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A similar challenge has been made to the use of GenerationQ as a source. GenerationQ is an online magazine aimed at LGBT young adults, particularly young gay men. It covers news of particular interest to this community. In its favor, it enjoys a broad international readership. However, it is an online rather than a paper source, and some of its reporting has been used in a biographical article that's part of WikiProject LGBT Studies, but that the article's subject self-identifies as not being part of the LGBT community. The article specifically cites facts (and includes references) demonstrating that the subject of the article's business dealings are inconsistent with his public statements. Additionally, the facts stated in the article are supported by two primary sources written and posted online by the article's subject. Similar to the question of CounterPunch, an editor is challenging a reference to this source backed up by references to the two corroborating primary sources. How is the reliability of a source like this determined, and how is that applied when the article is a biography of a living person? Fundamentally, I want to know: is this a reliable source? -- Ssbohio 02:31, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
All of the sources for this page are self-references or links to partners. Are this, this and this reliable enough to add to the article? Corvus cornix 22:26, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
Almost none of the entries on this list have any citation to show that they have professed to being a Lutheran. The 3 sources listed:
do not seem at all reliable. Any thoughts on what to do here? Kevin 11:58, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
Hi, I'm not sure this is the right place but in this article the World Sex Guide is used as a source... I'm not sure this is the right kind of source for this kind of article... Cperroquin 14:21, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
I have added unreliable source? tags to those statements in Battle of Jenin for which I could not replace CAMERA with a journalistic reliable source. It seems clear to me both from WP:RS and past editing experience that partisan pressure groups are not generally used as reliable sources. According to the wikipedia page for CAMERA: "News media cite CAMERA as an advocate of Israel [1] and discuss the organization's mobilisation for the support of Israel in the form of full-page ads in newspapers [2], organizing demonstrations, and encouraging sponsor boycotts. [3] Critics of CAMERA call its "non-partisan" claims into question and define its alleged biases." No editors appear to be disputing their partisan nature; according to User:Isarig "You are confusing 'partisan' with 'non reliable'. The two are not same, or even similar. CAMERA meets every requirement WP has for reliable sources." (Note that I am not arguing with use of attributed POV statements from CAMERA expressing their analyses, rather I take issue with their use as a source for wikipedia-voice statements of fact like "Palestinian Minister Abu said X on date Y.[1]")
On a related issue - and uninvolved editors feel free to refactor out this comment if it's clearly in the wrong place - is not the removal of such maintenance tags ( [4], [5]) without some approximation of consensus built on talk considered very bad practice if not outright disruptive editing? Eleland 16:18, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
comment by involved editor - it doesn't matter what side a source is allegedly supporting as long as it's references and statements are reliable. for the same reason, i cannot remove The Guardian articles or the BBC despite their anti-israel bias (and countless errors). there is nothing beyond "they say they support israel" or "they only correct anti-israeli POV" to justify the claim that the source in unreliable. on top of this many of the "needs more reliable reference" statements have similar statements expressed on other references and up to now camera notes have been fairly easily verified. we are discussing reliability in report and there is no validated reason to suspect camera as more unreliable than the major news medias they are quoting or criticizing... to the contrary even. Jaakobou Chalk Talk 17:23, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
So let me get this straight - the CAMERA article, which as you conced restored the original text, and then went on to paraphrase it is 'spinning information to one party's advantage' because it omits the qualifier ("In a considerable number of places"), but the article they were critiquing, which compeltly omitted the conetxt of Dyan talking about buying land - that text is ok, and should not be critiqued? Isarig 21:08, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
Okay we are getting seriously sidetracked here, what are we talking about the Moshe Dayan quote for exactly? I mean PR is right, and anyone who knows the full context of this quote (where he talks about provoking border wars with Lebanon in order to steal farmland, etc) can see that, but this quote is not at all at issue in the article I was talking about. Eleland 21:25, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
In general, this noticeboard should be used to solicit opinions from editors previously unaware of the concern. I see this is not precisely true in this case. Moving to the specific item of concern, it seems self-evident that CAMERA is an advocacy website, and should be used with caution. If the only source for certain quotes is CAMERA, it is reasonable to ask for substantiation of the quotes from an alternative source. Using only quotes available through a single article in an advocacy website leaves us open to the risk of unbalanced reporting, so that should be kept in mind. In this case, CAMERA is not serving as a 'convenience link' in the sense in which some advocacy websites host duplicates of print articles from more reliable sources. CAMERA is quoting from secondary sources. Thus it should be used with care, and preferably minimized, with alternative confirmation of those news stories found. Hornplease 10:10, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
CAMERA is obviously not a generally reliable source for controversial material. It is of course reliable for giving its own opinions, and it is sufficiently notable that its opinions on developments are often newsworthy. But when its material is republished by a RS, then it can be indirectly quoted as , eg. NYTimes , based on... That does not seem to be the question here--the initial question is can be be used for its copy of another source. I think the solution then is to quote the place it copies, e.g. the Jerusalem Post, and then say (as reported by ), But if the original source is accessible, why not find it and cite it? An interesting side issue seems to be whether it can be used as a source for the statements about people whose position it agrees with. I think in general not, as no such source can be trusted to report them fairly rather than reinterpret them in a more favorable light. DGG ( talk) 02:47, 22 August 2007 (UTC)
As you all seem to work with references regularly, so I felt this would be an appropriate place to ask for someone to help me.
I've been adding references, but many are untidy. See DiGard_Motorsports#References to see what I'm talking about. Anyone willing to lend a hand? I especially am unsure what to do with things I found off of Google Books.
Also, does References go above or below External Links?
I'm primarily looking to see if anyone would be willing to help work on the ref coding. I can fairly defend the references used if anyone takes issue with the refs.
(crossposted at [14])
Guroadrunner 12:02, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
Are the sources listed in question two here: Talk:Water fluoridation#RfC reliable? · jersyko talk 13:39, 26 August 2007 (UTC)
Will Beback is systematically eliminating links to Overlawyered, added by multiple editors, without discussion on talk pages, and against consensus. Though it is in the form of a blog, it qualifies as a WP:RS: it features writing by multiple writers (including Stuart Taylor and Michael Fumento) and is edited by the leading expert in the field, Walter Olson; it is regularly cited by books, [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] {and many others} law reviews, newspaper articles, and magazines (including a number that just plagiarize us without citing). Even if it is considered a self-published source, it qualifies as a source under WP:SPS. (COI disclosure: I occasionally write for Overlawyered. I added an Overlawyered link to one page after consulting with other editors to the page.) I don't challenge all of the removals, but it seems improper to remove cites to the site when it is cited as an example of an opinion of leading legal reformers. THF 18:53, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
There seem to be two distinct issues: one whether Overlawyered is a reliable source in the general case. The answer to that appears to be no, especially given the lack of apparent editorial oversight. The next question is whether we can use Overlawyered as a link of convenience for some documents that are hosted there. The answer to that seems to be a clear yes. The final question is even when overlawyered is not necessarily reliable is its material notable(that is, can we on BLP say something like "According to _ at Overlawyered _" the answer to that seems to be yes given that the material is frequently cited by mainstream sources. JoshuaZ 19:47, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
Please note, per Wikipedia_talk:Biographies_of_living_persons#Reason_for_reverting_ban_on_self-published_external_links, that this discussion implies that Overlawyered (when posts are written by reliable-source bloggers) can be used as an external link in a biography article. I request reversion of Beback's deletions to EL. THF 19:52, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
These amateur anti-Scientology personal homepages keep recurring as references on Scientology-related articles. Some of them make some rather threatening-sounding statements that I find every bit as ominous as the "Religious Freedom Watch" lone-nut hate site (whose article was recently deleted). It seems clear to me that these kind of religious-partisan rant sites are no better than personal blogs, of no use to us as sources, nor trustworthy for courtesy links:
Furthermore, these sites are also seeded in a very spammy fashion across the External Links sections of almost the entirety of the Scientology articles.
The Anti-Scn editors will likely cry that I'm seeking to silence all criticism of Scientology. Far from it - I want lots and lots of criticism, but criticism with airtight sources, not these homepages of people ranting about their holy mission to "expose the global scam of Scientology". If these criticisms are so encyclopedic, we should be able to get all the dirt we need from reliable sources, not some angry conspiracy-theory personal webpage made by persons with evident grudges. User:AndroidCat has done a great job recently supplanting CoS articles with solid newspaper articles as sources, so let's follow his example and lose these childish "Scientology sucks" pages. wikipediatrix 04:00, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
Can I get a clarification on whether internal information, like manuals, memos, etc pertaining to an organization, that is distributed only for use by members within the organization is considered "published" and hence reliable sources? I scoured through a few pages of reliability and its archives, and i didn't find anything specifically addressing that point. The Jackal God 19:32, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
Please see WP:BLP/N#Ongoing WP:BLP-related concerns, particularly: WP:BLP/N#WP:BLP#Reliable sources policy section itself, which pertain to questions pertaining to reliable sources of material about living persons (not only biographies but other articles concerning living persons as well). Thank you. -- NYScholar 17:38, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
Per WP:N a subject is notable if it has recieved non-trivial coverage by multiple reliable sources. I was looking at the article on Claus Elming, a Danish football player and TV personality who has recieved significant non-trivial coverage in the Danish media. Ignoring for a moment that the reliable sources in this context are not used solely to satisfy WP:V what is the general concensus on the use of foreign language sources as reliable sources, especially when such sources are in a language only understood by a small minority of editors? Is there a generally agreed upon concensus on a threshold for how minor a language may be before such sources are disregarded? MartinDK 15:07, 22 August 2007 (UTC)
This is a dispute I wish could be resolved one way or another soon. It might be my misunderstanding, but we need external input with convincing arguments. The case is currently an open RfC, but I wish this was settled soon. It's about a Food and Drug Administration document, found in the FBI files, now available from this FBI web page (it can be ordered, or consulted at the FBI headquarters). Also available for a few dollars at the paperlessarchives.com. That FDA document contains a note that a specific product can be used for iron-deficiency. There is no mention that it can be used for anything else. The FDA statement from that letter was used in an article as follow: "The tablets had in fact only been approved as a supplement to counteract iron-deficiency anemia.". If you want to comment on this issue, I rather you do it at the RfC of the talk page of the article in which the dispute is ongoing, this will save me to have to notify all the person involved to have their say here. Thank you. Raymond Hill 21:32, 1 September 2007 (UTC)
A dispute between me and Cyrus XIII about the NPOV of my contributions to Lords of Chaos (book) has escalated into an edit war. I can't see any substance in his accusations. Lords of Chaos has some - mildly put- controversial content. I disagree with this content, but I definitely think it has to be included in the article. In my opinion Cyrus XIII is referring to WP:NPOV and WP:EL in an attempt to keep this content out of Wikipedia, thus censoring the article. We are both experienced editors and I don't think that one of use is going to make the 'mistake' of braking the 3 revert rule. Zara1709 15:05, 11 August 2007 (UTC)
For example, [27], this is cited extensively in Rogerian argument. I noticed this site yesterday when an anon added links to several pages. We have 300+ links from articles. Any thoughts? Tom Harrison Talk 13:58, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
Repeated insertion of the claim that George Washington was a Deist... without any source or reference to back the claim up. Also repeated deletion of Thomas Jefferson from the list of Episcopalians even though there is a source for this. Other material boarders on WP:SYNT and OR. This article needs serious help from neutral editors. Blueboar 15:43, 5 September 2007 (UTC)
Are institutions websites (Colleges, Universities, etc.) reliable sources to use for referencing articles. Like for example the Technological Institute of Piraeus? Link to the site: [28] and link to the information: [29] Can they be used in a wikipedia article as a reference or are they inadequate? El Greco ( talk · contribs) 16:00, 5 September 2007 (UTC)
This debate has been going on for over 2 years now and it has re-surfaced again. The debate is whether this article should be included in the Bose article or not. If you check the talk page not only do I believe that this article does not qualify because it is blatantly POV but it fails the tests of verifiability and being a reliable source (detailed listings of this are on the talk page). But this can be summed up by this comment:
Please can you help lay this issue to rest? -- UKPhoenix79 20:08, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
Are my points logical? Any other comments? -- UKPhoenix79 05:10, 4 September 2007 (UTC)
Comment The article clearly doesn't meet WP:RS, but it's more a symptom than the problem. Its inclusion will no longer be an issue when the article achieves a more neutral tone. I mean, I like my ancient 301s, but I don't think they are contributing to world peace. Flowanda | Talk 22:54, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
In your biography on Mick Gatto, it says he died on 17th August, 2007.
This is absolutely incorrect. I know for a fact he is still alive today. In fact, an associate of mine is having lunch with him today.
So can the information on him be fixed please.
I've used these as sources a lot. My guess is that Wikipedia doesn't actually consider them reliable sources, though. Correct?-- P4k 00:55, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
As illustrated by this diff [30], User:Piotrus thinks that the chemist Witold Lawrynowicz (bio at [31]), is a reliable source for a statement phrased as a fact. At issue is the Lithuanian motivation for not joining forces with the Poles during the Polish-Soviet War (a featured article). Lawrynowicz's assertion is not trivial. Novickas 19:41, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
Is TV Squad reliable? It's called a weblog, but it seems to be run more like an online newspaper. The TV Squad page says
Peregrine Fisher 17:44, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
OK, here we go. A reliable source talking about it [32]. That should help us decide. - Peregrine Fisher 07:29, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
I asked this question above and didn't get much of a response. I have researched it some more and I believe TV Squad is a reliable source for television information, but they use the word blog so I'd like help making a determination. They're a part of Weblogs, Inc., like Engadget. This National Business Review article says about Engadget "If that sounds like a magazine, it should. Although it looks like a blog and acts like a blog, Engadget is a webzine (web-based magazine) dressed up like a blog." It says of Weblogs, Inc., "the content areas are covered by people who treat content production as a job." Also, that "An expert writes alone or in conjunction with others about a "hot" topic (gadgets, say), links to outside material and solicits feedback from the readership." They describe the system as "artificially-viral" and as a "blog-like, content-specific, web-only publication." TV Squad is indexed by google news. According to the Weblogs, Inc. site, they're "bloggers" are paid, they have a team of editors, and have a clear separation between advertising and editors. Their also part of AOL now. Peregrine Fisher 20:32, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
An editor is contesting Variety, a trade paper for the Hollywood industry, as a reliable source at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Dragon Ball Z (film). While I am not arguing for the article to be kept, the editor does not believe that the information at the Variety article (seen here) is credible. Variety has been a completely acceptable resource per reliable source criteria, and I am having difficulty explaining to the editor that this is the case. His reason is that if it does not come directly from the studio, it does not count. I am completely positive that Variety is acceptable and have incorporated its information at Dragon Ball Z#Live-action film adaptation, but I'd like independent opinions to show the editor that Variety is acceptable. — Erik ( talk • contrib) - 22:29, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
Can an independent editor weigh in on the validity of Variety as a source of verifiable coverage about this project? By all counts, Variety is a published, third-party source, and its mention of the project ought to qualify. — Erik ( talk • contrib) - 23:29, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
Dkosopedia is in about two dozen articles where it should not be.
