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Written by the same already cited author who wrote this already cited article in Tablet (magazine), this request is primarily due to an abundance of caution because I want to heavily rely on it, as well as the contentiousness of the content, particularly I/P and gensex. FortunateSons ( talk) 12:01, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

WP:UGC source (wiki) widely used in WP:C/C++ articles (note that the site also has a C reference despite the name). Examples are too many so I won't be comprehensive here but C string handling is one of the worst cases that I know of. The reason I bring it here instead of just removing everything by myself is that this site is considered the best/most up to date C++ reference in existence and in my experience that is the case. I just don't think this is enough to warrant an exception to UGC. Nickps ( talk) 16:25, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

Very cleary a user editable wiki, and so WP:UGC, it's not reliable. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested « @» ° ∆t° 19:39, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

It's not really user editable. The entire wiki is currently under protection, and we can currently only make suggestions on a dedicated talk page. However, I'm not sure how the group people who can directly edit is determined nor whether that makes them reliable, and the wiki was editable once anyways.

It's funny how the best documentation on C/C++ out there is an unreferenced wiki running on software that EOL'd in 2014 with unmaintained extensions, and everyone seems to trust it, and it's actually trustworthy. Aaron Liu ( talk) 21:00, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

So it can be edited by anyone, we don't know who the group of editors are. If it is trusted is there any use by others? -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested « @» ° ∆t° 21:08, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

Besides the plethora of love from user-generated sites like stackoverflow and reddit, we also have learncpp, a very trusted tutorial site that's... self-published... and also very widely-used in online circles... uhh and uh this reddit thread has many people who claim to have C++ Paper (basically a part of the standard) authorship and who claim to sit on the C++ committee yeah

As expected, there aren't news sources covering this geek information. Some less reliable citations include Phoronix (basically a really prominent blog), MakeUseOf (slightly worse than the likes of ScreenRant), and the LA Times... published a High School student's opinion piece b "std::map vs std::unordered_map" which links it prominently, even calls it "C++ Standard Reference", and provides no opinion except a summary of what these two classes do.

Man, all of this would be so fucking easier if cppreference.com just cited the relevant papers that state the claims. Aaron Liu ( talk) 21:32, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

It really would Stackoverflow, Reddit, self-published sources, and blogs are not making the case. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested « @» ° ∆t° 22:14, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

I'm not sure how the group people who can directly edit is determined The group is literally just autoconfirmed editors. As far as I'm aware, that's the only restriction imposed. Nickps ( talk) 21:38, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

Okay, it's weird that their user rights logs don't log autoconfirmation. Thanks.

Looking at the recent changes, it's just two to three (unreliable) editors editing. Aaron Liu ( talk) 21:45, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

Is it weird? Our logs don't seem to include that either. There is another thing though. Autoconfirm is configurable. What if they disabled it entirely so only manually confirmed people can edit? (Is that even possible to do?) That would make them a closed wiki, at least for now. Not that it would matter too much since every user that was autoconfirmed before the lockdown would still be able to edit. Nickps ( talk) 22:10, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

@ Nickps and Aaron Liu: Most of what the site does is summarize information from the ISO C++ specs as well as some compiler documentation. The reason why people think it's authoritative is because the actual standards cost money. Most libraries don't have them online to my knowledge.

open-std.org [1] [2] hosts many of the draft standards and proposals, but these are not authoritative. You could easily replace almost all refs to cppreference with refs to the draft standards based on skimming the pages in question.

Ideally, we could have a cite C/C++ specification template that would reference the ISO version and link the draft standard, while clarifying the difference. Chess ( talk) (please mention me on reply) 17:53, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

There's a pre-existing {{ Cite ISO standard}} template, the URL to the draft could always be added after the cite but within the closing ref tag. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested « @» ° ∆t° 18:01, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

I cannot clearly navigate open-std.org. Yes, cppreference summarizes (which is what all encyclopedias do), but how can we take their word that it's in the standard? I know from experience that it is right, but it's actually unsubstantiated. Like I said, this would all be much easier if cppreference just cited sources. Aaron Liu ( talk) 20:48, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

@ Aaron Liu: All behaviour of valid C++ programs should be defined in the standard (or at least defined as implementation-defined or undefined). Please check out [3] which is the subpage of open-std with the draft standards for C++. For C, they can be found here: [4] It is not necessary to cite facts about the language itself to anything other than the standard because the language is defined in the standard. cppreference doesn't cite anything because it is implicitly cited to the specification.

I'm not against removing cppreference as a source, but you seem to be overestimating the difficulty of removing it. Please ask away if you need any help tracing information to somewhere in the standard itself. Chess ( talk) (please mention me on reply) 05:59, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

Note that for what it's worth cppreference does sometimes cite the standard explicitly. See [5]. Typically, pages about C have references while pages about C++ don't though there are some rare exceptions. Nickps ( talk) 10:32, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

I was saying that cppreference could cite section numbers, but you do raise a good point that we could find these sections ourselves. Aaron Liu ( talk) 11:35, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

IMO an unreliable source is still better than no source, but for where it not practical to cite the standard, or where a more accessible source is desired, I think a good alternative would be to cite the documentation of one of the major implementers (Microsoft, GNU, Clang, etc) with or without attribution at discretion. Those would be reliable for the implementation's... well, implementation of the spec, even if in some circumstances perhaps not for the spec itself. Alpha3031 ( t • c) 10:50, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

The issue with using any wiki is that it's content can't be guaranteed (Typos, poor readings of the source material, and even outright malicious editing). Documentation from implementor would be much more reliable. It may be a long term task to replace the references, but the encyclopedia would be better for it being done. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested « @» ° ∆t° 11:28, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

• Unreliable – it's user-generated content (a wiki), and I've seen vandalism there before. It's a very useful source for C++ programmers, and I use it often, but it is not reliable by Wikipedia's standards. — Mx. Granger ( talk · contribs) 15:33, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

Is the U.S. Government agency "RFE/RL" (AKA " Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty"):

• Option 1: Generally reliable
• Option 2: Additional considerations
• Option 3: Generally unreliable
• Option 4: Deprecate

Chetsford ( talk) 11:38, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

• Previous discussions (as near as I can find - please feel free to edit with anything I missed): 2008, 2019, 2021. Chetsford ( talk) 11:48, 7 May 2024 (UTC)
• See also 2021 RfC and 2022 discussion on Radio Free Asia. BobFromBrockley ( talk) 14:16, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

Survey

• 4 While it's possible to find individual instances of WP:USEBYOTHERS, common sense would dictate that robust content analysis on an outlet's unreliability or propensity to publish falsehoods should be given more weight in source evaluation than a drive-by "according to X" mention. Following is a non-exhaustive (and easily expandable) list of 14 pieces of evidence documenting RFE/RL's unreliability:

a. RFE/RL has a documented history of broadcasting lies, rumors, and conspiracy theories

From 1950 to 1971, RFE/RL disseminated overt lies to its audience about something as basic as the identity of its editor. That year, an expose revealed that editorial decisions at RFE/RL were being secretly made by the CIA, something RFE/RL falsely denied over a period of decades [6].

• Penn professor Kristen Ghodsee writes in The Baffler that - well after the CIA had divested itself of RFE/RL - executives continued managing the outlet to advance "a new genre of psychological and political warfare", that the outlet trafficked in antisemitic conspiracy theories, and reported "unsubstantiated rumors as fact". [7]

b. RFE/RL has a documented history of intimidating -- up to and including firing -- its own staff to ensure reportage aligns with U.S. global ambitions

• In 2023, Blankspot reported that multiple RFE/RL "journalists" who reported critically on Azerbaijan were fired during a period the U.S. was cozying up to the Azerbaijani government. [8]
• Also that year, Arzu Geybullayeva, in her blog, explained that her conversations with RFE/RL journalists found that they faced "systematic harassment" from management if they veered from the U.S. foreign policy line. [9]
• In 2018, the entire staff of the RFE/RL station in the Republic of Georgia protested the firing of their director and asserted "growing intimidation, unfair treatment and attacks from RFE/RL management" over the topics and tone of their reporting. [10]
• The GAO has documented that USAGM's own staff, generally -- including staff from RFE/RL, specifically -- have stated that management has meddled with editorial independence by taking "actions that did not align with USAGM’s firewall principles". [11]

c. RFE/RL is both objectively and subjectively non- WP:INDEPENDENT and has been described as "propaganda" by RS:

• According to Jennifer Grygiel, a media studies scholar at Syracuse University, under U.S. federal law, "RFE/RL is required to support the U.S. government abroad". [12]
• The objective fact of its structural non-independence has been subjectively confirmed by studies; an article in the scholarly journal UC Irvine Law Review in 2020 reported that RFE/RL operated by "not always address[ing] facts unfavorable to U.S. policy". [13]
• In 2018, the New York Times implicitly described RFE/RL as propaganda, writing that it "used Facebook to target ads at United States citizens, in potential violation of longstanding laws meant to protect Americans from domestic propaganda" [14].
• Magda Stroínska, scholar of linguistics at McMaster University, describes RFE/RL as "propaganda" in her 2023 book My Life in Propaganda: A Memoir About Language and Totalitarian Regimes (no online copy available).
• As reported by the Wall Street Journal, a variety of sources have criticized RFE/RL for distributing "foreign propaganda favorable to authoritarian regimes in Central Asia". [15]

d. RFE/RL has no legal incentive to be accurate in its reporting on BLPs Under federal law, RFE/RL has the unique position of being absolutely "immune from civil liability". Even fully deprecated outlets like Gateway Pundit and Occupy Democrats have a pecuniary interest to get claims about living people roughly correct. RFE/RL, however, does not as it can never be sued.

e. RFE/RL is closely associated with deprecated outlets. RFE/RL is operated by the same controlling mind (U.S. Agency for Global Media) that oversees Radio y Television Marti, which has been deprecated by community consensus as a purveyor of falsehoods.

Chetsford ( talk) 11:38, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

a. This material relates to a very long time ago. I don't think we consider it a reliable source for geopolitical topics during the Cold War.

b. There are a bunch of legitimately concerning issues raised here, which point to some management failures, both in the USAGM senior management during the Trump period and in specific national teams at various time limited periods. Without trivialising these, including the labour disputes and internal politics involved, I don't think these sources suggest reliability issues. It suggests the potential for bias, with the recent Azerbaijan case being most concerning, but even that article explicitly says Despite the criticism towards editor Ilkin Mamamdov, it’s worth noting that during his tenure, significant investigations have been published. For instance, the Azerbaijani team exposed corruption among high-ranking politicians in Azerbaijan.

c. These speak to bias not reliability. The tl;dr of the Conversation op ed is in the sub-heading: Major US outlets present mostly facts – that support American values It talks about the "firewall" eroding under Trump (the issue covered in b, but remaining mostly in place. The Irvine Law Review piece (same author) speaks about trustworthiness as a form of propaganda, i.e. building a reputation for honesty as a way of building soft power - again bias alongside reliability. Stroínska talks about listening to RFE while growing up, i.e. during the Cold War, so that's not relevant. The WSJ piece covers material on specific central Asian services under Trump that fits with the stuff in (b); in all of the cases the complaints (relating to bias not reliability) triggered action to correct them, so don't raise critical reliability issues.

d. This speaks to a theoretical issue rather than actual identified problems.

e. In previous RfCs, "association with deprecated outlets" has been dismissed as a factor. I think it's only significant if RFE is sourcing material from the deprecated outlet or using the same authors.

In short, a strong case for bias (especially at particular times for particular national services) but no reason to depart from general reliability. BobFromBrockley ( talk) 16:42, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

• 1 No evidence of unreliability has been provided, and in my experience it is a generally reliable source. BilledMammal ( talk) 11:53, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

• Unanswerable - What is the context in which we are examining the source? What information are we citing it for, and in which WP article? Blueboar ( talk) 11:55, 7 May 2024 (UTC)
• 4 Per Chetsford - the US state-owned anti-socialist propaganda structure is not, nor has it ever been, from a mission perspective, the equivalent of state-owned media such as BBC or CBC. CIA documentation refers to Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty as two of the largest and most successful covert action projects in the U.S. effort to break the communist monopoly on news. [16] - We cannot possibly see this as a reliable or neutral source. Furthermore this non-reliability has been demonstrated via the recent use of antisemitic conspiracy theories within the Cuban broadcasting arm of the US propaganda apparatus. It's quite clear that, rather than being editorially independent if ideologically suspect, media outlets, these propaganda vehicles will say whatever they believe most likely to serve their mission of undermining US enemies. This is not what we should be basing an encyclopedia off of. Simonm223 ( talk) 12:14, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

  Thats talking about the original implementation, not the modern implementation that has no relationship to the original beyond the name. BilledMammal ( talk) 12:32, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

  In that quote that is not where the sentence ends (despite the period used here); it is specifically referring to the communist monopoly on news and information in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. - which was absolutely real. (p. 2) Relatedly, it's also highly relevant that this document is from 1969 (p. 11), over half a century ago during the Cold War. Crossroads ^-talk- 00:00, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

• Option 1 the source received broad citations (below) and is generally respected (ex.: b. 2. above). While some arguments can be made about not citing during CIA control, those generally were not shown to be applicable after. While it could be called propaganda, it was not successfully shown to be propaganda in the sense that is relevant to reliability (see 2019, per @ X1\), and was considered closer to BBC than to a propaganda outlet in the more contemporary sense of the word (see 2021, by @ Shrike). In particular, internal conduct is generally concerning from a human but not generally from a reliability perspective, and I see no conflict of interest with the government that is not equal or worse compared to Al Jazeera Media Network, Deutsche Welle or many others. Regarding @ Chetsfords last argument, I would like to mention that the discussion on USAGM, which was closed as SNOW, showed that there was broad consensus that USAGM is not a sign of unreliability. FortunateSons ( talk) 12:59, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

I say only with the most respect to X1, etc.'s opinions from previous discussions you cited, but referencing the opinions of people (myself included) who have registered free Wikipedia accounts as sources to establish a site's reliability may be less convincing than referencing the research of RS to establish a site's reliability. "RFE/RL is reliable because HomicidalOstrich1987 said it's reliable" is maybe not the equivalent of "RFE/RL is reliable because the New York Times said it's reliable." Chetsford ( talk) 13:21, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

• Option 1- I don’t see anything here that’s especially concerning except they were kind of dubious 50+ years ago. The evidence of them being propaganda in the current day is slim and a bunch of passing mentions. No actual evidence of incorrect information has been provided. Unless we want to mark all state owned broadcasters as generally unreliable? PARAKANYAA ( talk) 13:14, 7 May 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1 - No current and concrete evidence of unreliability has been provided here, only characterizations that appear to be used to conflate what it was decades ago with what it is today. - Amigao ( talk) 13:17, 7 May 2024 (UTC)
• Option 4: RFE is clearly propaganda produced by a government. As such, it's not making even the careless attempt to be factual expected of WP:GUNREL sources. It's an active and knowing source of false info, which is prime deprecation territory. Loki ( talk) 14:15, 7 May 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1 Per others. Source appears to be well-respected and cited by other outlets. Deprecation or downgrade would not only be excessive, but outright unwarranted. Toa Nidhiki05 14:31, 7 May 2024 (UTC)
• Option 4. While it is historically significant, it is still a propaganda outlet established by the CIA; see eg. ^[1] - arguments above that "what it is today" has somehow shifted aren't really meaningful, since independent coverage doesn't actually document an improvement or provide any reason to think that it has changed from its propaganda roots. (It is obviously a given that statements from figures within RFE, the US government, or the CIA are not usable to establish reliability for WP:MANDY / WP:INDEPENDENT reasons.) And I'm not convinced by what WP:USEBYOTHERS exists, for several reasons. First, as Cone documents, the CIA (and RFE itself) went out of its way to manufacture signs of support for RFE in the US media; and many there, despite knowing that RFE was a CIA propaganda operation, collaborated with them to give it the veneer of legitimacy. There's no reason to think that this has stopped - statements from the people involved that amount to "we stopped after we got caught" are not persuasive. Second, ultimately, use by others isn't as convincing as outright coverage describing it as a propaganda outlet; the best way to establish reliability is with sources outright discussing a source's reliability, and in RFE's case they're pretty clear that it's a propaganda outlet rather than a legitimate news source. This is starkly distinct from the more legitimate government-funded news sources some people have tried to compare it to, which were open about their funding and which have in-depth independent coverage describing them as reliable. -- Aquillion ( talk) 17:09, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

  The Stacey Cone article is about RFE in the 1950s and 60s, not its current form. RFE's current funding and financials are available in its annual Form 990, available here. - Amigao ( talk) 22:10, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

There are numerous examples, I've provided, of more recent editorial indiscretions - as recent as 2023 - taken by RFE/RL, such as firing journalists who report factual information that doesn't align with U.S. government policy and its 2016-renewed statutory mandate to support the U.S. Government. Insofar as the fact RFE/RL now says it's not secretly controlled by the CIA, it made the same claim over a period of 25 years. Why is its current claim more believable than its last claim (which was proved an elaborate lie that it falsely reported thousands of times over a period of decades)? What changed that allows us to now take what its says at face value, no questions asked? Chetsford ( talk) 03:08, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

WP:EXTRAORDINARY claims require extraordinary evidence, and you have provided none regarding RFE's current funding to back up your claim. - Amigao ( talk) 14:07, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

As I specifically said, nothing anyone has produced has demonstrated that their reputation has changed, which would of course require similar WP:SECONDARY coverage specifically describing a change with a clear-cut line we could use; you assert that that article does not apply to its current form, implying that you believe there is a clear line, but obviously their own 990 Form is useless for establishing something like that. If its assurances that it has changed have been taken seriously - and have actually altered its reputation - you should be able to produce secondary sources proving that. The fact that you had to resort to their own 990 form to argue it via WP:OR using WP:INVOLVED primary sources implies that secondary sources establishing its reputation has improved do not, in fact, exist and that it is therefore still as unreliable at best and more likely an active source of misinformation. -- Aquillion ( talk) 12:57, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

I think this (linked below) might get me partial credit regarding your request FortunateSons ( talk) 13:05, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

• Option 3 Perhaps option 2 for non controversial stuff but for anything impacting US relations/policies, seems like propaganda push, even if no outright falsification. Not 4 because prefer 2/3 first and then see. Selfstudier ( talk) 17:13, 7 May 2024 (UTC)
• Option 2, u:Chetsford has provided compelling evidence that the source is biased and therefore may not be suitable for certain areas or to determine due weight. Editor discretion is definitely required. I'm reluctant to !vote 3 or 4 without any examples of deliberate and/or uncorrected falsehoods. Alaexis _¿question? 17:15, 7 May 2024 (UTC)
• Option 2 ~ Per State Media Monitor [17] it's parent oragnisation is considered "Independent State-Funded and State-Managed (ISFM)" -- which they describe as having a "medium" level of independence. Prior to '71 it should definitely be considered a propaganda broadcaster, but I don't see reason to do anything more than mention it's circumstances somewhere. — Preceding unsigned comment added by [[User:{{{1}}}|{{{1}}}]] ([[User talk:{{{1}}}#top|talk]] • [[Special:Contributions/{{{1}}}|contribs]])

State Media Monitor is, itself, questionably RS and certainly not INDEPENDENT. It began as a project at CEU but is now the singular writing of a man named Marius Dragomir who is a former RFE/RL employee (and whose qualification to engage in media studies analysis includes a B.A. degree).
He is unquestionably wrong in his assertion it's "independent" since it is run by a single person who serves at the pleasure of the president of the day, unlike independent state broadcasters such as Deutsche Welle who are run by a multi-stakeholder board. Why he would make this clear error, one can only speculate. Chetsford ( talk) 02:51, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

• Option 2 at worst. We classify Xinhua as option 2, even though [f]or subjects where the Chinese government may be a stakeholder, the consensus is almost unanimous that Xinhua cannot be trusted to cover them accurately and dispassionately. It is already clear from the above discussion that RFE/RL is in a substantially better position than that.

