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Lambgoat.com is a news website for mainly metal and hardcore bands, and has been used used on some articles as a reference for information. It posts news regularly although author names are hidden. I've looked for information about who runs the site and who's its authors are but I have found nothing. I personally believe that it is an unreliable source of information however I need the opinions of others. SilentDan297 talk 16:37, 20 February 2014 (UTC)
Another thing about this website that I've noticed is reviews, and as Precision123 said, it may be useful small and simple claims, but what about opinions? SilentDan297 talk 21:44, 20 February 2014 (UTC)
Source Paul Kengor. Dupes: How America's Adversaries Have Manipulated Progressives for a Century. Wilmington, DE: Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI) Books (2010), pp. 226-227. The material is also provided on Ronald and Allis Radosh, Red Star Over Hollywood. I prefer to use Kengor's book since it is more popular and presumably easier to verify.
Article Hollywood blacklist Section and paragraph -- The blacklist begins. The paragraph will follow the one starting with "The other ten refused ..."
Content The following is needed to make the discussion of the hearing more neutral. It currently leaves out important information.
During the hearing, the committee presented evidence against members of the Hollywood Ten. This included communist party registration rolls, Daily Worker articles, New Masses bylines, party application forms, and membership card numbers. Lauren Bacall said that when the Committee for the First Amendment flew to Washington “We didn’t realize until much later that we were being used to some degree by the Unfriendly Ten. As a result, Bacall and her fellow committee members were involved in something “we knew nothing about.” Bogart angrily complained to Danny Kaye that members of the Committee for the First Amendment had “sold me out.” The California state legislature determined that the Committee for the First Amendment was a communist front. It was not, since most of its members were non-communist liberals who had been fooled by the communists. Members of the Committee for the First Amendment saw their reputation damaged and had to explain that they were not communists.
Thanks for your time. LesLein ( talk) 23:41, 24 February 2014 (UTC)
I would appreciate some views on the validity of the website Made of Chalk, which has been used to support some assertions at Heart (band). It looks like a self published site, but it has a journalistic type form. The page in question is a review here. The statement being supported is "Throughout history Heart has been labeled as Hard Rock, Folk, Easy Listening, Heavy Metal, and Adult Contemporary, many times demonstrating two or more of these styles on the same album. Their album title Dog And Butterfly was a symbol of their sometimes contradictory styles, with the "Dog" side of the album focusing on hard rock tunes and the "Butterfly" side made up of acoustic folk music". The site has named reviewers, but does not seem to give any information about them, or about the site.-- SabreBD ( talk) 20:43, 23 February 2014 (UTC)
Is this website reliable? I've been planning to nominate Trouble (Natalia Kills album) in a near future and I do not know if I should keep mentions to Idolator or remove them completely. Prism △ 19:05, 19 February 2014 (UTC)
This paper [6] is extensively used on our article on the Mosuo, an article that has suffered from NPOV problems. I don't find it cited in Google Books or Google Scholar. I'm inclined to remove it as well as other material fact tagged over a year ago, but would like other opinions first. I can't see a justification for using it. Dougweller ( talk) 11:26, 26 February 2014 (UTC)
Is used as a source for a number of strong claims at Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. The query is as to whether it is a primary source and not a secondary one, and whether quotes taken from it are usable in the article where they might possibly be taken from a primary document out of full context. Thanks. Collect ( talk) 16:22, 26 February 2014 (UTC)
Another home remedy, tea tree oil, also is not recommended because topical application often leads to local irritation and inflammation, allergic contact eczema, and allergic contact dermatitis as a result of eucalyptol and limonene content (Therapeutic Research Center, 2011). The National Pediculosis Association (1997-2009) also strongly recommends avoiding tea tree oil because pure tea tree oil is contraindicated in neonates, infants, and pregnant women because of a lack of information regarding safety and efficacy.
and
Avoid unproven remedies such as use of mayonnaise, petrolatum jelly, and tea tree oil.
It appears eczema is a worse result than head lice per that article? I would fer shure have thought "seizures and deaths" were a teeny bit worse than head lice. AFAICT, the major issue is that there is insufficient money to be made to warrant full scale medical studies about "possible contraindications" of a home remedy but that, IMHO, is insufficient to label it as "pseudoscience" either. Collect ( talk) 12:23, 22 February 2014 (UTC)
I don't see any evidence that the National Pediculosis Association should be regarded as a reliable source on claims of efficacy or safety of medical treatments. Is it known that the National Pediculosis Association isn't being run by a concerned parent with no medical training, who is operating the organization out of her or his garage? The fact that the article by Eisenhower and associates cites anything that the National Pediculosis Association says raises questions about the reliability of the article. (I have not read the Eisenhower article, so I don't know the context in which the statement was made.) Incidentally, a specific statement warning against the use of tea tree oil for treatment of head lice in children seems out of place in the lede of a general article on tea tree oil – but that discussion is not really appropriate for this noticeboard. Dezastru ( talk) 14:38, 24 February 2014 (UTC)
At least, that's what Deborah Altschuler of the National Pediculosis Association says. Ms. Altschuler started the group 15 years ago when her daughter was sent home from nursery school with lice and the message we don't have families like that here. Since then, she has been trying to de-stigmatize lice, and to get people to behave rationally when they find them. Her group sells a $14.95 comb, which she believes is the only thing that will stop an infestation: picking out the eggs, or nits, one by one. She warns that many pesticide shampoos are dangerous. And she says that if people are serious about nitpicking, they really don't need to go into housekeeping overdrive.
A year after the American Academy of Pediatrics called on schools to end no-nits policies that keep children being treated for head lice out of classes, little has changed except the intensity of the debate, according to an article published yesterday in The American Journal of Nursing.... The academy recommends treatment with a cream rinse, sold commercially as Nix, which contains permethrin. The nursing journal article said those recommendations had been vigorously contested over the last year by members of the National Pediculosis Association, which opposes chemical treatments in favor of the use of special combs to find and remove nits.
Many of us come naturally to advocacy in our role as parents. The activist in public health, however, can face a peculiar set of problems.... This is where the activist evolves into educator, support system and collector of personal accounts - sometimes appalling - of families and individuals who have suffered from unnecessary, unsuccessful or excessive chemical treatments. The activist must do what disinterested experts will not do: investigate the origin, nature, methods and limits of knowledge in Pediculosis and its management. The activist must also seek allies - often the school nurses, occasionally the press, and sometimes (in cases where a child has suffered grievous harm), the lawyers - when there is no mechanism in place to exchange insights, experience and research. With the exception of an occasional accolade for all the hard work that goes into being an activist, I generally find myself resenting the term.... It is the activist's particular challenge to educate the public in spite of the relative indifference to this issue on the part of the professional communities the public turns to for advice.
Here's one from the American Cancer Society http://www.cancer.org/treatment/treatmentsandsideeffects/complementaryandalternativemedicine/herbsvitaminsandminerals/tea-tree-oil Formerly 98 ( talk) 03:06, 27 February 2014 (UTC)
I apologise for this not being an inquiry relating to a specific article but the nature of the query really is a general one.
The Jats are well-covered by uninvolved reliable sources. However, our articles also frequently cite G. C. Dwivedi's The Jats: Their Role in the Mughal Empire and in particular a version edited by Vir Singh (author). From what I've been able to piece together, Dwivedi appears to be/have been a Jat himself; Vir Singh is director of Surajmal Memorial Education Society and also a Jat. I can't find out much about them in terms of their academic expertise as historians and worry greatly that they're promoting the deeds of the Jat people, as is common among caste-affiliated "pseudo-histories". The book itself barely registers as a citation on GBooks (and then only in poor sources) and it doesn't register at all at JSTOR. Note that Suraj Mal is a Jat hero and that the primary purpose of the SMES seems to be technical education rather than something more attuned to the subject matter of the book.
I'm worried here that we're dealing with crusading amateur historians/caste hagiographers. Can anyone find anything more that might give a general indication of reliability or otherwise for statements of historical fact? - Sitush ( talk) 14:16, 27 February 2014 (UTC)
I removed material from Global surveillance disclosures (2013–present) and Thomas de Maizière that was cited to the German tabloid Bild. [12] [13]. My rationale for deletion is:
Another editor restored the material noting that Reuters picked up the story. However, Reuters is not verifying or independently reporting on this - they're just repeating Bild's claim. [15]. I would appreciate comments on whether this material should be included from editors who are familiar with German media. GabrielF ( talk) 18:11, 25 February 2014 (UTC)
As a practicing journalist, I would warn against any blanket assumptions or accusations when it comes to the reliability of a published source. Some are better, some worse, nobody is perfect. The famed “editorial control” more and more becomes a matter of mythology. When newspapers have to save – and they all have to – the unproductive and bothersome fact checker usually is first not to be replaced when retirement comes.
Having said that, the fact that BILD (not unlike other media elsewhere) sometimes can have a cavalier attitude towards sourcing should not be used to delete a whole passage from WP. I have checked the deleted passage named in the diff, and in my professional opinion, there is very little a newsdesk editor would object to. To wit:
“Quoting an unnamed NSA official in Germany, Bild am Sonntag reported that whilst President Obama's order to stop spying on Merkel was being obeyed, the focus had shifted to bugging other leading government and business figures including Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere, a close confidant of Merkel. Caitlin Hayden, a security adviser to President Obama, was quoted in the newspaper report as saying, "The US has made clear it gathers intelligence in exactly the same way as any other states." [1] [2]”
To sum it up, the reliability or unreliability of BILD, or rather BamS, is not what needs to be weighed. The only fact that needs to be sourced is: Did BamS report that the NSA shifted its focus from the German Chancellor to the rows behind her? And the answer appears to be yes.
Should the passage be removed because BILD's reliablility is in doubt? The answer appears to be no. BsBsBs ( talk) 15:01, 27 February 2014 (UTC)
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[nisanyansozluk.com] is being used as a source in Tarkhan in a discussion about the meaning of the word. [16] His biography at tr.wiki [17] says he started by writing about computing, then travel books. He's written Etymological Dictionary of Contemporary Turkish and I presume it's the website version that is being used as a source. Dougweller ( talk) 16:03, 23 February 2014 (UTC)
Is this person reliable for the same arcticle? Leland Liu Rogers — Translator. Indiana University, graduate student in Mongolian Studies. Leland is a fluent speaker of Mongolian, and has over two years' cumulative experience in. And this is the work I would like to refer to. -- Mrliebeip ( talk) 15:32, 28 February 2014 (UTC)
Removal of various citations because they are "blacklisted". I think CBR is a reliable source for computer history. Searching Google Books for "Computer Business Review" finds [19] some 800 citations to their stories. Someone not using his real name ( talk) 14:35, 1 March 2014 (UTC)
Article on Eli Wallach. Is All Movie Guide [23] a reliable source for info about his life and career? NY Times seems to think so. [24] Does Wikipedia? Dezastru ( talk) 00:24, 24 February 2014 (UTC)
There is a disagreement on Right Sector and Talk:Right Sector as to whether Right Sector leader, Dmytro Yarosh, should be quoted from a Ukrains’ka Pravda interview using one of two available sources:
Help would be appreciated. - Darouet ( talk) 16:38, 26 February 2014 (UTC)
Here is the original Pravda article, and here is the google translation of that article, instead of the comment. You'll have to scroll down to find the appropriate text. - Darouet ( talk) 16:48, 26 February 2014 (UTC)
There is currently a request for comments at Talk:Pablo Casals in which some users might wish to comment. A large part of the situation concerns establishing the common name of a person from sources outside Wikipedia. Full information is provided on the talk page. 131.111.185.66 ( talk) 21:55, 2 March 2014 (UTC)
Cesar Millan ( | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) is a famous dog trainer but with controversial methods. This has affected the article for years. A section about a campaign against these methods backed by a number of well known organisations such as the RSPCA, Dogs Trust, The World Society for the Protection of Animals, " Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour was removed with an edit summary that it was not a reliable source. https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Cesar_Millan&diff=next&oldid=597205314]. I replaced it as I strongly disagree that it is not a reliable source for the campaign and the views of the sponsoring organisation, and it's been removed again. Here is the press release [25] and here [26] is a page about the sponsoring organisations. User:Dreadstar has brought this up on the talk page, asking if it is an organisation known for fact checking, etc. I don't think that's the point here. The edit itself says "In March 2010, various preeminent UK animal welfare, behaviour, training, canine and veterinary organisations issued a joint statement in which they warned against the dog training techniques used by Cesar Milan: "The organisations believe that the use of such training techniques is not only unacceptable from a welfare perspective, but that this type of approach is not necessary for the modification of dog behaviour." It's been suggested at the talk page that the organisations may not know that their names are being used, ie that the "joint press release" wasn't actually what it claimed to be. I see no reason to think that the website is not telling the truth about this. However, it's hard to find publicity for it in the media. However, I've only found [27] and a statement by one of the participating organisations. [28]. Dougweller ( talk) 06:27, 2 March 2014 (UTC)
Are any of the many online sources cited in this section of the article on Mary Faustina Kowalska reliable (by Wikipedia norms) for the statement, "After a failed attempt to persuade Pope Pius XII to sign a condemnation, Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani at the Holy Office included her works on a list he submitted to the newly elected Pope John XXIII in 1959"?
Although this sounds somewhat like a conspiracy theory, I would not oppose it, if only it is judged to be based on a reliable source. I have discussed it here in the hope that someone (anyone other than the editor who has inserted the statement) would express an opinion. Esoglou ( talk) 07:34, 26 February 2014 (UTC)
The amount of information supporting the “failed attempt” statement is quite substantial, and there is zero evidence to the contrary. I’m confident that there are still many more sources of books, periodicals, information, etc. to be tapped. My next move is to contact all the sources in an effort to compile more verification. I’ll add additional references as they become available. AcuteInsight ( talk) 23:23, 26 February 2014 (UTC)
Just got a tip that there is also a reference to Ottaviani's attempt to get Pope Pius XII to sign a condemnations in "Vatican Secret Diplomacy: Joseph P. Hurley and Pope Pius XII by Charles R. Gallagher, Society of Jesus New England [36]. It's $40, and I'm not buying another book just to have it rejected again. I'm going to try to order it through the library. AcuteInsight ( talk) 03:16, 27 February 2014 (UTC)
Dorje Shugden controversy ( | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) now uses www.dorjeshugdenhistory.org as a source for claiming Shugden was a Dharma Protector. [37] I had removed it saying the website fails RS, but it's been replaced claiming it is a reliable source. What do others think? Dougweller ( talk) 22:18, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
It's there in the quote. What do people think?