The site flunks WP:EL#Links_normally_to_be_avoided: "13. Links to open wikis, except those with a substantial history of stability and a substantial number of editors" and "1. Any site that does not provide a unique resource beyond what the article would contain if it became a Featured article." THF 17:54, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
This wiki has no NPOV policy, or rather, has a POV policy that says The dKosopedia is written from a left/progressive/liberal/Democratic point of view while also attempting to fairly acknowledge the other side's take. I would consider it a partisan site, so I would be cautious about what articles it was an EL in, especially in BLP articles. - Dean Wormer 02:52, 13 September 2007 (UTC)
Sidney Blumenthal wrote what certainly appears to be a fact piece in Salon.com. [33] [34] An editor called it an opinion piece and removed it. Is it reliable? ← BenB4 00:40, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
Is Quackwatch considered a Reliable Source?
The reason I'm asking is that I'm wondering whether the Russell Blaylock article should mention that the three publications mentioned in the article as being associated with Dr. Blaylock are all listed as "unreliable" by QuackWatch. See discussion on the Talk page. NCdave 21:45, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
This is a double post. It was already posted at Fringe Theory Notice Board however I believe the root of the problem is a lack of proper sources.
See Admin Fringe Notice Board for more info or comments. --
FR Soliloquy 23:57, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
User:Artikalflex has recently inserted new text, critical of William Wilberforce into the article, and backed it up with references to this essay, http://afrikanliberationdaylondon.com/PDF/AFRIKANSOCIETY5.pdf To most of the other editors on this article, this seems to have rather a polemic tone, and whilst the essay seems superficially well-referenced (including references to sources already used in our Wilberforce article) two major issues have already been identified which bring its overall status into doubt. There is are significant factual errors in identifying Paul Foot as the son (actually nephew) of Michael Foot who is claimed to be a former British Prime Minister (actually Leader of the Opposition). A large section of the essay is also devoted to Wilberforce's purported treatment of a supposed Agnes Bronte. The website from which these claims originate http://freespace.virgin.net/pr.og/agnes.html appears to be a fairly obvious spoof. Adam Hochschild is also widely quoted in the essay, however, an online article written by him, http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/abolition/william_wilberforce_article_01.shtml , whilst somewhat critical is far more balanced in tone, suggesting the possibility of selective quoting for this and other references used. Finally, the essay is to all intents and purposes self-published, the actual author is not clearly identified. Personally it appears to me that this source is far from reliable in our terms. Views? David Underdown 17:25, 11 September 2007 (UTC)
this is the section of text i want to enter
Abolition of Slavery
After the abolition of the slave trade, William Wilberforce was not immediately concerned with the abolition the Slavery. Britain heavily depended on the suffering of Africans to sustain their economy, the love of money generated from the Slave plantations continued to overshadow a collective sense of morality. During this time, even the Church of England’s morality was in limbo as Bishops were still allowed to purchase slaves and the Church still owned slave plantations. Wilberforce’s morality also came into question as he advocated that the whipping of slave should not stop, but instead, the slaves should only be whipped at night. [1]
Slave Plantation owners now became concerned with where they were going to get their new slaves from. Wilberforce had no objections to his colleagues who recommended that African people be bred like animals, as a substitute to boosting the African population in the lave Plantations. Thus subjecting, Africans to more trauma and rapes. [2]
Mounting public pressure compelled Wilberforce and his friends to launch an anti-slavery society in 1823, 16 years after the abolition of the slave trade. The formal name of the organization was the Society for the Mitigation and Gradual Abolition of Slavery which was more commonly known as the Society for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery (SGAS) in 1823. SGAS advocated ideas and policies that would help slavery to survive for at least 100 years. Its members openly boasted that they wanted slavery to gradually: ‘… die away and to be forgotten …’.
In the light of an increasing frequency of slave revolts and growing public contempt, in May 1830, SGAS passed a resolution for the immediate abolition of slavery. [2]
these paragraphs are well referenced from the books
Bury the Chains by Adam Hochschild 2005 p.314, Hart 2006 p.3, Capitalism and Slavery by Eric Williams 1944 p.182
David Underdown has been continually complaining about ...
Issue 1: reference to a polemic essay, http://afrikanliberationdaylondon.com/PDF/AFRIKANSOCIETY5.pdf
Issue 2: fault finding in the polemic essay, http://afrikanliberationdaylondon.com/PDF/AFRIKANSOCIETY5.pdf.
Issue 3: references are week ie. http://www.sturgetown.com/sturge.html
Issue 4: "seems superficially well-referenced (including references to sources already used in our Wilberforce article)" by David Underdown
Issue 5: Use http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/abolition/william_wilberforce_article_01.shtml as a reference, written by Adam Hochschild.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Stone is a vanity page StaticElectric 19:28, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
I couldn't find a better place on the list of reporting pages. StaticElectric 19:42, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
My specific concern is with videos hosted on Youtube, but the same principle applies to any hosted source. I'm currently citing videos like these as sources about the filming of the Harry Potter movies. The actual video (whose copyright status on Youtube is very dubious!) is a documentary by Grenada television which, of itself, is a highly reliable source (exclusive access to backstage footage, interviews with cast, crew, directors, etc). It is clearly presented verbatim on Youtube and as such essentially Youtube merely acts as an archive. Is there any reason why Youtube being the host makes it an unreliable source? I know WP:SPS but this would seem not to be applicable since it's not really self published. Happy- melon 17:00, 15 September 2007 (UTC)
Could I just get a second and third opinion on this. This webpage was being used a source in Jacques Lacan - specifically the criticism section. It was added by User:MarkAnthonyBoyle [35]. That webpage is an abstract for a book which hasn't been published - so as far as I can see this aint reliable in WP's terms. This page is also used - I consider this to be a self-published review and therefore not a reliable source. The third source I'm questioning is International Network of Freud Critics whose "intent is to broadcast relevant information about the fabrications, the lies, and the disinformation of the Freudians". That statement alone makes me dubious but I can find no peer-review or editorial systems on the site - it is also obviously partisan (but that seems no longer to be in violation of the WP:RS guideline). In summary I think these links fail WP:RS but I wanted to bring this to a wider forum for discussion. Any views?-- Cailil talk 14:16, 16 September 2007 (UTC)
FYI
Astonishing. Yes I suppose I was borderline incivil, it was early in the morning when I woke up to find that Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters had deleted criticism with tag lines such as <start at cleanup of unencyclopedic "yo mama so ugly" type "criticisms">, <clean up rambing and personalistic rants> and <rm rant that is cited only to blogs> Sorry if I took his good natured chiding for something else.
In the process of his editing he removed the following:
(diff) (hist) . . Jacques Lacan; 20:19 . . (-436) . . Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters (Talk | contribs) (start at cleanup of unencyclopedic "yo mama so ugly" type "criticisms" added by anon)
“In psychoanalitic practice charging a full fee for a 5-minute session (varying of the length of the sessions) is considered un-ethical because there are other ways to confront the client with sticking to the same material. In Lacan's biography written by Roudinesco it is told that during sessions Lacan sometimes got his hair cut and received pedicures “(p. 391) [3] .
This reference is a quote from Richard D. Chessick, M.D., Ph.D. (google scholar 212 articles) From a book review A Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis: Theory and Technique by Bruce Fink professor of psychology at Duquesne University. The review was published online at The American Journal of Psychiatry, which claims “According to ISI’s Journal Citation Report, The American Journal of Psychiatry has an impact factor of 7.16, which ranks it 2nd among 87 journals in psychiatry. The Journal is 1st among psychiatric publications in total citations, with nearly 30,000 citations per year.”
. Jacques Lacan; 20:40 . . (-1,325) . . Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters (Talk | contribs) (clean up rambing and personalistic rants)
In
Fashionable Nonsense (1997),
Alan Sokal and
Jean Bricmont accuse Lacan of "superficial erudition" and of abusing scientific concepts he does not understand
Lost the following elucidation: “(e.g., confusing
irrational numbers and
imaginary numbers).
Richard Webster is strongly critical of Lacan's ideas, invoking the phrase "the cult of Lacan."
[4]”
Filip Buekens (Aalst, Belgium, °1959) is Associate Professor in the Faculty of Philosophy at Tilburg University. He studied linguistics and philosophy at the universities of Leuven (Belgium) and Cologne (Germany) and obtained his Ph.D. in philosophy in 1991 on the philosophy of language, mind and action of Donald Davidson, on whose work he published two monographs. His current research interests are the interface of semantics and pragmatics, truth-conditional semantics and Gricean reasoning about meaning. He (sometimes) defends a position known as minimalist semantics. He has also published on analytic metaphysics and formal ontologies in medicine, issues in the philosophy of action (attempts, deontic logic) and has written two books on the foundations of analytic philosophy and the nature of reference. He is currently working on a long-term project on the structure, content and value of truth and the metaphysical nature of experiences. Recently he undertook an excursion into psychoanalysis and its role in the history of postmodernist thought.
His key publications include:
Buekens, F. (1994), 'Externalism, Content, and Causal Histories', in Dialectica 1994 (48), p. 267-286;
Buekens, F., W. Ceusters, G. De Moor (1997a), 'TSMI: a CEN/TC51 Standard for Time Specific Problems in Healthcare Informatics and Telematics', in International Journal of Medical Informatics 46 (1997), 87-101;
Buekens, F. (1997b), 'A Decision Procedure for Von Wright's OBS-Calculus', in Logique et Analyse 149 (1995), 43-55;
Buekens, F. (2001b), 'Essential Indexicality and the Irreducibility of Phenomenal Concepts', in Communication and Cognition 34, 75-97;
Buekens, F. (2005b), 'Pourquoi Lacan est-il si obscur?' in M. Borch-Jacobson & J. Van Rillaer (eds.), Livre Noir de la Psychanalyse, Paris: les arenas, 2005, pp. 269-278 (also translated in Italian and Spanish and chinese)
Buekens, F. (2005a), 'Compositionality, Abberrant Sentences and Unfamiliar Situations', in Edouard Machery, Markus Werning, and Gerhard Schurz (Eds.), The Compositionality of Meaning and Content. Volume II: Applications to Linguistics, Psychology and Neuroscience. Series: Linguistics & Philosophy, 2, Ontos Verlag, 2005, pp. 83-103
Filip Buekens of Tilburg University has made several studies of Lacan's work and concluded "on the basis of a careful analysis of texts of Lacan, his followers (‘Orthodox Lacanians’) and his interpreters in France and elsewhere (‘Interpreters’), that what they claim and defend is based on fallacious arguments, equivocations, intellectual bluff-poker and a consistent abuse of concepts from other sciences. The result is an intellectual charade."[
[36]][
[37]]"Lacan is a philosophical charlatan, and not just because he tried to turn a pseudo-science (psychoanalysis) into a ‘science of the subject’."[
[38]].
Professor R.C. Tallis claims that he was a psychopath who, "listened to no truths other than those which confirmed his own hypotheses...he projected not only his own theories on madness in women but also his own fantasies and family obsessions". "His lunatic legacy also lives on in places remote from those in which he damaged his patients, colleagues, mistresses, wives, children, publishers, editors, and opponents—in departments of literature whose inmates are even now trying to, or pretending to, make sense of his utterly unfounded, gnomic teachings and inflicting them on baffled students."[ [39]]
RC Tallis, MA, MRCP, FRCP, F MedSci, DLitt, was Professor of Geriatric Medicine, University of Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom. 55 articles on pubmed (PubMed, available via the NCBI Entrez retrieval system, was developed by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) at the National Library of Medicine (NLM), located at the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH).) 13 citations on Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, Guest speaker at The Royal College of Physicians,
Article is about 5400 words, do you think there may be room for some balance in the interests of NPOV? Or perhaps we should start a POV fork? MarkAnthonyBoyle 14:02, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
Hi Cailil, I suggest you have a quick look at the post I put on
User:Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters page. I simply do not understand why you consider criticism of Lacan or Freud from highly respected scholars in those fields to be soapboxing, other than that they hold a different view to yours. I think these short quotes are concise, and provide NPOV balance.
MarkAnthonyBoyle 23:09, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
There is a discussion on [40] where one admin Jossi is of the opinion that High court order cannot be considered as Neutral source of information and Newspaper article is not a verifiable source of information. Request input from other experienced wikipedia user's to give their input as if a High court order is considered Neutral WP:NPOV or not, also can a national newspaper article be used as a verifiable source of information ? Rushmi 16:40, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
My Question is same, we are not to discuss the neutrality of court judgement, is a court judgement a neutral WP:NPOV Reliable WP:RS or not ? Is wikipedia considered a place where neutrality of a court order is questioned ? Same goes with National newspaper article. Is an article published in a national newspaper article considered as varifiable and reliable source of information or not. Rushmi 15:55, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
Recently, a feature article by Debbie Nathan appearing in Counterpunch was challenged as an unreliable source in a biographical article. The article is factual journalism, not editorial content, and the challenger has not stated specific concrete objections to the article, since there may be BLP issues. Nathan is a feature writer for New York Magazine, as well as a published author. I don't personally see the sourcing problem, but I respect the editor who's raising the objection, so I wanted to get the views of more editors. -- Ssbohio 02:31, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
OK, I did some further research... Debbie Nathan is particularly reputable on the topic of this article, child sexual abuse, having written a book on the subject that's been published by a major house. The book, Satan's Silence: Ritual Abuse and the Making of a Modern American Witch Hunt, is well-regarded by reviewers such as Philip Jenkins, Prof. Robert A. Baker, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Women's Review of Books, The American Enterprise, the San Diego Union-Tribune, The Nation, and the Brisbane, Australia Sunday Mail. It is considered a seminal work on the topic. It is required reading in Prof. Cecil Greek's graduate seminar in the University of South Florida's college of criminology. I believe that Nathan is a bona fide specialist in this field. Considering the evidence, how does that affect her reliability as a source? Please let me know what you think of the critical and academic opinions of Nathan and her work on this topic. -- Ssbohio 04:25, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
I hope this isn't considered canvassing, but I would appreciate if some mods would look at and advise/vote per the reasons given by some posters for keeping the world public speaking championships... they seem partisan and nonsensical. cheers. JJJ999 02:01, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
Is Ars Technica a usable source for IT and technology related news? http://arstechnica.com/news.ars is the main source. I asked here but got no response, so wanted to be bold and cross-check. Thanks. • Lawrence Cohen 06:10, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
Well, I'm from the US, so, I'm not terribly familiar with this publication. It's article Daily Mail, describes it as a tabloid, so, I think it's somewhat dubious. As do others. I'd really love to get some opinions, particularly, from other editors, more familiar with this publication, as to if the Daily Mail is a reliable source, that we can use at Man vs. Wild. Presently, it is being used as a reference. SQL( Query Me!) 03:19, 20 September 2007 (UTC)
There is a minor debate going on within WP:PW about whether or not pwinsider.com, which, from the notice I got when I went to save this page the first time, is blacklisted currently, really is a reliable source or not. We aren't sure if this is a peer reviewed, neutral, and scholarly site or not. Some say that it amounts to a dirtsheet, others say that it is a reputable, secondary or third party source. I figured that it would be a good idea leave this up to the pros at this noticboard. Peace, The Hyb rid 05:00, 20 September 2007 (UTC)
Within past edits of the Henry K. Beecher article, there were allegations medical ethics abuses: namely CIA experimentation and continuation of Nazi research. These claims seem to be based upon two sources. There is an ongoing conversation between another editor and I on whether these fit WP:V criteria, and I was hoping if people could comment:
Djma12 ( talk) 03:06, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
Can someone please comment on the Archaeology section in the Ebionites article and the source document, Buried Angels, that supports that section. The source document claims to report on archaeological research published in an Italian journal in the chapter on Archaeology. I have concerns that Jacob Rabinowitz is more of an armchair commentator than a biblical scholar, since the "book" is self-published on the Web. I would like to get the broader perspective of editors that have not been working on the article.
