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So, Supreme Deliciousness just restored a very long section on various OPCW "whistleblowers" that had been removed from the article back in November by Volunteer Marek (it was briefly restored by Alaexis with the edit summary "rv removal of sourced info; the level of detail is probably excessive but then we need to summarise them rather than removing everything"; then My very best wishes removed it again). I haven't looked back further to see how long it had been there. I reverted Supreme D's edit yesterday, and s/he swiftly reverted. The article is under 1RR so obviously I won't revert again.
I believe that this huge section was undue back in November, and hence the version without it became the stable consensus version. However, now that the OPCW-IIT report was published in January, which deals in a very evidence-based way with all the concerns raised by "Alex" and Henderson, this older material is even less due. The new version of the article has much more on the arcane details relating to these "whistleblowers" than it does to the IIT report, which can't be right.
The edit also includes a major change to the infobox and lead to change the attribution from the Syrian gov to "Unknown", despite the exhaustive UN investigation and the overwhelming consensus in the real world being clear about who is responsible. That seems to me straightforwardly pushing a fringe POV.
Thoughts? BobFromBrockley ( talk) 16:52, 10 May 2023 (UTC)
"and hence the version without it became the stable consensus version." ... the info was removed without any discussion or consensus so the removal slipped under the radar. This is NOT any "stable consensus" VQuakr and Bobfrombrockley are now edit warring to remove important information that the reader now will be unable to find. There are large doubts about the OPCW investigation by several journalists and whistleblowers so the removal of this from the article heavily distorts what has happened. The article now is completely one sided and censored. It is still an allegation that the Syrian Air force carried out the attack, it is still denied by Syria and Russia.-- Supreme Deliciousness ( talk) 03:33, 11 May 2023 (UTC)
Re this edit: I strongly oppose it. No reliable sources support any doubt about the perpetrator. To suggest otherwise is to give credence to WP:FRINGE positions. BobFromBrockley ( talk) 19:08, 14 May 2023 (UTC)
It is also more accurate and encyclopedic to present it in the article as: "the OPCW IIT report concluded that Syria was behind the attack" instead of just saying "Syria was behind it"That might be plausible if only the IIT concluded this. However, every serious piece of research and investigation has concluded it. Some voices deny that climate change is real or that the earth is round, but we don't need to attribute when the consensus is overwhelming. We give weight to the denials already. Adding in more (see WP:MANDY) is unnecessary. BobFromBrockley ( talk) 09:23, 11 June 2023 (UTC)
I recently came across a review, submitted to the European Parliament, entitled A Review of The Organization For the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons Fact-Finding Mission Report Into the Alleged Use of Chemical Weapons in Douma: Evidence of Manipulation, Bias, and Censorship. It can be read here. It is credited to the following four authors:
This seems quite notable, and I'm surprised that I don't see any reference to it here. Perhaps one reason is its size - it is 162 pages long, and contains 192 endnotes. Perhaps we can work together here to parse out what is of most use for the Wikipedia article? Philomathes2357 ( talk) 07:05, 21 September 2023 (UTC)
Berlin Groupis the Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media and is known for disinformation and ties to Russia Softlem ( talk) 14:15, 9 October 2023 (UTC)
Trust me- No, we don't trust any editor's understanding of what is or isn't significant. We use reliable secondary sources. Do you have any of those? It seems many editors have looked and failed. Please provide a reliable source, or at a minimum, stop bludgeoning the talk page. Malibu Sapphire ( talk) 20:28, 25 September 2023 (UTC)
NachDenkSeiten with the subtitle The Critical Website is a German blog that comments on political and social issues. Originally praised as an important part of a “ counterpublic ,” since around 2015 the website has been accused of spreading conspiracy theories , for example about the Ukraine crisis since 2014 or the corona pandemic . The editor is the former SPD politician Albrecht Müller ,[4] per de-wiki (not a reliable source, but enough to know that this ain't either) As far as the Syrian state media, it does not count. Therefore, I am still at exclude, not a single reliable secondary source has been provided. Andre 🚐 03:03, 13 October 2023 (UTC)
Syria FM and Russian Envoy condemn OPCW politicization
The group found procedural irregularities that were considered grounds for controversy over the investigations that took place in connection with the Douma incident. In the past, Russia had accused the United States and its allies of turning the OPCW into a tool to achieve their interests and holding Damascus fully responsible for the chemical attacks "in the absence of sufficient evidence."So it basically said they were tools of Russia, but yeah, it's definitely the best source of the bunch we have here. Now comes the editorial control bit. It's weird when I go search for "Berlin 21 group of experts" nothing else comes up but this article. I assume it must be a translation issue. "Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media" is the title we have. "Berlin Group 21" comes up with about 25 results. We do now have 1 basically reliable enough source that tells us that the group found irregularities that were considered grounds for controversy over the Douma investigations. Would you care to propose the 1 sentence treatment that this should in your view merit for this 1 reliable source? Andre 🚐 05:23, 13 October 2023 (UTC)
To clarify - we already report the predictable Syrian/Russian POV in the reactions section. Both nations are clearly not independent of the subject and their state responses do not convey weight to the POV. So far there is not support for any additional mention of this. It's work noting that while verifiability in reliable sources is a prerequisite to including content, it's not a guarantee. I think it's unlikely I would support adding such fringey content at all unless it was picked up by much higher-quality outlets. VQuakr ( talk) 20:02, 13 October 2023 (UTC)
Check its
wikipedia page and its
"Ownership" section which reveals its funding. "Al-Mayadeen" outlet is explicitly pro-Assad, pro-Iran and pro-Russia.
