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is the new Israeli private news channel, News 0404 founded by journalist Boaz Golan, and self-identified as promoting a 'Zionist-patriotic' perspective according to the stub dedicated to it on the Hebrew Wikipedia (חדשות 0404),reliable for facts? I have raised the issue at the talk page of List of violent incidents in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, 2015 Repeatedly, we have affirmed that even long-established websites full of competent journalists or scholars ( Counterpunch, Mondoweiss) (basically anti-Zionist with regard to the I/P area) cannot be used for facts. So on that precedent, it seems self-evident that a new POV-pushing news outlet based on user contributions with no notable names, run by a private entrepreneur, should not be used for facts. Thirdly, the reports are all in Hebrew, and the newbie editor using them supplies no details of their content, which means third parties unfamiliar with that language have to take on trust the veracity of his reports. Could experienced RS hands please set forth the relevant policy on this for that editor's benefit. Thank you. Nishidani ( talk) 09:47, 18 January 2015 (UTC)
I have found a new website that I think is reliable and could benefit Wikipedia. The link for the site is below and I would like to know if it could be considered a valid citation.
I would like to replace info in The Big Bang Theory. The source that is used is not updated due to a neilsen glitch in the ratings, and my source has updated info.
I would like to replace a fact in the US. Viewers Section in the List of episodes for season 8. It says that the first few episodes of the season got a certain number of viewers that was not updated. If here is the exact place on the site that I found the info. Compare it to Wikipedia's non-updated info.
http://tvseriesfinale.com/tv-show/the-big-bang-theory-season-eight-ratings-33990/
Thank you for your patience. Jatremitiedi ( talk) 00:54, 22 January 2015 (UTC)
I'm not sure about discussing this issue here, but this is important for me to know the answer of the question as a wiki user. when i needed to saying about Literary Works of George Jordac(Christian Lebanese author),have used one of encyclopedia webs at draft of Gorge jordac article. By the way is that reliable source? Is there any permission for wiki user to use such as these sources?thanks. Samaneh-davoudi ( talk) 08:05, 11 January 2015 (UTC)
Encyclopedias are generally "tertiary sources" and we should use the sources they cite for their articles - if they cite no sources, then normal practice is to dismiss their articles in any event. Technical or specialized encyclopedias generally show where they got their information. Collect ( talk) 23:08, 15 January 2015 (UTC)
Hello. Myself & two other editors ( 62 & Galatz) are in a dispute as to who would be considered Total Nonstop Action Wrestling's majority shareholder. 62 & Galatz insist on:
|key_people = Robert Carter
(Majority stakeholder - 71%)
and are using these links as sources in an attempt to verify Robert as being TNA's majority shareholder. I have told them that the first two links would be no good, as the date attached to them makes them old & out-of-date, while the third link makes NO mention of Mr. Carter OR the company he's currently involved with, which would make that link no good as well. I, however, insist on:
|key_people = Janice Carter
(Majority stakeholder - 71%)
and have provided links to more recent, up-to-date articles, verifying Mrs. Carter's company, Panda Energy International, as the company's majority owner/shareholder, as well as Mrs. Carter herself as the company's owner; however, 62 & Galatz refuse to accept the links I have sourced as being correct & continue to revert the article to a version with their, albeit out-of-date & therefore incorrect, information contained within. So, I suppose the question is, would my sources take precedence over theirs, due to mine being more recent & therefore, up-to-date? 76.235.248.47 ( talk) 13:24, 21 January 2015 (UTC)
The Carter family have owned a controlling stake in the company ever since, making Panda Energy a family business.
This entire thread is WP:OR. Unless you have a straightforward direct statement saying that a particular person is the majority shareholder, you cannot put it in. If a corporation is the majority shareholder, the CEO of that corporation is not the majority owner. The owners of the second company are themselves collectively the owners of the owned company. Gaijin42 ( talk) 23:35, 21 January 2015 (UTC)
It has just a couple weeks to go, and we haven't posted notice of it here. So now I am doing so: Talk:G._Edward_Griffin#RfC:_.22conspiracy_theorist.22_in_first_sentence, in the hope of getting more input for the closer. Thanks. Jytdog ( talk) 14:48, 23 January 2015 (UTC)
While there is an RfC (dated 3 January 2015) still ongoing at Talk:G. Edward Griffin#Survey, it is a separate issue that references only the first line of the lede. The requester provided a list of sources which he included with his RfC statement (which I've not seen done before now) but I am mentioning them here as the proper venue for RS discussion. I believe the overwhelmingly negative influence that was created by poorly sourced contentious material has resulted in a WP:COATRACK. It prevents Griffin from advancing as a potential GA candidate, which is my primary interest. I doubt it would pass a less stringent DYK review as it is now. A few involved editors are actually OK with the article as is, and don't appear to have any problems maintaining the SQ which is why I brought the RS issues here.
Some of the sources contain less than notable mention of Griffin (not even qualifying as trivial) but are still being used to justify contentious material in this BLP.
Other questionable sources, some of which don't pass the smell test for WP:RS but are used in the article to justify contentious material:
The following sources have, for the most part, been criticized as not RS for citing even generalizations of positive reviews about Griffin as an author and lecturer. I suggested using them to balance (NPOV, V, UNDUE, BLP) what critics have alleged about Griffin and his books:
Disclaimer - Griffin is a BLP, but one of the books he has written brings PS-Fringe into play. I am not advocating for laetrile (amygdalin, B17) by any means, and I certainly am not suggesting that we, as editors, promote Griffin's book, World Without Cancer, as the end-all cure for cancer. Hell no! I am simply asking the community for input re: RS. My only purpose here is to fix the WP:COATRACK problem created by poorly sourced contentious material, not all of which is PS. I hope to provide proper balance (without WP:UNDUE) by citing sources I listed above to balance the criticism cited by questionable sources used to justify contentious material. I realize BLPs and PS-Fringe are hot topics, which is another reason I'm looking for input from uninvolved editors. If I have misstated anything, please advise and I will be happy to correct it. Thank you. Atsme☯ Consult 23:38, 20 January 2015 (UTC)
Ok, I try to simplify with a few direct statements you can dig your teeth into:
I don't think I can clarify my questions more than what I already have in the mountain of text above. Your input will be appreciated Atsme☯ Consult 18:10, 22 January 2015 (UTC)
Laetrile was proven clinically ineffective more than 30 years ago and is considered a canonical example of "quackery".[4] Nonetheless, advocates for laetrile dispute this label, asserting that there is a conspiracy between the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the pharmaceutical industry and the medical community, including the American Medical Association and the American Cancer Society, to exploit the American people, and especially cancer patients. Advocates of the use of laetrile have also changed the rationale for its use, first as a treatment of cancer, then as a vitamin, then as part of a "holistic" nutritional regimen, or as treatment for cancer pain, among others, none of which have any significant evidence supporting its use. Despite the lack of evidence for its use, laetrile developed a significant following due to its wide promotion as a "pain-free" treatment of cancer as an alternative to surgery and chemotherapy that have significant side effects. The use of laetrile in place of known effective treatments of cancer led to a number of deaths.[35]
The FDA and AMA crackdown, begun in the 1970s, effectively escalated prices on the black market, played into the conspiracy narrative and helped unscrupulous profiteers foster multi-million dollar smuggling empires.[36][37][38]
Some North American cancer patients have traveled to Mexico for treatment with the substance, allegedly under the auspices of Ernesto Contreras.[39] The actor Steve McQueen died in Mexico following cancer treatment with laetrile and surgery to remove a stomach tumor while undergoing treatment for peritoneal mesothelioma (a cancer that attacks the lining of the abdomen) under the care of William D. Kelley, a dentist and orthodontist who devised a supposed cancer treatment based on laetrile.[40]
Laetrile advocates in the United States include Dean Burk (now deceased), a former chief chemist of the National Cancer Institute cytochemistry laboratory,[41] and national arm wrestling champion Jason Vale, who claimed that his kidney and pancreatic cancers were cured by eating apricot seeds. Vale was convicted in 2003 for, among other things, marketing laetrile.[42] The court also found that Vale, who had made at least $500,000 from his illegal sales of laetrile, had fraudulently marketed the substance.[43]
The US Food and Drug Administration continues to seek jail sentences for vendors marketing laetrile for cancer treatment, calling it a "highly toxic product that has not shown any effect on treating cancer."[44]
In terms of fraudulent quack cancer treatments, there is probably none that is more totally busted than this one. Your wall of text - essentially a Gish gallop across the quackscape of laetrile advocacy - only indicates that your judgment on this issue is simply wrong.
Sooner or later you are going to have to start listening to other people, drop the stick and walk away, or accept a restriction on your editing. There are no other possible outcomes at this point. There really aren't.
I do not doubt your sincerity for a moment. Just like the lay advocates of laetrile, you are wrong. Just like the lay advocates of laetrile, allowing your statements to stand would make the world a worse place.
I can't really show you where you are going wrong without a massive wall of text of my own, so here goes:
I believe the MSKCC announcement to conduct further research is notable as well as relevant to Griffin's BLP regarding his advocacy for further research as stated in his book, World Without Cancer. Therefore, my question is "Do the sources pass the acid test for reliability with regards to inclusion of MSKCC's announcement? It will be represented for what it is - hypotheses based on lab experiments - representative of the minority view, making sure it does not receive prominence over mainstream views. It also serves to update the older hypotheses now cited, some of which are 20 to 30 years old.
[42] - is this book an acceptable source since the author of that book is the physician who inspired Griffin to write his book, and it also includes the information Griffin used when writing his book?
[43] October 2008 research by Giuseppe Nacci, M.D., 500 pgs from EVIDENCE BASED MEDICINE: 1,700 official scientific publications 1,750 various bibliographical references with particular emphasis on pgs 17-25, and pgs 159-166 (which includes documented case histories) - this is published information (also in book form) authored by a reputable physician. Is it a RS for supporting Griffin's minority view with regards to why he believes what he does? It is my understanding that minority views can be/should be represented as long as they are reliably sourced, adhere to NPOV, and do not give precedence over mainstream views. The fact that the information directly relates to what Griffin advocates and has written about establishes relevance. Yes or no?
You asked, "are you asking about reliability—that is, whether or not a given source supports a particular claim in an article?" Yes, that is what I am asking. If a partisan source or sources include passing mention (trivial, unsourced) of a subject using contentious and/or pejorative terminology in say, an article about a politician, and somewhere in that article they mention one of Griffin's books or Griffin himself in a parenthetical phrase, or brief sentence, (a) does such mention justify such opinions to be presented as statements of fact in Wiki voice, or is it still considered opinion, and (b) what if there are equally as many "reliable" sources that dispute such claims either by omission, or direct denial, including denial by Griffin himself? I understand why such sources could be used to express the opinion of critics, but I don't understand how those opinions could be considered factual based on trivial mention in partisan sources. Yes, or no? Please explain.
I am very appreciative of your intelligible responses, and look forward to further input from you and other knowledgeable editors who are well-versed in this subject. What I learn from the noticeboard regarding the PS-Fringe aspects of proper presentation will also help with regards to the parallel issues relating to Griffin's other books, such as The Creature From Jekyll Island which helps explain the structure of the highly controversial, Federal Reserve System.