1. Is Jacob Rabinowitz for real as a scholar or is he simply recycling the research of scholars?
2. Is the source sufficiently well researched that it supports what is claimed in the article?
3. Even if Rabinowitz is not a real scholar, is the reporting of research that is otherwise only available in Italian a valuable resource for the article?
4. There is no other published archaeological evidence claiming to support the existence of the Ebionites. Is this "fringe research"? Is Rabinowitz making "fringe claims" based on the research of others?
Thanks for looking into this. Ovadyah 20:42, 5 September 2007 (UTC)
Rabinowitz is the owner of Invisible Books online publishing company, so this work is self-published. Ovadyah 19:58, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
I have been able to determine that Rabinowitz has a Ph.D. from Brown University and is listed as an independent scholar. Here is a list of his prior publications: publications
Jacob Rabinowitz (Rabinowitz, Jacob) Catullus's Complete Poetic Works by Jacob Rabinowitz and Gaius Valerius Catullus Softcover, ISBN 0882142208 (0-88214-220-8) The Faces of God: Canaanite Mythology As Hebrew Theology by Jacob Rabinowitz Softcover, Continuum Intl Pub Group, ISBN 0882141171 (0-88214-117-1) Jewish Law: Its Influence on the Development of Legal Institutions by Jacob Rabinowitz Hardcover, Bloch Pub Co, ISBN 0819701734 (0-8197-0173-4) Rotting Goddess: The Origin of the Witch in Classical Antiquity by Jacob Rabinowitz Softcover, A K Pr Distribution, ISBN 157027035X (1-57027-035-X) The Unholy Bible: Hebrew Literature of the Early Kingdom Period by Jacob Rabinowitz Softcover, ISBN 1570270155 (1-57027-015-5)
He is described in several websites as a practicing neo-pagan. One website has examples of his original poetry:
Here are some poems by Jacob Rabinowitz, another Neo-Canaanite. I thought they were so powerful that i asked his permission to have them here.
Jake is the author of several interesting books including: The Faces of God: Canaanite Mythology As Hebrew Theology, The Unholy Bible: Hebrew Literature of the Kingdom Period, and his great book on Hecate, The Rotting Goddess: the Origin of the Witch in Classical Antiquity The last two are published by Autonomedia.
Canaanite Poems by Jacob Rabinowitz
Does anyone have more opinions on his scholarship and the online book Buried Angels? Ovadyah 20:02, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
Religious conversion and terrorism was an article that was deleted after an {{ afd}} a few months ago.
I am considering initiating a full deletion review, because I thought the {{ afd}} procedures followed did not conform to policy. I'll try to talk about the procedural flaws as little as possible here.
I asked for temporary content review and userification. The major complaint of the wikipedian who nominated the article was that the article was unreferenced. But they made this nomination after deleting all the references, and I thought at least some of those references were perfectly valid. And, after the nomination, they kept removing good-faith attempts to introduce new, valid references.
The first reference the artle referenced was published in the Toronto Star in 2004, entitled: "He embraced Islam, then terrorism". A link to the online version of this article was provided when the article was first written. It seems to have expired, or otherwise gone 404 by March of 2007. Here is my first question. If a reference cites the publication, the date, the page number, the title, and the byline, then does it remains just as valid a reference as when it was available online? Surely the article is just as authoritative when it is taken down from the newspaper's web-site? With the date, page number, title, etc, doesn't it remain verifiable? In this particular case we have the publication, title, date, but we don't have the page number. Is that all that is lacking to continue to use that reference?
There is another site that seems to have a copy of that article. If the site with the mirror has some kind of claim that the original copyright holder has given them permission to republish the material, it remains a valid reference? Correct? If so, which publication should one list as the publisher? New Yokr Times articles often remain freely available to non-subscribers only for about two weeks. But the New York Times bought the International Herald Tribune a few years ago. So, when we reference the copy of a New York Times article republished by the International Herald Tribune, do we list the NYT or the IHT as the publisher?
How much trust should we extended to republishers, that they formally acquired permission to republish material that has expired from the original publisher's web-site? The Toronto Star article I referred to is mirrored, in full, on the following sites:
The two sites mirror the first couple of hundred words.
Presumably the last two didn't get permission, and think the first hundred words qualifies as "fair use"? The SITE quote actually contains enough material to substantiate that Dhiren Barot was accused of being a terrorist. But policy proscribes using it as a source, correct?
Thanks! Geo Swan 04:19, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
If articles remain verifiable and authoritative after they are no longer available online, so long as we can supply the page number, in addition to the title, publication, date and author, then I have decided I am going to do my best to record the page number of the articles I cite, when they are still online.
The New York Times lists the page numbers of the articles in the current day's issue here. http://www.nytimes.com/pages/todayspaper/index.html
I created a page to track NYTimes citations I have used, or might use. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Geo_Swan/Guantanamo/NYTimes_articles
A couple of questions:
Cheers! Geo Swan 00:20, 13 September 2007 (UTC)
In the article Dave the Barbarian (character), a user named AKR619 has repeatedly added statements about an alleged relationship between two characters. Supposedly, there was a set of Disney Channel commercials featuring several characters (Lizzie McGuire, Kim Possible and Dave the Barbarian) in a romantic relationship that, according to AKR619, got Disney Channel into a problem with the FCC.
However, I can find no evidence of the incident, nor of the commercials. The statements are unsourced, but supposedly commercials can act as a source. However, I do not remember such commercials, nor can I find any information on them. The user refuses to post any discussion about the relationship, nor discussion of the commercials, nor links to the videos.
I tagged the statements as unsourced material, later removing it after my research came up empty. he then reverted my deletion. Later I deleted it again, posting that unsourced statements should be removed or sourced. His reply was that since it was a commercial, that counts as the source, and reverted my deletion again.
I made an RFC which yielded no reply.
The idea that Disney Channel would do such a thing like this as described seems more than unlikely to me, especially being mainly a children's channel. It also seems unlikely that such a commercial would not come up as a result of extensive internet search. I seek only the truth. ~ PH DrillSergeant... § 04:05, 22 September 2007 (UTC)
The same user recently changed all of the spellings of the character Faffy to Faafy, a spelling that is (a) not used on Disney Channel, (b) not used on the Disney Channel site, (c) is not used in the Closed-Captioning for the show, and (d) returns 9 hits on google (most copies of this article) compared to several thousand for "Faffy". I do not have the time to undo all of these changes. Can someone help please? ~ PH DrillSergeant... § 05:22, 24 September 2007 (UTC)
Recently, with the death of Myra Nicholson, the usage of the World's Oldest People Yahoo Group as a reliable source has risen. Nicholson's death was reported by an expert on the forum and the message was used as a citation on both the Recent Deaths page and Nicholson's own page for over two days until a newspaper report came to light. Robert Young, who runs the forum uses the following justification for his use of the source:
Self-published material may, in some circumstances, be acceptable when produced by an established expert on the topic of the article whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable third-party publications.
Robert Young is at least an expert enough to have had his page kept (see the deletion debate on the talk page) so his claim basis is that because he is an expert and because he moderates the messages and claims that actually get posted to the forum, the source should be counted under the above criteria. This debate does not just concern the occasional death of someone that is posted there before a news story hits. It is also used:
As a neutral editor, one who could either way with this one. On the pro side, it does provide a lot of useful information that would be difficult, if not impossible to find elsewhere. The site is moderated by an acknowledge expert in the field, who screens every message before it is made available to the public. On the con side, there's concerns about original research (for example, the Ruby Muhammad claim is published nowhere else and is now being used by both Dead or Alive info and Genarians.com to call her age into question). Also, registration is required, which doesn't bar a source from being used, but makes it more difficult for people who don't want to spread their information around on the internet to access what may be the sole source for something.
I have alerted Robert Young about this discussion so that he can come here if he wishes to present his side of the debate. As I said, I don't have a particular opinion on this, but I'm not fond of the edit wars that erupt every time this is used as a source. Let's get an answer once and for all. Cheers, CP 16:06, 24 September 2007 (UTC)
WP:BLP#Reliable_sources and so on.
I need several admins to clarify something so that there's no confusion over the issue, as there seems to be a few people abusing their admin duties. Where exactly in Wikipedia's TOS does it state (with no confusion) that a site which happens to contain pornographic images and/or links to pornographic websites is automatically deemed unreliable as a reference for content? TMZ.com owns the rights to the infamous "Kramer" video, they've watermarked it, and its used as a source on Wikipedia. A site that I'd like to use as a reference has legal fight videos, the site owns all rights to the videos and has also watermarked them with additional details. According to Alexa.com the site in question ranks in the top 5,000 most visited websites in the world. So where in Wikipedia's rules does it state that this site is unreliable as a reference whereas TMZ.com (a celebrity gossip site) is reliable? Playboy.com contains pornography, why can various wiki articles (including those not related to the magazine) use pages of that site as a reference if pornographic sites are thus "unreliable" in the eyes of Wikipedia? It seems that some contributors and admins are creating their own liberal interpretations of Wikipedia policy. Can someone just show me a rule? KimboSlice 22:38, 24 September 2007 (UTC)
In the Alcoholics Anonymous article as a criticism that AA offers No Model of a recovered Person this article is given as a citation for the following.
This looks like an opinion expressed by the author, not a result of a quantitative study of AA and Al-Anon literature. If it was, she gives no citation or method of the research. While the article is published what seems to be a reputable magazine, there is no evidence of peer-review for this particular article. As such, what appears to be just the authors opinion isn't relevant encyclopedic content. -- Craigtalbert 20:54, 30 September 2007 (UTC)
NB, Periodicals are regularly used as a reliable source, even in featured articles. 82.19.66.37 21:47, 30 September 2007 (UTC)
Would you call the following two maps reliable: Image:Rzeczpospolita 1920 claims names.png; Image:Border-Lithuania-Poland-1919-1939.svg? The first one cites some, but not all sources. The second one cites no sources, and a possible error has been raised on its discussion page. But both are also broadly correct, and helpful in related articles. Are they reliable or unreliable? Should they stay or be removed?-- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk 18:32, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
I am at a complete standstill with another editor in the Nobel Prize article regarding reliable sources about whether or not the Prize in Economics is a Nobel Prize. Could someone please help and give feedback to this discussion? While I believe this is a topic that has a lot of misinformation on the web, it would be helpful if someone else could review this case. You may find it helpful to also read the intro to the Nobel Prize in Economics article. Some definitions of a Nobel Prize are included in the discussion, copied from the Nobel Foundation, another from M-W (listed in a different debate that includes the same editor), etc. There are also references to derived definitions listed in the discussion as well as definitions made up by individual editors. Clearly not all definitions can be correct as they contradict each other. –panda 18:59, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
Recently an editor has added information to an article ( Jaclyn Reding) that I'd previously deleted due to the fact that I couldn't find any reliable sources. The information in question being her supposed maiden name. When asking him where he'd gotten the sources and if he could put them in the article he was slightly rude and claimed that he used Ancestry.com to find her parents through a deceased brother and ussearch.com to connect her to her husband. I am wondering what are the reliabilities of these sources? The author is vague on her own website not stating where she was born, what her husband's name is, or if she has any family at all. I hate to get into a conflict with an editor in the first place, but I'm concerned that this borders on original research. I don't want to remove the information without merit because that could escalate this situation into an edit war, which I'd like to avoid so if anybody could shed some light on these two places I'd appreciate it. -- ImmortalGoddezz 23:41, 4 September 2007 (UTC)
requesting comments regarding source's reliability
here - [48].
-- Jaakobou Chalk Talk 20:11, 15 September 2007 (UTC)
The lede is available without paying for it (preview) and this contains the key claim cited here. When numerous ( [49], [50], [51]) mirror sites have an apparently identical article - and their ideological biases are all over the place - I think it's safe to treat it as a legitimate source. This being said, Paul Martin ("Sayed Anwar") of the Washington Times was very publically, and very credibly, accused of repeated journalistic fraud on CBC Television, an accusation which has not been retracted or, to my knowledge, credibly disputed. That's the real issue. Eleland 02:57, 16 September 2007 (UTC)
The New York Times is a reliable source, but what about Times opinion column in a BLP (rather a BLC: biography of a living corporation)? I don't think fact checking or editorial oversight apply in those cases and thus I feel uneasy about relying on them as sources. If what they say is accurate, I think it should be easy to find something other than a columnist saying it, in my opinion. My concern is based on what I see at Overstock.com if someone would please take a look and weigh in.-- Wally Ball 02:44, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
A recent editor on the Exetel page has been citing a number of Wikipedia policies in an effort to force through some of his edits and remove some of the references on the page. Having looked at the policies it seems that what he says does have some merit.
One of the sources used on the page is Boing Boing, a blog site. WP:SPS (cited by this editor) says that blogs are largely not acceptable as sources but may be in some circumstances. As far as I can see Boing Boing doesn't seem to satisfy the requirements for exemption. The editor in question claims that Boing Boing is acceptable because it "used to be a magazine, contains some of the more influential people in technology, and is labeled on Wikipedia as a "publishing entity"". [52] Try as I might I can't find anything to support this claim so my question is, is he right?
Another issue on the page is the use of references that don't directly mention the company. A source used to support a claim that Exetel has implemented a certain policy refers only to "another ISP" but doesn't mention Exetel. [53] The article does link to another article on another website but does that make the first a reliable source for the claim? I know the second is fine (that's the source I'd use) but I'm not sure if the first is OK to use.
