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The following online article is used in a Wikipedia BLP, Aliza Ayaz which is up for AfD: Pakistan’s First And Youngest Student, Aliza Ayaz Speaks At WUF By The UN Habitat.

Is brandsynario.com a reliable source?

• Unreliable going by their about page here where they describe themselves as a pr platform and offer advertorial articles to advertisers. They may be ok for basic facts but even that's a push, imv Atlantic306 ( talk) 23:36, 11 October 2020 (UTC)

This comes up every once in a while, a few times in the past couple of weeks. The Congressional Record publishes tributes in its 'Extensions of Remarks' section. These include tributes to members of a congressperson's constituency. According to our article, Witnesses in committee hearings are often asked to submit their complete testimony "for the record" and only deliver a summary of it in person. and it then makes the (un-sourced) claim that The overwhelming majority of what is found there is entered at the request of Members of the House of Representatives. I've seen it argued that these tributes are not indicative of notability (because they constitute service to a constituency), but more importantly-- and why I am bringing it here-- that there is no editorial oversight of the tributes, meaning that they can only be reliable for sourcing 'Person X received a congressional tribute'. However, I cannot find any way to confirm this.

Are congressional tributes generally reliable (particularly as sources of biographical information)? -- Eddie891 ^Talk _Work 22:53, 11 October 2020 (UTC)

• I would classify these as self-sourced content based on what you described, and should only be used in accordance with the five-factor WP:SELFSOURCE test. Neutrality ^talk 00:17, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

I think your opinion is accurate: not for notability, and only in accordance with WP:SPS. ( t · c) buidhe 07:54, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

• who.int   

But it looks likely for scientific purpose from WP:MEDRS, which is generally reliable for COVID-19 sources. -- The Houndsworth ( talk) 01:55, 8 October 2020 (UTC)

• What's the question here? WHO is obviously reliable, but will fail MEDRS for biomedical facts. Guy ( help! - typo?) 09:27, 8 October 2020 (UTC)

Sources like R&D blueprints were published by the WHO, for example, the phase plans for COVID-19 vaccine. -- The Houndsworth ( talk) 11:22, 8 October 2020 (UTC)

Can you provide the examples? Sounds like they distributed/hosted preprints. They did not author articles or review them? Mysteriumen•♪Ⓜ ^•♪talk _{♪• look} 13:29, 8 October 2020 (UTC)

Here is the plan of COVID-19 vaccine from the WHO. [25] -- The Houndsworth ( talk) 11:28, 11 October 2020 (UTC)

• Most content on the WHO website is not written by WHO, but rather comes from whatever nation's government employees are liaison for their region with the WHO. There is a wide variation in the quality of content. WHO is a publisher with rather relaxed editorial standards. Just because a report is WHO branded does not mean that, for example, it is of the same quality as peer reviewed journal content. Blue Rasberry (talk) 21:04, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

There is a policy application discussion over at Talk:List of largest empires#Empire of Japan. The question is whether a particular instance of using personal communication with an author to assess the reliability of a source for a specific piece of information found within is appropriate. Complicating the matter is the fact that the source in question is not the original source of that particular piece of information; an earlier source which is not reliable when it comes to this particular subject matter per WP:RSCONTEXT has been found, and it contains the same piece of information while citing an even earlier source which we have been unable to locate (and thus may or may not be reliable).

The discussion on the talk page has stagnated, and I would like input from more editors weighing in on this. I was unsure if WP:RSN or WP:NORN was the more appropriate place for this, so I posted it to both. TompaDompa ( talk) 23:32, 11 October 2020 (UTC)

It's not that communicating with an author is inappropriate, it's that their reply won't carry much weight anyway, so it's not usually worth bothering them. A source says what it says in writing. Ask again here if you want views on what a specific source is reliable for. Itsmejudith ( talk) 16:02, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

@ Itsmejudith: But I do want views on whether that specific source is reliable for that particular piece of information; the assertion is that it is not, and the argument put forth as to why relies on the communication with the author. That's why I'm asking here. TompaDompa ( talk) 23:01, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

But you'll need to post the source here so we don't have to trail through loads of stuff to find out what it is. I can see a name Conrad mentioned in the discussion but there's no Conrad currently cited in the article. Itsmejudith ( talk) 15:04, 13 October 2020 (UTC)