You have established only one thing: that Griffin does not just write about the laetrile conspiracy theory, but actually subscribes to it. You have succeeded in strengthening the case for characterising him as a conspiracy theorist, but have entirely failed to establish that his advocacy of laetrile is anything other than delusional. The only saving grace is that unlike some advocates, he is at least not making money direct from defrauding desperate people with terminal disease. Guy ( Help!) 19:19, 23 January 2015 (UTC)
There are five sources in the stub article on Violet Brown, an old woman:
Between them they give three different dates of birth for her. Is there any reason to consider any of them unreliable, or to consider any one of them to be indubitably more reliable than the others? Justlettersandnumbers ( talk) 20:06, 16 January 2015 (UTC)
While the GRG reportedly verified her age, their source isn't given. And if it is her birth certificate, it's important to note that birth certificates are not necessarily accurate - my grandfather's (born 1906, in Trinidad, which would have had a very similar system of birth registration as Jamaica) DOB is, reportedly, wrong on his birth certificate because there was a fine for reporting a birth more than a week late. A friend's father, born around 1940, has two different birth certificates with different first and surnames. Without more information, I wouldn't take the date supplied by the GRG as a fact, while disregarding the other reported birth dates. That amounts to privileging the most opaque of the five sources. Guettarda ( talk) 06:18, 19 January 2015 (UTC)
The simple fact is that an official DOB is a data point around which there exists a certain amount of error. What that error is, I don't know. But a 1% error rate in a country of 2.8 million amounts to 28,000 errors. Even a 0.1% error rate still means that 2,800 DOBs are wrong. And we're talking about record keeping over 100 years ago. My experience with a country whose bureaucracy was, at the time, run by the same colonial civil service as Jamaica makes me suspect that the rate of accuracy was probably on the higher end. To that error rate we must compound the error rate of researchers (who are volunteers, so who knows how well they are trained in data collection) and the error rate of transcription onto the web site. Against that we have the error rate of the news stories. Maybe journalists make more mistakes than GRG researchers (though I would never assume that a priori); the problem lies not in the possibility of error, but in the coincidence of error. And here's the thing - the newspaper reports are tied to events. It's far easier to transpose a digit when typing than it is to confuse "last Sunday" with "last week Tuesday".
Unless you're willing to assume that Jamaicans as ignorant and First World sources are authoritative, I see no way to privilege that one source while dismissing the others. Guettarda ( talk) 23:03, 19 January 2015 (UTC)
Greetings, The Gerontology Research Group is the world's leading authority in extreme longevity tracking. The confidentiality of the data provided and presented by the Gerontology Research Group is beyond any further doubts, once an authenticity of an age is verified just as it happened in Mrs. Violet Brown's case. She was indeed born on Mar. 10, 1900. The verification of a supercentenarian case is a process, in which many different aspects are taken into consideration and it does take time. Firstly a case is pending and then, after further review the final decision is made. A case can be positively verified only when there has been gathered the substantial evidence on the particular case. A news report is not substantial evidence of an age. The Gerontology Research Group bases on the original documentation. Moreover, one document is not enough to verify a case. The multiple number of documents, records, certifications and other sources eliminate the possibility of incompatibility. Then, even if one of these sources was indeed in range of error, the researchers can distinguish it. The researchers, GRG Correspondents are trusted members of the GRG, who have previously proven their credibility and signed the confidentiality agreement. The Gerontology Research Group is a professional organization, cooperates with Guiness World Records as well as with other gerontological and sociological institutions. Its correspondents, apart from collecting the evidence, also often perform the research "in field" by contacting the families of supercentenarians, supercentenarians themselves and exchanging the information with them. Waenceslaus ( talk) 16:11, 20 January 2015 (UTC)
Assertions by the GRG fan club that the GRG is infallible are incorrect. On one occasion there was a dispute on Wiki as to whether or not a British supercentenarian had died. The GRG, vigorously supported by Robert Young, assured us that she had died while a relative insisted she had not. The GRG was wrong (they had been supplied incorrect information). Also their website is technologically out of date (they have promised an upgrade for about a year) and some of the pages, cited as references in Wiki, have not been updated for up to 7 years, so there must exist the possibility, however small, that the date published on their website is not what they have on their records. However, while not 100% reliable the GRG is still probably more reliable than your average newspaper where journalism can range from sloppy to grossly incompetent and occasionally deliberately false. In this case I would expect the DoB of 10 March to probably be correct. DerbyCountyinNZ ( Talk Contribs) 09:46, 24 January 2015 (UTC)
I have used IndiaGlitz as a reference in the article Vikram filmography. I wanna make sure if the source qualifies WP:RS. A point worth noting is that, ref #143 is taken from IndiaGlitz and republished by CNN IBN. There have been numerous instances where IBN have used source material from IndiaGlitz and published them, as can be seen here and here. Considering such information will be allowed as RS, coming from IBN, I think non-controversial claims from IndiaGlitz can also be qualified as RS. I rest my case. -- Sriram speak up 07:42, 13 January 2015 (UTC)
Myself and another editor ( SummerPhd) are engaged in a dispute about whether each of the following sources are acceptible to establish that a particular motion picture was set in New York City:
(1) A citation to the motion picture itself, as a primary source, in reference to a variety of elements including ending credits [copied from discussion on the article's talk page]:
The other editor contends that direct reference to such elements in the primary source is not allowable because it would be synthesis and original research. I believe that in this context, a primary source is not only allowable but perhaps the strongest, because the primary source is being used to cite a " straightforward, descriptive statement of facts that can be verified by any educated person with access to the primary source but without further, specialized knowledge."
(2) A citation to a statement from a scholarly, peer-reviewed journal. The journal article states: "[The story is] set in New York City in the film, but Chicago in the play..."
We both agree that this source is acceptable.
(3) A citation to the New York Times, referring to a statement that the film was being shot in New York City. The other editor contends that the mere fact that a film was shot "on location" cannot establish that the story was actually set there. While I agree that this is true to a certain extent, I believe that in practice it is powerful evidence, and goes a long way toward establishing that the film was indeed set in New York.
In sum: the other editor wishes to remove all of the citations except the citation to the academic journal. In my opinion this removes the strongest sources and best evidence, to the ultimate detriment of the article. (The setting of the film has been a subject of dispute in the past, perhaps because the play was set in Chicago).
Robert Ankony is a Vietnam veteran, a veteran police officer and detective, and has a Ph.D in criminology. He has written a memoir, issued by a reputable publisher, as well as articles about his experiences in the Vietnam War, and has written numerous articles in scholarly criminology articles. He maintains a website with reprints of his published writings and a self-published blog: http://www.robertankony.com
Ankony has also contributed to Wikpedia as Icemanwcs ( talk · contribs). Many of his contributions have been in the form of citations to his published works. Others have been verbatim copies of those works. It's my opinion, and just an opinion, that he's made those contributions to improve Wikipedia and not for any personal gain. His website does not carry any advertisements and it doesn't appear that he gains any monetary rewards by directing traffic to it. I believe he has contributed his scholarship in good faith, to the overall benefit of the project.
An editor using a variety of IPs ( 208.54.38.255, 172.56.8.192, 172.56.9.67) has decided that all of the references and external links to writings by Ankony are detrimental to Wikipedia, are in violation of policy, and must be removed immediately without any discussion. He has removed the citations but not the cited material. I've counseled a more cautious approach. In response the editor has made all kinds of accusations about my motives and methods. I don't want to deal with the IP editor any more which is why I'm bringing this here for the community to handle.
Ankony's "About me" webpage says: [45]
Here are some of the pages from which the IP editor has deleted citation's to Ankony's scholarly, peer reviewed publications or other published writings: Explosive material, Proactive policing, Long-range reconnaissance patrol. Please decide if these citations and contributions should be removed with prejudice or have value. Rezin ( talk) 21:30, 15 January 2015 (UTC)
I have provided links to the spam blacklit noticeboard which lists some of the spamming by Robert Ankony and his talk page which also shows the warnings given by editors. http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=MediaWiki_talk:Spam-blacklist&oldid=642808855#www.robertankony.com and http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=User_talk:Icemanwcs&oldid=642810110#External_links
An editor has twice challenged a thesis published at a university-affiliated research institution, DRMCC: [48] He says that the fact that it is a thesis, and the fact that it is from this university, needs citations. Opinions? — Brianhe ( talk) 21:52, 24 January 2015 (UTC)
Is this book:
a reliable citation for the statement, "The gathering during Hajj is considered the largest annual gathering of people in the world"? (See [50])
Ping: User:Debresser Shii (tock) 14:51, 27 January 2015 (UTC)
Some sources say [Mansa Musa http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/world-history/meet-mansa-musa-i-of-mali--the-richest-human-being-in-all-history-8213453.html independent] and Huffand Daily Mail are these enough to verify a statement that he was one of the richest men to have ever lived? including Henry Louis Gates saying it also gates and he is a historian. Many Thanks-- Inayity ( talk) 18:34, 16 January 2015 (UTC)
Note: Wealth is not an absolute value for every time and place. While on a desert island, Robinson Crusoe was the wealthiest person alive as far as Friday was concerned. Currently we see some Russian oligarch's having their wealth cut in half by simple currency fluctuations. By the way, RS/N has repeatedly found "CelebrityNetWorth" to not meet WP:RS. [53], [54], [55], [56] etc. Collect ( talk) 16:44, 26 January 2015 (UTC) Nor is "ranker.com" a reliable source for any claim of fact at all. Collect ( talk) 16:48, 26 January 2015 (UTC)
The known issues section of Nexus 5 was removed because none of the sources are considered valid. could an independent party check them one by one?
Used by Scientific American. Sci Am also links directly to the source's website within an online Sci Am article. The source is also used by US News, Bloomberg News, CBS News, the LA Times, USA Today, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal. Users @ Randykitty: and @ HG: nonetheless respectively contend that Energy in Depth is "unusable" and material cited to it is "very poorly sourced". Thoughts? In my opinion excluding Energy in Depth even when use is restricted to with in-text attribution may leave articles about publications and resources preferred by environmental lobbying organizations unbalanced, indeed, that's why so many editors of reliable sources like Scientific American see Energy in Depth as a "go to" resource: it provides critical balance from an authority, albeit an authority with a POV. This POV is affiliated with the energy industry, however my view is that if the partisan affiliation is fully disclosed to the reader, per WP:RS "reliable sources are not required to be neutral, unbiased, or objective. Sometimes non-neutral sources are the best possible sources for supporting information about the different viewpoints held on a subject." I'll grant that adding critiques to articles is not to everyone's taste, indeed it isn't to mine, but these two editors have already rejected my stripping out the critique to just leave behind the undisputed facts the critique refers to as "original research" on my part. On a related note, I suggest we ask ourselves if black and white thinking about RS is appropriate or necessary: an appreciation of shading would mean sources could be used under specified conditions, such as with attribution.-- Brian Dell ( talk) 04:15, 25 January 2015 (UTC)
During the last few weeks, there has been much edit warring over the inclusion of birth dates in K-pop band pages. Please understand that I am not posting here to determine whether or not birth dates should be included in band articles, which is another related discussion. I am posting here to get input from more editors on whether the entertainment agencies are reliable sources for this information. Some K-pop band members are independently notable and have their own articles, with their birth dates sourced from their agency. Note that band members's profiles (including birth dates) are also published by the Korean media, but the original sources are the agencies.