That website has a pattern of promoting conspiracy theories of pro-Russian outlets like Grayzone, Sputnik, etc.
In Syria, it is a vehement opponent of
Syrian opposition, dehumanises the
Free Syrian Army as "terrorists" and labels Assad regime's indiscriminate bombardment operations as "cleansing".
[1] It is strongly pro-Russia and describes the
Russian invasion of Ukraine as a
"special operation to demilitarize and "denazify" Ukraine" and literally labelled the Zelensky government in Ukraine as a
"Nazi regime". This website is obviously a fake news, conspiratorial outlet.
Shadowwarrior8 (
talk) 22:07, 13 October 2023 (UTC)
Al-Mayadeen is not a reliable source for anything other than Hezbollah press releases. SANA is not reliable for anything other than Ba’ath Party press releases. This is a dead horse that needs no more flogging. BobFromBrockley ( talk) 00:43, 14 October 2023 (UTC)
I cannot argue against your point that Al-Mayadeen is biased. Refreshingly, they're very upfront about their biases in their "about us" section. However, it's also true that every outlet is biased about certain topics, and whether or not bias affects reliability should be determined on a case-by-case basis.
If they re-post some article from Russian state media, I fully understand that we would analyze that article's "reliability" by referencing the original source (Russian state media) rather than the re-publisher, so those particular articles wouldn't be usable, since most Russian state media is deprecated. I understand that.
What I don't understand is why they'd be labeled "unreliable" in this context. The Berlin Group 21 report exists, and Al-Mayadeen is simply noting that fact and providing their subjective analysis of it. That's exactly what any other outlet would do if they covered the story. By citing them in this context, we wouldn't be "relying" in blind faith on any of Al-Mayadeen's assertions, since the only assertion made (that the report exists) is uncontested, and the rest is opinion. I'm not following what exactly is "unreliable" about Al-Mayadeen in this context. Maybe someone can clarify their thoughts on that, and link me to relevant policies.
What the argument of my colleagues appears to boil down to, to me, is that Al-Mayadeen is irrelevant as a source here, because the story is too convenient for their worldview. "Who cares that Al-Maydeen talked about the report - they would"...like a WP:MANDY in reverse. But I don't see that standard applied to western sources that are considered mainstream. If that were the standard, wouldn't that mean that we could never cite NPR or PBS about something that happened in the world that advanced US interests, even if all PBS did was mention that it happened, because "of course, they would think that something advancing US interests is newsworthy"?
If we dismiss any source that deviates in any way from our western sensibilities of what constitutes "proper journalism", we'll be left with articles that give vastly disproportionate weight to the perspectives of western countries, because those perspectives are by definition "more reliable". I'm unsure of how that approach to sourcing differs from the definition of systemic bias.
I really think that even if Al-Mayadeen were later determined to be "generally unreliable", there is no problem with using them in this context. Of course, in a different context, they might not be usable. And I still think that the UN Press source is usable as well. Philomathes2357 ( talk) 02:19, 14 October 2023 (UTC)
There's an RfC (not started by me, and not related to this particular case) on RSN now: Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard#Al-Mayadeen. 93.72.49.123 ( talk) 21:51, 15 October 2023 (UTC)
References
WARNING: ACTIVE COMMUNITY SANCTIONS The article Douma chemical attack, along with other pages relating to the Syrian Civil War and ISIL, is designated by the community as a contentious topic. The current restrictions are:
Editors who repeatedly or seriously fail to adhere to the purpose of Wikipedia, any expected standards of behaviour, or any normal editorial process may be sanctioned.
|
This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
Douma chemical attack article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
Article policies
|
Find sources: Google ( books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL |
Archives: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11Auto-archiving period: 30 days |
This article is rated C-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
A news item involving Douma chemical attack was featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the In the news section on 10 April 2018. |
Daily pageviews of this article
A graph should have been displayed here but
graphs are temporarily disabled. Until they are enabled again, visit the interactive graph at
pageviews.wmcloud.org |
It is requested that a photograph be
included in this article to
improve its quality.