This is the source in question: Conrad, Sebastian (2014). "The Dialectics of Remembrance: Memories of Empire in Cold War Japan" (PDF). Comparative Studies in Society and History. 56 (1): 8. ISSN  0010-4175. JSTOR  43908281. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2020-07-08. Retrieved 2020-07-07. In 1942, at the moment of its greatest extension, the empire encompassed territories spanning over 7,400,000 square kilometers. TompaDompa ( talk) 05:08, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

Or indeed anything, see their use in the last 4 edits of this editor. [26] Doug Weller talk 11:06, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

No. There's no editorial oversight, history of quality publishing etc. It's literally the pet project of the former editor of British version of Breitbart (Kassam) pushing overt conspiracy theories (and trying to get them cross posted to other similarly unreliable sources like the Post Milennial). I don't revert much when sourced, but those were blatantly misleading.

It became even more obvious when actually reviewing what they said in the one article linked. The whole Soros / anti-China attack line, misrepresenting who / what things are, and the roles played. As I said on that users page, one of the "two people" associated with the evil plan is Kevin Rudd. Of course they don't say that in the article in case anyone questions it. Koncorde ( talk) 11:27, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

• No. Propaganda blog, and if it keeps being added we should blacklist it. Guy ( help! - typo?) 15:42, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

Many popculture articles (about comic books or such) are often using references to the Top 10 list (a phenomena which should get its own article one day, if more sources like [27] exist - but that's an aside). The question is whether such lists are reliable and worth including, as usually they contain almost only plot (plus occasional basic facts about originating publication and creator), and next to no analysis. Recently another editor compared such lists to clickbait, and I do agree that they seem to be a very low quality source. Usually they don't explain their methodology, and contain just a description of whatever they discuss, with no justification, just assertions. But how low? Should we ban them or let them be? And should they count towards making a subject notable, given their proliferation on the Internet?

Examples of usage (often such lists form a major or only part of reception of many weaker articles about fiction); I will provide full quotes as some of those articles may end up being deleted one day. Comic Book Resources listed the character as part of He-Man: 15 Most Powerful Masters of the Universe, Comic Book Resources listed the character as "He-Man: Eternia’s 15 Mightiest Villains", Lion-O has received a mostly positive reception from critics: Comic Book Resources ranked the character 15th Best thing about ThunderCats. io9 ranked Lion-O 5th best thing about ThunderCats., Cheetara has had a mostly positive reception from critics. Comic Book Resources ranked the character among 11th Best thing about ThunderCats.io9 ranked Cheetara 2nd best thing about ThunderCats.... Comic Book Resources consider Cheetara the 10th most valuable Thundercats toy., Total Film ranked Zod #32 on their "Top 50 Greatest Villains of All Time" list in 2007. Pop-culture website IGN.com ranked General Zod as #30 on their list of the "Top 100 Comic Book Villains"., and so on.

More examples of such lists (from websites like Comic Book Resources, Screen Rant, IGN, io9 and similar portals, which seem to be usually reliable - but this mass production of loq quality clickbait-ish lists, which seems like it could almost be automated by some script, is worrisome: https://www.cbr.com/dc-comics-most-powerful-immortal-villains/, http://www.cbr.com/no-team-no-the-15-most-terrible-super-teams-in-comics/ , , http://www.cbr.com/generations-the-15-best-marvel-legacy-heroes/ , https://www.cbr.com/10-most-awesome-moments-from-marvels-star-wars-comic/ , https://www.cbr.com/teen-titans-best-worst-costumes-ranked/ , https://screenrant.com/comics-greatest-superheroes-marvel-dc-ranked/ , https://screenrant.com/dceu-the-batman-b-list-villains-gotham/ , http://www.cbr.com/the-best-female-fighters-in-mortal-kombat/ , https://www.cbr.com/good-and-bad-thundercats/ , https://io9.gizmodo.com/all-31-thundercats-and-their-foes-ranked-1767083095 and https://www.cbr.com/valuable-thundercats-toys/ , http://snarkerati.com/movie-news/the-top-50-greatest-heroes-villains-of-all-time-total-film-compiled-list/ , https://web.archive.org/web/20101224011850/http://comics.ign.com/top-100-villains/30.html , and so on.