Hijiri 88 (
聖
やや) 14:07, 3 March 2014 (UTC)
I just met eleven articles using http://www.notafina.de as a source for various bits and pieces of information. The source has been used in:
Moreover, the score also includes a fourth bagatelle as an encore of the piece to be performed if the pianist wishes, which is marked "Tempo primo" and only includes a sixteenth rest. Citation
(Notafina and another source used to support this content).The work's original German title, Als Jakob erwachte aus dem Schlaf, sah er, daß Gott dagewesen war. Er hat es aber nicht gemerkt (Jacob woke from his sleep and said: Truly the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it. Citation
The composition is mathematically adjusted so that all musicians end the piece together Citation
The set has been published by Schott Music together with Ligeti's Invention for piano, which is put in the middle and which the set is strongly associated with. Citation
The premiere took place in Saarbrücken, with Robert Pappert conducting the Kammerchor Hausen. Citation
Magány, sometimes translated into English as Solitude. Citation
The composition is dedicated to Serge Koussevitzky and his wife, Natalia Koussevitzky and is meant to be a gift for the Koussevitzky Music Foundation in the Library of Congress. Citation
This composition is in one movement and takes three minutes to perform Citation
It is a very quick piece, marked Risoluto, ♩ = 88, and gravitates towards F. Citation
The movement list is as follows: ..... Citation
It was eventually published by Schott Music. Citation
All of these articles were created by the same editor. According to their About us page, Notafina "is a legal download site for sheet music and other digital content". EagerToddler39 ( talk) 22:30, 4 March 2014 (UTC)
I'm not sure if this belongs here or on ANI, since it's clearly a politically-motivated user trying to find any excuse he can to dismiss my sources, but on Talk:Yamanoue no Okura User:Dwy has been claiming that literary scholars such as Donald Keene and Nakanishi Susumu don't qualify as "historians" because they are "literary scholars" instead. I should clarify that by "historians" Dwy is referring to a Japanese word rekishi-gakusha, a term that generally refers to the study of political history, and by "literary scholars" he means kokubun-gakusha. The problem is that the article in question is about a poet who is not notable for any impact he had on politics or the like, and whose name gets only a few passing mentions in the historical records of the time. For this reason, virtually no political historians write about him.
The subject is considered by a vast number of (probably most) literary scholars to have been of Korean ( Baekje) descent, but in the 1970s and 80s this theory was criticized by two political historians based on somewhat non-intuitive readings of ancient texts and one or two of the minor details that are known about him. The theory was defended by several prominent literary historians, and the debate has largely died down since c.1985. Since then, virtually every book and scholarly article covering the subject in detail (with one exception) has said either "Okura was born in Baekje" or "Okura was probably born in Baekje". All of these books and articles are written by "literary scholars" and not "historians".
I interpret this as meaning that the consensus theory is that Okura was probably born in Baekje, but that we probably shouldn't state this in the article until a new general reference work is published that backs this up explicitly. User:Dwy, however, interprets it as "literary scholars say one thing, but historians say another thing". Unfortunately, because this subject is not a significant part of political history, the only political historians who have discussed it in any detail are the very few who oppose the theory on grounds of political history, and the overwhelming majority who (probably) see the theory as something for literary historians to decide amongst themselves have not touched it. This makes it very hard for me to discuss with Dwy, who insists that "no historians accept this theory".
My question here is whether scholars like Nakanishi and Keene count as "historians" for our purposes. Both of them have spent over half a century teaching and writing about the history of Japanese literature (the latter wrote a 4,000+page history of Japanese literature in English [38] [39] [40] [41]), and if scholars who study old literary texts don't count as "historians" then do we throw New Testament scholars like Bart Ehrman out as well? To the best of my knowledge the only "historian" (by Dwy's definition) Ehrman has ever cited in one of his books was a historian of classical Greece and Rome who rejected the historicity of Jesus -- does this mean the article on Jesus should say "literary scholars of the New Testament consider Jesus to have existed, but historians reject this claim"?
Hijiri 88 ( 聖 やや) 01:32, 1 March 2014 (UTC)
It is not very nice of Hijiri 88 to open a discussion here with such a one-sided description of the case, especially when he did not give me any notification or a chance to present my side of story. I am tempted to contradict every point Hijiri 88 made, but it would not be very constructive. So I make the most relevant point only:
As mentioned earlier, [42] the term "historians"(史家) was taken from the words of Susumu Nakanishi himself, 「帰化人の推定について史家の意見を仰いだところ「臣」たることに異議があった」(I asked for the opinion of historian on assuming that he was an immigrant, and they raised objection on the basis of his being "Omi.")(Nakanishi Susumu (1973), “ Yamanoue no Okura”, Kawade Shobo Shinsha, p.45) So it was not actually my synthesis.
By the other scholars who took part in the debate on the Toraijin theory, the opponents were often referred to as something like "scholars of ancient (Japanese) history"
The term "scholars of ancient Japanese history" may therefore work as well. -- Dwy ( talk) 18:27, 3 March 2014 (UTC)
Who said the Cathars worshipped two Gods - their persecutors? (unsigned)
I rather think they only worshipped one of the two -- the second was Satan. Interesting group. Collect ( talk) 20:35, 5 March 2014 (UTC)
I have long been familiar with this website, and have used it as a reference myself in some articles. However, I have since begun to question whether it is a reliable source, given that it has the word blog right in its title, after it was proposed as an addition to Murry Salby (see Talk:Murry_Salby#Protected_edit_request_on_4_March_2014). I would like some feedback as to whether it is a reliable source. The website itself is here. Jinkinson talk to me 04:31, 5 March 2014 (UTC)
The blog's primary problem is that it is specifically "opinion oriented" and specifically implies that "established official IPCC reports are good" and "anyone opposing them is bad." As a result, within any post thereon is unlikely to be any balancing information about the person being written about. I find it interesting that they now appear to post unedited press releases from some companies - I guess they do not have enough material otherwise now? [44] demonstrate the POV pretty clearly. Collect ( talk) 16:43, 5 March 2014 (UTC)
Or are we going to use only high-quality independent, reliable sources? In which case the subject may not meet notability criteria, or would have a two-line article like: "Salby is a climate scientist best known for promoting climate-change skepticism. He was fired from his academic post in 2013. Salby claimed he was fired in retaliation for his skeptical views on climate change, while his university stated that he was fired for failing to meet his academic and teaching obligations." MastCell Talk 17:27, 5 March 2014 (UTC)
There are over 50 articles using famousdiamonds.tripod.com as either an external link (i.e., Samarian spinel, Chalk Emerald, Taylor-Burton Diamond); a general reference ( Pink Star (diamond), Imperial Crown of Russia); and/or as a citable source ( Brown diamonds, Coronation of the Russian monarch, Gabi Tolkowsky). I cannot find anything on the internet that leads me to believe the site's author is an expert gemologist or historian. Is his site actually reliable? 71.234.215.133 ( talk) 20:29, 6 March 2014 (UTC)
For the BLP on George W. Bush is [45] a reliable source for the following statement, specifically as worded: "his favorability ratings among the public have substantially improved since he left office"? Dezastru ( talk) 00:23, 5 March 2014 (UTC)
USAToday (given above) says "notable" for the increase. Would you prefer that term here? I trust the RS nature is not at issue here. Pollingreport lists a change from 26% to 49%, and some other polls (one CBS one, for example) had a low of 19%. Still -- 26 to 49 is "notable" without making any improper surmise (though out of a hundred people, 99+ would find it "substantial:. Collect ( talk) 19:40, 6 March 2014 (UTC) Collect ( talk) 19:40, 6 March 2014 (UTC)
In the third paragraph of the article Homosexuality and Roman Catholicism, is citation of Seattle Catholics Divided On Repealing Gay Marriage a reliable source for the statement:
Leading figures in the Catholic hierarchy, including cardinals and bishops, have sometimes actively campaigned against or encouraged clergy and parishioners to campaign against same-sex marriage
The question is about "cardinals and bishops" (not other leaders) themselves "actively campaigning" (not just encouraging others to campaign). It is claimed that the citation gives support only to a statement such as
In some parts of the United States, Catholic bishops "urged their parishes to host a signature drive" for a referendum against same-sex marriage, and an opponent of this measure said that "Catholic leaders have increasingly campaigned against same-sex marriage".
But this has also been disputed.
This question, together with the broader one whether other supporting sources perhaps exist, has been discussed without conclusion on the article's talk page: here. Perhaps an advance can be made by examining whether this, the one source actually cited, supports or does not support the statement in the article. Esoglou ( talk) 16:29, 6 March 2014 (UTC)
Esoglou seems to have come to RSN hoping that other users will read the article and its sources for him because he can't be arsed to do it himself. The article and its sources are very clear about the large sums of money that the church donated to anti-marriage campaigns, their lobbying against hiring discrimination laws, etc. I have pointed out repeatedly on the article talk page that this material is already adequately cited, and he has flat-out refused to check. – Roscelese ( talk ⋅ contribs) 17:30, 6 March 2014 (UTC)
The cited NPR article does not mention cardinals, so it is not reliable for any statement about cardinals per se. However, the source does say that "Catholic leaders have increasingly campaigned against same-sex marriage in other states. In Minnesota, where it's also on the ballot this fall, bishops there have directed parishes to form committees to advocate the church's position", so it is reliable for a statement that Catholic leaders have campaigned against same-sex marriage. The statement that "Leading figures in the Catholic hierarchy, including cardinals and bishops, have sometimes actively campaigned against or encouraged clergy and parishioners to campaign against same-sex marriage" is clearly true, you just need to search more thoroughly for better sources if you want to include that information, since it is in contention. (And not just Catholic leaders in some parts of the United States; there are sources documenting such efforts by Church leaders in a number of countries.) For information on the US context specifically, you might try searching for reports in catholicnews.com. Dezastru ( talk) 18:34, 6 March 2014 (UTC)
On the Spanish Wikipedia there is an AFD on es:Liceo Mexicano Japonés, a Japanese curriculum school in Mexico. (See the notability standards of the Spanish Wikipedia here: es:Wikipedia:Artículos_sin_relevancia_aparente, which differ from the English Wikipedia) I referred to a passage in a book as an argument that the book has significant content:
WhisperToMe ( talk) 09:02, 5 March 2014 (UTC)
Is www.jazz.com reliable enough to add to Wikipedia:WikiProject Albums/Sources? GabeMc ( talk| contribs) 22:58, 7 March 2014 (UTC)
Dr. Robert Thurman came out with an article yesterday that directly contradicts every claim made by this short film by Nicolas Hague. Thurman also points out facts that are missing in Hague's film, but are present in every academic book. Thurman is a Buddhist scholar, and an expert in the Gelug school. Can we consider Hague's film as a Nonreliable source? Heicth ( talk) 01:18, 7 March 2014 (UTC)
The unreliable short film is currently being used in Wikipedia for these claims, which are rebutted by Thurman and others:
The Tibetan community is divided over Dorje Shugden controversy, evidently in recent days, as local police station has received an unnamed parcel from Singapore bearing the sender's name as Shugden, which contained a DVD and a letter questioning the role of Dalai Lama and the deities in the Tibetan struggle for an autonomous region within China. Shugden is a segment of Tibetan community which follows Dorje Shugden, reportedly a Dharma protector of Sakya Gelug tradition. But it has not been recognized by the Dalai Lama and had [sic] been socially boycotted. Dalai Lama had issued an explicit ban order on this section of practitioners in 1996, stating that they do not comply with the principles of Buddhism. Dorje Shugden practitioners have also been stripped off voting rights, which other Tibetans enjoy.Dezastru ( talk) 17:28, 7 March 2014 (UTC)
Source: [59]
Article: waterboarding
Content: "Is waterboarding a form of torture? No." As per John A. Rizzo.
Glennconti ( talk) 14:50, 6 March 2014 (UTC)
The lead of the waterboarding article says waterboarding is torture. This source says waterboarding is not torture. Is John A. Rizzo a "high quality" source that can be used to restart the debate (which has recurred many times) on whether a less definitive statement like "waterboarding is generally considered to be torture" should be substituted in the lead? Any opinions will be sincerely appreciated. Thank you. Glennconti ( talk) 21:16, 6 March 2014 (UTC)
Is this newspaper reliable? the fact that the article has been primed to say "created with a goal to provide objective information " gives one pause, taglines asserting objectivity are generally signs of the opposite.
Use: It published an obituary of an artist [60] which would help establish the notability if it is an acceptable source.-- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 07:18, 8 March 2014 (UTC)
Dorje Shugden controversy ( | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) and other pages now uses this Aljazeera piece as a source for various claims. I notice several glaring errors, such as the number of Shugden practitioners, not to mention staged purposeful confrontations, slow motion editing to make people seem sinister etc. This is the very definition of a "hit piece". What do you think? Heicth ( talk) 17:04, 3 March 2014 (UTC)
"The figure of four million worshippers for Dorje Shugden is preposterous." There are several other obvious "errors". Furthermore, they don't even mention the murder of 3 people by Shugden cultists that every academic source mentions. Lastly, its an academic fact that China fuels Shugden activity. This was nothing but a "hit piece." Heicth ( talk) 21:36, 3 March 2014 (UTC)
Please take a look at the references in the Robert Hunkins article.
Thanks for taking a look. 71.139.148.125 ( talk) 21:56, 9 March 2014 (UTC)
I have always wondered about this so I feel it is best to ask here what others think. Box office Mojo is actually IMDB. Is this site actually a reliable source for Wikipedia? What about The Numbers is that a reliable source? I can't see where they are getting their information from. Does anyone know if there is an accepted site for these figures?-- Mark Miller ( talk) 04:46, 9 March 2014 (UTC)
In 2014 Wiki-PR launched a new website under the name StatusLabs.com.
"WMF bites the bullet on affiliation and FDC funding, elevates Wikimedia user groups". SignPost. February 12, 2014.
