Welcome — ask about reliability of sources in context!

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What is the reliability of Legal Insurrection for courtroom reporting of legal trials?

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

Mokadoshi ( talk) 04:08, 28 April 2024 (UTC) reply

This has been discussed previously but no clear consensus was reached: Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 335#RfC: Legal Insurrection. While its blog articles tend to be political opinions, the blog also features courtroom reporting of major trials. I have found this reporting quite helpful for presenting additional information about the legal strategies used by attorneys in Gibson's Bakery v. Oberlin College. For example, this article makes the following factual claims:

1. The plaintiff (Gibson's Bakery) hired an accountant to make a determination of financial damages using tax documents and other financial statements.
2. The accountant estimated the business would be impacted for 30 years.
3. The accountant calculated total projected damages to be $5.8 million.
4. The defense (Oberlin College) hired an expert witness which testified that the maximum damages possible could only be $35,000.

The article was written by Daniel McGraw who was in attendance in the court room during the trial, and he has written for the NYT and some other publications that are also referenced in the Wikipedia article. Ohio Supreme Court documents confirm (1) and (2), but as far as I can tell, Legal Insurrection is the only available source for (3) and (4). Based on this information, I'm inclined to believe (3) and (4) are factually accurate. The Wikipedia article benefits from this information, particularly point (4), because without it the article is too strongly written in the plaintiff's point of view. I am trying to improve this article to GA status, and I believe it will be hard to achieve WP:NPOV without reporting of the defense's arguments in court. Not many news agencies provide this level of coverage. I have cited Legal Insurrection a few times in this article for similar reporting. As a blog, I think it's clear it cannot be considered "generally reliable." However, I'm wondering if we can have a discussion about whether it could be considered reliable specifically for its court room reporting on arguments made by a legal team during a court trial. Mokadoshi ( talk) 04:08, 28 April 2024 (UTC) reply

because without it the article is too strongly written in the plaintiff's point of view [...] I believe it will be hard to achieve WP:NPOV without reporting of the defense's arguments in court.

As a matter of policy, that is not how NPOV works. We do not pick a predetermined point of view that we think is neutral or balanced and then go out to find the sources that can support it. We survey all the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic and cover those views in proportion to the prominence of each viewpoint in those sources. Alpha3031 ( t • c) 06:56, 28 April 2024 (UTC) reply

I'm just trying to address the NPOV feedback given to me on the article's Talk page. Still, the NPOV issues aside, the question here is whether these types of articles can be considered subject matter experts as they are written by professional journalists that have written about the same court case for other newspapers. Mokadoshi ( talk) 07:04, 28 April 2024 (UTC) reply

I don't think journalists are considered subject matter experts generally speaking, and I would not consider just being a journalist to be a qualifier for EXPERTSPS. Also, I don't know if my interpretation is anywhere close to what voorts intended, but if the two issues identified are 1) POV and 2) marginal RS in support of that POV, the solution is not usually to add marginal RS in support of the opposite POV. My recommendation would be to first try and cut down the play-by-play to what is in your top secondary RS and consider what the overall thrust is like (you can do it in your head or just as a plan, it doesn't have to be written). Other sources can then be used to fill in the gaps, but you'd want to try and adhere to the proportion set by your top RS, and not let the rest of the sources dominate (which includes the mentioned RSOPINION, any primary sources like court documents even though there is usually no question about their reliability, etc). I would suggest extreme care using primary sources when DUE is implicated (not just first-party: Independent sources may not necessarily be secondary, and secondary sources not independent), primary sources are generally too narrow to properly assess DUE, and it's unlikely you'd be able to fix a DUE problem with them. Alpha3031 ( t • c) 14:42, 28 April 2024 (UTC) reply

My point was more about WP:RSBIAS, which is that we should be careful about the context in which we use biased RSes. I was not saying that the sources were per se unreliable, but that in context, non-biased sources should be preferred over biased ones when reporting on factual issues. voorts ( talk/ contributions) 14:46, 28 April 2024 (UTC) reply

Mmm. Caution is to be applied to the ordinary reporting of biased sources, but the editorial and opinion pieces (even in otherwise excellent sources) are also covered under WP:RSOPINION. So in general those would be considered unreliable, for statements of fact, and especially for establishing due weight. Alpha3031 ( t • c) 08:25, 29 April 2024 (UTC) reply

• On side note:Just fyi: MOS:LEGAL may have some guidelines, a guideline related talk page discussion. Bookku ( talk) 07:23, 28 April 2024 (UTC) reply
• 2 or 3 and leaning 3. If the only source for the defense argument is a highly partisan blog we don't need to include that source to create a false balance. Simonm223 ( talk) 12:19, 28 April 2024 (UTC) reply
• 2 or 3 and leaning 2 per above, it may well be OK for strictly reporting on that is said (it is an SPS, but by a subject expert), but interpretation may be more iffy. The issue here may well be more of an Undue than as RS one, is what they say really relevant. Slatersteven ( talk) 12:34, 28 April 2024 (UTC) reply
• 2 or 3 just jumping on the bandwagon, apparently, and agree with Simonm223 and Slatersteven before me. I probably lean more 3. While bias certainly does not disqualify a source from being reliable, highly opinionated sources that are lacking in other indicia of reliability tend to jaundice my eye, so to speak. Were I emperor of Wikipedia, I would not use it, but if Slatersteven's view prevails, I won't quibble. Cheers. Dumuzid ( talk) 13:49, 28 April 2024 (UTC) reply
• At the very least, attribution needed. -- NoonIcarus ( talk) 16:49, 28 April 2024 (UTC) reply
• @ Mokadoshi: I have re-added your signature immediately after the four options to make the RfC compliant with the "Keep the RfC statement (and heading) neutrally worded and short" requirement in WP:RFCNEUTRAL. Please feel free to adjust if needed, as long as the RfC statement meets this requirement. —  Newslinger  talk 08:46, 29 April 2024 (UTC) reply

  Thank you; sorry about that. Mokadoshi ( talk) 04:21, 1 May 2024 (UTC) reply

• We need to be very careful to restrict any decision to courtroom reporting. A quick search of the website's front page reveals recent (non-courtroom reporting) articles that are obviously opinion pieces and not marked as such. First example Leslie Eastman's article on lab-grown meat: I might be more sensitive to that argument were it not for the electric vehicle mandates and the ban on gas stoves I have been battling for many years Second example Mary Chastain's article on pro-Palestine protests at an American university: What a bunch of spineless cowards. Rutgers President Jonathan Holloway agreed to eight of the ten demands given to him by the pro-Hamas mob [...] This one sickens me because these people are TOTES the victims here, not Jews and Israel Third example, Mike LaChance's commentary on links on transgender swimmer: Once again, Biden is putting the priorities of the far left over real problems the country is facing. All he cares about is votes. Democrats are becoming victims of their own policies. The effort to ‘get’ Trump continues. Fourth example, Stacey Matthews' article on pro-Palestine protests at an American university: As further evidence that the lunatics are indeed running the asylum at Columbia University ... So apparently Jewish students, faculty and staff, and their families were supposed to be assured ... Yeah, right. None of these authors' articles should be used for facts. starship .paint ( RUN) 03:56, 4 May 2024 (UTC) reply
  • Turns out that Legal Insurrection has apparently eleven regular contributions, I covered four above, leaving seven, now minus Mandy Nagy for not writing since 2014 since suffering a stroke, leaving six, let's check them for opinion articles. Kemberlee Kaye, Senior Contributing Editor: On October 7, and 8, and 9, and beyond, the putrid hate generated by these ideologies spewed forth on campuses, shocking the nation. Our readers were not shocked. I wish we had been wrong. But we were right. Fuzzy Slippers, Weekend Editor: You can’t make this stuff up. The least self-aware politician in the entire nation, Hillary Clinton (who is sometimes referred to as “Killery” for the long long list of dead bodies that float up in her wake) has just taken Democrat projection to a whole new level. James Nault, Author: Although the previous Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Army General Mark A. Milley, was terrible, as we reported almost a year ago, his relief and the current Chairman, Air Force General Charles Q. “CQ” Brown, is even worse Jane Coleman, Author: You might think that after the school finally put its foot down, the Intifada campus crowd would get the message. Instead, they pushed back harder ... This is exactly the kind of mealymouthed answer that got the presidents of UPenn and Harvard ousted following their disgraceful appearances before the congressional committee investigating campus antisemitism last December. William A. Jacobson, Founder: Woke eats its own ... Oorah for that, but maybe it’s time to for woke corporate America to wake up to the monsters they have created ... Google is horrendously biased. And everyone knows it. Only one out of ten active contributors, Vijeta Uniyal, who is based in Germany and reports on international news, did not immediately appear to be writing opinion articles. I would say that the other nine can be discounted for facts. starship .paint ( RUN) 04:17, 4 May 2024 (UTC) reply
  • @ Mokadoshi, Simonm223, Slatersteven, Dumuzid, and NoonIcarus: - notifying of the above. starship .paint ( RUN) 04:24, 4 May 2024 (UTC) reply

    Since this is seeing some activity again: Just for the record, my opinion is that it's generally unreliable per WP:BLOG, I just don't see why we need an RFC about it. Not that GUNREL means never use, and I doubt we'd need to DEPREC if it's only come up twice, but using it doesn't solve the stated issue (that of NPOV/DUE). RFC seems to me to be a bit of an XY problem, so to speak. Court room reporting is PRIMARY anyway, different content type, different level of WP:EXCEPTIONAL, different standards. Alpha3031 ( t • c) 04:58, 4 May 2024 (UTC) reply

    Thanks @ Starship.paint I agree we should hesitate to use this source. Simonm223 ( talk) 11:33, 4 May 2024 (UTC) reply

• Nothing about this source distinguishes it from any random political blog. — 100.36.106.199 ( talk) 11:21, 9 May 2024 (UTC) reply

  I have found this reporting quite helpful for presenting additional information about the legal strategies used by attorneys in Gibson's Bakery v. Oberlin College. Oh, no wonder, it’s User:E.M.Gregory’s response when they were prevented from adding poor material at Oberlin College. 100.36.106.199 ( talk) 11:28, 9 May 2024 (UTC) reply

  Are you suggesting I’m a sock? Mokadoshi ( talk) 13:43, 9 May 2024 (UTC) reply

  I was commenting on how the article came to exist and why it's chock full of poor sources. 100.36.106.199 ( talk) 00:12, 10 May 2024 (UTC) reply

• 3, based on the helpful discussions above: Even in cases where the source may be valid, it is usually better to find a more reliable source instead. I don't see a problem with the specific use case in the OP, but it seems clear that there are ample reasons to be wary of this source, and in most cases there should be better sources available. And if this is indeed the only source that covers a particular proceeding at a particular level of detail, it may be worth considering whether that level of detail is appropriate for our encyclopedic purposes. -- Visviva ( talk) 02:29, 21 May 2024 (UTC) reply

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

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

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

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

Survey

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

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

From 1950 to 1971, RFE/RL disseminated overt lies to its audience about something as basic as the identity of its editor. That year, an expose revealed that editorial decisions at RFE/RL were being secretly made by the CIA, something RFE/RL falsely denied over a period of decades [1].

