This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current main page. |
Archive 85 | ← | Archive 87 | Archive 88 | Archive 89 | Archive 90 | Archive 91 | → | Archive 95 |
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Are the sourcing decisions described here compatible with WP:RS, WP:V, and WP:NPOV? -- AndewNguyen ( talk) 18:32, 9 May 2021 (UTC)
On May 1, an RFC was opened at the RS noticeboard raising a pair of sourcing issues that have resulted from the decision to classify the hereditarian hypothesis as a fringe theory (that is, the hypothesis that variation in average IQ scores between racial or ethnic groups has a genetic component). This decision has resulted in about 45 otherwise reliable sources being removed or excluded from Wikipedia articles, and in Charles Murray's and Heiner Rindermann's entire bodies of work related to this topic being declared unreliable sources ( [1] [2] [3]). It also has required articles to include material that several editors consider to misrepresent the sources it cites. Two days after being opened, that RFC was shut down as improperly formatted.
Immediately following the RFC's closure, a discussion was underway about opening a new RFC at the NPOV noticeboard which would properly address these sourcing concerns. However, before that could be done, a new RFC was opened on the article's talk page which reiterated the question of whether or not the hereditarian hypothesis is a fringe theory, without addressing the underlying issue of sourcing. The goal of the present RFC is to address this issue of sourcing that some editors feel needs to be addressed, as was suggested in the other RFC: "If there really is a fundamental issue not addressed by this RfC, then this RfC does not prevent someone from opening a proper RfC to address it." -- AndewNguyen ( talk) 18:32, 9 May 2021 (UTC)
Add your signature, with an optional comment of 1-2 sentences, under one of the two options below. All non-vote comments, including threaded discussion and replies to another's vote, should be posted in the "discussion" section.
If the current RFC concludes that this approach to sourcing is incompatible with WP:RS, WP:V and/or WP:NPOV, but the separate RFC on the article's talk page concludes that the hereditarian hypothesis is a fringe theory, it will mean one of two things: it will mean either that the decision to classify the hypothesis as a fringe theory should no longer require these outcomes with respect to sourcing, or that the community will have to make an exception to these policies for articles about race and intelligence. In other words these two RFCs are asking two separate questions, which may have two separate answers. -- AndewNguyen ( talk) 18:32, 9 May 2021 (UTC)
Okay, THIS looks like the thing that I've been waiting for over the past year. Depending on the outcome of this RFC, perhaps it's time for me to become active again.[6] To me this looks like an admission of being an WP:SPA. They do not currently appear to have any other interests on WP besides overturning the consensus on race and intelligence. For this reason, I would suggest that the best response to their shenanigans would be to WP:DENY recognition as far as possible (until such time as their disruption rise to the level of a sanctionable offense). Generalrelative ( talk) 21:28, 9 May 2021 (UTC)
Eastern Security Network ( | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
Over the past week or so, the above article has had a ton of POV edit warring by various IPs and SPAs. I don't feel qualified to clean up the article or start a discussion, but the article's badly in need of attention from an experienced editor—hopefully someone here can help sort things out. Gaelan 💬 ✏️ 06:17, 10 May 2021 (UTC)
I've noticed a common pattern in the articles for political leaders whereby socio-economic outcomes that happen under their rule are implicitly or explicitly linked to the leader's policies. Rarely, if ever, are such claims supported by strong RS, such as high-quality RS and academic sources. It's frequently just stated that improvements happened under the rule (which is verifiable) and attributed to the leader (which is rarely verified). The problem with that is that socio-economic outcomes are not necessarily caused by a single leader's policies. A specific example of this is the article for the Rwandan dictator Paul Kagame, which emphasizes in the lead that he has "prioritized national development, launching programmes which have led to development on key indicators, including healthcare, education and economic growth." The problem with that statement is that it's hard to imagine a country embroiled in a civil war not to improve its socio-economic outcomes during a subsequent period of peace. Snooganssnoogans ( talk) 15:50, 11 May 2021 (UTC)
Could we have some eyes on the Julian Assange article, where talk page discussion has repeatedly rejected UNDUE coverage of a certain bit of content regarding his imprisonment and where a minority of editors has laid out their support of such content at considerable length. Thanks. The talk page threads are Health and Less is more. The associated article content is referenced in them and can be seen in a recent string of reverts of my trimming some of the disputed text. SPECIFICO talk 20:35, 8 May 2021 (UTC)
Reaction here seems pretty clear. Meanwhile over on the article and its talk page, progress remains blocked against any trimming at all of the UNDUE content. SPECIFICO talk 21:06, 14 May 2021 (UTC)
A former Wikipedia editor claimed in an article that this site engaged in a multi-year smear campaign against Mark Levin. Is there any merit to the accusations? I decided to post this here because I have not gotten a response from the talk page of his article. X-Editor ( talk) 20:44, 14 May 2021 (UTC)
Wikipedia pages on police departments have a systemic problem of copy-pasting mundane "organizational structure"/"organizational chart"-type information from the websites of the police departments. I believe this type of content is a flagrant violation of WP:WEIGHT. Not only is the content of no interest to most readers, but it fails WP:RS and fills pages to the brim with filler that diverts readers from actual substantive encyclopedic information. For example, here is just some of the content that I tried to remove from the Los Angeles Police Department page (all of which is sourced to the LAPD itself) and all of which was immediately reverted [8]:
I noticed that this problem is also somewhat common on pages for businesses, but it is generally easy to remove it without any pushback (there are no passionate defenders of keeping the organizational chart of the subdivisions of the accounting department at McDonalds). The police department pages are more problematic because (1) the "organizational chart"-type content appears to have been systematically edited into the pages in the first place, and (2) There is pushback in removing it. Surely it fails WP:NPOV (in particular, WP:WEIGHT) to keep this kind of "organizational chart" copypasta content? While there is value in basic information about the organizational structure, surely there is no encyclopedic value in the "Office of Chief of Staff [does Chief of Staff-style actions] and has four subdivisions which have the names ABCD"? Snooganssnoogans ( talk) 03:15, 27 April 2021 (UTC)
I think the Oakland Police Department article is a good example of how this type of content should look, but it could use a lead that better summarizes the article. --- Avatar317 (talk) 05:08, 27 April 2021 (UTC)
I agree that there may be some excessive detail in there; however, [the] claims of it being unencyclopedic and of no interest "to anyone" are 100% subjective....we have to keep WP:PRESERVE in mind regarding material for which better sources likely exist. WP:PRIMARY sources also are not banned. There are many sources that talk about policing in detail, how it's done and how it's organized, and not just from a perspective of focusing on brutality. WP:TE is editing in a partisan and skewed manner, which I believe applies to editing police department articles only to add stuff about brutality and corruption and removing other stuff. We should be editing so as to speak of the good and the bad per due weight, not all one or the other.Articles on major American police departments absolutely need more eyes from editors focused on upholding NPOV. They get very little attention except that over the past year, there's been a big push to add stuff about police misconduct to the leads of these articles, most of which are very short, while at the same time attempts are made to gut other material. See New York Police Department, Los Angeles Police Department, Chicago Police Department, and Philadelphia Police Department, among others. Yes, we should of course cover misconduct with WP:Due weight. However, this is happening at the same time that almost no attention or effort whatsoever (and literally zero on the part of some editors) is going into editing any aspect of law enforcement other than misconduct, except to remove material on it. Any of those articles' histories and talk pages show this. How is this NPOV? Crossroads -talk- 20:42, 30 April 2021 (UTC)
A federal judge in 2002 dismissed the lawsuit after the city, which had fought it, made changes on the use of police force and handling of complaints against officers.Omitting this is a smoking gun of POV editing. In fact, material on that was already there in the body, albeit unsourced, and was removed in that very diff! There is absolutely no legitimate reason to omit that verifiable fact and thus imply that nothing has been done about those problems. How many more sources are being presented one-sidedly in these police department articles? How many sources are being excluded that present a more balanced picture? If this continues, I will have no choice but to seek a topic ban. WP:Tendentious editing, "partisan, biased, or skewed taken as a whole", is absolutely not allowed. Crossroads -talk- 23:11, 13 May 2021 (UTC) Edits per misunderstanding below. Crossroads -talk- 03:28, 15 May 2021 (UTC)
I checked Crossroads's editing since August 2018 and I have found no instance of Crossroads adding any substantive negative content to articles on police departments, even though the editor has edited pages for several police departments, and has edited a lot on those pages since the killing of George Floyd (a juncture in which historical and present misconduct came to the forefront of public discourse and was covered comprehensively in contemporary RS). Furthermore, if you look at Crossroads's complaint about me not using every part of this AP News source (because I didn't see one sentence at the end of the piece) [17], doesn't Crossroads fall afoul of the same violation when he fails to add content on how the CPD are vastly more likely to use force against Blacks: "Records show that Black residents, about 28% of the Columbus population, accounted for about half of all use-of-force incidents from 2015 through 2019"? [18] If he's using the AP News source, why does he cherry-pick one positive sentence and omit pertinent negative content? That's the same complaint the editor is making against me. I certainly don't think any of the above merits a topic ban (or sanction of any sort for that matter), but I find it hypocritical to be calling for bans on others for purportedly lopsided editing in the other direction. Snooganssnoogans ( talk) 01:11, 14 May 2021 (UTC)
Comment/Issue - Firstly, I have seen very little of the overall editing on police departments by both editors disputing here so I can't comment on that, but I would like to make a point or raise an issue.
Media nowadays does publish stats like what Snoo stated: "Records show that Black residents, about 28% of the Columbus population, accounted for about half of all use-of-force incidents" ... but this type of reporting leads the reader to a false conclusion of racism. Here's a fact: Males make up about half of the US population, but account for close to 95% of all use-of-force incidents by police departments nationwide, and make up about 95% of prisoners. Does that mean that police and the justice system are sexist and should incarcerate more females? No, it just means that males commit more crime, and more violent crime. This may be true for black people (not because of skin color or genetics, but because of poverty and racial discrimination breeding anger)...for example, the number one killer of young black males (18-25) in the US is other young black males. That statistic is not the case for young white males.
My take is that I oppose having statements that LEAD the reader to believe that racial disrimination exists, when the science doesn't specifically say that. To compare here, as an example: we need rate of police violence against (whites who resist arrest) vs. police violence against (blacks who resist arrest). Studies by criminologists should be more represented than simple population ratio to police violence ratio statements. --- Avatar317 (talk) 05:40, 14 May 2021 (UTC)
Looking for NPOV experts on the matter, the article currently has an ethnicity dispute section however the lede contradicts this by establishing an ethnicity to the subject. I think this violates our NPOV policy see WP:VOICE. The question on the RFC is should the lede state the subjects ethnic background? [19] Magherbin ( talk) 20:18, 17 May 2021 (UTC)
As stated in the article's Talk page, three users removed every single mention of content that might be considered negative about the company, even though the sources were reliable (for example, official announcement by European and Australian authorities). This was a very bold move that was repeatedly done without providing a real evidence. I wish to remind that removing such content - and even deleting entire section entitled "Controversies" - is blatant advertising. I would also recommend on conducting an investigation into the three relevant users as they are probably sockpuppets.
Here is the link to the version of the article before the blatant advertising by removing specific content (published on May 3, 2021). On May 7, 2021, User:Antiantonio removed every single mention of negative content, obviously for promotional reasons ( link to diff), but it was immediately reverted by User:SunDawn.
During a single day on May 7, the three users tried again to promote the company by omitting information and rephrasing the article. Here are few diffs for example:
I reverted the removal of the content, but user User:Vlavluck kept reverting my edits.
The revision history of the article clearly shows the questionable edits SoftSwiss ( | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views). I am sure that further investigation will show these account also have conflict of interests with the relevant company. -- Fact789 ( talk) 09:36, 18 May 2021 (UTC)
Please visit the talk page of the mentioned article SoftSwiss to see the report about why this edits been done and to find the consensus.