Drmies maintains that entertainment companies are not reliable sources, as can be seen in these diffs from A Pink: 1, 2 (my reply), 3. See also this diff from Talk:Girls' Generation. A quote from that last one:
"And yes, I am sticking to my guns on the sourcing thing: we have a policy, and it's found at WP:BLP. It applies here. A Hollywood star from the 1930s, you can bet that someone has looked into it, and has written it up in a book or a reliable publication. In this area, we are dependent completely on the production companies, and that's just not a good thing. If we can't trust Allkpop and those kinds of sites, then we certainly shouldn't automatically trust the owners of these groups, their contracts, their social lives and their bodies ("We Got Married"), their sexualities, and their public image. Why would you trust them? Don't you know that youth is a very marketable commodity?"
Examples of company pages that list birth dates:
I couldn't find any more examples because the vast majority of South Korean singers' articles have no references at all for the birth date. If references were added they would most likely be from the company website or secondary sources such as Naver or MelOn (which get the info from the companies).
I have never posted on a noticeboard before so please let me know if I've made a mistake or not posted in the right place. Myself (and some other editors) are trying to raise the quality of K-pop articles and are receiving much opposition. A few more opinions on this issue would really help, since many K-pop editors think Drmies is manipulating Wikipedia guidelines because he dislikes K-pop. -- Random86 ( talk) 00:38, 25 January 2015 (UTC)
I want to know whether Oneindia.com is a reliable source or not? It is an online news portal owned by Greynium Information Technologies Pvt. Ltd. and offers news in English, Hindi, Bengali, Tamil, Malayalam, Telugu, Gujarati and Kannada languages.( source) Several reliable sources have used Oneindia.in as sources for their news stories. Examples [57] [58] The Hindu has called it "one of India's leading portals".( source)
Thanks.-- Skr15081997 ( talk) 14:31, 25 January 2015 (UTC)
On this edit, it says "described as 'fanatics' by David Dean Shulman". He is a WP:BIASED peace activist which was disputed before as WP:RS. As a Is he enough RS for labeling even when attributed to him? Ashtul ( talk) 12:21, 27 January 2015 (UTC)
"Fanatic" here appears to be an opinion properly sourced as an opinion, not (I trust) implying specific criminal acts. I would note,moreover, that "fanatic" in the sports arena is not even considered much of a pejorative, but simply implying "strong feelings" (though I would state it can not be used as a "fact" in Wikipedia's voice, to be sure). Collect ( talk) 15:32, 27 January 2015 (UTC)
Hello.
This is the article. My question is, The Guardian is clearly reliable. Beyond reproach in some peoples eyes. The issue here is, some of the facts in this particular article are... wrong. My question is, despite the inconsistencies, can this article still be considered reliable for reporting on the currently ongoing ArbCom case in the Gamergate article? I'm curious about an outsider's perspective. I understand reliability can be questioned based on several factors, with the publication only one of them. Would this article, if it is unreliable, bring into the question of the reliability of the author perhaps? Would love to see some opinions from people "outside" the Gamergate controversy bubble preferably, as it is being debated in the Talk there as well. Ries42 ( talk) 04:15, 25 January 2015 (UTC)
As in all cases (and the The Graudian is actually fallible [59] <g>) there is a wee bit of opinion in what could have been purely factual reportage. Where there is the slightest hint that a claim is one of opinion, we are better off citing it properly as the opinion of the one holding it than to run the risk, howsoever small, that readers will take it as absolute fact uttered in Wikipedia's voice. (I consider such statements as " who were all actively attempting to prevent the article from being rewritten with a pro-Gamergate slant " and "The conflict on the site began almost alongside Gamergate, a grassroots campaign broadly targeting alleged corruption in games journalism and perceived feminist influence in the videogame industry" as containing issues which seem to be opinion as much as fact, or possibly more so. The value of using "opinions as opinions" seems to far outweigh the position "but it is fact because a reliable source stated it as fact" at all. Cheers. Collect ( talk) 19:38, 26 January 2015 (UTC)
While I agree that this is partly a re-hash of the blog post, that doesn't make it useless as a source. If there are factual inaccuracies in it, we should not duplicate them. However, the existence of factual inaccuracies does not necessarily render the whole source unusable. If we took that approach, we would probably be safer just not using journalistic sources at all. There are certainly statements in the source that are wholly accurate, so it depends what you want to use. Formerip ( talk) 13:27, 27 January 2015 (UTC)
72.227.98.109 (
talk) 00:49, 28 January 2015 (UTC)I thought wikipedia wasn't about the truth. Now that the Guardian has done to Wikipedia what they've been doing all along, suddenly we need a special rule about a reliable source only being a reliable source when somebody (who) decides what the source reports is true? So in the future, when the Guardian reports something, what are you going to do to fact check it before you site them? A Guardian article exactly as wrong as this one about any number of other subjects would have been cited by you guys, and if somebody complained that it was factually inaccurate, you would have told them Wikipedia isn't about the truth and left it in.
It's alleged the article is "wrong," and thus not from a reliable source. The article was updated and corrected today. It now appears to me to be fully accurate. Hipocrite ( talk) 15:21, 28 January 2015 (UTC)
(From WP:BLP/N)
I suggested there that the pertinent cites for the claims of fact would be any Brookings source stating that he, indeed, worked there and a Carnegie source stating his position with them. The Weekly Standard cite appears to be self-written, so of problematic value as to anything other than statements of fact. The Yale Daily News, AFAICT, is a student publication which is of no value for the sentence to which it is appended, and the RightWeb editorial is also not needed for a claim of fact (indeed is not specifically needed at all here) but which also contains clear opinions which would preclude it being used as an RS for claims of fact. The discussion indeed focused on using the opinions cites as a basis to label living persons as "neoconservative" in Wikipedia's voice. The Right Web cite is clearly an opinion piece and really of no use here as far as I can tell.
Are the last two cites usable at all to state in Wikipedia's voice (I opined that such a use would require that opinions must be properly cited as opinions) that Kagan and others of his family are "neoconservative"? Is it proper to use problematic cites for a simple claim where absolutely RS cites are readily found and used? See Wikipedia:Biographies_of_living_persons/Noticeboard#Robert_Kagan and a second section with the same name at the bottom of the page, Wikipedia:Biographies_of_living_persons/Noticeboard#Neoconservativism_-_Victoria_Nuland and Wikipedia:Biographies_of_living_persons/Noticeboard#Neoconservatism_-_Frederick_Kagan where the same sources and arguments to categorise them is made. See also List of Neoconservatives (listing towards bottom of article) and diff [60] [61] where specific living persons are categorized on the basis of an opinion article, and so on. Thanks. Collect ( talk) 16:43, 31 January 2015 (UTC)
Is it appropriate to include Publishers Weekly's review of Orson Scott Card's novella "Hamlet's Father" in Card's article? User:Collect claims it is a BLP violation to include a mention of the publication's brief negative review, since PW points out that the novella attempts to link homosexuality to pedophilia, while I argue that PW is a major industry publication whose reviews of full-length novels are not usually much longer than this and that BLP definitely does not bar criticism of an author's creations, which is what this is. – Roscelese ( talk ⋅ contribs) 17:39, 31 January 2015 (UTC)
""Here's the punch line: Old King Hamlet was an inadequate king because he was gay, an evil person because he was gay, and, ultimately, a demonic and ghostly father of lies who convinces young Hamlet to exact imaginary revenge on innocent people," writes William Alexander. "The old king was actually murdered by Horatio, in revenge for molesting him as a young boy – along with Laertes, and Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern, thereby turning all of them gay … Hamlet is damned for all the needless death he inflicts, and Dead Gay Dad will now do gay things to him for the rest of eternity: 'Welcome to Hell, my beautiful son. At last we'll be together as I always longed for us to be.'" "
— The Guardian
This discussion has been deleted by Joestanza as Blueboar suggested this is not the correct venue for this discussion. Diff; discussion here. Epic Genius ( talk) 20:19, 1 February 2015 (UTC)
Some material (Summing up his work, Ticktin says: "My work on the political economy of the USSR showed … " ) in a BLP is ref'd to this site [62]. It appears to be the personal blog of a woman in Ontario. Is this RS? Capitalismojo ( talk) 00:38, 2 February 2015 (UTC)
Is The Daily Telegraph a WP:reliable source? An IP-hopping editor is repeatedly removing the phrase "making New Caledonia one of the few countries or territories in the world with two recognized flags" from Flag of New Caledonia claiming that the Telegraph is "Not reliable source". They justify this on the talk page by arguing that it is "an article in the other part of the world". They use the same argument for their repeated removal of the second flag from the infobox of New Caledonia. The source says "New Caledonian Congress overwhelmingly voted to adopt the emblem of the indigenous movement ... as the nation's second official flag" and "The unusual move makes New Caledonia one of only a handful of countries ... that have two official national flags." Are there any policy based reasons why this Telegraph article is not reliable? Does the geographic location of a source impact its reliability? TDL ( talk) 16:51, 30 January 2015 (UTC)
Is [63] this ethicsdaily.com article sufficient to label Timothy McVeigh's religion as Christian Identity?
From here it looks like the opinion of the writer who proffers no actual source for the claim whatsoever. Absent a real source, we can not assert McVeigh's religion to have been "Christian Identity Movement".
Second issue is whether we can place McVeigh in Category:American libertarians on the basis of [64] page 298 The claim made in the biography sourced to that book was:
Which sounds like pure speculation at best. Is that book a good source for the claimmade? Is the claim actually speculation which does not belong in a biography? Is the claim as stated sufficient to place McVeigh in the category? Thanks. Collect ( talk) 18:22, 28 January 2015 (UTC)
There is a Wikipedian who believes you can cite a book without a page number and that's okay. He does not possess the books because he sold them a long time ago: he just cites them anyway.
I think this is absolutely not the case, and that page numbers and references to text in specific pages are required ( page needed templates should be installed if no page numbers are present). See Talk:Chinese_Canadians_in_British_Columbia#Re Oppenheimer.... WhisperToMe ( talk) 15:19, 27 January 2015 (UTC)
This is that Wikipedian mentioned in the lede of this oh-no-not-yet-another-board-essay as a way to reject good faith and demand page-cites when they are not needed. This has included WTMs' demands that I must provide page cites even for talkpage mentions of sources and events that he is also determinedly finding ways to keep (or try to keep) from conflicting with this chosen POV-theme for "his" article; he orated endlessly and repetitiously at the OR board recently, asserting that WP:V requires page-cites for anything or HE will delete it, including apparently his threats to delete the talk page mentions of issues and events absent from or in conflict with the prejudicial biases of the selection of "scholarly" sources he insists are all that matters; he holds in disdain the many local histories I mention and items in them, again demanding page cites, and last night (in my time zone) ordering me to get the page-cites that he's demanding; he wants me to put more time into his demands and is escalating his attacks on anything I bring up. This is yet another bureaucratic side-discussion where he is IMO CANVASSING for support to get me out of his way; I know BC and BC wiki-space like almost no one else, and have a lot of support and respect for my knowledge of BC history and sources about it outside Wikipedia as well as inside it (see the barnstars section of my userpage).