• Penn professor Kristen Ghodsee writes in The Baffler that - well after the CIA had divested itself of RFE/RL - executives continued managing the outlet to advance "a new genre of psychological and political warfare", that the outlet trafficked in antisemitic conspiracy theories, and reported "unsubstantiated rumors as fact". [2]

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

• In 2023, Blankspot reported that multiple RFE/RL "journalists" who reported critically on Azerbaijan were fired during a period the U.S. was cozying up to the Azerbaijani government. [3]
• Also that year, Arzu Geybullayeva, in her blog, explained that her conversations with RFE/RL journalists found that they faced "systematic harassment" from management if they veered from the U.S. foreign policy line. [4]
• In 2018, the entire staff of the RFE/RL station in the Republic of Georgia protested the firing of their director and asserted "growing intimidation, unfair treatment and attacks from RFE/RL management" over the topics and tone of their reporting. [5]
• The GAO has documented that USAGM's own staff, generally -- including staff from RFE/RL, specifically -- have stated that management has meddled with editorial independence by taking "actions that did not align with USAGM’s firewall principles". [6]

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

• According to Jennifer Grygiel, a media studies scholar at Syracuse University, under U.S. federal law, "RFE/RL is required to support the U.S. government abroad". [7]
• The objective fact of its structural non-independence has been subjectively confirmed by studies; an article in the scholarly journal UC Irvine Law Review in 2020 reported that RFE/RL operated by "not always address[ing] facts unfavorable to U.S. policy". [8]
• In 2018, the New York Times implicitly described RFE/RL as propaganda, writing that it "used Facebook to target ads at United States citizens, in potential violation of longstanding laws meant to protect Americans from domestic propaganda" [9].
• Magda Stroínska, scholar of linguistics at McMaster University, describes RFE/RL as "propaganda" in her 2023 book My Life in Propaganda: A Memoir About Language and Totalitarian Regimes (no online copy available).
• As reported by the Wall Street Journal, a variety of sources have criticized RFE/RL for distributing "foreign propaganda favorable to authoritarian regimes in Central Asia". [10]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Option 3 Perhaps option 2 for non controversial stuff but for anything impacting US relations/policies, seems like propaganda push, even if no outright falsification. Not 4 because prefer 2/3 first and then see. Selfstudier ( talk) 17:13, 7 May 2024 (UTC) reply
• Option 2, u:Chetsford has provided compelling evidence that the source is biased and therefore may not be suitable for certain areas or to determine due weight. Editor discretion is definitely required. I'm reluctant to !vote 3 or 4 without any examples of deliberate and/or uncorrected falsehoods. Alaexis _¿question? 17:15, 7 May 2024 (UTC) reply
• Option 2 ~ Per State Media Monitor [12] it's parent oragnisation is considered "Independent State-Funded and State-Managed (ISFM)" -- which they describe as having a "medium" level of independence. Prior to '71 it should definitely be considered a propaganda broadcaster, but I don't see reason to do anything more than mention it's circumstances somewhere. — Preceding unsigned comment added by [[User:{{{1}}}|{{{1}}}]] ([[User talk:{{{1}}}#top|talk]] • [[Special:Contributions/{{{1}}}|contribs]])

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Discussion

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

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

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

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

• Selection of use by others:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

For a while it's been fairly clear that certain British papers aren't reliable on trans issues. The most clear example of this by a large margin is the Telegraph, which appears to still be considered generally reliable on this topic mostly because nobody has bothered to compile examples of them making factual errors.

I finally sat down to do it over the past month and I found some real whoppers:

• The Telegraph ran the following five stories on consecutive days asserting that a secret recording at a school was evidence that the school let students identify as cats. [14] [15] [16] [17] [18]

We have a whole article on this general style of dubious claim in right wing media, it's called the litter boxes in schools hoax. Naturally, it is not true in this case as well. See the following evidence: [19] [20] [21] [22] [23]

What appears to have happened is that a student compared another student identifying as trans to identifying as a cat to score a rhetorical point. There was a whole government investigation on this which completely cleared the school and the Telegraph has not retracted or corrected any of their articles. Indeed, if you look at the latest one you can see the Telegraph attempting to imply that the school's denial of the claims is false.

• The Telegraph regularly quotes a man named James Esses as a proxy for Thoughtful Therapists, which they describe as a group of counsellors and psychologists concerned with impact of gender ideology on young people or similar. ( [24] [25] [26] [27] [28]). They rarely make it clear that James Esses is not and has never been a therapist: he was kicked out of his program for expressing largely the same anti-trans sentiments that they keep quoting him for, and is clear about this on his very own website: [29].
• The Telegraph recently released this article that is in part about a group called Therapists Against Conversion Therapy and Transphobia. Note that for one, they describe TACTT as "trans activists" despite also being a professional organization with an agenda; contrast to their treatment of Thoughtful Therapists above. But more importantly TACTT released this response criticizing essentially every factual claim in the article about them. The most clear errors in my view are that the Telegraph called the Cass Review a report on the dangers of gender ideology when it is in fact a systematic review about trans healthcare; they describe the UKCP, a voluntary professional organization, as a regulator; and they describe calling a vote of no confidence in the leadership of the UKCP as a "coup" and "bullying" instead of a fairly ordinary parliamentary procedure. Oh, and they weren't contacted by the Telegraph before the article.

And there's tons more to be clear, I don't even have all of it on my page assembling the issues. I've mostly been ignoring factual claims made in opinion pieces, for instance (except for a truly wild claim that Joseph Mengele was transitioning children). Loki ( talk) 21:37, 8 May 2024 (UTC) reply

I would like to add some context. In 1978, Glad to Be Gay was released, known colloqually as "britains national gay anthem".

It contained the Stanza

Read how disgusting we are in the press
The Telegraph, People and Sunday Express
Molesters of children, corruptors of youth
It's there in the paper, it must be the truth

What they are referring to is Section 28, a proto- Don't Say Gay bill, which the Telegraph repeatedly platformed homophobic support for and was criticized by LGBT rights groups for. [30] [31] [32] [33] Here's some sources that investigate their opposition to LGBT marriage [34] [35]

This non-exhaustive historical context is to drive the point home: The Telegraph has been recognizably anti-LGBT for over 4 decades now. Your Friendly Neighborhood Sociologist ⚧ Ⓐ ( talk) 22:36, 8 May 2024 (UTC) reply

There's also a variety of scholarly sources that bear out that the Telegraph is a biased source on trans issues, such as this one this one on coverage of the organization Mermaids and this one on the British press in general.

They were also reprimanded by a regulator a few times for inaccurate statements about transgender issues. Loki ( talk) 23:02, 8 May 2024 (UTC) reply

I looked at many of the cited articles, and some listed here, but almost all the examples have nothing to do with the "reliability" of the Telegraph. They simply show that the Telegraph can be biased when it comes to coverage of trans/lgbt topics. It is well-established here that biased sources =/ unreliable sources. The few examples of where the Telegraph may have been factually incorrect is not enough to argue for deprecation/unreliability. Re cat: The Telegraph ran a article (not listed above) about the government clearing the school's name. And the original Telegraph article just seems to be an accurate transcript of the purported video. Re regulators: this example has almost nothing to do with trans coverage. It also deals with an opinion article. And the regulator even acknowledged that the publication had shown it was willing to correct the record promptly once it had become aware of the inaccuracy. Therefore, on balance, it considered the remedial action was offered with due promptness. So that's really a point to the Telegraph for making prompt corrections in their (opinion) articles. Dr. Swag Lord ( talk) 04:45, 9 May 2024 (UTC) reply

I'd like to point out that even in the article you linked, there is no mention that the Telegraph got it wrong the first time and no student ever claimed to be a cat. So that's now six articles without a correction or retraction, after directly claiming that the student in question identifies as a cat several times. Loki ( talk) 04:53, 9 May 2024 (UTC) reply

I see nothing in those articles that state the Telegraph claiming that factually, simply reporting that claim made by others as central to the news story. —  Masem ( t) 15:42, 9 May 2024 (UTC) reply

I mean we wouldn't get away with repeating lies (even with attribution) on Wikipedia and I don't think a newspaper should be considered reliable if it repeatedly does the same. LunaHasArrived ( talk) 16:00, 9 May 2024 (UTC) reply

The very first line of the very first article I linked is A school teacher told a pupil she was “despicable” after she refused to accept that her classmate identifies as a cat.

Furthermore, see the following quotes:

• Difficult as it may be to believe, children at a school in East Sussex were reprimanded last week for refusing to accept a classmate’s decision to self-identify as a cat.
• The incident at Rye College, first reported by The Daily Telegraph yesterday, was not a one-off. Inquiries by this newspaper have established that other children at other schools are also identifying as animals, and the responses of parents suggest that the schools in question are hopelessly out of their depth on the question of how to handle the pupils’ behaviour.
• A teacher at Rye College, a state secondary in East Sussex, was recorded telling a pupil who refused to accept her classmate was a cat that she was despicable. [...] The Telegraph has revealed that at other schools teachers are allowing children to identify as horses, dinosaurs and even moons.
• Sir Keir’s comments are the most outspoken by any party leader over the issue since The Telegraph revealed that two children were reprimanded by a teacher for questioning a classmate’s cat identity.

Just so we're clear, that's an explicit statement of the false claim in the paper's own words in every article but the last one. And what appear to be several other extremely dubious claims in the same vein in a few. Loki ( talk) 18:25, 9 May 2024 (UTC) reply

Yeah, these are pretty unequivocally examples of The Telegraph saying in its own voice that there are students really identifying as cats (and as dinosaurs and moons, apparently). The claim that all The Telegraph did was report what people said is off the mark and obfuscates the depth of the paper's promulgation of misinformation. The Telegraph has told the world in its own voice that The Telegraph says teachers are allowing children to identify as horses, dinosaurs and even moons—how much more in its own voice can one get? Hydrangeans ( she/her | talk | edits) 18:35, 9 May 2024 (UTC) reply

To go through those one by one:

1. That isn't saying that a student identified as a cat, it is saying that a teacher told a pupil they were "despicable" for refusing to accept that her classmate identifies as a cat. That is true, and supported by a recording - whether the student actually identified as a cat is a different question.
2. Same as #1
3. That doesn't say the student identifies as a cat, that is saying other students at other schools identified as various animals. Have these claims been established as false?
4. Same as #1 and #3
5. Same as #1

At no point does the Telegraph say, in their own voice, that a student identified as a cat. BilledMammal ( talk) 23:08, 9 May 2024 (UTC) reply

What part of "a students decision to self-identity as a cat"(2) means the telegraph isn't saying a student identifies as a cat. LunaHasArrived ( talk) 23:17, 9 May 2024 (UTC) reply

The full context is children at a school in East Sussex were reprimanded last week for refusing to accept a classmate’s decision to self-identify as a cat. In this full context, we see that it isn't saying the student identified as a cat - only that the teacher told students off for not accepting it. BilledMammal ( talk) 23:48, 9 May 2024 (UTC) reply

Sorry, this isn't saying "a student was deciding whether to identify as a cat or not". It's saying "a students decision to self identify as a cat". If I said "the UK's decision to vote conservative at the last general election" I am saying that the UK did in fact vote conservative, there is no other way to read this. LunaHasArrived ( talk) 23:55, 9 May 2024 (UTC) reply

I only saw your edit after posting. To amend my comparison, if I said "Labour party members were reprimanded after refusing to accept the UK's decision to leave the EU" what am I saying about the UKs decision about leaving the EU. LunaHasArrived ( talk) 23:58, 9 May 2024 (UTC) reply

( edit conflict) You keep omitting the first part of the sentence, which changes the meaning of the second part. Without that first part, you would be correct - but because the Telegraph includes the first part, you're not, and the Telegraph is only saying why the teacher reprimanded the students, not whether the reason the teacher reprimanded the students was factually accurate. If this doesn't clarify things for you I'm not sure anything will, so I'm going to back out of this conversation now. BilledMammal ( talk) 00:00, 10 May 2024 (UTC) reply

I agree with Dr. Swag Lord; possibly biased, but no evidence that they are unreliable. In fact, I would point out that this is one of the most reliable sources in Britain.

The fact that British media has a different opinion on this topic than American media doesn’t make British media unreliable, and attempting to paint it as biased or unreliable because of that difference in opinion would reduce the neutrality of our coverage of the topic by omitting positions that differ from the American position. BilledMammal ( talk) 05:02, 9 May 2024 (UTC) reply

Just a note that speaking in terms of dichotomy between the UK and US is potentially misleading: there's the rest of Anglophone media (and indeed, non-English language media) as well. Remsense 诉 05:04, 9 May 2024 (UTC) reply

I've listed specific false claims made by the Telegraph. What's your defense of the Telegraph falsely claiming a student identified as a cat five times without any retraction or correction? What's your defense of the Telegraph repeatedly quoting a non-therapist for the position of therapists on trans issues?

I have more examples:

• the headline of this article claims that Belgium and the Netherlands called for additional restrictions of puberty blockers when that's not true and not even close to true. Neither of those countries nor any government agency of those countries has said any such thing in an official capacity.
• this article has an "expert" claim that a tweet supportive of trans lesbians violates the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, which it very much does not.
• Here's an article, which is part of a whole series like this, where the Telegraph just asks its readers for cases of "wokeness" and then repeats whatever obvious nonsense they give back. I wouldn't even mention it except it's clearly labeled "news", and it's yet again another example of the litter boxes in schools hoax.