User:Hemiauchenia, User:Fact789 As stated in the article's Talk page, according to Wikipedia:Content removal the deleted part of article have been removed because of WP:INAPPROPRIATE WP:ICW the links used for citation failed verification, not reliable, have no information about quoted text. In addition to this, few unconfirmed theses contain traces of the original research. They have been tagged by Antiantonio and Coldmanviktor you can learn it through history of changes bad source tags According the principles described in Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not this part of article have been removed by me Vlavluck ( talk) 15:47, 12 May 2021 (UTC) There are no problems between me and negative comments about the company, there are only problems with shit links that does not contain information about the quoted text. User:Hemiauchenia We can't leave such a poor supplied thesis in the article. Check following "Report about detected original research case" under or make your own one. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Vlavluck ( talk • contribs)
Theses deleted from the article:
Deleted theses violate the principals described in Wikipedia:No original research, and also demonstrate disrespect to the requirements for verifiability and reliability of references described in Wikipedia:Reliable sources. Vlavluck ( talk) 09:17, 18 May 2021 (UTC)
References
{{
cite web}}
: CS1 maint: url-status (
link)
{{
cite web}}
: CS1 maint: url-status (
link)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
The discretionary sanctions page is clear that noticeboards are off-limits to non-EC users. Even ignoring that this is blatant forum shopping... RandomCanadian ( talk / contribs) 17:01, 24 May 2021 (UTC) |
---|
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it. |
[ [20]] The following is copied directly from the discussion there. They keep throwing the same arguments, even though I've countered them each time again and again. The following text, taken for example from the lead section, is considered an NPOV work-in-progress with serious holes that paint Israel in a seriously negative color by omitting crucially important context: On 10 May, (...) Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad began firing rockets into Israel from the Gaza Strip, hitting multiple residences and a school. Israel began a campaign of airstrikes against Gaza; by 16 May, some 950 targeted attacks had demolished (...): 18 buildings (...), 40 schools and four hospitals, and also struck the al-Shati refugee camp. In addition, at least 19 medical facilities have been damaged or destroyed by Israeli bombardment. The al-Jalaa Highrise, housing offices of the Associated Press and Al Jazeera as well as 60 condominiums, was destroyed on 15 May, prompting outcry. By 17 May, the United Nations estimated that Israel had demolished 94 buildings in Gaza, comprising 461 housing and commercial units. As a result of the violence, at least 248 Palestinians were killed by Israeli bombardment in Gaza, including 66 children. Palestinian rocket fire has killed 12 in Israel, including one child. On 11 May, the Israel Defense Forces said that at least 15 of the Palestinian casualties were members of Hamas, and also said that some Palestinian civilian casualties were caused by errant rocket launches within the Gaza Strip. As of 20 May 2021, the Palestinian National Authority reported injuries for at least 1,900 Palestinians, while as of 12 May Israel reported at least 200 injured Israelis. That text should be changed to the following: On 10 May, (...) Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad began firing rockets The article omits the context behind the actions and the intentions of both sides in the conflict, Israel and the Palestinians. By omitting this extremely important context, the article is conveying a negative image of Israel and is considered an NPOV work-in-progress. My proposal aims to fix that. This is not about trying to give Israel "equal weight". This does not break neutrality by showing Israel's side more positively: the proposal itself is neutral; if it makes Israel looks better, it is just a side effect (that I desire to achieve, in this case, which does not make the proposal break the neutrality principle, either). While I did synthesize multiple secondary sources, this does not make the proposal original research, it is just the way by which an encyclopedia is formed. The sources don't just quote the IDF or Israel's leaders, they assert facts and report information. All of the text I've explicitly requested to add in the format of "A->B" is attributable to high-quality secondary sources. I've consulted Wikipedia's list of perennial sources while drafting my edit request (and it took a few hours straight to do this), and the "miscellaneous" sources I've listed at the bottom of my proposal are there just for reference, to be present in the talk page. The IDF press releases are intended to enhance, not replace, the reliable secondary sources. The sources directly support the information, and they're used in the context as secondary sources, not primary, and are therefore not "a mouthpiece for the IDF". The point about Hamas and human shields is a minor point that can be addressed by minimal rephrasing; it does not make this entire proposal lose its stand. Maybe the lead section is not the best place to put the information - I'm not objecting to that; but it's better to improve the neutrality of Wikipedia by including the important context, and later on the information can be reorganized in a better way. (Maybe I could also help with that.) It's better for Wikipedia to present more neutral articles by including crucially important context - especially when it makes the reader see the whole picture in different light, and even if it's not organized as ideally as it should be - rather than omitting that context. As said in WP:NPOVT#Space and balance, "The remedy is to add to the article — not to subtract from it". And although the sources might be "outdated" by now, they're still relevant if only to break the barrier of getting the information into the article. Wikipedia articles can always have more sources added or better ones replacing worse ones. Having relevant but outdated sources for this recent event still doesn't justify leaving this important information out. |
Comment The editor is, per this Arbpia ARCA not permitted to participate in formal discussions ("edits relating to the Arab-Israeli conflict, to pages and discussions in all namespaces"). Because the editor is not happy with being unable to get what he wants at the article talk page, where he is permitted to make edit requests in the normal way, he is coming here in an attempt to get around the limitation. Selfstudier ( talk) 09:42, 24 May 2021 (UTC)
There is disagreement over at Talk:Spanish Empire#Colonial empire about whether referring to the Spanish empire as a colonial empire in the WP:LEAD is compliant with WP:NPOV. Further input would be appreciated. TompaDompa ( talk) 20:11, 24 May 2021 (UTC)
I don't feel particularly strongly about this article's subject or potential title, but I wanted to post this here for wider scrutiny because I suspect it gets to the core of WP:NPOV and its application as it relates to religious beliefs that directly conflict with science. There was only brief discussion on the talk page around this move ( Talk:Rejection of evolution by religious groups#Article title in May 2020, but nothing further, which I was surprised by. — Goszei ( talk) 02:51, 23 May 2021 (UTC)
core of WP:NPOVhere. NightHeron ( talk) 11:06, 23 May 2021 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
There's an ongoing discussion between myself and Special:Contribs/73.248.126.206 at the article on Kevin Paffrath about whether he ought to be introduced in the lead as a "landlord" or "real estate investor", and we've reached a bit of an impasse. The article initially described him as "American YouTuber, real estate broker, and landlord", and there was an edit war over removing "landlord", and adding either "investor" or "real estate investor". I suggested the compromise of adding "real estate investor" but retaining "landlord", but 73.248.126.206 believes it ought to be removed. My reasoning is that the significant coverage of Paffrath, outside of the sources focusing on his YouTube channel, discuss his landlording: New York Times Magazine, Curbed. I'll let 73.* summarize their point of view, or just see the conversation at Talk:Kevin Paffrath#Landlord. GorillaWarfare (she/her • talk) 21:51, 27 May 2021 (UTC)
Regardless, consider it a throwaway point. More important: it's very unlikely that you will persuade me and others through comparison to other articles ( WP:OTHERSTUFF).I'm not sure why you're continuing to insist on following this line of argument when we've both explained it's a common tactic that is almost always unconvincing to editors, to the point that it's garnered multiple essays. GorillaWarfare (she/her • talk) 04:33, 28 May 2021 (UTC)
but there were originally more than 40 sources, which GW largely by herself cut down to around 20, a few of them on duplicate groundsThis is a claim you made on the talk page, and I already gave you a pretty detailed breakdown there of the sources I removed and why they were unreliable. I also invited you to specify any source I removed if you thought it shouldn't have been, which you did not take me up on. I see that after you repeated the implication here that I had removed legitimate sources, Cullen328 replied
All the baloney about cutting sources as if that is suspicious lacks any credibility because many of the sources were duplicates and others were clearly not reliable.You have doubled down on it without specifying a single source that was removed inappropriately:
the cutting of sources (at least several of which were legitimate, or at least more legitimate than/comparable to Curbed, and not duplicates... So there are 20-40 sources but they're to be discarded. If it were true that I had removed multiple usable sources for no good reason, surely you could point to some?
the third paragraph in Career section is 100% GWThis is not true; the mention of "landlord influencers", the Millenial Money reporting on the breakdown of his income, and the quote describing him as a "multimillionaire landlord who once extolled..." were all in the article before I touched it ( earlier revision). I did add more quotes and descriptions of RS commentary on Paffrath to the section, some of which is critical ("arguably incendiary opinions..."), some of which is Paffrath's response to the criticism ("I separate ethics from business"), and some of which is positive ("The overwhelming majority of Paffrath's content consists of mundane tips that have a neutral or even positive effect on tenants", "Jackson said that Paffrath was 'exceptionally talented at talking to a camera, a natural salesman'"), and some of which has no real opinion to it (Paffrath and others shifted their channels towards COVID-19 stimulus updates).
she changed all real estate investor labels to landlord (I then risked being banned to add RE investor alongside landlord)This is where diffs come in handy because I'm not 100% sure which edit(s) you're referring to, but I assume it is this one. There were at the time two sources being used to support the descriptors in the lead, and neither described him as an investor, so it was appropriate to remove. You later swapped "YouTuber, real estate broker, and landlord" for "YouTuber, real estate investor, and real estate broker" and added a Newsweek source which describes him as "an investor and real estate broker"; I changed it to "YouTuber, real estate broker, landlord, and investor" to properly reflect the source along with a clear summary: [21]. I was following the sources here, as the diffs show. As for "I then risked getting banned", that is certainly one way to spin "I edit warred against the status quo and refused to discuss on the talk page as asked".
persistently removed references to net worthThis one is true, at least. I have twice reverted attempts to add estimated net worth, both of which I will note were wildly different numbers. The diffs are [22] (summary:
I don't think "The Wealthy Niche" is a reliable source, and even if it were, the text is quite clear that this is little more than a wild guess: "Kevin has a combination of income sources pretty much similar to Graham Stephan. It’s hard to tell their exact net worth because their exact mortgage amount is unknown. But, we’ve tried our best to calculate their net worth as accurately as possible and according to our estimates, the net worth of Kevin Paffrath aka Meet Kevin is about $32 Million.") and [23] (summary:
appears to be a clickbait website, not a RS).
whitewashed the Instagram incident as an 'error' and removed the dollar amounts in question (I believe it was $30 million given from Facebook-Instagram to the Newsom administration)Again, look at the article before I edited it (it says that a Facebook spokesperson said that the post had been removed in error) and the current ( permalink) version after my edits (which also says that a Facebook spokesperson said that the post had been removed in error). Both versions include that Paffrath believes it was intentional. As for the $30 million claim, the article before my edits said that
Paffrath suspects the post was taken down intentionally and points out that Instagram through Facebook donated over 30 million dollars "on behalf of" Gavin Newsom's campaign.I could find no source supporting that Paffrath alleged a $30 million donation by Facebook, and so I removed the dollar value while retaining what was in the source, which is that Paffrath alleged Facebook/Instagram's removal was related to donations to Newsom's various causes. GorillaWarfare (she/her • talk) 04:07, 28 May 2021 (UTC)
And yes, I will add (i.e. restore) the fact that Paffrath suspected it, and that the same amount (tens of millions) was given.You are once again misrepresenting my edits. I did not remove the statement that Paffrath suspected Facebook/Instagram's removal was related to their donations to Newsom's causes. The article formerly said, "Paffrath suspects the post was taken down intentionally and points out that Instagram through Facebook donated over 30 million dollars "on behalf of" Gavin Newsom's campaign". After my edits, it says "Paffrath told Fox News he suspected the post was taken down intentionally, and that the removal was related to its parent company Facebook's donations to Newsom's causes". GorillaWarfare (she/her • talk) 05:17, 28 May 2021 (UTC)
Oh, we both know you don't have to worry about that, I'm sure you know who are just minutes away.More unsupported cabal aspersions, I see. GorillaWarfare (she/her • talk) 16:11, 28 May 2021 (UTC)
response to the rebuttal. Your claim that landlord is rarely used in this context is provably incorrect. The best way to actually check this kind of information (and not go on one's own gut feeling which may or may not be right) is by looking in a good linguistic corpus. (Cullen will forgive me, I hope – Google Books is fine as an indicator but an annotated corpus is more reliable.) The Corpus of Contemporary American English is here. If you search for "landlord" in texts from the last 10 years you'll find that it is used in written and spoken news media, in fiction, in TV shows (scripted and non-scripted), in academic texts, in blogs, and in other kinds of language as well, to describe a person in terms of their role. Contexts are sometimes negative but just as frequently neutral. This is obviously original research, but I can't find that the claims you have made about the usage of landlord are supported at all, except by your own assertions. The claim about what a person would or would not introduce themselves as is a red herring. In a round of introductions, nobody would say "Hello, I am a short track speed skater" or "Nice to meet you, I am a convicted criminal" except in very specific contexts – and yet those terms (when appropriately sourced) are perfectly fine in the first sentence of a Wikipedia article. Incidentally, the corpus search for landlord did yield a few hits for "I am a landlord"/"I'm a landlord", used in specific contexts and not in "self-deprecating terseness/minimalism". Another red herring is that the word is used
when describing subject's primary occupation, since a) nobody in this discussion has said that landlord is given as his primary occupation, and b) again, the lead includes more than a person's primary occupation. More info about what goes into the first sentence in a biography on Wikipedia can be found here. -- bonadea contributions talk 12:50, 29 May 2021 (UTC)
I've started an RfC on whether a name used by less than 1% of the local population of Bar, Montenegro, should be in the first line of the lede: [25]. Khirurg ( talk) 22:45, 2 June 2021 (UTC)
This discussion has been disrupted by
block evasion,
ban evasion, or
sockpuppetry from the following user:
Comments from this user should be excluded from assessments of consensus. |
I am new to this and was unaware of some of the rules and still trying to figure it out and I do have a coi as I am a relative of the bio grandchild of Bob Gibson. He has a grandson and someone who likely has a coi and is a relative of Bob's son who wants to keep the fact he has a child hidden due to his abandonment of the child. The child was born on July 7, 2010 and had a relationship with Bob but not with his bio dad, Bob's son Chris. The child does exist and shouldn't be forced out of claiming himself as Bob's grandson. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Troooth ( talk • contribs)
Two Wikipedia articles, namely "Rent control in the United States"
[26] and "Rent regulation"
[27], contain a statement that reads as follows: "There is a consensus among economists that rent control reduces the quality and quantity of housing".
For weeks, I have been arguing on the article's talk page
[28] about how misleading this claim is. I would like to ask for help here, since the case at hand is a blatant case of lack of neutrality.
The sources used to support this claim are:
1) An article by Blair Jenkins (of whom we do not even know if she has a PhD in economics), who has no other publications on this subject and whose article is published in a journal of dubious quality (impact factor 0.920). Furthermore, what the article itself actually states is that 23% of economists either "agree with provisions" (16.6%) or directly "disagree" (6.5%) with the claim that "A ceiling on rents reduces the quantity and quality of housing available". This is not a consensus. Moreover, the article is neither reproducible nor replicable, so it cannot be used to substantiate the claim. Finally, there is a conflict of interest between the publisher and the assertion. That is, the publisher is not neutral: The Journal Econ Journal Watch
[29] is published by a self-declared "conservative" and "libertarian" think tank called Fraser Institute
[30].
2) An opinion survey without peer review process, without methodological sampling and isolated interviews.
[31]
3) One report by another self-declared "liberal" think tank
[32],
[33].
Notwithstanding that the statement is erroneous, is it encyclopaedically appropriate for that phrase to appear as the second entry in the article? I think that here again we are faced with an attempt to promote one kind of view on the rent control mechanism. I think that for the sake of objectivity, one should first explain technically what rent control is and then move on to the assessments that economists, sociologists, and other scientists or sectors of society have to make.
In sum, maintaining the claim in these articles implies a significant ideological bias and a serious lack of neutrality. My position is that the sentence should be removed. If the sentence is to be retained, then for the sake of truth, we should at least edit it to say something like: "According to one study published by a libertarian think tank, most economists agree that "a ceiling on rents reduces the quantity and quality of housing available", while 23% of economists have reservations or disagree".