Furthermore, I find the OP’s argument to be particularly unpersuasive. While I don’t doubt that there are more sources that could be used for this, the claims presented here appear to be a mixture of relevant, irrelevant, and cited to marginally reliable or unreliable sources. In addition, many of the arguments are not supported by the sources, particularly involving substantial overstatements of what the sources actually say, or missing substantial context from the same sources.

RFE/RL has had instances or time periods of propagandizing, but e.g. they were also a key source of news during the Chernobyl disaster. They may also be one of a very small number of reliable news sources reporting from repressive countries, where at minimum they are likely to be more willing to report criticism that local sources cannot or will not publish. Sunrise ( talk) 07:59, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

"a very small number of reliable news sources reporting from repressive countries, where at minimum they are likely to be more willing to report criticism" While that's certainly RFE/RL's boilerplate in its press releases and marketing brochures, independent sources disagree:

... among numerous other examples, etc. Chetsford ( talk) 16:51, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

This reply is simply a repetition of two of the same examples from the original comment. I have already said my list is non-exhaustive, but these two are similarly unpersuasive:

-- Sunrise ( talk) 01:39, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

• Option 2. In summary, the opening rationale does not adequately distinguish between bias and unreliability, and the cited evidence is largely of the former and not much of the latter. A source can be reliable for facts, while being biased in its selection of facts. Indeed, the most effective propaganda is that which is composed entirely of factual statements, arranged in a biased fashion. Imagine, for example, that a source published an article every time a Russian committed a crime, and never published an article about an American committing a crime. The reader may be influenced to form a negative opinion of Russians, and yet the source could still be a reliable source of information about those crimes. Some more detailed commentary on the given rationale:
  • Point A focuses on Cold War era activity. For content published by this source in that era, an additional consideration is warranted. But it's not clear how relevant this is to the modern organisation.
  • Point B is short on details of actual unreliability. The first bullet point amounts to an accusation of bias. OK, but did they publish false information or not? The second bullet point quotes "systematic harassment", but this phrase does not appear in the source (which is a blog - not exactly the pinnacle of reliability itself). The third bullet point says the protest was "over the topics and tone of their reporting" but the source doesn't support that.
  • Point C is about bias. not always address[ing] facts unfavorable to U.S. policy is compatible with how I described bias working in practice: the selective omission of facts does not mean the selected facts are not still facts.
  • Point D is dubious. Even if RFE/RL enjoyed immunity in the US, they have operations in less friendly regimes, where presumably there is no such immunity. The reference to BLPs is spurious.
  • Point E is guilt by association. Barnards.tar.gz ( talk) 15:39, 8 May 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1 (2 at very worst). Evidence has been presented for bias. No evidence has been presented for unreliability, and some of the evidence presented for bias actually affirms reliability. (See my response to Chetsford above for the reasoning - perhaps I should have posted that here and not as a reply in which case feel free to move it.) BobFromBrockley ( talk) 16:47, 8 May 2024 (UTC)
• Option 2 - should be attributed as we would any statement from any government agency, and no this is not analogous to the BBC. NPR is analogous to the BBC, this however is material the government is publishing to advance its interests to a foreign audience. And that should be, at the very least, attributed. nableezy - 19:23, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

Philosophically, this seems like a reasonable solution when attribution is crafted as "according to the U.S. Government's RFE/RL" as opposed to "according to RFE/RL". The very name "Radio Free Europe", presented without context, is violative of our NPOV policy, specifically WP:ADVOCACY, by falsely presenting this is (a) a European operation, (b) free of state influence. If Italy, under Mussolini, had a state-run news agency called "the Most Accurate Sources Available" it would be a little ridiculous if we simply weaved into WP "according to the Most Accurate Sources Available ..." anytime we referenced it. Chetsford ( talk) 00:10, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

I would be inclined to agree here -- attributing something to "Radio Free Europe" is pretty misleading (one is inclined to suspect that this might have been part of the idea behind naming it that). jp× g 🗯️ 01:10, 12 May 2024 (UTC)

• Option 1 - as long as Al-Jazzera is considered GREL it would be absurd to give RFE/RL less than that. Vegan416 ( talk) 21:55, 8 May 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1ish Bias isn't teh same as being unreliable. None of the evidence provided strongly points to it not being generally reliable on the stuff it reports on, that said it seems that there is certainly cause for concern around it not reporting on certain thing or omission of facts— blindlynx 23:44, 8 May 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1, 2 at worst. As far as bias goes, I find worse things in NYT. At worst, it's guilty of a bias of omission on certain topics. Headbomb { t · c · p · b} 02:06, 9 May 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1 Radio Free Europe has clear editorial independence unlike Xinhua and Russia Today. Are we going to deprecate NPR and the BBC now because they're state media too? All sources have biases, so that itself is not a sufficient argument for unreliability, only if the bias becomes so pervasive it directly impacts the factuality of the source. Curbon7 ( talk) 02:34, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

"Are we going to deprecate NPR and the BBC now because they're state media too?" NPR and BBC have insulating, non-partisan governance boards. RFE/RL is run by a unitary political appointee. NPR and BBC don't have legal mandates to advance the cause of their host governments. RFE/RL does (as detailed in my !vote). NPR and BBC don't have a host of RS calling them propaganda and questioning their accuracy. RFE/RL does. Chetsford ( talk) 03:19, 11 May 2024 (UTC)

I can see why some participants have !voted for option 2, but no one has explained sufficiently why it should be fully deprecated, a status that not even Xinhua and Anadolu Agency and Russia Today have. Of course one should scrutinize an article when it is in an area the US government has a vested interest in ( WP:COMMONSENSE) or in some other areas identified above like Azerbaijan post-2023, but it seems generally reliable. Curbon7 ( talk) 22:39, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

• Option 1. This is one of the best and most informative sources on subjects related to Russia, for example. The source of funding does not really matter per WP:V. What matters is the reputation for fact checking and accuracy, and it has a very good reputation. An explicit attribution to specific author (rather than RFE/RL) may be needed for opinions, as usual. And no, this is not a propaganda source by any reasonable account; it is generally not even a "biased source". For comparison, Voice of America is more biased, less informative and less professional, but even that would be "Option 1" I think. My very best wishes ( talk) 20:49, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

Just to be objective, the quality of this source may depend on the country it covers, and even on specific program director. For example, Masha Gessen was terrible as a director of Russian program, even though she is a very good journalist. She was replaced by a much better director. My very best wishes ( talk) 02:01, 10 May 2024 (UTC)

• Option 1 per Sunrise and My very best wishes. It is an important sources for Wikipedia, because it often attempts to do RS-quality reporting in regions that are extremely hostile to it. Also, other RS trust it enough to rely on its reporting. I also don't see any compelling evidence of unreliability presented here, and too many arguments about theoretical bias that don't even touch on its actual reporting. - GretLomborg ( talk) 06:34, 11 May 2024 (UTC)
• Option 2. How many angels can manufacture consent on the head of a pin? I really don't think the precise number matters -- it's preposterous to imagine that we have only two options here, with one being "they're biased which means that their claims are factually incorrect" and the other being "their claims are factually correct which means they aren't biased". Neither of these claims really make any sense. Can't we just put up a post-it note somewhere saying that they're somewhat biased on the issue and move on with our lives? jp× g 🗯️ 01:06, 12 May 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1. Compared with other RSs, RFE/RL does not seem out of line with journalistic output. Dramatic restructuring in the last few decades has given it editorial independence from the State Department, for example. While its focus may be on region-specific news to region-specific audiences, the quality of journalistic output itself is not at a low level, and should not be treated as such. Furthermore, there is very widespread skepticism here on Wikipedia, meaning instances of it being cited are very frequently scrutinized as though it were a low-quality source. AnandaBliss ( talk) 18:45, 12 May 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1 In my experience RFE/RL is a solid source for Russia and Ukraine, particularly when compared with other sources that focus on Russia. There is some discussion in the media and scholarly literature on to what extent it is biased, as there should be, but it does not appear to rise to the level of making it unreliable. Its biases seem similar to the biases you would find in western sources that are widely regarded as reliable, such as The New York Times or The Washington Post. RFE/RL also does report some things critical of Ukraine and the West/the US, such as this or this. However, I do not have experience with all of RFE/RLs various branches across different countries. It may be possible some specific ones should be used with more caution, but even then I'm doubtful they would be "generally unreliable". -- Tristario ( talk) 07:21, 13 May 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1: Especially in the Russian invasion of Ukraine, their coverage has been on-the-ground and in-depth. I note the repeated mentions of Central Asia, where I do not usually edit. Maybe that is the reason for the difference in perspective. If problems are being noted there specifically, then perhaps a narrower RfC may be in order. If Trump takes office again, perhaps another RfC may be in order. Right here, right now, we are using it extensively in Ukraine without any complaint from anyone afaik until now. Elinruby ( talk) 16:17, 14 May 2024 (UTC)
• Option 2: There is some WP:USEBYOTHERS as evidence of reliability in some cases, but also detailed descriptions of editorial lapses and concerns over autonomy (not just bias) for the modern iterations of RFE/RL in some cases (e.g. OP's point C and the WSJ on Tajikistan). At a minimum, attribution should be given in controversial topics. Additional caution should be applied to areas involving the US government. Anything from the old Cold War era RFE/RL should be generally unreliable. — MarkH₂₁ ^talk 22:31, 17 May 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1 : the journalistic output of RFE/RL is in line with the standards of many other publicly-funded international outlets that cover foreign-related news ( BBC, France24, Deutsche Welle) which have been scrutinized here at RSN for many years. I believe it fully complies with our standards laid out at WP:RS, which is why I think it should be regarded as reliable. As for Central Asia, as someone who has studied Central Asian energy policy outside of Wikipedia, I can say with confidence that I have never witnessed any bias towards any such authoritarian regimes as mentioned by other editors, so I have to disagree with that assessment. I have to agree with Elinruby that another RfC may be in order if the editorial independence of RFE/RL is, in the future, affected by future US administrations, in which case attribution may become in order. Pilaz ( talk) 13:55, 19 May 2024 (UTC)

• Option 2 When all is said and done, we’re talking about a state-sponsored media source explicitly chartered to further selected narratives. Also per Chetsford's well-researched stuff.

In its own words, its mission is to promote democratic values. Substitute another adjective, such as “conservative”, “progressive”, “socialist”, etc. and the issue should become clear (unless one ascribes magical or quasi-sacred symbolism to the ideal of democracy instead of merely viewing it soberly as a vehicle to guarantee human rights).

I don’t believe that an outward appearance of checking the boxes of “journalistic standards” is relevant here. That checklist was designed for independent media and designed to differentiate between e.g. The Guardian and The Daily Beast; using it as a yardstick is completely irrelevant when the source is ipso facto strongly biased, as here, when the entire purpose of the outlet is to further narratives. Having had a modicum of experience in an analogous sector regarding standards compliance, let me reiterate that not everything can be taken at face value.

In the remote corners of this encyclopedia, there still exist a number of articles and places containing statements from the 2000s that, if an editor made them today in favor of Russia or China, would result in a noticeboard discussion, and rightly so, A few such pages are on my low-priority list. There are surely others out there.

Cheers, RadioactiveBoulevardier ( talk) 09:30, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

Discussion

• A recent previous RfC dealt with the Radio y Television Marti (AGM) of which RFE/RL is one of its sibling brands. I'm GF pinging participants in that discussion since this is closely related: User:Toa Nidhiki05, User:FortunateSons, User:Cortador, User:Aquillion, User:NightHeron, User:Simonm223, User:Alaexis, User:Boynamedsue, User:LokiTheLiar. Chetsford ( talk) 11:38, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

  Would you be so kind as to tag those that participated in the SNOW-discussion as well? I think that discussion may be relevant here too (unless I missed that you did, in which case I apologise). :) I think it might be beneficial to link to that discussion too, as the SNOW-consensus seemed to be that there can be significant difference between the sources, particularly that their reliability is not necessarily related. FortunateSons ( talk) 12:12, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

  Adding participants from the relevant USAGM discussion if not mentioned above:@ Amigao, @ Red-tailed hawk and @ Hemiauchenia FortunateSons ( talk) 12:56, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

• It should be noted that WP:RADIOFREEASIA is already listed as a result of a previous discussion.

• Selection of use by others:

1. https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20221002-sergey-kiriyenko-so-called-viceroy-of-the-donbas-helped-launch-putin-s-career
2. https://time.com/5444612/ukraine-kateryna-handziuk-acid-attack-protest/
3. https://www.businessinsider.com/video-russia-soldiers-using-ukraine-pows-as-human-shields-report-2023-12
4. https://www.hrw.org/reports/pdfs/worldreports/world.93/hsw.pdf
5. https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/43964/flooding-in-azerbaijan
6. https://www.nature.com/articles/345567b0.pdf
7. https://kyivindependent.com/investigative-stories-from-ukraine-parliament-still-closed-to-journalists-raising-transparency-concerns/
8. https://ca.news.yahoo.com/video-ukraine-appears-show-russians-121936734.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAApRwJTfaPCfSe5Cgh2IWJ-dgRMeHrWoUOu4emZZR8QMVYEcN17h_ZbyYfNdzj1nvaI8hdwjY8uXyaqwvMFQeiN-bYiJK1pV9D5vvPAK4ddxEN0GzQSM9UEIpRNqxxHzVcDLadz5R8JHYL2cR7bTcZaGxy_QAHnIiTYa-jMu9YMn (from insider)
9. https://www.aa.com.tr/en/asia-pacific/death-toll-rises-to-55-from-kyrgyz-tajik-border-clashes/2230340
10. https://www.lrt.lt/en/news-in-english/19/1166583/belgian-air-force-shares-video-of-russian-jet-intercept-over-baltic-sea
11. https://www.newsweek.com/eu-chief-calls-more-ammo-ukraine-top-chinese-diplomat-urges-peace-1782525
12. https://theweek.com/news/world-news/russia/955795/was-cyberattack-ukraine-precursor-russia-invasion
13. https://www.forbes.com/sites/katyasoldak/2012/11/02/ukraines-prison-prone-prime-ministers/
14. https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2014/04/12/302167295/armed-men-take-police-hq-in-eastern-ukraine-city
15. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/6/who-is-nobel-peace-prize-winner-narges
16. https://www.cnn.com/2017/07/15/politics/who-is-rinat-akhmetshin/index.html
17. https://socialsciences.ucla.edu/2017/08/29/are-islamic-state-recruits-more-street-gang-members-than-zealots/
18. https://fortune.com/europe/2022/09/25/putin-losing-ukraine-war-cannot-explain-to-russia-why-says-zelensky/
19. https://abcnews.go.com/US/us-woman-speaks-after-release-russian-captivity-same/story?id=95670746
20. https://thehill.com/policy/international/3484858-heres-who-russia-has-punished-for-speaking-out-against-the-war-in-ukraine/
21. Positive reception: https://www.politico.eu/article/radio-free-europe-returns-to-fight-fake-news/

(Note that no specific selection regarding RS or timeline was made, primarily focussing on getting a diverse list of sourcing. Feedback and additions are welcome)

FortunateSons ( talk) 12:06, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

• A list of raw links with no context is too onerous to sift through to determine their veracity, however, on a cursory audit, many of these are themselves non-RS (e.g. Newsweek), or are other U.S. Government websites (e.g. NASA), or are reporting on RFE/RL rather than sourcing RFE/RL (e.g. HRW). Chetsford ( talk) 12:28, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

  I am happy to filter them more thoroughly (based on what criteria?), but for example NASA is broadly cited. FortunateSons ( talk) 12:32, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

  The fact that one completely unrelated organization cited another completely unrelated organization run by the same government once doesn’t mean anything. Dronebogus ( talk) 23:57, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

  Andalou is indeed deprecated, or at least discouraged. Ditto Newsweek. The rest are generally considered reliable with the usual caveats about context, except that if that Forbes is a blog, special considerations may apply. Some are better than others. For what it is worth, Ukraine war articles use RFE/RL extensively and nobody in that topic area ever complained about it. Elinruby ( talk) 15:58, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

  That depends on whether or not you consider NASA to be an RS (possible considered the high number of citations) and if you think that they are interdependent enough not to count for USEBYOTHERS. Both positions are valid IMO, but it also doesn’t really matter, because the goal is to show broad use by (preferably respected) sources. FortunateSons ( talk) 00:26, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

  I know, it’s just that’s a pretty poor example since, although NASA is respected, it’s both insufficiently independent and not known for being a barometer of where we put our editorial Overton window. Basically what I’m saying is science and politics have different standards of reliability on WP; NASA isn’t a source on the latter so it can’t be used to judge the reliability of a political outlet. Dronebogus ( talk) 00:40, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

  Makes sense. I was trying to also establish reliability for “generic” reporting (read: non-contentious), but I understand that those two may be too “close” (despite the older organisational structure being likely applicable here, per the discussion I linked above) for comfort. FortunateSons ( talk) 00:45, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

I have been using this source for 1977 in New Zealand Televison. The wikipedia article says NZ On Air is a "state-funded online promotional showcase of New Zealand television and film." Based off this info, I'm still not sure if this source is reliable so could someone please tell me if it is? SVcode( Talk) 21:40, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

That link is to NZ On Screen, not NZ On Air. Their about-us page ("Our Story") states "NZ On Screen is non-commercial and is governed by an independent charitable trust, the Digital Media Trust. It is primarily funded by NZ On Air." and "Reliability underpins our mahi. We act reliably to create a dependable resource for, and with, our stakeholders." (mahi meaning work, etc.) I'd consider the site reliable but not a guarantor of notability. Daveosaurus ( talk) 12:00, 24 May 2024 (UTC)

Is Henry Heras and his works on history like this one - https://archive.org/details/aravidudynastyof035336mbp/page/326/mode/2up?q=Pennar

Reliable?? Violetmyers ( talk) 09:57, 24 May 2024 (UTC)

Firstly, WP:AGE MATTERS: in general, it is wise to use more recent sources, and there have been specific issues with regard to the historiography of India in that regard. Beyond that, reliable for what? Heras seems to have written on a wide range of topics, and we tend to shy away from making blanket 'reliable' assessments. AndyTheGrump ( talk) 11:17, 24 May 2024 (UTC)

for this

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Violetmyers/sandbox#

This military conflict widely explained in this book? So as per the AGEMATTERS should I use this book or not ??? Violetmyers ( talk) 12:10, 24 May 2024 (UTC)

" The Killing of Mr George" is a source attributed to Alix Kirsta on thier own personal web page. On its face, I wouldn't accept it. However, at the bottom it claims to have originally been published in The Sunday Times on 25 May 1997. Though Kirsta does show up three times in a search of the Times' archives (over six years or so), not only are there no matches for searching 25 May 1997, but I went over every single archived story from that issue, and none of them were "The Killing of Mr George" nor even authoried by Kirsta.