Loki ( talk) 05:31, 9 May 2024 (UTC) reply

One by one:

• Per WP:HEADLINES, headlines are unreliable regardless of who they are published by. The fact that the Telegraph's headlines are no different is not a cause for concern or a reason to consider the publication unreliable.
• That's an attributed opinion; She said the tweet contravened the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1979. It isn't an indication of unreliability.
• Those are opinions attributed to readers. Again, it isn't an indicator of unreliability.

BilledMammal ( talk) 06:18, 9 May 2024 (UTC) reply

That's an attributed opinion

Attributed to simply a representative from a women's group. It seems truthfully introducing Women's Declaration International could arguably require additional description. Remsense 诉 06:27, 9 May 2024 (UTC) reply

I assume you believed they should have included criticism of that organization? Failing to criticize a organization when attributing to it doesn't make a source unreliable; if it did, I don't think we would have any reliable sources. BilledMammal ( talk) 06:33, 9 May 2024 (UTC) reply

You're correct, of course. This one straddles the border between ontology and epistemology, and is borderline in any case. Remsense 诉 06:38, 9 May 2024 (UTC) reply

WP:HEADLINES is not a defense because the false claim is also repeated in the first line of the article. And attributing false claims to other people is not a good defense if you make no attempt whatsoever to fact-check them. Loki ( talk) 13:48, 9 May 2024 (UTC) reply

The first sentence contains a different claim than the headline; as far as I know, the claim in the first sentence is true? BilledMammal ( talk) 15:33, 9 May 2024 (UTC) reply

The first sentence of that article says Belgium and the Netherlands have become the latest countries to question the use of puberty blockers. Is it true? The parliament of the Netherlands passed a motion [36] which notes the caution being expressed in other European countries and calls for additional research. So the Netherlands part seems true enough. The Belgium claim is more tenuous - it appears to refer to this paper [37] published in a mainstream medical journal by an affiliate of the Belgian Center for Evidence Based Medicine [38], which was commissioned by the Federal Government [39]. Now, I'm not for one minute going to claim that that chain of association amounts to this being an official action of the Belgian government, but synecdoche is common in reporting about countries, so it's not a smoking gun of falsehood. Barnards.tar.gz ( talk) 16:36, 9 May 2024 (UTC) reply

• The evidence shared, both in this thread and in OP's link to the much longer userpage list of examples, persuades me that The Telegraph is generally unreliable for trans topics, and if it comes to an RfC I would there say as much. This isn't down to a difference of opinion. This is about a periodical repeatedly making errors of fact and misrepresentations in this topic area. It's true that biased sources aren't necessarily unreliable, but our tendency to be okay with expecting editors to parse through biases doesn't become a shield for a biased source that is also unreliable. I'll add that an editor's claim that this is about how British media has a different opinion on this topic than American media is not what OP is saying. Although OP wrote, British papers aren't reliable on trans issues, that claim was not framed as being because they report different things from U. S. news sources ( for that matter, the very American news network Fox has propounded the "litter boxes in schools" hoax too). And for evidence of the errors of fact of the The Telegraph, the OP has included non-U. S. sources, such as The Guardian. And this rightly shouldn't be reduced to being a difference between national newspapers; this is also about contradicting academic consensuses in trans healthcare and more. Hydrangeans ( she/her | talk | edits) 05:33, 9 May 2024 (UTC) reply

  Co-signed. Concerning the judgment that there has been insufficient evidence presented for The Telegraph's frequent factual errors on this subject to consider an RfC, I would ask what would suffice? We're capable of deprecating a source based on a sufficient collection of individual incidents in context. Remsense 诉 05:35, 9 May 2024 (UTC) reply

  Given that the Telegraph is a newspaper of record and a quality press, you would need high-quality third-party sources demonstrating that the Telegraph is consistently unreliable in this topic area. Sources simply portraying the Telegraph as biased is not sufficient. Dr. Swag Lord ( talk) 07:19, 9 May 2024 (UTC) reply

  Yes, to be clear, I said "certain" British papers are unreliable on trans issues because I meant only certain British papers. The Telegraph is by far the most egregious and I'd also probably include the Times, but not the BBC or the Guardian (and that's even though I do think they're still both to the right of most American papers on trans issues). Loki ( talk) 05:37, 9 May 2024 (UTC) reply

• The important question here is whether the Telegraph reported at any point that the school had denied any pupil identified as a cat. If they did report this denial, then I don't think there is a problem here. If they have covered this up, then I would suggest there is a serious problem, a new RfC is warranted, and I would reconsider my previous opposition to downgrading the source on trans issues. Given paywall issues, I can't check it myself... Boynamedsue ( talk) 06:02, 9 May 2024 (UTC) reply

  It seems you put significant emphasis on later retractions. In my view, an outlet's later retraction is simply insufficient for the example's total removal from consideration for reasons that seem obvious: temporary errors are still errors that existed in print, and a frequent pattern of retraction calls into question the de facto editorial policy prior to publishing. It seems altogether too cute to treat the pattern of publishing one article saying one thing, and another later that includes a vital, previously ignored dimension as anything but retraction in a different format. The question is whether we can treat individual articles from the Telegraph as reliable to support claims: those are incomplete like this as less reliable, full stop. Remsense 诉 06:10, 9 May 2024 (UTC) reply

  I think you've misinterpreted the cat stories - the focus of those stories doesn't appear to be that the student identified as a cat, but that a teacher defended their right to identify as a cat - and there is a tape supporting the claim that a teacher defended that right. I don't think that at any point does the Telegraph say that a girl at Rye College did identify as a cat in their own voice. BilledMammal ( talk) 06:25, 9 May 2024 (UTC) reply

I do think that it is very important that, once the school clarified that nobody was actually identifying as a cat, the paper clearly states this. Boynamedsue ( talk) 06:48, 9 May 2024 (UTC) reply

They do; The school now says that no children at Rye College identify as a cat or any other animal. BilledMammal ( talk) 06:53, 9 May 2024 (UTC) reply

Read the very next sentence: However, the girls and their parents claimed it was their understanding that one did.

In context this is clearly not actually a retraction or correction by the Telegraph but an attempt to defend their original reporting even as it's clear that it's false.

Also, I think that the "focus" is also clear from them feeling the need to say this. Loki ( talk) 13:54, 9 May 2024 (UTC) reply

As BilledMammal pointed out, the Telegraph did point out the school's denial of the incident. They did so again in this article ("The school said, five days after the row broke, that no child identified as a cat or any other animal...) And, in this article I linked to above, they included the inspector's report that there were "no concerns" over the school's handling of the issue (plus they include a lengthly statement from a spokesperson of the school). Dr. Swag Lord ( talk) 07:05, 9 May 2024 (UTC) reply

@ Remsense:The article is factual though, the recording is pretty clear. The questions are whether the school was contacted for comment and whether its denial was published. Boynamedsue ( talk) 06:54, 9 May 2024 (UTC) reply

Agreed. I seem to have misread the first and second articles linked, apologies. Remsense 诉 06:57, 9 May 2024 (UTC) reply

• By way of comment on the discussion as it's developing, my view is that 'giving the impression of circulating a transnationally debunked hoax by prominently featuring it but technically refraining from expressing it directly in editorial voice' is a low bar to set for reliability, especially for a topic considered contentious. (In any case, the Rye College matter is just one of the examples; there are also the obfuscations/misrepresentations of Esses/Thoughtful Therapists and TACTT and related, as well as the evidence in the userpage list.) Hydrangeans ( she/her | talk | edits) 07:14, 9 May 2024 (UTC) reply
• Strong disagree. This is another example of confusing bias with reliability. A good case is made for bias, but not for unreliability. Detailed rationale follows:
  • The cat story issue has been covered by others. In short, it appears that they reported a reasonable interpretation of a recording, focused on the teacher's behaviour more than the cat claim, and then later reported the school's denial. One of the cited examples is about other cases of pupils identifying as other animals [40]. It's unclear whether the accuracy of this has been questioned or not.
  • Quoting someone who isn't a therapist isn't a factual error. It's worth noting that the "anti-trans sentiments" for which James Essess was kicked out of his programme are essentially the same position that the recent Cass review (a WP:MEDRS of the highest quality) has concluded, i.e. that affirmation is not necessarily the only answer. This suggests that the Telegraph is not publishing unreliable information, rather that it is publishing a POV (other POVs are available).
  • On TACTT. You say they describe TACTT as "trans activists" - but they are, and their own website [41] is clear on this: TACTT is an activist group, rather than a learning space.. Looking at TACTT's complaints, they seem to relate to statements made by Dr Christian Buckland, not statements made by The Telegraph in editorial voice. In this respect, The Telegraph is reliably reporting them. Regarding a report on the dangers of gender ideology, this is a strongly opinionated but not strictly unfactual description, since the report does directly criticise ideological behaviour as detrimental to the interests of children.
  • I looked at some of the examples in the "tons more" link. They're long on bias, short on factual errors.
  • I looked at the Joseph Mengele claim. It's an opinion piece, not The Telegraph's editorial voice. And you say it's a wild claim, but it appears to be factual, based on the testimony of holocaust survivor Eva Kor [42]: Cross transfusions were carried out in an attempt to "make boys into girls and girls into boys"..
  • The IPSO rulings are put forward as evidence of unreliability, but they demonstrate that corrections were made promptly and in duly prominent positions. This is exactly what we ask of a generally reliable WP:NEWSORG.
  • In short, The Telegraph projects a strong POV due to its strong bias, but we don't exclude sources for bias, and it would be a violation of NPOV to do so. Barnards.tar.gz ( talk) 08:22, 9 May 2024 (UTC) reply

  Things like the cat box incident demonstrate that the bias of the Telegraph is so severe that it deleteriously affects the paper's accuracy. We should not be using it as a source for establishing notability of a given incident, should attribute any statements it makes explicitly and should seriously consider whether statements of the Telegraph are WP:DUE prior to inclusion. Simonm223 ( talk) 11:21, 9 May 2024 (UTC) reply

  gender ideology was a term coined by the Catholic church and then borrowed by the GC movement which RS all agree is a meaningless buzzword.

  Thoughtful Therapists is a WP:FRINGE group that opposes conversion therapy bans and recommends organizations known for promoting conversion therapy [43]. Here's a statement [44] where he makes such claims as Schools should never socially affirm a pupil or enable them to socially transition, Self-ID should never become law (self-id is considered a right by the UN), hospitals shouldn't have pride flags, it should be ok to misgender schoolchildren, etc. His FAQ [45] says conversion therapy only applies to gay people, not trans people. He was removed from Childline because he kept publicly complaining about respecting trans kids and why conversion therapy shouldn't be banned. [46] [47]

  This man's positions are ridiculously fringe and it reflects very poorly on the Telegraph they went they to him for anything - it's like using the Flat Earth Society as a source for astrophysics news. Your Friendly Neighborhood Sociologist ⚧ Ⓐ ( talk) 16:04, 9 May 2024 (UTC) reply

  It's pretty common for newspapers to get quotes from activists/ non-experts ( see here). Does that mean that the newspaper is fundamentally unreliable? No. Does that mean WP is required to quote these activists/ non-experts as well? Also, no. News organizations aren't required to follow polices like DUE--but we are. So if someone tries to quote some random activist using the Telegraph as a source, just direct them to this: WP:UNDUE. Dr. Swag Lord ( talk) 18:10, 9 May 2024 (UTC) reply

  Okay but the problem isn't that they cite activists, the problem is that they cite activists and fail to mention it. Nobody here is going to be mad at a newspaper for citing activists. -- Licks-rocks ( talk) 18:24, 9 May 2024 (UTC) reply

  So what I’m hearing is that the only issue is that the Telegraph didn’t use the word “activist” when introducing James Essess. It’s true, using proper descriptors is good journalistic practice but this has almost nothing to do with reliability. Should we also admonish Forbes for failing to label Essess as an activist? [48] Dr. Swag Lord ( talk) 21:33, 9 May 2024 (UTC) reply

  the forbes article you cite describes his organisation as "an organization campaigning against “the impact of gender identity ideology on children”", which I think does a good job of delivering that information. I also don't recall ever saying that this was the only issue. Could you link me to where I said anything like that so I can correct the record? -- Licks-rocks ( talk) 11:38, 10 May 2024 (UTC) reply

  Well you said: "Okay but the problem isn't that they cite activists, the problem is that they cite activists and fail to mention it." So I took that to mean you're fine if they quote Essess but you want the Telegraph to be explicitly clear that he be labeled as an activist. Dr. Swag Lord ( talk) 21:28, 11 May 2024 (UTC) reply