193.52.24.13 (
talk) 21:13, 23 March 2021 (UTC)
193.52.24.13 (
talk ·
contribs ·
WHOIS) is a blocked sock of
Pedrote112 —
Mikehawk10 (
talk)
07:34, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
most economists agree that "a ceiling on rents reduces the quantity and quality of housing available"is not true -- most economists would not say that about typical selective controls because indeed it is false. SPECIFICO talk 16:13, 24 March 2021 (UTC)
It's totally fine to mention the opinions of anti-regulation economists and political advocacy "think tanks", but they're claims to speak for all economists don't bear out. Economics is not a hard science and economic opinions are inextricably linked to political ideology. Anyone who pretends otherwise is entitled to their opinion but cannot be treated as a neutral observer.
Editors who wish to clean up these articles should go and read Wikipedia:Describing points of view. Wikipedia has a structured and reliable process for how we go about describing opinions. These are opinions, not facts. Describe these opinions as per Wikipedia:Describing points of view. -- Dennis Bratland ( talk) 19:34, 25 March 2021 (UTC)You analogy is false for this reason: Andrew Wakefeild has had his medical license revoked. Medicine is a real science with rigorous oversight, and objective rules of conduct. Frauds and quacks are identifiable. Kshama Sawant has not had her license to practice economics revoked, because there is no such thing as a license to practice economics. There can't be because there is no rigorous test to determine if an economic theory is valid or not, or if an economic "fact" is true or false. Nothing an economist could do can be construed as misconduct. Sawant has a PhD in economics. That is equal to any one else's claim to be an economist. The only reason to suggest she is in any way comparable with Andrew Wakefield is if one does not like her opinions, yet cannot rigorously prove them to be false, what with her opinions being economic in nature, and thus not scientific, meaning they are not falsifiable.
You can believe in the magic of the invisible hand of the free market all you want, believe as hard as you can, but that doesn't make it science. It's still mere opinion and should be treated as we treat any other opinion, given appropriate attribution and weight. -- Dennis Bratland ( talk) 16:34, 26 March 2021 (UTC)Insulting me by saying I'm no better than an acolyte of proven fraud and quack Andrew Wakefield is both offensive and reinforces my point that all these claims of rationality and rigor among those mansplaining rent control to us ignorant hysterics is a sham. This desperate need to attach the aura of authority to anti-rent control opinions only exposes how weak the argument is.
If you told an astrophysicist you think Pluto really a planet not a mere dwarf planet, they don't huff "how dare you! We have spoken!" They say, well, here's the evidence, here's our line of reasoning. Or consider MOS:PUFFERY. We don't need to put pedantic lecturing like "Bob Dylan is the defining figure of the 1960s counterculture and a brilliant songwriter" into encyclopedia articles. We can simply leave that unsaid and instead mention a handful of the long list of accolades that justify assessment. The claims about Bob Dylan are given in-text attribution so we can see whose opinion that is. If you want to give opinions about rent control, just say it with in-text attribution and not in Wikipedia's voice. If those authorities are respected enough, that speaks for itself. -- Dennis Bratland ( talk) 21:40, 28 March 2021 (UTC)I was asked to contribute to this discussion. I found a meta-analysis on the effects of rent control by the Urban Institute. For what it's worth, the Urban study discusses rent control's impact on many dimensions, such as neighborhood stability and racial equity. A neutral introduction to a Wikipedia article on rent control would discuss all of these effects, not just the quantity and quality of housing, and it would include the perspectives of social science fields other than econ.
The claim that this discussion has been focusing on is: "There is a consensus among economists that rent control reduces the quality and quantity of housing." Let's break this down.
"There is a consensus among economists"
I think this is what computer scientists call folklore: something that many people in a field believe but isn't necessarily supported by evidence. Economists might believe that most other economists agree with them on a claim because all the economists they know agree with that claim, but that might be because they're in an echo chamber. Many sources, like this Freakonomics podcast episode and this Washington Post op-ed, claim that this is something that most economists agree on. However, newspaper op-eds are usually not fact-checked, so any claim in the WaPo op-ed might be false. I think the Freakonomics episode is more reliable, since the podcast creator is obviously very familiar with the econ field, but this claim needs to be substantiated by more sources. It's also worth noting that the claimed "consensus among economists" in these sources is a value judgment ("rent control is bad policy"), which isn't the claim in question ("rent control reduces the quality and quantity of housing").
"rent control reduces the quality ... of housing"
"Quality" is a subjective term, and it should be qualified (pun intended). Rent control laws might reduce the quality of apartments in that they cause the apartments to deteriorate physically from neglect; there is some evidence for this (see p. 5 in the Urban paper). However, quality of housing might also be judged by the stability of the surrounding neighborhood and the tenants' social connections, which rent control might promote in some cases. Given the ambiguity of the word "quality," I think we can't say that rent control reduces the quality of housing.
"rent control reduces the ... quantity of housing"
I think the quantity of housing is easier to judge. Studies such as the 2018 DMQ study show that rent control reduces rental housing supply by encouraging landlords to convert their rental apartments into owner-occupied ones. However, when newly built houses are exempt from rent control laws, those laws don't affect the amount of new construction. To me, this pair of observations is enough to infer a causal relationship: that rent control reduces the quantity of rentals. This causal relationship needs to be stated in a reliable source, and I think we have plenty of sources that could support it.
Overall, I think we should not include the claim that "There is a consensus among economists that rent control reduces the quality and quantity of housing," because not all parts of it can be supported by reliable sources. However, we could include a statement about the effects of rent control laws on the amount of rental housing available. I also think that such a statement should be part of a broader discussion of the varied effects of rent control. Qzekrom (she/her • talk) 06:30, 28 March 2021 (UTC)
I'm a bit late to the party here, though a few sources to consider:
In some circumstances, e.g. if information to both landlord and tenant is improved, contracts are made more transparent and easier to enforce, then risks may be reduced for both parties and/or constraints on investment may be overcome. It is possible that both landlords and tenants may gain from the intervention. In such cases supply will increase and rents may be lower (or there may be additional demand for the better product). However, in other circumstances, the effect of regulation is to control rents below market levels and/or to provide greater security of tenure or other benefits to tenants which reduce returns or increase risks to landlords. In this case the result will be a reduction in supply; there will be pressure to avoid or evade the regulation; immobility and under-occupation of poor-quality, ill-maintained properties; and higher rents and worse housing for those excluded from the market.In other words, if the rent control binds rents to under what the price would be in a market, quality of units would suffer and supply would be reduced. On the other hand, if the rent regulation provides better information to landlords and tenants then both could be better off due to relatively lowered risks associated with renting.
reduction in rental supply likely increased rents in the long run. The study noted that landlords substituted their stock away from rental units and towards condos in response to rent regulation.
after standardizing for quality, rents in the uncontrolled sector were significantly higher than rents in the controlled sectorbut also that uncontrolled rents
likely exceed the rents that would have occurred in the absence of controls.
I can give more input, but these seem to be very typical results on the topic that have occurred over time. Generally, economists have found that the rents of uncontrolled units rises due to rent controls, which negatively affects quality (utility/cost). They also have found that oftentimes rent control results in the reduction of housing stock. Some economists suggest that this is because rent control regulations have been poorly written and that there might exist some rent control regulations that would be helpful, but that rent controls that bind the rental stock to a lower price than the market price would tend to decrease quality of the uncontrolled stock and the quantity of rental stock overall. I'm also aware of some work that has been done on the optimal maintenance rates for a landlord that is facing new rent control regulations (and that the answer is generally to decrease maintenance if the rent controlled maximum price is set below the market price for a unit), though I am unable to recall the paper at this time. I might try to find a textbook if that would be helpful.— Mikehawk10 ( talk) 23:07, 15 April 2021 (UTC)
since sellers face excess demand for their products, each will be able to make sales even if their products are not as good as those of competitors. As a result, sellers have too little incentive to maintain or enhance the quality of their products. For example, a common complaint about rent-controlled apartments is that they receive little maintenance and no renovations.In context, "to little incentive to do x" is more of a positive description that x won't be done as much (as opposed to a normative description saying people ought to do x more), so I believe that the second textbook is a source that can be used to back the claim of scholarly consensus with respect to decreases in the quality of rental units. Both books are from right before the great recession really got going, though from my understanding there hasn't been any sort of general shift on this belief reflected in relevant literature since then. (On a side note, the copyright dates on the books are both 2008, though online sources say the books were published in late 2007. I went with the dates printed in the books in making the citations.)— Mikehawk10 ( talk) 00:06, 17 April 2021 (UTC)
The claim is false since there are economists who think differentlydoesn't really give an argument against WP:RS/AC. Consensus is not equivalent to unanimity; there can be disagreement by small numbers of scholars and yet a scholarly consensus might be present. When we have textbooks (which are often considered tertiary sources) that are providing a sense of academic consensus on the rent control, I think that the consensus is sufficiently well-sourced. As always, the different views on rent control should be presented in the article relative to their prominence in published, reliable sources However, they should not be given equal weight with the consensus views in the article's description of the academic debates on rent control. — Mikehawk10 ( talk) 20:08, 17 April 2021 (UTC)
The
neutrality of this article is
disputed. |
And yet economists from both the right and the left are in almost universal agreement that rent control makes housing problems worse in the long run.[5] --- Avatar317 (talk) 20:09, 22 April 2021 (UTC)
I join this discussion late. There is indeed a strong consensus among economists on the negative effects on rent control, to the extent that it features prominently in many introductory textbooks to the field of economics. For example, the negative effects of rent control in Stockholm has been a key example in Swedish textbooks about economics for decades (to add an additional example to the mainly anglo-centric discussion). Claiming that there is a consensus for this is perfectly in line with NPOV and it would appear the IP who first object mainly argues from WP:IDONTLIKEIT. While rent control may be a complex topic in politics, it is a very straightforward one in economics. Jeppiz ( talk)\
References
There is an RFC on Talk:Sheikh Jarrah property dispute#RFC concerning whether or not the current article title is an appropriate neutral descriptive title, additional views welcome. nableezy - 03:33, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
Talk:Investigations_into_the_origin_of_COVID-19 ( | article | history | links | watch | logs)
Investigations_into_the_origin_of_COVID-19 has an ongoing RFC for how we should refer to the report authored by the WHO and based on a study conducted jointly with China. A discussion is taking place. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments on the discussion page. Thank you. Shibbolethink ( ♔ ♕) 19:11, 25 June 2021 (UTC)
I raised concerns about lack of coverage of doubts about efficacy at WikiProject Psychology here. I listed some sources, but I'm hoping that someone with better psych background than I have could look at those two articles and bring them in line with WP:NPOV. Thanks. NightHeron ( talk) 00:41, 10 June 2021 (UTC)
This discussion has been disrupted by
block evasion,
ban evasion, or
sockpuppetry from the following user:
Comments from this user should be excluded from assessments of consensus. |
On the talk page, I listed sources that discuss Theodorakis' antisemitic statements. [51] But my inclusion of them in the article was reverted twice without the opponents of inclusion engaging on talk. I appreciate the attention of uninvolved editors in this dispute; hopefully we can settle this without a RfC. ( t · c) buidhe 05:20, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
:::Here's a source:
During a press conference in 2003, Theodorakis' criticism of Israeli policy reached a new level, as he said, "Today we can say that this little country is the root of evil, not of good, which means that too much self-righteousness and stubbornness are evil." In a 2011 television interview he even described himself as an "anti-Semite and anti-Zionist," adding that "American Jews" had been responsible for the global economic crisis that had hit Greece as well.
[52] He did apologize later in a letter.
VikingDrummer (
talk) 10:01, 6 June 2021 (UTC)sock puppet of banned user-
GizzyCatBella
🍁
14:05, 11 June 2021 (UTC)
That’s not all VikingDrummer - full text below:
Accused of anti-Semitism
During a press conference in 2003, Theodorakis' criticism of Israeli policy reached a new level, as he said, "Today we can say that this little country is the root of evil, not of good, which means that too much self-righteousness and stubbornness are evil." In a 2011 television interview he even described himself as an "anti-Semite and anti-Zionist," adding that "American Jews" had been responsible for the global economic crisis that had hit Greece as well.
Those statements horrified not only people in Israel. In a later apology, Theodorakis explained his position in a letter to the Central Council of Jews in Greece. What he had meant by "root of evil" was the "unfortunate policies" of the state of Israel and its ally, the US. Had he once described himself as "anti-Semitic," he had misspoken after a very long and tiring interview. "I love the Jewish people, I love the Jews!" said Theodorakis.
[53] - GizzyCatBella 🍁 10:35, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
@Buidhe, are there any records of him saying similar things on other occasions? - GizzyCatBella 🍁 10:35, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
Also, looks like this has been discussed in the past.. [54], [55] and other editors tried to include it back in a day [56], [57], [58], [59], [60] - GizzyCatBella 🍁 10:49, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
Yeah, I guess it could be added .. - GizzyCatBella 🍁 11:06, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
References
Talk:Ilhan_Omar#RFC has an RFC for possible consensus. A discussion is taking place. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments on the discussion page. Thank you. Benevolent human ( talk) 00:28, 13 June 2021 (UTC)
There is an RfC at Talk:Tether (cryptocurrency)#RFC about tone concerning whether the lede (e.g. "Tether is a controversial crypto currency") and the article as a whole are written with an impartial tone. Additional views welcome. - DaxMoon ( talk) 09:24, 14 June 2021 (UTC)
The article on Eric Feigl-Ding currently has a section on criticism he has received. The neutrality of this section is in dispute. I have been trying to address this on the talk page, but I have received very little direct engagement on my questions from the editors who have written this section. I believe the entirety of the section violates WP:NPOV, and almost every sentence violates some specific sub-policy.
Rather than me going into detail immediately, I would like to ask you to read the section titled "criticism" and then note your answers to the following questions, which I will argue is misleading:
1) Who was criticizing him? Are their qualifications relevant?
2) Can you name anyone who was praising him? Are their qualifications relevant?
3) What is he criticized for?
4) Who used the app he helped develop?
5) What conclusion is supported by mentioning the app in this section? What purpose is being served by mentioning the Google Scholar section?
6) Is there a source that supports the claim he has “a relevant academic background”?
7) Does the second paragraph of this 2 paragraph section have anything to do with the topic?