— rybec 13:58, 5 March 2014 (UTC)
Hi, I am in search of references for Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Café Jacques (band). Is a Dutch Progressive Rock Page CD review regarded as a reliable secondary source? The two reviews at the source webpage are evidence that the two albums produced by Café Jacques are covered by a reliable media publisher. This is the means by which I wish to show notability (i.e. the band released two albums with a major record label). I am intending to put two inline citations after the names of the albums in the discography, if that is the right way to approach it. In other words where citations 2 & 3 are now. Thankyou. Have a great day. CaesarsPalaceDude ( talk) 02:55, 10 March 2014 (UTC)
Hi, what i mean to say is Nagavanshi is not one of the Kshatriya Lineage.Also i am saying that the references provided for "Nagavanshi" Lineage in Kshatriya page are not at all reliable. The reference provided are:
^ Omacanda Hāṇḍā. Naga Cults and Traditions in the Western Himalaya, p.251. [1]
Jump up ^ Viyogi, Naval and Ansar. History Of The Later Harappans And Silpakara Movement, p.198 [2]
Jump up ^ Pranab Chandra Roy Choudhury, (1968).< Folk Tales of Bihar, p.63. Sahitya Akademi
Please analyse these references provided in Kshatriyas page with experts & remove that "Nagavanshi" Lineage from Kshatriya page immediately if they are not reliable.Thank You. - 117.200.18.243 ( talk) 08:12, 10 March 2014 (UTC)
I'm wondering if I should add these as articles on Wikipedia or not. 198.228.217.171 ( talk) 18:28, 10 March 2014 (UTC)
A couple of questions:
Other at first sight similar sites:
Any ideas? Fram ( talk) 12:00, 10 March 2014 (UTC)
The book itself is not listed in loc.gov or google books project, however a mention of the book is found here http://books.google.com/books?id=SYUXAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA97&dq=Steward+%26+Barkeeper+Manual&hl=en&sa=X&ei=TPkdU4r-GqeC2QWpoYDoCQ&ved=0CDYQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=Steward%20%26%20Barkeeper%20Manual&f=false in one book, thats it, much less a recipe to base an entire wikipedia page off of. the book in question is called "Steward & Barkeeper's Manual in 1869"
A recipe for a John Collins is featured in the Steward and Barkeeper's Manual of 1869:
Teaspoonful of powdered sugar
The juice of half a lemon
A wine glass of Old Tom Gin
A bottle of plain soda
Shake up, or stir up with ice. Add a slice of lemon peel to finish
^
http://secondgoldenage.com/2012/07/21/collinses-fizzes-difference/
The author of this book along with the author of "imbibe!" David Wondrich who frequently self promotes including on this page several times /info/en/?search=Tom_Collins use sources or references that do not exist or are behind pay walls. Drinkreader ( talk) 18:42, 10 March 2014 (UTC) Drinkreader ( talk) 18:40, 10 March 2014 (UTC)
At the suggestion of my dear friend User:TippyGoomba I seek a determination on the usability of a self-published work by Dr. Robert G. Brown, professor of physics at Duke University, proposed to be used on the Pandeism page. Dr. Brown's CV spells out a history of something more than two dozen publications in peer-reviewed journals in the field of physics, and numerous magazine columns and articles predominately addressed to aspects of information theory. He has, as well, an undergraduate degree in philosophy, though this may be minimally relevant. Pandeism is, naturally, generally a philosophical topic, but Dr. Brown wrote and posted on his university website this article, A Theorem Concerning God, the centerpiece of which is what Dr. Brown calls "The Pandeist Theorem." He therein sets forth a proposition that of all extant theological models, Pandeism is the one best supported by physics, and he goes on to comment as to how Pandeism compares to other theological models (or specific religions) in light of principles of physics. In addressing this issue User:TippyGoomba quotes from WP:UGC, specifically (emphasis theirs):
Here we are not speaking of the use of self-published information as a source about a living person, so only the first line relates to this issue. Specifically, User:TippyGoomba disputes that it at all matters that Dr. Brown is reasonably well-published in the field of physics, when Pandeism is a theological model. I have pointed out that physicists do, as it happens, comment on the viability of theological models in light of scientific knowledge, and TippyGoomba propsed bringing the discussion here. And so I propose it to be proper to reference to a self-published work inasmuch as Dr. Brown therein discusses this theological model within the context of his area of abundantly demonstrable expertise in physics. DeistCosmos ( talk) 19:58, 12 March 2014 (UTC)
I'm currently working on the ITF Men's Circuit article with a hope to one day be able to take an article to WP:FLC, I need sources from a third party and I am wondering whether Coretennis and SteveGTennis would be considered reliable websites for use. Any help is appreciated. Aureez ( Talk) 16:46, 13 March 2014 (UTC)
In Archive 112 there's a discussion on whether or not Cyberbaiting deserves an article or should be part of Cyberbullying. Neither has happened. Sources mentioned way back in the 2012 discussion were [68] [69] [70] [71] [72] [73] [74] [75] [76]. I come to it by means of this article: [77]. It looks like it peaked in usage around then, based on a quick look at Google Books, but it would be nice to have a formalized decision. Thmazing ( talk) 07:10, 14 March 2014 (UTC)
Regarding the source http://www.parliamentlive.tv/Main/Player.aspx?meetingId=14995&player=silverlight&wfs=true which was used in the following edits: First TransPennine Express, Chiltern Railways, British Rail Class 170. My browser (Firefox 27) shows the message "Silverlight does not appear to be correctly installed on this computer." Since this would fail WP:ELNO#EL8 if used as an external link, is it admissible as a ref source? -- Redrose64 ( talk) 15:13, 12 March 2014 (UTC)
{{
cn}}
, or leave them alone? --
Redrose64 (
talk) 19:30, 15 March 2014 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
This website, from the "leader in software and services for family history enthusiasts," was recently used as a source to insert alleged birth names, and date of births on a BLP. No other sources I found were reporting this information. I'm told this is covered by WP:BLPPRIMARY, and should not be used.
Hundreds of Wikipedia articles are using this cite as a reference or external link, (see here).
Should this cite by blocked from use on Wikipedia? Is there some value that is appropriate? Sportfan5000 ( talk) 14:49, 27 February 2014 (UTC)
It is a software company, and of essentially nil value for making any claims of fact. Collect ( talk) 16:22, 27 February 2014 (UTC)
I know WP editors like to paint an entire website with a single brush, but that's not a very good practice. In the case of familytreelegends.com, whether it's a reliable source depends on which records from the site are being cited. The site has digitized books - reference, history, and geography books - that are the same as the books found on Google Books or archive.org. Those should be considered reliable sources. The remainder of the records on the site are indexes of primary sources. Although not primary sources themselves, the method of index creation often leaves a lot to be desired, so the indexes should not be considered reliable. Any family trees found on the site are user-contributed, so they fail WP:SPS (the site hosts, but does not publish the trees), and are not reliable. 71.139.152.78 ( talk) 20:31, 28 February 2014 (UTC)
At http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=2_ZstVBZSfIC&lpg=PA1&pg=PA72#v=onepage&q&f=true Soldiers, Saints, and Scallywags, David Gore, 2009, chapter A Mild Deception, pp 72-79, gives details to the discredit of my great-great-great grandfather, who appears to have invented aristocratic connections for his family and purchased both unrelated portraits (of people with the same surname) and space in books of the time to substantiate the connections. The author seems to have done his homework in this and other historical matters, and the book is recommended by the Guild of one-name studies (of perhaps rather humble academic status, certainly not a certified peer-reviewed publication) at http://www.one-name.org/profiles/mayne.html. It has also been reprinted by the Wiltshire Family History Society, see http://issuu.com/wiltshirefhs/docs/65_-_april_1997.
I am considering using some of this information to point out the deception. Is this source reliable for this purpose? Richard Keatinge ( talk) 12:18, 12 March 2014 (UTC)
In the past couple of years I've watched nearly thirty examples of the kind of TV program the article " Korean drama" covers (K-dramas), and written about them for a book (and movie) log I keep. A few months ago I used all the sources I could find to compile a sort of history of K-dramas, realised it was too much for the log, and adapted it into a "History" section for the article "Korean drama", which is over a third of the article's total length. (Compare my work on a comparable section for " State income tax".)
Since I don't read Korean, I promptly posted to the "Korean popular culture" working group's talk page, noting the existence of the section and my disqualification, and inviting corrections. None have been forthcoming.
Last month I watched a drama that considerably disturbed me, in a way that I then found was reasonably common among anglophone viewers. I added a "Controversy" section to the article " Secret Garden (TV series)" about this, reading as follows:
"Some Western viewers object strongly to scenes in which Kim Joo-won's sexual assaults on Gil Ra-im are portrayed as romantic, and received by her as such. As usual in discussions of media portrayals of sexual assault, other viewers object to these objections; some offer explanations involving traditional Korean gender politics."
The section was promptly removed, ostensibly because its only support was blogs. I responded by creating a section in the talk page about it. (There I speculate that there may be more authoritative sources in Korean, but the specific one I hypothesise has not, in fact, said anything on the subject, at least to judge by web searches.) The blogs cited: Dramabeans recap of episode 13, December 2010 Outside Seoul blog, August 2013.
I have since read a fair amount of what Wikipedia's policies say about reliable sources. I conclude that although it's clearly insane to object to these blogs as self-published sources per se, given that what I'm trying to support is the existence of "objections", the rider about self-published sources as sources about themselves applies: since these objections concern a third party, they can't be cited. (So if I understand correctly, I could cite Dramabeans critiquing itself, but not, as marketers do, quote its reviews of actual dramas. Um. Dramabeans is more or less a blog, certainly a self-published work at least as regards the two main writers, and one of the main sites in English on K-dramas. It's one of the two blogs I cited, the other being a much more typical trivial blog, though one that happens to be well written and well thought out and so forth.) Near as I can tell, even the talk section is impermissible, not that I'm going to be the person to delete it.
It gets worse, though. It now appears that well over 50% of the content of the "History" section of "Korean drama" is also due for removal for lack of reliable sources. ("State income tax" is not comparably vulnerable.) Since the section consists of fifteen paragraphs, I'm not going to go over it in detail here, but such sources include:
1) Blog posts (including the main source cited for TV ratings records, cited as " Top 50 highest-rated TV dramas of all time").
2) Self-published works (including the most historically-inclined source for the years up to 1964, cited as "With S2", a set of five PDFs, for example "Radio Dayz").
4) Dissertations cited without regard to supervision, independent citation, etc. (Ironically, I do know of one citation to one of these, since the later and more useful dissertation, Jeon's, which is quite recent and is my single most important source, cites the earlier and less useful one.)
5) An enthusiast page for the history of a video recorder company.
6) One footnote tries to cite DramaWiki, the other main site in English about K-dramas, which as a wiki is also unacceptable, but Wikipedia blacklists it anyway, for reasons not made remotely clear when editing. (Not this time either.) [1]
7) One footnote even amounts to "Citation needed".
In comparison, only a few of the footnotes cite a published article about early radio in Korea, a published article about K-dramas' exports in the past two decades, and some newspaper articles.
It's worth noting that while there isn't much published scholarship on K-dramas, there is some, and it's primarily, of course, in Korean, with bits and pieces in Japanese, Chinese, and Thai, at least. I've been waiting for months now for access to a recently published history of K-dramas, because I'm hoping it'll have formatted information I can use in related projects not on, or meant for, Wikipedia. So in other words, the information exists - the self-published up-to-1964 work is patently based on research the authors probably didn't do themselves - and exists in what Wikipedia would apparently consider reliable sources, but isn't available in English-language sources.
The Korean page linked to from "Korean drama" as the equivalent article ("대한민국의 텔레비전 드라마" or "%EB%8C%80%ED%95%9C%EB%AF%BC%EA%B5%AD%EC%9D%98_%ED%85%94%EB%A0%88%EB%B9%84%EC%A0%84_%EB%93%9C%EB%9D%BC%EB%A7%88") has an extensive history section, which Google Translate makes mincemeat out of, and which cites no sources at all. I obviously don't know much about Korean Wikipedia's policies, but what I've observed from the pages on individual dramas is that those are low on text (plot summary, reception, production notes) in general, so this section in the overview page is exceptional.
So OK, I have a big and a little concern here. The big concern is that two long documents of presumptive merit (well, I certainly think mine has some!) are vulnerable to deletion not because they can't be done well but because they *haven't* been done well *by Wikipedia's evidence standards* and nobody's stepping forward. The little concern is that an issue that taints not only a drama, but because of similar issues with other dramas and the praise the first drama received, the whole industry, apparently can't be addressed on Wikipedia. (Unless there's Korean feminist scholarship on the subject and I just don't know about it.)
Oh, and one other concern: When I do something that helps the promotion of K-drama, its flaws are ignored. When I do something that hurts the promotion of K-drama, its flaws justify its deletion. Um?
Joe Bernstein joe@sfbooks.com not a registered Wikipedian
[1] Wikipedia has in the past plagiarised DramaWiki (see " Eyes of Dawn" [2]), and frankly should do more of that, since DramaWiki tends to be more reliable within its remit. For example, Wikipedia on " My Lovely Sam Soon" has the ratings agencies backwards; I know this because the Korean TV advertising agency, Kobaco (no longer a monopoly, but was one at this document's date), confirms DramaWiki's version; see http://www.kobaco.co.kr/information/adinfo/UploadFile/%281%29120_%BD%C3%C3%BB%B7%FC%C6%C4%B0%ED%B5%E9%B1%E2.pdf.
[2] Eyes of Dawn is one of the most important dramas in the history of K-drama. It is not an accident that it is (at least as far as I know) the earliest drama available on English-subtitled DVD. Its continued absence from Wikipedia after over six years, while Wikipedia covers literally hundreds of less important dramas, is shameful. I expect to watch it within a couple of months, and would be tempted to address that absence myself, except for this education I'm getting in verifiability.
128.95.223.129 ( talk) 19:37, 10 March 2014 (UTC)
I think you're mistaking my motivations here. I'm not saying "Oh, I see, English Wikipedia is a monolith with consistent standards of evidence, and I'm desperate to get my content to fit those standards". I'm saying "Huh. I'm coming to English Wikipedia with the fruits of a community who work together, and English Wikipedia scorns that community and doesn't want its fruits. Except by stealing them, which it frequently does. Can this be changed, or defended, or is English Wikipedia just irredeemably evil?"