Should we (a) not use this source, (b) use it credited to Alix Kirsta's blog, (c) use it credited to The Sunday Times, or (d) some other option(s) I'm not foreseeing? Thanks, all, — Fourthords | =Λ= | 13:39, 19 May 2024 (UTC)

This shows that it was definitely an article in The Sunday Times Magazine (see the second photo which lists the article as page 44-). If it's used I would cite the magazine and include the url to Alix Kirsta's site as a courtesy link (I don't think there's a reason to believe Kirsta wouldn't have reproduced the article faithfully). -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested « @» ° ∆t° 14:55, 19 May 2024 (UTC)

Oh, not the newspaper but a similarly-named magazine! Thank you so much! I probably never would've wound up there. Cheers! — Fourthords | =Λ= | 14:57, 19 May 2024 (UTC)

To be precise, a magazine that was (and is) a supplement to the newspaper. Nigel Ish ( talk) 12:11, 24 May 2024 (UTC)

Is this source and its author Yogendra Mishra reliable? It's intended to be cited at Shaikh Hamid Lawi. Sutyarashi ( talk) 06:28, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

Probably, I say that because WP:AGEMATTERS and the source is now over 50 years old. So it looks reliable, but could be outdated by more modern sources. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested « @» ° ∆t° 10:21, 25 May 2024 (UTC)

Lushootseed Press is the publishing wing of the Lushootseed Research non-profit, an organization dedicated to researching and funding Lushootseed research in the area. I don't know why @ SounderBruce keeps saying that they are "not a reliable publisher." [19] They were founded by Vi Hilbert, one of the most prominent Lushootseed scholars (and native speaker of Lushootseed) in the late 1900s-early 2000s. They have published the work of experts including PhD's Dr. Jay Miller (anthropologist) and Dr. Zalmai Zahir (who has been previously established as a reliable source on this board) and the aformentioned Vi Hilbert/taqʷšəbluʔ. They publish textbooks on Lushootseed instruction, the most widely-used Lushootseed dictionary (through University of Washington Press), non-fiction informational books, memoirs, and collections of auto-biographical recordings. Even if they are "self published" by the publisher, the authors (Jay Miller and Vi Hilbert most commonly) are experts in their fields. PersusjCP ( talk) 19:06, 19 May 2024 (UTC)

Sources being used in the article Bothell, Washington. There were two sources removed and mentioned in the removal comment: "Lushootseed Press is not a reliable publisher; Kenmore Historical Society is self-publishing their book"

• Hilbert, Vi; Miller, Jay; Zahir, Zalmai (2001). sdaʔdaʔ gʷəɬ dibəɬ ləšucid ʔacaciɬtalbixʷ - Puget Sound Geography. Original Manuscript from T.T. Waterman. Lushootseed Press. p. 81. ISBN  979-8750945764.
• Kenmore by the Lake: A Community History (PDF). Kenmore Heritage Society. 2003. p. 16.

These are small publishers and not likely to be peer reviewed. However individual works can be considered reliable if for instance they are cited (approvingly) in peer reviewed articles or reviewed approvingly in academic journals. The Kenmore Heritage Society claims the book won some awards; were these awards academic and reputable? Erp ( talk) 06:03, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

As far as Kenmore by the Lake goes, searching online I was able to find that the book received an award from the American Association for State and Local History. It also received the 2004 Award of Publication Excellence from the Washington Museum Association.

Not necessarily related to reliability, I'm not sure if "self-published" is the right word here either. According to the Bothell Reporter the book was principally written by a woman named Priscilla Droge, so unless she was in charge of the KHS it's not like blogging or a vanity press, which is what WP:SPS is principally about. Kenmore by the Lake lists the KHS as having a whole editorial team. Hydrangeans ( she/her | talk | edits) 06:25, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

As for Lushootseed Press, there are some paywalls I can't get past, but from what I gather it was associated with Vi Hilbert, a respected authority on the Lushootseed language. A book published by Lushootseed Press is cited in this article published in the academic journal Anthropological Linguistics. According to this article in the Journal of Northwest Anthropology (pp. 33–34), some Lushootseed Press publications are reprint editions of books originally published by the University of Washington, like Lushootseed: The Language of the Skagit, Nisqually, and Other Tribes of Puget Sound—An Introduction (1995; originally by University of Washington in 1976). Vi Hibert and Lushootseed Press seem to be cited in numerous academic publications about language and indigenous studies: [20] [21] [22] [23] [24] [25] [26], among others. The claim Lushootseed is not a reliable publisher would require further explanation to persuade me. Hydrangeans ( she/her | talk | edits) 06:46, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for your little write up, that was much more specific than what I wrote :) PersusjCP ( talk) 22:59, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

As the article in question is being prepped for GA and eventual FA status, there is great care to curate "high-quality reliable sources" to meet the FA criteria. While Lushootseed Press might meet the RS standard, it does not meet the high-quality qualifier of FACR. Sounder Bruce 03:39, 25 May 2024 (UTC)

May I ask why you conclude it doesn't meet this standard? My impression is that WP:SCHOLARSHIP produced by university-affiliated scholars is considered a WP:BESTSOURCE. I ask for a bit of patience about this since I've promoted articles to GA status but not to FA status. Hydrangeans ( she/her | talk | edits) 04:18, 25 May 2024 (UTC)

They are high-quality sources. As Hydrangeans stated, they are secondary sources, recognized as reliable and accurate by scholarly publications and state/national level associations in the case of the Kenmore source, and they are written by subject-matter experts in the field of Lushootseed research. That is high-quality to me. PersusjCP ( talk) 05:50, 25 May 2024 (UTC)

Even a top notch big academic press can sometimes produce non-reliable publications and small presses can produce reliable stuff. Even a vanity press might, by luck, print something worthwhile. In the long run what counts is the work itself and its acceptance (or non-acceptance) by modern scholars, not the press. Further check (world cat) shows that a fair number of universities have "Puget Sound Geography" on their shelves. Not a huge number, though several are well-known institutions. But books on this particular topic are very much specialized though might appeal to people doing comparative linguistics. I also note it is referenced (using google scholar) such as by Williams, David B. (2021-04-24). Homewaters: A Human and Natural History of Puget Sound. University of Washington Press. ISBN  978-0-295-74861-0. (in the introductory chapter when discussing place names) or Thrush, Coll (2017-03-01). Native Seattle: Histories from the Crossing-Over Place. University of Washington Press. ISBN  978-0-295-74135-2. among others; the University of Washington Press is suitably high quality for a press. "Kenmore by the Lake" is not in so many academic libraries (however it is even more specialized); however, it does seem to have won a couple of awards. The other question is what in the article are the works being used to support.

• Puget Sound Geography seems to be used to support that the name of the large winter village near Bothell was ƛ̕ax̌ʷadis. The book (or the underlying manuscript) seems to be the most reliable source for that fact and is used by other scholarly books for just that for other names. I would probably include a transliteration of the name. I note that the Kenmore City Council recently changed the name of a local park to include it, ƛ̕ax̌ʷadis (Tl' awh-ah-dees) Park ( https://www.kenmorewa.gov/Home/Components/FacilityDirectory/FacilityDirectory/12/103).
• Kenmore by the Lake seems to be used to support the removal of most of its people and the destruction of the village. Looking at the pdf of the book, I'm less happy about it as a very high quality reliable source given the lack of inline citations though the relevant chapter (chapter 2) is using David Buerge as a source (he is also one of the sources still in the article) along with "Snoqualmie Tribe interviews" and "University of Washington documents" (in other words someone has done necessary primary research). It also uses some speculative language which is probably right in that primary sources are likely sparse (better than being over definitive).

Is my understanding correct? If so, I would say Puget Sound Geography is a reliable and acceptable source. If known, I would also annotate the reference to include the estimated date for when the original Waterman manuscript was written (this might well be a range); given Waterman's death date, he likely interviewed people who had actually lived or visited the village when it existed or had heard stories about it from their parents and grandparents who had lived there. I would also list Waterman as the author and the other three as editors. Erp ( talk) 16:14, 25 May 2024 (UTC)

Yes, this is the case. I used Kenmore by the Lake just to support the last sentence in that paragraph. I think that it is important for context in the history section, as it creates continuity, rather than jumping from one time to another, and someone wanting to know more about what happened would be able to look into that source.

In addition, the Burke Museum used ƛ̕ax̌ʷadis in their Waterlines map of Lushootseed place names around Seattle. [27] I understand the debate around Kenmore source because yeah, it is a very small and niche publication, but there is no real reason why Puget Sound Geography isn't reliable. And BTW thanks for your citiation tips. I have tried citing PSG in a few different ways because the physical book is about half his original and half the modern-day authors' writings and notes. For example, the "Bainbridge Island" section (pp.222-230) starts with a map of the names on the island made by the researchers but corresponding to marks made on Waterman's original maps iirc, then is followed by 3 pages of transcriptions of the original notes by Waterman, which is followed by five pages of tables from the editors where they outline the location, old and new orthographies, and etymology/translation. I will go ahead and replace the "author" with "editor" in my notes and add Waterman :) PersusjCP ( talk) 19:51, 25 May 2024 (UTC)

The core of Puget Sound Geography is the Waterman manuscript and university libraries described the author/editor bit as "original manuscript from T.T. Waterman ; edited with additional material from Vi Hilbert, Jay Miller, and Zalmai Zahir". It is not at all uncommon for editors to add a great deal of extra material (sometimes well over half) when making a new edition (or a manuscript being printed for the first time) of an older work though the editorial additions should be clearly delineated or described.

Waterman, T. T. (2001). Hilbert, Vi; Miller, Jay; Zahir, Zalmai (eds.). sdaʔdaʔ gʷəɬ dibəɬ ləšucid ʔacaciɬtalbixʷ - Puget Sound geography. Federal Way, Washington: Lushootseed Press. Erp ( talk) 22:24, 25 May 2024 (UTC)

Thanks :) PersusjCP ( talk) 23:28, 25 May 2024 (UTC)

Ones to Watch is written blog-style and is operated by Live Nation Entertainment, a major player in US music and entertainment. An example article is [28] for Yuno Miles. Is that enough to count for reliability and notability for now? Aaron Liu ( talk) 20:56, 24 May 2024 (UTC)

Ones to watch has 100k followers on instagram, it's popular. Maybe its not as reliable as billboard magazine or somethin but I think its fine. Also according to their Linkedin page, the writer of that article went to USC with a Masters in specialized journalism, and studied English Lang & Lit at Loyola Marymount and Reed College which are renowned institutions so they probably know what they are doing. Freedun ( yippity yap) 06:26, 25 May 2024 (UTC)

WP:LINKEDIN is essentially Facebook Aaron Liu ( talk) 18:52, 25 May 2024 (UTC)

who would lie about what college they went to. or we could check the university records / university paper but i cant bother to do that right now. all I'm saying is the journalist probably knows what they're doing Freedun ( yippity yap) 22:58, 25 May 2024 (UTC)

who would lie about what college they went to

Anyone wanting to establish more credibility than they actually have.
Also, you can't even be sure that the journalist wrote their own page instead of some random dawg. Aaron Liu ( talk) 23:56, 25 May 2024 (UTC)

ig fair. but common sense and statistics tells me that they prob aren't lying Freedun ( yippity yap) 07:18, 26 May 2024 (UTC)

There's several ways to show something is reliable, it has a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy, it's used as a source by other reliable source, or if reliability relies on the author that they have been previously published by other independent reliable sources as an expert in the relevant field. None of these are based on what qualifications, if you want to rely on the author you need to show that they are regarded as an expert by other sources. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested « @» ° ∆t° 13:34, 26 May 2024 (UTC)

Although this calls itself a blog it doesn't appear to be a self-published source, however I can seem to find anything about how it operates. How many instagram followers is has doesn't factor into whether it's a reliable source.
I've asked for input from Wikiproject Music, see WT:WPMU#RSN discussion about Ones To Watch. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested « @» ° ∆t° 10:16, 25 May 2024 (UTC)

I'm doing a GA review for Lightning McQueen and have been checking the sources. There's a little section that summarizes Mater and the Ghostlight and it uses Animation World Network as the source. Here's the link to the source: https://www.awn.com/blog/mater-and-ghostlight-2006. According to the link, this is a blog, and I'm not inclined to accept it as a good source. However, I don't want to be hasty and was wondering if anyone has an opinion on this source being used to summarize a film. Thank you! COI Statement: I'm a paid editor employed by BYU. Heidi Pusey BYU ( talk) 21:51, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

I have another. The same article uses what seems to be a blog as a source in the reception section, calling the author a "critic". I'm not sure if it is a blogger or if it really is a critic. What do you think? Here's the link: https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/cars-2-2011 Heidi Pusey BYU ( talk) 22:32, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

Never mind. Roger Ebert is legitimate. Heidi Pusey BYU ( talk) 22:34, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

Animation World Network looks reliable, but this is a blog by Rick DeMott and it's not clear how much oversite AWN have of the blogs they publish. Saying that Rick DeMott is used as a reliable source in the matter of animation and movies, so if it is a self-published source it could still be considered reliable. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested « @» ° ∆t° 10:39, 25 May 2024 (UTC)

Good to know, thank you. Heidi Pusey BYU ( talk) 17:26, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

I removed a reference that had been added to The Moon Is Down, John Steinbeck bibliography, The Moon Is Down (film), and Natalie Wood. The reference is to Bibliographia Dystopia Volume 1, John Steinbeck's The Moon Is Down, by Amelio Anthony, published in 2020, publisher=Primedia.

The book isn't listed in Worldcat. Scholarly Publishing Collective labels it self-published. Amazon lists publisher as "ISBN Services". Best I can tell, it's a self-published book. I searched for evidence that the author is, as WP:SELFCITE requires, "an established subject-matter expert, whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable, independent publications" but was unable to find any.

The editor who added the reference is the author of the book. He does not agree that the book is not a reliable source, so I am opening this discussion so he can make his argument for it and obtain input from other editors. Schazjmd  (talk) 22:57, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

Unless the author can make a persuasive case that they are "an established subject-matter expert", this book cannot be considered a reliable source. Otherwise, anybody could easily insert their POV by self-publishing an ebook on Kindle and then citing it here. That would be untenable. Philomathes2357 ( talk) 22:59, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

As he's new to wikipedia, I offered to open this discussion so he could make his case to other editors. He plans to participate here. Schazjmd  (talk) 23:02, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

Regardless of whether we consider the book reliable or not, the editor has a WP:COI on adding their own book into Wikipedia without properly disclosing it and following our COI guidelines.

I left the COI intro on their talk page now. Raladic ( talk) 23:03, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

I appreciate the opportunity to detail my book and research. I elected to self publish only because the market for bibliographical works is typically limited to Universities, Book Sellers, Auction Houses, Literary Research Centers, and Students. Spending thousands to make hundreds seemed pointless. The book, however, IS considered by all of the authorities in the field to be the definitive work on the subject:

1) I reference 57 published works in the book's own bibliography, all authoritative works and newspapers

2) I conducted over 22 personal interviews with detailed notes and recordings

3) My archival work was done at The Steinbeck Museum with the aid of Director Susan Shillinglaw and Chief Archivist Lisa Josephs, who is mentioned in the book. The Steinbeck Museum carries my book for sale in their gift shop.

4) I spent countless hour in the Steinbeck research centers at San Jose State University, University of Texss, Austin, Stanford, etal

5) The book was discussed in an article published in First's Magazine in Sept 2020, "What's Up with The Moon Is Down"

6) Jim Dourgarian (an investigative journalist and book seller) has been a member of the (ABAA) Antiquarian Bookseller's Association since 1980 and is generally regarded as the world's leading authority on John Steinbeck publications. He said "He has done a service to the bibliographic/collecting/Steinbeck Community...I will add that Anthony's research to the states of the First Edition of TMID is news to me, and when it's news to me, that's saying something"

7) Professor David Douglas Lee, a professor of literature in Amsterdam and author of the book "The Moon Was Down; Possible Pasts" ISBN 978-94-92563-12-5 said, "This is the work of monks" regarding my book

8) Kenneth Holmes, the author of the most popular bibliography of Steinbeck ever published, "John Steinbeck: a descriptive bibliographical collection of the Holmes Collection", 2013 wrote the Forward to my book and said, "I is remarkable for its comprehensive detail, the product of incredible curiosity, patience, and determination"

9)The book itself presents editions lost to history including evidence of the first Japanese language edition published in 1942 in old world kanji. This is the ONLY reference to this edition anywhere else in the world. You will also only find reference in this book to the first clandestine Chinese Edition, the first Greek Edition, etc, ALL backed up with publication dates, names, and photographs of the actual books that can not be found anywhere else in the world.

10) This is the only source of information about all 8 issue state points (most of which were discovered by myself) and are backed-up with a massive spreadsheet database, detailed photographs of the points, Their publication priorities, and variations.

11) this is the only book in the world to SHOW in photographs, the earliest known copy of The Moon Is Down in book form and detail its unique issue points for both the book and dustjacket.

All of my research is backed-up by dated copies of the book, newspaper articles, original press releases, letters from the author and publisher, interview notes, and photos.

The book is used as the definitive source for issue points by ABAA booksellers, Auction houses like Sotheby's, Christie's, etal, it is sold in the gift shop of the Steinbeck Museum in Salinas California, and it is used for identifying states at several universities including my Alma Mater Georgia Tech.