Finally, can a forum post be a reliable source? The editor has, for some unexplained reason, got it in his mind that two policies of this ISP are linked and were implemented at the same time and will not take my word for it that one of the policies was implemented in March 2004 and the other was implemented in November 2006. I need to convince him of the facts so the two can be separated on the article's page and the only source I can find is a post from the company CEO on the highly moderated Whirlpool forums. [54] -- AussieLegend 12:26, 23 September 2007 (UTC)
not so much a matter of WP:RS but WP:UNDUE/ WP:NOTE . After a long and hairy dispute, Persecution of Heathens is now a disambiguation page. Concerning Religious discrimination against Neopagans, a rather short article in spite of detailed treatment of individual cases along the lines of "In 2007, a teacher at Shawlands Academy in Glasgow was denied time off with pay to attend Druid rites ( Pentacle Magazine: I Want Pagan Holidays)". This article has three sub-articles, one at Religious discrimination against Asatru, another at Religious discrimination against Wiccans, and a third at Discrimination against Hellenic neopaganism. In my opinion, this is compeltely unwarranted: these are religious minorities of the order of 0.2% where they are most numerous, and while they do face discrimination, they are not singled out according to their specific denomination. To me, this smells of lobbyist activism, not encyclopedic coverage. In this, I am in deadlock with Liftarn ( talk · contribs), who maintains that each pagan denomination and sub-denomination should get its own "discrimination" article. Third party input is welcome at Talk:Religious discrimination against Neopagans. -- dab (𒁳) 13:35, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
WP:RS states a reliable source has a "reputation for fact-checking and accuracy", but how do you prove this? Obviously the major news sources, like NPR, BBC, NYTimes and others are reliable, but would Canadian Content and Policy Review be considered reliable sources? Also, WikiNews is not considered to be a reliable source, is it? Thanks — Christopher Mann McKay talk 19:31, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
What is Wikipedia's policy regarding reporting someone's birthday when there is conflicting information about it. I'm thinking specifically of an actor where there has been at least 2 or 3 different birth dates and/or birth years reported in IMDB, on fan sites, and elsewhere. Should the birthday not be reported or should the one that the majority of sites list be used? It's verifiable, even if it may conflict with info from other sites, and it doesn't seen any particular source is more reliable than another in this case. (IMDB has changed this actor's birth date a few times.) This actor hasn't been in an interview that I know of where they've revealed their birth date and they have no official website. –panda 18:10, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
I apologize, because I'm sure this has been asked before, but isn't there a policy that says foreign language news stories cannot be considered reliable on the English wiki? I found an article which references a sensational news story, but all the links are in Dutch. Can I delete these references and request a citation? What is considered appropriate in this case? It's probable that that the news story was not covered by the English language press.-- The Fat Man Who Never Came Back 17:37, 30 September 2007 (UTC)
Specifically 1 (also see Talk:Conservapedia). Some users on the Talk page propose that RationalWiki be considered a reliable source on this subject, others disagree. Since this is (apparently) a contentious and politicised issue, I thought I'd see what a wider sampling of editors thought.
Please note that we want to know if RationalWiki is a reliable source for this subject, not whether they're right to criticise Conservapedia or not. I shouldn't have to point this out, but some people get very excited about certain topics. ;-) I'm also not seeking opinion about the general utility of RationalWiki as a reliable source, although feel free to comment on that subject if you want. -- tiny plastic Grey Knight ⊖ 07:39, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
Old newspaper reports (1985 ) are hosted by an anti subject of article site , these copies of mainly SF Chronicle papers and appear with an extreme of bias to me, these copies on the critical website then lead (by click on link) to to further derogatory comment blog and bulletin board posts all derogatory and personal opinion with no further refs , included is a court report by one plaintiff
here is an example the subject is Adi Da a not well known American spiritual teacher
here is a typical lightmind.com link the ( anti Da ) site ,which hosts the newspaper reports from 1985 click on the bottom links to see where they lead , would appreciate a non partisan opinion ( or 2 ) thanks very much
http://lightmind.com/thevoid/daism/sfchron-04.html -- 202.63.42.221 08:51, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
There is a dispute re the reliability of Asma Barlas's book titled "Believing Women" in Islam: Unreading Patriarchal Interpretations of the Qur'an (University of Texas Press, 2002). User:Arrow740 argues that "Barlas has no qualifications as a historian." [55]. This issue was discussed in details without reaching any consensus. Below, I provide the arguments made for reliability of this work:
This book was published by University of Texas press and has received the following reviews:
Asma Barlas has contributed to several scholarly works like Cambridge Companion to the Qur’an (Cambridge University Press, 2006). She was named to the prestigious Spinoza Chair at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands for "her prominent contributions to discussions about women and Islam".
Here is the relevant page from her book [56]. -- Aminz 08:48, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
"Articles should rely on reliable, third-party published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy. Sources should be appropriate to the claims made: exceptional claims require exceptional sources. All articles must adhere to Wikipedia's neutrality policy, fairly representing all majority and significant-minority viewpoints that have been published by reliable sources, in rough proportion to the prominence of each view."
"In general, the most reliable sources are peer-reviewed journals and books published in university presses; university-level textbooks; magazines, journals, and books published by respected publishing houses; and mainstream newspapers. As a rule of thumb, the greater the degree of scrutiny involved in checking facts, analyzing legal issues, and scrutinizing the evidence and arguments of a particular work, the more reliable it is."
"Academic and peer-reviewed publications are highly valued and usually the most reliable sources in areas where they are available, such as history, medicine and science. Material from reliable non-academic sources may also be used in these areas, particularly if they are respected mainstream publications. The appropriateness of any source always depends on the context. Where there is disagreement between sources, their views should be clearly attributed in the text."
The fact that Barlas has written books on Islamic history published by reputable university presses like the Cambridge University Press and University of Texas Press, and that her work has received mainly positive reviews from historians of Islam, obviously means that her book is a reliable source on Islamic history. Despite all of this evidence, several users (including User:Arrow740 as mentioned above) at Talk:Aisha and Talk:Aisha's age at marriage removed Barlas' book from those articles based on personal opinions (like the example above) despite the fact that they themselves failed to cite any evidence to support their arguments at all. - Jagged 85 10:10, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
Haven't we already been through this several months ago? Beit Or 19:56, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
In general, the most reliable sources are peer-reviewed journals and books published in university presses; university-level textbooks; magazines, journals, and books published by respected publishing houses; and mainstream newspapers.
Re: Arrow740:
The historian Kirsten V. Walles, from the Department of History at the University of Texas, praised Asma Barlas' ability as a historian of Islam in her peer-review of Barlas' book:
"The book "Believing Women" in Islam: Unreading Patriarchal Interpretations of the Qur'an is a fascinating analysis of the woman’s position in Muslim society. However the basic premise of Asma Barlas’s theories could be applied and used by scholars of many disciplines including religion, gender, and history..."
"As an historian, I read this book with the intention of being able to assign this to students who have a cursory or minimal knowledge of Islam and the role of women in Muslim society..."
"Part 1 of the book analyzes the primary texts (Qur'an, Tafsir, Ahadith) and main secondary sources (the Sunnah, Shari'ah, and the state) utilized by Muslims. Barlas delves into the historical foundations of these sources and analyzes the methodologies, which led to the transformation of these texts such that they conformed to the cultures of the time..."
"...The only question that is left to answer is, if we are to reread to obtain knowledge and to truly understand history, then who determines what is truth?"
Paul Allen Williams, who has a PhD in the History of Religions, also praised Barlas' ability as a historian of Islam in his peer-review of her work:
"In fact, she is able to bring the riches of literary criticism, feminist thought, scriptural studies, Islamic history, and the Qur’an itself into a coherent, if densely argued, text."
Unless you can find any peer-reviews that explictly criticize Barlas' ability as an Islamic historian, then there is no doubt in my mind that all of this evidence from scholarly peer-reviews clearly point to Asma Barlas indeed being a reliable source for the early history of Islam.
Jagged 85 07:17, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
About Barlas' book, it is not a book about history, but about a feminist re-interpretation of the Qur'an. The statements you have assembled cannot be construed as a blanket endorsement of all sentences in the book. The book is about "argument" and "methods" of interpretation, not history. Books written by the actual, mainstream, prominent historians of Islam are what we have included. Attempts by apologists unqualified in this specific area to muddy the waters should not be included; that is irresponsible. Arrow740 23:13, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
It looks like this is dying down, but I'll put in my two cents since I was asked to. I don't object to using Barlas as a source. However, there is an obvious dearth of historians who believe what she believes about Aisha. I think it's just not a prominent enough minority view to be included, even if Barlas herself is reliable in her field. The majority opinion isn't just the product of Western historians, secularists, or anti-Muslims, it's found in Bukhari and al-Tabari.-- Cúchullain t/ c 16:21, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
Re: Cuchullain: Islamic scholars (including Muhammad Ali) are trained in early Islamic history and traditional Islamic sources like the Quran, Hadith, Sira, etc. Muhammad Ali was also the editor of an Islamic journal, so I don't see why he should be considered unreliable on the grounds of being a "religious partisan" source. The other Islamic scholars that were previously removed are also qualified in interpreting early Islamic history but were removed simply because several editors interpreted them as religious partisan sources. Jagged 85 12:14, 11 October 2007 (UTC)
Hi, an IP editor has been very aggressively questioning two sentences on Joe Szwaja, a low-traffic article that I want to get 3rd party review on. They are:
He asserts that unless language indicating facts about the source is included, it is not valid.
And:
He insists that each single community group here must be sourced, and that this questionnaire for the candidate is not a valid source. As it's a primary source for simple facts that aren't negative, I think it is fine. Could you please weigh in on these? The discussions are pretty circular to non-existent. • Lawrence Cohen 20:52, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
Hello,
There's quite a discussion raging on Talk:Causes of the 1948 Palestinian exodus regarding the use of different sources on the main topic, namely the Causes of the 1948 Palestinian exodus. I don't want to get too involved in the broader discussion, since it is getting quite ridiculous and my question here pertains to one single author, Joseph Schechtman, who is also at the source of an edit war on said article.
Here's the problem: Schechtman is considered by many to be a historian (he is quoted excessively in the anti-Palestinian crowd), and therefore, according to his proponents on Causes of the 1948 Palestinian exodus, merits inclusion. Schechtman, however, has been outed as a fraud by the Author Erskine Childers (UN), much in the same way Joan Peters (who, interestingly enough, quotes Schechtman excessively) was unmasked by Norman Finkelstein. This was later acknowledged by the historian Stephen Glazer [7] and not refuted since.
So the question is, can a historian be considered a reliable source even after he/she has been outed as a fraud?
Cheers and thanks, Pedro Gonnet 13:14, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
Spartan pederasty and Pederasty in ancient Greece suffer from literal interpretation of historical primary, self-published sources which are known to be unreliable. For example, Claudius Aelianus's Varia Historia is used to claim that pederasty was legally mandated in ancient Sparta, but that work is "not perfectly trustworthy in details," and Aelianus's "agenda is always to inculcate culturally 'correct' Stoic opinions, perhaps so that his readers will not feel guilty."
I am tempted to tag all of the statements supported by primary historical source references with {{ Verify credibility}} and remove those such as Var. Hist. which are known to be inaccurate. However, I have recently been in heated debates about this subject, so it would be best if someone else took a fresh look at the problem. 1of3 21:32, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
The following article is being used to reference an quote in the Battle of Jenin article to present "evidence" of an Israeli war crime, could I get some input on whether this source meets RS: [60]. The wikipedia article seems to make me think that it wouldn't due to the WP:REDFLAG that the statement it is presenting causes. Kyaa the Catlord 07:33, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
Here is the Daily Telegraph linking to the document, describing it as an "eyewitness account". Here is Human Rights Watch citing the article and noting that a Gush Shalom translation is available, effectively vouching for it. Here is Teddy Katz referring to the article in a UN document. Here is the actual journalist discussing the article on a nationally syndicated American radio show - or perhaps they hired a voice actor? Can't trust those left-wingers!
Really, now, I previously brought to this noticeboard some alleged quotations that only showed up once on Google and was shot down for it. We are currently using one quote on the basis that a single editor says he called the news agency and verified that yes, an article with that title was published on that day (but he doesn't know what it said.) Now you're telling me that this extremely well-corroborated piece isn't good enough? I think the operating principle here is not WP:REDFLAG but WP:IDONTLIKEIT. Eleland 12:45, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
This would be better addressed by posting a Request for comment, as it is clearly a content dispute. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 15:08, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
Each of these books has been used extensively on wikipedia articles relating to the South Asian Subcontinent. There must be one standard on wikipedia weather these are acceptable as secondary and tertiary sources or not acceptable at all. The ensuing rule must be applicable on all articles in wikipedia thereafter . How is this going to be achieved?
or is there already a wikipedia ruling on this .
Cheers
Intothefire 19:39, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
Cheers
Intothefire 02:36, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
Is The Abusive Hosts Blocking List a reliable source? Does citing it violate WP:BLP?
Hi are Antiwar.com and Globalsecurity.org reliable sources? (Hypnosadist) 22:34, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
Is there any reason why the AR series of goverment publications would be rejected by Wikipedia editors as verifiable sources on reasons why the US Army acts or does not act?
The question relates to the naming of units in describing those units to non-military organizations that are not in a unit's chain of command. Upholding the history and traditions of regiments within the US Army force structure is covered by AR 600-82 (other sources appear to derive their rationale on this public domain publication). AR 220-1 describes status reporting of subordinate commands to higher levels, also citing AR 220-5 which provides that within the Army's reporting channels, the word "regiment" is an assumed part of the name of a regiment and is not used in an official designation, but on websites such as www.army.mil available for non-military users (such as Wikipedia editors), the usage is generally to name regiments with the word "Regiment" appended. This practice also extends to printed material made available for public consumption by regiments and not intended for use within the Army itself; it appears to be the practice used in our United States Army article as well.
The issue relates to an accepted matter for mediation. I am concerned that because of any connection I may have to the US Army, I may find myself banned by the government from remaining as an editor, should there be a result of Wikipedia mediation that disparages the use of active unit's oral traditions in favor of an interpretation of Wikipedia's full compliance with policies approved of by Wikipedia or the WikiMedia Foundation. It has come to my attention that at least one other popular website is now off-limits for use by persons connected to the US Army. My concerns extend to how the mediation results may be interpreted by Internet users in general in their determination of the Wikipedia as a reliable source of usable information. Hotfeba 16:15, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
The Nobel Prize for Economics has just been announced, and barely has the mike gone dead before various proud members of differing religions/ethnicities and nationalities are quarreling over whether various individuals are Jewish, Russian, Polish or American, or some suitable combination of those things and hyphens. (One of them is a fairly well-known atheist, but I don't see any atheists staking a claim here. No initiative.)
The reason I am posting here is simple: is this website a reliable source? It doesn't seem to meet any of the requirements, but I've already spent too much time on this question, and anti-semitism was implied at what must be record speed, so I'll be damned if I'm questioning it without backup. Relata refero 14:03, 15 October 2007 (UTC)
Another wikipedian has made some assertion about reliable sources that I am quite skeptical of.
Short version. The DoD has released approximately 1366 memos containinng allegations against Guantanamo captives, and 673 transcripts from their Combatant Status Review Tribunals and their annual Administrative Review Board hearings. These 2039 documents contain allegations that were leveled against the captives.
This other wikipedian asserts that reporting that the DoD has leveled these allegations against the captives is a violation of {{ blp}}. He assert that these DoD documents cannot be considered reliable sources, If I understand his concerns, he believes that the allegations can't be covered in the wikipedia unless he is satisfied they are true -- even though the first line of WP:VER says it is concerned with verifiability, not truth.
This other wikipedian has even gone so far as to assert that merely referencing the DoD documents constitutes original research and a breach of WP:NPOV.