  Yes, and the forbes quote satisfies that requirement, while the telegraph one doesn't. Forbes also does a better job of separating him from the therapists he claims to represent, where the telegraph lumps those two together, thus implying by omission that he is a therapist, which he very much is not. -- Licks-rocks ( talk) 21:39, 11 May 2024 (UTC) reply

  So if omitting the word “therapist” is enough for you to deprecate the Telegraph, how do you feel about the very anti-trans ^sarcasm Washington Blade referring to him as a “British Therapist”? [49] Dr. Swag Lord ( talk) 01:15, 12 May 2024 (UTC) reply

  Technically they say contradictory things, that he's a therapist, and that he was expelled from his training institute. So one is confused over his status. Also one offs from random publications does nothing to the fact that the telegraph repeatedly refused to label him appropriately LunaHasArrived ( talk) 01:23, 12 May 2024 (UTC) reply

  I don't like that phrasing very much but in context they make his actual credentials very clear. And it's also only one article. The Telegraph repeatedly lets the reader assume he's an expert without clarifying either way. Loki ( talk) 04:13, 12 May 2024 (UTC) reply

  Not sure if you linked to this article yet, Loki, but the most comprehensive article I found on Esses from the Telegraph is this. It puts his expulsion right at top. Do you think that article is an accurate representation of him? (also other Telegraph articles label him as a “writer and commentator” [50] and as a “social campaigner [51].) Dr. Swag Lord ( talk) 06:22, 12 May 2024 (UTC) reply

  Is one expected to read every article from the telegraph to know his full story for accuracy. Either way if anything the fact that the telegraph continues to mislabel him after doing that peice means it can't even claim ignorance. LunaHasArrived ( talk) 15:56, 12 May 2024 (UTC) reply

  Also the fact that the telegraph has opinion peices written by him should be of note here as well (4 in the last 10 months) LunaHasArrived ( talk) 16:01, 12 May 2024 (UTC) reply

  @ Dr.Swag Lord, Ph.d, regarding that article you linked:

• Summarizing the above in short, that article is an UNDUE and fringe platforming puff piece derived from the fact someone at the telegraph thought "this dude was fired for campaigning for conversion therapy a few months ago - let's interview him to talk about how oppressed he is and how conversion therapy is actually a normal practice" and wrote an article on it that somehow 1) omits more details than the daily mails reporting on the topic, 2) presents a more partisan stance on conversion therapy than the daily mail, 3) somehow mentions his campaigning wrt conversion therapy less than the daily mail, 4) sanitizes his FRINGE statements through their own voice, 5) misrepresent why he was fired and 6) is literally just re-sensationalizing the case of a dude fired for being a bigoted quack that had been old news when it was written. Your Friendly Neighborhood Sociologist ⚧ Ⓐ ( talk) 19:05, 13 May 2024 (UTC) reply

  You're moving a bit fast there, friend. In my main comment here below I explicitly ruled out deprecation, and instead said: I don't think this needs deprecation or anything, but I do think there are some major risks to using this paper uncritically on LGBT issues.. In other words, had this been an RFC I would have probably voted "additional considerations apply" based on this evidence. -- Licks-rocks ( talk) 10:06, 12 May 2024 (UTC) reply

  Yes it is, but not to platform WP:FRINGE activists that heavily. If almost everything they publish on trans issues is undue because they almost only quote quacks and often get stuff wrong, at some point we should acknowledge the paper is the issue and not have to discuss the due-ness for every quack they quote. If a newspaper had for 40 years the clear POV the earth is flat, and was publishing hundreds of articles a year claiming the earth is flat and quoting the flat earth society and questioning what the shadow lobby at NASA is hiding from everybody about the earth's topology, I think we'd all quickly recognize how unreliable that makes them (at least, for the subject of the earth's topology). When they do it for trans people, somehow perpetually churning out FRINGE nonsense (and attacking a minority) becomes a different POV.

  Here's an article targeting a transgender teen (and misgendering them) while fearmongering about how awful it is the school didn't misgender them because the parents asked them to. [55] They constantly use the term gender ideology in their own voice all the time [56], which our own article explains is a moral panic. If almost everything they publish on trans issues is undue, we should mention that somewhere. Your Friendly Neighborhood Sociologist ⚧ Ⓐ ( talk) 19:27, 9 May 2024 (UTC) reply

  “Targeting”? “Fear mongering”? What you may consider targeting and fear mongering is leaps and bounds away from what I—and many other editors—would consider targeting and fear mongering. The Telegraph simply reported on the incident. They quoted the child’s mother. They quoted the school and they quoted the LGBT charity the school works with. It’s actually a pretty balanced news story, more-or-less. The Telegraph even did the smart thing by not naming to “protect the young person’s identity”. It’s a difficult position to argue you’re being “targeted” by a newspaper when the newspaper doesn’t even name you. Dr. Swag Lord ( talk) 22:05, 9 May 2024 (UTC) reply

  This is a school with approximately 2400 students (by looking at their website) anyone at the school or who knows people at the school could probably have a good guess at who the student is given that they would have left recently and would other obvious details (not including possible social media OSINT). If the telegraph had named them I think it would have been far far worse. Also one has to dig very far into the article to know that the school never got any actual confirmation about the supposed clinical advice. And the fear mongering is obvious, it's an extremely common tactic for people to say that schools are taking kids away from parents and even that some schools "trans" kids behind the parents back. This article plays into all of these beliefs. LunaHasArrived ( talk) 22:26, 9 May 2024 (UTC) reply

  Yeah, when you consider the cat articles were about a specific living person it gets even worse. It doesn't matter how identifiable they are, the claims in these articles would be an obvious WP:BLP violation. Loki ( talk) 23:11, 9 May 2024 (UTC) reply

  Yeah, this is all starting to sound like “this article is bad because the Telegraph reported on it, and I don’t like their reporting.” I don’t actually see any evidence of falsity. This is not some hoax incident—these are real events that transpired and a major national newspaper reported on it. Dr. Swag Lord ( talk) 23:40, 9 May 2024 (UTC) reply

  I mean, read the paragraph by yfns beneath for a much more information but in general one can lie by omission or suggest an idea without lying. Either way I was just supporting the idea that they were targeting and fear mongering. LunaHasArrived ( talk) 23:48, 9 May 2024 (UTC) reply

  Sentence 1: A leading private school in Scotland had parents investigated by social workers after they fought teachers’ attempts to “affirm” their daughter’s transgender identity.

  • scare quotes around "affirm", which is a red flag considering affirming a trans kids identity is a pretty straightforward thing for a school to do - just don't misgender and deadname them. They do this multiple times in the article.
  • A quote from later in the article: The child later said she identified as male, and the school adopted male pronouns in a move the mother said was kept from her.

  In the very first sentence, they've misgendered a teenager (the first of many times) and questioned through quotes the school's respect for him as nefarious (the first of many times). How is it not targeting and fearmongering to write an essay about a teenager just trying to live their life framing the parents who are bigoted towards their own child as the victims and endorsing their bigotry?

  One paragraph down: the parents, acting on advice from psychologists who had assessed their child, asked for the school to adopt a “watchful waiting” approach. ... “Watchful waiting” is an approach in which a child’s view of their gender is closely observed but without social or medical intervention. Evidence suggests that many children with gender issues will revert to identifying as a member of their biological sex as they become older.

  • "watchful waiting" was invented by a FRINGE activist known for practicing conversion therapy, Kenneth Zucker, and involved refusing to allow children to socially transition until puberty [57]. without social or medical intervention is doublespeak - it has always involved active intervention to deny transgender identity until a set age.
  • Evidence suggests that many children with gender issues will revert to identifying as a member of their biological sex as they become older is based on long debunked studies from Zucker. He saw kids who were gender noncomforming in any way without identifying as trans, he actively tried to discourage them all from being gender noncomforming anyways just in case, and when the kids continued to not identify as trans he passed it off as saying most grow out of being trans.

  In the first three paragraphs, they've misgendered the teenager and questioned the school supporting him, they've tried to appeal to authority (the psychiatrist, unnamed) to recommend disrespecting him, whitewashed the form of conversion therapy they recommended for him, and presented misleading information about how many trans kids "desist". These are factual inaccuracies and promotion, in their own voice, of FRINGE nonsense. Your Friendly Neighborhood Sociologist ⚧ Ⓐ ( talk) 23:19, 9 May 2024 (UTC) reply

  I know this a contentious topic, and I’m not trying to engage in any meta-debates about this, but does misgendering equate to source unreliability? The way a newspaper decides to use gendered pronouns is more of a matter of editorial preference/style. When Chelsea Manning announced their transition, CNN, the Christian Science Monitor, ABC News, and the Washington Post all used different pronouns to refer to Manning [58]. And if we’re going to deprecate the Telegraph for misgendering, we would need to do the same for the Associated Press [59], NY Times [60], and CNN [61]. Dr. Swag Lord ( talk) 02:23, 10 May 2024 (UTC) reply

  Considering that those article about the AP, NYT, and CNN are all about them issuing corrections for incorrect pronouns, I think your example undermines your own point.

  Like, I don't think this is the strongest point here either, which is why I didn't lead with it, but the reality of trans people is enough of a fact that we were able to form a clearly sourced consensus around the first line of trans woman, A trans woman (short for transgender woman) is a woman who was assigned male at birth. That it's politically controversial in some circles doesn't mean that reliable sources have no opinion on the issue: the effectiveness of COVID vaccines is also politically controversial in some circles but we don't tip-toe around that. Loki ( talk) 03:10, 10 May 2024 (UTC) reply

  I just used those examples because they were really easy to find. The reality is misgendering in the media is quite common ( see) and I doubt most outlets issue corrections. I don’t think I disagree with your last two points? Sources make political claims all the time. But the effectiveness of the Covid vaccine is purely a medically-based claim (even if some political partisan sources disagree with consensus). However, to say something like “transgender people deserve X” or “transgender people don’t deserve X” are purely political claims that we are allowed to insert (with proper attribution) into WP. Dr. Swag Lord ( talk) 04:04, 10 May 2024 (UTC) reply

  However, to say something like “transgender people deserve X” or “transgender people don’t deserve X” are purely political claims that we are allowed to insert (with proper attribution) into WP.

  There is an overwhelming medical consensus that conversion therapy does not work and is harmful. Whether or not it works is not a political claim, it is a medical one. Same for the claim "the majority of trans kids grow out of it" - FRINGE.

  The Telegraph discussing a type of conversion therapy, framing it as neutral while not accurately describing how it works, and presenting debunked statistics to make it look like the majority of transgender people detransition is flat out medical misinformation, not a purely political claim.

  Even if we ignore the fact that the Telegraph, through misgendering, consistently shows hostility and an open lack of respect for a demographic - the FRINGE misinformation remains. It's as if they consistently said the earth is flat in their own voice while interviewing members of the flat earth society and introducing them only as scientists Your Friendly Neighborhood Sociologist ⚧ Ⓐ ( talk) 16:44, 10 May 2024 (UTC) reply

  I wasn’t making a reference to conversion therapy at all. That is absolutely a medical claim. Before you were saying that Thoughtful Therapists were the ones pro-conversion therapy. Now the Telegraph is explicitly pro-conversion therapy? Regardless, if the Telegraph is pro- or anti-conversion therapy that wouldn’t be relevant for us per MEDRS. Dr. Swag Lord ( talk) 18:27, 10 May 2024 (UTC) reply

  Sorry, you want evidence that this RS is unreliable. They are completely whitewashing conversion therapy with the "watchful waiting" angle and going against medical consensus. Whilst we would never use the telegraph for medical claims per MedRS that doesn't mean a source going against medical consensus isn't notable. What would you think of this was instead promoting antivax theories. LunaHasArrived ( talk) 18:35, 10 May 2024 (UTC) reply

  Yes to both, though the telegraph is a little more discreet - here I laid out Thoughtful Therapists' ties to conversion therapy and FRINGE lobbying. In the above comments, I was referring to an article in the Telegraph where they present a form of conversion therapy as a neutral therapy, give a false definition, and present debunked statistics (ie, the majority of trans kids "desist") to support its efficacy.