Feel free to ask questions, I am only too happy to answer. Anthonyamelio ( talk) 23:28, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for coming here to discuss. Please understand that reliability on Wikipedia has nothing to do with the innate scholarship represented by a book, and none of us mean to denigrate your work. While the details of your research are fascinating, it's really other people's reactions that help us find reliability. You've given us some, but any links you could provide or specific citations (a couple of which you gave) would be the most helpful. Cheers. Dumuzid ( talk) 23:32, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

BTW, I do no know if I can post images or links to sources here but am happy to do so if possible. Anthonyamelio ( talk) 23:34, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

And a Correction, the First's Magazine Article is Sept 2021! not 2020. Anthonyamelio ( talk) 23:37, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

https://firstsmagazine.com/product/september-october-2021/ Anthonyamelio ( talk) 23:38, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

Amazon Reviews: https://www.amazon.com/Bibliographia-Dystopia-John-Steinbecks-Moon/product-reviews/1636491111/ref=cm_cr_dp_d_show_all_btm?ie=UTF8&reviewerType=all_reviews Anthonyamelio ( talk) 23:40, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

Concentrating solely on reliability, it is reviewed Barden, Tom; Amelio, Anthony (2021-06-04). "Bibliographia Dystopia, Volume 1: John Steinbeck's The Moon Is Down". Steinbeck Review. 18 (1): 96–98. doi: 10.5325/steinbeckreview.18.1.0096. ISSN  1546-007X. Retrieved 2024-05-27.. This is overall a positive review though the reviewer did note that the author needed a copy editor. The Steinbeck Review does seem a respectable journal (Stanford University subscribes and also has a copy of the book; UC Berkeley subscribes but does not have the book). I could not find another review, but, the subject area is very specialist. Since Steinbeck attended Stanford, the university has a particular interest in his work. Erp ( talk) 23:40, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

Hmm. From what I'm seeing so far, a decent case can be made for reliability, especially given the review from the Steinbeck Review. That puts it into usable territory, in my view.

Given the niche and relatively uncontroversial nature of the subject matter, I don't see a problem with using this citation. It would be a shame to let a strict, unwavering stance against self-publication to get in the way of providing our readers with interesting and useful information about Steinbeck. Philomathes2357 ( talk) 23:50, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

I think you will find that many of the passions people have in life are orphan passions, like the love of AMC Pacers or collecting bottle caps. It is often hard, in these cases, to find genuine "authority" and a broad definition of the word should be considered. Just one passionate man's opinion. Anthonyamelio ( talk) 23:56, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

Is the publication available on WP:LIBRARY? RadioactiveBoulevardier ( talk) 18:51, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

Any editor who feels the source should be considered reliable for wikipedia's purposes is welcome to revert my edits at The Moon Is Down, John Steinbeck bibliography, The Moon Is Down (film), and Natalie Wood that removed it. Schazjmd  (talk) 06:50, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

Hi, I was trying to improve Legality of cryptocurrency by country or territory#Turkey;

Many reliable sources say its illegal however I cannot find any penal code from Turkish laws or court order about it.

I found self-published lawyer article who had same question same as me. In their research they also contacted with central bank about clarification however in the end their conclusion is its legal.

What can be done in this situation for the article? Can this article be used as source? Since this article is verifiable unlike other news. Throat0390 ( talk) 22:06, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

It's a primary source and valid only for the writer's opinion. It also pretty clearly states that the Turkish government has made transactions in cryptocurrency illegal under paragraph 2 of article 3 of the Regulation on the Non-use of Crypto Assets in Payments.

It would be exceptionally irresponsible of us to comment on the enforceability of laws in Turkey based on the comments of an individual business website. If reliable sources say cryptocurrencies are illegal, then stick with them rather than citing legal advice being given out free on the internet. Boynamedsue ( talk) 02:52, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

Regarding the reliability of references from FootballPakistan.com. Recently, I have had a discussion with User:Saqib regarding the notability of the said website, who has started mass removing references citing it. I don't mind that and I am totally happy to replace them as some of its news articles are sourced from reputable sources like Dawn, The News etc. such as here, but I am here after now having been accused of spamming, previously having been doubted as having affiliation with the website even though I even replaced some of the references before that.

I don't have any sort of connection with any sort of website, and anyone can have a look at my contributions since a year ago when I started contributing in these articles aiming to improve them as many of them were incomplete and in precarious conditions. I understand the importance of maintaining the reliability of sources. However, I would like to highlight the challenges faced when sourcing information on the said topic, as information, articles or even news on the sport in the country, especially pre-2010s, is very scarce and the source has provided detailed accurate coverage about it.

Specially biographical information about football players in Pakistan is rare to find, and the source has been really helpful in providing such details, especially for lesser-known players. Many of the recently created or expanded articles mainly with content from the website, and after some research are amongst the top scorers of the national team for example. Throwawayjamal047 ( talk) 21:49, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

Throwawayjamal047, But my concerns are valid because you consistently included this particular WP:RSSELF in almost every article you edited and/or created. What's particularly alarming is that even when footballpakistan itself cites the original RS, you're not directly referencing the original source, but rather footballpakistan so this indeed raises questions about the necessity of using footballpakistan. — Saqib ( talk I contribs) 22:29, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

Not all of the articles there are extracted from other websites like here or here. Have a look at 2023–24 PFF National Challenge Cup for example. Many of the reports from where I took out the statistics about the matches can't be found anywhere else and it took my whole time editing it. After your mass removal this can easily be removed. Or pages such as Sharafat Ali (footballer), Qayyum Changezi or Qazi Ashfaq which are notable players, the first having scored several goals and currently among the top scorers of all time of the national team thanks to information provided on the same website. I totally understand your second concern, as SOME of the articles there are indeed attributed from other news outlets and I explained the reasons for my usage of that website as it was more effortless that way. Throwawayjamal047 ( talk) 22:49, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

Here again after no consensus yet. Honestly your mass deletions after still no resolution seems like a pretty cavalier way of managing article content. The way you have been doing this is beyond common sense I'm afraid, and shows complete disrespect for the contributions of others: first you start mentioning "Feel free to discuss its reliability there if you believe it should be allowed. However, I don't consider it reliable", and then you go on with your mass deletions. After your accusations on me to User:CNMall41 and me having created this consensus you carry on with your mass removals. I guess according to you in some of these articles [29] [30] [31] some of them dating back to 2015 I have also been involved in "spamming the website".

But instead of that, you are simply blanket-deleting the efforts of the contributors. How do you expect these contributors to react? This is the opposite of collaborative editing. I doubt that this kind of behaviour, which disregards all contributions by fellow editors, is condoned by Wikipedia policy. There is a reason I am using this source after consistently telling you that there is literally nothing else covering football in the country specially in such detail during all the time I have been covering this topic as there is a lack of users covering it here. This is what I have found from Dawn which is by far the main English media outlet in Pakistan:

"Then there is a very popular site for football lovers on the web, www.footballpakistan.com which happens to be the only one covering Pakistan’s football activities." The founder of the website by the name of Malik Riaz is also the only guy covering the country on RSSSF as you can see at the end of the following pages. [32] [33]

I'm uncertain where this consensus will lead, but I'm eager to see a resolution soon so I can avoid wasting further time and effort. The last thing I want is to invest my energy into contributing, only to have it mass removed and face accusations. Throwawayjamal047 ( talk) 11:50, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

Look, I get that this website seems handy for football stuff in Pakistan, but let's not forget it's run by fans and it's WP:RSSELF. They even say on their "About Us" page that they're still a growing fan forum. So, it might be best to avoid using it as a source, especially for Pakistan-related topics that are considered WP:CTOP. I've noticed FNH004 has just began reinstating this website as a source again, but continued insistence on using this source will force me to escalate this matter at WP:ANI. --— Saqib ( talk I contribs) 14:05, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

OH NO 😱😱😱 FNH004 ( talk) 14:09, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

"but continued insistence on using this source will force me to escalate this matter at WP:ANI." Did I or FNH004 did anything wrong for you to say this. Isn't it better to discuss this here and reach to a conclusion, you just deliberately started removing all the sources even throwing accusations about me without any reason. That's what forced me to bring this matter here. Even after that, you continued with your mass removal after your unsuccessful complaint about me. WP:RSSELF also states self-published expert sources may be considered reliable when produced by an established expert on the subject matter, whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable, independent publications. I don't know what RSSSF is then. I totally understand the reaction of the other user as we have been trying our best to improve articles on football about Pakistan and Bangladesh (in his case), and there is nothing I repeat nothing else covering this topic specially for pre-2010s era in Pakistani football. Look at Muhammad Umer article, some months ago nobody was even aware of him and after throughout research we have found that he is the second (recorded) top scorer of the national team, many of his content is extracted from the website. Or Sharafat Ali, where his Urdu biography in the website is the only thing found on internet and we have compiled the amount of goals thanks to that. Yes it is a shame that ordinary people like us are doing what we can because the federations in the respective countries don't give a damn about player records specially for Pakistan. You just can't be making decisions on your own and remove all that without even reaching a consensus, specially when all this has cost us all the efforts and time. As just staten here in the talk page this site has been used to source numerous articles which were accepted after review, so I don't understand how all of a sudden you deem it unreliable. Throwawayjamal047 ( talk) 14:48, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

@ ActivelyDisinterested and S0091: Could you share your 2cents on this source, please? --— Saqib ( talk I contribs) 14:52, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

Bro called for backup 😭😭 FNH004 ( talk) 15:18, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

I mean why don't you answer to my last response. Now that we are here you are also free to do a major cleanup on articles relating to the Iran national football team specially the historic results reports and stats pages here, here, here, here, here, here, or here as all of it's information is attributed from Teammelli.com, which you would deem as WP:RSSELF. Throwawayjamal047 ( talk) 15:38, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

Throwawayjamal047, Apparently FNH004 has now received a warning from an admin not to add a blog to the pages. — Saqib ( talk I contribs) 15:46, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

the admin just told me to refrain from using blogs (probably cause of your accusations) as source but said nth about the site in question. FNH004 ( talk) 15:49, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

So now that website is a blog?? You still didn't answer to my last response. Also just like you started mass removing content without reaching a consensus you are also free to do a major cleanup on the Iranian football articles as that website is the equivalent of the source you seem so concerned about Throwawayjamal047 ( talk) 15:52, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

Reading their About page, they describe themselves as as forum (It has grown to incorporate one of the most interactive, knowledgeable, and revealing forums for any sport in Pakistan.) and their FAQ states We are essentially a volunteer task force striving for the progress, promotion, prosperity, and professionalism of football in Pakistan and regularly re-posting news about the sport in this country. so it is clearly user-generated source which are generally considered unreliable. Above that, their FAQ also states In the past we have helped the PFF whichever way we can on our own expenses etc. Be it regarding scouting Pakistani-origin players from abroad, finding coaches, discussing future projects etc. so they also are not an independent source regarding the PFF. S0091 ( talk) 16:12, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

S0091, And I'd bet they'll tweak the wording on their About Us or FAQ page soon, so let me just archive them for future reference. — Saqib ( talk I contribs) 16:34, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

LMAO what? Are you still insinuating I have connection with that website. Aight m8 go on honestly this is just surreal 😭😭 Throwawayjamal047 ( talk) 16:38, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

@ Saqib if you have evidence @ Throwawayjamal047 is affiliated with the site, then take it to ANI. Until then, you need to stop WP:casting aspersions or making insinuations and the two of you need to stop WP:bludgeoning. Step away and let others make their own assessment. S0091 ( talk) 16:54, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

S0091, But I haven't even indirectly accused them of being connected to this website. I simply inquired if there was any affiliation because they were widely citing this source on each and every article they edited - even when coverage in RS were available. @ Throwawayjamal047, admitted on their tp that they ignore coverage in RS and used this website for citations. — Saqib ( talk I contribs) 17:00, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

So using sources from one of the few football releated sites from Pakistan to help cite articles on Pakistani football players = being somehow related to that organisation. Very nice 🤡. Second time you've accussed him btw without any evidence whatsoever. Btw do you have anything personal against FootballPakistan.com, seems like you do to me. Anyways, good luck on your journey policing wikipedia, I hope one day I can create a page on the "Wikipedia Police" dedicated to you, with reliable sources ofcourse 😇 FNH004 ( talk) 17:17, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

"even when coverage in RS were available" LMAO how many times I have staten SOME of the articles there are indeed attributed from other news outlets and I explained the reasons for my usage of that website as it was more effortless that way. I am more than happy to have them replaced IF there is another source from the main RS. Could you please let me know where can I found the alternative for the sources of the matches in 2011 PFF League. Guess what, you can't find it anywhere. Btw that page was created long ago before I started editing. Will you also remove all the stats of the matches now. Go on m8 you seem to have more knowledge on this topic Throwawayjamal047 ( talk) 17:20, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

From the WP:RSSELF stating "self-published expert sources MAY be considered reliable when produced by an established expert on the subject matter, whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable, independent publications."

If that's the case there was also talks regarding the other website I was talking about, and it used in nearly all the articles regarding the Iran national football team, without any consensus and on the basis that "the guy who runs the site is credited as an RSSSF contributor for the Gulf region". Same is the case of the other website as the founder has been one of the only contributors for the country in RSSSF.

Again I bring this from Dawn which is by far the main English media outlet in Pakistan. Or here where the chief editor of the website has published his work on the news outlet.

If it's that much of a concern wouldn't it be feasible to just avoid using it for re-posted news from the main news outlets. Could anyone let me know where else can I replace the mass removal of sources from here for example. There is nothing else. Throwawayjamal047 ( talk) 16:36, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

@ Throwawayjamal047 please start a separate thread about this other source. It is getting too confusing which one folks are referring to and this thread is about Footballpakistan.com. S0091 ( talk) 16:44, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

I am giving an example of that source as it is used for articles on matches and statistics of the Iranian national team, same like I have been using Footballpakistan.com but somehow he has a problem with the latter. Again could you let me know any other sources for articles such as here which have been removed. It has cost me all my time and efforts, anyways if anyone has problem with it I am more then happy to stop contributing on these topics as I will again say information covering the sport in detail is very scarce and Im afraid there is nothing else I can find. Many of articles on stats or historic matches of the national team are also pretty much useless now as there is no other sources for them I'm afraid. Better to reach to a conclusion soon, so I know when to stop to avoid having it mass removed, facing accusations or being reported. Throwawayjamal047 ( talk) 17:06, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

@ Throwawayjamal047 No, I am not going to go through several sources in an article. That is not how RSN works. If you believe a source meets WP:RS criteria and someone is disputing that, then start a thread for that source, explain why you think it meets RS and be concise. S0091 ( talk) 17:36, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

Here I will be more concise. Information regarding football in Pakistan is scarce and rare to find. I have just given to Mr. Saqib this page to do a major cleanup of all the matches. Just like he has been doing in all the articles. And unsurprisingly, there is nothing you can find apart from information that website and btw that article was created long ago before I started participating in Wikipedia. Throwawayjamal047 ( talk) 17:47, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

Without getting into the details of this dispute, would the participating editors please see WP:USERGENERATED. On the basis only of a quick scan of the remarks above, it seems that it may be relevant. -- 𝕁𝕄𝔽 ( talk) 16:10, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

JMF, Exactly. footballpakistan.com is WP:UGC as well a WP:RSSELF. — Saqib ( talk I contribs) 16:13, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

I'm not sure this is UGC, but I don't see it has a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy. I can find two uses by other reliable sources, [34] [35] but nothing else. The about is page contains the usual value free corporate speak, with no indication of editorial policies or setup. As a side note whether this site is being spammed, or any other behaviour issues, should be reported to the appropriate noticeboards. This is only for discussing the reliability of sources. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested « @» ° ∆t° 17:36, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

Mr Saqib seems to be more concerned about the latter. Anyways he is more than free to remove all the articles containing that source just like he has been doing. I have just given him

this page to do a major cleanup of all the matches. P.D: There is nothing you can find apart from that website and btw that page was created long ago before I started editing.

Throwawayjamal047 ( talk) 17:44, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

Theapricity.com is a racialist forum. Clearly nowhere an RS but when looking at existing references, there exist some articles citing it.

Should these cites and the information added through them be removed outright. It is mostly used in race-related articles. I request someone familiar with with the area (if complete removal is deemed apt) to do this.

Thanks Gotitbro ( talk) 08:39, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

There are 13 uses of the site in articles, [36] mostly split between forum posts (which are not reliable and should be removed) and hosted documents (most of which are for 'The Races of Europe' by Carleton S. Coon (1939) originally published by Macmillan).
The second lot needs to be handled one by one, from what I can see Coon's work is being used appropriately (sections dealing with historical perspectives). The apricity link could be swapped out for another courtesy link if one was available. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested « @» ° ∆t° 10:37, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

I'd agree with removing the references that use forum posts as a source. Lostsandwich ( talk) 06:32, 26 May 2024 (UTC)

To be clear I would be hesitant to use 'The Races of Europe' in anything but its correct historical context (e.g. how ideas of race where formulated in the the early 20th century). It's an obviously outdated source. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested « @» ° ∆t° 13:36, 26 May 2024 (UTC)

I would add that I'd argue that a more appropriate citation would be to a current secondary source that analyzes the formulation of those ideas of race, rather than citing Coon directly to use as an example of those ideas. For example, Richard McMahon's The Races of Europe: Construction of National Identities in the Social Sciences, 1839–1939 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), a secondary source about the context and history of Coon's writings and similar works and how they socially constructed race by imbuing stereotypes with the imprimatur of science. Hydrangeans ( she/her | talk | edits) 22:37, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

Based on this discussion with AstonishingTunesAdmirer, I would like to improve the phrasing of WP:ROTTENTOMATOES to be clearer. It currently states that There is consensus that Rotten Tomatoes should not be used for biographical information, as it is user-generated content along with a lack of oversight. There are two issues with that phrasing:

• "Biographical information" as well as movie and television data on Rotten Tomatoes are technically maintained by their staff. It's quite unreliable, nevertheless. Information in their database seems to be based on user-generated content from IMDB and elsewhere as well as user-provided submissions with a lack of oversight and verification.
• I'm concerned that biographical information could lead some readers to believe using Rotten Tomatoes data is fine as long as the biographical section of Rotten Tomatoes celebrity pages are avoided. Having "biographical information" link to WP:BLP could also lead people to believe Rotten Tomatoes data is acceptable outside of BLPs.

If there is consensus, I would like to change the sentence to There is consensus that Rotten Tomatoes should not be used for biographical information, cast and crew data, and or other film and television data, as it is sourced from user-generated and user-provided content with a lack of oversight and verification. I'm not proposing any changes to any other sentences regarding reviews, etc. Daniel Quinlan ( talk) 21:35, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

As I indicated in the linked discussion, I'm in favor of this wording, as, in my opinion, there is a clear distinction between it being user-generated and it being sourced from user-generated content (with the latter probably being worse, actually). Regarding the second point, it's worth clarifying too. The only clear consensus in the previous RfC was about using Rotten Tomatoes for its reviews/scores. Everything else seems to be of dubious origin with no clear oversight, as is evident from the example provided in the linked discussion. AstonishingTunesAdmirer 連絡 22:23, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

@ Daniel Quinlan's suggestion looks like a straightforward improvement to me.