The article:
https://undark.org/2020/11/25/complicated-rise-of-eric-feigl-ding/ provides some evidence to back up what I say below, but if you're willing to take my word for it, here's some of the concerns.:
a) The people who criticized him are among the most respected infectious disease researchers in the world. Does that come across in the wikipedia article?
b) The unsourced statement made in point 6) above is in dispute. Given that, does this statement promote one point of view above others (c.f., WP:VOICE)?
c) The named person praising him in point 2) above has no infectious disease experience. Does the juxtaposition of his praise with the anonymous criticism violate WP:UNDUE?
d) In point 3) above, did you answer that they were criticizing him for using social media or for not having an infectious disease background? They are criticizing him because they believe much of the information he is spreading is inaccurate and sometimes dangerous, and that he seemingly implied that he had expertise that he did not (which gives undue credibility to his statements). Does the section in any way convey these concerns?
Now consider the sources given about his app development. Both sources are from https://www.hackreactor.com/blog, and regard an app that was developed at Hack Reactor.
e) I believe this is an example of a "publication put out by an organization" about a "topic that organization has an interest in promoting." (c.f., WP:IS).
f) If your answer to 4) above was that it was used for the Ebola response you are wrong. It was never used for this. Hack Reactor is a site that teaches programming skills. I see nothing in the blog posts that clearly states that this was anything more than a class project which was never installed on anyone's phone for the purpose of contact tracing anywhere (the website for the app http://germtheorylabs.org/ mentioned in one of the blog posts is abandoned). I have looked extensively for any other source about this app and I can find none other than Ding's tweets, which came out after extensive prominent work on COVID apps by others was announced. I believe the current wording of the Wikipedia article on this point is potentially misleading, and I think the whole point is actually an example of WP:OR --- see g) below.
Finally, the person who added the comments on the app and Google Scholar said on the talk page:
″Also, the 'zero experience' infectious disease claim seems to be wrong. The two Hack Reactor points out Feigl-Ding was involved in the development of a 2014 contact tracing app for outbreaks. Also his Google Scholar publication record includes many papers on global health and on infectious disease risk factors. We cannot just dismiss all those. Hence added citations to them for balance.″
g) So these are clearly intended to support the conclusion that he has prior infectious disease expertise. However, the cited sources do not themselves make this point. Additionally the "balance" achieved here also involved watering down the explicit statement from a prominent infectious disease researcher (who had undoubtedly seen his Google Scholar page) that he has 'zero experience' with understanding infectious disease epidemic dynamics. This would appear to me to be a violation of WP:SYNTH as well as WP:UNDUE. As an infectious disease researcher myself I dispute any implication that his Google Scholar page demonstrates experience studying epidemic dynamics.
I have given a detailed explanation of what I consider to be violations of a number of Wikipedia policies in the relevant talk page in the section on "balancing discussion". My impression of the responses I have received is that they have ignored my questions about whether the section violates WP:NPOV in general and WP:OR, WP:SYNTH, WP:IS, WP:UNDUE, etc in particular. Instead they argue that the criticism is "unfair" and "propaganda". The fact that this is their response to the more clinical question of whether a statement exemplifies original research or whether a source is independent makes me believe they are not interested in conveying the content of the criticisms and the responses to them. They are engaging in the dispute rather than describing it, which violates WP:VOICE.
After feeling that my points were being ignored, I added a section "Current Violations of Wikipedia Policy in the Article", to the talk page which has been ignored except for one person who responded positively, and one person who called it "superfluous". There is still no engagement from the relevant editors on the explicit examples I claim violate the various policies.
In full disclosure, I am one of the infectious disease researchers who has criticized Eric Feigl-Ding for what I view as numerous dangerously inaccurate statements he has made on social media. Our primary concern is the inaccuracy. I can point to other people who are also not infectious disease researchers who are commenting about COVID on social media whose content I promote. So it is not about the use of social media, or even being from outside the field. These people who I promote typically make comments on specific subtopics on which they do have expertise. Additionally, it isn't even a difference of opinion about policies --- I am generally supportive of the same policies that he promotes with a few exceptions. The issue with Ding is that he does not constrain himself to things on which he has expertise --- he makes bold sensational comments on things he doesn't understand, and he is often wrong (but he strongly implies he has expertise on the topics). When he makes mistakes he tends to ignore them for a while, and if he ever does anything about it it's usually a quiet delete a week later, with no attempt to correct the record, generally after hundreds of thousands of impressions. When given a choice between an accurate statement or something misleading that might go viral, I believe he chooses the latter. These are my opinions. Because I recognize my conflict, I have refrained from directly editing the page and restrict myself to the talk page.
But I'm tired of my questions being ignored. I believe that the section not only misrepresents the criticism, it has been written to refute the criticism. It needs to get fixed, and I really want to stop wasting my time on it. I was blissfully unaware of how it had evolved over the past year, but when he tweeted out a link to his patreon page asking for monthly donations, I decided to take a look at the article, and I was shocked by the inaccuracy of it.
I would like to see the section either accurately reflect the criticism or be entirely removed. I feel that the criticism should be included, but I would prefer it be removed than that the section be left in its current form. Joelmiller ( talk) 14:57, 11 June 2021 (UTC)
@ GlobeGores, Sahiljain22, Yug, Smojarad, Zmlpqa01, and Ekpyros:
This relate to the John McGuirk page ( /info/en/?search=John_McGuirk) and particularly to the comment that he is editor of a "far-right" media outlet called Gript. This designation, that Gript is "far-right" has been the subject of an extensive, going discussion on the talk page, but I wanted to escalate that discussion to here as I am concerned that the article has serious issues, and I would like to involve the wider community.
Effectively the issue is that the claim is sourced to a pseudo-anonymous blog, which calls Gript alt-right, and an academic article which says Gript will sometimes "echo" the talking points of the far-right, but does not claim that Gript is itself far-right. During the discussion a third source, which does class Gript as far-right was added.
I have argued that the decision to class Gript as far-right, when it has been widely discussed in Irish media either and has never been called far-right by a reputable mainstream Irish publication, gives undue weight to a fringe publication and appears to be an attempt by an editor to enshrine a personal political view.
I have linked numerous articles which describe Gript as right-wing and conservative, and I attempt to expand the description of Gript on the page to read "He is the editor of the news and opinion website Gript, which has been described alternatively as conservative, right-wing and alt-right." I thought that was a fair compromise, as it included the description of Gript as alt-right even though it comes from a pseudo-anonymous, and openly partisan, blog, whilst showing that that was not the general position - the material was still removed.
It is my view that the article does not represent the wider understanding of Gript in Ireland, but rather privilege's a very particular political perspective on it. I would be interested in other's thoughts, as there are only four of us on the talk page and I do not feel the issues on the page are likely to be dealth with.
As a sidenote, and this may not be of relevance to this board - as a new contributor to Wikipedia I was appalled at the behaviour of one of the other edtiors (Bastun), who seemed to take my edits as a personal affront. He reverted my original attempts to fix the article without reason; mocked me; implied I am innumerate; accused me of lying; said my NPOV dispute was disingenuous; started a sockpuppet investigation into my account; and consistently refers to me as a SAP in a fashion that I take to be an attempt to denigrate rather than a mere statement of fact. It is not what I expected, and I have not done anything to him to justify his venom. It has certainly made me reconsider devoting further time to improving articles if this is the accepted approach towards new comers.
Thank you for your consideration. Perpetualgrasp ( talk) 21:49, 2 June 2021 (UTC)
far-right publication. It also calls McGuirk a
Far-right commentator, but we're not using it to make that claim.
alt-right website. The alt-right is part of the far-right, and The Beacon's own subheading is
reporting on the far right.
In the US, far-right talking points have been popularised through an eco-system of influencers and partisan media outlets who relay the message in milder terms. In Ireland, those echoing the far-right message include parties like Renua and the alternative media outlets Gript and The Burkean...Gript and The Burkean primarily produce opinion pieces while positioning themselves as an alternative to mainstream journalism. It also includes a screenshot of McGuirk tweeting a Gript article using the manipulation tactics that it just discussed. The article itself is titled "How the far-right incite hatred".
right-wing.
conservative.
has a typically right-wing and conservative approach to news and debate. I think that's close to calling Gript
right-wing and conservative, but that
typicallyseems to weaken their findings.
Right-Wing opinion/news account Gript Media. That statement isn't made in the editorial voice of The Irish Examiner, and it's unclear whether it came from the Department of Health, Department of Education, or a third-party (because the Department of Health outsourced some of their analysis). Ultimately, I don't think there's enough information here to determine who the original source was or if they're at all reliable.
far-right, 1 source that says
conservative, 1 source that says
right-wing, and 1 source that weakly (in my mind) says
right-wing and conservative. To me, this seems like a clear indication that
far-rightis an appropriate label, although some other description that also includes
right-wingand
conservativemight be acceptable, though these labels are used fewer times.
Coming over from
WP:RSN on this after diggin a little more—I'm not sure that describing Gript as "far-right" is the best move with regards to a wikivoice statement. I have significant questions regarding the editorial process and editorial control exherted by The Beacon, and I'm not seeing a
WP:USEBYOTHERS that points towards it having a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy, either. Furthermore, the analysis on its bias based on excluding sources that don't mention a bias seems to be deficient... couldn't that be considered some form of marginal evidence to the website not having an extremist bias? Also, regarding The Journal, their other pieces (such as this
one) reaffirm that the site has a generally generally right-wing, conservative perspective
, and I think that we can say that the paper provides some evidence against a "far-right" designation. When taking a look at additional sources (such as
The Busineess Post, which describes the source alternatively as "conservative" and "right-wing"), it's not clear to me that the analysis above is complete or that a complete analysis would result in us labeling the group as "far-right". "Right-wing" seems to be the median, though it's still not clear to me how to analyze the sources that don't mention a site bias. In the absence of a consensus among RS that the site is "far-right", I don't think labeling them as "far-right" is justified. —
Mikehawk10 (
talk)
06:09, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
As has been noted, the Beacon is not the only source using the "far-right" label, and at least one of the sources that does appears to be sufficiently reliable. And please let's not get into any outlandish "what the definition of 'is' is" style wikilawyering here. (i.e., "Well they don't actually say they are far right, just that they employ far right tactics and talking points" - seriously?). Now, my position on this and all similar matters having to do with the far right: being wishy washy with how we describe them, whitewashing, etc, can have consequences along the magnitude of, possibly, global security being jeopardised. We should not forget that the far right started World War II, and that one of the (many) factors that allowed them to come into power back then was lackadaisical complacency among the press, etc. Hitler et al were not taken seriously as a real threat by too many people. So, my motivation for my position here is not partisan or ideological - just the track record of who were the ones that caused the biggest manmade catastrophe in the history of the world. Firejuggler86 ( talk) 01:05, 13 June 2021 (UTC)
Is this really a neutral term? I can tell you as someone who grew up in the faith (no longer practising but this ain't about me), when I hear the term it raises alarm bells. It is never used as a self-description, it's kind of like "Romanist", "Papist", "Romish" etc, emphasisizing the Pope rather than the catholic (universal) aspect. It came about from point scoring whereby the Church of England wanted to disallow the Catholic church's exclusive claim to the term "catholic", which stems from the Nicene Creed. Is it really such a huge imposition to use the term "Catholic" instead of "Roman Catholic", unless you're distinguishing from "Maronite Catholic", "Chaldean Catholic" etc? MaxBrowne2 ( talk) 09:28, 13 June 2021 (UTC)
'...disallow the Catholic church's exclusive claim to the term "catholic"'- so your position is that Rome holds exclusive claim to the term "catholic"? That does not sound particularly neutral. yes, the Roman church is commonly called simply the "Catholic Church", and in contexts where this is completely unambiguous that is fine. In English contexts it is somewhat complicated, because the Church of England was part of the larger Roman Catholic Church for many centuries. When they split with Rome, they did not establish a new Church: they considered it to be the same church it had always been, with unbroken succession, and still retaining its "catholicness" while also adopting some reformed characteristics. So, that was one reason for specifying "Roman" - to disambiguate. As for emphasising "Popishness" - considering the Pope had declared the Church of England heretical and had issued a papal bull ordering all faithful Catholics to engage in efforts to violently overthrow the English government & monarch and install a Roman Catholic regime...can you really fault them for that? And meanwhile on the continent Europe was having one of its bloodiest wars in history because a number of countries had turned Protestant and the Pope didnt like it. Firejuggler86 ( talk) 06:29, 14 June 2021 (UTC)
This discussion has been disrupted by
block evasion,
ban evasion, or
sockpuppetry from the following user:
Comments from this user should be excluded from assessments of consensus. |
In Far-right politics in Poland, Jan Żaryn, Lubusz Land, and maybe others there is a whitewash of the far right. Inconvenient associations and history are obliterated from view. Nulliq ( talk) 03:40, 3 June 2021 (UTC)
The misrepresentation of that source by this brand new account (Nulliq) and another editor (Trasz) who initially re-entered that text into the article has been addressed on the article's talk page.
[63] -
GizzyCatBella
🍁 05:42, 3 June 2021 (UTC)
:Not a misrepresentation, though inaccurate. The
source has a few detail different on slogans than the text and "Critics" was replaced by "Western experts" which is different.
User:Volunteer Marek's
edit summary of "unsourced BLP vio" is more than inaccurate, it is dishonest. There is a cited source, and there is no BLP info there.
VikingDrummer (
talk) 05:52, 3 June 2021 (UTC) sock puppet of banned user-
GizzyCatBella
🍁
14:13, 11 June 2021 (UTC)
:::I watch this noticeboard. The
edit summary was on a different edit, and is entirely untrue. There is a source, and it isn't BLP.
VikingDrummer (
talk) 06:05, 3 June 2021 (UTC) sock puppet of banned user-
GizzyCatBella
🍁
14:13, 11 June 2021 (UTC)
:::::Yes, I have discussed with Marek and
User:Tino Cannst on
Piast Canal where information on the mythological name was removed by Marek despite sources.