The external tool WordPress Openverse may be able to locate suitable images on Flickr and other web sites. |
So, Supreme Deliciousness just restored a very long section on various OPCW "whistleblowers" that had been removed from the article back in November by Volunteer Marek (it was briefly restored by Alaexis with the edit summary "rv removal of sourced info; the level of detail is probably excessive but then we need to summarise them rather than removing everything"; then My very best wishes removed it again). I haven't looked back further to see how long it had been there. I reverted Supreme D's edit yesterday, and s/he swiftly reverted. The article is under 1RR so obviously I won't revert again.
I believe that this huge section was undue back in November, and hence the version without it became the stable consensus version. However, now that the OPCW-IIT report was published in January, which deals in a very evidence-based way with all the concerns raised by "Alex" and Henderson, this older material is even less due. The new version of the article has much more on the arcane details relating to these "whistleblowers" than it does to the IIT report, which can't be right.
The edit also includes a major change to the infobox and lead to change the attribution from the Syrian gov to "Unknown", despite the exhaustive UN investigation and the overwhelming consensus in the real world being clear about who is responsible. That seems to me straightforwardly pushing a fringe POV.
Thoughts? BobFromBrockley ( talk) 16:52, 10 May 2023 (UTC)
"and hence the version without it became the stable consensus version." ... the info was removed without any discussion or consensus so the removal slipped under the radar. This is NOT any "stable consensus" VQuakr and Bobfrombrockley are now edit warring to remove important information that the reader now will be unable to find. There are large doubts about the OPCW investigation by several journalists and whistleblowers so the removal of this from the article heavily distorts what has happened. The article now is completely one sided and censored. It is still an allegation that the Syrian Air force carried out the attack, it is still denied by Syria and Russia.-- Supreme Deliciousness ( talk) 03:33, 11 May 2023 (UTC)
Re this edit: I strongly oppose it. No reliable sources support any doubt about the perpetrator. To suggest otherwise is to give credence to WP:FRINGE positions. BobFromBrockley ( talk) 19:08, 14 May 2023 (UTC)
It is also more accurate and encyclopedic to present it in the article as: "the OPCW IIT report concluded that Syria was behind the attack" instead of just saying "Syria was behind it"That might be plausible if only the IIT concluded this. However, every serious piece of research and investigation has concluded it. Some voices deny that climate change is real or that the earth is round, but we don't need to attribute when the consensus is overwhelming. We give weight to the denials already. Adding in more (see WP:MANDY) is unnecessary. BobFromBrockley ( talk) 09:23, 11 June 2023 (UTC)
I recently came across a review, submitted to the European Parliament, entitled A Review of The Organization For the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons Fact-Finding Mission Report Into the Alleged Use of Chemical Weapons in Douma: Evidence of Manipulation, Bias, and Censorship. It can be read here. It is credited to the following four authors:
This seems quite notable, and I'm surprised that I don't see any reference to it here. Perhaps one reason is its size - it is 162 pages long, and contains 192 endnotes. Perhaps we can work together here to parse out what is of most use for the Wikipedia article? Philomathes2357 ( talk) 07:05, 21 September 2023 (UTC)
Berlin Groupis the Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media and is known for disinformation and ties to Russia Softlem ( talk) 14:15, 9 October 2023 (UTC)
Trust me- No, we don't trust any editor's understanding of what is or isn't significant. We use reliable secondary sources. Do you have any of those? It seems many editors have looked and failed. Please provide a reliable source, or at a minimum, stop bludgeoning the talk page. Malibu Sapphire ( talk) 20:28, 25 September 2023 (UTC)
NachDenkSeiten with the subtitle The Critical Website is a German blog that comments on political and social issues. Originally praised as an important part of a “ counterpublic ,” since around 2015 the website has been accused of spreading conspiracy theories , for example about the Ukraine crisis since 2014 or the corona pandemic . The editor is the former SPD politician Albrecht Müller ,[4] per de-wiki (not a reliable source, but enough to know that this ain't either) As far as the Syrian state media, it does not count. Therefore, I am still at exclude, not a single reliable secondary source has been provided. Andre 🚐 03:03, 13 October 2023 (UTC)
Syria FM and Russian Envoy condemn OPCW politicization