The only change I would propose to your suggestion is to write: "Rotten Tomatoes should not be used for biographical information, cast and crew data, or other film and television data". I'm not sure if there's a formal rule in English about this or not, but to me, "or" sounds & feels much more natural than "and" in this context. Philomathes2357 ( talk) 03:56, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

I agree that an "or" is more appropriate. I'll update the proposal. Daniel Quinlan ( talk) 04:41, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

If it weren't for the PROD/AFD ordeals a franchise-related page, Lynn Minmay, went through earlier this month, I wouldn't have focused some of my attention towards adding a few stronger sources for Robotech: The Movie (more of a U.S. test-screened re-edit of Megazone 23 than a straight adaptation of the original parent show). What the Movie page could soon benefit from, furthermore, may not be online anymore--but is, more importantly, Waybacked. If this RSN appeal gets the go-ahead, I'll be on the case ASAP.

• "Production History". The Memory Matrix: A "Robotech The Movie" Website. GWEI. Archived from the original on 2022-05-24. Retrieved 2024-05-29.

-- Slgrandson ( How's my egg-throwing coleslaw?) 01:36, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

I really not sure what you asking, even if there is a question. But I don't think the website you linked would be a reliable source, it's a fan site apparently run by an individual. Reliable sources should have a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy, or if they are self published the author should have been previously been published by reliable, independent publications. I don't see how either would apply in this case. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested « @» ° ∆t° 16:55, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

Might as well file it under "Further reading" at this stage. Thanks for helping me out here. -- Slgrandson ( How's my egg-throwing coleslaw?) 22:01, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

It requires peer review and double-blind trials. It has an impact factor of 3.5 per SAGE, which is average for the field of medicine. It has been published for 7 years by reputable publishers such as SAGE Publications and PubMed Central. The journal is included in the Committee on Publication Ethics.

The journal is Journal of Evidence-Based Integrative Medicine. Aie-118 ( talk) 14:21, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

Not gonna happen—see Wikipedia:Fringe theories. Even though the journal may only publish takes that are peer-reviewed by other alternative medicine believers, Wikipedia focuses on evidence based information, especially when it comes to medical topics. See also User:Guy Macon/Yes. We are biased. ( t · c) buidhe 14:41, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

Please provide a source for your claim that the journal is only peer-reviewed by "other alternative medicine believers". The journal passes merit by WP:MEDRES standards. I won't repeat myself, so compare them to my original post above. As an aside, if the journal is so disreputable as to be blacklisted as a source, then the article for it should reflect its apparent low quality. Aie-118 ( talk) 15:52, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

There is no such thing as evidence-based integrative medicine. Integrative medicine, by definition, seeks to crowbar evidence-free woo into evidence-based medicine. Guy ( help! - typo?) 14:52, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

Journal of Evidence-Based Integrative Medicine is on the CiteWatch because integrative medicine, as a whole, is filled with woo and junk nonsense. The CiteWatch itself takes no position on the journal itself, other than lump it with every other sources on integrative medicine. We can remove JEBIM from the CiteWatch when integrative medicine becomes a beacon of scientific integrity. Headbomb { t · c · p · b} 20:06, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

That is certainly an understandable reason to put it on CiteWatch in the first place, but should not prevent it from being taken off CiteWatch if the journal passes WP:MEDRES standards. Aie-118 ( talk) 21:04, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

WP:FRINGE/ALT probably applies more than WP:MEDRS.

Looking through, some of the primary research articles aren't necessarily bad science, but one/off primary research articles should probably not be on Wikipedia for the most part, as they don't make up a scientific consensus. other papers seem to not have gone through a real peer review.

for example, this paper here: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2515690X211026193

its just a one off single point of data with a small sample size (50 vs 50 is not enough for an epidemiological study). the number of people infected by covid is random and rather small on any given day, and i raise eyebrows that a control group of 50 "random" people has 10 of them infected, even over a multi week period. the groups of people were all folks inside the same office, which means infection probably spread between the people. a WP:MEDRS journal would probably have caught this in peer review. some of the discussion raises eyebrows (i.e. zinc and vitamin c for covid 19).

Is there some diamond in the rough paper in that journal worth citing? Maybe, but the chance of accidentally citing a bad paper and recommending that there is evidence that zinc can "prevent" covid is probably higher. User:Sawerchessread ( talk) 21:31, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

WP:MEDRS already prohibits primary sources, so fortunately that concern is already addressed by the present rules.

I agree that WP:FRINGE/ALT applies. Because it is a medical journal first and foremost, WP:MEDRS must also apply. This journal fits the criteria for an alternative theoretical formation. It deals with topics on the frontier of science, while still following scientific principles and standards. Take a look for yourself at the sorts of articles that would be cited:

https://journals.sagepub.com/action/doSearch?AllField=Review&SeriesKey=chpd&startPage=0&pageSize=10 Aie-118 ( talk) 02:34, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

Bluntly put, a "new" account, who's very first edit is this, who then comes to RSN to ask JEBIM to be 'deemed reliable'.

The answer is no, doi: 10.1177/2156587217728644, which makes claims like Two of the studies were conducted with rats and produced clear, objective evidence of a benefit of Reiki over placebo. This suggests that there is some merit to the claim that Reiki “attunement” imparts an extra healing capacity to the recipient. Although there is currently no scientific explanation for this, the clinical trial evidence is compelling. and then later However, in the 2 placebo-controlled trials considered in this review,19,20 Reiki was not found to be more effective than placebo for reducing acute pain during medical procedures., and contextualizes their research within the rejected framework of Polyvagal theory, does not meet WP:MEDRS for the claim that Reiki is more effective than placebos. Headbomb { t · c · p · b} 23:16, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

I fail to see your point about this being a "new" (dredged from the deep) account. Is the Wikipedia subtitle not "The Free Wikipedia that anyone can edit"? Have I not followed the proper procedure to make an edit to that page?

In any case, that's only tangential to my proposal here. You may have missed the first sentence in the paragraph you quoted, but it says Viewed collectively, these studies provide reasonably strong support for Reiki being more effective than placebo.. This is a secondary source that reviews primary sources, a requirement of WP:MEDRES. One of the studies not finding significant results doesn't disprove the quality of the review as a whole. If anything it supports the review's value as a source that it doesn't only review positive results and analyzes the lack of results in negative results.

As for referencing polyvagal theory being a disqualifier for any journal, there are 15,500 primary sources and 1,170 secondary sources that mention polyvagal theory, some of those same journals that publish reviews treating the theory favorably are currently being used as a WP:MEDRES source on other pages. Unless you're proposing adding many journals included in those 1,170 sources above to the blacklist, then referencing the theory favorably isn't disqualifying to the request to have JEBIM removed from CiteWatch. Aie-118 ( talk) 22:26, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

One way we know that JEBIM belongs on Citewatch is that they published an article on Reiki by a chemical engineer (not an MD or any kind of medical PhD) which is substantially outside the medical mainstream. The article doesn't meet WP:MEDRS (it is MEDRS, by the way, not 'MEDRES'). MrOllie ( talk) 23:21, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

I'm afraid I wasn't able to corroborate or disprove that claim, what is is based on? Aie-118 ( talk) 00:29, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

It's the article you were trying to cite, I had assumed you would be familiar with it and its author. MrOllie ( talk) 00:40, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

Funny, because when I check the article, I see their name, an email address, and a mailing address. No mention of chemical engineering. So do you have a source for that claim or not? Aie-118 ( talk) 01:16, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

Yes. What qualifications did you think he had? An email address is not a lot to go on. - MrOllie ( talk) 02:15, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

I don't see a prima facie case of why we'd even want to use this journal as a source (a specific claim that this source supports that others don't might help) and it's not like CITEWATCH would prevent the use of a source anyway. It is not a blacklist. It's a "oh what are people doing again"-list, and the journal would presumably get the "what is this junk" reaction whether it was on the list or not. Alpha3031 ( t • c) 03:42, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

+1 for "a specific claim that this source supports that others don't might help". Philomathes2357 ( talk) 03:51, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

Sure, the specific claim that I'm trying to use the journal for is this review of other studies (the claim is in the title): 10.1177/2F2156587217728644. I have to disagree with the above post, the journal being on CITEWATCH was given to me as the explicit reason why the source was unacceptable when I proposed the edit. Aie-118 ( talk) 23:34, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

then argue back on this single article.

surely it is far easier to include a single article you think is reputable than try to defend the entirety of the journal and every article. User:Sawerchessread ( talk) 00:09, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

the journal being on CITEWATCH was given to me as the explicit reason why the source was unacceptable

First, no one gave you that as reason. Second, from the WP:CITEWATCH: This list is a starting point to detect unreliable sources which are cited by Wikipedia, but it does not answer whether it is appropriate to cite them.

Headbomb { t · c · p · b} 01:00, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

My interpretation of the FAQ was that the exceptions would not accepted for this article, but on your advice, I will try to argue for its inclusion on its own merits. Aie-118 ( talk) 01:23, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

Sure, so long as you understand that no one will agree with you that this is a reliable source. Headbomb { t · c · p · b} 02:58, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

https://x.com/maxwelltani/status/1793303914655158284

Washington Post CEO Will Lewis is introing the paper’s new “Build It” plan today. In a meeting with staff, he noted that the paper lost $77 million over the past year, and saw a 50% drop off in audience since 2020: “To be direct, we are in a hole, and we have been for some time."

Lewis says the says the three pillars of the new strategy are: great journalism, happy customers, and making money: “If we're doing things that don't meet all three…we should stop doing that." He adds that the company will also be looking for ways to use AI in its journalism.

AI is a major component of the Post's internal strategy announcement today. WaPo's chief tech officer told staff that going forward, the paper has to have "AI everywhere in our newsroom."

What could this mean? Bruh moment or malarkey? This is not a request to formally alter or reassess the reliability of this source. jp× g 🗯️ 18:34, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

Seems a bit premature to raise this issue here now. Vegan416 ( talk) 18:54, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

Agree as to premature. Sounds like corporatese to me, but who knows? I think it would entirely possible to have a reliable source which leans heavily on AI, so long as that AI is edited by humans (or is remarkably accurate in a way I don't believe is currently possible). But yeah. Something to keep an eye on! Dumuzid ( talk) 18:58, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

Setting off the corporatese radar, the supposed trifecta of great journalism, happy customers, and making money is a combination that I'm not sure any publication has achieved in recent years. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 19:00, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

Makes you wonder when we are going to have AI editors in wikipedia. But then again maybe we already have... Vegan416 ( talk) 19:10, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

I would love to see an AI editor here smart enough to fix inadvertent typos and grammatical errors, while leaving intentional ones (like those within direct quotes) alone. I would like even more to see an AI editor smart enough to surf the web and suggest reliable sources for unsourced claims in articles. BD2412 T 19:20, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

While such specialized tasks are not beyond current AI, I want to reiterate that LLMs are a dead end and in general suck at accuracy as they lack any form of comprehension. RadioactiveBoulevardier ( talk) 20:44, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

yeah, they are more likely to hallucinate sources.

and as LLMs are trained on wikipedia data, using an LLM to edit the same data its trained on will lead to weird consequences. User:Sawerchessread ( talk) 21:02, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

I don't know what you mean by the word "comprehension" here, but in the normal meaning of the word, this statement is false. jp× g 🗯️ 23:43, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

RadioactiveBoulevardier I'm curious, are you saying LLMs are a dead end as an expert in the field of AI? —DIYeditor ( talk) 01:07, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

...to raise what issue? This is a noticeboard, not an immediatedrasticactionboard... jp× g 🗯️ 23:37, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

True, and I'm glad you posted this here. Thank you. Philomathes2357 ( talk) 23:39, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

Agree that it’s premature. RadioactiveBoulevardier ( talk) 08:30, 26 May 2024 (UTC)

There are multiple ways to use AI in the newsroom, most of them don't come with significant reliability risks... The key is the context, whether AI is being used to support existing journalists and editors or replace existing journalists and editors. Horse Eye's Back ( talk) 19:22, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

This is probably not a good thing, but I agree with other editors that it's premature to discuss changes to WaPo's reliability based on this alone. Something to keep a close eye on, though. Philomathes2357 ( talk) 21:41, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

Echoing this pretty much. Statement reeks of corporate-speak rather than concrete change, and there's less worrying ways for them to use AI than writing articles, but it's worth following for a little while. The Kip ^{( contribs)} 22:50, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

I’m concerned as a person who cares about journalism, but agree with the others that it’s something to remember, but not currently a sign of unreliability. FortunateSons ( talk) 23:20, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

Concur in being unconcerned. The most reliable newspapers will all make similar announcements (The Guardian already has) for cost and productivity reasons, but they're reputationally risk-averse and they'll make sure to have appropriate scrutiny & safeguards. At worst each source's reliability will stay the same (at GENREL), but the variance across authors/articles/editors will increase, and we already have tools to deal with that. DFlhb ( talk) 13:09, 25 May 2024 (UTC)

• Would AI robots do live TV field journalism any time soon? I suppose AI may be used in transcription of scripts of live field journalists but not AI robots doing live TV field journalism, any time soon. The solution may be to use AI to cross check with feeds of live TV field journalists? Bookku ( talk) 15:17, 25 May 2024 (UTC)

Looks like the first AI thing they are rolling out is curated AI summaries of articles. Not something we need to worry about unless it impacts article copy, probably, but worth seeing how this expands. Toa Nidhiki05 17:14, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

• Comment Til it actually happens, it's simply a businessperson thinking out loud. We can revisit if and when things change. Oaktree b ( talk) 17:57, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

Back in Feburary of this year, I started a discussion on Cartoon Brew's reliability. The general consensus on the matter was that it was reliable for animation-related topics, but should not be used in articles about living people. However, some editors have expressed concern over the website's accuracy of their reporting, as seen here.

That being said, what is the reliability of the Cartoon Brew regarding information related to animation?

• Option 1: Generally reliable
• Option 2: Additional considerations
• Option 3: Generally unreliable
• Option 4: Deprecate

—  🌙Eclipse ^{( talk) ( contribs)} 01:11, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

Option 1: Generally reliable. Freedun ( yippity yap) 10:43, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

The discussion you linked to questions a particular article from Cartoon Brew that may contain a misunderstanding. It's quite possible for 'generally reliable' sources to be wrong, this RFC won't change that. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested « @» ° ∆t° 11:01, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

Premature RfC This doesn't seem like a source that has been discussed enough to justify a RfC. I would suggest asking if the source is good for a particular use rather than trying to create a blanket view for a minor source. Springee ( talk) 13:29, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

Agreed. Can we have more examples of concerns? Aaron Liu ( talk) 15:39, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

Option 1 - never seen its reliability questioned within the field of animation. Other RSes point back to CB to back up their sourcing. -- Masem ( t) 17:35, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

Option 1 Seems like it is one of the more highly regarded animation news sites. Well regarded in the field, referenced by other reliable sources as an authority. Silver seren ^C 17:38, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

I forgot to mention this, but there has been some criticism towards the website in the past over claimed uses of sensationalism. —  🌙Eclipse ^{( talk) ( contribs)} 18:14, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

So, as far as I'm aware, FreeCodeCamp articles are a sort of group blog ( WP:SPS) but they don't seem to have been discussed here at all. Not too surprising, I only see a couple of dozen uses. Database of Databases (dbdb.io) I'm less sure about, it's nominally published by people from Carnegie Mellon but it's not clear to me if there's any sort of editorial review process at all. I figured I'd raise this over here since I find it unlikely we'd come to a consensus at the AfD itself ( Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/SurrealDB). A couple of others were a bit interesting too: Light Square (lightsquare.org) which seems to be AI generated, only used on Claude (language model) so far but people might want to keep an eye on it; and the GI-Workshop on Foundations of Databases (Grundlagen von Datenbanken), which seems to be a reasonable source. Alpha3031 ( t • c) 05:06, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure its relatively easy to apply to put your own software on dbdb.io and its like wikipedia for software and i know wikipedia isn't a reliable source. I've done a course with freeCodeCamp, it is famous, and overall U could say its decently trust worthy. However I know that almost anyone can write for it so it is probably not reliable enough for wikipedia. and light square looks like its made By ChatGPT Freedun ( yippity yap) 10:51, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

FreeCodeCamp and Database of Databases are user generated content so wouldn't generally be considered reliable sources.
GI-Workshop on Foundations of Databases appears to be a conference, the papers used in it are likely reliable. Anyone can submit papers, but that doesn't mean they are all included and the conference appears reputable.
Light Square is... weird. I've read several of the articles and I'm not sure they are written by AI, but they do read oddly. This may have something to do with them being an independently managed official government organisation of the Government of Lumina, [37] details of Lumina movement can be found here. I would suggest finding a more established source if possible. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested « @» ° ∆t° 11:31, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

A more general concern I have with the sourcing for this article - and one of the reasons I nominated it for deletion - is the confusion over exactly what they are being cited for. Is this supposed to be an article about an " open-sourced multi-model database", as the lede describes, or is it instead about a company of the same name, which seems to be selling cloud-based database services? Either topic might be notable, possibly both are as topic for separate articles, but what we have at present appears to me to be an attempt to use sources relating to one to establish the notability of the other, in a rather confusing article which entirely fails to explain what the relationship is. AndyTheGrump ( talk) 01:29, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

Hi, RSN! Please help us resolve a content dispute.

• The disputed source is this one: Suissa, Judith and Sullivan, Alice: The Gender Wars, Academic Freedom and Education, in the Journal of Philosophy of Education, Vol. 55, No. 1, 2021.
• The disputed article is J. K. Rowling, a featured article.
• The source says at page 69: The treatment of J.K. Rowling, subjected to a tidal wave of requests to ‘choke on a basket of dicks’ and similar, in response to a strikingly thoughtful and empathetic essay, is simply the highest profile case of a commonplace phenomenon (Leng, 2020; Rowling, 2020).
• The claim I'd like to make is: Rowling received insults and threats. (The threats part is supported by a different source.)

I'm being asked not to use the source because it's variously said to be partisan, generally unreliable, or unsuitable for use in a BLP, leading to the discussion here ( permalink). Your thoughts, please?— S Marshall  T/ C 15:18, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

The core of the dispute is that it is a WP:PROFRINGE source. The authors did not do anything even resembling due diligence regarding their research to the point where the press had to issue a post-publication correction for errors of fact. Beyond these straight-forward errors of fact the authors regularly make bold assertions, for example, We will argue that current conflicts around sex and gender are not about trans rights per se, which we fully support, and which are already protected under current UK legislation,1 but about the imposition of ontological claims underlying a particular ideological position. Often associated with the intellectual traditions of postmodernism and queer theory, this position entails denying the material reality and political salience of sex as a category, and rejecting the rights of women as a sex class (Jones and Mackenzie, 2020). Disallowing discussion on these points is a feature of and, as we will argue, fundamental to a prominent strand of activism associated with this position, which we will refer to here as the gender identity ideology and movement. Is dipping into fringe territory with the claims that:

1. There is a postmodernism and queer theory-derived ontological position that denies the material reality of sex as a category.
2. That said ontological position "rejects the rights of women"
3. That discussion of these points is disallowed

These are fringe positions. They're frankly farcical if you have even a passing familiarity with queer theory or the major ontological works of "postmodernism".