VikingDrummer (
talk) 07:16, 3 June 2021 (UTC) sock puppet of banned user-
GizzyCatBella
🍁
14:13, 11 June 2021 (UTC)
So basically, you've addressed this problem - which is definitely real - by dismissing arguments altogether because of their source. Good job, really. Trasz ( talk) 20:41, 19 June 2021 (UTC)
This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current main page. |
Archive 85 | ← | Archive 87 | Archive 88 | Archive 89 | Archive 90 | Archive 91 | → | Archive 95 |
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Are the sourcing decisions described here compatible with WP:RS, WP:V, and WP:NPOV? -- AndewNguyen ( talk) 18:32, 9 May 2021 (UTC)
On May 1, an RFC was opened at the RS noticeboard raising a pair of sourcing issues that have resulted from the decision to classify the hereditarian hypothesis as a fringe theory (that is, the hypothesis that variation in average IQ scores between racial or ethnic groups has a genetic component). This decision has resulted in about 45 otherwise reliable sources being removed or excluded from Wikipedia articles, and in Charles Murray's and Heiner Rindermann's entire bodies of work related to this topic being declared unreliable sources ( [1] [2] [3]). It also has required articles to include material that several editors consider to misrepresent the sources it cites. Two days after being opened, that RFC was shut down as improperly formatted.
Immediately following the RFC's closure, a discussion was underway about opening a new RFC at the NPOV noticeboard which would properly address these sourcing concerns. However, before that could be done, a new RFC was opened on the article's talk page which reiterated the question of whether or not the hereditarian hypothesis is a fringe theory, without addressing the underlying issue of sourcing. The goal of the present RFC is to address this issue of sourcing that some editors feel needs to be addressed, as was suggested in the other RFC: "If there really is a fundamental issue not addressed by this RfC, then this RfC does not prevent someone from opening a proper RfC to address it." -- AndewNguyen ( talk) 18:32, 9 May 2021 (UTC)
Add your signature, with an optional comment of 1-2 sentences, under one of the two options below. All non-vote comments, including threaded discussion and replies to another's vote, should be posted in the "discussion" section.
If the current RFC concludes that this approach to sourcing is incompatible with WP:RS, WP:V and/or WP:NPOV, but the separate RFC on the article's talk page concludes that the hereditarian hypothesis is a fringe theory, it will mean one of two things: it will mean either that the decision to classify the hypothesis as a fringe theory should no longer require these outcomes with respect to sourcing, or that the community will have to make an exception to these policies for articles about race and intelligence. In other words these two RFCs are asking two separate questions, which may have two separate answers. -- AndewNguyen ( talk) 18:32, 9 May 2021 (UTC)
Okay, THIS looks like the thing that I've been waiting for over the past year. Depending on the outcome of this RFC, perhaps it's time for me to become active again.[6] To me this looks like an admission of being an WP:SPA. They do not currently appear to have any other interests on WP besides overturning the consensus on race and intelligence. For this reason, I would suggest that the best response to their shenanigans would be to WP:DENY recognition as far as possible (until such time as their disruption rise to the level of a sanctionable offense). Generalrelative ( talk) 21:28, 9 May 2021 (UTC)
Eastern Security Network ( | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
Over the past week or so, the above article has had a ton of POV edit warring by various IPs and SPAs. I don't feel qualified to clean up the article or start a discussion, but the article's badly in need of attention from an experienced editor—hopefully someone here can help sort things out. Gaelan 💬 ✏️ 06:17, 10 May 2021 (UTC)
I've noticed a common pattern in the articles for political leaders whereby socio-economic outcomes that happen under their rule are implicitly or explicitly linked to the leader's policies. Rarely, if ever, are such claims supported by strong RS, such as high-quality RS and academic sources. It's frequently just stated that improvements happened under the rule (which is verifiable) and attributed to the leader (which is rarely verified). The problem with that is that socio-economic outcomes are not necessarily caused by a single leader's policies. A specific example of this is the article for the Rwandan dictator Paul Kagame, which emphasizes in the lead that he has "prioritized national development, launching programmes which have led to development on key indicators, including healthcare, education and economic growth." The problem with that statement is that it's hard to imagine a country embroiled in a civil war not to improve its socio-economic outcomes during a subsequent period of peace. Snooganssnoogans ( talk) 15:50, 11 May 2021 (UTC)
Could we have some eyes on the Julian Assange article, where talk page discussion has repeatedly rejected UNDUE coverage of a certain bit of content regarding his imprisonment and where a minority of editors has laid out their support of such content at considerable length. Thanks. The talk page threads are Health and Less is more. The associated article content is referenced in them and can be seen in a recent string of reverts of my trimming some of the disputed text. SPECIFICO talk 20:35, 8 May 2021 (UTC)
Reaction here seems pretty clear. Meanwhile over on the article and its talk page, progress remains blocked against any trimming at all of the UNDUE content. SPECIFICO talk 21:06, 14 May 2021 (UTC)
A former Wikipedia editor claimed in an article that this site engaged in a multi-year smear campaign against Mark Levin. Is there any merit to the accusations? I decided to post this here because I have not gotten a response from the talk page of his article. X-Editor ( talk) 20:44, 14 May 2021 (UTC)
Wikipedia pages on police departments have a systemic problem of copy-pasting mundane "organizational structure"/"organizational chart"-type information from the websites of the police departments. I believe this type of content is a flagrant violation of WP:WEIGHT. Not only is the content of no interest to most readers, but it fails WP:RS and fills pages to the brim with filler that diverts readers from actual substantive encyclopedic information. For example, here is just some of the content that I tried to remove from the Los Angeles Police Department page (all of which is sourced to the LAPD itself) and all of which was immediately reverted [8]:
I noticed that this problem is also somewhat common on pages for businesses, but it is generally easy to remove it without any pushback (there are no passionate defenders of keeping the organizational chart of the subdivisions of the accounting department at McDonalds). The police department pages are more problematic because (1) the "organizational chart"-type content appears to have been systematically edited into the pages in the first place, and (2) There is pushback in removing it. Surely it fails WP:NPOV (in particular, WP:WEIGHT) to keep this kind of "organizational chart" copypasta content? While there is value in basic information about the organizational structure, surely there is no encyclopedic value in the "Office of Chief of Staff [does Chief of Staff-style actions] and has four subdivisions which have the names ABCD"? Snooganssnoogans ( talk) 03:15, 27 April 2021 (UTC)
I think the Oakland Police Department article is a good example of how this type of content should look, but it could use a lead that better summarizes the article. --- Avatar317 (talk) 05:08, 27 April 2021 (UTC)
I agree that there may be some excessive detail in there; however, [the] claims of it being unencyclopedic and of no interest "to anyone" are 100% subjective....we have to keep WP:PRESERVE in mind regarding material for which better sources likely exist. WP:PRIMARY sources also are not banned. There are many sources that talk about policing in detail, how it's done and how it's organized, and not just from a perspective of focusing on brutality. WP:TE is editing in a partisan and skewed manner, which I believe applies to editing police department articles only to add stuff about brutality and corruption and removing other stuff. We should be editing so as to speak of the good and the bad per due weight, not all one or the other.Articles on major American police departments absolutely need more eyes from editors focused on upholding NPOV. They get very little attention except that over the past year, there's been a big push to add stuff about police misconduct to the leads of these articles, most of which are very short, while at the same time attempts are made to gut other material. See New York Police Department, Los Angeles Police Department, Chicago Police Department, and Philadelphia Police Department, among others. Yes, we should of course cover misconduct with WP:Due weight. However, this is happening at the same time that almost no attention or effort whatsoever (and literally zero on the part of some editors) is going into editing any aspect of law enforcement other than misconduct, except to remove material on it. Any of those articles' histories and talk pages show this. How is this NPOV? Crossroads -talk- 20:42, 30 April 2021 (UTC)
A federal judge in 2002 dismissed the lawsuit after the city, which had fought it, made changes on the use of police force and handling of complaints against officers.Omitting this is a smoking gun of POV editing. In fact, material on that was already there in the body, albeit unsourced, and was removed in that very diff! There is absolutely no legitimate reason to omit that verifiable fact and thus imply that nothing has been done about those problems. How many more sources are being presented one-sidedly in these police department articles? How many sources are being excluded that present a more balanced picture? If this continues, I will have no choice but to seek a topic ban. WP:Tendentious editing, "partisan, biased, or skewed taken as a whole", is absolutely not allowed. Crossroads -talk- 23:11, 13 May 2021 (UTC) Edits per misunderstanding below. Crossroads -talk- 03:28, 15 May 2021 (UTC)
I checked Crossroads's editing since August 2018 and I have found no instance of Crossroads adding any substantive negative content to articles on police departments, even though the editor has edited pages for several police departments, and has edited a lot on those pages since the killing of George Floyd (a juncture in which historical and present misconduct came to the forefront of public discourse and was covered comprehensively in contemporary RS). Furthermore, if you look at Crossroads's complaint about me not using every part of this AP News source (because I didn't see one sentence at the end of the piece) [17], doesn't Crossroads fall afoul of the same violation when he fails to add content on how the CPD are vastly more likely to use force against Blacks: "Records show that Black residents, about 28% of the Columbus population, accounted for about half of all use-of-force incidents from 2015 through 2019"? [18] If he's using the AP News source, why does he cherry-pick one positive sentence and omit pertinent negative content? That's the same complaint the editor is making against me. I certainly don't think any of the above merits a topic ban (or sanction of any sort for that matter), but I find it hypocritical to be calling for bans on others for purportedly lopsided editing in the other direction. Snooganssnoogans ( talk) 01:11, 14 May 2021 (UTC)
Comment/Issue - Firstly, I have seen very little of the overall editing on police departments by both editors disputing here so I can't comment on that, but I would like to make a point or raise an issue.
Media nowadays does publish stats like what Snoo stated: "Records show that Black residents, about 28% of the Columbus population, accounted for about half of all use-of-force incidents" ... but this type of reporting leads the reader to a false conclusion of racism. Here's a fact: Males make up about half of the US population, but account for close to 95% of all use-of-force incidents by police departments nationwide, and make up about 95% of prisoners. Does that mean that police and the justice system are sexist and should incarcerate more females? No, it just means that males commit more crime, and more violent crime. This may be true for black people (not because of skin color or genetics, but because of poverty and racial discrimination breeding anger)...for example, the number one killer of young black males (18-25) in the US is other young black males. That statistic is not the case for young white males.
My take is that I oppose having statements that LEAD the reader to believe that racial disrimination exists, when the science doesn't specifically say that. To compare here, as an example: we need rate of police violence against (whites who resist arrest) vs. police violence against (blacks who resist arrest). Studies by criminologists should be more represented than simple population ratio to police violence ratio statements. --- Avatar317 (talk) 05:40, 14 May 2021 (UTC)
Looking for NPOV experts on the matter, the article currently has an ethnicity dispute section however the lede contradicts this by establishing an ethnicity to the subject. I think this violates our NPOV policy see WP:VOICE. The question on the RFC is should the lede state the subjects ethnic background? [19] Magherbin ( talk) 20:18, 17 May 2021 (UTC)
As stated in the article's Talk page, three users removed every single mention of content that might be considered negative about the company, even though the sources were reliable (for example, official announcement by European and Australian authorities). This was a very bold move that was repeatedly done without providing a real evidence. I wish to remind that removing such content - and even deleting entire section entitled "Controversies" - is blatant advertising. I would also recommend on conducting an investigation into the three relevant users as they are probably sockpuppets.
Here is the link to the version of the article before the blatant advertising by removing specific content (published on May 3, 2021). On May 7, 2021, User:Antiantonio removed every single mention of negative content, obviously for promotional reasons ( link to diff), but it was immediately reverted by User:SunDawn.
During a single day on May 7, the three users tried again to promote the company by omitting information and rephrasing the article. Here are few diffs for example:
I reverted the removal of the content, but user User:Vlavluck kept reverting my edits.
The revision history of the article clearly shows the questionable edits SoftSwiss ( | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views). I am sure that further investigation will show these account also have conflict of interests with the relevant company. -- Fact789 ( talk) 09:36, 18 May 2021 (UTC)
Please visit the talk page of the mentioned article SoftSwiss to see the report about why this edits been done and to find the consensus.