But not to him, he went to the OR board to get support for the notion that my 59 years of life and over 45 years of in-depth readings of BC history and media was not valid i.e. he didn't have to listen to it because that is "original research" in his instruction creeping rule-mongering world of "scholarly"
I've never encountered anyone so hostile to things he doesn't know or are which in the way of the thesis he's developing on the page in question, and in various others, and in good two dozen lengthy and SYNTH-y arguments on various talkpages and boards while continuing to TRIVIA/UNDUE expansions of material, fighting off, again even talkpage mentions of events he hasn't heard about....and which his preferred collection of bias sources with their glosses and generalizations of half-truths either avoid or just don't know about. They're all "of a kind" and the article is increasingly an ethnopolitics soapbox and not a good article, and is at conflict in its tone and conclusions/assertions with many (many) other BC articles. His cite-obsession and SYNTHographical ramblings include attempts to justify capital-W "Whites" rather than the WikiCanada standard "European Canadian" or the more specific uses like British, American, Maritimer, German, etc as the paradigm of his selection of sources is "White/Chinese" in a very recognizable theme of anti-"white" bias most easily summarized as "cruel nasty exploitive white bigots vs earnest hard working decent and suffering Chinese"; way too common in modern academia; and for those thinking I'm just an "angry old white man" who's anti-Chinese, that's a crock and I'm not alone.....
as an example, see the CCinBC talkpage about a geographer named Mike Kennedy who, like me and many others, doesn't like at all the ideologically driven fabrications and distortions of current (recent) trends in BC historiography; and the way said authors either don't know the facts, or don't want to admit to anything that gets in teh way of their biased constructs about BC's complicated past. And THAT is exactly where WTM is coming from too - this discussion about page-cites is only looking for validation (which he hasn't gotten though on the talkpage he's pretending he has) of his efforts to block any mention of facts and issues and to exclude sources I know them to be in, with the page-cite game only IMO a ruse; he knows I don't have the books on hand (I live in Cambodia for now) and yet keeps on telling me to get them and page-cite them. Not just insistently, but actually as though he's Editor-in-Chief...which he's NOT. He's No 34 on list of all-time wikipedians but his user summary is opted out of; from what I have experienced I suspect that most of his edits re board-wars and long SYNTH-y essays and given what I'm seeing of his work on articles of "his" I've seen and tried to cope with and input on, I'm aghast at what else must be out there on Wikipedia written by him.
....and yes, no wonder "some people" want me blocked, I insist on fairness and the complete truth and know propaganda and distortion when I see it; while they want me gone because that's NOT what they want in Wikipedia, rather information control and suppression of fact in the way of their respective agendas........including in the case of Chinese Canadians in British Columbia; I get accused of "walls of text" in that ANI while his (incredibly) lengthy and unreadable expoundings of weird-logic and selective-cite SYNTH go unaddressed and unrestricted; it was said to me I should edit in other topic areas where I will not encounter such people and one (too typical) somebody-else-that-knows-nothing-about BC denounced me for OWN behaviour on BC topics; nothing could be more misdirected and a-factual; telling me to abandon my province's history and social geography to people from beyond whose only sources are online and have no direct experience of the place is utterly absurd; while not telling it to someone constructing and bureacratic-board warring, as again here, to continue his campaign of rule-mongering and fact-avoidance and anti-collaboration and very obvious "OWN" behaviour is ludicrous.
I have contemplated taking the many issues concerning his obstructive and imperious/demanding and ordering-me-around behaviour to boards on the problems I find in all his work (including an atrociously bald writing style with bad syntax and clumsy construction, but what's going on is SYNTH/OR, TRIVIA, UNDUE, ESSAY, POV and more all at the same time; his AGF towards anything I say is reflexive by now; but has escalated since a discussion on my talkpage where he disputed my removal of "Anglophone schools" from BC education sections and proceeded to lecture me, a real live British Columbian, on what he thought was OK, and even though two other editors joined me in seemingly getting him to understand how wrong he was, he never conceded defeat though conceding he should use "English-language schools" and "French-language schools" but still not getting that those "English-language schools" have French-immersion programs and are not really "English-language schools".
He spoke throughout that like a college professor telling us (all three were Canadians) what was "actually" the case, even though he's never even been to the country and only just started "invading" Canadian wiki-space a few months ago...three or four very long months now, all the while disputing word-usages and page-cite-demanding and advancing the POV of his choice of sources while ignoring dozens of sources I've assembled on that talkpage; probably archived now because of his ongoing nit-pickery about words using SYNTH/out-of-context and often highly illogical "logic".....
Following that non-admission-of-error, his latest onslaught began against a slew of edits in the last 48 hours on the CCinBC article; so many that I can't keep up; that he would order me to go buy the book in question, which I already have read several times and know well (I don't keep mental notes of page numbers when reading/digesting as I'm reading as an historian, not a wiki-bureaucrat) as I have dozens of other books - hundreds really - about BC that he doesn't even want to give a nod to, except to demand page-cites when they're not necessary, as GB Fan encouragingly notes above...but in the comment on the CCinBC talkpage just now that clued me into the existence of this yet-another-side-discussion of his, he makes no concession AT ALL to what GB Fan has said....he hears only himself, and turns things said in edit comments and talkpage mentions back with complete distortion or miscomprehension of what was said, juxtaposing his SYNTH and misapprehensions on what was being changed or had said, and never listening and always arguing.
Yet I'm the one in hot water because of his onslaught of half-truths and rule-happy things like this discussion - "it's OK if I demand page-cites for anything, right?". No it's not, and it's not OK to keep on with this behaviour, and not OK to imperiously tell off a Wikipedian experienced in the subject area and who has built a great deal of the BC content in Wikipedia that he is worthless and tht anything he says cannot be taken in good faith; he doesn't say that directly but the message has been clear; including in his coming here to look for yet more support for his SYNTH extrapolations of guidlines into iron-clad rules in order to censor what he doesn't want to hear and doesn't want in "his" article(s).
Yet another hour of my time spent on all this (I type fast, this didn't take me hours though indeed hours upon hours and days upon days have been spent trying to get him to listen to commonsense....or resist attack from those he's found "support" from in the vicious bearpit of hate and pomposity called ANI. Skookum1 ( talk) 10:57, 28 January 2015 (UTC)
Is the [ Postgraduate Medical Journal] reliable to use at Safety of electronic cigarettes for the claims above. According to WP:RS/MC, Being a "medical source" is not an intrinsic property of the source itself; a source becomes a medical source only when it is used to support a medical claim. It is vital that the biomedical information in all types of articles be based on reliable, third-party, published sources and accurately reflect current medical knowledge. For the non-medical claims above I think this source is reliable for the claims. For example, stating that there are flavors that include Gummy Bears and bubble gum and claims made by advocates or proponents are non-medical claims.
According to WP:RSOPINION, Some sources may be considered reliable for statements as to their author's opinion, but not for statements asserted as fact without an inline qualifier like "(Author) says...". A prime example of this is opinion pieces in mainstream newspapers. When using them, it is better to explicitly attribute such material in the text to the author to make it clear to the reader that they are reading an opinion. I prefer to include in-text attribution to the source as above for the non-medical claims. QuackGuru ( talk) 04:49, 19 January 2015 (UTC)
1) A 2014 Postgraduate Medical Journal stated that e-cigarettes have concentrated liquids that are packed in colorful containers and combined with flavors that appear to be made to attract children. The flavors include Gummy Bears and bubble gum. It was concluded that it is recommended that e-cigarettes be kept in a safe place, where children and pets do not have access them.
3) A 2014 Postgraduate Medical Journal stated that proponents frequently assert that e-cigarettes is only water vapor.
1 is non-medical and 3 is the assertion of the proponents. I shortened 3 from the original wording. Is the Postgraduate Medical Journal reliable for these claims? QuackGuru ( talk) 22:07, 19 January 2015 (UTC)
Editorials in medical journals are short essays that express the views of the authors, often regarding a research or review article published in the same issue. Editorials provide perspective on how the current article fits with other information on the same topic.
Editorials should deal with contemporary issues of importance to clinicians. Their content can be clinical, social, political, legal or related to research issues. Although they may be controversial, they should attempt to provide a balanced view. Editorials provide a personal view and, as such, will not be routinely submitted to peer review.
One more case where we should stick to citing opinions as opinions. Opinions from notable persons are citable as opinions from notable persons. Opinions in editorial columns are still opinions. And if there is a consensus that the opinions are not from a notable person, and are not an official view of a publication, than it is a matter of editorial discussion as to whether to use the opinions. The gist is at the end of the column where it is clear that the author is opposed to tobacco companies "reinventing themselves as legitimate businesses" which is not a "medical statement" but a strongly political statement. Usable if cited as opinion ascribed to its (non-notable) author, not to the publication. And subject to the consensus of other editors. Were this a column by a notable person I would more strongly suggest consensus ought to allow its use. Collect ( talk) 12:41, 20 January 2015 (UTC)
Consensus from uninvolved editors is that the source is reliable and we should cite opinions as opinions. QuackGuru ( talk) 06:37, 26 January 2015 (UTC)
See Talk:Safety_of_electronic_cigarettes#In-text_attribution_again.
1. Nicotine is regarded as a possibly lethal toxin. [68]
2. A policy statement by the American Association for Cancer Research and the American Society of Clinical Oncology has reported that "Third-hand exposure occurs when nicotine and other chemicals from second-hand aerosol deposit on surfaces, exposing people through touch, ingestion,and inhalation". [69]
Is the policy statement from the American Association for Cancer Research and the American Society of Clinical Oncology reliable for these claims? QuackGuru ( talk) 19:14, 21 January 2015 (UTC)
Note. If this source is reliable I think it is safe to say a lot more policy statements can be added to the page. QuackGuru ( talk) 05:10, 26 January 2015 (UTC)
See Safety_of_electronic_cigarettes#Environmental_impact. Is this source reliable? QuackGuru ( talk) 05:10, 26 January 2015 (UTC)
AlbinoFerret tried to hide text from a reliable source from the page. He eventually deleted some of the text. [70] [71] [72] [73] [74] QuackGuru ( talk) 01:32, 27 January 2015 (UTC)
I noticed a lot of text and sources are being deleted from the Safety of electronic cigarettes. Is World Lung Foundation source reliable? QuackGuru ( talk) 23:14, 26 January 2015 (UTC)
AlbinoFerret thinks the page is now POV. Is the International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease reliable? QuackGuru ( talk) 05:45, 27 January 2015 (UTC)
"WMA Statement on Electronic Cigarettes and Other Electronic Nicotine Delivery Systems". World Medical Association.