Suissa and Sullivan say, For gender identity campaigners, simply asserting that sex exists as a meaningful category, distinct from people’s self-declared ‘gender identity’, is deemed transphobic. Lobby groups such as Stonewall demand affirmation of the mantra ‘Trans Women Are Women’, with explicit and repeated calls for ‘No debate’. The statement ‘Trans Women Are Women’ could be assumed to be a polite fiction. Which is both deeply inaccurate, deliberately disingenuous with its interpretation of what "trans women are women" means.

This is not the factual claim the press later required a correction of: In practice, the kinds of statements that routinely lead to people (overwhelmingly women) being denounced as transphobes include: but Suissa and Sullivan provide no evidence that women are "overwhelmingly" the subjects of transphobia accusations.

Over and over Suissa and Sullivan make the claim, unsupported by evidence, that the ideology of Stonewall and another trans rights charity erases, eliminates or obviates sex as a protected category. This is a factually inaccurate statement and is, frankly, a WP:FRINGE view within politics, social sciences and philosophy regarding the relationship between sex and gender and how trans rights advocacy goes about protecting the rights of trans people.

For this reason it was suggested that this source should not be used when better sources for the same claim are readily available. Simonm223 ( talk) 15:28, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

I also want to call out that the source only supports "insults" and not "threats" and other sources support "insults" - it is not required to support the statement it currently supports. Simonm223 ( talk) 15:37, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

If the statement it's supporting is already widely supported by other better sources there seems to be no reason to include this one at all. LunaHasArrived ( talk) 16:40, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

Like I said in the other discussion, we should not be citing anything in a BLP to a bad source. (I think the source is bad for basically the same reasons that Simonm223 does: it appears to have a strong and very much non-mainstream POV.) We don't even need it to source the statement at issue, so I don't understand why people are fighting for it. Loki ( talk) 16:50, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

I would find it difficult to believe that there aren't other sources supporting the statement, is there a particular reason to use this one? If a less controversial source can be used to support the same statement it could lead to less arguements in the future. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested « @» ° ∆t° 16:54, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

ActivelyDisinterested I can supply part of the reasoning, based on five pages of FAR discussions. Every time Rowling tweets, there is a storm of news coverage; RECENTISM and NOTNEWS are constant problems in that article, where many editors don't seem to understand summary style and that there is a sub-article at Political views of J. K. Rowling. Part of the FAR process was to weigh what might be enduring commentary (not engaging RECENTISM) according to that which was raised after-the-fact or in journal or academic or scholarly sources. That wasn't always possible, as consensus determined that some WP:RECENTISM had to be tolerated re items that had not yet had time to make it to academic publications, and we were constrained by a very poorly designed but recent and well attended RFC. But the intent was to mostly reflect items that were covered by academic or scholarly sources, even if we sometimes added on news sources to provide reader accessibility. The current draft is favoring more RECENTISM and has moved away from a broad summary of more enduring issues with less he-said, she-said, as found in the FA version ("Her statements have divided feminists; fuelled debates on freedom of speech and cancel culture; and prompted declarations of support for transgender people from the literary, arts and culture sectors."). That JKR was insulted for her views didn't seem to be such a problematic statement. (Somewhere in this discussion I see that even got altered to "death threats", which was never in the article.) Hope this helps -- more concerned about how to get back to the collaborative environment that prevailed during four months and five talk pages of FAR discussion. SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 16:57, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

This is kind of a silly thing to get into a big argument about; the source is being used as a reference for a fairly minor point, one which probably has lots of other possible sources that could be used, so it's not particularly necessary. Still, I'm worried that if the objections to the source go unchallenged, this will be used as precedent from now until the indefinite future to ensure the sources deemed reliable for gender-related articles are all from a monoculture of support for the position of trans activists, just the sort of thing Suissa and Sullivan wrote their paper to speak out against. So I have to object to declaring a source out of bounds because it holds a dissenting view. *Dan T.* ( talk) 19:15, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

I mean, from what it seems it's less the entire viewpoint and the fact that the text is proven unreliable (a post publication statement had to be put out correcting various points), and that instead of getting into the nitty gritty about the viewpoint, one just simply uses a better source for this singular statement. If an argument about the viewpoint comes up it comes up later, but let's not waste everyone's time here and now and instead remove it and use the clearly more reliable sources. LunaHasArrived ( talk) 20:46, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

Lots going on here:

• First a point of order: a source is not necessarily disqualified because it advocates a fringe theory in it, if it has non-fringe material too. For example, The Emperor's New Mind contains a fringe theory about consciousness, but contains a great deal of other material besides and thus is a suitable source for supporting statements about that material. WP:CONTEXTMATTERS.
• It's relatively easy to identify fringe theories in the physical sciences, where scientific consensus is widely discussed and results are widely believed to converge on an objective truth. It's far harder in academic philosophy, where ideas diverge and proliferate and different schools of thought emerge. This is not in any way to besmirch philosophy as non-rigorous. It is simply rare to find complete consensus on complex philosophical issues. Robust disagreement comes with the territory. Does that mean fringe theories can't exist in philosophy? No, there is pseudophilosophy and pseudo-scholarship, and people tweeting their personal incohera on a daily basis. That's what fringe looks like in this context. A highly cited paper in a respectable academic journal really doesn't come close.
• The given objections to this paper are weak. The cited statements seem to be based on a mixture of interpreting theorists like Judith Butler, and argumentation about the consequences of regarding sex as performative and socially constructed. Maybe you disagree. I'm sure many do. That doesn't make this paper fringe.
• Is the paper unreliable? Possibly because a correction was published? Well, the correction was to a minor point that didn't change the conclusion, and publishing corrections is usually a good signal that accuracy is taken seriously. Another signal of reliability is WP:USEBYOTHERS. I see 45 citations on Google Scholar. I haven't checked them all but at a glance they seem to be routine citations without comment. If the paper was as unreliable as claimed, we would surely expect it to either be ignored, or subject to scathing refutations and retraction.
• Is the paper a good source to support the phrase "insults and threats"? Certainly for "insults", and it's not far off "threats" either, given that it's not unreasonable to think that a woman might find extreme sexualized violent insults threatening.
• Since the paper is neither fringe nor unreliable, and supports the content, and none of the controversial elements of the source are imported into the article, removing it merely acts to cleanse Wikipedia of a disfavoured POV, which is not exactly in the spirit of WP:NPOV. It's ironic that the article was about suppression of ideas. Barnards.tar.gz ( talk) 21:13, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

• The Emperor's New Mind is a reliable, and excellent, source for its maths and physics content. It's clear and well-written. It's not a reliable source for philosophy or cognitive science. Because Roger Penrose is a superb, world class mathematical physicist, and he's got exactly no qualifications at all in cognitive science or philosophy.— S Marshall  T/ C 22:15, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

• My position is summarized fully by Barnards.tar.gz ... that said, this is not a hill to die on, and I wish we could set aside this unfortunate sideshow and go back to the productive discussion that saw us moving forward on article talk. SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 17:02, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

I completely agree that wether a source is reliable depends on what we are using it for (although interesting to note that for its claim it cites a sps and Rowling, not the best in the world). On the nature of it's ability to check facts there's the uncited claim about most people being called transphobic are women, and various comments about policy capture and groups (including Stonewall) trying to get rid of Sex as a thing whatsoever (as in not in law, not in general discussion and beyond). The first of these isn't inherintly true and the second is just blatantly false and nearing into conspiracy. LunaHasArrived ( talk) 00:04, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

I see nothing remotely unreliable about the authors, source ( Journal of Philosophy of Education/ Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain), or the publisher ( Wiley-Blackwell). They all seem like pretty mainstream academic sources to me. As Barnards.tar.gz pointed out, correcting minor errors post-publication is a sign of reliable source. Have there been peer-reviewed articles attacking the source's claims? Dr. Swag Lord ( talk) 00:16, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

No.— S Marshall  T/ C 08:36, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

So given that no other sources are disputing the factuality of the article--and the article has even been cited numerous times in other quality sources--what's the issue? The source clearly verifies the cited content. Are editors simply objecting to the article's thesis? If yes, that's not a matter of RS at all. Dr. Swag Lord ( talk) 09:00, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

Well to be fair to the objectors, that's not quite what they're saying? Their views are best read in their own words, above.— S Marshall  T/ C 12:05, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

I mean, there are one or two sources commenting, but this is a low impact journal Adam Cuerden ^{( talk)}_{Has about 8.8% of all FPs.} 14:34, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

https://www.philosophy-of-education.org/enabling-free-inquiry-together-a-response-to-suissa-and-sullivan/ is a response to a very similar article by the same authors, for instance. So the authors are disreputable Adam Cuerden ^{( talk)}_{Has about 8.8% of all FPs.} 14:37, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

The fact that people disagree with them makes them disreputable?— S Marshall  T/ C 14:51, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

You explicitly said there were no sources disputing the factuality of the article. This is a source disputing that. Adam Cuerden ^{( talk)}_{Has about 8.8% of all FPs.} 15:00, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

Where does this source dispute the factuality of the article I'm citing?— S Marshall  T/ C 15:38, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

It's kind of the main argument, but, "We feel it is a misreading to suggest that

the material realities of sex are erased within queer theory" is a good start. It's written in polite, academic language, but it's all about how Suissa and Sullivan's core assumption is false. Adam Cuerden ^{( talk)}_{Has about 8.8% of all FPs.} 01:27, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

That's refuting Suissa and Sullivan's opinions and conclusions. Which is fair actually: I agree that Suissa and Sullivan's opinions are wrong. And also, ghastly. And horrible. But their facts are in a scholarly journal that cares about the truth and prints retractions where appropriate, so we can rely on the factuality of what they publish without retracting. I want to be clear that I do so without ever endorsing or supporting the views in that article.

Could we refocus on whether this is a reliable source for the claim that Rowling got told to choke on a basket of dicks, please? There's no need to launch a full frontal assault on a position nobody's defending.— S Marshall  T/ C 09:21, 19 May 2024 (UTC)

@ S Marshall: Well, I thought that was what you were asking for. As for if it's a reliable source - well, first off, it's worth noting that the article is written in a very "scattershot" way, and has three sentences on Rowling in total. The source for the "choke on a basket of dicks" is a non-peer reviewed blog by Mary Leng, and there's no source for it on the blog. ^[1]

The entire coverage of Rowling is a mere three sentences in the entire paper, so it's not a major focus of the paper, and, as such, I wouldn't presume a lot of fact-checking of the source. So I'm not sure that quoting Suissa and Sullivan is really much better than citing Leng's article on Medium, a website without editorial controls. Frankly, I don't think that's a reliable source, and think it's mere sourcewashing to quote Suissa and Sullivan's direct quoting of an unreliable soruce.

Another issue is how you want to frame this. The only explicit thing that Suissa and Sullivan say about the "choke on a basket of dicks" is that it was in response to an essay Rowling published (the essay has a citation, so we can at least identify it), and Rowling's defense of "women who speak publicly on these issues".

You want to use this to talk about insults in connection to her commentary on changes to laws related to transgender people, which Suissa and Sullivan does not cover with respect to Rowling. So, regardless of the reliability of the source, it doesn't say what you need it to for the information you want to cite. Because we're not trying to say that Rowling was insulted, we're actually trying to say that she received insults in response to specific things, so, even if we considered it a reliable source, it couldn't be used where you propose for it to be used. WP:SYNTH violations are very easy with this source, since, in the end, it has three sentences about Rowling and doesn't really provide a lot of context, so if the material in our article frames "insults" in any way not supported by Suissa and Sullivan, that's a WP:SYNTH violation. So it's kind of just generally a terrible source for information on Rowling, because there's only the slightest passing mention of her. Adam Cuerden ^{( talk)}_{Has about 8.8% of all FPs.} 15:50, 19 May 2024 (UTC) Adam Cuerden ^{( talk)}_{Has about 8.8% of all FPs.} 15:50, 19 May 2024 (UTC)

Argh! Please may I edit that? The editor in me can't stomach " irregardless".

Yes, I do want to say that after she posted her essay she was insulted and threatened on Twitter, and I do want to say that the insults and threats were in response to her essay. That link is intentional. Are you saying her essay didn't lead to insults and threats? Because I can answer that without difficulty.— S Marshall  T/ C 17:07, 19 May 2024 (UTC)

@ S Marshall: That's not what the discussion is about.. This discussion was over you using this for the sentence "As her views on the legal status of transgender people came under scrutiny, she received insults and threats". So, no, you don't want to use this for the essay. The essay isn't even discussed in the draft you're writing, at least, not explicitly. I presume you're not intending to make up new content just to keep it in the article, so it's a bit exasperating that you seem to be have forgotten the text (that you yourself wrote) that Suissa and Sullivan is meant to cite. Adam Cuerden ^{( talk)}_{Has about 8.8% of all FPs.} 17:27, 19 May 2024 (UTC)

Yes, of course it's what it's about. This is exactly what it's about. Follow the sequence: Rowling wrote an essay on her blog where she explained her views on the legal status of transgender people; and lots of people looked at it and were appalled; so they resorted to insults and threats over twitterX. What on Earth did you think we were talking about?— S Marshall  T/ C 21:24, 19 May 2024 (UTC)

I do not see any reference whatsoever to "her views on the legal status of transgender people" in Suissa and Sullivan. WP:SYNTH actively forbids us from drawing conclusions not found in the actual text by combining sources. Adam Cuerden ^{( talk)}_{Has about 8.8% of all FPs.} 15:33, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

Reading the essay and then reading Suissa and Sullivan page 69 is SYNTH? Really?— S Marshall  T/ C 17:57, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

@ S Marshall: 'Yes, really. Especially as the essay only mentions the changes to laws around 7/8ths of the way through. If the essay was titled "Why the changes to Scottish gender identification laws are wrong", then maybe we could argue it's obvious, but when Rowling only brings up laws late in the article... Adam Cuerden ^{( talk)}_{Has about 8.8% of all FPs.} 23:40, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

Awesome, now we're getting somewhere! That's not how SYNTH works but let's pretend for the sake of argument that it is.

Remember that, as I've said right from the start of this thread, that the only part which I'm citing to Suissa and Sullivan is "Rowling received insults". Is it SYNTH to say that choke on a basket of dicks is an insult?— S Marshall  T/ C 07:39, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

I have said I would stop commenting, but since you're directly asking me, citations aren't without context. If you want to say Rowling was insulted after her essay, it's not SYNTH. If you want to include clauses saying that it's connected to the legal status of transgender people, or any other framing of the insults than that they were in response to the essay, then you'd either need a source saying that connection - for the same insults to avoid misleading characterisation of the Suissa and Sullivan source - or would need to replace Suissa and Sullivan with the other source. In practice, this makes it useless. Adam Cuerden ^{( talk)}_{Has about 8.8% of all FPs.} 10:57, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

Since it doesn't appear that my attempt to get people from the talk page to stop commenting here is going to work (the only person to claim they would stop has just commented again after not even 24 hours), I guess there's no point to me declining to comment myself.

So: I don't think that citing As Rowling's views on the legal status of transgender people came under scrutiny, she received insults and death threats to Suissa and Sullivan would be WP:SYNTH. I do think it would fail verification, because Suissa and Sullivan doesn't say anything about "Rowling's views on the legal status of transgender people" (and because they're not a reliable source overall and so they cannot be cited for anything at all in a BLP). To cite "X happened because Y", you can't just provide a cite that says "X happened". Loki ( talk) 23:35, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

There is only one citation to Butler in the Suissa & Sullivan paper. It misinterprets them pretty severely. Particularly, they are using a particularly vulgar read of "categorical fiction" that shows the very sort of naturalized ontology Butler is criticizing throughout the pages surrounding that brief citation. They're clearly talking about how variation within categories destabilizes the sex category, not that it should necessarily be abolished.

And this is what I mean that this is a fringe paper. It is reading conspiracy theories into single-line statements in much larger works and then suggesting that everybody is lock-step, within queer theory, with that one line from that one book.

And this doesn't even touch on the idea of treating Gender Trouble as a key "postmodern" ontological text. I suppose Discourse, Figure wouldn't have served their thesis such as it is. Simonm223 ( talk) 12:19, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

Is there any other reason why someone could be annoyed at the essay other than JK's views on the legal status of trans people. (For example calling Magdalen burns "an immensely brave young feminist" could be one comment people took anger over that had nothing to do with rowlings views on legal issues). This would mean it's synth to say people threatened Rowling over the legal views as opposed to anything else in rowlings essay. LunaHasArrived ( talk) 19:18, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

If the text this source was supporting could only be sourced to it, then it would make some sense to go back and forth over whether it's too fringe to be reliable (in general or for a specific statement), since the question of whether or not to include the text would hinge partly on that ... but since there's no shortage of better sources for the only text this source is being used to support (namely, Rowling received insults and threats, although this source only verifies the first half), and indeed some of those better sources are already being used, it's hard to see what the basis for also citing a lower-quality, biased/fringe source (as discussed on talk and somewhat above) is: it's better to use the better sources. (What's the noticeboard for discussing that, I wonder? It's not exactly a question of reliability in absolute 'is X reliable' terms, it's more like: if we have several academic biographies saying Cicero was born in Arpinum, and then also a Washington Examiner article saying it, what's the venue for discussing 'why should or shouldn't we cite the Washington Examiner if we're already citing biographies?'?) -sche ( talk) 04:30, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

Just on that last point, the articles' talk page is probably most appropriate for discussing which sources to use in that article. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested « @» ° ∆t° 09:29, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

It was being discussed there, then the talk page section got closed and moved here because S. Marshall seems to be desperate to continue using this source as a "teaching moment" of how to use a questionable source in an article.

This really feels like the use of Suissa and Sullivan is classic disrupting Wikipedia to make a point. It doesn't even source the whole statement it's being used for, and the whole statement is trivially sourced to better sources. Maybe this is more a situation for WP:TROUT. Let's review:

• The source is, at the least, actively questioned. Many people think it's a bad source.
• No-one says it sources everything it's used to source in the single sentence clause it's used for. The other half of the clause is currently unsourced, so another source needs found whether it stays or goes.

+It's relatively trivially replaced.