User:Hemiauchenia, User:Fact789 As stated in the article's Talk page, according to Wikipedia:Content removal the deleted part of article have been removed because of WP:INAPPROPRIATE WP:ICW the links used for citation failed verification, not reliable, have no information about quoted text. In addition to this, few unconfirmed theses contain traces of the original research. They have been tagged by Antiantonio and Coldmanviktor you can learn it through history of changes bad source tags According the principles described in Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not this part of article have been removed by me Vlavluck ( talk) 15:47, 12 May 2021 (UTC) There are no problems between me and negative comments about the company, there are only problems with shit links that does not contain information about the quoted text. User:Hemiauchenia We can't leave such a poor supplied thesis in the article. Check following "Report about detected original research case" under or make your own one. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Vlavluck ( talk • contribs)
Theses deleted from the article:
Deleted theses violate the principals described in Wikipedia:No original research, and also demonstrate disrespect to the requirements for verifiability and reliability of references described in Wikipedia:Reliable sources. Vlavluck ( talk) 09:17, 18 May 2021 (UTC)
References
{{
cite web}}
: CS1 maint: url-status (
link)
{{
cite web}}
: CS1 maint: url-status (
link)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
The discretionary sanctions page is clear that noticeboards are off-limits to non-EC users. Even ignoring that this is blatant forum shopping... RandomCanadian ( talk / contribs) 17:01, 24 May 2021 (UTC) |
---|
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it. |
[ [20]] The following is copied directly from the discussion there. They keep throwing the same arguments, even though I've countered them each time again and again. The following text, taken for example from the lead section, is considered an NPOV work-in-progress with serious holes that paint Israel in a seriously negative color by omitting crucially important context: On 10 May, (...) Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad began firing rockets into Israel from the Gaza Strip, hitting multiple residences and a school. Israel began a campaign of airstrikes against Gaza; by 16 May, some 950 targeted attacks had demolished (...): 18 buildings (...), 40 schools and four hospitals, and also struck the al-Shati refugee camp. In addition, at least 19 medical facilities have been damaged or destroyed by Israeli bombardment. The al-Jalaa Highrise, housing offices of the Associated Press and Al Jazeera as well as 60 condominiums, was destroyed on 15 May, prompting outcry. By 17 May, the United Nations estimated that Israel had demolished 94 buildings in Gaza, comprising 461 housing and commercial units. As a result of the violence, at least 248 Palestinians were killed by Israeli bombardment in Gaza, including 66 children. Palestinian rocket fire has killed 12 in Israel, including one child. On 11 May, the Israel Defense Forces said that at least 15 of the Palestinian casualties were members of Hamas, and also said that some Palestinian civilian casualties were caused by errant rocket launches within the Gaza Strip. As of 20 May 2021, the Palestinian National Authority reported injuries for at least 1,900 Palestinians, while as of 12 May Israel reported at least 200 injured Israelis. That text should be changed to the following: On 10 May, (...) Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad began firing rockets The article omits the context behind the actions and the intentions of both sides in the conflict, Israel and the Palestinians. By omitting this extremely important context, the article is conveying a negative image of Israel and is considered an NPOV work-in-progress. My proposal aims to fix that. This is not about trying to give Israel "equal weight". This does not break neutrality by showing Israel's side more positively: the proposal itself is neutral; if it makes Israel looks better, it is just a side effect (that I desire to achieve, in this case, which does not make the proposal break the neutrality principle, either). While I did synthesize multiple secondary sources, this does not make the proposal original research, it is just the way by which an encyclopedia is formed. The sources don't just quote the IDF or Israel's leaders, they assert facts and report information. All of the text I've explicitly requested to add in the format of "A->B" is attributable to high-quality secondary sources. I've consulted Wikipedia's list of perennial sources while drafting my edit request (and it took a few hours straight to do this), and the "miscellaneous" sources I've listed at the bottom of my proposal are there just for reference, to be present in the talk page. The IDF press releases are intended to enhance, not replace, the reliable secondary sources. The sources directly support the information, and they're used in the context as secondary sources, not primary, and are therefore not "a mouthpiece for the IDF". The point about Hamas and human shields is a minor point that can be addressed by minimal rephrasing; it does not make this entire proposal lose its stand. Maybe the lead section is not the best place to put the information - I'm not objecting to that; but it's better to improve the neutrality of Wikipedia by including the important context, and later on the information can be reorganized in a better way. (Maybe I could also help with that.) It's better for Wikipedia to present more neutral articles by including crucially important context - especially when it makes the reader see the whole picture in different light, and even if it's not organized as ideally as it should be - rather than omitting that context. As said in WP:NPOVT#Space and balance, "The remedy is to add to the article — not to subtract from it". And although the sources might be "outdated" by now, they're still relevant if only to break the barrier of getting the information into the article. Wikipedia articles can always have more sources added or better ones replacing worse ones. Having relevant but outdated sources for this recent event still doesn't justify leaving this important information out. |
Comment The editor is, per this Arbpia ARCA not permitted to participate in formal discussions ("edits relating to the Arab-Israeli conflict, to pages and discussions in all namespaces"). Because the editor is not happy with being unable to get what he wants at the article talk page, where he is permitted to make edit requests in the normal way, he is coming here in an attempt to get around the limitation. Selfstudier ( talk) 09:42, 24 May 2021 (UTC)
There is disagreement over at Talk:Spanish Empire#Colonial empire about whether referring to the Spanish empire as a colonial empire in the WP:LEAD is compliant with WP:NPOV. Further input would be appreciated. TompaDompa ( talk) 20:11, 24 May 2021 (UTC)
I don't feel particularly strongly about this article's subject or potential title, but I wanted to post this here for wider scrutiny because I suspect it gets to the core of WP:NPOV and its application as it relates to religious beliefs that directly conflict with science. There was only brief discussion on the talk page around this move ( Talk:Rejection of evolution by religious groups#Article title in May 2020, but nothing further, which I was surprised by. — Goszei ( talk) 02:51, 23 May 2021 (UTC)
core of WP:NPOVhere. NightHeron ( talk) 11:06, 23 May 2021 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
There's an ongoing discussion between myself and Special:Contribs/73.248.126.206 at the article on Kevin Paffrath about whether he ought to be introduced in the lead as a "landlord" or "real estate investor", and we've reached a bit of an impasse. The article initially described him as "American YouTuber, real estate broker, and landlord", and there was an edit war over removing "landlord", and adding either "investor" or "real estate investor". I suggested the compromise of adding "real estate investor" but retaining "landlord", but 73.248.126.206 believes it ought to be removed. My reasoning is that the significant coverage of Paffrath, outside of the sources focusing on his YouTube channel, discuss his landlording: New York Times Magazine, Curbed. I'll let 73.* summarize their point of view, or just see the conversation at Talk:Kevin Paffrath#Landlord. GorillaWarfare (she/her • talk) 21:51, 27 May 2021 (UTC)
Regardless, consider it a throwaway point. More important: it's very unlikely that you will persuade me and others through comparison to other articles ( WP:OTHERSTUFF).I'm not sure why you're continuing to insist on following this line of argument when we've both explained it's a common tactic that is almost always unconvincing to editors, to the point that it's garnered multiple essays. GorillaWarfare (she/her • talk) 04:33, 28 May 2021 (UTC)
but there were originally more than 40 sources, which GW largely by herself cut down to around 20, a few of them on duplicate groundsThis is a claim you made on the talk page, and I already gave you a pretty detailed breakdown there of the sources I removed and why they were unreliable. I also invited you to specify any source I removed if you thought it shouldn't have been, which you did not take me up on. I see that after you repeated the implication here that I had removed legitimate sources, Cullen328 replied
All the baloney about cutting sources as if that is suspicious lacks any credibility because many of the sources were duplicates and others were clearly not reliable.You have doubled down on it without specifying a single source that was removed inappropriately:
the cutting of sources (at least several of which were legitimate, or at least more legitimate than/comparable to Curbed, and not duplicates... So there are 20-40 sources but they're to be discarded. If it were true that I had removed multiple usable sources for no good reason, surely you could point to some?
the third paragraph in Career section is 100% GWThis is not true; the mention of "landlord influencers", the Millenial Money reporting on the breakdown of his income, and the quote describing him as a "multimillionaire landlord who once extolled..." were all in the article before I touched it ( earlier revision). I did add more quotes and descriptions of RS commentary on Paffrath to the section, some of which is critical ("arguably incendiary opinions..."), some of which is Paffrath's response to the criticism ("I separate ethics from business"), and some of which is positive ("The overwhelming majority of Paffrath's content consists of mundane tips that have a neutral or even positive effect on tenants", "Jackson said that Paffrath was 'exceptionally talented at talking to a camera, a natural salesman'"), and some of which has no real opinion to it (Paffrath and others shifted their channels towards COVID-19 stimulus updates).
she changed all real estate investor labels to landlord (I then risked being banned to add RE investor alongside landlord)This is where diffs come in handy because I'm not 100% sure which edit(s) you're referring to, but I assume it is this one. There were at the time two sources being used to support the descriptors in the lead, and neither described him as an investor, so it was appropriate to remove. You later swapped "YouTuber, real estate broker, and landlord" for "YouTuber, real estate investor, and real estate broker" and added a Newsweek source which describes him as "an investor and real estate broker"; I changed it to "YouTuber, real estate broker, landlord, and investor" to properly reflect the source along with a clear summary: [21]. I was following the sources here, as the diffs show. As for "I then risked getting banned", that is certainly one way to spin "I edit warred against the status quo and refused to discuss on the talk page as asked".
persistently removed references to net worthThis one is true, at least. I have twice reverted attempts to add estimated net worth, both of which I will note were wildly different numbers. The diffs are [22] (summary:
I don't think "The Wealthy Niche" is a reliable source, and even if it were, the text is quite clear that this is little more than a wild guess: "Kevin has a combination of income sources pretty much similar to Graham Stephan. It’s hard to tell their exact net worth because their exact mortgage amount is unknown. But, we’ve tried our best to calculate their net worth as accurately as possible and according to our estimates, the net worth of Kevin Paffrath aka Meet Kevin is about $32 Million.") and [23] (summary:
appears to be a clickbait website, not a RS).
whitewashed the Instagram incident as an 'error' and removed the dollar amounts in question (I believe it was $30 million given from Facebook-Instagram to the Newsom administration)Again, look at the article before I edited it (it says that a Facebook spokesperson said that the post had been removed in error) and the current ( permalink) version after my edits (which also says that a Facebook spokesperson said that the post had been removed in error). Both versions include that Paffrath believes it was intentional. As for the $30 million claim, the article before my edits said that
Paffrath suspects the post was taken down intentionally and points out that Instagram through Facebook donated over 30 million dollars "on behalf of" Gavin Newsom's campaign.I could find no source supporting that Paffrath alleged a $30 million donation by Facebook, and so I removed the dollar value while retaining what was in the source, which is that Paffrath alleged Facebook/Instagram's removal was related to donations to Newsom's various causes. GorillaWarfare (she/her • talk) 04:07, 28 May 2021 (UTC)
And yes, I will add (i.e. restore) the fact that Paffrath suspected it, and that the same amount (tens of millions) was given.You are once again misrepresenting my edits. I did not remove the statement that Paffrath suspected Facebook/Instagram's removal was related to their donations to Newsom's causes. The article formerly said, "Paffrath suspects the post was taken down intentionally and points out that Instagram through Facebook donated over 30 million dollars "on behalf of" Gavin Newsom's campaign". After my edits, it says "Paffrath told Fox News he suspected the post was taken down intentionally, and that the removal was related to its parent company Facebook's donations to Newsom's causes". GorillaWarfare (she/her • talk) 05:17, 28 May 2021 (UTC)
Oh, we both know you don't have to worry about that, I'm sure you know who are just minutes away.More unsupported cabal aspersions, I see. GorillaWarfare (she/her • talk) 16:11, 28 May 2021 (UTC)
response to the rebuttal. Your claim that landlord is rarely used in this context is provably incorrect. The best way to actually check this kind of information (and not go on one's own gut feeling which may or may not be right) is by looking in a good linguistic corpus. (Cullen will forgive me, I hope – Google Books is fine as an indicator but an annotated corpus is more reliable.) The Corpus of Contemporary American English is here. If you search for "landlord" in texts from the last 10 years you'll find that it is used in written and spoken news media, in fiction, in TV shows (scripted and non-scripted), in academic texts, in blogs, and in other kinds of language as well, to describe a person in terms of their role. Contexts are sometimes negative but just as frequently neutral. This is obviously original research, but I can't find that the claims you have made about the usage of landlord are supported at all, except by your own assertions. The claim about what a person would or would not introduce themselves as is a red herring. In a round of introductions, nobody would say "Hello, I am a short track speed skater" or "Nice to meet you, I am a convicted criminal" except in very specific contexts – and yet those terms (when appropriately sourced) are perfectly fine in the first sentence of a Wikipedia article. Incidentally, the corpus search for landlord did yield a few hits for "I am a landlord"/"I'm a landlord", used in specific contexts and not in "self-deprecating terseness/minimalism". Another red herring is that the word is used
when describing subject's primary occupation, since a) nobody in this discussion has said that landlord is given as his primary occupation, and b) again, the lead includes more than a person's primary occupation. More info about what goes into the first sentence in a biography on Wikipedia can be found here. -- bonadea contributions talk 12:50, 29 May 2021 (UTC)
I've started an RfC on whether a name used by less than 1% of the local population of Bar, Montenegro, should be in the first line of the lede: [25]. Khirurg ( talk) 22:45, 2 June 2021 (UTC)
This discussion has been disrupted by
block evasion,
ban evasion, or
sockpuppetry from the following user:
Comments from this user should be excluded from assessments of consensus. |
I am new to this and was unaware of some of the rules and still trying to figure it out and I do have a coi as I am a relative of the bio grandchild of Bob Gibson. He has a grandson and someone who likely has a coi and is a relative of Bob's son who wants to keep the fact he has a child hidden due to his abandonment of the child. The child was born on July 7, 2010 and had a relationship with Bob but not with his bio dad, Bob's son Chris. The child does exist and shouldn't be forced out of claiming himself as Bob's grandson. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Troooth ( talk • contribs)
Two Wikipedia articles, namely "Rent control in the United States"
[26] and "Rent regulation"
[27], contain a statement that reads as follows: "There is a consensus among economists that rent control reduces the quality and quantity of housing".
For weeks, I have been arguing on the article's talk page
[28] about how misleading this claim is. I would like to ask for help here, since the case at hand is a blatant case of lack of neutrality.
The sources used to support this claim are:
1) An article by Blair Jenkins (of whom we do not even know if she has a PhD in economics), who has no other publications on this subject and whose article is published in a journal of dubious quality (impact factor 0.920). Furthermore, what the article itself actually states is that 23% of economists either "agree with provisions" (16.6%) or directly "disagree" (6.5%) with the claim that "A ceiling on rents reduces the quantity and quality of housing available". This is not a consensus. Moreover, the article is neither reproducible nor replicable, so it cannot be used to substantiate the claim. Finally, there is a conflict of interest between the publisher and the assertion. That is, the publisher is not neutral: The Journal Econ Journal Watch
[29] is published by a self-declared "conservative" and "libertarian" think tank called Fraser Institute
[30].
2) An opinion survey without peer review process, without methodological sampling and isolated interviews.
[31]
3) One report by another self-declared "liberal" think tank
[32],
[33].
Notwithstanding that the statement is erroneous, is it encyclopaedically appropriate for that phrase to appear as the second entry in the article? I think that here again we are faced with an attempt to promote one kind of view on the rent control mechanism. I think that for the sake of objectivity, one should first explain technically what rent control is and then move on to the assessments that economists, sociologists, and other scientists or sectors of society have to make.
In sum, maintaining the claim in these articles implies a significant ideological bias and a serious lack of neutrality. My position is that the sentence should be removed. If the sentence is to be retained, then for the sake of truth, we should at least edit it to say something like: "According to one study published by a libertarian think tank, most economists agree that "a ceiling on rents reduces the quantity and quality of housing available", while 23% of economists have reservations or disagree".