  Regardless, if the Telegraph is pro- or anti-conversion therapy that wouldn’t be relevant for us per MEDRS. - Yes and no. If a paper routinely targets a minority and often (but not always) uses pseudoscience to do so, and publishes hundreds of articles a day on the topic, there is a clear reliability issue in general.

  What is the goalpost for unreliability, or even an acknowledgement of bias? If it's not enough they've been known to target a minority population for over 40 years, if it's not enough they still openly fearmonger about the minority, if it's not enough they routinely turn to groups known for attacking that minority with pseudoscience and in the courts for quotes and present them as neutral, and it's not enough they present medical misinformation about the minority on a regular basis - how far do they have to go before we acknowledge they are unreliable on the issue (or, at the barest euphemistic minimum, biased) Your Friendly Neighborhood Sociologist ⚧ Ⓐ ( talk) 18:55, 10 May 2024 (UTC) reply

  Whatever your opinion about misgendering and source reliability here, one has to admit that factual inaccuracies and promoting fringe theories about conversion therapy has to count towards source unreliability. LunaHasArrived ( talk) 18:39, 10 May 2024 (UTC) reply

• A past discussion can be found here (from late 2022/early 2023). That outcome was pretty clear, but it wasn’t a great RfC either. Do you think that it is probable that reopening it could plausibly change the outcome? FortunateSons ( talk) 11:07, 9 May 2024 (UTC) reply
• Just as a note, even the Telegraph's defenders concede that it's strongly biased - but per WP:BIASED, when citing a biased source we must make its bias clear, ie. if we're in agreement that the Telegraph has an anti-trans bias (one that is not obvious from its name), then we must at a bare minimum require that it be given inline attribution that specifically makes that bias clear. People IMHO often forget about this aspect of WP:BIASED; but we cannot present them as a neutral source of information. Given how frequently and aggressively it tends to get cited in this topic area, it might be worth coming up with a standard attribution (though, also, WP:BIASED sources of course shouldn't be used in a lopsided manner, per WP:BALANCE; if we're in agreement that it's biased then that means we ought to avoid sections or articles cited overwhelmingly to them or to sources that share their bias, something that I don't think we're doing currently.) -- Aquillion ( talk) 13:10, 9 May 2024 (UTC) reply

  Just noting that I’m not convinced it is biased, rather than just having a different POV from some other sources.

  I also think you misread WP:BIASED; it says inline attribution may be required, not that it is. BilledMammal ( talk) 13:16, 9 May 2024 (UTC) reply

  Does the word bias have some other distinct meaning for you here? Remsense 诉 13:18, 9 May 2024 (UTC) reply

  If we’re going to interpret "having a POV" as "having a bias", and attribute inline on that basis, then we’re going to have to consider virtually every source on this topic as biased and attribute inline. I don’t think that would be useful. BilledMammal ( talk) 13:25, 9 May 2024 (UTC) reply

  Every source is biased. I'm not convinced myself that the Telegraph is biased to the degree to require attribution in all cases. Remsense 诉 13:33, 9 May 2024 (UTC) reply

  1) It's not policy (or even guidance) that we must attribute information from a biased source. We can use common sense and editorial judgement to extract wikivoice-grade factual information even from biased sources. I refer to my comment in the RFE/RL thread about how bias works in practice: not (usually) through publishing outright fabrications, but by being selective about what is reported. We need to be careful when handling biased sources, but all sources are biased in contentious topics (none moreso than this one), and we have to work with that.

  2) Is this actually a real problem on enwiki? Sections or articles on trans topics cited overwhelmingly to The Telegraph? Barnards.tar.gz ( talk) 15:09, 9 May 2024 (UTC) reply

Yes, it's a real problem. Mermaids (charity), for instance, still has an entire section devoted to a piece from the Telegraph and a response to it. -- Aquillion ( talk) 17:03, 9 May 2024 (UTC) reply

That doesn't look problematic at all. The Telegraph instigated an investigation into Mermaids which led to an investigation by the Charity Commission (thus demonstrating that it wasn't just some fabricated nonsense), and as the following sections demonstrate, this was widely reported on in many sources including the Guardian, the BBC, The Times, and Pink News. We use multiple sources in those sections and we seem to have had no trouble extracting factual statements and quotes from these sources, despite The Telegraph's bias and despite Pink News's equal and opposite bias. This is how it's meant to work. Barnards.tar.gz ( talk) 13:42, 11 May 2024 (UTC) reply

• From loki's records, I don't get the impression that it's just bias that is the problem. Consistently misrepresenting a guy with no medical background as some kind of expert witness seems like it goes beyond bias to me, as does failing to do due diligence on what is very obviously a hoax story. Correcting the record when you make a mistake is obviously fine and even a sign of a good editorial process that cares about getting things right. Correcting the record because you failed to verify your story before hitting post, however, does not qualify for that kind of understanding. If a news source posts stories without verifying what the people involved in those stories have to say about it, that news organisation is acting as a glorified content mill, and we don't treat content mills as reliable. That aside, I don't see how an obvious bias isn't an issue for a "paper of record". I don't think this needs deprecation or anything, but I do think there are some major risks to using this paper uncritically on LGBT issues. ---- Licks-rocks ( talk) 15:57, 9 May 2024 (UTC) reply

• The Telegraph is a news source that has long shown its unreliability in this topic area, purposefully putting out misinformation and false claims and rarely retracting them. And even their retractions are more in the line of "group said this isn't true, but..." with always the indication that the false thing could still be true. It's the same sort of nonsense that the Daily Mail has long pulled with their misinformation. It's just that, in this case, rather than doing that to anything political like the Daily Mail does, we have The Telegraph doing that specifically to LGBT topics and having done so for decades. They are one of the definitive UK pieces of misinformation media when it comes to LGBT subject matter and are willfully misinformative on the topic to suit their agenda. (And, as usual, the defenders of this anti-LGBT media show up relatively quickly, much like the defenders of sources like Fox News and Breitbart did when those were up for consideration.) Silver seren ^C 15:45, 9 May 2024 (UTC) reply
• Yes, the Telegraph has major form for printing stuff like this which is aimed at transphobes (I know we're supposed to call them "gender-critical" these days, but we don't call racists "skin colour critical", so sod that). Now, if it was just biased reporting, that's one thing, but there is genuine misinformation here, much like the issue that the paper has with climate change. Repeating obvious nonsense is misinformation, even if you do a Daily Mail and print a correction in 8pt font at the bottom of Page 25 three weeks later. Black Kite (talk) 17:18, 9 May 2024 (UTC) reply

  I agree entirely. And there is the question of WP:DUE. The only reason we would ever need the Telegraph as a source is to reflect the increasingly fringe opinions of transphobes. Why bother? Transphobic opinions are not worth including in a neutral encyclopedia except as a description of transphobic views. Simonm223 ( talk) 17:41, 9 May 2024 (UTC) reply

  This is also a strong point. WP:BESTSOURCES should guide us away from a biased newspaper and toward citing academic sources that represent medical/sociological/historical/etc. consensuses. I am aware some editors have said The Telegraph simply has a 'different POV'. But I would hazard that if this 'different POV' entails The Telegraph frequently framing coverage of trans topics in an alarmist way that stokes opposition to the mainstream academic consensus on the legitimacy of trans experience and healthcare, then The Telegraph is not the best source for the topic and its coverage will often be undue. And I think that in the case of The Telegraph, the matter has gotten to the point that it so muddles fact and fiction it is more useful to the project to consider the source generally unreliable for the topic area. Hydrangeans ( she/her | talk | edits) 18:32, 9 May 2024 (UTC) reply

  I do think a lot of this thread is indicative of the contempt many Wikipedia editors have for humanities and social sciences as academic disciplines. Like, sure, there's an evident and obvious academic consensus among sociologists, psychologists and academic social workers about issues like gender affirming care, sure, transphobic academics in the space, like Jordan Peterson, have career trajectories very similar to other WP:PROFRINGE academics like parapsychologists, but, have you considered that a newspaper thinks this is alarming? Totally worthy of use as a counter-balance source. Just like we need to cite Uri Gellar as an expert in telekinesis. Simonm223 ( talk) 01:28, 10 May 2024 (UTC) reply

• I'm very reluctant to state any source is unreliable on the basis of our independent analysis of the accuracy or inaccuracy of its stories, as opposed to the analysis of RS on the accuracy of inaccuracy of its stories. Content analysis is a methodical activity that requires adequate sampling (generally, a stratified sample of two constructed weeks for every six months of content is considered a best practice for daily newspapers) and a process of independent coding. That type of research is outside the capability of a Wikipedia noticeboard discussion. In a previous comment Dr. Swag Lord explained that, since the Telegraph is a newspaper of record, we need high quality sources affirming it's not a RS, a position with which I'd tend to agree. Chetsford ( talk) 08:11, 10 May 2024 (UTC) reply

  Remember:original research done to determine source reliability is very explicitly the exemption to WP:OR, we can in fact as users do our own research as part of determining whether a source is reliable, that research is even required! It's part of your due diligence as an editor under WP:RS. The relevant sections for this discussion are WP:CONTEXTMATTERS and WP:CONTEXTFACTS, which states that source reliability can vary depending on topic and a bunch of other factors. Neither "paper of record" nor "quality press" are qualifications that get special treatment in Wikipedia policy. -- Licks-rocks ( talk) 11:26, 10 May 2024 (UTC) reply

"original research done to determine source reliability is very explicitly the exemption to WP:OR, we can in fact as users do our own research" I'm well aware. And, similarly, there's also no proscription on an editor expecting a second editor engaged in source evaluative OR to meet some minimal standard of research quality. And convenience sampling articles for a cross-source lexical comparison is the shoddiest kind of research. Chetsford ( talk) 15:38, 10 May 2024 (UTC) reply

We're a collaborative volunteer project, so if you feel the amount of research done is unsatisfactory, and you have something to contribute in that regard, you should absolutely feel free to. That said, I think it's also a bit unfair for you to expect one guy to do an entire PhD in Telegraphonics when that is well beyond the amount of effort this board normally operates on. And judging by your comments to loki below, I'm not even exaggerating about the PhD part. -- Licks-rocks ( talk) 16:35, 10 May 2024 (UTC) reply

"if you feel the amount of research done is unsatisfactory, and you have something to contribute in that regard, you should absolutely feel free to" It's not my responsibility to prove your position. "I think it's also a bit unfair for you to expect one guy to do an entire PhD in Telegraphonics" Simple solution is point to what RS say. If no RS support your position and you want me to rely exclusively on internet user "Lick Rocks" original research then, yes, I will expect it meets a reasonable quality standard. Sorry! Chetsford ( talk) 17:20, 10 May 2024 (UTC) reply

This whole "paper of record" argument is no more valid here than it would be to argue that this article would be an appropriate source for an astronomy page. 18:28, 10 May 2024 (UTC) Simonm223 ( talk) 18:28, 10 May 2024 (UTC) reply

Multiple reliable sources have already been provided, though. And again, "what RS say" is not the only standard applicable here. -- Licks-rocks ( talk) 20:29, 10 May 2024 (UTC) reply

Multiple reliable sources have already been provided" ... and most don't say what they're being alleged to say. They're framing studies, not inquiries into the Telegraph's accuracy on baseline facts. Chetsford ( talk) 03:15, 11 May 2024 (UTC) reply

• As documented here, we do have significant secondary coverage of the Telegraph making errors, including a few scholarly sources which examine the whole British media. And plenty of other reliable news sources documenting particular mistakes.

  But also, this has never been how WP:RSN has worked before. In other cases, even for major newsorgs like Fox, simple aggregation of mistakes was enough. It's very rare that scholarship will call out a newsorg like this, so the fact that we do have some sources doing it is somewhat exceptional all by itself. Loki ( talk) 11:56, 10 May 2024 (UTC) reply

I read the first two studies which are fairly rote, paint-by-numbers, comparative analyses of second order agenda setting in media outlets; the kind that every media studies PhD grad produces as their first journal article. I have no basis on which to doubt their accuracy, however, neither of them make the conclusion the Telegraph is inaccurate or unreliable. Rather, they merely count and compare the presence of specific frame packages which is a different question entirely. As deductive framing studies, they both are disciplinarily grounded in the constructed nature of social reality which posits the total absence of objective reality. To use framing studies to try to categorize outlets at RSN would then require we make an original conclusion that there is objective reality. And, once we do that, we've invalidated the usability of the very studies we're trying to source. Chetsford ( talk) 16:01, 10 May 2024 (UTC) reply

• As Chetsford explained, the linked academic studies do not question the general reliability of the Telegraph and other British media. I have also looked at the articles you have listed under “Secondary Coverage”. Practically are all PinkNews articles getting comments from pro-trans people about how awful a Telegraph article is—does that seem a wee bit familiar to you? So is it fine when PinkNews does it but not the Telegraph??
• Also re: It's very rare that scholarship will call out a newsorg like this —it’s really not. Look over Breitbart News, The Grayzone, Natural News, Palmer Report, InfoWars, OpIndia, etc. Do you notice the depth of ultra-strong academic studies calling out those sources—in clear terms—for their utter nonsense? Could you provide a similar compilation of academic sources for the Telegraph?