Is the World Medical Association a reliable source? QuackGuru ( talk) 05:47, 27 January 2015 (UTC)
The World Vision International article has a list of well known people who endorse the organization. Is it appropriate to use a youtube video of of the individual endorsing World Vision International, that are also happen to be promotional videos for WVI? The only purpose of referencing the video was to prove that the individuals actually endorsed WVI. There are 14 people listed in this section and I did this for several of them including Alex Trabek, Hugh Jackman and Sarah McLaughlin. Elmmapleoakpine ( talk) 22:54, 2 February 2015 (UTC)
Lovearth.net seems painfully non-RS. It is a personal blog of conspiracy theories. It is being used extensively at the General Motors streetcar conspiracy article [ [76]]. Capitalismojo ( talk) 14:28, 2 February 2015 (UTC)
This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 180 | Archive 181 | Archive 182 | Archive 183 | Archive 184 | Archive 185 | → | Archive 190 |
is the new Israeli private news channel, News 0404 founded by journalist Boaz Golan, and self-identified as promoting a 'Zionist-patriotic' perspective according to the stub dedicated to it on the Hebrew Wikipedia (חדשות 0404),reliable for facts? I have raised the issue at the talk page of List of violent incidents in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, 2015 Repeatedly, we have affirmed that even long-established websites full of competent journalists or scholars ( Counterpunch, Mondoweiss) (basically anti-Zionist with regard to the I/P area) cannot be used for facts. So on that precedent, it seems self-evident that a new POV-pushing news outlet based on user contributions with no notable names, run by a private entrepreneur, should not be used for facts. Thirdly, the reports are all in Hebrew, and the newbie editor using them supplies no details of their content, which means third parties unfamiliar with that language have to take on trust the veracity of his reports. Could experienced RS hands please set forth the relevant policy on this for that editor's benefit. Thank you. Nishidani ( talk) 09:47, 18 January 2015 (UTC)
I have found a new website that I think is reliable and could benefit Wikipedia. The link for the site is below and I would like to know if it could be considered a valid citation.
I would like to replace info in The Big Bang Theory. The source that is used is not updated due to a neilsen glitch in the ratings, and my source has updated info.
I would like to replace a fact in the US. Viewers Section in the List of episodes for season 8. It says that the first few episodes of the season got a certain number of viewers that was not updated. If here is the exact place on the site that I found the info. Compare it to Wikipedia's non-updated info.
http://tvseriesfinale.com/tv-show/the-big-bang-theory-season-eight-ratings-33990/
Thank you for your patience. Jatremitiedi ( talk) 00:54, 22 January 2015 (UTC)
I'm not sure about discussing this issue here, but this is important for me to know the answer of the question as a wiki user. when i needed to saying about Literary Works of George Jordac(Christian Lebanese author),have used one of encyclopedia webs at draft of Gorge jordac article. By the way is that reliable source? Is there any permission for wiki user to use such as these sources?thanks. Samaneh-davoudi ( talk) 08:05, 11 January 2015 (UTC)
Encyclopedias are generally "tertiary sources" and we should use the sources they cite for their articles - if they cite no sources, then normal practice is to dismiss their articles in any event. Technical or specialized encyclopedias generally show where they got their information. Collect ( talk) 23:08, 15 January 2015 (UTC)
Hello. Myself & two other editors ( 62 & Galatz) are in a dispute as to who would be considered Total Nonstop Action Wrestling's majority shareholder. 62 & Galatz insist on:
|key_people = Robert Carter
(Majority stakeholder - 71%)
and are using these links as sources in an attempt to verify Robert as being TNA's majority shareholder. I have told them that the first two links would be no good, as the date attached to them makes them old & out-of-date, while the third link makes NO mention of Mr. Carter OR the company he's currently involved with, which would make that link no good as well. I, however, insist on:
|key_people = Janice Carter
(Majority stakeholder - 71%)
and have provided links to more recent, up-to-date articles, verifying Mrs. Carter's company, Panda Energy International, as the company's majority owner/shareholder, as well as Mrs. Carter herself as the company's owner; however, 62 & Galatz refuse to accept the links I have sourced as being correct & continue to revert the article to a version with their, albeit out-of-date & therefore incorrect, information contained within. So, I suppose the question is, would my sources take precedence over theirs, due to mine being more recent & therefore, up-to-date? 76.235.248.47 ( talk) 13:24, 21 January 2015 (UTC)
The Carter family have owned a controlling stake in the company ever since, making Panda Energy a family business.
This entire thread is WP:OR. Unless you have a straightforward direct statement saying that a particular person is the majority shareholder, you cannot put it in. If a corporation is the majority shareholder, the CEO of that corporation is not the majority owner. The owners of the second company are themselves collectively the owners of the owned company. Gaijin42 ( talk) 23:35, 21 January 2015 (UTC)
It has just a couple weeks to go, and we haven't posted notice of it here. So now I am doing so: Talk:G._Edward_Griffin#RfC:_.22conspiracy_theorist.22_in_first_sentence, in the hope of getting more input for the closer. Thanks. Jytdog ( talk) 14:48, 23 January 2015 (UTC)
While there is an RfC (dated 3 January 2015) still ongoing at Talk:G. Edward Griffin#Survey, it is a separate issue that references only the first line of the lede. The requester provided a list of sources which he included with his RfC statement (which I've not seen done before now) but I am mentioning them here as the proper venue for RS discussion. I believe the overwhelmingly negative influence that was created by poorly sourced contentious material has resulted in a WP:COATRACK. It prevents Griffin from advancing as a potential GA candidate, which is my primary interest. I doubt it would pass a less stringent DYK review as it is now. A few involved editors are actually OK with the article as is, and don't appear to have any problems maintaining the SQ which is why I brought the RS issues here.
Some of the sources contain less than notable mention of Griffin (not even qualifying as trivial) but are still being used to justify contentious material in this BLP.
Other questionable sources, some of which don't pass the smell test for WP:RS but are used in the article to justify contentious material:
The following sources have, for the most part, been criticized as not RS for citing even generalizations of positive reviews about Griffin as an author and lecturer. I suggested using them to balance (NPOV, V, UNDUE, BLP) what critics have alleged about Griffin and his books:
Disclaimer - Griffin is a BLP, but one of the books he has written brings PS-Fringe into play. I am not advocating for laetrile (amygdalin, B17) by any means, and I certainly am not suggesting that we, as editors, promote Griffin's book, World Without Cancer, as the end-all cure for cancer. Hell no! I am simply asking the community for input re: RS. My only purpose here is to fix the WP:COATRACK problem created by poorly sourced contentious material, not all of which is PS. I hope to provide proper balance (without WP:UNDUE) by citing sources I listed above to balance the criticism cited by questionable sources used to justify contentious material. I realize BLPs and PS-Fringe are hot topics, which is another reason I'm looking for input from uninvolved editors. If I have misstated anything, please advise and I will be happy to correct it. Thank you. Atsme☯ Consult 23:38, 20 January 2015 (UTC)
Ok, I try to simplify with a few direct statements you can dig your teeth into:
I don't think I can clarify my questions more than what I already have in the mountain of text above. Your input will be appreciated Atsme☯ Consult 18:10, 22 January 2015 (UTC)
Laetrile was proven clinically ineffective more than 30 years ago and is considered a canonical example of "quackery".[4] Nonetheless, advocates for laetrile dispute this label, asserting that there is a conspiracy between the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the pharmaceutical industry and the medical community, including the American Medical Association and the American Cancer Society, to exploit the American people, and especially cancer patients. Advocates of the use of laetrile have also changed the rationale for its use, first as a treatment of cancer, then as a vitamin, then as part of a "holistic" nutritional regimen, or as treatment for cancer pain, among others, none of which have any significant evidence supporting its use. Despite the lack of evidence for its use, laetrile developed a significant following due to its wide promotion as a "pain-free" treatment of cancer as an alternative to surgery and chemotherapy that have significant side effects. The use of laetrile in place of known effective treatments of cancer led to a number of deaths.[35]
The FDA and AMA crackdown, begun in the 1970s, effectively escalated prices on the black market, played into the conspiracy narrative and helped unscrupulous profiteers foster multi-million dollar smuggling empires.[36][37][38]
Some North American cancer patients have traveled to Mexico for treatment with the substance, allegedly under the auspices of Ernesto Contreras.[39] The actor Steve McQueen died in Mexico following cancer treatment with laetrile and surgery to remove a stomach tumor while undergoing treatment for peritoneal mesothelioma (a cancer that attacks the lining of the abdomen) under the care of William D. Kelley, a dentist and orthodontist who devised a supposed cancer treatment based on laetrile.[40]
Laetrile advocates in the United States include Dean Burk (now deceased), a former chief chemist of the National Cancer Institute cytochemistry laboratory,[41] and national arm wrestling champion Jason Vale, who claimed that his kidney and pancreatic cancers were cured by eating apricot seeds. Vale was convicted in 2003 for, among other things, marketing laetrile.[42] The court also found that Vale, who had made at least $500,000 from his illegal sales of laetrile, had fraudulently marketed the substance.[43]
The US Food and Drug Administration continues to seek jail sentences for vendors marketing laetrile for cancer treatment, calling it a "highly toxic product that has not shown any effect on treating cancer."[44]
In terms of fraudulent quack cancer treatments, there is probably none that is more totally busted than this one. Your wall of text - essentially a Gish gallop across the quackscape of laetrile advocacy - only indicates that your judgment on this issue is simply wrong.
Sooner or later you are going to have to start listening to other people, drop the stick and walk away, or accept a restriction on your editing. There are no other possible outcomes at this point. There really aren't.
I do not doubt your sincerity for a moment. Just like the lay advocates of laetrile, you are wrong. Just like the lay advocates of laetrile, allowing your statements to stand would make the world a worse place.
I can't really show you where you are going wrong without a massive wall of text of my own, so here goes:
I believe the MSKCC announcement to conduct further research is notable as well as relevant to Griffin's BLP regarding his advocacy for further research as stated in his book, World Without Cancer. Therefore, my question is "Do the sources pass the acid test for reliability with regards to inclusion of MSKCC's announcement? It will be represented for what it is - hypotheses based on lab experiments - representative of the minority view, making sure it does not receive prominence over mainstream views. It also serves to update the older hypotheses now cited, some of which are 20 to 30 years old.
[42] - is this book an acceptable source since the author of that book is the physician who inspired Griffin to write his book, and it also includes the information Griffin used when writing his book?
[43] October 2008 research by Giuseppe Nacci, M.D., 500 pgs from EVIDENCE BASED MEDICINE: 1,700 official scientific publications 1,750 various bibliographical references with particular emphasis on pgs 17-25, and pgs 159-166 (which includes documented case histories) - this is published information (also in book form) authored by a reputable physician. Is it a RS for supporting Griffin's minority view with regards to why he believes what he does? It is my understanding that minority views can be/should be represented as long as they are reliably sourced, adhere to NPOV, and do not give precedence over mainstream views. The fact that the information directly relates to what Griffin advocates and has written about establishes relevance. Yes or no?
You asked, "are you asking about reliability—that is, whether or not a given source supports a particular claim in an article?" Yes, that is what I am asking. If a partisan source or sources include passing mention (trivial, unsourced) of a subject using contentious and/or pejorative terminology in say, an article about a politician, and somewhere in that article they mention one of Griffin's books or Griffin himself in a parenthetical phrase, or brief sentence, (a) does such mention justify such opinions to be presented as statements of fact in Wiki voice, or is it still considered opinion, and (b) what if there are equally as many "reliable" sources that dispute such claims either by omission, or direct denial, including denial by Griffin himself? I understand why such sources could be used to express the opinion of critics, but I don't understand how those opinions could be considered factual based on trivial mention in partisan sources. Yes, or no? Please explain.
I am very appreciative of your intelligible responses, and look forward to further input from you and other knowledgeable editors who are well-versed in this subject. What I learn from the noticeboard regarding the PS-Fringe aspects of proper presentation will also help with regards to the parallel issues relating to Griffin's other books, such as The Creature From Jekyll Island which helps explain the structure of the highly controversial, Federal Reserve System.