Now, your obvious reply is that I'm reifying English Wikipedia. As the evidence below shows, relatively little plagiarism has been done by Wikipedians in good standing. But the thing is, it has been let stand by Wikipedians in good standing, including the one who zapped my citation of Dramabeans. So either Wikipedians who edit Korean drama articles don't know enough about anglophone resources re K-drama to know that DramaWiki keeps on its front page an explicit request to Wikipedians to kill plagiarisms, or they don't care. And anyway, you're reifying me into a good Wikipedian, so it's only fair that I reify Wikipedia into a bad organisation, or find out why it isn't.
I've watched all or part of thirty K-dramas, of which twenty-four have English Wikipedia articles. Six of these plagiarise DramaWiki today, one having replaced its plagiarism of Dramabeans with a plagiarism of DramaWiki, a different one also plagiarising Dramabeans today. As it happens, I'm not invested enough in DramaWiki to want to learn how to zap all the plagiarisms, especially since that would put the onus on me to write new synopses of these dramas I've watched, and my preferred style for such is more like DramaWiki's than Wikipedia's. My point here isn't about plagiarism, although I certainly think it needs dealing with, but about the dynamics I see as resulting from Wikipedia's stance on verifiability. Just to start with: I found no plagiarisms going the other way. I was sure there'd be at least one in my sample, but no. DramaWiki, which requires registration of participants (I haven't even been able to notify them of this post, as I have Dramabeans), has not to my knowledge copied Wikipedia.
Let me start with the typical English Wikipedia K-drama article. (English Wikipedia now has over 500 of these, per List of South Korean dramas, of which only thirteen concern dramas dated there before 2000. I certainly haven't consulted all of them, but am speaking of those I have.) After the intro there's generally a synopsis or plot summary, often detailed and comprehensively spoiling said plot. Then there's usually either a succinct cast list or a detailed list of characters; the latter often goes with a less substantial synopsis. There are usually, but not always, episode ratings; there may be a soundtrack listing; there may be text about the drama's reception; there may be other stuff. There may or may not be references. (Speaking of which, the latest Wikipedian to edit Korean drama has inserted a wholly unreferenced section about blogs and streaming sites, linking to several of the latter but none of the former, and has inserted a false alert that the entire article, not just my section or his, "does not cite any references". Response to my postings at last, and unsurprisingly, but excessively, hard line.)
We have two plagiarised sites at issue here, which happen to be the two I consider the most useful sites in my ongoing research on the Korean dramas I watch. DramaWiki, the main site plagiarised in my sample, has articles on over 1200 K-dramas (as well as lots of Japanese dramas and dramas in Chinese), including pretty much every K-drama since 2000 and a fair sample of the 1990s; I don't know whether they have any from the 1980s or before yet. DramaWiki articles start with a short info section, comparable to the combination of intro and info box in Wikipedia articles; then comes a synopsis, generally written short and with attention to avoiding spoilers; then there are usually episode ratings for newer dramas, or more limited ratings info for older ones, there may be a soundtrack listing, and there may be other info. Most of the material at a DramaWiki page is factual and difficult to prove plagiarism of, though I have little doubt, given what I've already found, that DramaWiki is the real source for much of this sort of thing at English Wikipedia. I've generally ignored the synopses, because all the dramas I've watched to date are on DVDs, and come with their own teaser synopses; but in fact, the main way people in anglophone countries now experience K-dramas is online streaming, so synopses of this sort are urgently needed, and deserve the care DramaWiki often bestows on them. They are also the easiest things to catch Wikipedians plagiarising. DramaWiki is a sub-site of D-Addicts, whose other main facets are a set of fora, and bittorrent offerings of K-dramas. I assume the latter is illegal, but legal streaming sites advertise on both D-Addicts proper and DramaWiki. Wikipedia blacklists links to DramaWiki - so in other words, the only way Wikipedia encourages people to cite DramaWiki is by stealing! - and I don't know whether this is because D-Addicts' bittorrent offering is against the law or because of some specific misbehaviour. DramaWiki's info pages do not link to pages offering downloads, at D-Addicts or elsewhere, unlike the inferior pages at hancinema.net which English Wikipedia often links to. Anyway, to get to DramaWiki's page on each drama listed below, go to wiki dot d-addicts dot com slash the title indicated, with the usual substitutions such as _ for space.
I've already described Dramabeans recaps, but I left something out: Sometimes the recap of episode one begins with a set of character sketches. Now, I've actually found an example of Wikipedia plagiarising Dramabeans for a synopsis, but it's an uphill battle; the other example of plagiarism I've found instead uses the character sketches. To get to these go to Dramabeans, follow the link to "Recaps", find the title indicated, and go to the recap for its episode one. Dramabeans doesn't hyperventilate about Wikipedia plagiarism as DramaWiki does - well, it has far less reason to - but does have a copyright notice on each page.
Introductions complete, here's my evidence, in considerable detail:
1. Mary Stayed Out All Night plagiarises DramaWiki on Mary Stayed Out All Night, whose DVD title is Marry Me, Mary! This is the third drama I watched (I'm going mostly in that order) and one of my favourites, although pretty much everyone at Dramabeans considers it absolutely terrible.
The synopsis contributed to DramaWiki by Hanjae on 23 Nov 2010 reads:
<removed for copyright issues - but problem fixed>
Since Wikipedia has such a hostile attitude to DramaWiki, I figured y'all might not trust its use of wiki software, so I checked each page in question at archive.org, whose 31 Dec 2010 copy shows this synopsis.
On 9 Dec 2011, Sunuraju, who appears to be a Wikipedian in good standing, created the Wikipedia page. The synopsis included in that first version:
<removed for copyright issues - but problem fixed>
Wikipedia's synopsis now reads:
<removed for copyright issues - but problem fixed>
2. Prosecutor Princess plagiarises DramaWiki on Prosecutor Princess, whose DVD title is the same. This is the twelfth drama I watched, and girlfriday of Dramabeans liked it more than I did.
The synopsis contributed to DramaWiki by Hanjae on 17 Feb 2010 reads:
<removed for copyright issues - but problem fixed>
Archive.org's 9 Mar 2010 copy shows this synopsis.
On 1 May 2010, XChampagne created the Wikipedia page. The synopsis included in that first version:
<removed for copyright issues - but problem fixed>
This is the first example I found (though note Eyes of Dawn) of an actual attempt to stop the plagiarism: Decltype, a Wikipedian in good standing, almost instantly got into an edit war with XChampagne, explicitly because of the copyright violation, and won it after two rounds; there's no further record of XChampagne, whose activity seems to have been confined to this article. However, Darkpiggy put this synopsis back on 22 May 2010. Darkpiggy's activity was confined to two days, and concerned this article and the article about its titular lead, Kim So-yeon.
Wikipedia's synopsis now reads:
3. Becoming a Billionaire incompletely plagiarises DramaWiki on The Birth of the Rich, whose DVD title is Becoming a Billionaire. This is the fourteenth drama I watched, and I moderately liked it; Dramabeans skipped it.
The synopsis whose first sentence Hanjae revised, and whose other sentences Hanjae contributed, on 28 Mar 2010 reads:
<removed for copyright issues - but problem fixed>
Archive.org's 29 Mar 2010 copy shows this synopsis.
The synopsis created by an anonymous Wikipedia editor on 10 Jul 2013 reads:
Note the final sentence. The footnotes point to the same article in two places, which does not include any of this text, and which I'm pretty sure doesn't actually back up much of it either, although I haven't read with care to establish that.
Wikipedia's synopsis now reads:
(In case anyone cares: The testicular cancer / breast cancer dispute is endemic in discussions of this drama. All we know for sure is that he's unwilling to identify the cancer site; he frequently denies that it's breast cancer, but could be lying.)
4. Secret Garden (TV series) plagiarises DramaWiki on Secret Garden, whose DVD title is the same. This is the twenty-ninth drama I watched; although both main writers for Dramabeans castigated the sexual assault scenes as harshly as I could wish, they ended up giving the show favourable ratings over all, despite seeing its flaws clearly; I hated enough aspects of the show (not just the sexual assaults) that saying I hated the show over all is fair. This is the other case in which I've found an attempt to stop the plagiarism.
Hanjae heavily revised the DramaWiki synopsis 23 Nov 2010:
<snipped for copyright reasons>
Bumblelion1018 created the Wikipedia page 3 Dec 2010, too fast for archive.org to capture an intervening copy, with the following synopsis:
<snipped for copyright reasons>
Bumblelion1018 created a page for another K-drama the next month, and then seems to have vanished. On 1 March 2011, administrator VernoWhitney zapped this synopsis as a copyright violation. An anonymous user added it back on 5 May 2011, and it's stayed ever since.
Wikipedia's synopsis now reads:
<snipped for copyright reasons>
5. Gourmet (TV series) plagiarises DramaWiki on Gourmet and, as posted before, DramaWiki's recap of episodes one through four of Gourmet. The DVD title is The Grand Chef. This is the thirtieth drama I'm watching, which I'm finally beginning to enjoy, and which javabeans at Dramabeans thought well of.
The Dramabeans recaps for this series appeared shortly after airdates, beginning 6 Jul 2008 with a post by javabeans including the following character sketches:
<snipped for copyright reasons>
Archive.org's 10 Sep 2008 copy shows this material. I imagine you now see why Wikipedia relatively rarely plagiarises Dramabeans; I'm pretty sure it isn't for lack of desire, just for lack of convenient brevity.
DramaWiki tracked this drama starting long before it aired, and had a placeholder synopsis for much of that time. On 6 Oct 2008 Leimomi considerably revised and expanded the existing synopsis into:
<removed for copyright issues - but problem fixed>
Archive.org's 17 Jan 2009 copy shows this synopsis.
JKSarang, blocked as a sock puppet of InkHeart, created the Wikipedia page 16 Oct 2009 with this synopsis:
<removed for copyright issues - but problem fixed>
69dressings, blocked as a sock puppet of InkHeart, added the following character sketches 21 Nov 2009:
<removed for copyright issues - but problem fixed>
Wikipedia's synopsis now reads:
<removed for copyright issues - but problem fixed>
Wikipedia's character list now reads:
<removed for copyright issues - but problem fixed>
6. Will It Snow For Christmas? used to plagiarise Dramabeans on Will It Snow For Christmas?, until it started plagiarising DramaWiki on Will it Snow at Christmas%3F instead. This is the nineteenth drama I watched, and while javabeans at Dramabeans thought better of it than I did, I thought it on balance good.
The synopsis contributed to DramaWiki by C51236 7 Dec 2009 reads:
<removed for copyright issues - but problem fixed>
Even if archive.org had the necessary granularity, they were thrown off by the question mark in the title until 2011, so they don't verify this.
The synopsis contributed by an anonymous Wikipedia editor on 26 Dec 2009 reads:
<removed for copyright issues - but problem fixed>
Wikipedia's synopsis now reads:
<removed for copyright issues - but problem fixed>
Neither reference supplies this wording, though at least they aren't identical this time.
Now, neither Wikipedia nor DramaWiki *started* with this synopsis. I don't have an exact quote available of the DramaWiki one, but both sites started out with very similar synopses. The first edit to the article at each site involved a separate line, reading "credit to dramabeans". At DramaWiki, the first edit added that line. At Wikipedia, the first edit took that line away. In other words, DramaWiki plagiarised Dramabeans for a little while, and then corrected it; Wikipedia quoted Dramabeans for a little while, and then turned it into plagiarism.
My position is becoming clear. I find the K-drama world remarkably casual about intellectual property. It's true that a major illegal streaming site, dramacrazy, was recently shut down, and another may be in trouble too. But there are plenty of entire dramas on YouTube, some even with English subtitles; soundtracks are more often there than not; Dramabeans is clearly encouraged to use images galore; *video stores* in the US get licenses to produce what amount to legal bootleg copies of currently airing dramas; the list goes on. If javabeans, girlfriday, or the DramaWikians want to get up in arms about this plagiarism, I won't object, but I'm not personally all that interested in leading the charge. What takes my breath away is the CONTEMPT shown by years' worth of plagiarism of these two sites, while simultaneously pretending that Wikipedia is on a pedestal that would be contaminated if it dealt honourably with them: links to Dramabeans are speedily removed (a search the other day found only two in English Wikipedia - though dozens in European Wikipedias), links to DramaWiki barred from getgo.
I understand that no individual I'm addressing here now is in a position to change that, and to the extent that anyone not specifically interested in K-dramas is still reading, they're not even a tiny bit responsible for it. Except that Wikipedia's standards of evidence, which y'all have clearly bought into or you wouldn't be here, more or less ineluctably lead to precisely this sort of situation.
A long time ago I ran the first English-language website on author John Crowley. He found the site interesting and worth his attention. I'm surprised to hear Wikipedia wouldn't have. Around the same time, I got involved in the workings of the Big 8 (Usenet). I was one of the first members of what became the Big 8 Management Board, and am cited along with Jim Riley because the two of us (locked into lots of arguments) did most of the research underlying the historical discussion of the Big-8 Usenet hierarchies. I already knew I couldn't cite my own work here; I now know why the pathetic and unreferenced "History" section in "Big 8 (Usenet)" doesn't cite it either. (But hey, at least it doesn't plagiarise it. I should count my blessings.)
In other words, Wikipedia is hostile to pretty much every community I've ever participated in, except the academic and journalistic communities. (The only reason I might have some credibility now on Usenet's history is that I lost the arguments, and the community, so the Big 8 now has the sort of active management Wikipedia can believe in.) And near as I can tell, this hostility is directly rooted in the way verifiability is handled.
Which is why I'm posting this here, instead of looking for a forum on copyright violations instead. This is evidence of the hostility I'm talking about, not because a bunch of individuals, some of whom Wikipedia actually has sanctioned, perpetrated plagiarism, but because Wikipedia's ivory tower kept the plagiarism undiscovered for years.