Cheers! Geo Swan 02:04, 16 October 2007 (UTC)
As I see it, they can't be viewed as a reliable source when they are not an independent source, and are the primary and only source. This is the core of WP:RS surely? From a personal and subjective viewpoint I'd never consider giving any government department a blanket reliability status. ---- WebHamster 01:02, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
The distinction between primary and secondary sources is sometimes a matter of common sense. The situation of the captives at Guantanamo is a matter of legitimate world-wide public interest, and information about what actual accusation have been leveled against individuals there is legitimate content, and presenting it is not an example of blp. DGG ( talk) 01:33, 17 October 2007 (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 1 | Archive 2 | Archive 3 | Archive 4 | Archive 5 |
A similar challenge has been made to the use of GenerationQ as a source. GenerationQ is an online magazine aimed at LGBT young adults, particularly young gay men. It covers news of particular interest to this community. In its favor, it enjoys a broad international readership. However, it is an online rather than a paper source, and some of its reporting has been used in a biographical article that's part of WikiProject LGBT Studies, but that the article's subject self-identifies as not being part of the LGBT community. The article specifically cites facts (and includes references) demonstrating that the subject of the article's business dealings are inconsistent with his public statements. Additionally, the facts stated in the article are supported by two primary sources written and posted online by the article's subject. Similar to the question of CounterPunch, an editor is challenging a reference to this source backed up by references to the two corroborating primary sources. How is the reliability of a source like this determined, and how is that applied when the article is a biography of a living person? Fundamentally, I want to know: is this a reliable source? -- Ssbohio 02:31, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
All of the sources for this page are self-references or links to partners. Are this, this and this reliable enough to add to the article? Corvus cornix 22:26, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
Almost none of the entries on this list have any citation to show that they have professed to being a Lutheran. The 3 sources listed:
do not seem at all reliable. Any thoughts on what to do here? Kevin 11:58, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
Hi, I'm not sure this is the right place but in this article the World Sex Guide is used as a source... I'm not sure this is the right kind of source for this kind of article... Cperroquin 14:21, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
I have added unreliable source? tags to those statements in Battle of Jenin for which I could not replace CAMERA with a journalistic reliable source. It seems clear to me both from WP:RS and past editing experience that partisan pressure groups are not generally used as reliable sources. According to the wikipedia page for CAMERA: "News media cite CAMERA as an advocate of Israel [1] and discuss the organization's mobilisation for the support of Israel in the form of full-page ads in newspapers [2], organizing demonstrations, and encouraging sponsor boycotts. [3] Critics of CAMERA call its "non-partisan" claims into question and define its alleged biases." No editors appear to be disputing their partisan nature; according to User:Isarig "You are confusing 'partisan' with 'non reliable'. The two are not same, or even similar. CAMERA meets every requirement WP has for reliable sources." (Note that I am not arguing with use of attributed POV statements from CAMERA expressing their analyses, rather I take issue with their use as a source for wikipedia-voice statements of fact like "Palestinian Minister Abu said X on date Y.[1]")
On a related issue - and uninvolved editors feel free to refactor out this comment if it's clearly in the wrong place - is not the removal of such maintenance tags ( [4], [5]) without some approximation of consensus built on talk considered very bad practice if not outright disruptive editing? Eleland 16:18, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
comment by involved editor - it doesn't matter what side a source is allegedly supporting as long as it's references and statements are reliable. for the same reason, i cannot remove The Guardian articles or the BBC despite their anti-israel bias (and countless errors). there is nothing beyond "they say they support israel" or "they only correct anti-israeli POV" to justify the claim that the source in unreliable. on top of this many of the "needs more reliable reference" statements have similar statements expressed on other references and up to now camera notes have been fairly easily verified. we are discussing reliability in report and there is no validated reason to suspect camera as more unreliable than the major news medias they are quoting or criticizing... to the contrary even. Jaakobou Chalk Talk 17:23, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
So let me get this straight - the CAMERA article, which as you conced restored the original text, and then went on to paraphrase it is 'spinning information to one party's advantage' because it omits the qualifier ("In a considerable number of places"), but the article they were critiquing, which compeltly omitted the conetxt of Dyan talking about buying land - that text is ok, and should not be critiqued? Isarig 21:08, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
Okay we are getting seriously sidetracked here, what are we talking about the Moshe Dayan quote for exactly? I mean PR is right, and anyone who knows the full context of this quote (where he talks about provoking border wars with Lebanon in order to steal farmland, etc) can see that, but this quote is not at all at issue in the article I was talking about. Eleland 21:25, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
In general, this noticeboard should be used to solicit opinions from editors previously unaware of the concern. I see this is not precisely true in this case. Moving to the specific item of concern, it seems self-evident that CAMERA is an advocacy website, and should be used with caution. If the only source for certain quotes is CAMERA, it is reasonable to ask for substantiation of the quotes from an alternative source. Using only quotes available through a single article in an advocacy website leaves us open to the risk of unbalanced reporting, so that should be kept in mind. In this case, CAMERA is not serving as a 'convenience link' in the sense in which some advocacy websites host duplicates of print articles from more reliable sources. CAMERA is quoting from secondary sources. Thus it should be used with care, and preferably minimized, with alternative confirmation of those news stories found. Hornplease 10:10, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
CAMERA is obviously not a generally reliable source for controversial material. It is of course reliable for giving its own opinions, and it is sufficiently notable that its opinions on developments are often newsworthy. But when its material is republished by a RS, then it can be indirectly quoted as , eg. NYTimes , based on... That does not seem to be the question here--the initial question is can be be used for its copy of another source. I think the solution then is to quote the place it copies, e.g. the Jerusalem Post, and then say (as reported by ), But if the original source is accessible, why not find it and cite it? An interesting side issue seems to be whether it can be used as a source for the statements about people whose position it agrees with. I think in general not, as no such source can be trusted to report them fairly rather than reinterpret them in a more favorable light. DGG ( talk) 02:47, 22 August 2007 (UTC)
As you all seem to work with references regularly, so I felt this would be an appropriate place to ask for someone to help me.
I've been adding references, but many are untidy. See DiGard_Motorsports#References to see what I'm talking about. Anyone willing to lend a hand? I especially am unsure what to do with things I found off of Google Books.
Also, does References go above or below External Links?
I'm primarily looking to see if anyone would be willing to help work on the ref coding. I can fairly defend the references used if anyone takes issue with the refs.
(crossposted at [14])
Guroadrunner 12:02, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
Are the sources listed in question two here: Talk:Water fluoridation#RfC reliable? · jersyko talk 13:39, 26 August 2007 (UTC)
Will Beback is systematically eliminating links to Overlawyered, added by multiple editors, without discussion on talk pages, and against consensus. Though it is in the form of a blog, it qualifies as a WP:RS: it features writing by multiple writers (including Stuart Taylor and Michael Fumento) and is edited by the leading expert in the field, Walter Olson; it is regularly cited by books, [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] {and many others} law reviews, newspaper articles, and magazines (including a number that just plagiarize us without citing). Even if it is considered a self-published source, it qualifies as a source under WP:SPS. (COI disclosure: I occasionally write for Overlawyered. I added an Overlawyered link to one page after consulting with other editors to the page.) I don't challenge all of the removals, but it seems improper to remove cites to the site when it is cited as an example of an opinion of leading legal reformers. THF 18:53, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
There seem to be two distinct issues: one whether Overlawyered is a reliable source in the general case. The answer to that appears to be no, especially given the lack of apparent editorial oversight. The next question is whether we can use Overlawyered as a link of convenience for some documents that are hosted there. The answer to that seems to be a clear yes. The final question is even when overlawyered is not necessarily reliable is its material notable(that is, can we on BLP say something like "According to _ at Overlawyered _" the answer to that seems to be yes given that the material is frequently cited by mainstream sources. JoshuaZ 19:47, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
Please note, per Wikipedia_talk:Biographies_of_living_persons#Reason_for_reverting_ban_on_self-published_external_links, that this discussion implies that Overlawyered (when posts are written by reliable-source bloggers) can be used as an external link in a biography article. I request reversion of Beback's deletions to EL. THF 19:52, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
These amateur anti-Scientology personal homepages keep recurring as references on Scientology-related articles. Some of them make some rather threatening-sounding statements that I find every bit as ominous as the "Religious Freedom Watch" lone-nut hate site (whose article was recently deleted). It seems clear to me that these kind of religious-partisan rant sites are no better than personal blogs, of no use to us as sources, nor trustworthy for courtesy links:
Furthermore, these sites are also seeded in a very spammy fashion across the External Links sections of almost the entirety of the Scientology articles.
The Anti-Scn editors will likely cry that I'm seeking to silence all criticism of Scientology. Far from it - I want lots and lots of criticism, but criticism with airtight sources, not these homepages of people ranting about their holy mission to "expose the global scam of Scientology". If these criticisms are so encyclopedic, we should be able to get all the dirt we need from reliable sources, not some angry conspiracy-theory personal webpage made by persons with evident grudges. User:AndroidCat has done a great job recently supplanting CoS articles with solid newspaper articles as sources, so let's follow his example and lose these childish "Scientology sucks" pages. wikipediatrix 04:00, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
Can I get a clarification on whether internal information, like manuals, memos, etc pertaining to an organization, that is distributed only for use by members within the organization is considered "published" and hence reliable sources? I scoured through a few pages of reliability and its archives, and i didn't find anything specifically addressing that point. The Jackal God 19:32, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
Please see WP:BLP/N#Ongoing WP:BLP-related concerns, particularly: WP:BLP/N#WP:BLP#Reliable sources policy section itself, which pertain to questions pertaining to reliable sources of material about living persons (not only biographies but other articles concerning living persons as well). Thank you. -- NYScholar 17:38, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
Per WP:N a subject is notable if it has recieved non-trivial coverage by multiple reliable sources. I was looking at the article on Claus Elming, a Danish football player and TV personality who has recieved significant non-trivial coverage in the Danish media. Ignoring for a moment that the reliable sources in this context are not used solely to satisfy WP:V what is the general concensus on the use of foreign language sources as reliable sources, especially when such sources are in a language only understood by a small minority of editors? Is there a generally agreed upon concensus on a threshold for how minor a language may be before such sources are disregarded? MartinDK 15:07, 22 August 2007 (UTC)
This is a dispute I wish could be resolved one way or another soon. It might be my misunderstanding, but we need external input with convincing arguments. The case is currently an open RfC, but I wish this was settled soon. It's about a Food and Drug Administration document, found in the FBI files, now available from this FBI web page (it can be ordered, or consulted at the FBI headquarters). Also available for a few dollars at the paperlessarchives.com. That FDA document contains a note that a specific product can be used for iron-deficiency. There is no mention that it can be used for anything else. The FDA statement from that letter was used in an article as follow: "The tablets had in fact only been approved as a supplement to counteract iron-deficiency anemia.". If you want to comment on this issue, I rather you do it at the RfC of the talk page of the article in which the dispute is ongoing, this will save me to have to notify all the person involved to have their say here. Thank you. Raymond Hill 21:32, 1 September 2007 (UTC)
A dispute between me and Cyrus XIII about the NPOV of my contributions to Lords of Chaos (book) has escalated into an edit war. I can't see any substance in his accusations. Lords of Chaos has some - mildly put- controversial content. I disagree with this content, but I definitely think it has to be included in the article. In my opinion Cyrus XIII is referring to WP:NPOV and WP:EL in an attempt to keep this content out of Wikipedia, thus censoring the article. We are both experienced editors and I don't think that one of use is going to make the 'mistake' of braking the 3 revert rule. Zara1709 15:05, 11 August 2007 (UTC)
For example, [27], this is cited extensively in Rogerian argument. I noticed this site yesterday when an anon added links to several pages. We have 300+ links from articles. Any thoughts? Tom Harrison Talk 13:58, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
Repeated insertion of the claim that George Washington was a Deist... without any source or reference to back the claim up. Also repeated deletion of Thomas Jefferson from the list of Episcopalians even though there is a source for this. Other material boarders on WP:SYNT and OR. This article needs serious help from neutral editors. Blueboar 15:43, 5 September 2007 (UTC)
Are institutions websites (Colleges, Universities, etc.) reliable sources to use for referencing articles. Like for example the Technological Institute of Piraeus? Link to the site: [28] and link to the information: [29] Can they be used in a wikipedia article as a reference or are they inadequate? El Greco ( talk · contribs) 16:00, 5 September 2007 (UTC)
This debate has been going on for over 2 years now and it has re-surfaced again. The debate is whether this article should be included in the Bose article or not. If you check the talk page not only do I believe that this article does not qualify because it is blatantly POV but it fails the tests of verifiability and being a reliable source (detailed listings of this are on the talk page). But this can be summed up by this comment:
Please can you help lay this issue to rest? -- UKPhoenix79 20:08, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
Are my points logical? Any other comments? -- UKPhoenix79 05:10, 4 September 2007 (UTC)
Comment The article clearly doesn't meet WP:RS, but it's more a symptom than the problem. Its inclusion will no longer be an issue when the article achieves a more neutral tone. I mean, I like my ancient 301s, but I don't think they are contributing to world peace. Flowanda | Talk 22:54, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
In your biography on Mick Gatto, it says he died on 17th August, 2007.
This is absolutely incorrect. I know for a fact he is still alive today. In fact, an associate of mine is having lunch with him today.
So can the information on him be fixed please.
I've used these as sources a lot. My guess is that Wikipedia doesn't actually consider them reliable sources, though. Correct?-- P4k 00:55, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
As illustrated by this diff [30], User:Piotrus thinks that the chemist Witold Lawrynowicz (bio at [31]), is a reliable source for a statement phrased as a fact. At issue is the Lithuanian motivation for not joining forces with the Poles during the Polish-Soviet War (a featured article). Lawrynowicz's assertion is not trivial. Novickas 19:41, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
Is TV Squad reliable? It's called a weblog, but it seems to be run more like an online newspaper. The TV Squad page says
Peregrine Fisher 17:44, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
OK, here we go. A reliable source talking about it [32]. That should help us decide. - Peregrine Fisher 07:29, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
I asked this question above and didn't get much of a response. I have researched it some more and I believe TV Squad is a reliable source for television information, but they use the word blog so I'd like help making a determination. They're a part of Weblogs, Inc., like Engadget. This National Business Review article says about Engadget "If that sounds like a magazine, it should. Although it looks like a blog and acts like a blog, Engadget is a webzine (web-based magazine) dressed up like a blog." It says of Weblogs, Inc., "the content areas are covered by people who treat content production as a job." Also, that "An expert writes alone or in conjunction with others about a "hot" topic (gadgets, say), links to outside material and solicits feedback from the readership." They describe the system as "artificially-viral" and as a "blog-like, content-specific, web-only publication." TV Squad is indexed by google news. According to the Weblogs, Inc. site, they're "bloggers" are paid, they have a team of editors, and have a clear separation between advertising and editors. Their also part of AOL now. Peregrine Fisher 20:32, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
An editor is contesting Variety, a trade paper for the Hollywood industry, as a reliable source at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Dragon Ball Z (film). While I am not arguing for the article to be kept, the editor does not believe that the information at the Variety article (seen here) is credible. Variety has been a completely acceptable resource per reliable source criteria, and I am having difficulty explaining to the editor that this is the case. His reason is that if it does not come directly from the studio, it does not count. I am completely positive that Variety is acceptable and have incorporated its information at Dragon Ball Z#Live-action film adaptation, but I'd like independent opinions to show the editor that Variety is acceptable. — Erik ( talk • contrib) - 22:29, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
Can an independent editor weigh in on the validity of Variety as a source of verifiable coverage about this project? By all counts, Variety is a published, third-party source, and its mention of the project ought to qualify. — Erik ( talk • contrib) - 23:29, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
Dkosopedia is in about two dozen articles where it should not be.