Dr. Swag Lord ( talk) 19:33, 10 May 2024 (UTC) reply

I can't see how 4/8 sources being from pink news counts as "almost all". The other sources are: ipso, CNN, the guardian and vox. As for point 2, perhaps make comparison to other large news corporations older than 25 years for an alt comparison. Also remember UK libel law could be influenceful here. LunaHasArrived ( talk) 19:42, 10 May 2024 (UTC) reply

CNN, the guardian, and Vox all relate to the Times—not the telegraph (if we’re going to deprecate the Times too we would really need a separate discussion for that). I guess more comparable examples would be Fox News, daily mail, and Sputnik. Dr. Swag Lord ( talk) 20:28, 10 May 2024 (UTC) reply

This paper outlines selective quotations and dubious press standards in how they handled Kathleen Stock, arguing they helped spread misinformation [62], here's one on how they were providing "evidence" used to support section 28 [63], here's a thesis that extensively covers the Telegraph's promotion of negative stereotypes and myths about trans people [64], here's a paper on IPSO's standards for discrimination being lax when applied to demographics instead of individuals [65], here's another noting how the telegraph frames trans people in negative terms [66], here's another (in italian) comparing independent media to papers such as the Telegraph which push negative stereotypes about trans people [67], here's another commenting on their stereotyping of trans people [68]

These were found from the first two pages of google scholar results for "transgender" AND "daily telegraph" and are varyingly weighty. There are about 1,800 results, from sampling a few pages it seems to be 1/3 about their bias/misinformation/negative stereotyping of trans people, 1/3 about them doing that to LGBT people in general, and 1/3 just happening to cite or mention the Telegraph. IE, in not acknowledging the Telegraph's unreliability (or at least, open bias against a demographic), we are actively ignoring the majority of scholarly sources on the topic. Your Friendly Neighborhood Sociologist ⚧ Ⓐ ( talk) 20:20, 10 May 2024 (UTC) reply

I just read the Liverpool thesis. As with the other studies presented, it never makes the case of the Telegraph publishing erroneous information, it merely notes frame packages and ruminates on the frame effects of those packages. Outlets aren't unreliable because they produce different frame packages from the social consensus. They're unreliable because they propagate erroneous baseline facts. The arguments against the Telegraph here seem to be mixing up the two. Chetsford ( talk) 03:15, 11 May 2024 (UTC) reply

Thank you for providing new sources to look at. I looked at a couple of them and I'm afraid you either misinterpreted the study or it has nothing to do with the topic of reliability

1. This study: This has nothing to with reliability. All it's saying is the phrase "trans activist" may be used in a negative context when referring to trans people. The study uses this Telegraph opinion piece as an example. That's it.

2. This study: So a footnote in this study states that a Telegraph headline was inaccurate about Allison Bailey "winning" her case (it turns out she did not). You can find more information from the IPSO complaint. But as the IPSO complaint notes, the Telegraph "identified the headline error within 30 minutes and amended it promptly prior to any complaint being received...the Committee appreciated that the publication had recognised the error almost immediately...The correction which was published – and the subsequent proposal to publish a homepage reference to the correction – clearly put the correct position on record, and was offered promptly and with due prominence". So 1) we don't consider headlines accurate anyways and 2) the Telegraph fixed their mistake within 30 minutes. People, news sources engaging in basic error-correction is a hallmark of a reliable source.

3. This Master's thesis: This quotes Labor MP Allan Roberts (politician) saying Conservative Members used papers like the Telegraph and Evening Standard to support the clause. If this is true or not is not relevant. The media will frequently announce their support or disproval of various laws, bills, parties, and candidates. This does not make the source unreliable--even if the proposed law is abhorrent (see: Presentism (historical analysis).

4. Liverpool Thesis. It seems like Chetsford has already disputed this source.

5. This article. Please note that this is actually an opinion piece--hence "Viewpoint" on the top--but no matter. It doesn't actually state the Telegraph spread misinformation. It says: I want to consider Stock as a totemic figure for a trans-hostile media, and discuss the way her case has been used to spread misinformation around universities, and trans people". Dr. Swag Lord ( talk) 21:12, 11 May 2024 (UTC) reply

Why would that be "outside the capability of a Wikipedia noticeboard discussion"? Such discussion originally determined that The Telegraph is generally reliable, and they can likewise determine that this is no longer the case. Cortador ( talk) 06:21, 13 May 2024 (UTC) reply

I feel like looking at the "There's more" really gives a far more comprehensive view of the issue than just what's posted here. I believe the Telegraph should be deprecated on GENSEX topics. Snokalok ( talk) 12:58, 10 May 2024 (UTC) reply

Yeah, but there's so much more that I felt it would be not as impactful to list everything, so I tried to only list the handful of strongest examples. That may have been a mistake. Loki ( talk) 15:34, 10 May 2024 (UTC) reply

• I do not see any compelling evidence to remove The Telegraph as WP:RS generally or for transgender related topics as per the last RfC [69]. It is longstanding reliable newspaper and a newspaper of record in the UK. Yes it is biased, but that is completely allowed per WP:BIASEDSOURCES. The three specific things highlighted in the start of the discussion do not indicate factual reliablity, but bias. In the first case, Tele reported on the leaked audio / video and months later a report came out by ofsted saying the culture of the school was fine. In the second case, regarding James Esses it seems they just say he is the co-founder of the organisation. In the third case, it just appears to be simply bias. Regards  Spy-cicle💥  ^Talk? 18:59, 10 May 2024 (UTC) reply
• Is this going to be an RfC at some point? I don't think RSP is going to change without one, and honestly I'd probably save my energy looking into it unless and until there is one. I would also suggest to OP that only one outlet be considered at a time (since the userpage you link refers to two), since if both are done together, I think there will be a lot of confusion, and realistically one is probably worse than the other. Also, more generally about the discussion above, any criticisms of the form "they covered X topic in a slanted way" and not squarely about false facts are best left out since (1) one biased source's facts can be combined with other biased sources' facts for a well-rounded article and (2) this argument usually takes up a lot of space and convinces few. If the bias extends to stating outright falsehoods, then it's a serious problem and we should be squarely focused on that. Crossroads ^-talk- 00:32, 11 May 2024 (UTC) reply
• I don't think that the suggestion here is in any way outlandish. The Telegraph has clearly gone far beyond simply being a biased source in the normal, legitimate, sense. A Tory broadsheet paper would traditionally be biased towards the concerns and opinions of the Conservative Party while remaining firmly grounded in truth when covering factual matters. The Telegraph has lost that grounding on this subject. It has printed many stories about trans people, and related issues, that turned out to be substantially untrue. It has done this enough times that this, at best, shows a complete lack of interest in whether those stories were correct. It opens a very reasonable suspicion that they might well have been printed knowing them to be false.

For me, the "litterbox" stories look like evidence of bad faith. How does a national newspaper print stories that could have been debunked as obvious meme based hoaxes with as little as a 20 second Google search? I'm just a private individual and I've done more research before pressing the Retweet button! They have staff employed to check this stuff! Sure, reliable Sources can be hoaxed. The fake Hitler Diaries prove that. These are rare events typically leading to a tightening of fact checking procedures to prevent further embarrassment. They are not day-to-day happenings, yet the Telegraph keep on printing this stuff and not retracting it. There is credulity and there is reckless indifference to truth. I detect the latter in the Telegraph's recent behaviour.

I don't see how we can continue to consider them reliable on LGBT or gender issues. -- DanielRigal ( talk) 01:55, 11 May 2024 (UTC) reply

• I don't see this as sufficient to make the source unreliable for the topic in general. It seems at least some of the pushback comes from sources that have taken claims out of context. It may be valid to say a specific story is not reliable but to say the paper as a whole is unreliable on the topic as a whole hasn't been sufficiently supported. Springee ( talk) 03:26, 11 May 2024 (UTC) reply

• The evidence presented here makes it clear that The Telegraph should be considered unreliable for transgender-related topics. Skyshifter talk 13:50, 11 May 2024 (UTC) reply

It's clear that it has gone beyond bias in this topic and in to unreliable. Most notably whencer they talk about children they seem to promote fringe medical ideas about what's happening, including whitewash conversion therapy or claims about the Cass review that I would get laughed at for putting in the article. LunaHasArrived ( talk) 15:00, 11 May 2024 (UTC) reply

• Loki is correct here - I wasn't aware of the Telegraph being reliable or unreliable on this topic, but looking through their exhaustive research has convinced me. As another editor said, it goes beyond opinion and bias, because there's a lot of flat-out misinformation there. The Telegraph should be considered unreliable on any transgender-related topics, broadly construed. Fred Zepelin ( talk) 15:13, 11 May 2024 (UTC) reply

• Most of the evidence indicates bias rather than reliability (like calling someone trans activists or "rarely mak[ing] it clear that James Esses is not and has never been a therapist." If we're going to have an RfC I'd recommend the initiator to focus on the examples that clearly demonstrate the unreliability. I've re-read the paragraph about the cat girl twice and did not understand what exactly the newspaper said that turned out to be false. Alaexis _¿question? 21:27, 11 May 2024 (UTC) reply

  Honestly, the complaint that I was a bit vague about what they said appears to be fair considering you weren't the only person who was confused. Does this list of quotes where they directly claim a student identified as a cat make it more clear? Or are you instead not satisfied that this claim was sufficiently proven false? Loki ( talk) 21:39, 11 May 2024 (UTC) reply

  Was the Telegraph’s initial reporting really that different from the rest of the media?:

  • A 13-year-old girl was reportedly called "despicable" by her own teacher on Friday after she began questioning how her classmate could identify as a cat at a Church of England school. [70]
  • The conversation, secretly recorded and posted on TikTok, appears to show a teacher defending a pupil’s right to self-identify as a cat, while two other pupils vehemently disagree with her. [71]
  • A teacher at an East Sussex school called a student’s opinion ‘despicable’ in a discussion about a classmate’s claim that she ‘identifies as a cat’. [72]

  The Telegraph later did make it clear that according to the school, no student identified as a feline (quotes are up above somewhere). Dr. Swag Lord ( talk) 22:31, 11 May 2024 (UTC) reply

  The first one is clearly relying on the Telegraph's reporting. The second and third one both make it clear that they're not saying the student identifies as a cat in their publication's own voice. All three are minor local publications that reported this story once.

  Compare to other big name publications:

  • The Guardian's earliest article on the topic puts the denial front and center.
  • Tbe BBC barely reported on the controversy at all. The only mention of it I can find is this review of what other papers are reporting on, where they make it clear that it's the Telegraph that's saying a pupil identified as a cat.
  • Even the Times, no stranger to anti-trans bias itself, reported the denial in clear terms in their second article on the subject. (Though their first was admittedly not great, it's still better than any of the Telegraph's five articles on the same subject.)

  Again, the Telegraph reported this fake story five times, hasn't corrected or retracted any of the articles, and even attempted to contradict the school's denial. Loki ( talk) 04:24, 12 May 2024 (UTC) reply

  Thanks for providing the quotes. I think that your version of the events ("a student compared another student identifying as trans to identifying as a cat to score a rhetorical point") is likely to be true. I wouldn't say that the it's "proven", since essentially we have the school's statement versus anonymous "girls and their parents" with whom the Telegraph supposedly spoke.

  Having listened to the recording, I guess one could have interpreted it the way they did it, but as a major newspaper they should've investigated the story properly rather than rushing to print a sensationalised story.