Joe Bernstein joe@sfbooks.com
128.95.223.196 ( talk) 02:27, 17 March 2014 (UTC)
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Lambgoat.com is a news website for mainly metal and hardcore bands, and has been used used on some articles as a reference for information. It posts news regularly although author names are hidden. I've looked for information about who runs the site and who's its authors are but I have found nothing. I personally believe that it is an unreliable source of information however I need the opinions of others. SilentDan297 talk 16:37, 20 February 2014 (UTC)
Another thing about this website that I've noticed is reviews, and as Precision123 said, it may be useful small and simple claims, but what about opinions? SilentDan297 talk 21:44, 20 February 2014 (UTC)
Source Paul Kengor. Dupes: How America's Adversaries Have Manipulated Progressives for a Century. Wilmington, DE: Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI) Books (2010), pp. 226-227. The material is also provided on Ronald and Allis Radosh, Red Star Over Hollywood. I prefer to use Kengor's book since it is more popular and presumably easier to verify.
Article Hollywood blacklist Section and paragraph -- The blacklist begins. The paragraph will follow the one starting with "The other ten refused ..."
Content The following is needed to make the discussion of the hearing more neutral. It currently leaves out important information.
During the hearing, the committee presented evidence against members of the Hollywood Ten. This included communist party registration rolls, Daily Worker articles, New Masses bylines, party application forms, and membership card numbers. Lauren Bacall said that when the Committee for the First Amendment flew to Washington “We didn’t realize until much later that we were being used to some degree by the Unfriendly Ten. As a result, Bacall and her fellow committee members were involved in something “we knew nothing about.” Bogart angrily complained to Danny Kaye that members of the Committee for the First Amendment had “sold me out.” The California state legislature determined that the Committee for the First Amendment was a communist front. It was not, since most of its members were non-communist liberals who had been fooled by the communists. Members of the Committee for the First Amendment saw their reputation damaged and had to explain that they were not communists.
Thanks for your time. LesLein ( talk) 23:41, 24 February 2014 (UTC)
I would appreciate some views on the validity of the website Made of Chalk, which has been used to support some assertions at Heart (band). It looks like a self published site, but it has a journalistic type form. The page in question is a review here. The statement being supported is "Throughout history Heart has been labeled as Hard Rock, Folk, Easy Listening, Heavy Metal, and Adult Contemporary, many times demonstrating two or more of these styles on the same album. Their album title Dog And Butterfly was a symbol of their sometimes contradictory styles, with the "Dog" side of the album focusing on hard rock tunes and the "Butterfly" side made up of acoustic folk music". The site has named reviewers, but does not seem to give any information about them, or about the site.-- SabreBD ( talk) 20:43, 23 February 2014 (UTC)
Is this website reliable? I've been planning to nominate Trouble (Natalia Kills album) in a near future and I do not know if I should keep mentions to Idolator or remove them completely. Prism △ 19:05, 19 February 2014 (UTC)
This paper [6] is extensively used on our article on the Mosuo, an article that has suffered from NPOV problems. I don't find it cited in Google Books or Google Scholar. I'm inclined to remove it as well as other material fact tagged over a year ago, but would like other opinions first. I can't see a justification for using it. Dougweller ( talk) 11:26, 26 February 2014 (UTC)
Is used as a source for a number of strong claims at Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. The query is as to whether it is a primary source and not a secondary one, and whether quotes taken from it are usable in the article where they might possibly be taken from a primary document out of full context. Thanks. Collect ( talk) 16:22, 26 February 2014 (UTC)
Another home remedy, tea tree oil, also is not recommended because topical application often leads to local irritation and inflammation, allergic contact eczema, and allergic contact dermatitis as a result of eucalyptol and limonene content (Therapeutic Research Center, 2011). The National Pediculosis Association (1997-2009) also strongly recommends avoiding tea tree oil because pure tea tree oil is contraindicated in neonates, infants, and pregnant women because of a lack of information regarding safety and efficacy.
and
Avoid unproven remedies such as use of mayonnaise, petrolatum jelly, and tea tree oil.
It appears eczema is a worse result than head lice per that article? I would fer shure have thought "seizures and deaths" were a teeny bit worse than head lice. AFAICT, the major issue is that there is insufficient money to be made to warrant full scale medical studies about "possible contraindications" of a home remedy but that, IMHO, is insufficient to label it as "pseudoscience" either. Collect ( talk) 12:23, 22 February 2014 (UTC)
I don't see any evidence that the National Pediculosis Association should be regarded as a reliable source on claims of efficacy or safety of medical treatments. Is it known that the National Pediculosis Association isn't being run by a concerned parent with no medical training, who is operating the organization out of her or his garage? The fact that the article by Eisenhower and associates cites anything that the National Pediculosis Association says raises questions about the reliability of the article. (I have not read the Eisenhower article, so I don't know the context in which the statement was made.) Incidentally, a specific statement warning against the use of tea tree oil for treatment of head lice in children seems out of place in the lede of a general article on tea tree oil – but that discussion is not really appropriate for this noticeboard. Dezastru ( talk) 14:38, 24 February 2014 (UTC)
At least, that's what Deborah Altschuler of the National Pediculosis Association says. Ms. Altschuler started the group 15 years ago when her daughter was sent home from nursery school with lice and the message we don't have families like that here. Since then, she has been trying to de-stigmatize lice, and to get people to behave rationally when they find them. Her group sells a $14.95 comb, which she believes is the only thing that will stop an infestation: picking out the eggs, or nits, one by one. She warns that many pesticide shampoos are dangerous. And she says that if people are serious about nitpicking, they really don't need to go into housekeeping overdrive.
A year after the American Academy of Pediatrics called on schools to end no-nits policies that keep children being treated for head lice out of classes, little has changed except the intensity of the debate, according to an article published yesterday in The American Journal of Nursing.... The academy recommends treatment with a cream rinse, sold commercially as Nix, which contains permethrin. The nursing journal article said those recommendations had been vigorously contested over the last year by members of the National Pediculosis Association, which opposes chemical treatments in favor of the use of special combs to find and remove nits.
Many of us come naturally to advocacy in our role as parents. The activist in public health, however, can face a peculiar set of problems.... This is where the activist evolves into educator, support system and collector of personal accounts - sometimes appalling - of families and individuals who have suffered from unnecessary, unsuccessful or excessive chemical treatments. The activist must do what disinterested experts will not do: investigate the origin, nature, methods and limits of knowledge in Pediculosis and its management. The activist must also seek allies - often the school nurses, occasionally the press, and sometimes (in cases where a child has suffered grievous harm), the lawyers - when there is no mechanism in place to exchange insights, experience and research. With the exception of an occasional accolade for all the hard work that goes into being an activist, I generally find myself resenting the term.... It is the activist's particular challenge to educate the public in spite of the relative indifference to this issue on the part of the professional communities the public turns to for advice.
Here's one from the American Cancer Society http://www.cancer.org/treatment/treatmentsandsideeffects/complementaryandalternativemedicine/herbsvitaminsandminerals/tea-tree-oil Formerly 98 ( talk) 03:06, 27 February 2014 (UTC)
I apologise for this not being an inquiry relating to a specific article but the nature of the query really is a general one.
The Jats are well-covered by uninvolved reliable sources. However, our articles also frequently cite G. C. Dwivedi's The Jats: Their Role in the Mughal Empire and in particular a version edited by Vir Singh (author). From what I've been able to piece together, Dwivedi appears to be/have been a Jat himself; Vir Singh is director of Surajmal Memorial Education Society and also a Jat. I can't find out much about them in terms of their academic expertise as historians and worry greatly that they're promoting the deeds of the Jat people, as is common among caste-affiliated "pseudo-histories". The book itself barely registers as a citation on GBooks (and then only in poor sources) and it doesn't register at all at JSTOR. Note that Suraj Mal is a Jat hero and that the primary purpose of the SMES seems to be technical education rather than something more attuned to the subject matter of the book.
I'm worried here that we're dealing with crusading amateur historians/caste hagiographers. Can anyone find anything more that might give a general indication of reliability or otherwise for statements of historical fact? - Sitush ( talk) 14:16, 27 February 2014 (UTC)
I removed material from Global surveillance disclosures (2013–present) and Thomas de Maizière that was cited to the German tabloid Bild. [12] [13]. My rationale for deletion is:
Another editor restored the material noting that Reuters picked up the story. However, Reuters is not verifying or independently reporting on this - they're just repeating Bild's claim. [15]. I would appreciate comments on whether this material should be included from editors who are familiar with German media. GabrielF ( talk) 18:11, 25 February 2014 (UTC)
As a practicing journalist, I would warn against any blanket assumptions or accusations when it comes to the reliability of a published source. Some are better, some worse, nobody is perfect. The famed “editorial control” more and more becomes a matter of mythology. When newspapers have to save – and they all have to – the unproductive and bothersome fact checker usually is first not to be replaced when retirement comes.
Having said that, the fact that BILD (not unlike other media elsewhere) sometimes can have a cavalier attitude towards sourcing should not be used to delete a whole passage from WP. I have checked the deleted passage named in the diff, and in my professional opinion, there is very little a newsdesk editor would object to. To wit:
“Quoting an unnamed NSA official in Germany, Bild am Sonntag reported that whilst President Obama's order to stop spying on Merkel was being obeyed, the focus had shifted to bugging other leading government and business figures including Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere, a close confidant of Merkel. Caitlin Hayden, a security adviser to President Obama, was quoted in the newspaper report as saying, "The US has made clear it gathers intelligence in exactly the same way as any other states." [1] [2]”
To sum it up, the reliability or unreliability of BILD, or rather BamS, is not what needs to be weighed. The only fact that needs to be sourced is: Did BamS report that the NSA shifted its focus from the German Chancellor to the rows behind her? And the answer appears to be yes.
Should the passage be removed because BILD's reliablility is in doubt? The answer appears to be no. BsBsBs ( talk) 15:01, 27 February 2014 (UTC)
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[nisanyansozluk.com] is being used as a source in Tarkhan in a discussion about the meaning of the word. [16] His biography at tr.wiki [17] says he started by writing about computing, then travel books. He's written Etymological Dictionary of Contemporary Turkish and I presume it's the website version that is being used as a source. Dougweller ( talk) 16:03, 23 February 2014 (UTC)
Is this person reliable for the same arcticle? Leland Liu Rogers — Translator. Indiana University, graduate student in Mongolian Studies. Leland is a fluent speaker of Mongolian, and has over two years' cumulative experience in. And this is the work I would like to refer to. -- Mrliebeip ( talk) 15:32, 28 February 2014 (UTC)
Removal of various citations because they are "blacklisted". I think CBR is a reliable source for computer history. Searching Google Books for "Computer Business Review" finds [19] some 800 citations to their stories. Someone not using his real name ( talk) 14:35, 1 March 2014 (UTC)
Article on Eli Wallach. Is All Movie Guide [23] a reliable source for info about his life and career? NY Times seems to think so. [24] Does Wikipedia? Dezastru ( talk) 00:24, 24 February 2014 (UTC)
There is a disagreement on Right Sector and Talk:Right Sector as to whether Right Sector leader, Dmytro Yarosh, should be quoted from a Ukrains’ka Pravda interview using one of two available sources:
Help would be appreciated. - Darouet ( talk) 16:38, 26 February 2014 (UTC)
Here is the original Pravda article, and here is the google translation of that article, instead of the comment. You'll have to scroll down to find the appropriate text. - Darouet ( talk) 16:48, 26 February 2014 (UTC)
There is currently a request for comments at Talk:Pablo Casals in which some users might wish to comment. A large part of the situation concerns establishing the common name of a person from sources outside Wikipedia. Full information is provided on the talk page. 131.111.185.66 ( talk) 21:55, 2 March 2014 (UTC)
Cesar Millan ( | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) is a famous dog trainer but with controversial methods. This has affected the article for years. A section about a campaign against these methods backed by a number of well known organisations such as the RSPCA, Dogs Trust, The World Society for the Protection of Animals, " Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour was removed with an edit summary that it was not a reliable source. https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Cesar_Millan&diff=next&oldid=597205314]. I replaced it as I strongly disagree that it is not a reliable source for the campaign and the views of the sponsoring organisation, and it's been removed again. Here is the press release [25] and here [26] is a page about the sponsoring organisations. User:Dreadstar has brought this up on the talk page, asking if it is an organisation known for fact checking, etc. I don't think that's the point here. The edit itself says "In March 2010, various preeminent UK animal welfare, behaviour, training, canine and veterinary organisations issued a joint statement in which they warned against the dog training techniques used by Cesar Milan: "The organisations believe that the use of such training techniques is not only unacceptable from a welfare perspective, but that this type of approach is not necessary for the modification of dog behaviour." It's been suggested at the talk page that the organisations may not know that their names are being used, ie that the "joint press release" wasn't actually what it claimed to be. I see no reason to think that the website is not telling the truth about this. However, it's hard to find publicity for it in the media. However, I've only found [27] and a statement by one of the participating organisations. [28]. Dougweller ( talk) 06:27, 2 March 2014 (UTC)
Are any of the many online sources cited in this section of the article on Mary Faustina Kowalska reliable (by Wikipedia norms) for the statement, "After a failed attempt to persuade Pope Pius XII to sign a condemnation, Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani at the Holy Office included her works on a list he submitted to the newly elected Pope John XXIII in 1959"?
Although this sounds somewhat like a conspiracy theory, I would not oppose it, if only it is judged to be based on a reliable source. I have discussed it here in the hope that someone (anyone other than the editor who has inserted the statement) would express an opinion. Esoglou ( talk) 07:34, 26 February 2014 (UTC)
The amount of information supporting the “failed attempt” statement is quite substantial, and there is zero evidence to the contrary. I’m confident that there are still many more sources of books, periodicals, information, etc. to be tapped. My next move is to contact all the sources in an effort to compile more verification. I’ll add additional references as they become available. AcuteInsight ( talk) 23:23, 26 February 2014 (UTC)
Just got a tip that there is also a reference to Ottaviani's attempt to get Pope Pius XII to sign a condemnations in "Vatican Secret Diplomacy: Joseph P. Hurley and Pope Pius XII by Charles R. Gallagher, Society of Jesus New England [36]. It's $40, and I'm not buying another book just to have it rejected again. I'm going to try to order it through the library. AcuteInsight ( talk) 03:16, 27 February 2014 (UTC)
Dorje Shugden controversy ( | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) now uses www.dorjeshugdenhistory.org as a source for claiming Shugden was a Dharma Protector. [37] I had removed it saying the website fails RS, but it's been replaced claiming it is a reliable source. What do others think? Dougweller ( talk) 22:18, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
It's there in the quote. What do people think?