The site flunks WP:EL#Links_normally_to_be_avoided: "13. Links to open wikis, except those with a substantial history of stability and a substantial number of editors" and "1. Any site that does not provide a unique resource beyond what the article would contain if it became a Featured article." THF 17:54, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
This wiki has no NPOV policy, or rather, has a POV policy that says The dKosopedia is written from a left/progressive/liberal/Democratic point of view while also attempting to fairly acknowledge the other side's take. I would consider it a partisan site, so I would be cautious about what articles it was an EL in, especially in BLP articles. - Dean Wormer 02:52, 13 September 2007 (UTC)
Sidney Blumenthal wrote what certainly appears to be a fact piece in Salon.com. [33] [34] An editor called it an opinion piece and removed it. Is it reliable? ← BenB4 00:40, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
Is Quackwatch considered a Reliable Source?
The reason I'm asking is that I'm wondering whether the Russell Blaylock article should mention that the three publications mentioned in the article as being associated with Dr. Blaylock are all listed as "unreliable" by QuackWatch. See discussion on the Talk page. NCdave 21:45, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
This is a double post. It was already posted at Fringe Theory Notice Board however I believe the root of the problem is a lack of proper sources.
See Admin Fringe Notice Board for more info or comments. --
FR Soliloquy 23:57, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
User:Artikalflex has recently inserted new text, critical of William Wilberforce into the article, and backed it up with references to this essay, http://afrikanliberationdaylondon.com/PDF/AFRIKANSOCIETY5.pdf To most of the other editors on this article, this seems to have rather a polemic tone, and whilst the essay seems superficially well-referenced (including references to sources already used in our Wilberforce article) two major issues have already been identified which bring its overall status into doubt. There is are significant factual errors in identifying Paul Foot as the son (actually nephew) of Michael Foot who is claimed to be a former British Prime Minister (actually Leader of the Opposition). A large section of the essay is also devoted to Wilberforce's purported treatment of a supposed Agnes Bronte. The website from which these claims originate http://freespace.virgin.net/pr.og/agnes.html appears to be a fairly obvious spoof. Adam Hochschild is also widely quoted in the essay, however, an online article written by him, http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/abolition/william_wilberforce_article_01.shtml , whilst somewhat critical is far more balanced in tone, suggesting the possibility of selective quoting for this and other references used. Finally, the essay is to all intents and purposes self-published, the actual author is not clearly identified. Personally it appears to me that this source is far from reliable in our terms. Views? David Underdown 17:25, 11 September 2007 (UTC)
this is the section of text i want to enter
Abolition of Slavery
After the abolition of the slave trade, William Wilberforce was not immediately concerned with the abolition the Slavery. Britain heavily depended on the suffering of Africans to sustain their economy, the love of money generated from the Slave plantations continued to overshadow a collective sense of morality. During this time, even the Church of England’s morality was in limbo as Bishops were still allowed to purchase slaves and the Church still owned slave plantations. Wilberforce’s morality also came into question as he advocated that the whipping of slave should not stop, but instead, the slaves should only be whipped at night. [1]
Slave Plantation owners now became concerned with where they were going to get their new slaves from. Wilberforce had no objections to his colleagues who recommended that African people be bred like animals, as a substitute to boosting the African population in the lave Plantations. Thus subjecting, Africans to more trauma and rapes. [2]
Mounting public pressure compelled Wilberforce and his friends to launch an anti-slavery society in 1823, 16 years after the abolition of the slave trade. The formal name of the organization was the Society for the Mitigation and Gradual Abolition of Slavery which was more commonly known as the Society for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery (SGAS) in 1823. SGAS advocated ideas and policies that would help slavery to survive for at least 100 years. Its members openly boasted that they wanted slavery to gradually: ‘… die away and to be forgotten …’.
In the light of an increasing frequency of slave revolts and growing public contempt, in May 1830, SGAS passed a resolution for the immediate abolition of slavery. [2]
these paragraphs are well referenced from the books
Bury the Chains by Adam Hochschild 2005 p.314, Hart 2006 p.3, Capitalism and Slavery by Eric Williams 1944 p.182
David Underdown has been continually complaining about ...
Issue 1: reference to a polemic essay, http://afrikanliberationdaylondon.com/PDF/AFRIKANSOCIETY5.pdf
Issue 2: fault finding in the polemic essay, http://afrikanliberationdaylondon.com/PDF/AFRIKANSOCIETY5.pdf.
Issue 3: references are week ie. http://www.sturgetown.com/sturge.html
Issue 4: "seems superficially well-referenced (including references to sources already used in our Wilberforce article)" by David Underdown
Issue 5: Use http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/abolition/william_wilberforce_article_01.shtml as a reference, written by Adam Hochschild.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Stone is a vanity page StaticElectric 19:28, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
I couldn't find a better place on the list of reporting pages. StaticElectric 19:42, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
My specific concern is with videos hosted on Youtube, but the same principle applies to any hosted source. I'm currently citing videos like these as sources about the filming of the Harry Potter movies. The actual video (whose copyright status on Youtube is very dubious!) is a documentary by Grenada television which, of itself, is a highly reliable source (exclusive access to backstage footage, interviews with cast, crew, directors, etc). It is clearly presented verbatim on Youtube and as such essentially Youtube merely acts as an archive. Is there any reason why Youtube being the host makes it an unreliable source? I know WP:SPS but this would seem not to be applicable since it's not really self published. Happy- melon 17:00, 15 September 2007 (UTC)
Could I just get a second and third opinion on this. This webpage was being used a source in Jacques Lacan - specifically the criticism section. It was added by User:MarkAnthonyBoyle [35]. That webpage is an abstract for a book which hasn't been published - so as far as I can see this aint reliable in WP's terms. This page is also used - I consider this to be a self-published review and therefore not a reliable source. The third source I'm questioning is International Network of Freud Critics whose "intent is to broadcast relevant information about the fabrications, the lies, and the disinformation of the Freudians". That statement alone makes me dubious but I can find no peer-review or editorial systems on the site - it is also obviously partisan (but that seems no longer to be in violation of the WP:RS guideline). In summary I think these links fail WP:RS but I wanted to bring this to a wider forum for discussion. Any views?-- Cailil talk 14:16, 16 September 2007 (UTC)
FYI
Astonishing. Yes I suppose I was borderline incivil, it was early in the morning when I woke up to find that Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters had deleted criticism with tag lines such as <start at cleanup of unencyclopedic "yo mama so ugly" type "criticisms">, <clean up rambing and personalistic rants> and <rm rant that is cited only to blogs> Sorry if I took his good natured chiding for something else.
In the process of his editing he removed the following:
(diff) (hist) . . Jacques Lacan; 20:19 . . (-436) . . Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters (Talk | contribs) (start at cleanup of unencyclopedic "yo mama so ugly" type "criticisms" added by anon)
“In psychoanalitic practice charging a full fee for a 5-minute session (varying of the length of the sessions) is considered un-ethical because there are other ways to confront the client with sticking to the same material. In Lacan's biography written by Roudinesco it is told that during sessions Lacan sometimes got his hair cut and received pedicures “(p. 391) [3] .
This reference is a quote from Richard D. Chessick, M.D., Ph.D. (google scholar 212 articles) From a book review A Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis: Theory and Technique by Bruce Fink professor of psychology at Duquesne University. The review was published online at The American Journal of Psychiatry, which claims “According to ISI’s Journal Citation Report, The American Journal of Psychiatry has an impact factor of 7.16, which ranks it 2nd among 87 journals in psychiatry. The Journal is 1st among psychiatric publications in total citations, with nearly 30,000 citations per year.”
. Jacques Lacan; 20:40 . . (-1,325) . . Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters (Talk | contribs) (clean up rambing and personalistic rants)
In
Fashionable Nonsense (1997),
Alan Sokal and
Jean Bricmont accuse Lacan of "superficial erudition" and of abusing scientific concepts he does not understand
Lost the following elucidation: “(e.g., confusing
irrational numbers and
imaginary numbers).
Richard Webster is strongly critical of Lacan's ideas, invoking the phrase "the cult of Lacan."
[4]”
Filip Buekens (Aalst, Belgium, °1959) is Associate Professor in the Faculty of Philosophy at Tilburg University. He studied linguistics and philosophy at the universities of Leuven (Belgium) and Cologne (Germany) and obtained his Ph.D. in philosophy in 1991 on the philosophy of language, mind and action of Donald Davidson, on whose work he published two monographs. His current research interests are the interface of semantics and pragmatics, truth-conditional semantics and Gricean reasoning about meaning. He (sometimes) defends a position known as minimalist semantics. He has also published on analytic metaphysics and formal ontologies in medicine, issues in the philosophy of action (attempts, deontic logic) and has written two books on the foundations of analytic philosophy and the nature of reference. He is currently working on a long-term project on the structure, content and value of truth and the metaphysical nature of experiences. Recently he undertook an excursion into psychoanalysis and its role in the history of postmodernist thought.
His key publications include:
Buekens, F. (1994), 'Externalism, Content, and Causal Histories', in Dialectica 1994 (48), p. 267-286;
Buekens, F., W. Ceusters, G. De Moor (1997a), 'TSMI: a CEN/TC51 Standard for Time Specific Problems in Healthcare Informatics and Telematics', in International Journal of Medical Informatics 46 (1997), 87-101;
Buekens, F. (1997b), 'A Decision Procedure for Von Wright's OBS-Calculus', in Logique et Analyse 149 (1995), 43-55;
Buekens, F. (2001b), 'Essential Indexicality and the Irreducibility of Phenomenal Concepts', in Communication and Cognition 34, 75-97;
Buekens, F. (2005b), 'Pourquoi Lacan est-il si obscur?' in M. Borch-Jacobson & J. Van Rillaer (eds.), Livre Noir de la Psychanalyse, Paris: les arenas, 2005, pp. 269-278 (also translated in Italian and Spanish and chinese)
Buekens, F. (2005a), 'Compositionality, Abberrant Sentences and Unfamiliar Situations', in Edouard Machery, Markus Werning, and Gerhard Schurz (Eds.), The Compositionality of Meaning and Content. Volume II: Applications to Linguistics, Psychology and Neuroscience. Series: Linguistics & Philosophy, 2, Ontos Verlag, 2005, pp. 83-103
Filip Buekens of Tilburg University has made several studies of Lacan's work and concluded "on the basis of a careful analysis of texts of Lacan, his followers (‘Orthodox Lacanians’) and his interpreters in France and elsewhere (‘Interpreters’), that what they claim and defend is based on fallacious arguments, equivocations, intellectual bluff-poker and a consistent abuse of concepts from other sciences. The result is an intellectual charade."[
[36]][
[37]]"Lacan is a philosophical charlatan, and not just because he tried to turn a pseudo-science (psychoanalysis) into a ‘science of the subject’."[
[38]].
Professor R.C. Tallis claims that he was a psychopath who, "listened to no truths other than those which confirmed his own hypotheses...he projected not only his own theories on madness in women but also his own fantasies and family obsessions". "His lunatic legacy also lives on in places remote from those in which he damaged his patients, colleagues, mistresses, wives, children, publishers, editors, and opponents—in departments of literature whose inmates are even now trying to, or pretending to, make sense of his utterly unfounded, gnomic teachings and inflicting them on baffled students."[ [39]]
RC Tallis, MA, MRCP, FRCP, F MedSci, DLitt, was Professor of Geriatric Medicine, University of Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom. 55 articles on pubmed (PubMed, available via the NCBI Entrez retrieval system, was developed by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) at the National Library of Medicine (NLM), located at the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH).) 13 citations on Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, Guest speaker at The Royal College of Physicians,
Article is about 5400 words, do you think there may be room for some balance in the interests of NPOV? Or perhaps we should start a POV fork? MarkAnthonyBoyle 14:02, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
Hi Cailil, I suggest you have a quick look at the post I put on
User:Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters page. I simply do not understand why you consider criticism of Lacan or Freud from highly respected scholars in those fields to be soapboxing, other than that they hold a different view to yours. I think these short quotes are concise, and provide NPOV balance.
MarkAnthonyBoyle 23:09, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
There is a discussion on [40] where one admin Jossi is of the opinion that High court order cannot be considered as Neutral source of information and Newspaper article is not a verifiable source of information. Request input from other experienced wikipedia user's to give their input as if a High court order is considered Neutral WP:NPOV or not, also can a national newspaper article be used as a verifiable source of information ? Rushmi 16:40, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
My Question is same, we are not to discuss the neutrality of court judgement, is a court judgement a neutral WP:NPOV Reliable WP:RS or not ? Is wikipedia considered a place where neutrality of a court order is questioned ? Same goes with National newspaper article. Is an article published in a national newspaper article considered as varifiable and reliable source of information or not. Rushmi 15:55, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
Recently, a feature article by Debbie Nathan appearing in Counterpunch was challenged as an unreliable source in a biographical article. The article is factual journalism, not editorial content, and the challenger has not stated specific concrete objections to the article, since there may be BLP issues. Nathan is a feature writer for New York Magazine, as well as a published author. I don't personally see the sourcing problem, but I respect the editor who's raising the objection, so I wanted to get the views of more editors. -- Ssbohio 02:31, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
OK, I did some further research... Debbie Nathan is particularly reputable on the topic of this article, child sexual abuse, having written a book on the subject that's been published by a major house. The book, Satan's Silence: Ritual Abuse and the Making of a Modern American Witch Hunt, is well-regarded by reviewers such as Philip Jenkins, Prof. Robert A. Baker, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Women's Review of Books, The American Enterprise, the San Diego Union-Tribune, The Nation, and the Brisbane, Australia Sunday Mail. It is considered a seminal work on the topic. It is required reading in Prof. Cecil Greek's graduate seminar in the University of South Florida's college of criminology. I believe that Nathan is a bona fide specialist in this field. Considering the evidence, how does that affect her reliability as a source? Please let me know what you think of the critical and academic opinions of Nathan and her work on this topic. -- Ssbohio 04:25, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
I hope this isn't considered canvassing, but I would appreciate if some mods would look at and advise/vote per the reasons given by some posters for keeping the world public speaking championships... they seem partisan and nonsensical. cheers. JJJ999 02:01, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
Is Ars Technica a usable source for IT and technology related news? http://arstechnica.com/news.ars is the main source. I asked here but got no response, so wanted to be bold and cross-check. Thanks. • Lawrence Cohen 06:10, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
Well, I'm from the US, so, I'm not terribly familiar with this publication. It's article Daily Mail, describes it as a tabloid, so, I think it's somewhat dubious. As do others. I'd really love to get some opinions, particularly, from other editors, more familiar with this publication, as to if the Daily Mail is a reliable source, that we can use at Man vs. Wild. Presently, it is being used as a reference. SQL( Query Me!) 03:19, 20 September 2007 (UTC)
There is a minor debate going on within WP:PW about whether or not pwinsider.com, which, from the notice I got when I went to save this page the first time, is blacklisted currently, really is a reliable source or not. We aren't sure if this is a peer reviewed, neutral, and scholarly site or not. Some say that it amounts to a dirtsheet, others say that it is a reputable, secondary or third party source. I figured that it would be a good idea leave this up to the pros at this noticboard. Peace, The Hyb rid 05:00, 20 September 2007 (UTC)
Within past edits of the Henry K. Beecher article, there were allegations medical ethics abuses: namely CIA experimentation and continuation of Nazi research. These claims seem to be based upon two sources. There is an ongoing conversation between another editor and I on whether these fit WP:V criteria, and I was hoping if people could comment:
Djma12 ( talk) 03:06, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
Can someone please comment on the Archaeology section in the Ebionites article and the source document, Buried Angels, that supports that section. The source document claims to report on archaeological research published in an Italian journal in the chapter on Archaeology. I have concerns that Jacob Rabinowitz is more of an armchair commentator than a biblical scholar, since the "book" is self-published on the Web. I would like to get the broader perspective of editors that have not been working on the article.