  One more question, has the Telegraph's coverage of this particular incident been used on Wikipedia? I'm asking since the deprecation would only be necessary if the normal mechanisms and the editorial discretion have been insufficient. Alaexis _¿question? 08:36, 12 May 2024 (UTC) reply

How many angels can meow on the head of a pin? I really don't think the precise number matters -- it's preposterous to imagine that we have only two options here, with one being "they're biased which means that their claims are factually incorrect" and the other being "their claims are factually correct which means they aren't biased". Neither of these claims really make any sense. Can't we just put up a post-it note somewhere saying that they're somewhat biased on the issue and move on with our lives?

Parenthetically, it may be noted for the record that there is a Wikipediocracy topic about this thread. jp× g 🗯️ 01:04, 12 May 2024 (UTC) reply

I was actually thinking of proposing an amendment to its WP:RSP entry to read something like: Some editors believe The Telegraph is biased or opinionated for matters relating to transgender rights and LGBT topics. Statements may need attribution and considered for WP:DUEWEIGHT. We could also include another sentence to remind editors that the Telegraph shouldn’t be used for anything remotely relating to medical claims, as per MEDRS. Dr. Swag Lord ( talk) 01:26, 12 May 2024 (UTC) reply

I think that it's good to acknowledge their bias on the issue but I also separately think their bias is so extreme they often report clear falsehoods about trans topics. I've already listed what I think is a clear example of them breathlessly reporting a falsehood every day for five straight days without ever doing basic fact-checking like asking the school if it's true. And also while apparently making up other related falsehoods in the process with zero evidence.

And this is very much not the only example, only the most egregious. there's several cases in the evidence page I linked where they say things that are either clearly false or very dubious, and many more cases where they solicit clear falsehoods from an anti-trans activist they frame as some sort of expert.

Like, if this was just about bias, I could have gone with a lot of other papers. The reason this is only about the Telegraph is that it was clear after even a relatively small amount of background research that the Telegraph specifically is way worse on this than even other papers with a similar bias. Loki ( talk) 04:38, 12 May 2024 (UTC) reply

• I'd like to have the Telegraph regarded as generally unreliable on trans issues. The paper has totally lost the plot on this matter. There's a great inverview with Jon Ronson, in the Guardian which says this:

His remedy may sound a bit old-fashioned to some, but it involves reasserting the importance of some reportorial values that are under threat. “The fact that ideology-led nonfiction storytelling is happening everywhere feels worrying, because a society that stops caring about facts is a society where anything can happen. I think the way out of it is to treat people as complicated grey areas, rather than magnificent heroes or sickening villains. And to stick to the nuanced truth, rather than flattening it to make ideological points.”

He’s quick to add a qualification: “That doesn’t mean I’m against activist journalism – it’s obviously done a lot of good. But the old rules of journalism – evidence, fairness – still need to apply.”

I don't think that on trans issues, the Telegraph demonstrates any of the reportorial values of evidence, fairness and fact checking that we require of a "reliable source". For us editors dealing with a complex multi-faceted report like the Cass Review, we need sources that "stick to the nuanced truth".

More generally, I think Wikipedia has a problem when newspapers are used to determine WP:WEIGHT and WP:BALANCE. We get a bunch of dubious stories published by an extreme press (think, the WPATH eunuch story, or the cat litter story above, or the scare about breast binders being child abuse) while more neutral press simply don't report these nonsense stories at all. We can't weigh shit on one side of the scale and thin air on the other side of the scale and claim we're being neutral. If anyone has ideas for a solution, let me know, but I think there's a danger Wikipedia ends up pushing misinformation and being non-neutral because we haven't figured out how to balance this kind of problem journalism. -- Colin° ^Talk 11:18, 12 May 2024 (UTC) reply

• I'm glad we're actually discussing this properly instead of the thought-terminating cliche of "it's reliable because it always has been". As has been pointed out, the Telegraph has had a reputation for bias so strong as to call into question its reliability for, well, half a century. Given the issue has now been a matter of actual academic analysis, I'd go so far as to put the majority of British traditional broadsheet media as "additional considerations apply" when it comes to GENSEX — that's what that category is there for, after all – but as far as the Telegraph goes, it's plainly unreliable in this topic area. Sceptre ( talk) 18:55, 12 May 2024 (UTC) reply
• I think the threshold for a note of deprication for the telegraph as a reliable source on trans issues has been more than exceeded, and this discussion shows a lack of respect for the social sciences. Transgender care is largely a settled science, especially for adults. If the telegraph was doing this for vaccinations, we'd swiftly deprecate it. I would support a motion to deprecate. However - I would note that the telegraph is generally reliable on all other coverage. Carlp941 ( talk) 01:50, 12 May 2024 (UTC) reply

• Reading through the examples and sources in this discussion, I come to the conclusion that the source is not reliable for the topic area. At the very least, it's biased to the point that its coverage would be undue in most instances, i.e. it covers incidents and minor controversies that other reputable publications do not. -- K.e.coffman ( talk) 19:33, 12 May 2024 (UTC) reply
• The evidence presented is convicing - The Telegraph is uneliable on trans issues, appears to have a lack of editorial oversight, either through negligence or deliberately, and presents fringe voices as authorative. I support marking The Telegraph as unreliable regarding trans topics. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cortador ( talk • contribs) 06:19, 13 May 2024 (UTC) reply
• From what I've seen I would support "no consensus on reliability" or "extra considerations apply" or something like that for the Telegraph's coverage of this topic area. I think some of their reporting on this topic is already not reliable according to WP:MEDRS. Excluding that, their reporting on this topic area seems questionable but maybe sometimes usable. -- Tristario ( talk) 10:16, 13 May 2024 (UTC) reply

In order for you to see that we would require a properly formatted RfC, which this isn't. You can't vote "no consensus", it is a summary of users' consensus. The last time this happened, there was a clear consensus for "Reliable". Boynamedsue ( talk) 16:03, 13 May 2024 (UTC) reply

this is WP:RFCBEFORE, so it makes sense to discuss what a desired or expected outcome would be. -- Licks-rocks ( talk) 18:35, 13 May 2024 (UTC) reply

I think this is a contentious topic that requires the best quality sources, and its most technical aspects should be covered by WP:MEDRS. While I think that the Telegraph is on the whole a generally reliable source (stronger on international issues, weaker on UK politics), I think we would lose absolutely nothing by avoiding ever using it as a source on trans-related issues, or indeed on gender and sexuality issues more broadly, per the evidence presented here by Loki and the arguments of Hydrangeans and others. BobFromBrockley ( talk) 18:05, 13 May 2024 (UTC) reply

• I think this evidence is strong enough to justify downgrading The Telegraph on trans topics. Colin also makes a great point about WP:WEIGHT, though I don't really see any realistic solution to that, beyond exercising our editorial judgment and arguing things out on talk pages. DFlhb ( talk) 11:23, 14 May 2024 (UTC) reply

  I'd agree. Hell, they're currently going on a bender over David Campanale trying to define his homophobia as Christian values, and then putting out desperate warnings about how "Christians are now the most despised minority in Britain". They're downright tabloid in their coverage of LGBT issues. This is a clear case of "reliable on most subjects, not on certain specific ones", though. Adam Cuerden ^{( talk)}_{Has about 8.8% of all FPs.} 12:28, 16 May 2024 (UTC) reply

• It seems odd anyone serious would consult a newspaper on "trans issues", at all. Surely, there is a body of academic literature on "trans issues", even the politics around it, per WP:CONTEXT. Alanscottwalker ( talk) 16:19, 18 May 2024 (UTC) reply

I agree that the issue is BIAS, not RS. While some publications may print fake stories to promoted their bias, the more typical way is in the choice of stories or which facts and opinions to report. Note also that headlines and opinion pieces cannot be used as rs. And when a source attributes a claim made, it is not making the claim itself, nor should Wikipedia articles.

Furthermore, news organizations are reliable sources for news only and not for analysis of news or social sciences. By its nature, news reporting will contain inaccuracies.

The way to deal with BIAS is to ensure that the facts and opinions presented in articles are done so in proportion to rs. A story that only appears in the Telegraph would therefore lack weight for inclusion in any major article.

TFD ( talk) 16:58, 18 May 2024 (UTC) reply

• I have no particular love for the bias of The Telegraph, but I would like to see, as a counterbalance, a list of factually accurate and significant stories on this subject that are principally sourced to The Telegraph.

That is: what would we lose? I'm fine with saying use with care, especially with spin and phrasing, and favour better sources wherever possible, but nowhere near "generally unreliable".

I take issue with this description of the catgender fiasco:

What appears to have happened is that a student compared another student identifying as trans to identifying as a cat to score a rhetorical point.

The story is that audio emerged of a student being called despicable by a teacher in the classroom for saying it was ridiculous to say someone could identify as a cat and that you can't actually change sex.

The Telegraph misreported it, consistently, as about an actual student identifying as a cat, and the "debunkings" focused on the fact that no-one actually identified as a cat, and claims and counterclaims and ridiculous school inspections escalated from there. I think a plague on everyone's house on this particular story, which reflects badly on all the supplied sources, none of whom gave a decent account. Void if removed ( talk) 12:39, 23 May 2024 (UTC) reply

@ Void if removed the Telegraph reported the cat story as though it were factual news, where the whole truth was unimportant (or tossed out the window along the lines of it being too good a story for its readers). What "debunking" occurred, didn't AFAIK feature as news reporting. There may well be opinion columns about how awful the Telegraph or how stupid the people who believed the cat story were, and various blogs and podcasts, and maybe some of them got aspects wrong or misled in some way. But the important thing is that the kind of article we rely on as a source just avoided the cat story for the steaming turd it was.

More generally, it appears the Telegraph has a problem with "fact-checking and accuracy" for any topic in which its journalists are campaigning with zealotry. Another example is cycling. See 52mph in a 20 zone a claim featuring in bold red on their front page and continued in the article here. The subheading "Lycra louts are creating death traps all over Britain". The reality ( source), which the Telegraph won't tell you, is a pedestrian is killed on average every single day by a vehicle. So many that it isn't even news. But a pedestrian being killed by a cyclist is so rare, it is news for days. Spot any comparison with trans women and violent men and how they are reported by some press? That sub-heading is screaming out to me "Wikipedia, treat this newspaper for the tabloid trash it is". Many pointed out that 52mph is faster than Olympic athletes achieve in a velodrome. The correction at the bottom of the amended article states that they took the data, which is user-generated by Strata wearers, on trust. The point is that nobody on the Telegraph fact checked the story before publishing and sticking it on the banner of their front page. They only amended it because of a loud campaign ridiculing them. Nobody on the Telegraph is interested in the bigger cause of road deaths, which their readers are told is caused by lycra louts on cycles. I think that's a serious problem for Wikipedia to take the paper seriously on anything remotely controversial.

You ask "what would we lose". I don't suspect an awful lot. If something is genuinely important, it tends to be covered elsewhere. It's the weight it offers some editors, who then insist that reliable sources are covering it so it must be included. I'm sure there are lots of "factually accurate and significant stories" that appear solely in the Daily Mail or the Sun or the Daily Mirror. There's enough news in the world that journalists don't have to invent or mislead with everything they write. -- Colin° ^Talk 13:40, 23 May 2024 (UTC) reply

Sure, my preference is for basically any other source - I just think that "generally unreliable" is too strong, and precludes too many uses. I would go for "additional considerations apply", and advise caution on gender issues if the Telegraph is the only source covering it, but to be honest, I think a general rule on this topic - which so often is riven with social media drama and catgender nonsense - is if it doesn't have two sources, it probably isn't due.

As for what we lose, IIRC The Telegraph broke the story that GIDS suppressed negative evidence, which was part of the chain of events that ultimately led to The Cass Review. Just a quick look at old pages and back in 2021 they were the sole citation on the GIDS page that there had been resignations over the standards of care.

I think to come to a conclusion of "generally unreliable" means looking at a broader sampling of their coverage and not just cherry-picking all the worst ones. They throw a ton at the wall - what's the ratio of reliable to unreliable?

And even then, going through all the examples on the user page at the top, I just find most are entirely arguable. Saying people with Klinefelters or Jacobs syndrome are still male is just true, I don't see the objection. Getting quotes from activist groups and charities the author doesn't like does not make them unreliable. This article is described as suspicious - but why? Hannah Barnes covered this in the New Statesman, and the letter is here. There's no factual inaccuracy here, nothing that would lead me to say this is unreliable as regards the facts.