You have established only one thing: that Griffin does not just write about the laetrile conspiracy theory, but actually subscribes to it. You have succeeded in strengthening the case for characterising him as a conspiracy theorist, but have entirely failed to establish that his advocacy of laetrile is anything other than delusional. The only saving grace is that unlike some advocates, he is at least not making money direct from defrauding desperate people with terminal disease. Guy ( Help!) 19:19, 23 January 2015 (UTC)
There are five sources in the stub article on Violet Brown, an old woman:
Between them they give three different dates of birth for her. Is there any reason to consider any of them unreliable, or to consider any one of them to be indubitably more reliable than the others? Justlettersandnumbers ( talk) 20:06, 16 January 2015 (UTC)
While the GRG reportedly verified her age, their source isn't given. And if it is her birth certificate, it's important to note that birth certificates are not necessarily accurate - my grandfather's (born 1906, in Trinidad, which would have had a very similar system of birth registration as Jamaica) DOB is, reportedly, wrong on his birth certificate because there was a fine for reporting a birth more than a week late. A friend's father, born around 1940, has two different birth certificates with different first and surnames. Without more information, I wouldn't take the date supplied by the GRG as a fact, while disregarding the other reported birth dates. That amounts to privileging the most opaque of the five sources. Guettarda ( talk) 06:18, 19 January 2015 (UTC)
The simple fact is that an official DOB is a data point around which there exists a certain amount of error. What that error is, I don't know. But a 1% error rate in a country of 2.8 million amounts to 28,000 errors. Even a 0.1% error rate still means that 2,800 DOBs are wrong. And we're talking about record keeping over 100 years ago. My experience with a country whose bureaucracy was, at the time, run by the same colonial civil service as Jamaica makes me suspect that the rate of accuracy was probably on the higher end. To that error rate we must compound the error rate of researchers (who are volunteers, so who knows how well they are trained in data collection) and the error rate of transcription onto the web site. Against that we have the error rate of the news stories. Maybe journalists make more mistakes than GRG researchers (though I would never assume that a priori); the problem lies not in the possibility of error, but in the coincidence of error. And here's the thing - the newspaper reports are tied to events. It's far easier to transpose a digit when typing than it is to confuse "last Sunday" with "last week Tuesday".
Unless you're willing to assume that Jamaicans as ignorant and First World sources are authoritative, I see no way to privilege that one source while dismissing the others. Guettarda ( talk) 23:03, 19 January 2015 (UTC)
Greetings, The Gerontology Research Group is the world's leading authority in extreme longevity tracking. The confidentiality of the data provided and presented by the Gerontology Research Group is beyond any further doubts, once an authenticity of an age is verified just as it happened in Mrs. Violet Brown's case. She was indeed born on Mar. 10, 1900. The verification of a supercentenarian case is a process, in which many different aspects are taken into consideration and it does take time. Firstly a case is pending and then, after further review the final decision is made. A case can be positively verified only when there has been gathered the substantial evidence on the particular case. A news report is not substantial evidence of an age. The Gerontology Research Group bases on the original documentation. Moreover, one document is not enough to verify a case. The multiple number of documents, records, certifications and other sources eliminate the possibility of incompatibility. Then, even if one of these sources was indeed in range of error, the researchers can distinguish it. The researchers, GRG Correspondents are trusted members of the GRG, who have previously proven their credibility and signed the confidentiality agreement. The Gerontology Research Group is a professional organization, cooperates with Guiness World Records as well as with other gerontological and sociological institutions. Its correspondents, apart from collecting the evidence, also often perform the research "in field" by contacting the families of supercentenarians, supercentenarians themselves and exchanging the information with them. Waenceslaus ( talk) 16:11, 20 January 2015 (UTC)
Assertions by the GRG fan club that the GRG is infallible are incorrect. On one occasion there was a dispute on Wiki as to whether or not a British supercentenarian had died. The GRG, vigorously supported by Robert Young, assured us that she had died while a relative insisted she had not. The GRG was wrong (they had been supplied incorrect information). Also their website is technologically out of date (they have promised an upgrade for about a year) and some of the pages, cited as references in Wiki, have not been updated for up to 7 years, so there must exist the possibility, however small, that the date published on their website is not what they have on their records. However, while not 100% reliable the GRG is still probably more reliable than your average newspaper where journalism can range from sloppy to grossly incompetent and occasionally deliberately false. In this case I would expect the DoB of 10 March to probably be correct. DerbyCountyinNZ ( Talk Contribs) 09:46, 24 January 2015 (UTC)
I have used IndiaGlitz as a reference in the article Vikram filmography. I wanna make sure if the source qualifies WP:RS. A point worth noting is that, ref #143 is taken from IndiaGlitz and republished by CNN IBN. There have been numerous instances where IBN have used source material from IndiaGlitz and published them, as can be seen here and here. Considering such information will be allowed as RS, coming from IBN, I think non-controversial claims from IndiaGlitz can also be qualified as RS. I rest my case. -- Sriram speak up 07:42, 13 January 2015 (UTC)
Myself and another editor ( SummerPhd) are engaged in a dispute about whether each of the following sources are acceptible to establish that a particular motion picture was set in New York City:
(1) A citation to the motion picture itself, as a primary source, in reference to a variety of elements including ending credits [copied from discussion on the article's talk page]:
The other editor contends that direct reference to such elements in the primary source is not allowable because it would be synthesis and original research. I believe that in this context, a primary source is not only allowable but perhaps the strongest, because the primary source is being used to cite a " straightforward, descriptive statement of facts that can be verified by any educated person with access to the primary source but without further, specialized knowledge."
(2) A citation to a statement from a scholarly, peer-reviewed journal. The journal article states: "[The story is] set in New York City in the film, but Chicago in the play..."
We both agree that this source is acceptable.
(3) A citation to the New York Times, referring to a statement that the film was being shot in New York City. The other editor contends that the mere fact that a film was shot "on location" cannot establish that the story was actually set there. While I agree that this is true to a certain extent, I believe that in practice it is powerful evidence, and goes a long way toward establishing that the film was indeed set in New York.
In sum: the other editor wishes to remove all of the citations except the citation to the academic journal. In my opinion this removes the strongest sources and best evidence, to the ultimate detriment of the article. (The setting of the film has been a subject of dispute in the past, perhaps because the play was set in Chicago).
Robert Ankony is a Vietnam veteran, a veteran police officer and detective, and has a Ph.D in criminology. He has written a memoir, issued by a reputable publisher, as well as articles about his experiences in the Vietnam War, and has written numerous articles in scholarly criminology articles. He maintains a website with reprints of his published writings and a self-published blog: http://www.robertankony.com
Ankony has also contributed to Wikpedia as Icemanwcs ( talk · contribs). Many of his contributions have been in the form of citations to his published works. Others have been verbatim copies of those works. It's my opinion, and just an opinion, that he's made those contributions to improve Wikipedia and not for any personal gain. His website does not carry any advertisements and it doesn't appear that he gains any monetary rewards by directing traffic to it. I believe he has contributed his scholarship in good faith, to the overall benefit of the project.
An editor using a variety of IPs ( 208.54.38.255, 172.56.8.192, 172.56.9.67) has decided that all of the references and external links to writings by Ankony are detrimental to Wikipedia, are in violation of policy, and must be removed immediately without any discussion. He has removed the citations but not the cited material. I've counseled a more cautious approach. In response the editor has made all kinds of accusations about my motives and methods. I don't want to deal with the IP editor any more which is why I'm bringing this here for the community to handle.
Ankony's "About me" webpage says: [45]
Here are some of the pages from which the IP editor has deleted citation's to Ankony's scholarly, peer reviewed publications or other published writings: Explosive material, Proactive policing, Long-range reconnaissance patrol. Please decide if these citations and contributions should be removed with prejudice or have value. Rezin ( talk) 21:30, 15 January 2015 (UTC)
I have provided links to the spam blacklit noticeboard which lists some of the spamming by Robert Ankony and his talk page which also shows the warnings given by editors. http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=MediaWiki_talk:Spam-blacklist&oldid=642808855#www.robertankony.com and http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=User_talk:Icemanwcs&oldid=642810110#External_links
An editor has twice challenged a thesis published at a university-affiliated research institution, DRMCC: [48] He says that the fact that it is a thesis, and the fact that it is from this university, needs citations. Opinions? — Brianhe ( talk) 21:52, 24 January 2015 (UTC)
Is this book:
a reliable citation for the statement, "The gathering during Hajj is considered the largest annual gathering of people in the world"? (See [50])
Ping: User:Debresser Shii (tock) 14:51, 27 January 2015 (UTC)
Some sources say [Mansa Musa http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/world-history/meet-mansa-musa-i-of-mali--the-richest-human-being-in-all-history-8213453.html independent] and Huffand Daily Mail are these enough to verify a statement that he was one of the richest men to have ever lived? including Henry Louis Gates saying it also gates and he is a historian. Many Thanks-- Inayity ( talk) 18:34, 16 January 2015 (UTC)
Note: Wealth is not an absolute value for every time and place. While on a desert island, Robinson Crusoe was the wealthiest person alive as far as Friday was concerned. Currently we see some Russian oligarch's having their wealth cut in half by simple currency fluctuations. By the way, RS/N has repeatedly found "CelebrityNetWorth" to not meet WP:RS. [53], [54], [55], [56] etc. Collect ( talk) 16:44, 26 January 2015 (UTC) Nor is "ranker.com" a reliable source for any claim of fact at all. Collect ( talk) 16:48, 26 January 2015 (UTC)
The known issues section of Nexus 5 was removed because none of the sources are considered valid. could an independent party check them one by one?
Used by Scientific American. Sci Am also links directly to the source's website within an online Sci Am article. The source is also used by US News, Bloomberg News, CBS News, the LA Times, USA Today, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal. Users @ Randykitty: and @ HG: nonetheless respectively contend that Energy in Depth is "unusable" and material cited to it is "very poorly sourced". Thoughts? In my opinion excluding Energy in Depth even when use is restricted to with in-text attribution may leave articles about publications and resources preferred by environmental lobbying organizations unbalanced, indeed, that's why so many editors of reliable sources like Scientific American see Energy in Depth as a "go to" resource: it provides critical balance from an authority, albeit an authority with a POV. This POV is affiliated with the energy industry, however my view is that if the partisan affiliation is fully disclosed to the reader, per WP:RS "reliable sources are not required to be neutral, unbiased, or objective. Sometimes non-neutral sources are the best possible sources for supporting information about the different viewpoints held on a subject." I'll grant that adding critiques to articles is not to everyone's taste, indeed it isn't to mine, but these two editors have already rejected my stripping out the critique to just leave behind the undisputed facts the critique refers to as "original research" on my part. On a related note, I suggest we ask ourselves if black and white thinking about RS is appropriate or necessary: an appreciation of shading would mean sources could be used under specified conditions, such as with attribution.-- Brian Dell ( talk) 04:15, 25 January 2015 (UTC)
During the last few weeks, there has been much edit warring over the inclusion of birth dates in K-pop band pages. Please understand that I am not posting here to determine whether or not birth dates should be included in band articles, which is another related discussion. I am posting here to get input from more editors on whether the entertainment agencies are reliable sources for this information. Some K-pop band members are independently notable and have their own articles, with their birth dates sourced from their agency. Note that band members's profiles (including birth dates) are also published by the Korean media, but the original sources are the agencies.