Hijiri 88 (
聖
やや) 14:07, 3 March 2014 (UTC)
I just met eleven articles using http://www.notafina.de as a source for various bits and pieces of information. The source has been used in:
Moreover, the score also includes a fourth bagatelle as an encore of the piece to be performed if the pianist wishes, which is marked "Tempo primo" and only includes a sixteenth rest. Citation
(Notafina and another source used to support this content).The work's original German title, Als Jakob erwachte aus dem Schlaf, sah er, daß Gott dagewesen war. Er hat es aber nicht gemerkt (Jacob woke from his sleep and said: Truly the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it. Citation
The composition is mathematically adjusted so that all musicians end the piece together Citation
The set has been published by Schott Music together with Ligeti's Invention for piano, which is put in the middle and which the set is strongly associated with. Citation
The premiere took place in Saarbrücken, with Robert Pappert conducting the Kammerchor Hausen. Citation
Magány, sometimes translated into English as Solitude. Citation
The composition is dedicated to Serge Koussevitzky and his wife, Natalia Koussevitzky and is meant to be a gift for the Koussevitzky Music Foundation in the Library of Congress. Citation
This composition is in one movement and takes three minutes to perform Citation
It is a very quick piece, marked Risoluto, ♩ = 88, and gravitates towards F. Citation
The movement list is as follows: ..... Citation
It was eventually published by Schott Music. Citation
All of these articles were created by the same editor. According to their About us page, Notafina "is a legal download site for sheet music and other digital content". EagerToddler39 ( talk) 22:30, 4 March 2014 (UTC)
I'm not sure if this belongs here or on ANI, since it's clearly a politically-motivated user trying to find any excuse he can to dismiss my sources, but on Talk:Yamanoue no Okura User:Dwy has been claiming that literary scholars such as Donald Keene and Nakanishi Susumu don't qualify as "historians" because they are "literary scholars" instead. I should clarify that by "historians" Dwy is referring to a Japanese word rekishi-gakusha, a term that generally refers to the study of political history, and by "literary scholars" he means kokubun-gakusha. The problem is that the article in question is about a poet who is not notable for any impact he had on politics or the like, and whose name gets only a few passing mentions in the historical records of the time. For this reason, virtually no political historians write about him.
The subject is considered by a vast number of (probably most) literary scholars to have been of Korean ( Baekje) descent, but in the 1970s and 80s this theory was criticized by two political historians based on somewhat non-intuitive readings of ancient texts and one or two of the minor details that are known about him. The theory was defended by several prominent literary historians, and the debate has largely died down since c.1985. Since then, virtually every book and scholarly article covering the subject in detail (with one exception) has said either "Okura was born in Baekje" or "Okura was probably born in Baekje". All of these books and articles are written by "literary scholars" and not "historians".
I interpret this as meaning that the consensus theory is that Okura was probably born in Baekje, but that we probably shouldn't state this in the article until a new general reference work is published that backs this up explicitly. User:Dwy, however, interprets it as "literary scholars say one thing, but historians say another thing". Unfortunately, because this subject is not a significant part of political history, the only political historians who have discussed it in any detail are the very few who oppose the theory on grounds of political history, and the overwhelming majority who (probably) see the theory as something for literary historians to decide amongst themselves have not touched it. This makes it very hard for me to discuss with Dwy, who insists that "no historians accept this theory".
My question here is whether scholars like Nakanishi and Keene count as "historians" for our purposes. Both of them have spent over half a century teaching and writing about the history of Japanese literature (the latter wrote a 4,000+page history of Japanese literature in English [38] [39] [40] [41]), and if scholars who study old literary texts don't count as "historians" then do we throw New Testament scholars like Bart Ehrman out as well? To the best of my knowledge the only "historian" (by Dwy's definition) Ehrman has ever cited in one of his books was a historian of classical Greece and Rome who rejected the historicity of Jesus -- does this mean the article on Jesus should say "literary scholars of the New Testament consider Jesus to have existed, but historians reject this claim"?
Hijiri 88 ( 聖 やや) 01:32, 1 March 2014 (UTC)
It is not very nice of Hijiri 88 to open a discussion here with such a one-sided description of the case, especially when he did not give me any notification or a chance to present my side of story. I am tempted to contradict every point Hijiri 88 made, but it would not be very constructive. So I make the most relevant point only:
As mentioned earlier, [42] the term "historians"(史家) was taken from the words of Susumu Nakanishi himself, 「帰化人の推定について史家の意見を仰いだところ「臣」たることに異議があった」(I asked for the opinion of historian on assuming that he was an immigrant, and they raised objection on the basis of his being "Omi.")(Nakanishi Susumu (1973), “ Yamanoue no Okura”, Kawade Shobo Shinsha, p.45) So it was not actually my synthesis.
By the other scholars who took part in the debate on the Toraijin theory, the opponents were often referred to as something like "scholars of ancient (Japanese) history"
The term "scholars of ancient Japanese history" may therefore work as well. -- Dwy ( talk) 18:27, 3 March 2014 (UTC)
Who said the Cathars worshipped two Gods - their persecutors? (unsigned)
I rather think they only worshipped one of the two -- the second was Satan. Interesting group. Collect ( talk) 20:35, 5 March 2014 (UTC)
I have long been familiar with this website, and have used it as a reference myself in some articles. However, I have since begun to question whether it is a reliable source, given that it has the word blog right in its title, after it was proposed as an addition to Murry Salby (see Talk:Murry_Salby#Protected_edit_request_on_4_March_2014). I would like some feedback as to whether it is a reliable source. The website itself is here. Jinkinson talk to me 04:31, 5 March 2014 (UTC)
The blog's primary problem is that it is specifically "opinion oriented" and specifically implies that "established official IPCC reports are good" and "anyone opposing them is bad." As a result, within any post thereon is unlikely to be any balancing information about the person being written about. I find it interesting that they now appear to post unedited press releases from some companies - I guess they do not have enough material otherwise now? [44] demonstrate the POV pretty clearly. Collect ( talk) 16:43, 5 March 2014 (UTC)
Or are we going to use only high-quality independent, reliable sources? In which case the subject may not meet notability criteria, or would have a two-line article like: "Salby is a climate scientist best known for promoting climate-change skepticism. He was fired from his academic post in 2013. Salby claimed he was fired in retaliation for his skeptical views on climate change, while his university stated that he was fired for failing to meet his academic and teaching obligations." MastCell Talk 17:27, 5 March 2014 (UTC)
There are over 50 articles using famousdiamonds.tripod.com as either an external link (i.e., Samarian spinel, Chalk Emerald, Taylor-Burton Diamond); a general reference ( Pink Star (diamond), Imperial Crown of Russia); and/or as a citable source ( Brown diamonds, Coronation of the Russian monarch, Gabi Tolkowsky). I cannot find anything on the internet that leads me to believe the site's author is an expert gemologist or historian. Is his site actually reliable? 71.234.215.133 ( talk) 20:29, 6 March 2014 (UTC)
For the BLP on George W. Bush is [45] a reliable source for the following statement, specifically as worded: "his favorability ratings among the public have substantially improved since he left office"? Dezastru ( talk) 00:23, 5 March 2014 (UTC)
USAToday (given above) says "notable" for the increase. Would you prefer that term here? I trust the RS nature is not at issue here. Pollingreport lists a change from 26% to 49%, and some other polls (one CBS one, for example) had a low of 19%. Still -- 26 to 49 is "notable" without making any improper surmise (though out of a hundred people, 99+ would find it "substantial:. Collect ( talk) 19:40, 6 March 2014 (UTC) Collect ( talk) 19:40, 6 March 2014 (UTC)
In the third paragraph of the article Homosexuality and Roman Catholicism, is citation of Seattle Catholics Divided On Repealing Gay Marriage a reliable source for the statement:
Leading figures in the Catholic hierarchy, including cardinals and bishops, have sometimes actively campaigned against or encouraged clergy and parishioners to campaign against same-sex marriage
The question is about "cardinals and bishops" (not other leaders) themselves "actively campaigning" (not just encouraging others to campaign). It is claimed that the citation gives support only to a statement such as
In some parts of the United States, Catholic bishops "urged their parishes to host a signature drive" for a referendum against same-sex marriage, and an opponent of this measure said that "Catholic leaders have increasingly campaigned against same-sex marriage".
But this has also been disputed.
This question, together with the broader one whether other supporting sources perhaps exist, has been discussed without conclusion on the article's talk page: here. Perhaps an advance can be made by examining whether this, the one source actually cited, supports or does not support the statement in the article. Esoglou ( talk) 16:29, 6 March 2014 (UTC)
Esoglou seems to have come to RSN hoping that other users will read the article and its sources for him because he can't be arsed to do it himself. The article and its sources are very clear about the large sums of money that the church donated to anti-marriage campaigns, their lobbying against hiring discrimination laws, etc. I have pointed out repeatedly on the article talk page that this material is already adequately cited, and he has flat-out refused to check. – Roscelese ( talk ⋅ contribs) 17:30, 6 March 2014 (UTC)
The cited NPR article does not mention cardinals, so it is not reliable for any statement about cardinals per se. However, the source does say that "Catholic leaders have increasingly campaigned against same-sex marriage in other states. In Minnesota, where it's also on the ballot this fall, bishops there have directed parishes to form committees to advocate the church's position", so it is reliable for a statement that Catholic leaders have campaigned against same-sex marriage. The statement that "Leading figures in the Catholic hierarchy, including cardinals and bishops, have sometimes actively campaigned against or encouraged clergy and parishioners to campaign against same-sex marriage" is clearly true, you just need to search more thoroughly for better sources if you want to include that information, since it is in contention. (And not just Catholic leaders in some parts of the United States; there are sources documenting such efforts by Church leaders in a number of countries.) For information on the US context specifically, you might try searching for reports in catholicnews.com. Dezastru ( talk) 18:34, 6 March 2014 (UTC)
On the Spanish Wikipedia there is an AFD on es:Liceo Mexicano Japonés, a Japanese curriculum school in Mexico. (See the notability standards of the Spanish Wikipedia here: es:Wikipedia:Artículos_sin_relevancia_aparente, which differ from the English Wikipedia) I referred to a passage in a book as an argument that the book has significant content:
WhisperToMe ( talk) 09:02, 5 March 2014 (UTC)
Is www.jazz.com reliable enough to add to Wikipedia:WikiProject Albums/Sources? GabeMc ( talk| contribs) 22:58, 7 March 2014 (UTC)
Dr. Robert Thurman came out with an article yesterday that directly contradicts every claim made by this short film by Nicolas Hague. Thurman also points out facts that are missing in Hague's film, but are present in every academic book. Thurman is a Buddhist scholar, and an expert in the Gelug school. Can we consider Hague's film as a Nonreliable source? Heicth ( talk) 01:18, 7 March 2014 (UTC)
The unreliable short film is currently being used in Wikipedia for these claims, which are rebutted by Thurman and others:
The Tibetan community is divided over Dorje Shugden controversy, evidently in recent days, as local police station has received an unnamed parcel from Singapore bearing the sender's name as Shugden, which contained a DVD and a letter questioning the role of Dalai Lama and the deities in the Tibetan struggle for an autonomous region within China. Shugden is a segment of Tibetan community which follows Dorje Shugden, reportedly a Dharma protector of Sakya Gelug tradition. But it has not been recognized by the Dalai Lama and had [sic] been socially boycotted. Dalai Lama had issued an explicit ban order on this section of practitioners in 1996, stating that they do not comply with the principles of Buddhism. Dorje Shugden practitioners have also been stripped off voting rights, which other Tibetans enjoy.Dezastru ( talk) 17:28, 7 March 2014 (UTC)
Source: [59]
Article: waterboarding
Content: "Is waterboarding a form of torture? No." As per John A. Rizzo.
Glennconti ( talk) 14:50, 6 March 2014 (UTC)
The lead of the waterboarding article says waterboarding is torture. This source says waterboarding is not torture. Is John A. Rizzo a "high quality" source that can be used to restart the debate (which has recurred many times) on whether a less definitive statement like "waterboarding is generally considered to be torture" should be substituted in the lead? Any opinions will be sincerely appreciated. Thank you. Glennconti ( talk) 21:16, 6 March 2014 (UTC)
Is this newspaper reliable? the fact that the article has been primed to say "created with a goal to provide objective information " gives one pause, taglines asserting objectivity are generally signs of the opposite.
Use: It published an obituary of an artist [60] which would help establish the notability if it is an acceptable source.-- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 07:18, 8 March 2014 (UTC)
Dorje Shugden controversy ( | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) and other pages now uses this Aljazeera piece as a source for various claims. I notice several glaring errors, such as the number of Shugden practitioners, not to mention staged purposeful confrontations, slow motion editing to make people seem sinister etc. This is the very definition of a "hit piece". What do you think? Heicth ( talk) 17:04, 3 March 2014 (UTC)
"The figure of four million worshippers for Dorje Shugden is preposterous." There are several other obvious "errors". Furthermore, they don't even mention the murder of 3 people by Shugden cultists that every academic source mentions. Lastly, its an academic fact that China fuels Shugden activity. This was nothing but a "hit piece." Heicth ( talk) 21:36, 3 March 2014 (UTC)
Please take a look at the references in the Robert Hunkins article.
Thanks for taking a look. 71.139.148.125 ( talk) 21:56, 9 March 2014 (UTC)
I have always wondered about this so I feel it is best to ask here what others think. Box office Mojo is actually IMDB. Is this site actually a reliable source for Wikipedia? What about The Numbers is that a reliable source? I can't see where they are getting their information from. Does anyone know if there is an accepted site for these figures?-- Mark Miller ( talk) 04:46, 9 March 2014 (UTC)
In 2014 Wiki-PR launched a new website under the name StatusLabs.com.
"WMF bites the bullet on affiliation and FDC funding, elevates Wikimedia user groups". SignPost. February 12, 2014.