193.52.24.13 (
talk) 21:13, 23 March 2021 (UTC)
193.52.24.13 (
talk ·
contribs ·
WHOIS) is a blocked sock of
Pedrote112 —
Mikehawk10 (
talk)
07:34, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
most economists agree that "a ceiling on rents reduces the quantity and quality of housing available"is not true -- most economists would not say that about typical selective controls because indeed it is false. SPECIFICO talk 16:13, 24 March 2021 (UTC)
It's totally fine to mention the opinions of anti-regulation economists and political advocacy "think tanks", but they're claims to speak for all economists don't bear out. Economics is not a hard science and economic opinions are inextricably linked to political ideology. Anyone who pretends otherwise is entitled to their opinion but cannot be treated as a neutral observer.
Editors who wish to clean up these articles should go and read Wikipedia:Describing points of view. Wikipedia has a structured and reliable process for how we go about describing opinions. These are opinions, not facts. Describe these opinions as per Wikipedia:Describing points of view. -- Dennis Bratland ( talk) 19:34, 25 March 2021 (UTC)You analogy is false for this reason: Andrew Wakefeild has had his medical license revoked. Medicine is a real science with rigorous oversight, and objective rules of conduct. Frauds and quacks are identifiable. Kshama Sawant has not had her license to practice economics revoked, because there is no such thing as a license to practice economics. There can't be because there is no rigorous test to determine if an economic theory is valid or not, or if an economic "fact" is true or false. Nothing an economist could do can be construed as misconduct. Sawant has a PhD in economics. That is equal to any one else's claim to be an economist. The only reason to suggest she is in any way comparable with Andrew Wakefield is if one does not like her opinions, yet cannot rigorously prove them to be false, what with her opinions being economic in nature, and thus not scientific, meaning they are not falsifiable.
You can believe in the magic of the invisible hand of the free market all you want, believe as hard as you can, but that doesn't make it science. It's still mere opinion and should be treated as we treat any other opinion, given appropriate attribution and weight. -- Dennis Bratland ( talk) 16:34, 26 March 2021 (UTC)Insulting me by saying I'm no better than an acolyte of proven fraud and quack Andrew Wakefield is both offensive and reinforces my point that all these claims of rationality and rigor among those mansplaining rent control to us ignorant hysterics is a sham. This desperate need to attach the aura of authority to anti-rent control opinions only exposes how weak the argument is.
If you told an astrophysicist you think Pluto really a planet not a mere dwarf planet, they don't huff "how dare you! We have spoken!" They say, well, here's the evidence, here's our line of reasoning. Or consider MOS:PUFFERY. We don't need to put pedantic lecturing like "Bob Dylan is the defining figure of the 1960s counterculture and a brilliant songwriter" into encyclopedia articles. We can simply leave that unsaid and instead mention a handful of the long list of accolades that justify assessment. The claims about Bob Dylan are given in-text attribution so we can see whose opinion that is. If you want to give opinions about rent control, just say it with in-text attribution and not in Wikipedia's voice. If those authorities are respected enough, that speaks for itself. -- Dennis Bratland ( talk) 21:40, 28 March 2021 (UTC)I was asked to contribute to this discussion. I found a meta-analysis on the effects of rent control by the Urban Institute. For what it's worth, the Urban study discusses rent control's impact on many dimensions, such as neighborhood stability and racial equity. A neutral introduction to a Wikipedia article on rent control would discuss all of these effects, not just the quantity and quality of housing, and it would include the perspectives of social science fields other than econ.
The claim that this discussion has been focusing on is: "There is a consensus among economists that rent control reduces the quality and quantity of housing." Let's break this down.
"There is a consensus among economists"
I think this is what computer scientists call folklore: something that many people in a field believe but isn't necessarily supported by evidence. Economists might believe that most other economists agree with them on a claim because all the economists they know agree with that claim, but that might be because they're in an echo chamber. Many sources, like this Freakonomics podcast episode and this Washington Post op-ed, claim that this is something that most economists agree on. However, newspaper op-eds are usually not fact-checked, so any claim in the WaPo op-ed might be false. I think the Freakonomics episode is more reliable, since the podcast creator is obviously very familiar with the econ field, but this claim needs to be substantiated by more sources. It's also worth noting that the claimed "consensus among economists" in these sources is a value judgment ("rent control is bad policy"), which isn't the claim in question ("rent control reduces the quality and quantity of housing").
"rent control reduces the quality ... of housing"
"Quality" is a subjective term, and it should be qualified (pun intended). Rent control laws might reduce the quality of apartments in that they cause the apartments to deteriorate physically from neglect; there is some evidence for this (see p. 5 in the Urban paper). However, quality of housing might also be judged by the stability of the surrounding neighborhood and the tenants' social connections, which rent control might promote in some cases. Given the ambiguity of the word "quality," I think we can't say that rent control reduces the quality of housing.
"rent control reduces the ... quantity of housing"
I think the quantity of housing is easier to judge. Studies such as the 2018 DMQ study show that rent control reduces rental housing supply by encouraging landlords to convert their rental apartments into owner-occupied ones. However, when newly built houses are exempt from rent control laws, those laws don't affect the amount of new construction. To me, this pair of observations is enough to infer a causal relationship: that rent control reduces the quantity of rentals. This causal relationship needs to be stated in a reliable source, and I think we have plenty of sources that could support it.
Overall, I think we should not include the claim that "There is a consensus among economists that rent control reduces the quality and quantity of housing," because not all parts of it can be supported by reliable sources. However, we could include a statement about the effects of rent control laws on the amount of rental housing available. I also think that such a statement should be part of a broader discussion of the varied effects of rent control. Qzekrom (she/her • talk) 06:30, 28 March 2021 (UTC)
I'm a bit late to the party here, though a few sources to consider:
In some circumstances, e.g. if information to both landlord and tenant is improved, contracts are made more transparent and easier to enforce, then risks may be reduced for both parties and/or constraints on investment may be overcome. It is possible that both landlords and tenants may gain from the intervention. In such cases supply will increase and rents may be lower (or there may be additional demand for the better product). However, in other circumstances, the effect of regulation is to control rents below market levels and/or to provide greater security of tenure or other benefits to tenants which reduce returns or increase risks to landlords. In this case the result will be a reduction in supply; there will be pressure to avoid or evade the regulation; immobility and under-occupation of poor-quality, ill-maintained properties; and higher rents and worse housing for those excluded from the market.In other words, if the rent control binds rents to under what the price would be in a market, quality of units would suffer and supply would be reduced. On the other hand, if the rent regulation provides better information to landlords and tenants then both could be better off due to relatively lowered risks associated with renting.
reduction in rental supply likely increased rents in the long run. The study noted that landlords substituted their stock away from rental units and towards condos in response to rent regulation.
after standardizing for quality, rents in the uncontrolled sector were significantly higher than rents in the controlled sectorbut also that uncontrolled rents
likely exceed the rents that would have occurred in the absence of controls.
I can give more input, but these seem to be very typical results on the topic that have occurred over time. Generally, economists have found that the rents of uncontrolled units rises due to rent controls, which negatively affects quality (utility/cost). They also have found that oftentimes rent control results in the reduction of housing stock. Some economists suggest that this is because rent control regulations have been poorly written and that there might exist some rent control regulations that would be helpful, but that rent controls that bind the rental stock to a lower price than the market price would tend to decrease quality of the uncontrolled stock and the quantity of rental stock overall. I'm also aware of some work that has been done on the optimal maintenance rates for a landlord that is facing new rent control regulations (and that the answer is generally to decrease maintenance if the rent controlled maximum price is set below the market price for a unit), though I am unable to recall the paper at this time. I might try to find a textbook if that would be helpful.— Mikehawk10 ( talk) 23:07, 15 April 2021 (UTC)
since sellers face excess demand for their products, each will be able to make sales even if their products are not as good as those of competitors. As a result, sellers have too little incentive to maintain or enhance the quality of their products. For example, a common complaint about rent-controlled apartments is that they receive little maintenance and no renovations.In context, "to little incentive to do x" is more of a positive description that x won't be done as much (as opposed to a normative description saying people ought to do x more), so I believe that the second textbook is a source that can be used to back the claim of scholarly consensus with respect to decreases in the quality of rental units. Both books are from right before the great recession really got going, though from my understanding there hasn't been any sort of general shift on this belief reflected in relevant literature since then. (On a side note, the copyright dates on the books are both 2008, though online sources say the books were published in late 2007. I went with the dates printed in the books in making the citations.)— Mikehawk10 ( talk) 00:06, 17 April 2021 (UTC)
The claim is false since there are economists who think differentlydoesn't really give an argument against WP:RS/AC. Consensus is not equivalent to unanimity; there can be disagreement by small numbers of scholars and yet a scholarly consensus might be present. When we have textbooks (which are often considered tertiary sources) that are providing a sense of academic consensus on the rent control, I think that the consensus is sufficiently well-sourced. As always, the different views on rent control should be presented in the article relative to their prominence in published, reliable sources However, they should not be given equal weight with the consensus views in the article's description of the academic debates on rent control. — Mikehawk10 ( talk) 20:08, 17 April 2021 (UTC)
The
neutrality of this article is
disputed. |
And yet economists from both the right and the left are in almost universal agreement that rent control makes housing problems worse in the long run.[5] --- Avatar317 (talk) 20:09, 22 April 2021 (UTC)
I join this discussion late. There is indeed a strong consensus among economists on the negative effects on rent control, to the extent that it features prominently in many introductory textbooks to the field of economics. For example, the negative effects of rent control in Stockholm has been a key example in Swedish textbooks about economics for decades (to add an additional example to the mainly anglo-centric discussion). Claiming that there is a consensus for this is perfectly in line with NPOV and it would appear the IP who first object mainly argues from WP:IDONTLIKEIT. While rent control may be a complex topic in politics, it is a very straightforward one in economics. Jeppiz ( talk)\
References
There is an RFC on Talk:Sheikh Jarrah property dispute#RFC concerning whether or not the current article title is an appropriate neutral descriptive title, additional views welcome. nableezy - 03:33, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
Talk:Investigations_into_the_origin_of_COVID-19 ( | article | history | links | watch | logs)
Investigations_into_the_origin_of_COVID-19 has an ongoing RFC for how we should refer to the report authored by the WHO and based on a study conducted jointly with China. A discussion is taking place. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments on the discussion page. Thank you. Shibbolethink ( ♔ ♕) 19:11, 25 June 2021 (UTC)
I raised concerns about lack of coverage of doubts about efficacy at WikiProject Psychology here. I listed some sources, but I'm hoping that someone with better psych background than I have could look at those two articles and bring them in line with WP:NPOV. Thanks. NightHeron ( talk) 00:41, 10 June 2021 (UTC)
This discussion has been disrupted by
block evasion,
ban evasion, or
sockpuppetry from the following user:
Comments from this user should be excluded from assessments of consensus. |
On the talk page, I listed sources that discuss Theodorakis' antisemitic statements. [51] But my inclusion of them in the article was reverted twice without the opponents of inclusion engaging on talk. I appreciate the attention of uninvolved editors in this dispute; hopefully we can settle this without a RfC. ( t · c) buidhe 05:20, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
:::Here's a source:
During a press conference in 2003, Theodorakis' criticism of Israeli policy reached a new level, as he said, "Today we can say that this little country is the root of evil, not of good, which means that too much self-righteousness and stubbornness are evil." In a 2011 television interview he even described himself as an "anti-Semite and anti-Zionist," adding that "American Jews" had been responsible for the global economic crisis that had hit Greece as well.
[52] He did apologize later in a letter.
VikingDrummer (
talk) 10:01, 6 June 2021 (UTC)sock puppet of banned user-
GizzyCatBella
🍁
14:05, 11 June 2021 (UTC)
That’s not all VikingDrummer - full text below:
Accused of anti-Semitism
During a press conference in 2003, Theodorakis' criticism of Israeli policy reached a new level, as he said, "Today we can say that this little country is the root of evil, not of good, which means that too much self-righteousness and stubbornness are evil." In a 2011 television interview he even described himself as an "anti-Semite and anti-Zionist," adding that "American Jews" had been responsible for the global economic crisis that had hit Greece as well.
Those statements horrified not only people in Israel. In a later apology, Theodorakis explained his position in a letter to the Central Council of Jews in Greece. What he had meant by "root of evil" was the "unfortunate policies" of the state of Israel and its ally, the US. Had he once described himself as "anti-Semitic," he had misspoken after a very long and tiring interview. "I love the Jewish people, I love the Jews!" said Theodorakis.
[53] - GizzyCatBella 🍁 10:35, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
@Buidhe, are there any records of him saying similar things on other occasions? - GizzyCatBella 🍁 10:35, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
Also, looks like this has been discussed in the past.. [54], [55] and other editors tried to include it back in a day [56], [57], [58], [59], [60] - GizzyCatBella 🍁 10:49, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
Yeah, I guess it could be added .. - GizzyCatBella 🍁 11:06, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
References
Talk:Ilhan_Omar#RFC has an RFC for possible consensus. A discussion is taking place. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments on the discussion page. Thank you. Benevolent human ( talk) 00:28, 13 June 2021 (UTC)
There is an RfC at Talk:Tether (cryptocurrency)#RFC about tone concerning whether the lede (e.g. "Tether is a controversial crypto currency") and the article as a whole are written with an impartial tone. Additional views welcome. - DaxMoon ( talk) 09:24, 14 June 2021 (UTC)
The article on Eric Feigl-Ding currently has a section on criticism he has received. The neutrality of this section is in dispute. I have been trying to address this on the talk page, but I have received very little direct engagement on my questions from the editors who have written this section. I believe the entirety of the section violates WP:NPOV, and almost every sentence violates some specific sub-policy.
Rather than me going into detail immediately, I would like to ask you to read the section titled "criticism" and then note your answers to the following questions, which I will argue is misleading:
1) Who was criticizing him? Are their qualifications relevant?
2) Can you name anyone who was praising him? Are their qualifications relevant?
3) What is he criticized for?
4) Who used the app he helped develop?
5) What conclusion is supported by mentioning the app in this section? What purpose is being served by mentioning the Google Scholar section?
6) Is there a source that supports the claim he has “a relevant academic background”?
7) Does the second paragraph of this 2 paragraph section have anything to do with the topic?