Drmies maintains that entertainment companies are not reliable sources, as can be seen in these diffs from A Pink: 1, 2 (my reply), 3. See also this diff from Talk:Girls' Generation. A quote from that last one:
"And yes, I am sticking to my guns on the sourcing thing: we have a policy, and it's found at WP:BLP. It applies here. A Hollywood star from the 1930s, you can bet that someone has looked into it, and has written it up in a book or a reliable publication. In this area, we are dependent completely on the production companies, and that's just not a good thing. If we can't trust Allkpop and those kinds of sites, then we certainly shouldn't automatically trust the owners of these groups, their contracts, their social lives and their bodies ("We Got Married"), their sexualities, and their public image. Why would you trust them? Don't you know that youth is a very marketable commodity?"
Examples of company pages that list birth dates:
I couldn't find any more examples because the vast majority of South Korean singers' articles have no references at all for the birth date. If references were added they would most likely be from the company website or secondary sources such as Naver or MelOn (which get the info from the companies).
I have never posted on a noticeboard before so please let me know if I've made a mistake or not posted in the right place. Myself (and some other editors) are trying to raise the quality of K-pop articles and are receiving much opposition. A few more opinions on this issue would really help, since many K-pop editors think Drmies is manipulating Wikipedia guidelines because he dislikes K-pop. -- Random86 ( talk) 00:38, 25 January 2015 (UTC)
I want to know whether Oneindia.com is a reliable source or not? It is an online news portal owned by Greynium Information Technologies Pvt. Ltd. and offers news in English, Hindi, Bengali, Tamil, Malayalam, Telugu, Gujarati and Kannada languages.( source) Several reliable sources have used Oneindia.in as sources for their news stories. Examples [57] [58] The Hindu has called it "one of India's leading portals".( source)
Thanks.-- Skr15081997 ( talk) 14:31, 25 January 2015 (UTC)
On this edit, it says "described as 'fanatics' by David Dean Shulman". He is a WP:BIASED peace activist which was disputed before as WP:RS. As a Is he enough RS for labeling even when attributed to him? Ashtul ( talk) 12:21, 27 January 2015 (UTC)
"Fanatic" here appears to be an opinion properly sourced as an opinion, not (I trust) implying specific criminal acts. I would note,moreover, that "fanatic" in the sports arena is not even considered much of a pejorative, but simply implying "strong feelings" (though I would state it can not be used as a "fact" in Wikipedia's voice, to be sure). Collect ( talk) 15:32, 27 January 2015 (UTC)
Hello.
This is the article. My question is, The Guardian is clearly reliable. Beyond reproach in some peoples eyes. The issue here is, some of the facts in this particular article are... wrong. My question is, despite the inconsistencies, can this article still be considered reliable for reporting on the currently ongoing ArbCom case in the Gamergate article? I'm curious about an outsider's perspective. I understand reliability can be questioned based on several factors, with the publication only one of them. Would this article, if it is unreliable, bring into the question of the reliability of the author perhaps? Would love to see some opinions from people "outside" the Gamergate controversy bubble preferably, as it is being debated in the Talk there as well. Ries42 ( talk) 04:15, 25 January 2015 (UTC)
As in all cases (and the The Graudian is actually fallible [59] <g>) there is a wee bit of opinion in what could have been purely factual reportage. Where there is the slightest hint that a claim is one of opinion, we are better off citing it properly as the opinion of the one holding it than to run the risk, howsoever small, that readers will take it as absolute fact uttered in Wikipedia's voice. (I consider such statements as " who were all actively attempting to prevent the article from being rewritten with a pro-Gamergate slant " and "The conflict on the site began almost alongside Gamergate, a grassroots campaign broadly targeting alleged corruption in games journalism and perceived feminist influence in the videogame industry" as containing issues which seem to be opinion as much as fact, or possibly more so. The value of using "opinions as opinions" seems to far outweigh the position "but it is fact because a reliable source stated it as fact" at all. Cheers. Collect ( talk) 19:38, 26 January 2015 (UTC)
While I agree that this is partly a re-hash of the blog post, that doesn't make it useless as a source. If there are factual inaccuracies in it, we should not duplicate them. However, the existence of factual inaccuracies does not necessarily render the whole source unusable. If we took that approach, we would probably be safer just not using journalistic sources at all. There are certainly statements in the source that are wholly accurate, so it depends what you want to use. Formerip ( talk) 13:27, 27 January 2015 (UTC)
72.227.98.109 (
talk) 00:49, 28 January 2015 (UTC)I thought wikipedia wasn't about the truth. Now that the Guardian has done to Wikipedia what they've been doing all along, suddenly we need a special rule about a reliable source only being a reliable source when somebody (who) decides what the source reports is true? So in the future, when the Guardian reports something, what are you going to do to fact check it before you site them? A Guardian article exactly as wrong as this one about any number of other subjects would have been cited by you guys, and if somebody complained that it was factually inaccurate, you would have told them Wikipedia isn't about the truth and left it in.
It's alleged the article is "wrong," and thus not from a reliable source. The article was updated and corrected today. It now appears to me to be fully accurate. Hipocrite ( talk) 15:21, 28 January 2015 (UTC)
(From WP:BLP/N)
I suggested there that the pertinent cites for the claims of fact would be any Brookings source stating that he, indeed, worked there and a Carnegie source stating his position with them. The Weekly Standard cite appears to be self-written, so of problematic value as to anything other than statements of fact. The Yale Daily News, AFAICT, is a student publication which is of no value for the sentence to which it is appended, and the RightWeb editorial is also not needed for a claim of fact (indeed is not specifically needed at all here) but which also contains clear opinions which would preclude it being used as an RS for claims of fact. The discussion indeed focused on using the opinions cites as a basis to label living persons as "neoconservative" in Wikipedia's voice. The Right Web cite is clearly an opinion piece and really of no use here as far as I can tell.
Are the last two cites usable at all to state in Wikipedia's voice (I opined that such a use would require that opinions must be properly cited as opinions) that Kagan and others of his family are "neoconservative"? Is it proper to use problematic cites for a simple claim where absolutely RS cites are readily found and used? See Wikipedia:Biographies_of_living_persons/Noticeboard#Robert_Kagan and a second section with the same name at the bottom of the page, Wikipedia:Biographies_of_living_persons/Noticeboard#Neoconservativism_-_Victoria_Nuland and Wikipedia:Biographies_of_living_persons/Noticeboard#Neoconservatism_-_Frederick_Kagan where the same sources and arguments to categorise them is made. See also List of Neoconservatives (listing towards bottom of article) and diff [60] [61] where specific living persons are categorized on the basis of an opinion article, and so on. Thanks. Collect ( talk) 16:43, 31 January 2015 (UTC)
Is it appropriate to include Publishers Weekly's review of Orson Scott Card's novella "Hamlet's Father" in Card's article? User:Collect claims it is a BLP violation to include a mention of the publication's brief negative review, since PW points out that the novella attempts to link homosexuality to pedophilia, while I argue that PW is a major industry publication whose reviews of full-length novels are not usually much longer than this and that BLP definitely does not bar criticism of an author's creations, which is what this is. – Roscelese ( talk ⋅ contribs) 17:39, 31 January 2015 (UTC)
""Here's the punch line: Old King Hamlet was an inadequate king because he was gay, an evil person because he was gay, and, ultimately, a demonic and ghostly father of lies who convinces young Hamlet to exact imaginary revenge on innocent people," writes William Alexander. "The old king was actually murdered by Horatio, in revenge for molesting him as a young boy – along with Laertes, and Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern, thereby turning all of them gay … Hamlet is damned for all the needless death he inflicts, and Dead Gay Dad will now do gay things to him for the rest of eternity: 'Welcome to Hell, my beautiful son. At last we'll be together as I always longed for us to be.'" "
— The Guardian
This discussion has been deleted by Joestanza as Blueboar suggested this is not the correct venue for this discussion. Diff; discussion here. Epic Genius ( talk) 20:19, 1 February 2015 (UTC)
Some material (Summing up his work, Ticktin says: "My work on the political economy of the USSR showed … " ) in a BLP is ref'd to this site [62]. It appears to be the personal blog of a woman in Ontario. Is this RS? Capitalismojo ( talk) 00:38, 2 February 2015 (UTC)
Is The Daily Telegraph a WP:reliable source? An IP-hopping editor is repeatedly removing the phrase "making New Caledonia one of the few countries or territories in the world with two recognized flags" from Flag of New Caledonia claiming that the Telegraph is "Not reliable source". They justify this on the talk page by arguing that it is "an article in the other part of the world". They use the same argument for their repeated removal of the second flag from the infobox of New Caledonia. The source says "New Caledonian Congress overwhelmingly voted to adopt the emblem of the indigenous movement ... as the nation's second official flag" and "The unusual move makes New Caledonia one of only a handful of countries ... that have two official national flags." Are there any policy based reasons why this Telegraph article is not reliable? Does the geographic location of a source impact its reliability? TDL ( talk) 16:51, 30 January 2015 (UTC)
Is [63] this ethicsdaily.com article sufficient to label Timothy McVeigh's religion as Christian Identity?
From here it looks like the opinion of the writer who proffers no actual source for the claim whatsoever. Absent a real source, we can not assert McVeigh's religion to have been "Christian Identity Movement".
Second issue is whether we can place McVeigh in Category:American libertarians on the basis of [64] page 298 The claim made in the biography sourced to that book was:
Which sounds like pure speculation at best. Is that book a good source for the claimmade? Is the claim actually speculation which does not belong in a biography? Is the claim as stated sufficient to place McVeigh in the category? Thanks. Collect ( talk) 18:22, 28 January 2015 (UTC)
There is a Wikipedian who believes you can cite a book without a page number and that's okay. He does not possess the books because he sold them a long time ago: he just cites them anyway.
I think this is absolutely not the case, and that page numbers and references to text in specific pages are required ( page needed templates should be installed if no page numbers are present). See Talk:Chinese_Canadians_in_British_Columbia#Re Oppenheimer.... WhisperToMe ( talk) 15:19, 27 January 2015 (UTC)
This is that Wikipedian mentioned in the lede of this oh-no-not-yet-another-board-essay as a way to reject good faith and demand page-cites when they are not needed. This has included WTMs' demands that I must provide page cites even for talkpage mentions of sources and events that he is also determinedly finding ways to keep (or try to keep) from conflicting with this chosen POV-theme for "his" article; he orated endlessly and repetitiously at the OR board recently, asserting that WP:V requires page-cites for anything or HE will delete it, including apparently his threats to delete the talk page mentions of issues and events absent from or in conflict with the prejudicial biases of the selection of "scholarly" sources he insists are all that matters; he holds in disdain the many local histories I mention and items in them, again demanding page cites, and last night (in my time zone) ordering me to get the page-cites that he's demanding; he wants me to put more time into his demands and is escalating his attacks on anything I bring up. This is yet another bureaucratic side-discussion where he is IMO CANVASSING for support to get me out of his way; I know BC and BC wiki-space like almost no one else, and have a lot of support and respect for my knowledge of BC history and sources about it outside Wikipedia as well as inside it (see the barnstars section of my userpage).