• S Marshall, who's in charge of writing the draft, has literally upped the discussion to a noticeboard before even doing basic things like, you know, sourcing the other half of the clause.
• Wikipedia articles are regularly used to find sources on subjects by people. It's almost a meme that one uses the sources on Wikipedia when writing essays in high school/university. As such, including a questionable, definitely transphobic article is a problem, as we're giving it substantially more prominence. "Suissa Sullivan Rowling" only returns 45 google hits, many of them not on the paper, so this would probably be its most prominent use.

So, is there actually any positive argument for including it, other than "it was already used"? Adam Cuerden ^{( talk)}_{Has about 8.8% of all FPs.} 11:44, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

I'm not removing an academic source just because some people think it's ideologically unsound. I do take seriously the claim that it's generally unreliable, though. That's a matter for this venue.— S Marshall  T/ C 12:09, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

It's factually unsound. This isn't simply a matter of ideological unsoundness but of shoddy research principally consisting of misread books and unsourced grand claims. For instance my complaint with their claim that the "overwhelming" targets of critique for transphobia are cis-women is that it's uncited, unverifiable, opinion being masqueraded as academic work. Simonm223 ( talk) 12:24, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

I rather disagree this isn't relevant. That there's oddities around the request for it to be reviewed here calls for a higher level of scrutiny of the source. That it doesn't even source the whole sentence clause it supposedly cited, that it is trivially replaced - all relevant, especially when S Marshall shut down the discussion on the talk page to move all discussion of the source here. If S Marshall hadn't shut down the discussion on the talk page, then maybe such things would be irrelevant, but they are insisting the entire discussion has to happen here. Talk:J._K._Rowling#Suissa and Sullivan. Adam Cuerden ^{( talk)}_{Has about 8.8% of all FPs.} 15:07, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

I'd also note that my collapsed comment was explicitly about the reliability of the text and not about the comportment of any editor. Simonm223 ( talk) 15:13, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

Again if you believe S Marshall shutting down the conversation at the article talk page was inappropriate you need to discuss it elsewhere. If you wish to discuss should reliable source 'x' or reliable source 'y' be used in the article the appropriate place to discuss it is the articles talk page.
This is specifically a forum for discussing the reliability of sources, per the noticeboard header This page is not a forum for general discussions unrelated to the reliability of sources. My hatting of the above thread was only an attempt to keep discussion to the nature of the source. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested « @» ° ∆t° 15:32, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

( edit conflict) I've un-hatted it. I know you meant that helpfully, ActivelyDisinterested, but when we get discussions about a hatting, the hatting's not serving its intended purpose.

I didn't shut down discussion on the talk page. I moved it here, because it's, yanno, a dispute about the reliability of a source. Moving a topic here doesn't shut anyone down. It just invites previously uninvolved people to opine.

Adam, let's remember that Hava Mendelle is publishing actual magazine articles about Talk:J. K. Rowling. Mendelle has an angle about Wikipedia and an axe to grind about "editors with activist agendas", which means me (because I want to call Rowling gender-critical in Wikivoice) and I suspect it might mean you too. Let's not give Mendelle too much fuel for her next Spectator Australia article.— S Marshall  T/ C 16:02, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

I won't undue what you've done, but I will remind everyone again to discuss the source not each other. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested « @» ° ∆t° 16:16, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

In the end, I do think the context is important for determining whether it should be used. Even if it was determined reliable for this fact - though see below for why I dont think it is - there are other reasons that come into the debate of whether it should be used, so we're in the weird situation where, if we only consider reliability and it's somehow determined to be reliable on this one point, but we've shut down all discussion on the other issues, it wouldn't settle anything because those other issues wouldn't disappear. If anything, it'd make things worse, because people would be pointing here, and saying "It's a settled issue!" and the other side would be saying "All those other points were explicitly excluded there! It settles nothing!" and that seems like something no-one wants. In the end, there's going to be a strong case of WP:NPOV's admonition that "basing content on the best respected and most authoritative reliable sources helps to prevent bias, undue weight, and other NPOV disagreements" hovering over this: Whether it technically is good enough to cite this specific fact or not, it's not the best respected, nor the most authoritative source for what should be a fairly trivial fact to prove. It also requires a certain degree of interpretation to get from its claims (quoting what is presumably a specific rude tweet without characterising it) to ours (she received insults). I'm not saying that's the most egregious interpretation, but it isn't quite what the source said. Adam Cuerden ^{( talk)}_{Has about 8.8% of all FPs.} 16:41, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

Since this has now spilled out onto other pages, I'd say it counts as WP:RSOPINION and if used should have in-text attribution. As such probably not suitable for the originally stated purpose in this discussion, but nothing wrong with it being used in other ways more generally. Void if removed ( talk) 17:32, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

I believe it's more nuanced than that. Yes, their opinions should certainly be attributed. But I don't believe the following two examples necessarily need attribution: a., J.K. Rowling received an insult and b. the UK has specific laws. My reasoning is as follows: plenty of sources state that J. K. Rowling has received insults but that's as far as they go, this is a specific example; plenty of sources mention the laws but this paper explains them. It's not synth to say there are laws; it's not synth to say that Rowling has received insults. Victoria ( tk) 21:26, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

Sure, it's not synth to say the UK has specific laws, and it's not synth to say Rowling has received insults. Synth as prohibited by policy happens when you join two statements together and the implicit assumption in the conjunction is controversial, it can literally by definition never happen when analysing the synthetic statement by its parts. Alpha3031 ( t • c) 04:15, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, I wasn't convinced there was a WP:SYNTH problem before but Victoria has, perhaps inadvertently, laid it out pretty convincingly.

If you have a source that says A happened, and a source that says B happened, and you want to say "because A happened, B happened", you still need a separate source for that. You can't just say "As A happened, B happened" and expect readers to draw the implication. That's obviously WP:SYNTH. Loki ( talk) 04:26, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

A simple statement of problems with the source itself

Let's step back. I don't think this source is reliable in the first case, not even for Rowling receiving insults, because I have now checked Suissa and Sullivan's sources for that bit of their text - which, as I explain below, is literally "random person from the internet's blog".

ETA: It's worth saying that there are literally only three sentences on Rowling in the entire source. That's it. It uses a kind of scattershot writing style, where it's listing related topics and doesn't draw connections between them, so, per WP:SYNTH's rules on using different parts of a source to draw connections not exxplicitly found in the source, this is the entirety of the text on Rowling found in Suissa and Sullivan:

• Page 66, "The book-burnings and #RIPJKRowling hashtag provoked by JK Rowling’s latest novel before it had been generally released exemplify the capacity for those so-minded to be outraged by words they have not read" (Nothing before or after this connects it with anything else discussed)

• Page 69 "The treatment of J.K. Rowling, subjected to a tidal wave of requests to ‘choke on a basket of dicks’ and similar, in response to a strikingly thoughtful and empathetic essay, is simply the highest profile case of a commonplace phenomenon (Leng, 2020; Rowling, 2020). Rowling’s intervention was prompted by the fact that women who speak publicly on these issues face campaigns of harassment, including attempts to get them fired."

Now, after that quote on page 69, it does list several women that it says were harrassed, but it very explicitly doesn't say that they were the women that prompted Rowling, nor does it use any source connected with Rowling for them. (The sentence in question is "Prominent legal cases like those of Maya Forstater (Kirkup, 2019), Allison Bailey (Filia, 2020) and Sonia Appleby (Barnes and Cohen, 2020) represent the tip of the iceberg." - and this is part of a transitional section moving from the brief discussion of Rowling towards a discussion of their complaints about the Labour movement. Adam Cuerden ^{( talk)}_{Has about 8.8% of all FPs.} 23:25, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

First of all, the source doesn't cite half of what it's meant to be used for. There is no mention in it of Rowling receiving threats. No-one is really disagreeing with this.

Second, it's a Fringe source. For 99% of statements in Suissa and Sullivan, trying to bring them to the Rowling article would immediately raise problems. As such it's only being used to cite a very minor point for which dozens of other sources exist.

Third, the text meant to be used to source the insults - as explicitly said by S Marshall in the first post in this thread, is, "The treatment of J.K. Rowling, subjected to a tidal wave of requests to ‘choke on a basket of dicks’ and similar..." That's hyperbolic in its wording, which isn't ideal: one would prefer a source where you can cite the fact without having to reinterpret hyperbole.

But it gets much worse: it has two citations. Rowling 2020 - which does not include any such language ( feel free to confirm) - and Leng 2020. Leng 2020, the clear source of Suissa and Sullivan's "fact" since it's the one that uses such language, is this Medium article. Medium is an open blog with no apparent editorial controls; Mary Leng has two articles on it, and no profile meaning the source works out to "some random person from the internet said it, and Suissa and Sullivan repeated it."

We wouldn't cite Leng's blog. I don't see how it becomes reliable because it passes through Suissa and Sullivan with slightly more sensatonalism (the "tidal wave") added.

I really don't see why this source is being defended at all. It's basically sourcewashing some woman's random blog. Even if we ignore everything else in Suissa and Sullivan, I think there's strong reasons to doubt the text used to cite the "fact".

I don't know how how defending this source even got to this stage in the first place. Adam Cuerden ^{( talk)}_{Has about 8.8% of all FPs.} 15:53, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

Here's the full sentence from Suissa & Sullivan, page 69: The treatment of J.K. Rowling, sub- jected to a tidal wave of requests to ‘choke on a basket of dicks’ and similar, in response to a strikingly thoughtful and empathetic essay, is simply the highest profile case of a commonplace phenomenon (Leng, 2020; Rowling, 2020). The footnotes refer to the "essay", which indeed is on Rowling's blog. Victoria ( tk) 16:08, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

Basically this essay is so bad on so many levels that it honestly is somewhat embarrassing that the Journal of Philosophy of Education ever published it to begin with. Simonm223 ( talk) 16:13, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

Honestly, if it was even just Rowling reporting it, we could discuss whether we should be using her characterisation of her critics, but it'd probably pass muster with at most a "Rowling said". but Rowling's blog doesn't quote the text Suissa and Sullivan use; the actual quote is from some random person's blog, and said blog lacks even a profile, so, while we do have an article on a Mary Leng, it's probably a BLP violation to presume they're the one who wrote a transphobic blog post without evidence of such. And of course, even if it is the same person, it's still a blog post, not an academic article. Adam Cuerden ^{( talk)}_{Has about 8.8% of all FPs.} 16:24, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

( edit conflict)Again, the footnote is simply pointing to the essay itself, not to the words as Wikipedia must. As for Mary Leng, yes, that is the philosopher Mary Leng, [38], who is not just some random woman on the internet. Victoria ( tk) 16:32, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

Alright. Still, that the statement in question is sourced to two blogs isn't really helping its reliability. It's pretty much universally agreed Suissa and Sullivan has problems, but the argument is over whether it's reliable enough to use for this single statement. That that statement is sourced to two blogs with no editorial oversight, and the direct quoting of an uncited fact from one of them is the exact part being used as the only text in Suissa and Sullivan that supports the Wikipedia text... Well... I think at this point I can rest my case. Adam Cuerden ^{( talk)}_{Has about 8.8% of all FPs.} 16:48, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia uses secondary sources. Suissa & Sullivan is a secondary source. The insult is mentioned by Mary Leng (primary) and probably also on Twitter (primary). That's how it works. Victoria ( tk) 17:03, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

That seems dubious; that'd basically make it impossible for any secondary source to be rejected. Adam Cuerden ^{( talk)}_{Has about 8.8% of all FPs.} 17:09, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

As with most fringe scholarship this is ultimately a question of WP:DUE - yes this article is a secondary source. But it's not a good or reliable one. It has obvious errors of fact. It has many more claims that are unsupported by evidence. Its thesis seems to rest upon, apparently, a weak reading of a single line of Gender Trouble and the subsequent assumption that Stonewall (charity) exists to reify that specific mis-read of Judith Butler however it engages so poorly with said material that it ends up just looking like someone trawling blogs for vaguely philosophical defenses of Rowling. As such the question of whether it is citing blogs is more an indicator of the low quality of the essay rather than something apropos to Wikipedia policy on primary and secondary sources.

I would note that I honestly think "Rowling got insults" is a WP:SKYBLUE statement while "Rowling got threats" is unsupported by this source. As such my personal preferred outcome would be to retain "Rowling got threats" in the article and to simply remove this source, which is a bad source that Wikipedia should not be using for anything. Simonm223 ( talk) 17:13, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

Aye. Someone being insulted on the internet is... not really news. As for the death threats... I'd like to see a bit better sourcing than "Rowling said she received threats", but let's leave discussion of that for after the statement is actually sourced. Adam Cuerden ^{( talk)}_{Has about 8.8% of all FPs.} 18:56, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

The commentary here has made some decent points about how the source is being used to document a claim that is fairly peripheral to the source's own points, can be sourced many other places, and is not really very well sourced factually in that source which is more of an opinion piece than a research study. Unfortunately, several commentators have been unable to restrain themselves from going beyond such reasonable criticism and getting into much more inflammatory territory by labeling it "fringe" and "transphobic" (and such things), thus compelling people of dissenting viewpoints in this contentious area to mount an unnecessary defense of the source (similarly to how in another thread further up this page they are forced to defend articles about a silly urban legend of litter boxes in schools). Sticking to the facts instead of pushing ideologies would make for a better discussion. *Dan T.* ( talk) 17:22, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

Nobody is forcing anybody to defend the litter box urban legend. Any editor doing so could just go, "yeah that was all pretty silly and we should stop," and then stop. And here's where I have to bring up the actual factual correction the journal required: you can read it here but, specifically, they changed the way they cited their source to refer to trans women as "males who identify as women", called it a systematic study when it was a literature review, and tried to convert bottom surgery rates from the figure of 5-13% provided in the source to 0.1% "annually".

This is really egregious and it's egregious in an openly bigoted way. I'm sorry if me calling this bigoted offends anyone. But it's true. They focused on surgery rates (already a red flag if you've ever actually spoken to trans people about the challenges of getting gender confirmation surgery assuming they want it), then they misrepresented the nature of the study they were citing to make it seem more authoritative than it was, then they doctored the numbers to make it seem like no trans women actually want gender confirming surgery anyway. If you can't recognize how that's bad then you probably need to step away from discussing sources in social sciences and humanities academia. Simonm223 ( talk) 17:44, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

"These details have been corrected only in this correction notice to preserve the published version of record." Wow. Adam Cuerden ^{( talk)}_{Has about 8.8% of all FPs.} 18:41, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

Oh yeah, I forgot, their claim about trans women mostly not taking hormones was incorrectly sourced to the citation involved in the correction and was, actually, just a whole-cloth invention. Like calling this WP:FRINGE might almost be too kind for this sort of blatant academic dishonesty. Simonm223 ( talk) 19:08, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

• This "simple statement" now runs to 1,500 words and has never been edited by anyone uninvolved. Can you see how those two facts are connected?— S Marshall  T/ C 13:22, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

  The source has a lot of problems. It took that long to unpack them all. Simonm223 ( talk) 16:10, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

Is this in the source?

In the latest proposed draft, Suissa and Sullivan is additionally used to cite "As her thoughts on the legal status of transgender people came under scrutiny", which is cited to pages 68-9. Rowling isn't mentioned on page 68, and I'm not seeing text that even begins to cite that on page 69. Can someone provide the quote from Suissa and Sullivan meant to source this as a first step? Because if it's not in the article, it's a pretty easy issue to deal with. Adam Cuerden ^{( talk)}_{Has about 8.8% of all FPs.} 20:08, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

• You're right and it's not in the source. I copy/pasted that from the text that's currently in the article because I mistakenly assumed that a featured article would be well-sourced. I'll fix that in the next draft, once we've decided whether Suissa and Sullivan can be used at all.— S Marshall  T/ C 20:53, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

It is not and never was pages 68 to 69; it was and is cited to pages 66 to 69. The entire section is about the legal status of transgender people, concluding on page 69 with the "choke on a bag of dicks" aimed at JKR (which is a bit more than scrutiny). SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 00:39, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

The entirety of commentary on Rowling is two sentences in page 66 to 69 inclusive: Page 66 states "The book-burnings and #RIPJKRowling hashtag provoked by JK Rowling’s latest novel before it had been generally released exemplify the capacity for those so-minded to be outraged by words they have not read", and Page 69 states ". The treatment of J.K. Rowling, subjected to a tidal wave of requests to ‘choke on a basket of dicks’ and similar, in response to a strikingly thoughtful and empathetic essay, is simply the highest profile case of a commonplace phenomenon (Leng, 2020; Rowling, 2020). Rowling’s intervention was prompted by the fact that women who speak publicly on these issues face campaigns of harassment, including attempts to get them fired." That is literally the entirety of the framing of Rowling in Suissa and Sullivan, in pages 66 to 69 inclusive. Neither of those talk about her "thoughts on the legal status of transgender people" in any way, shape, or form. SandyGeorgia, I really think you should step back, because that fact is patently not in Suissa and Sullivan, unless you have the wrong page numbers. Adam Cuerden ^{( talk)}_{Has about 8.8% of all FPs.} 01:50, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

The reference to her essay is an obvious reference to her views, and that reference to her views concludes an entire section discussing the legal status of transgender people. The content is clearly supported by the source. As Barnards, Victoria, S Marshall and several others have patiently explained above, the reliable source is adequate for the text it is citing. You're bludgeoning the discussion, and this last example appears as if it's a struggle to find a valid reason to discard the source. SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 01:56, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

I'm been passively reading goings-on regarding the article and these discussions for a while now. Didn't really want to get pulled in to all this. But, that's a quote from a reference that's supposed to be an academic source? Wow, that sounds immensely biased and terrible of a source. It sounds like it should be an opinion piece in some right wing rag. Basically straight out of the Daily Mail. Silver seren ^C 02:03, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

I, on the other hand, have not been following closely the preceding discussion, so I will likely need to review, for example, the 45 citations on google scholar later, but it seems like a reasonable disagreement to want a source that's a little more explicit if we are to say that the scrutiny (or more than scrutiny, as it may be) of JKR arises from thoughts on the legal status of transgender people. As it seems like a reasonable contention, having the disagreement patiently explained to Adam seems a little condescending. I apologise if I have missed something that is on the article talk page and not here at this noticeboard. Alpha3031 ( t • c) 03:32, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

I really don't get how Sandy thinks that reading four pages of text - three sentences of which are about Rowling, the rest on other people - and then making interpretations about Rowling based on the content that IS NOT about her (How does that not violate WP:SYNTH? How does that not fall afoul of "do not combine different parts of one source to reach or imply a conclusion not explicitly stated by the source"?).... is a reasonable way to cite half of a sentence of trivial information in a Biography of a Living Person where standards of citation are particularly high. I asked her to quote the text she thinks supports it, and she's saying all four pages are necessary. I don't understand how this is a good faith argument. I'm not assuming it's a bad faith one; I just don't understand how a respected writer of featured articles, who has been through and passed many source reviews can seriously think that's a reasonable thing to argue. What am I missing? I'm genuinely confused here, because I don't believe she's acting in bad faith, but to argue what she's arguing for is madness. Adam Cuerden ^{( talk)}_{Has about 8.8% of all FPs.} 05:30, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

To summarize in simplistic terms: an attempt is being made to write a draft about Rowling's transgender views - a draft that will gain consensus. The draft needs to be written in summary style and has to include a number of points, including the context that Rowling's comments came about in response to UK's gender recoginition laws (and what those are for readers not familiar), that Rowling's stance is gender-critical (or in line with trans exclusionary feminism) and that she's drawn criticim & even insults. This source satisfies a number of these points by explaining that the laws triggered the debate (and Rowling's part in it), what the laws are, and reactions Rowling has received. These points are strewn across a number of pages. Whether or not the source is used can be worked out on the Rowling talk page. The only question here is whether those who aren't involved in the discussion on Rowling talk deem it reliable. Victoria ( tk) 21:47, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

@ Victoriaearle: Let's be clear on a key point: If you go to the PDF, and search for Rowling's name, the one sentence on page 66, and the two sentences on page 69 are the only things you will find. It's not a valuable source of information for most of what you're mentioning, because WP:SYNTH explicitly disallows "combin[ing] different parts of one source to reach or imply a conclusion not explicitly stated by the source." This source never connects Rowling with gender recognition laws. It does not show that Rowling has commented on the laws. It does not show Rowling's point in the debate. And that's because it's really not about Rowling at all.