The group found procedural irregularities that were considered grounds for controversy over the investigations that took place in connection with the Douma incident. In the past, Russia had accused the United States and its allies of turning the OPCW into a tool to achieve their interests and holding Damascus fully responsible for the chemical attacks "in the absence of sufficient evidence."So it basically said they were tools of Russia, but yeah, it's definitely the best source of the bunch we have here. Now comes the editorial control bit. It's weird when I go search for "Berlin 21 group of experts" nothing else comes up but this article. I assume it must be a translation issue. "Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media" is the title we have. "Berlin Group 21" comes up with about 25 results. We do now have 1 basically reliable enough source that tells us that the group found irregularities that were considered grounds for controversy over the Douma investigations. Would you care to propose the 1 sentence treatment that this should in your view merit for this 1 reliable source? Andre 🚐 05:23, 13 October 2023 (UTC)
To clarify - we already report the predictable Syrian/Russian POV in the reactions section. Both nations are clearly not independent of the subject and their state responses do not convey weight to the POV. So far there is not support for any additional mention of this. It's work noting that while verifiability in reliable sources is a prerequisite to including content, it's not a guarantee. I think it's unlikely I would support adding such fringey content at all unless it was picked up by much higher-quality outlets. VQuakr ( talk) 20:02, 13 October 2023 (UTC)
Check its
wikipedia page and its
"Ownership" section which reveals its funding. "Al-Mayadeen" outlet is explicitly pro-Assad, pro-Iran and pro-Russia.
That website has a pattern of promoting conspiracy theories of pro-Russian outlets like Grayzone, Sputnik, etc.
In Syria, it is a vehement opponent of
Syrian opposition, dehumanises the
Free Syrian Army as "terrorists" and labels Assad regime's indiscriminate bombardment operations as "cleansing".
[1] It is strongly pro-Russia and describes the
Russian invasion of Ukraine as a
"special operation to demilitarize and "denazify" Ukraine" and literally labelled the Zelensky government in Ukraine as a
"Nazi regime". This website is obviously a fake news, conspiratorial outlet.
Shadowwarrior8 (
talk) 22:07, 13 October 2023 (UTC)
Al-Mayadeen is not a reliable source for anything other than Hezbollah press releases. SANA is not reliable for anything other than Ba’ath Party press releases. This is a dead horse that needs no more flogging. BobFromBrockley ( talk) 00:43, 14 October 2023 (UTC)
I cannot argue against your point that Al-Mayadeen is biased. Refreshingly, they're very upfront about their biases in their "about us" section. However, it's also true that every outlet is biased about certain topics, and whether or not bias affects reliability should be determined on a case-by-case basis.
If they re-post some article from Russian state media, I fully understand that we would analyze that article's "reliability" by referencing the original source (Russian state media) rather than the re-publisher, so those particular articles wouldn't be usable, since most Russian state media is deprecated. I understand that.
What I don't understand is why they'd be labeled "unreliable" in this context. The Berlin Group 21 report exists, and Al-Mayadeen is simply noting that fact and providing their subjective analysis of it. That's exactly what any other outlet would do if they covered the story. By citing them in this context, we wouldn't be "relying" in blind faith on any of Al-Mayadeen's assertions, since the only assertion made (that the report exists) is uncontested, and the rest is opinion. I'm not following what exactly is "unreliable" about Al-Mayadeen in this context. Maybe someone can clarify their thoughts on that, and link me to relevant policies.
What the argument of my colleagues appears to boil down to, to me, is that Al-Mayadeen is irrelevant as a source here, because the story is too convenient for their worldview. "Who cares that Al-Maydeen talked about the report - they would"...like a WP:MANDY in reverse. But I don't see that standard applied to western sources that are considered mainstream. If that were the standard, wouldn't that mean that we could never cite NPR or PBS about something that happened in the world that advanced US interests, even if all PBS did was mention that it happened, because "of course, they would think that something advancing US interests is newsworthy"?
If we dismiss any source that deviates in any way from our western sensibilities of what constitutes "proper journalism", we'll be left with articles that give vastly disproportionate weight to the perspectives of western countries, because those perspectives are by definition "more reliable". I'm unsure of how that approach to sourcing differs from the definition of systemic bias.
I really think that even if Al-Mayadeen were later determined to be "generally unreliable", there is no problem with using them in this context. Of course, in a different context, they might not be usable. And I still think that the UN Press source is usable as well. Philomathes2357 ( talk) 02:19, 14 October 2023 (UTC)
There's an RfC (not started by me, and not related to this particular case) on RSN now: Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard#Al-Mayadeen. 93.72.49.123 ( talk) 21:51, 15 October 2023 (UTC)
References