But not to him, he went to the OR board to get support for the notion that my 59 years of life and over 45 years of in-depth readings of BC history and media was not valid i.e. he didn't have to listen to it because that is "original research" in his instruction creeping rule-mongering world of "scholarly"
I've never encountered anyone so hostile to things he doesn't know or are which in the way of the thesis he's developing on the page in question, and in various others, and in good two dozen lengthy and SYNTH-y arguments on various talkpages and boards while continuing to TRIVIA/UNDUE expansions of material, fighting off, again even talkpage mentions of events he hasn't heard about....and which his preferred collection of bias sources with their glosses and generalizations of half-truths either avoid or just don't know about. They're all "of a kind" and the article is increasingly an ethnopolitics soapbox and not a good article, and is at conflict in its tone and conclusions/assertions with many (many) other BC articles. His cite-obsession and SYNTHographical ramblings include attempts to justify capital-W "Whites" rather than the WikiCanada standard "European Canadian" or the more specific uses like British, American, Maritimer, German, etc as the paradigm of his selection of sources is "White/Chinese" in a very recognizable theme of anti-"white" bias most easily summarized as "cruel nasty exploitive white bigots vs earnest hard working decent and suffering Chinese"; way too common in modern academia; and for those thinking I'm just an "angry old white man" who's anti-Chinese, that's a crock and I'm not alone.....
as an example, see the CCinBC talkpage about a geographer named Mike Kennedy who, like me and many others, doesn't like at all the ideologically driven fabrications and distortions of current (recent) trends in BC historiography; and the way said authors either don't know the facts, or don't want to admit to anything that gets in teh way of their biased constructs about BC's complicated past. And THAT is exactly where WTM is coming from too - this discussion about page-cites is only looking for validation (which he hasn't gotten though on the talkpage he's pretending he has) of his efforts to block any mention of facts and issues and to exclude sources I know them to be in, with the page-cite game only IMO a ruse; he knows I don't have the books on hand (I live in Cambodia for now) and yet keeps on telling me to get them and page-cite them. Not just insistently, but actually as though he's Editor-in-Chief...which he's NOT. He's No 34 on list of all-time wikipedians but his user summary is opted out of; from what I have experienced I suspect that most of his edits re board-wars and long SYNTH-y essays and given what I'm seeing of his work on articles of "his" I've seen and tried to cope with and input on, I'm aghast at what else must be out there on Wikipedia written by him.
....and yes, no wonder "some people" want me blocked, I insist on fairness and the complete truth and know propaganda and distortion when I see it; while they want me gone because that's NOT what they want in Wikipedia, rather information control and suppression of fact in the way of their respective agendas........including in the case of Chinese Canadians in British Columbia; I get accused of "walls of text" in that ANI while his (incredibly) lengthy and unreadable expoundings of weird-logic and selective-cite SYNTH go unaddressed and unrestricted; it was said to me I should edit in other topic areas where I will not encounter such people and one (too typical) somebody-else-that-knows-nothing-about BC denounced me for OWN behaviour on BC topics; nothing could be more misdirected and a-factual; telling me to abandon my province's history and social geography to people from beyond whose only sources are online and have no direct experience of the place is utterly absurd; while not telling it to someone constructing and bureacratic-board warring, as again here, to continue his campaign of rule-mongering and fact-avoidance and anti-collaboration and very obvious "OWN" behaviour is ludicrous.
I have contemplated taking the many issues concerning his obstructive and imperious/demanding and ordering-me-around behaviour to boards on the problems I find in all his work (including an atrociously bald writing style with bad syntax and clumsy construction, but what's going on is SYNTH/OR, TRIVIA, UNDUE, ESSAY, POV and more all at the same time; his AGF towards anything I say is reflexive by now; but has escalated since a discussion on my talkpage where he disputed my removal of "Anglophone schools" from BC education sections and proceeded to lecture me, a real live British Columbian, on what he thought was OK, and even though two other editors joined me in seemingly getting him to understand how wrong he was, he never conceded defeat though conceding he should use "English-language schools" and "French-language schools" but still not getting that those "English-language schools" have French-immersion programs and are not really "English-language schools".
He spoke throughout that like a college professor telling us (all three were Canadians) what was "actually" the case, even though he's never even been to the country and only just started "invading" Canadian wiki-space a few months ago...three or four very long months now, all the while disputing word-usages and page-cite-demanding and advancing the POV of his choice of sources while ignoring dozens of sources I've assembled on that talkpage; probably archived now because of his ongoing nit-pickery about words using SYNTH/out-of-context and often highly illogical "logic".....
Following that non-admission-of-error, his latest onslaught began against a slew of edits in the last 48 hours on the CCinBC article; so many that I can't keep up; that he would order me to go buy the book in question, which I already have read several times and know well (I don't keep mental notes of page numbers when reading/digesting as I'm reading as an historian, not a wiki-bureaucrat) as I have dozens of other books - hundreds really - about BC that he doesn't even want to give a nod to, except to demand page-cites when they're not necessary, as GB Fan encouragingly notes above...but in the comment on the CCinBC talkpage just now that clued me into the existence of this yet-another-side-discussion of his, he makes no concession AT ALL to what GB Fan has said....he hears only himself, and turns things said in edit comments and talkpage mentions back with complete distortion or miscomprehension of what was said, juxtaposing his SYNTH and misapprehensions on what was being changed or had said, and never listening and always arguing.
Yet I'm the one in hot water because of his onslaught of half-truths and rule-happy things like this discussion - "it's OK if I demand page-cites for anything, right?". No it's not, and it's not OK to keep on with this behaviour, and not OK to imperiously tell off a Wikipedian experienced in the subject area and who has built a great deal of the BC content in Wikipedia that he is worthless and tht anything he says cannot be taken in good faith; he doesn't say that directly but the message has been clear; including in his coming here to look for yet more support for his SYNTH extrapolations of guidlines into iron-clad rules in order to censor what he doesn't want to hear and doesn't want in "his" article(s).
Yet another hour of my time spent on all this (I type fast, this didn't take me hours though indeed hours upon hours and days upon days have been spent trying to get him to listen to commonsense....or resist attack from those he's found "support" from in the vicious bearpit of hate and pomposity called ANI. Skookum1 ( talk) 10:57, 28 January 2015 (UTC)
Is the [ Postgraduate Medical Journal] reliable to use at Safety of electronic cigarettes for the claims above. According to WP:RS/MC, Being a "medical source" is not an intrinsic property of the source itself; a source becomes a medical source only when it is used to support a medical claim. It is vital that the biomedical information in all types of articles be based on reliable, third-party, published sources and accurately reflect current medical knowledge. For the non-medical claims above I think this source is reliable for the claims. For example, stating that there are flavors that include Gummy Bears and bubble gum and claims made by advocates or proponents are non-medical claims.
According to WP:RSOPINION, Some sources may be considered reliable for statements as to their author's opinion, but not for statements asserted as fact without an inline qualifier like "(Author) says...". A prime example of this is opinion pieces in mainstream newspapers. When using them, it is better to explicitly attribute such material in the text to the author to make it clear to the reader that they are reading an opinion. I prefer to include in-text attribution to the source as above for the non-medical claims. QuackGuru ( talk) 04:49, 19 January 2015 (UTC)
1) A 2014 Postgraduate Medical Journal stated that e-cigarettes have concentrated liquids that are packed in colorful containers and combined with flavors that appear to be made to attract children. The flavors include Gummy Bears and bubble gum. It was concluded that it is recommended that e-cigarettes be kept in a safe place, where children and pets do not have access them.
3) A 2014 Postgraduate Medical Journal stated that proponents frequently assert that e-cigarettes is only water vapor.
1 is non-medical and 3 is the assertion of the proponents. I shortened 3 from the original wording. Is the Postgraduate Medical Journal reliable for these claims? QuackGuru ( talk) 22:07, 19 January 2015 (UTC)
Editorials in medical journals are short essays that express the views of the authors, often regarding a research or review article published in the same issue. Editorials provide perspective on how the current article fits with other information on the same topic.
Editorials should deal with contemporary issues of importance to clinicians. Their content can be clinical, social, political, legal or related to research issues. Although they may be controversial, they should attempt to provide a balanced view. Editorials provide a personal view and, as such, will not be routinely submitted to peer review.
One more case where we should stick to citing opinions as opinions. Opinions from notable persons are citable as opinions from notable persons. Opinions in editorial columns are still opinions. And if there is a consensus that the opinions are not from a notable person, and are not an official view of a publication, than it is a matter of editorial discussion as to whether to use the opinions. The gist is at the end of the column where it is clear that the author is opposed to tobacco companies "reinventing themselves as legitimate businesses" which is not a "medical statement" but a strongly political statement. Usable if cited as opinion ascribed to its (non-notable) author, not to the publication. And subject to the consensus of other editors. Were this a column by a notable person I would more strongly suggest consensus ought to allow its use. Collect ( talk) 12:41, 20 January 2015 (UTC)
Consensus from uninvolved editors is that the source is reliable and we should cite opinions as opinions. QuackGuru ( talk) 06:37, 26 January 2015 (UTC)
See Talk:Safety_of_electronic_cigarettes#In-text_attribution_again.
1. Nicotine is regarded as a possibly lethal toxin. [68]
2. A policy statement by the American Association for Cancer Research and the American Society of Clinical Oncology has reported that "Third-hand exposure occurs when nicotine and other chemicals from second-hand aerosol deposit on surfaces, exposing people through touch, ingestion,and inhalation". [69]
Is the policy statement from the American Association for Cancer Research and the American Society of Clinical Oncology reliable for these claims? QuackGuru ( talk) 19:14, 21 January 2015 (UTC)
Note. If this source is reliable I think it is safe to say a lot more policy statements can be added to the page. QuackGuru ( talk) 05:10, 26 January 2015 (UTC)
See Safety_of_electronic_cigarettes#Environmental_impact. Is this source reliable? QuackGuru ( talk) 05:10, 26 January 2015 (UTC)
AlbinoFerret tried to hide text from a reliable source from the page. He eventually deleted some of the text. [70] [71] [72] [73] [74] QuackGuru ( talk) 01:32, 27 January 2015 (UTC)
I noticed a lot of text and sources are being deleted from the Safety of electronic cigarettes. Is World Lung Foundation source reliable? QuackGuru ( talk) 23:14, 26 January 2015 (UTC)
AlbinoFerret thinks the page is now POV. Is the International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease reliable? QuackGuru ( talk) 05:45, 27 January 2015 (UTC)
"WMA Statement on Electronic Cigarettes and Other Electronic Nicotine Delivery Systems". World Medical Association.
Is the World Medical Association a reliable source? QuackGuru ( talk) 05:47, 27 January 2015 (UTC)
The World Vision International article has a list of well known people who endorse the organization. Is it appropriate to use a youtube video of of the individual endorsing World Vision International, that are also happen to be promotional videos for WVI? The only purpose of referencing the video was to prove that the individuals actually endorsed WVI. There are 14 people listed in this section and I did this for several of them including Alex Trabek, Hugh Jackman and Sarah McLaughlin. Elmmapleoakpine ( talk) 22:54, 2 February 2015 (UTC)
Lovearth.net seems painfully non-RS. It is a personal blog of conspiracy theories. It is being used extensively at the General Motors streetcar conspiracy article [ [76]]. Capitalismojo ( talk) 14:28, 2 February 2015 (UTC)