1. Is Jacob Rabinowitz for real as a scholar or is he simply recycling the research of scholars?
2. Is the source sufficiently well researched that it supports what is claimed in the article?
3. Even if Rabinowitz is not a real scholar, is the reporting of research that is otherwise only available in Italian a valuable resource for the article?
4. There is no other published archaeological evidence claiming to support the existence of the Ebionites. Is this "fringe research"? Is Rabinowitz making "fringe claims" based on the research of others?
Thanks for looking into this. Ovadyah 20:42, 5 September 2007 (UTC)
Rabinowitz is the owner of Invisible Books online publishing company, so this work is self-published. Ovadyah 19:58, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
I have been able to determine that Rabinowitz has a Ph.D. from Brown University and is listed as an independent scholar. Here is a list of his prior publications: publications
Jacob Rabinowitz (Rabinowitz, Jacob) Catullus's Complete Poetic Works by Jacob Rabinowitz and Gaius Valerius Catullus Softcover, ISBN 0882142208 (0-88214-220-8) The Faces of God: Canaanite Mythology As Hebrew Theology by Jacob Rabinowitz Softcover, Continuum Intl Pub Group, ISBN 0882141171 (0-88214-117-1) Jewish Law: Its Influence on the Development of Legal Institutions by Jacob Rabinowitz Hardcover, Bloch Pub Co, ISBN 0819701734 (0-8197-0173-4) Rotting Goddess: The Origin of the Witch in Classical Antiquity by Jacob Rabinowitz Softcover, A K Pr Distribution, ISBN 157027035X (1-57027-035-X) The Unholy Bible: Hebrew Literature of the Early Kingdom Period by Jacob Rabinowitz Softcover, ISBN 1570270155 (1-57027-015-5)
He is described in several websites as a practicing neo-pagan. One website has examples of his original poetry:
Here are some poems by Jacob Rabinowitz, another Neo-Canaanite. I thought they were so powerful that i asked his permission to have them here.
Jake is the author of several interesting books including: The Faces of God: Canaanite Mythology As Hebrew Theology, The Unholy Bible: Hebrew Literature of the Kingdom Period, and his great book on Hecate, The Rotting Goddess: the Origin of the Witch in Classical Antiquity The last two are published by Autonomedia.
Canaanite Poems by Jacob Rabinowitz
Does anyone have more opinions on his scholarship and the online book Buried Angels? Ovadyah 20:02, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
Religious conversion and terrorism was an article that was deleted after an {{ afd}} a few months ago.
I am considering initiating a full deletion review, because I thought the {{ afd}} procedures followed did not conform to policy. I'll try to talk about the procedural flaws as little as possible here.
I asked for temporary content review and userification. The major complaint of the wikipedian who nominated the article was that the article was unreferenced. But they made this nomination after deleting all the references, and I thought at least some of those references were perfectly valid. And, after the nomination, they kept removing good-faith attempts to introduce new, valid references.
The first reference the artle referenced was published in the Toronto Star in 2004, entitled: "He embraced Islam, then terrorism". A link to the online version of this article was provided when the article was first written. It seems to have expired, or otherwise gone 404 by March of 2007. Here is my first question. If a reference cites the publication, the date, the page number, the title, and the byline, then does it remains just as valid a reference as when it was available online? Surely the article is just as authoritative when it is taken down from the newspaper's web-site? With the date, page number, title, etc, doesn't it remain verifiable? In this particular case we have the publication, title, date, but we don't have the page number. Is that all that is lacking to continue to use that reference?
There is another site that seems to have a copy of that article. If the site with the mirror has some kind of claim that the original copyright holder has given them permission to republish the material, it remains a valid reference? Correct? If so, which publication should one list as the publisher? New Yokr Times articles often remain freely available to non-subscribers only for about two weeks. But the New York Times bought the International Herald Tribune a few years ago. So, when we reference the copy of a New York Times article republished by the International Herald Tribune, do we list the NYT or the IHT as the publisher?
How much trust should we extended to republishers, that they formally acquired permission to republish material that has expired from the original publisher's web-site? The Toronto Star article I referred to is mirrored, in full, on the following sites:
The two sites mirror the first couple of hundred words.
Presumably the last two didn't get permission, and think the first hundred words qualifies as "fair use"? The SITE quote actually contains enough material to substantiate that Dhiren Barot was accused of being a terrorist. But policy proscribes using it as a source, correct?
Thanks! Geo Swan 04:19, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
If articles remain verifiable and authoritative after they are no longer available online, so long as we can supply the page number, in addition to the title, publication, date and author, then I have decided I am going to do my best to record the page number of the articles I cite, when they are still online.
The New York Times lists the page numbers of the articles in the current day's issue here. http://www.nytimes.com/pages/todayspaper/index.html
I created a page to track NYTimes citations I have used, or might use. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Geo_Swan/Guantanamo/NYTimes_articles
A couple of questions:
Cheers! Geo Swan 00:20, 13 September 2007 (UTC)
In the article Dave the Barbarian (character), a user named AKR619 has repeatedly added statements about an alleged relationship between two characters. Supposedly, there was a set of Disney Channel commercials featuring several characters (Lizzie McGuire, Kim Possible and Dave the Barbarian) in a romantic relationship that, according to AKR619, got Disney Channel into a problem with the FCC.
However, I can find no evidence of the incident, nor of the commercials. The statements are unsourced, but supposedly commercials can act as a source. However, I do not remember such commercials, nor can I find any information on them. The user refuses to post any discussion about the relationship, nor discussion of the commercials, nor links to the videos.
I tagged the statements as unsourced material, later removing it after my research came up empty. he then reverted my deletion. Later I deleted it again, posting that unsourced statements should be removed or sourced. His reply was that since it was a commercial, that counts as the source, and reverted my deletion again.
I made an RFC which yielded no reply.
The idea that Disney Channel would do such a thing like this as described seems more than unlikely to me, especially being mainly a children's channel. It also seems unlikely that such a commercial would not come up as a result of extensive internet search. I seek only the truth. ~ PH DrillSergeant... § 04:05, 22 September 2007 (UTC)
The same user recently changed all of the spellings of the character Faffy to Faafy, a spelling that is (a) not used on Disney Channel, (b) not used on the Disney Channel site, (c) is not used in the Closed-Captioning for the show, and (d) returns 9 hits on google (most copies of this article) compared to several thousand for "Faffy". I do not have the time to undo all of these changes. Can someone help please? ~ PH DrillSergeant... § 05:22, 24 September 2007 (UTC)
Recently, with the death of Myra Nicholson, the usage of the World's Oldest People Yahoo Group as a reliable source has risen. Nicholson's death was reported by an expert on the forum and the message was used as a citation on both the Recent Deaths page and Nicholson's own page for over two days until a newspaper report came to light. Robert Young, who runs the forum uses the following justification for his use of the source:
Self-published material may, in some circumstances, be acceptable when produced by an established expert on the topic of the article whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable third-party publications.
Robert Young is at least an expert enough to have had his page kept (see the deletion debate on the talk page) so his claim basis is that because he is an expert and because he moderates the messages and claims that actually get posted to the forum, the source should be counted under the above criteria. This debate does not just concern the occasional death of someone that is posted there before a news story hits. It is also used:
As a neutral editor, one who could either way with this one. On the pro side, it does provide a lot of useful information that would be difficult, if not impossible to find elsewhere. The site is moderated by an acknowledge expert in the field, who screens every message before it is made available to the public. On the con side, there's concerns about original research (for example, the Ruby Muhammad claim is published nowhere else and is now being used by both Dead or Alive info and Genarians.com to call her age into question). Also, registration is required, which doesn't bar a source from being used, but makes it more difficult for people who don't want to spread their information around on the internet to access what may be the sole source for something.
I have alerted Robert Young about this discussion so that he can come here if he wishes to present his side of the debate. As I said, I don't have a particular opinion on this, but I'm not fond of the edit wars that erupt every time this is used as a source. Let's get an answer once and for all. Cheers, CP 16:06, 24 September 2007 (UTC)
WP:BLP#Reliable_sources and so on.
I need several admins to clarify something so that there's no confusion over the issue, as there seems to be a few people abusing their admin duties. Where exactly in Wikipedia's TOS does it state (with no confusion) that a site which happens to contain pornographic images and/or links to pornographic websites is automatically deemed unreliable as a reference for content? TMZ.com owns the rights to the infamous "Kramer" video, they've watermarked it, and its used as a source on Wikipedia. A site that I'd like to use as a reference has legal fight videos, the site owns all rights to the videos and has also watermarked them with additional details. According to Alexa.com the site in question ranks in the top 5,000 most visited websites in the world. So where in Wikipedia's rules does it state that this site is unreliable as a reference whereas TMZ.com (a celebrity gossip site) is reliable? Playboy.com contains pornography, why can various wiki articles (including those not related to the magazine) use pages of that site as a reference if pornographic sites are thus "unreliable" in the eyes of Wikipedia? It seems that some contributors and admins are creating their own liberal interpretations of Wikipedia policy. Can someone just show me a rule? KimboSlice 22:38, 24 September 2007 (UTC)
In the Alcoholics Anonymous article as a criticism that AA offers No Model of a recovered Person this article is given as a citation for the following.
This looks like an opinion expressed by the author, not a result of a quantitative study of AA and Al-Anon literature. If it was, she gives no citation or method of the research. While the article is published what seems to be a reputable magazine, there is no evidence of peer-review for this particular article. As such, what appears to be just the authors opinion isn't relevant encyclopedic content. -- Craigtalbert 20:54, 30 September 2007 (UTC)
NB, Periodicals are regularly used as a reliable source, even in featured articles. 82.19.66.37 21:47, 30 September 2007 (UTC)
Would you call the following two maps reliable: Image:Rzeczpospolita 1920 claims names.png; Image:Border-Lithuania-Poland-1919-1939.svg? The first one cites some, but not all sources. The second one cites no sources, and a possible error has been raised on its discussion page. But both are also broadly correct, and helpful in related articles. Are they reliable or unreliable? Should they stay or be removed?-- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk 18:32, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
I am at a complete standstill with another editor in the Nobel Prize article regarding reliable sources about whether or not the Prize in Economics is a Nobel Prize. Could someone please help and give feedback to this discussion? While I believe this is a topic that has a lot of misinformation on the web, it would be helpful if someone else could review this case. You may find it helpful to also read the intro to the Nobel Prize in Economics article. Some definitions of a Nobel Prize are included in the discussion, copied from the Nobel Foundation, another from M-W (listed in a different debate that includes the same editor), etc. There are also references to derived definitions listed in the discussion as well as definitions made up by individual editors. Clearly not all definitions can be correct as they contradict each other. –panda 18:59, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
Recently an editor has added information to an article ( Jaclyn Reding) that I'd previously deleted due to the fact that I couldn't find any reliable sources. The information in question being her supposed maiden name. When asking him where he'd gotten the sources and if he could put them in the article he was slightly rude and claimed that he used Ancestry.com to find her parents through a deceased brother and ussearch.com to connect her to her husband. I am wondering what are the reliabilities of these sources? The author is vague on her own website not stating where she was born, what her husband's name is, or if she has any family at all. I hate to get into a conflict with an editor in the first place, but I'm concerned that this borders on original research. I don't want to remove the information without merit because that could escalate this situation into an edit war, which I'd like to avoid so if anybody could shed some light on these two places I'd appreciate it. -- ImmortalGoddezz 23:41, 4 September 2007 (UTC)
requesting comments regarding source's reliability
here - [48].
-- Jaakobou Chalk Talk 20:11, 15 September 2007 (UTC)
The lede is available without paying for it (preview) and this contains the key claim cited here. When numerous ( [49], [50], [51]) mirror sites have an apparently identical article - and their ideological biases are all over the place - I think it's safe to treat it as a legitimate source. This being said, Paul Martin ("Sayed Anwar") of the Washington Times was very publically, and very credibly, accused of repeated journalistic fraud on CBC Television, an accusation which has not been retracted or, to my knowledge, credibly disputed. That's the real issue. Eleland 02:57, 16 September 2007 (UTC)
The New York Times is a reliable source, but what about Times opinion column in a BLP (rather a BLC: biography of a living corporation)? I don't think fact checking or editorial oversight apply in those cases and thus I feel uneasy about relying on them as sources. If what they say is accurate, I think it should be easy to find something other than a columnist saying it, in my opinion. My concern is based on what I see at Overstock.com if someone would please take a look and weigh in.-- Wally Ball 02:44, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
A recent editor on the Exetel page has been citing a number of Wikipedia policies in an effort to force through some of his edits and remove some of the references on the page. Having looked at the policies it seems that what he says does have some merit.
One of the sources used on the page is Boing Boing, a blog site. WP:SPS (cited by this editor) says that blogs are largely not acceptable as sources but may be in some circumstances. As far as I can see Boing Boing doesn't seem to satisfy the requirements for exemption. The editor in question claims that Boing Boing is acceptable because it "used to be a magazine, contains some of the more influential people in technology, and is labeled on Wikipedia as a "publishing entity"". [52] Try as I might I can't find anything to support this claim so my question is, is he right?
Another issue on the page is the use of references that don't directly mention the company. A source used to support a claim that Exetel has implemented a certain policy refers only to "another ISP" but doesn't mention Exetel. [53] The article does link to another article on another website but does that make the first a reliable source for the claim? I know the second is fine (that's the source I'd use) but I'm not sure if the first is OK to use.