I think that the objection seems to often be that they are covering it at all plus their general culture war framing, and maybe there's a point sometimes (ie, they trumpet culture war cat puffery for weeks), but not always (they provided coverage of clinical whistleblowers when the Guardian did not).

And frankly, I have to say I'm not aware of any GENSEX article which is massively skewed by an overrepresentation of singly-sourced Telegraph coverage, so what problem is this seeking to solve? Void if removed ( talk) 14:45, 23 May 2024 (UTC) reply

• The Telegraph does seem to have a very strong bias on a number of things which has stepped over into propaganda territory, it is getting more like Fox news. I think it should have no consensus on general reliability - that people should be somewhat cautious using it. I'd only make it yellow at RSP because I think we need to keep a decent spread of opinions about, but we definitely need to at least attribute it for a number of things rather than just treat it as reporting reliably. NadVolum ( talk) 13:02, 23 May 2024 (UTC) reply

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

open-std.org [73] [74] hosts many of the draft standards and proposals, but these are not authoritative. You could easily replace almost all refs to cppreference with refs to the draft standards based on skimming the pages in question.

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

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

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

@ Aaron Liu: All behaviour of valid C++ programs should be defined in the standard (or at least defined as implementation-defined or undefined). Please check out [75] which is the subpage of open-std with the draft standards for C++. For C, they can be found here: [76] It is not necessary to cite facts about the language itself to anything other than the standard because the language is defined in the standard. cppreference doesn't cite anything because it is implicitly cited to the specification.

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

Note that for what it's worth cppreference does sometimes cite the standard explicitly. See [77]. Typically, pages about C have references while pages about C++ don't though there are some rare exceptions. Nickps ( talk) 10:32, 20 May 2024 (UTC) reply

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

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

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

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

Hi there, wondering if 4chan archives such as 4plebs.org can be used as primary sources in certain situations, such as citing a post related to an incident (ex. the votehillary.com incident) with another source (in this case, a government document linking to said post) backing it up? It may seem tight, but I think having a consensus on it could be valuable.

I'm requesting these auto-archiving services to have a consensus because the original archive page, containing archives to many, many, 4chan posts was excluded around 2015.

Thanks, LOLHWAT ( talk) 20:12, 13 May 2024 (UTC) reply

WHy would RS not cover something? Slatersteven ( talk) 20:18, 13 May 2024 (UTC) reply

I was just asking for consensus on these specific situatuons; that's all. LOLHWAT ( talk) 20:19, 13 May 2024 (UTC) reply

Then I would say a blanket no, as there is no way of judging how accurate such are, ar they wp:sps for example? Slatersteven ( talk) 20:25, 13 May 2024 (UTC) reply

When there's a reference to a secondary source, I consider it good practice to also reference the primary source, and that's what I usually do. That is to say

According to the Scowmpka Argus-Picayune,^[1] Billy Bob made a post on his blog, www.BillyIsTehEpicSmexeh.com,^[2] confessing to being the Streetlamp Crapper of summer '89 and asking where he could go apologize. Mayor Haskins met with Billy Bob later that week, and they agreed that Billy would go around on Sundays and help change lightbulbs.^[1]

This is how I'd cite this: citation 1 would be the Argus-Picayune article, and citation 2 would be the post on BillyIsTehEpicSmexeh.com, which is obviously not a reliable source, but it's the actual post that this paragraph is talking about, so why not link people to it so they can go read it? It's WP:ABOUTSELF.

I think that if there's some relevant a link to foolz or archive.moe or fuuka or whatever would be justified if we have a RS saying "the thing was posted on 4chan in a thread saying blah blah blah". jp× g 🗯️ 17:34, 14 May 2024 (UTC) reply

Well said. LOLHWAT ( talk) 17:40, 14 May 2024 (UTC) reply

4plebs is used in a number of academic sources [78] [79] [80] [81], so seems to be a fine primary source in the limited cases where including one would be appropriate Tristario ( talk) 12:42, 16 May 2024 (UTC) reply

Strenuously disagree. WP:PRIMARY is clear that primary sources used in this manner must be "reliably published", which 4chan is not; using it in this manner would be WP:OR. Academic sources are permitted to perform OR; we are not, and can therefore only cover things posted on 4chan, at all, in circumstances where actually reliable sources have noted it. Cases where 4chan is cited as the sole source to establish that something was said on 4chan should be removed on sight. -- Aquillion ( talk) 17:15, 18 May 2024 (UTC) reply

I wasn't suggesting 4chan be used as a sole source, the kind of context I was thinking of was where it's been noted by a reliable source, as given in the example above. Tristario ( talk) 03:21, 19 May 2024 (UTC) reply

I agree with this usage. A 4chan post is definitionally a reliable source for the contents of the post, and 4plebs in my experience has been a reliable source for replicating the contents of 4chan. A "generally unreliable" source can have exceptions to its unreliability, and this is a fair one to make. Chess ( talk) (please mention me on reply) 18:46, 24 May 2024 (UTC) reply

See Primary, secondary and tertiary sources. Dege31 ( talk) 12:51, 16 May 2024 (UTC) reply

This is lacking in context, to the point where we can't really answer it without knowing what that context is. If the claim is about a living person, then a self-published sourced and a court document likely aren't sufficient. If it's simply that the votehillary.com incident happened? Maybe, but like Slatersteven, I have to wonder why there aren't better reliable, secondary, independent sources?

I see that the editor has courtesy vanished, so I don't anticipate an answer to this—but adding my own $0.02 in case someone points to this thread later on. Woodroar ( talk) 17:00, 18 May 2024 (UTC) reply

• No, for several reasons. WP:PRIMARY does not exempt a source from WP:RS; as PRIMARY says, only primary sources that have been reputably published can be used on Wikipedia. Therefore, 4chan archives can't be used as a primary source to say eg. "X was posted on 4Chan"; that would be textbook unacceptable WP:OR. And none of the exceptions to RS in this case can apply; WP:ABOUTSELF and WP:SELFPUB require that there be no reasonable doubts as to the authenticity of the author, but 4chan doesn't provide any sort of verification (or, normally, accounts), so even if someone is claiming to be a particular person talking solely about themselves or a subject-matter expert, that wouldn't be enough. -- Aquillion ( talk) 17:11, 18 May 2024 (UTC) reply

  It's pretty common to use a primary source to supplement information discussed in a secondary source, I disagree that that is "textbook OR". Just as it's not OR to grab someone's birthday from a primary source it's also not OR to grab e.g. a thread title (see example below) from a primary source which is in this case a faithful reproduction of a 4chan thread.

  And I don't understand what you mean regarding the "authenticity of the author" part here, everyone on 4chan is anonymous, we wouldn't be using those posts as sources for the belief of some specific author, we'd be using those posts as a source for the existence/content of the posts. I think the relevant question would be whether we believe those archives are faithful reproductions of the original threads, which given their use by academics and journalists seems likely. Endwise ( talk) 05:29, 22 May 2024 (UTC) reply

Okay, here is an example. Miles Routledge, who famously posted through the fall of Kabul, has a sentence in his article like this: Routledge said in an August 14 4chan post that "the intelligence agencies show that the capital may be taken over in 30 days; however not in a few days [...] Also if I get proven wrong and die, edit a laughing soundtrack over my posts. It'll be funny I think." This is currently cited to this Daily Dot article -- here I think it is obviously fine to link to an archive of the post. jp× g 🗯️ 00:48, 19 May 2024 (UTC) reply

Yes, linking to an archive of a post in situations like that seems fair Tristario ( talk) 03:23, 19 May 2024 (UTC) reply

Here's another example, of an article which currently cites an archive of a 4chan post: Superpermutation#Lower bounds, or the Haruhi problem. It links to a warosu archive of a 4chan thread where a novel mathematical discovery was made. This warosu archive is actually linked to in a reliable secondary source ( this article in The Verge). In this case the archive is just used to supply the title of the thread, and basically as a courtesy link for people who want to view the primary source. The secondary source verifies that the thread is authentic, so I think this is another case where it is fine. Endwise ( talk) 05:10, 22 May 2024 (UTC) reply

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lots going on here:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

---

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

+It's relatively trivially replaced.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A simple statement of problems with the source itself

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

( edit conflict)Again, the footnote is simply pointing to the essay itself, not to the words as Wikipedia must. As for Mary Leng, yes, that is the philosopher Mary Leng, [82], who is not just some random woman on the internet. Victoria ( tk) 16:32, 16 May 2024 (UTC) reply

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Is this in the source?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A proposal

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Other sources take issue with the paper:

• Transphobia has become a point of fixation for the birthright-speech community,30–32,36,37 which has once again attempted to disguise bigotry under a patina of academic freedom.3 [83]
• Autistic-trans people’s existence is also frequently deployed to undermine transgender healthcare (e.g., Hruz 2020; Suissa and Sullivan 2021).[ https://bulletin.appliedtransstudies.org/article/1/1-2/7/

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lushootseed Press is the publishing wing of the Lushootseed Research non-profit, an organization dedicated to researching and funding Lushootseed research in the area. I don't know why @ SounderBruce keeps saying that they are "not a reliable publisher." [84] They were founded by Vi Hilbert, one of the most prominent Lushootseed scholars (and native speaker of Lushootseed) in the late 1900s-early 2000s. They have published the work of experts including PhD's Dr. Jay Miller (anthropologist) and Dr. Zalmai Zahir (who has been previously established as a reliable source on this board) and the aformentioned Vi Hilbert/taqʷšəbluʔ. They publish textbooks on Lushootseed instruction, the most widely-used Lushootseed dictionary (through University of Washington Press), non-fiction informational books, memoirs, and collections of auto-biographical recordings. Even if they are "self published" by the publisher, the authors (Jay Miller and Vi Hilbert most commonly) are experts in their fields. PersusjCP ( talk) 19:06, 19 May 2024 (UTC) reply

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

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

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

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

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

As for Lushootseed Press, there are some paywalls I can't get past, but from what I gather it was associated with Vi Hilbert, a respected authority on the Lushootseed language. A book published by Lushootseed Press is cited in this article published in the academic journal Anthropological Linguistics. According to this article in the Journal of Northwest Anthropology (pp. 33–34), some Lushootseed Press publications are reprint editions of books originally published by the University of Washington, like Lushootseed: The Language of the Skagit, Nisqually, and Other Tribes of Puget Sound—An Introduction (1995; originally by University of Washington in 1976). Vi Hibert and Lushootseed Press seem to be cited in numerous academic publications about language and indigenous studies: [85] [86] [87] [88] [89] [90] [91], among others. The claim Lushootseed is not a reliable publisher would require further explanation to persuade me. Hydrangeans ( she/her | talk | edits) 06:46, 20 May 2024 (UTC) reply

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In addition, the Burke Museum used ƛ̕ax̌ʷadis in their Waterlines map of Lushootseed place names around Seattle. [92] I understand the debate around Kenmore source because yeah, it is a very small and niche publication, but there is no real reason why Puget Sound Geography isn't reliable. And BTW thanks for your citiation tips. I have tried citing PSG in a few different ways because the physical book is about half his original and half the modern-day authors' writings and notes. For example, the "Bainbridge Island" section (pp.222-230) starts with a map of the names on the island made by the researchers but corresponding to marks made on Waterman's original maps iirc, then is followed by 3 pages of transcriptions of the original notes by Waterman, which is followed by five pages of tables from the editors where they outline the location, old and new orthographies, and etymology/translation. I will go ahead and replace the "author" with "editor" in my notes and add Waterman :) PersusjCP ( talk) 19:51, 25 May 2024 (UTC) reply

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Link

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There are 13 uses of the site in articles, [93] mostly split between forum posts (which are not reliable and should be removed) and hosted documents (most of which are for 'The Races of Europe' by Carleton S. Coon (1939) originally published by Macmillan).
The second lot needs to be handled one by one, from what I can see Coon's work is being used appropriately (sections dealing with historical perspectives). The apricity link could be swapped out for another courtesy link if one was available. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested « @» ° ∆t° 10:37, 23 May 2024 (UTC) reply

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

yeah, they are more likely to hallucinate sources.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

for this

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

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

Ones to Watch is written blog-style and is operated by Live Nation Entertainment, a major player in US music and entertainment. An example article is [94] for Yuno Miles. Is that enough to count for reliability and notability for now? Aaron Liu ( talk) 20:56, 24 May 2024 (UTC) reply

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

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

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

who would lie about what college they went to

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

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

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

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