— rybec 13:58, 5 March 2014 (UTC)
Hi, I am in search of references for Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Café Jacques (band). Is a Dutch Progressive Rock Page CD review regarded as a reliable secondary source? The two reviews at the source webpage are evidence that the two albums produced by Café Jacques are covered by a reliable media publisher. This is the means by which I wish to show notability (i.e. the band released two albums with a major record label). I am intending to put two inline citations after the names of the albums in the discography, if that is the right way to approach it. In other words where citations 2 & 3 are now. Thankyou. Have a great day. CaesarsPalaceDude ( talk) 02:55, 10 March 2014 (UTC)
Hi, what i mean to say is Nagavanshi is not one of the Kshatriya Lineage.Also i am saying that the references provided for "Nagavanshi" Lineage in Kshatriya page are not at all reliable. The reference provided are:
^ Omacanda Hāṇḍā. Naga Cults and Traditions in the Western Himalaya, p.251. [1]
Jump up ^ Viyogi, Naval and Ansar. History Of The Later Harappans And Silpakara Movement, p.198 [2]
Jump up ^ Pranab Chandra Roy Choudhury, (1968).< Folk Tales of Bihar, p.63. Sahitya Akademi
Please analyse these references provided in Kshatriyas page with experts & remove that "Nagavanshi" Lineage from Kshatriya page immediately if they are not reliable.Thank You. - 117.200.18.243 ( talk) 08:12, 10 March 2014 (UTC)
I'm wondering if I should add these as articles on Wikipedia or not. 198.228.217.171 ( talk) 18:28, 10 March 2014 (UTC)
A couple of questions:
Other at first sight similar sites:
Any ideas? Fram ( talk) 12:00, 10 March 2014 (UTC)
The book itself is not listed in loc.gov or google books project, however a mention of the book is found here http://books.google.com/books?id=SYUXAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA97&dq=Steward+%26+Barkeeper+Manual&hl=en&sa=X&ei=TPkdU4r-GqeC2QWpoYDoCQ&ved=0CDYQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=Steward%20%26%20Barkeeper%20Manual&f=false in one book, thats it, much less a recipe to base an entire wikipedia page off of. the book in question is called "Steward & Barkeeper's Manual in 1869"
A recipe for a John Collins is featured in the Steward and Barkeeper's Manual of 1869:
Teaspoonful of powdered sugar
The juice of half a lemon
A wine glass of Old Tom Gin
A bottle of plain soda
Shake up, or stir up with ice. Add a slice of lemon peel to finish
^
http://secondgoldenage.com/2012/07/21/collinses-fizzes-difference/
The author of this book along with the author of "imbibe!" David Wondrich who frequently self promotes including on this page several times /info/en/?search=Tom_Collins use sources or references that do not exist or are behind pay walls. Drinkreader ( talk) 18:42, 10 March 2014 (UTC) Drinkreader ( talk) 18:40, 10 March 2014 (UTC)
At the suggestion of my dear friend User:TippyGoomba I seek a determination on the usability of a self-published work by Dr. Robert G. Brown, professor of physics at Duke University, proposed to be used on the Pandeism page. Dr. Brown's CV spells out a history of something more than two dozen publications in peer-reviewed journals in the field of physics, and numerous magazine columns and articles predominately addressed to aspects of information theory. He has, as well, an undergraduate degree in philosophy, though this may be minimally relevant. Pandeism is, naturally, generally a philosophical topic, but Dr. Brown wrote and posted on his university website this article, A Theorem Concerning God, the centerpiece of which is what Dr. Brown calls "The Pandeist Theorem." He therein sets forth a proposition that of all extant theological models, Pandeism is the one best supported by physics, and he goes on to comment as to how Pandeism compares to other theological models (or specific religions) in light of principles of physics. In addressing this issue User:TippyGoomba quotes from WP:UGC, specifically (emphasis theirs):
Here we are not speaking of the use of self-published information as a source about a living person, so only the first line relates to this issue. Specifically, User:TippyGoomba disputes that it at all matters that Dr. Brown is reasonably well-published in the field of physics, when Pandeism is a theological model. I have pointed out that physicists do, as it happens, comment on the viability of theological models in light of scientific knowledge, and TippyGoomba propsed bringing the discussion here. And so I propose it to be proper to reference to a self-published work inasmuch as Dr. Brown therein discusses this theological model within the context of his area of abundantly demonstrable expertise in physics. DeistCosmos ( talk) 19:58, 12 March 2014 (UTC)
I'm currently working on the ITF Men's Circuit article with a hope to one day be able to take an article to WP:FLC, I need sources from a third party and I am wondering whether Coretennis and SteveGTennis would be considered reliable websites for use. Any help is appreciated. Aureez ( Talk) 16:46, 13 March 2014 (UTC)
In Archive 112 there's a discussion on whether or not Cyberbaiting deserves an article or should be part of Cyberbullying. Neither has happened. Sources mentioned way back in the 2012 discussion were [68] [69] [70] [71] [72] [73] [74] [75] [76]. I come to it by means of this article: [77]. It looks like it peaked in usage around then, based on a quick look at Google Books, but it would be nice to have a formalized decision. Thmazing ( talk) 07:10, 14 March 2014 (UTC)
Regarding the source http://www.parliamentlive.tv/Main/Player.aspx?meetingId=14995&player=silverlight&wfs=true which was used in the following edits: First TransPennine Express, Chiltern Railways, British Rail Class 170. My browser (Firefox 27) shows the message "Silverlight does not appear to be correctly installed on this computer." Since this would fail WP:ELNO#EL8 if used as an external link, is it admissible as a ref source? -- Redrose64 ( talk) 15:13, 12 March 2014 (UTC)
{{
cn}}
, or leave them alone? --
Redrose64 (
talk) 19:30, 15 March 2014 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
This website, from the "leader in software and services for family history enthusiasts," was recently used as a source to insert alleged birth names, and date of births on a BLP. No other sources I found were reporting this information. I'm told this is covered by WP:BLPPRIMARY, and should not be used.
Hundreds of Wikipedia articles are using this cite as a reference or external link, (see here).
Should this cite by blocked from use on Wikipedia? Is there some value that is appropriate? Sportfan5000 ( talk) 14:49, 27 February 2014 (UTC)
It is a software company, and of essentially nil value for making any claims of fact. Collect ( talk) 16:22, 27 February 2014 (UTC)
I know WP editors like to paint an entire website with a single brush, but that's not a very good practice. In the case of familytreelegends.com, whether it's a reliable source depends on which records from the site are being cited. The site has digitized books - reference, history, and geography books - that are the same as the books found on Google Books or archive.org. Those should be considered reliable sources. The remainder of the records on the site are indexes of primary sources. Although not primary sources themselves, the method of index creation often leaves a lot to be desired, so the indexes should not be considered reliable. Any family trees found on the site are user-contributed, so they fail WP:SPS (the site hosts, but does not publish the trees), and are not reliable. 71.139.152.78 ( talk) 20:31, 28 February 2014 (UTC)
At http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=2_ZstVBZSfIC&lpg=PA1&pg=PA72#v=onepage&q&f=true Soldiers, Saints, and Scallywags, David Gore, 2009, chapter A Mild Deception, pp 72-79, gives details to the discredit of my great-great-great grandfather, who appears to have invented aristocratic connections for his family and purchased both unrelated portraits (of people with the same surname) and space in books of the time to substantiate the connections. The author seems to have done his homework in this and other historical matters, and the book is recommended by the Guild of one-name studies (of perhaps rather humble academic status, certainly not a certified peer-reviewed publication) at http://www.one-name.org/profiles/mayne.html. It has also been reprinted by the Wiltshire Family History Society, see http://issuu.com/wiltshirefhs/docs/65_-_april_1997.
I am considering using some of this information to point out the deception. Is this source reliable for this purpose? Richard Keatinge ( talk) 12:18, 12 March 2014 (UTC)
In the past couple of years I've watched nearly thirty examples of the kind of TV program the article " Korean drama" covers (K-dramas), and written about them for a book (and movie) log I keep. A few months ago I used all the sources I could find to compile a sort of history of K-dramas, realised it was too much for the log, and adapted it into a "History" section for the article "Korean drama", which is over a third of the article's total length. (Compare my work on a comparable section for " State income tax".)
Since I don't read Korean, I promptly posted to the "Korean popular culture" working group's talk page, noting the existence of the section and my disqualification, and inviting corrections. None have been forthcoming.
Last month I watched a drama that considerably disturbed me, in a way that I then found was reasonably common among anglophone viewers. I added a "Controversy" section to the article " Secret Garden (TV series)" about this, reading as follows:
"Some Western viewers object strongly to scenes in which Kim Joo-won's sexual assaults on Gil Ra-im are portrayed as romantic, and received by her as such. As usual in discussions of media portrayals of sexual assault, other viewers object to these objections; some offer explanations involving traditional Korean gender politics."
The section was promptly removed, ostensibly because its only support was blogs. I responded by creating a section in the talk page about it. (There I speculate that there may be more authoritative sources in Korean, but the specific one I hypothesise has not, in fact, said anything on the subject, at least to judge by web searches.) The blogs cited: Dramabeans recap of episode 13, December 2010 Outside Seoul blog, August 2013.
I have since read a fair amount of what Wikipedia's policies say about reliable sources. I conclude that although it's clearly insane to object to these blogs as self-published sources per se, given that what I'm trying to support is the existence of "objections", the rider about self-published sources as sources about themselves applies: since these objections concern a third party, they can't be cited. (So if I understand correctly, I could cite Dramabeans critiquing itself, but not, as marketers do, quote its reviews of actual dramas. Um. Dramabeans is more or less a blog, certainly a self-published work at least as regards the two main writers, and one of the main sites in English on K-dramas. It's one of the two blogs I cited, the other being a much more typical trivial blog, though one that happens to be well written and well thought out and so forth.) Near as I can tell, even the talk section is impermissible, not that I'm going to be the person to delete it.
It gets worse, though. It now appears that well over 50% of the content of the "History" section of "Korean drama" is also due for removal for lack of reliable sources. ("State income tax" is not comparably vulnerable.) Since the section consists of fifteen paragraphs, I'm not going to go over it in detail here, but such sources include:
1) Blog posts (including the main source cited for TV ratings records, cited as " Top 50 highest-rated TV dramas of all time").
2) Self-published works (including the most historically-inclined source for the years up to 1964, cited as "With S2", a set of five PDFs, for example "Radio Dayz").
4) Dissertations cited without regard to supervision, independent citation, etc. (Ironically, I do know of one citation to one of these, since the later and more useful dissertation, Jeon's, which is quite recent and is my single most important source, cites the earlier and less useful one.)
5) An enthusiast page for the history of a video recorder company.
6) One footnote tries to cite DramaWiki, the other main site in English about K-dramas, which as a wiki is also unacceptable, but Wikipedia blacklists it anyway, for reasons not made remotely clear when editing. (Not this time either.) [1]
7) One footnote even amounts to "Citation needed".
In comparison, only a few of the footnotes cite a published article about early radio in Korea, a published article about K-dramas' exports in the past two decades, and some newspaper articles.
It's worth noting that while there isn't much published scholarship on K-dramas, there is some, and it's primarily, of course, in Korean, with bits and pieces in Japanese, Chinese, and Thai, at least. I've been waiting for months now for access to a recently published history of K-dramas, because I'm hoping it'll have formatted information I can use in related projects not on, or meant for, Wikipedia. So in other words, the information exists - the self-published up-to-1964 work is patently based on research the authors probably didn't do themselves - and exists in what Wikipedia would apparently consider reliable sources, but isn't available in English-language sources.
The Korean page linked to from "Korean drama" as the equivalent article ("대한민국의 텔레비전 드라마" or "%EB%8C%80%ED%95%9C%EB%AF%BC%EA%B5%AD%EC%9D%98_%ED%85%94%EB%A0%88%EB%B9%84%EC%A0%84_%EB%93%9C%EB%9D%BC%EB%A7%88") has an extensive history section, which Google Translate makes mincemeat out of, and which cites no sources at all. I obviously don't know much about Korean Wikipedia's policies, but what I've observed from the pages on individual dramas is that those are low on text (plot summary, reception, production notes) in general, so this section in the overview page is exceptional.
So OK, I have a big and a little concern here. The big concern is that two long documents of presumptive merit (well, I certainly think mine has some!) are vulnerable to deletion not because they can't be done well but because they *haven't* been done well *by Wikipedia's evidence standards* and nobody's stepping forward. The little concern is that an issue that taints not only a drama, but because of similar issues with other dramas and the praise the first drama received, the whole industry, apparently can't be addressed on Wikipedia. (Unless there's Korean feminist scholarship on the subject and I just don't know about it.)
Oh, and one other concern: When I do something that helps the promotion of K-drama, its flaws are ignored. When I do something that hurts the promotion of K-drama, its flaws justify its deletion. Um?
Joe Bernstein joe@sfbooks.com not a registered Wikipedian
[1] Wikipedia has in the past plagiarised DramaWiki (see " Eyes of Dawn" [2]), and frankly should do more of that, since DramaWiki tends to be more reliable within its remit. For example, Wikipedia on " My Lovely Sam Soon" has the ratings agencies backwards; I know this because the Korean TV advertising agency, Kobaco (no longer a monopoly, but was one at this document's date), confirms DramaWiki's version; see http://www.kobaco.co.kr/information/adinfo/UploadFile/%281%29120_%BD%C3%C3%BB%B7%FC%C6%C4%B0%ED%B5%E9%B1%E2.pdf.
[2] Eyes of Dawn is one of the most important dramas in the history of K-drama. It is not an accident that it is (at least as far as I know) the earliest drama available on English-subtitled DVD. Its continued absence from Wikipedia after over six years, while Wikipedia covers literally hundreds of less important dramas, is shameful. I expect to watch it within a couple of months, and would be tempted to address that absence myself, except for this education I'm getting in verifiability.
128.95.223.129 ( talk) 19:37, 10 March 2014 (UTC)
I think you're mistaking my motivations here. I'm not saying "Oh, I see, English Wikipedia is a monolith with consistent standards of evidence, and I'm desperate to get my content to fit those standards". I'm saying "Huh. I'm coming to English Wikipedia with the fruits of a community who work together, and English Wikipedia scorns that community and doesn't want its fruits. Except by stealing them, which it frequently does. Can this be changed, or defended, or is English Wikipedia just irredeemably evil?"