Finally, can a forum post be a reliable source? The editor has, for some unexplained reason, got it in his mind that two policies of this ISP are linked and were implemented at the same time and will not take my word for it that one of the policies was implemented in March 2004 and the other was implemented in November 2006. I need to convince him of the facts so the two can be separated on the article's page and the only source I can find is a post from the company CEO on the highly moderated Whirlpool forums. [54] -- AussieLegend 12:26, 23 September 2007 (UTC)
not so much a matter of WP:RS but WP:UNDUE/ WP:NOTE . After a long and hairy dispute, Persecution of Heathens is now a disambiguation page. Concerning Religious discrimination against Neopagans, a rather short article in spite of detailed treatment of individual cases along the lines of "In 2007, a teacher at Shawlands Academy in Glasgow was denied time off with pay to attend Druid rites ( Pentacle Magazine: I Want Pagan Holidays)". This article has three sub-articles, one at Religious discrimination against Asatru, another at Religious discrimination against Wiccans, and a third at Discrimination against Hellenic neopaganism. In my opinion, this is compeltely unwarranted: these are religious minorities of the order of 0.2% where they are most numerous, and while they do face discrimination, they are not singled out according to their specific denomination. To me, this smells of lobbyist activism, not encyclopedic coverage. In this, I am in deadlock with Liftarn ( talk · contribs), who maintains that each pagan denomination and sub-denomination should get its own "discrimination" article. Third party input is welcome at Talk:Religious discrimination against Neopagans. -- dab (𒁳) 13:35, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
WP:RS states a reliable source has a "reputation for fact-checking and accuracy", but how do you prove this? Obviously the major news sources, like NPR, BBC, NYTimes and others are reliable, but would Canadian Content and Policy Review be considered reliable sources? Also, WikiNews is not considered to be a reliable source, is it? Thanks — Christopher Mann McKay talk 19:31, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
What is Wikipedia's policy regarding reporting someone's birthday when there is conflicting information about it. I'm thinking specifically of an actor where there has been at least 2 or 3 different birth dates and/or birth years reported in IMDB, on fan sites, and elsewhere. Should the birthday not be reported or should the one that the majority of sites list be used? It's verifiable, even if it may conflict with info from other sites, and it doesn't seen any particular source is more reliable than another in this case. (IMDB has changed this actor's birth date a few times.) This actor hasn't been in an interview that I know of where they've revealed their birth date and they have no official website. –panda 18:10, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
I apologize, because I'm sure this has been asked before, but isn't there a policy that says foreign language news stories cannot be considered reliable on the English wiki? I found an article which references a sensational news story, but all the links are in Dutch. Can I delete these references and request a citation? What is considered appropriate in this case? It's probable that that the news story was not covered by the English language press.-- The Fat Man Who Never Came Back 17:37, 30 September 2007 (UTC)
Specifically 1 (also see Talk:Conservapedia). Some users on the Talk page propose that RationalWiki be considered a reliable source on this subject, others disagree. Since this is (apparently) a contentious and politicised issue, I thought I'd see what a wider sampling of editors thought.
Please note that we want to know if RationalWiki is a reliable source for this subject, not whether they're right to criticise Conservapedia or not. I shouldn't have to point this out, but some people get very excited about certain topics. ;-) I'm also not seeking opinion about the general utility of RationalWiki as a reliable source, although feel free to comment on that subject if you want. -- tiny plastic Grey Knight ⊖ 07:39, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
Old newspaper reports (1985 ) are hosted by an anti subject of article site , these copies of mainly SF Chronicle papers and appear with an extreme of bias to me, these copies on the critical website then lead (by click on link) to to further derogatory comment blog and bulletin board posts all derogatory and personal opinion with no further refs , included is a court report by one plaintiff
here is an example the subject is Adi Da a not well known American spiritual teacher
here is a typical lightmind.com link the ( anti Da ) site ,which hosts the newspaper reports from 1985 click on the bottom links to see where they lead , would appreciate a non partisan opinion ( or 2 ) thanks very much
http://lightmind.com/thevoid/daism/sfchron-04.html -- 202.63.42.221 08:51, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
There is a dispute re the reliability of Asma Barlas's book titled "Believing Women" in Islam: Unreading Patriarchal Interpretations of the Qur'an (University of Texas Press, 2002). User:Arrow740 argues that "Barlas has no qualifications as a historian." [55]. This issue was discussed in details without reaching any consensus. Below, I provide the arguments made for reliability of this work:
This book was published by University of Texas press and has received the following reviews:
Asma Barlas has contributed to several scholarly works like Cambridge Companion to the Qur’an (Cambridge University Press, 2006). She was named to the prestigious Spinoza Chair at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands for "her prominent contributions to discussions about women and Islam".
Here is the relevant page from her book [56]. -- Aminz 08:48, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
"Articles should rely on reliable, third-party published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy. Sources should be appropriate to the claims made: exceptional claims require exceptional sources. All articles must adhere to Wikipedia's neutrality policy, fairly representing all majority and significant-minority viewpoints that have been published by reliable sources, in rough proportion to the prominence of each view."
"In general, the most reliable sources are peer-reviewed journals and books published in university presses; university-level textbooks; magazines, journals, and books published by respected publishing houses; and mainstream newspapers. As a rule of thumb, the greater the degree of scrutiny involved in checking facts, analyzing legal issues, and scrutinizing the evidence and arguments of a particular work, the more reliable it is."
"Academic and peer-reviewed publications are highly valued and usually the most reliable sources in areas where they are available, such as history, medicine and science. Material from reliable non-academic sources may also be used in these areas, particularly if they are respected mainstream publications. The appropriateness of any source always depends on the context. Where there is disagreement between sources, their views should be clearly attributed in the text."
The fact that Barlas has written books on Islamic history published by reputable university presses like the Cambridge University Press and University of Texas Press, and that her work has received mainly positive reviews from historians of Islam, obviously means that her book is a reliable source on Islamic history. Despite all of this evidence, several users (including User:Arrow740 as mentioned above) at Talk:Aisha and Talk:Aisha's age at marriage removed Barlas' book from those articles based on personal opinions (like the example above) despite the fact that they themselves failed to cite any evidence to support their arguments at all. - Jagged 85 10:10, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
Haven't we already been through this several months ago? Beit Or 19:56, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
In general, the most reliable sources are peer-reviewed journals and books published in university presses; university-level textbooks; magazines, journals, and books published by respected publishing houses; and mainstream newspapers.
Re: Arrow740:
The historian Kirsten V. Walles, from the Department of History at the University of Texas, praised Asma Barlas' ability as a historian of Islam in her peer-review of Barlas' book:
"The book "Believing Women" in Islam: Unreading Patriarchal Interpretations of the Qur'an is a fascinating analysis of the woman’s position in Muslim society. However the basic premise of Asma Barlas’s theories could be applied and used by scholars of many disciplines including religion, gender, and history..."
"As an historian, I read this book with the intention of being able to assign this to students who have a cursory or minimal knowledge of Islam and the role of women in Muslim society..."
"Part 1 of the book analyzes the primary texts (Qur'an, Tafsir, Ahadith) and main secondary sources (the Sunnah, Shari'ah, and the state) utilized by Muslims. Barlas delves into the historical foundations of these sources and analyzes the methodologies, which led to the transformation of these texts such that they conformed to the cultures of the time..."
"...The only question that is left to answer is, if we are to reread to obtain knowledge and to truly understand history, then who determines what is truth?"
Paul Allen Williams, who has a PhD in the History of Religions, also praised Barlas' ability as a historian of Islam in his peer-review of her work:
"In fact, she is able to bring the riches of literary criticism, feminist thought, scriptural studies, Islamic history, and the Qur’an itself into a coherent, if densely argued, text."
Unless you can find any peer-reviews that explictly criticize Barlas' ability as an Islamic historian, then there is no doubt in my mind that all of this evidence from scholarly peer-reviews clearly point to Asma Barlas indeed being a reliable source for the early history of Islam.
Jagged 85 07:17, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
About Barlas' book, it is not a book about history, but about a feminist re-interpretation of the Qur'an. The statements you have assembled cannot be construed as a blanket endorsement of all sentences in the book. The book is about "argument" and "methods" of interpretation, not history. Books written by the actual, mainstream, prominent historians of Islam are what we have included. Attempts by apologists unqualified in this specific area to muddy the waters should not be included; that is irresponsible. Arrow740 23:13, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
It looks like this is dying down, but I'll put in my two cents since I was asked to. I don't object to using Barlas as a source. However, there is an obvious dearth of historians who believe what she believes about Aisha. I think it's just not a prominent enough minority view to be included, even if Barlas herself is reliable in her field. The majority opinion isn't just the product of Western historians, secularists, or anti-Muslims, it's found in Bukhari and al-Tabari.-- Cúchullain t/ c 16:21, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
Re: Cuchullain: Islamic scholars (including Muhammad Ali) are trained in early Islamic history and traditional Islamic sources like the Quran, Hadith, Sira, etc. Muhammad Ali was also the editor of an Islamic journal, so I don't see why he should be considered unreliable on the grounds of being a "religious partisan" source. The other Islamic scholars that were previously removed are also qualified in interpreting early Islamic history but were removed simply because several editors interpreted them as religious partisan sources. Jagged 85 12:14, 11 October 2007 (UTC)
Hi, an IP editor has been very aggressively questioning two sentences on Joe Szwaja, a low-traffic article that I want to get 3rd party review on. They are:
He asserts that unless language indicating facts about the source is included, it is not valid.
And:
He insists that each single community group here must be sourced, and that this questionnaire for the candidate is not a valid source. As it's a primary source for simple facts that aren't negative, I think it is fine. Could you please weigh in on these? The discussions are pretty circular to non-existent. • Lawrence Cohen 20:52, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
Hello,
There's quite a discussion raging on Talk:Causes of the 1948 Palestinian exodus regarding the use of different sources on the main topic, namely the Causes of the 1948 Palestinian exodus. I don't want to get too involved in the broader discussion, since it is getting quite ridiculous and my question here pertains to one single author, Joseph Schechtman, who is also at the source of an edit war on said article.
Here's the problem: Schechtman is considered by many to be a historian (he is quoted excessively in the anti-Palestinian crowd), and therefore, according to his proponents on Causes of the 1948 Palestinian exodus, merits inclusion. Schechtman, however, has been outed as a fraud by the Author Erskine Childers (UN), much in the same way Joan Peters (who, interestingly enough, quotes Schechtman excessively) was unmasked by Norman Finkelstein. This was later acknowledged by the historian Stephen Glazer [7] and not refuted since.
So the question is, can a historian be considered a reliable source even after he/she has been outed as a fraud?
Cheers and thanks, Pedro Gonnet 13:14, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
Spartan pederasty and Pederasty in ancient Greece suffer from literal interpretation of historical primary, self-published sources which are known to be unreliable. For example, Claudius Aelianus's Varia Historia is used to claim that pederasty was legally mandated in ancient Sparta, but that work is "not perfectly trustworthy in details," and Aelianus's "agenda is always to inculcate culturally 'correct' Stoic opinions, perhaps so that his readers will not feel guilty."
I am tempted to tag all of the statements supported by primary historical source references with {{ Verify credibility}} and remove those such as Var. Hist. which are known to be inaccurate. However, I have recently been in heated debates about this subject, so it would be best if someone else took a fresh look at the problem. 1of3 21:32, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
The following article is being used to reference an quote in the Battle of Jenin article to present "evidence" of an Israeli war crime, could I get some input on whether this source meets RS: [60]. The wikipedia article seems to make me think that it wouldn't due to the WP:REDFLAG that the statement it is presenting causes. Kyaa the Catlord 07:33, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
Here is the Daily Telegraph linking to the document, describing it as an "eyewitness account". Here is Human Rights Watch citing the article and noting that a Gush Shalom translation is available, effectively vouching for it. Here is Teddy Katz referring to the article in a UN document. Here is the actual journalist discussing the article on a nationally syndicated American radio show - or perhaps they hired a voice actor? Can't trust those left-wingers!
Really, now, I previously brought to this noticeboard some alleged quotations that only showed up once on Google and was shot down for it. We are currently using one quote on the basis that a single editor says he called the news agency and verified that yes, an article with that title was published on that day (but he doesn't know what it said.) Now you're telling me that this extremely well-corroborated piece isn't good enough? I think the operating principle here is not WP:REDFLAG but WP:IDONTLIKEIT. Eleland 12:45, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
This would be better addressed by posting a Request for comment, as it is clearly a content dispute. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 15:08, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
Each of these books has been used extensively on wikipedia articles relating to the South Asian Subcontinent. There must be one standard on wikipedia weather these are acceptable as secondary and tertiary sources or not acceptable at all. The ensuing rule must be applicable on all articles in wikipedia thereafter . How is this going to be achieved?
or is there already a wikipedia ruling on this .
Cheers
Intothefire 19:39, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
Cheers
Intothefire 02:36, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
Is The Abusive Hosts Blocking List a reliable source? Does citing it violate WP:BLP?
Hi are Antiwar.com and Globalsecurity.org reliable sources? (Hypnosadist) 22:34, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
Is there any reason why the AR series of goverment publications would be rejected by Wikipedia editors as verifiable sources on reasons why the US Army acts or does not act?
The question relates to the naming of units in describing those units to non-military organizations that are not in a unit's chain of command. Upholding the history and traditions of regiments within the US Army force structure is covered by AR 600-82 (other sources appear to derive their rationale on this public domain publication). AR 220-1 describes status reporting of subordinate commands to higher levels, also citing AR 220-5 which provides that within the Army's reporting channels, the word "regiment" is an assumed part of the name of a regiment and is not used in an official designation, but on websites such as www.army.mil available for non-military users (such as Wikipedia editors), the usage is generally to name regiments with the word "Regiment" appended. This practice also extends to printed material made available for public consumption by regiments and not intended for use within the Army itself; it appears to be the practice used in our United States Army article as well.
The issue relates to an accepted matter for mediation. I am concerned that because of any connection I may have to the US Army, I may find myself banned by the government from remaining as an editor, should there be a result of Wikipedia mediation that disparages the use of active unit's oral traditions in favor of an interpretation of Wikipedia's full compliance with policies approved of by Wikipedia or the WikiMedia Foundation. It has come to my attention that at least one other popular website is now off-limits for use by persons connected to the US Army. My concerns extend to how the mediation results may be interpreted by Internet users in general in their determination of the Wikipedia as a reliable source of usable information. Hotfeba 16:15, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
The Nobel Prize for Economics has just been announced, and barely has the mike gone dead before various proud members of differing religions/ethnicities and nationalities are quarreling over whether various individuals are Jewish, Russian, Polish or American, or some suitable combination of those things and hyphens. (One of them is a fairly well-known atheist, but I don't see any atheists staking a claim here. No initiative.)
The reason I am posting here is simple: is this website a reliable source? It doesn't seem to meet any of the requirements, but I've already spent too much time on this question, and anti-semitism was implied at what must be record speed, so I'll be damned if I'm questioning it without backup. Relata refero 14:03, 15 October 2007 (UTC)
Another wikipedian has made some assertion about reliable sources that I am quite skeptical of.
Short version. The DoD has released approximately 1366 memos containinng allegations against Guantanamo captives, and 673 transcripts from their Combatant Status Review Tribunals and their annual Administrative Review Board hearings. These 2039 documents contain allegations that were leveled against the captives.
This other wikipedian asserts that reporting that the DoD has leveled these allegations against the captives is a violation of {{ blp}}. He assert that these DoD documents cannot be considered reliable sources, If I understand his concerns, he believes that the allegations can't be covered in the wikipedia unless he is satisfied they are true -- even though the first line of WP:VER says it is concerned with verifiability, not truth.
This other wikipedian has even gone so far as to assert that merely referencing the DoD documents constitutes original research and a breach of WP:NPOV.
Cheers! Geo Swan 02:04, 16 October 2007 (UTC)
As I see it, they can't be viewed as a reliable source when they are not an independent source, and are the primary and only source. This is the core of WP:RS surely? From a personal and subjective viewpoint I'd never consider giving any government department a blanket reliability status. ---- WebHamster 01:02, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
The distinction between primary and secondary sources is sometimes a matter of common sense. The situation of the captives at Guantanamo is a matter of legitimate world-wide public interest, and information about what actual accusation have been leveled against individuals there is legitimate content, and presenting it is not an example of blp. DGG ( talk) 01:33, 17 October 2007 (UTC)