The entirety of Rowling's mention in the source is the three sentences I've mentioned. I'll repeat them again, because it's important to be very clear on the sum total of information about Rowling in this source:

Page 66, "The book-burnings and #RIPJKRowling hashtag provoked by JK Rowling’s latest novel before it had been generally released exemplify the capacity for those so-minded to be outraged by words they have not read", and Page 69 "The treatment of J.K. Rowling, subjected to a tidal wave of requests to ‘choke on a basket of dicks’ and similar, in response to a strikingly thoughtful and empathetic essay, is simply the highest profile case of a commonplace phenomenon (Leng, 2020; Rowling, 2020). Rowling’s intervention was prompted by the fact that women who speak publicly on these issues face campaigns of harassment, including attempts to get them fired."

Page 66's reference is too scarce on details to use it, since it doesn't even name the novel in question. Page 69 doesn't connect it to UK laws, it connects the insults to her 2020 essay, and that's it. It very explicitly does not state which women that "face[d] campaigns of harrassment" inspired Rowling. Suissa and Sullivan are, again too vague to allow us to use them to make a point like that, because this article isn't about Rowling, and the authors of it do not provide sufficient detail to say much of anything about her. Literally the only thing this could be used for is her receiving insults in response to her 2020 essay - NOT gender recognition laws. The sentence on page 66 is not put in sufficient context to say anything on the back of it that would be useful. Adam Cuerden ^{( talk)}_{Has about 8.8% of all FPs.} 23:12, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

A proposal

The point of coming to WP:RSN is to get outside input from people who weren't already arguing about this back at Talk:JK Rowling. I've declined to participate much in this discussion for that reason. Right now, almost all the people who are talking about this are people who were already arguing about this back at JK Rowling's page, which doesn't help at all to resolve the dispute. Just so it's clear, I specifically mean Adam Cuerden, S Marshall, SandyGeorgia, Victoriaearle, and Simonm223.

So, I have a suggestion: let's all take a week or so off this thread so we don't keep on scaring off outside input, which will hopefully let us all actually resolve this ultimately very minor issue and get back to improving the article. Loki ( talk) 01:48, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

Fair. I think everything that needs said by me is said Adam Cuerden ^{( talk)}_{Has about 8.8% of all FPs.} 01:23, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

While I will note I didn't choose nor particularly approve of the venue for this discussion I will also say that I've said my piece about this source. Simonm223 ( talk) 14:15, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

Aye. I mean, it was rushed over here after a mere three days of discussion on Talk:J. K. Rowling. Of course it's going to havea lot of comments from the people active on the talk page there; discussion had barely begun. Adam Cuerden ^{( talk)}_{Has about 8.8% of all FPs.} 22:30, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

I would add that involved editors going round removing this source from other pages such as with this edit, with no discussion of content, citing this rushed and incomplete discussion as an absolute authority, is not on. Void if removed ( talk) 17:04, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

Literally nobody has demonstrated that my analysis of their factual inaccuracies and general poor scholarship is in any way incorrect. That source is not reliable. Simonm223 ( talk) 17:11, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

Regardless, you are having a content dispute about one page which has nowhere near reached a conclusion, whatever you may personally think, and you cannot unilaterally declare this source "unreliable" and remove longstanding content on a bunch of other pages that have no idea this discussion is even taking place. Void if removed ( talk) 17:13, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

Simonm223 Whited (a Potter scholar we use extensively) has lots of errors, too, but no one is complaining about using them. In the medical realm, where I usually edit, I can't recall ever reading a source in the areas where I'm most knowledgeable that I couldn't find plenty to correct. Many sources have similar, and here, we aren't using the source to cite anything controversial. SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 18:00, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

I didn't spend several hours of my life doing a close read of Whited's essay. I did spend several hours of my life doing a close read of Suissa and Sullivan's poor excuse of an essay. This led to me feeling it was grossly inappropriate as a source for Wikipedia. Whether I would feel the same about Whited is neither here nor there. Simonm223 ( talk) 18:20, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

A couple of comments here in the context of Rowling doesn't give you the right to go unilaterally removing it from multiple pages with no discussion as if you have "proven" the paper is bunk with your negative opinion. I've read dozens of papers I have a low opinion of, but they still get cited, whatever my opinion of them, because they are invariably reliable sources for the scholarly opinions of the author. Now, I agree that using this paper to establish a factual claim in wikivoice is inappropriate, but I disagree that it is a source that is so contemptible it cannot be used with attribution, let alone based on your say so. Void if removed ( talk) 18:28, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

It's factually inaccurate opinion piece that appears to have been principally derived by an inability to effectively read one paragraph of a Judith Butler book and then cooking up some bizarre conspiracy theory about the Mermaids charity. It's a fringe source and, as it is currently used, is mostly just establishing that people were mean to British bigots online in a variety of capacities. Simonm223 ( talk) 12:04, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

This is all very much your opinion, which is fine, but not terribly compelling, especially when that opinion is coloured by epithets like "British bigots".

I don't know what you mean about Mermaids, can you quote the relevant part? Void if removed ( talk) 13:39, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

It's the conclusion of the essay. Simonm223 ( talk) 17:35, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

I can't find a reference to Mermaids. Sorry but do you mean Stonewall? Void if removed ( talk) 22:17, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

It is possible I got the two mixed up. Simonm223 ( talk) 11:56, 24 May 2024 (UTC)

Hi, LokiTheLiar; I responded on your talk page about the misimpression left here. I hope someone uninvolved will come along and hat the off-topic portions or otherwise get some direction back in to this severely bludgeoneed discussion. Else maybe we can perhaps all go back to working collaboratively on talk as we were before this digression. My opinion remains that a) the source is reliable, and b) it verifies the content. SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 16:46, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

Suissa & Sullivan contains multiple instances of factual distortion and FRINGE promotion:

• They say J Michael Bailey was targeted - they neglect to mention what for, ie the pseudoscientific Blanchard's transsexualism typology (which posits that all LGB trans women are fetishists...) (p 60)
• They say ROGD (the theory kids catch trans from the internet) was attacked by activists and that's why the school issued a correction, arguing it vindicated the analysis and results, yet the journal insisted on some ‘reframing’ of the paper in a corrected version - The correction was actually huge, it went from "parents said this is happening so it's true" to "parents said this is happening so it might be true" ie "the data means this is true" to "the data does not mean this is true". (p 61)
• They defend Kenneth Zucker (who has a paragraph in gender identity change efforts and whose own article makes clear he attempted to 1) prevent kids growing up trans and 2) prevent them being gender noncomforming at all) (p 75)
• In those previous 3 examples, they claim the person was silenced and attacked, without bothering to even mention what they said that people took issue with.
• We would like to thank Holly Smith, Michael Biggs, Alan Sokal, Adam Swift and an anonymous reviewer of this journal for their extremely helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper. Unsurprising they both cite and worked with members of Genspect and SEGM...

Other sources take issue with the paper:

• Transphobia has become a point of fixation for the birthright-speech community,30–32,36,37 which has once again attempted to disguise bigotry under a patina of academic freedom.3 [39]
• Autistic-trans people’s existence is also frequently deployed to undermine transgender healthcare (e.g., Hruz 2020; Suissa and Sullivan 2021).[ https://bulletin.appliedtransstudies.org/article/1/1-2/7/

I would say these issues are blatant enough we should avoid this paper as much as possible. It's a multi-page rant that defends WP:FRINGE activists and scholars from criticisms, claiming they were on political grounds, without bothering to mention why they were criticized and trying to downplay the scientific issues with their work (such as, in the three examples above: calling all LGB trans women fetishists, saying kids catch trans from the internet based on a survey of transphobic websites, and putting kids through conversion therapy). Your Friendly Neighborhood Sociologist ⚧ Ⓐ ( talk) 17:34, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

If a publisher (Journal of Philosophy of Education) is reliable do we generally cherry pick which of their publications are to be considered reliable? Seems like a huge rabbit hole were many sources will be challenged because of objections to their content, methods, etc. —DIYeditor ( talk) 01:28, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

Yes, we do generally do so. WP:SOURCEDEF is explicit that reliability also depends on the authors and individual works, as well as the publisher. Alpha3031 ( t • c) 03:56, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

It's actually fairly common to exclude WP:FRINGE pushing papers no matter what journal they're being published in. Major journals can still publish crap papers, see Lancet MMR autism fraud for one of the most well known examples. We, as editors, have some amount of discretion in determining what sources are good to use. That's the entire point of WP:DUE after all. Silver seren ^C 04:11, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

I am generally one to go to bat for trusting the veracity of current academic sources, as I am at times concerned by the willingness of some Wikipedians to simply ignore relevant scholarship while writing articles. But just as newspapers sometimes get things wrong, so too do journals at times. And here we have not only a close and thorough read by Wikipedians of errors and distortions in "The Gender Wars, Academic Freedom and Education" but moreoever a situation in which other academic sources are criticizing the piece (YFNS's link to the pieces in Digital Discovery and the Bulletin of Applied Trans Studies article and to the piece in Digital Discovery). This is a high level of analysis that is altogether very persuasive. Suissa and Sullivan's "The Gender Wars, Academic Freedom and Education" is not a reliable source and shouldn't be cited on Wikipedia. Hydrangeans ( she/her | talk | edits) 04:54, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

A brief discussion about this website bolnews.com was archived recently, but I believe it needs to be revisited due to its usage in our articles, especially in BLPs. Numerous UPEs also frequently cite BOL News coverage to support notability claims for articles related to Pakistani actors and TV shows. FWIW, this website is owned by a notorious Pakistani TV network, BOL News, which lacks trustworthiness and respectability. The network's owner, Axact, was involved in running a diploma mill, and BOL News was established as a front business. It appears that these websites are now operating as content farms. I noticed that bolnews.com and its affiliated websites such as bolentertainment.com has been producing paid articles on various individuals, such as Kim Gravel, Jared Carrabis, Lawrence Zarian, Cherryn Krol, Ella Langley, Dario Gil, Gian Luca Passi De Preposulo, Laura Jarrett, Jennifer Adamson, Sarah Netburn, Tony Balkissoon, Katelyn Mabus, Amanda Eller, Alberto Musalem, Jonathan Higginbotham. This coverage could potentially be used for establishing WP:GNG for non-notable figures. For example, their article on Natalie Harp even states Despite her prominence, Harp has yet to be featured on a Wikipedia page. Moreover, BOL News has been producing a lot of paid placements for figures like Waqar Zaka, whose BLP was recently deleted due to a lack of WP:N. Given these issues, can we safely categorize BOL News and its affiliated sites as WP:GUNREL? @ Erik, Denniss, and ActivelyDisinterested:— Saqib ( talk I contribs) 09:46, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

Good summary. I'd support this. Erik ( talk |  contrib) ^{( ping me)} 11:15, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

Smelled fishy once I stumbled about this site. I highly doubt this site was ever reliable. -- Denniss ( talk) 12:11, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

bolentertainment.com is clearly unreliable. The main site, bolnews.com, is a mix. They also ran an English-language newspaper (print edition) which produced some quality content and it was available online through this site - I consider it as reliable. Anything produced by their web team is usually AI-generated, so it is highly unreliable. For bolnews.com, I'd say it is reliable if it is produced with a proper byline (which means that the writer has a proper history of writing quality content and is actually a journalist, not a guest post). Anything from bolnews.com/entertainment/ or bolnews.com/trending/ is highly unreliable. Please note that somewhere.

Also, it is under a different management now, i.e. AsiaPak Investments, so we can hope that they will produce more professional journalistic content, leaving behind Axact legacy. Can we discuss and ban Daily Pakistan please like Republic TV of India or Daily Mail from the UK? 216.213.133.219 ( talk) 22:05, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

216.213.133.219, I strongly disagree. I wouldn't trust their news stories, even if published under bylines, as they are known for produce paid content. Just take a look at the quality of paid content they were producing for Waqar Zaka. — Saqib ( talk I contribs) 22:45, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

Agree bolentertainment.com is unreliable. Bolnews.com clearly has problematic content so at best falls under WP:NEWSORGINDIA even if written by a journalist. It should not be used for BLPs, to establish notability or anything controversial. It might be fine for uncontroversial facts but even so, better sources likely exist so BOL News should be avoided which lands me at WP:GUNREL. S0091 ( talk) 15:50, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

Also found this where they were fined for airing unsubstantiated allegations against media executives in 2020. S0091 ( talk) 19:01, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

S0091, Bol News is known for peddling fake news. They deliberately spread fake news to tarnish reputations and even endanger lives. Check out this article for evidence supporting my claims. One of their TV hosts, Aamir Liaquat Hussain repeatedly claimed that some activists engaged in anti-Pakistan and anti-Islam activities, putting their lives at risk. He later admitted that he made these claims at the direction of the network's owners. — Saqib ( talk I contribs) 19:12, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

It also does not seem to be much better since being purchased by AsiaPak Investments in September 2023 given many of the articles you provided are from this year, with some as recent as this month. S0091 ( talk) 19:22, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

S0091, Well, AsiaPak is a notorious organization with no prior experience in journalism. They acquired Bol for dubious reasons. For instance, according to this investigation report, Bol has been involved in numerous scandals, including accusations of misconduct and poor journalism. So why would anyone want to buy Bol? Some might argue it's to exert influence over others. Simple! I anticipate they'll produce even more fake news now. — Saqib ( talk I contribs) 19:28, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

At 25 May 2024 Kharkiv missile strikes, source number 20 is cited to elaborate on Russian state media claims that Ukraine housed a military warehouse and command post in a mall that was recently struck by Russia, killing 18 civilians. This is the source [40]. It is an apparent offshoot of Telegram citing the Conflict Intelligence Team. This claim is extremely WP:EXCEPTIONAL and in my view we require multiple sources of higher quality to justify the inclusion of such analysis. Apparently there are no such sources. Is the source enough on its own? Super Ψ Dro 17:05, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

It is an apparent offshoot of Telegram citing the Conflict Intelligence Team
It's actually the subdomain of the CIT website, i. e. the CIT website. Which uses Teletype. ManyAreasExpert ( talk) 17:19, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

So... a primary, self-published source? Super Ψ Dro 17:36, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

CIT can be described as an investigative journalism so they are a secondary source when commenting on Russian claims. They are often referred to by BBC and other RSs. Their investigations were used in MH17 downing investigation. As a mass media outlet, they are not very well established however. They are not a mass media, actually. Definitely more reliable then tg channels. Less reliable then BBC and other RSs. ManyAreasExpert ( talk) 17:51, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

One could similarly argue that the Ukrainian claims of war crime are WP:EXCEPTIONAL when they can't even count properly the number of large explosions that happened in the strike. It's also confusing how removing a balanced explanation/elaboration will improve the section given the same general claim is already deemed satisfactory for inclusion before. It's not like the article is too big or covering too many views. Feels like WP:IGNORE. If the secondary explosions are confusing enough to make all but the specialists be unsure of what they are, then I see it as a duty for Wikipedia to cover a more detailed explanation for transparency, thus overriding WP:RS paperwork. Alexis Coutinho ( talk) 17:28, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

If the secondary explosions are confusing enough to make all but the specialists be unsure of what they are frankly that source is the only time I've ever seen that claim, then I see it as a duty for Wikipedia to cover a more detailed explanation for transparency Wikipedia does not lead in anything, it always follows the sources. when they can't even count properly the number of large explosions that happened in the strike pretty damn sure they know better than any Wikipedia user and that it is not our job to reach into these grounds. I will stop commenting here for the sake of avoiding the section from becoming a wall of text as is usual in noticeboards. Super Ψ Dro 17:34, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

pretty damn sure they know better than any Wikipedia user If so, then they are willfully lying. Alexis Coutinho ( talk) 11:05, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

• I am not sure why this was completely ignored. Super Ψ Dro 19:00, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

  I'm not sure which claim of CIT you regard as exceptional? ManyAreasExpert ( talk) 19:05, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

Not sure it's a reliability issue. Here you can find an article in Kommersant saying that a source in the ministry of defence told TASS them there was a munitions storage in the mall, and this is the original TASS article, I'm pretty sure they are reliable for the Russian government's position. Neither of these two sources say that it was a military target in their own voice.

The real question is whether it's WP:DUE and so probably should be asked at the NPOV noticeboard. Alaexis _¿question? 18:34, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

Russian govt position often falls into WP:FRINGE. ManyAreasExpert ( talk) 18:45, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

Is Mada Masr a reliable source on the Arab- Israeli conflict? Specifically, can we use it for a claim that a particular casualty of the recent war was "executed", as here- Faiq Al-Mabhouh? Kentucky Rain24 ( talk) 17:22, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

Well, the article you've linked acknowledges that he died fighting (His brother surrendered, but Mabhouh resisted and engaged in gunfire that resulted in his death). AJ Arabic also confirms that he died in a clash with Israeli forces. So the facts of his death are not in question and can be described in wikivoice.

This leaves us with the question of whether the characterisation of his death as "assassination" should be included in the article. I think that this is a rather unusual choice of words for a death on a battlefield, and unless there many other RS that use it, we should not include it. Alaexis _¿question? 18:48, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

It seems he was a Hamas security forces officer that died while fighting, so clearly he cannot be said to have been "executed". Vegan416 ( talk) 19:16, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

Is it the only source that uses the word "assassinated"? From the article it would likely seem an exceptional claim that would require other sources to agree with it in order to be WP:DUE. Boynamedsue ( talk) 19:43, 2 June 2024 (UTC)