The article:
https://undark.org/2020/11/25/complicated-rise-of-eric-feigl-ding/ provides some evidence to back up what I say below, but if you're willing to take my word for it, here's some of the concerns.:
a) The people who criticized him are among the most respected infectious disease researchers in the world. Does that come across in the wikipedia article?
b) The unsourced statement made in point 6) above is in dispute. Given that, does this statement promote one point of view above others (c.f., WP:VOICE)?
c) The named person praising him in point 2) above has no infectious disease experience. Does the juxtaposition of his praise with the anonymous criticism violate WP:UNDUE?
d) In point 3) above, did you answer that they were criticizing him for using social media or for not having an infectious disease background? They are criticizing him because they believe much of the information he is spreading is inaccurate and sometimes dangerous, and that he seemingly implied that he had expertise that he did not (which gives undue credibility to his statements). Does the section in any way convey these concerns?
Now consider the sources given about his app development. Both sources are from https://www.hackreactor.com/blog, and regard an app that was developed at Hack Reactor.
e) I believe this is an example of a "publication put out by an organization" about a "topic that organization has an interest in promoting." (c.f., WP:IS).
f) If your answer to 4) above was that it was used for the Ebola response you are wrong. It was never used for this. Hack Reactor is a site that teaches programming skills. I see nothing in the blog posts that clearly states that this was anything more than a class project which was never installed on anyone's phone for the purpose of contact tracing anywhere (the website for the app http://germtheorylabs.org/ mentioned in one of the blog posts is abandoned). I have looked extensively for any other source about this app and I can find none other than Ding's tweets, which came out after extensive prominent work on COVID apps by others was announced. I believe the current wording of the Wikipedia article on this point is potentially misleading, and I think the whole point is actually an example of WP:OR --- see g) below.
Finally, the person who added the comments on the app and Google Scholar said on the talk page:
″Also, the 'zero experience' infectious disease claim seems to be wrong. The two Hack Reactor points out Feigl-Ding was involved in the development of a 2014 contact tracing app for outbreaks. Also his Google Scholar publication record includes many papers on global health and on infectious disease risk factors. We cannot just dismiss all those. Hence added citations to them for balance.″
g) So these are clearly intended to support the conclusion that he has prior infectious disease expertise. However, the cited sources do not themselves make this point. Additionally the "balance" achieved here also involved watering down the explicit statement from a prominent infectious disease researcher (who had undoubtedly seen his Google Scholar page) that he has 'zero experience' with understanding infectious disease epidemic dynamics. This would appear to me to be a violation of WP:SYNTH as well as WP:UNDUE. As an infectious disease researcher myself I dispute any implication that his Google Scholar page demonstrates experience studying epidemic dynamics.
I have given a detailed explanation of what I consider to be violations of a number of Wikipedia policies in the relevant talk page in the section on "balancing discussion". My impression of the responses I have received is that they have ignored my questions about whether the section violates WP:NPOV in general and WP:OR, WP:SYNTH, WP:IS, WP:UNDUE, etc in particular. Instead they argue that the criticism is "unfair" and "propaganda". The fact that this is their response to the more clinical question of whether a statement exemplifies original research or whether a source is independent makes me believe they are not interested in conveying the content of the criticisms and the responses to them. They are engaging in the dispute rather than describing it, which violates WP:VOICE.
After feeling that my points were being ignored, I added a section "Current Violations of Wikipedia Policy in the Article", to the talk page which has been ignored except for one person who responded positively, and one person who called it "superfluous". There is still no engagement from the relevant editors on the explicit examples I claim violate the various policies.
In full disclosure, I am one of the infectious disease researchers who has criticized Eric Feigl-Ding for what I view as numerous dangerously inaccurate statements he has made on social media. Our primary concern is the inaccuracy. I can point to other people who are also not infectious disease researchers who are commenting about COVID on social media whose content I promote. So it is not about the use of social media, or even being from outside the field. These people who I promote typically make comments on specific subtopics on which they do have expertise. Additionally, it isn't even a difference of opinion about policies --- I am generally supportive of the same policies that he promotes with a few exceptions. The issue with Ding is that he does not constrain himself to things on which he has expertise --- he makes bold sensational comments on things he doesn't understand, and he is often wrong (but he strongly implies he has expertise on the topics). When he makes mistakes he tends to ignore them for a while, and if he ever does anything about it it's usually a quiet delete a week later, with no attempt to correct the record, generally after hundreds of thousands of impressions. When given a choice between an accurate statement or something misleading that might go viral, I believe he chooses the latter. These are my opinions. Because I recognize my conflict, I have refrained from directly editing the page and restrict myself to the talk page.
But I'm tired of my questions being ignored. I believe that the section not only misrepresents the criticism, it has been written to refute the criticism. It needs to get fixed, and I really want to stop wasting my time on it. I was blissfully unaware of how it had evolved over the past year, but when he tweeted out a link to his patreon page asking for monthly donations, I decided to take a look at the article, and I was shocked by the inaccuracy of it.
I would like to see the section either accurately reflect the criticism or be entirely removed. I feel that the criticism should be included, but I would prefer it be removed than that the section be left in its current form. Joelmiller ( talk) 14:57, 11 June 2021 (UTC)
@ GlobeGores, Sahiljain22, Yug, Smojarad, Zmlpqa01, and Ekpyros:
This relate to the John McGuirk page ( /info/en/?search=John_McGuirk) and particularly to the comment that he is editor of a "far-right" media outlet called Gript. This designation, that Gript is "far-right" has been the subject of an extensive, going discussion on the talk page, but I wanted to escalate that discussion to here as I am concerned that the article has serious issues, and I would like to involve the wider community.
Effectively the issue is that the claim is sourced to a pseudo-anonymous blog, which calls Gript alt-right, and an academic article which says Gript will sometimes "echo" the talking points of the far-right, but does not claim that Gript is itself far-right. During the discussion a third source, which does class Gript as far-right was added.
I have argued that the decision to class Gript as far-right, when it has been widely discussed in Irish media either and has never been called far-right by a reputable mainstream Irish publication, gives undue weight to a fringe publication and appears to be an attempt by an editor to enshrine a personal political view.
I have linked numerous articles which describe Gript as right-wing and conservative, and I attempt to expand the description of Gript on the page to read "He is the editor of the news and opinion website Gript, which has been described alternatively as conservative, right-wing and alt-right." I thought that was a fair compromise, as it included the description of Gript as alt-right even though it comes from a pseudo-anonymous, and openly partisan, blog, whilst showing that that was not the general position - the material was still removed.
It is my view that the article does not represent the wider understanding of Gript in Ireland, but rather privilege's a very particular political perspective on it. I would be interested in other's thoughts, as there are only four of us on the talk page and I do not feel the issues on the page are likely to be dealth with.
As a sidenote, and this may not be of relevance to this board - as a new contributor to Wikipedia I was appalled at the behaviour of one of the other edtiors (Bastun), who seemed to take my edits as a personal affront. He reverted my original attempts to fix the article without reason; mocked me; implied I am innumerate; accused me of lying; said my NPOV dispute was disingenuous; started a sockpuppet investigation into my account; and consistently refers to me as a SAP in a fashion that I take to be an attempt to denigrate rather than a mere statement of fact. It is not what I expected, and I have not done anything to him to justify his venom. It has certainly made me reconsider devoting further time to improving articles if this is the accepted approach towards new comers.
Thank you for your consideration. Perpetualgrasp ( talk) 21:49, 2 June 2021 (UTC)
far-right publication. It also calls McGuirk a
Far-right commentator, but we're not using it to make that claim.
alt-right website. The alt-right is part of the far-right, and The Beacon's own subheading is
reporting on the far right.
In the US, far-right talking points have been popularised through an eco-system of influencers and partisan media outlets who relay the message in milder terms. In Ireland, those echoing the far-right message include parties like Renua and the alternative media outlets Gript and The Burkean...Gript and The Burkean primarily produce opinion pieces while positioning themselves as an alternative to mainstream journalism. It also includes a screenshot of McGuirk tweeting a Gript article using the manipulation tactics that it just discussed. The article itself is titled "How the far-right incite hatred".
right-wing.
conservative.
has a typically right-wing and conservative approach to news and debate. I think that's close to calling Gript
right-wing and conservative, but that
typicallyseems to weaken their findings.
Right-Wing opinion/news account Gript Media. That statement isn't made in the editorial voice of The Irish Examiner, and it's unclear whether it came from the Department of Health, Department of Education, or a third-party (because the Department of Health outsourced some of their analysis). Ultimately, I don't think there's enough information here to determine who the original source was or if they're at all reliable.
far-right, 1 source that says
conservative, 1 source that says
right-wing, and 1 source that weakly (in my mind) says
right-wing and conservative. To me, this seems like a clear indication that
far-rightis an appropriate label, although some other description that also includes
right-wingand
conservativemight be acceptable, though these labels are used fewer times.
Coming over from
WP:RSN on this after diggin a little more—I'm not sure that describing Gript as "far-right" is the best move with regards to a wikivoice statement. I have significant questions regarding the editorial process and editorial control exherted by The Beacon, and I'm not seeing a
WP:USEBYOTHERS that points towards it having a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy, either. Furthermore, the analysis on its bias based on excluding sources that don't mention a bias seems to be deficient... couldn't that be considered some form of marginal evidence to the website not having an extremist bias? Also, regarding The Journal, their other pieces (such as this
one) reaffirm that the site has a generally generally right-wing, conservative perspective
, and I think that we can say that the paper provides some evidence against a "far-right" designation. When taking a look at additional sources (such as
The Busineess Post, which describes the source alternatively as "conservative" and "right-wing"), it's not clear to me that the analysis above is complete or that a complete analysis would result in us labeling the group as "far-right". "Right-wing" seems to be the median, though it's still not clear to me how to analyze the sources that don't mention a site bias. In the absence of a consensus among RS that the site is "far-right", I don't think labeling them as "far-right" is justified. —
Mikehawk10 (
talk)
06:09, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
As has been noted, the Beacon is not the only source using the "far-right" label, and at least one of the sources that does appears to be sufficiently reliable. And please let's not get into any outlandish "what the definition of 'is' is" style wikilawyering here. (i.e., "Well they don't actually say they are far right, just that they employ far right tactics and talking points" - seriously?). Now, my position on this and all similar matters having to do with the far right: being wishy washy with how we describe them, whitewashing, etc, can have consequences along the magnitude of, possibly, global security being jeopardised. We should not forget that the far right started World War II, and that one of the (many) factors that allowed them to come into power back then was lackadaisical complacency among the press, etc. Hitler et al were not taken seriously as a real threat by too many people. So, my motivation for my position here is not partisan or ideological - just the track record of who were the ones that caused the biggest manmade catastrophe in the history of the world. Firejuggler86 ( talk) 01:05, 13 June 2021 (UTC)
Is this really a neutral term? I can tell you as someone who grew up in the faith (no longer practising but this ain't about me), when I hear the term it raises alarm bells. It is never used as a self-description, it's kind of like "Romanist", "Papist", "Romish" etc, emphasisizing the Pope rather than the catholic (universal) aspect. It came about from point scoring whereby the Church of England wanted to disallow the Catholic church's exclusive claim to the term "catholic", which stems from the Nicene Creed. Is it really such a huge imposition to use the term "Catholic" instead of "Roman Catholic", unless you're distinguishing from "Maronite Catholic", "Chaldean Catholic" etc? MaxBrowne2 ( talk) 09:28, 13 June 2021 (UTC)
'...disallow the Catholic church's exclusive claim to the term "catholic"'- so your position is that Rome holds exclusive claim to the term "catholic"? That does not sound particularly neutral. yes, the Roman church is commonly called simply the "Catholic Church", and in contexts where this is completely unambiguous that is fine. In English contexts it is somewhat complicated, because the Church of England was part of the larger Roman Catholic Church for many centuries. When they split with Rome, they did not establish a new Church: they considered it to be the same church it had always been, with unbroken succession, and still retaining its "catholicness" while also adopting some reformed characteristics. So, that was one reason for specifying "Roman" - to disambiguate. As for emphasising "Popishness" - considering the Pope had declared the Church of England heretical and had issued a papal bull ordering all faithful Catholics to engage in efforts to violently overthrow the English government & monarch and install a Roman Catholic regime...can you really fault them for that? And meanwhile on the continent Europe was having one of its bloodiest wars in history because a number of countries had turned Protestant and the Pope didnt like it. Firejuggler86 ( talk) 06:29, 14 June 2021 (UTC)
This discussion has been disrupted by
block evasion,
ban evasion, or
sockpuppetry from the following user:
Comments from this user should be excluded from assessments of consensus. |
In Far-right politics in Poland, Jan Żaryn, Lubusz Land, and maybe others there is a whitewash of the far right. Inconvenient associations and history are obliterated from view. Nulliq ( talk) 03:40, 3 June 2021 (UTC)
The misrepresentation of that source by this brand new account (Nulliq) and another editor (Trasz) who initially re-entered that text into the article has been addressed on the article's talk page.
[63] -
GizzyCatBella
🍁 05:42, 3 June 2021 (UTC)
:Not a misrepresentation, though inaccurate. The
source has a few detail different on slogans than the text and "Critics" was replaced by "Western experts" which is different.
User:Volunteer Marek's
edit summary of "unsourced BLP vio" is more than inaccurate, it is dishonest. There is a cited source, and there is no BLP info there.
VikingDrummer (
talk) 05:52, 3 June 2021 (UTC) sock puppet of banned user-
GizzyCatBella
🍁
14:13, 11 June 2021 (UTC)
:::I watch this noticeboard. The
edit summary was on a different edit, and is entirely untrue. There is a source, and it isn't BLP.
VikingDrummer (
talk) 06:05, 3 June 2021 (UTC) sock puppet of banned user-
GizzyCatBella
🍁
14:13, 11 June 2021 (UTC)
:::::Yes, I have discussed with Marek and
User:Tino Cannst on
Piast Canal where information on the mythological name was removed by Marek despite sources.
VikingDrummer (
talk) 07:16, 3 June 2021 (UTC) sock puppet of banned user-
GizzyCatBella
🍁
14:13, 11 June 2021 (UTC)
So basically, you've addressed this problem - which is definitely real - by dismissing arguments altogether because of their source. Good job, really. Trasz ( talk) 20:41, 19 June 2021 (UTC)