Now, your obvious reply is that I'm reifying English Wikipedia. As the evidence below shows, relatively little plagiarism has been done by Wikipedians in good standing. But the thing is, it has been let stand by Wikipedians in good standing, including the one who zapped my citation of Dramabeans. So either Wikipedians who edit Korean drama articles don't know enough about anglophone resources re K-drama to know that DramaWiki keeps on its front page an explicit request to Wikipedians to kill plagiarisms, or they don't care. And anyway, you're reifying me into a good Wikipedian, so it's only fair that I reify Wikipedia into a bad organisation, or find out why it isn't.
I've watched all or part of thirty K-dramas, of which twenty-four have English Wikipedia articles. Six of these plagiarise DramaWiki today, one having replaced its plagiarism of Dramabeans with a plagiarism of DramaWiki, a different one also plagiarising Dramabeans today. As it happens, I'm not invested enough in DramaWiki to want to learn how to zap all the plagiarisms, especially since that would put the onus on me to write new synopses of these dramas I've watched, and my preferred style for such is more like DramaWiki's than Wikipedia's. My point here isn't about plagiarism, although I certainly think it needs dealing with, but about the dynamics I see as resulting from Wikipedia's stance on verifiability. Just to start with: I found no plagiarisms going the other way. I was sure there'd be at least one in my sample, but no. DramaWiki, which requires registration of participants (I haven't even been able to notify them of this post, as I have Dramabeans), has not to my knowledge copied Wikipedia.
Let me start with the typical English Wikipedia K-drama article. (English Wikipedia now has over 500 of these, per List of South Korean dramas, of which only thirteen concern dramas dated there before 2000. I certainly haven't consulted all of them, but am speaking of those I have.) After the intro there's generally a synopsis or plot summary, often detailed and comprehensively spoiling said plot. Then there's usually either a succinct cast list or a detailed list of characters; the latter often goes with a less substantial synopsis. There are usually, but not always, episode ratings; there may be a soundtrack listing; there may be text about the drama's reception; there may be other stuff. There may or may not be references. (Speaking of which, the latest Wikipedian to edit Korean drama has inserted a wholly unreferenced section about blogs and streaming sites, linking to several of the latter but none of the former, and has inserted a false alert that the entire article, not just my section or his, "does not cite any references". Response to my postings at last, and unsurprisingly, but excessively, hard line.)
We have two plagiarised sites at issue here, which happen to be the two I consider the most useful sites in my ongoing research on the Korean dramas I watch. DramaWiki, the main site plagiarised in my sample, has articles on over 1200 K-dramas (as well as lots of Japanese dramas and dramas in Chinese), including pretty much every K-drama since 2000 and a fair sample of the 1990s; I don't know whether they have any from the 1980s or before yet. DramaWiki articles start with a short info section, comparable to the combination of intro and info box in Wikipedia articles; then comes a synopsis, generally written short and with attention to avoiding spoilers; then there are usually episode ratings for newer dramas, or more limited ratings info for older ones, there may be a soundtrack listing, and there may be other info. Most of the material at a DramaWiki page is factual and difficult to prove plagiarism of, though I have little doubt, given what I've already found, that DramaWiki is the real source for much of this sort of thing at English Wikipedia. I've generally ignored the synopses, because all the dramas I've watched to date are on DVDs, and come with their own teaser synopses; but in fact, the main way people in anglophone countries now experience K-dramas is online streaming, so synopses of this sort are urgently needed, and deserve the care DramaWiki often bestows on them. They are also the easiest things to catch Wikipedians plagiarising. DramaWiki is a sub-site of D-Addicts, whose other main facets are a set of fora, and bittorrent offerings of K-dramas. I assume the latter is illegal, but legal streaming sites advertise on both D-Addicts proper and DramaWiki. Wikipedia blacklists links to DramaWiki - so in other words, the only way Wikipedia encourages people to cite DramaWiki is by stealing! - and I don't know whether this is because D-Addicts' bittorrent offering is against the law or because of some specific misbehaviour. DramaWiki's info pages do not link to pages offering downloads, at D-Addicts or elsewhere, unlike the inferior pages at hancinema.net which English Wikipedia often links to. Anyway, to get to DramaWiki's page on each drama listed below, go to wiki dot d-addicts dot com slash the title indicated, with the usual substitutions such as _ for space.
I've already described Dramabeans recaps, but I left something out: Sometimes the recap of episode one begins with a set of character sketches. Now, I've actually found an example of Wikipedia plagiarising Dramabeans for a synopsis, but it's an uphill battle; the other example of plagiarism I've found instead uses the character sketches. To get to these go to Dramabeans, follow the link to "Recaps", find the title indicated, and go to the recap for its episode one. Dramabeans doesn't hyperventilate about Wikipedia plagiarism as DramaWiki does - well, it has far less reason to - but does have a copyright notice on each page.
Introductions complete, here's my evidence, in considerable detail:
1. Mary Stayed Out All Night plagiarises DramaWiki on Mary Stayed Out All Night, whose DVD title is Marry Me, Mary! This is the third drama I watched (I'm going mostly in that order) and one of my favourites, although pretty much everyone at Dramabeans considers it absolutely terrible.
The synopsis contributed to DramaWiki by Hanjae on 23 Nov 2010 reads:
<removed for copyright issues - but problem fixed>
Since Wikipedia has such a hostile attitude to DramaWiki, I figured y'all might not trust its use of wiki software, so I checked each page in question at archive.org, whose 31 Dec 2010 copy shows this synopsis.
On 9 Dec 2011, Sunuraju, who appears to be a Wikipedian in good standing, created the Wikipedia page. The synopsis included in that first version:
<removed for copyright issues - but problem fixed>
Wikipedia's synopsis now reads:
<removed for copyright issues - but problem fixed>
2. Prosecutor Princess plagiarises DramaWiki on Prosecutor Princess, whose DVD title is the same. This is the twelfth drama I watched, and girlfriday of Dramabeans liked it more than I did.
The synopsis contributed to DramaWiki by Hanjae on 17 Feb 2010 reads:
<removed for copyright issues - but problem fixed>
Archive.org's 9 Mar 2010 copy shows this synopsis.
On 1 May 2010, XChampagne created the Wikipedia page. The synopsis included in that first version:
<removed for copyright issues - but problem fixed>
This is the first example I found (though note Eyes of Dawn) of an actual attempt to stop the plagiarism: Decltype, a Wikipedian in good standing, almost instantly got into an edit war with XChampagne, explicitly because of the copyright violation, and won it after two rounds; there's no further record of XChampagne, whose activity seems to have been confined to this article. However, Darkpiggy put this synopsis back on 22 May 2010. Darkpiggy's activity was confined to two days, and concerned this article and the article about its titular lead, Kim So-yeon.
Wikipedia's synopsis now reads:
3. Becoming a Billionaire incompletely plagiarises DramaWiki on The Birth of the Rich, whose DVD title is Becoming a Billionaire. This is the fourteenth drama I watched, and I moderately liked it; Dramabeans skipped it.
The synopsis whose first sentence Hanjae revised, and whose other sentences Hanjae contributed, on 28 Mar 2010 reads:
<removed for copyright issues - but problem fixed>
Archive.org's 29 Mar 2010 copy shows this synopsis.
The synopsis created by an anonymous Wikipedia editor on 10 Jul 2013 reads:
Note the final sentence. The footnotes point to the same article in two places, which does not include any of this text, and which I'm pretty sure doesn't actually back up much of it either, although I haven't read with care to establish that.
Wikipedia's synopsis now reads:
(In case anyone cares: The testicular cancer / breast cancer dispute is endemic in discussions of this drama. All we know for sure is that he's unwilling to identify the cancer site; he frequently denies that it's breast cancer, but could be lying.)
4. Secret Garden (TV series) plagiarises DramaWiki on Secret Garden, whose DVD title is the same. This is the twenty-ninth drama I watched; although both main writers for Dramabeans castigated the sexual assault scenes as harshly as I could wish, they ended up giving the show favourable ratings over all, despite seeing its flaws clearly; I hated enough aspects of the show (not just the sexual assaults) that saying I hated the show over all is fair. This is the other case in which I've found an attempt to stop the plagiarism.
Hanjae heavily revised the DramaWiki synopsis 23 Nov 2010:
<snipped for copyright reasons>
Bumblelion1018 created the Wikipedia page 3 Dec 2010, too fast for archive.org to capture an intervening copy, with the following synopsis:
<snipped for copyright reasons>
Bumblelion1018 created a page for another K-drama the next month, and then seems to have vanished. On 1 March 2011, administrator VernoWhitney zapped this synopsis as a copyright violation. An anonymous user added it back on 5 May 2011, and it's stayed ever since.
Wikipedia's synopsis now reads:
<snipped for copyright reasons>
5. Gourmet (TV series) plagiarises DramaWiki on Gourmet and, as posted before, DramaWiki's recap of episodes one through four of Gourmet. The DVD title is The Grand Chef. This is the thirtieth drama I'm watching, which I'm finally beginning to enjoy, and which javabeans at Dramabeans thought well of.
The Dramabeans recaps for this series appeared shortly after airdates, beginning 6 Jul 2008 with a post by javabeans including the following character sketches:
<snipped for copyright reasons>
Archive.org's 10 Sep 2008 copy shows this material. I imagine you now see why Wikipedia relatively rarely plagiarises Dramabeans; I'm pretty sure it isn't for lack of desire, just for lack of convenient brevity.
DramaWiki tracked this drama starting long before it aired, and had a placeholder synopsis for much of that time. On 6 Oct 2008 Leimomi considerably revised and expanded the existing synopsis into:
<removed for copyright issues - but problem fixed>
Archive.org's 17 Jan 2009 copy shows this synopsis.
JKSarang, blocked as a sock puppet of InkHeart, created the Wikipedia page 16 Oct 2009 with this synopsis:
<removed for copyright issues - but problem fixed>
69dressings, blocked as a sock puppet of InkHeart, added the following character sketches 21 Nov 2009:
<removed for copyright issues - but problem fixed>
Wikipedia's synopsis now reads:
<removed for copyright issues - but problem fixed>
Wikipedia's character list now reads:
<removed for copyright issues - but problem fixed>
6. Will It Snow For Christmas? used to plagiarise Dramabeans on Will It Snow For Christmas?, until it started plagiarising DramaWiki on Will it Snow at Christmas%3F instead. This is the nineteenth drama I watched, and while javabeans at Dramabeans thought better of it than I did, I thought it on balance good.
The synopsis contributed to DramaWiki by C51236 7 Dec 2009 reads:
<removed for copyright issues - but problem fixed>
Even if archive.org had the necessary granularity, they were thrown off by the question mark in the title until 2011, so they don't verify this.
The synopsis contributed by an anonymous Wikipedia editor on 26 Dec 2009 reads:
<removed for copyright issues - but problem fixed>
Wikipedia's synopsis now reads:
<removed for copyright issues - but problem fixed>
Neither reference supplies this wording, though at least they aren't identical this time.
Now, neither Wikipedia nor DramaWiki *started* with this synopsis. I don't have an exact quote available of the DramaWiki one, but both sites started out with very similar synopses. The first edit to the article at each site involved a separate line, reading "credit to dramabeans". At DramaWiki, the first edit added that line. At Wikipedia, the first edit took that line away. In other words, DramaWiki plagiarised Dramabeans for a little while, and then corrected it; Wikipedia quoted Dramabeans for a little while, and then turned it into plagiarism.
My position is becoming clear. I find the K-drama world remarkably casual about intellectual property. It's true that a major illegal streaming site, dramacrazy, was recently shut down, and another may be in trouble too. But there are plenty of entire dramas on YouTube, some even with English subtitles; soundtracks are more often there than not; Dramabeans is clearly encouraged to use images galore; *video stores* in the US get licenses to produce what amount to legal bootleg copies of currently airing dramas; the list goes on. If javabeans, girlfriday, or the DramaWikians want to get up in arms about this plagiarism, I won't object, but I'm not personally all that interested in leading the charge. What takes my breath away is the CONTEMPT shown by years' worth of plagiarism of these two sites, while simultaneously pretending that Wikipedia is on a pedestal that would be contaminated if it dealt honourably with them: links to Dramabeans are speedily removed (a search the other day found only two in English Wikipedia - though dozens in European Wikipedias), links to DramaWiki barred from getgo.
I understand that no individual I'm addressing here now is in a position to change that, and to the extent that anyone not specifically interested in K-dramas is still reading, they're not even a tiny bit responsible for it. Except that Wikipedia's standards of evidence, which y'all have clearly bought into or you wouldn't be here, more or less ineluctably lead to precisely this sort of situation.
A long time ago I ran the first English-language website on author John Crowley. He found the site interesting and worth his attention. I'm surprised to hear Wikipedia wouldn't have. Around the same time, I got involved in the workings of the Big 8 (Usenet). I was one of the first members of what became the Big 8 Management Board, and am cited along with Jim Riley because the two of us (locked into lots of arguments) did most of the research underlying the historical discussion of the Big-8 Usenet hierarchies. I already knew I couldn't cite my own work here; I now know why the pathetic and unreferenced "History" section in "Big 8 (Usenet)" doesn't cite it either. (But hey, at least it doesn't plagiarise it. I should count my blessings.)
In other words, Wikipedia is hostile to pretty much every community I've ever participated in, except the academic and journalistic communities. (The only reason I might have some credibility now on Usenet's history is that I lost the arguments, and the community, so the Big 8 now has the sort of active management Wikipedia can believe in.) And near as I can tell, this hostility is directly rooted in the way verifiability is handled.
Which is why I'm posting this here, instead of looking for a forum on copyright violations instead. This is evidence of the hostility I'm talking about, not because a bunch of individuals, some of whom Wikipedia actually has sanctioned, perpetrated plagiarism, but because Wikipedia's ivory tower kept the plagiarism undiscovered for years.
Joe Bernstein joe@sfbooks.com
128.95.223.196 ( talk) 02:27, 17 March 2014 (UTC)