What should we do? Should those lists be culled? -- _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 03:54, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

Lists that simply give lists but do not give more than a brief description of why stuff is on the list is something we slangly call "listicles" and are basically useless as sources and for notability. They should be removed, and then notability re-evaluted if these were being used to support it. -- Masem ( t) 04:33, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

Piotrus, listicles are, as Masem says, worthless spacefillers. I always remove "was #32 on Widget World's Top 100 Widgets" and the like from the lead of articles, and my general view on lists is set out in Wikipedia:Awards and accolades. As sources, these are worthless IMO. Guy ( help! - typo?) 15:46, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

In the last month, I've twice happened upon articles which show books written by the long-dead subject with links to google books. Formerly, the links would open to a selection from the book or article being referenced, but now many show as no-ebook available and lead only to purchase links. Last year I believe I saw an article in which similar Amazon purchase links were removed by another editor, and presumed that was because such naked commercialism was against some wikipedia policy. In the case of historian William B. Hesseltine (whose books were reissued several times before he died in 1963, well after the long-standing 1923 U.S. copyright cutoff date, now minimally extended), I knew some works were available free at Hathi Trust, so substituted those links for the google link, and also noted where the google link was purchase-only not a ref. Yesterday I came across similar links in the case of the linguist Edward Southey Joynes, who died in 1917. I sent a message to the talk page of the administrator/editor who had checked the links on August 15, and he suggested I contact another administrator, who (before I checked my email because of scammer calls that have plagued me) suggested I post here. I really am not a great technician, but prefer to spend whatever time I can spare adding content (such as local background and slaveholdings in yesterday's Joynes articles) that overseas editors (much less readers) can't otherwise access. I don't have time to spend hours learning and parsing various wikipedia policies, much less get caught in long discussion threads. Is there a wikipedia policy against purchase links? Or has google just changed its public domain works access policy? Jweaver28 ( talk) 19:49, 13 October 2020 (UTC)

Yes, there is a policy against purchase-only links, see WP:LINKSTOAVOID #5.

Links to Amazon or Google Books can be OK in a book citation if they actually offer the text of the book (or at least substantial, relevant excerpts) without purchase; compare Template:Cite_book#URL. Both do so for many copyrighted works in a legal way, see also Authors Guild, Inc. v. Google, Inc.

(The question is a bit offtopic here, but there is probably no perfect venue for it.)

Regards, HaeB ( talk) 04:32, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

It cannot be assumed that the excerpts on Amazon fairly represent the book. if fixed excepts or no excerpts are provided for a particular book on Google Books, they too do not provide reliable information about the book. All links to commercial sites for books should be changed to those from OCLC or another library cataloging agency/. DGG ( talk ) 05:01, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

Regarding Google Books, this claim runs against longtime consensus, see e.g. WP:GBOOKS.

Do you have actual examples where Amazon's "Search Inside" misrepresented the content of a book?

And no, there is generally no reason to promote OCLC or other agencies with a link - we have WP:ISBN as a standard, vendor neutral solution for pointing to cataloging information. (By the way, OCLC is an organization with a questionable ethics record too, and in any case book citations are not the place to fight capitalism or hand out prizes to favorite nonprofits - the criterion for a link is whether it provides the reader with useful information, specifically in this case the text of the book or parts thereof.)

Regards, HaeB ( talk) 05:38, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

Is Google Books a purchase site? I mean, they do sell books, but they also offer previews/snippets for a ton of content they don't sell. In either case, such links (to Google Books but also Amazon) can be useful when they offer previews of pages and such, but a related problem is that what works for one person won't work for another due to geoblocking, and that some books that offered preview switch to no preview and so on, so those links can rot overtime. I think the ideal solution would be for a link from a reference to be 'smart', and take you to a page that gives you a choice 'do you want to view this book in Google Books, Amazon, OCLC, worldcat, etc.'. It beats defaulting to one or another platform based on one editors preferences~and would offer the most value to the reader. -- _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 05:29, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

Having worked through the lawsuit around Google Books, I would not consider Google Books' primary purpose to be a "vendor", since not all books can be purchased from that. It is meant to be a digitized library which you can potentially pay to access. Yes, Google/publishers can make money from it, but that's part of their goal and not their primary goal with it. Amazon, on the other hand, is 100% a vendor, the "look inside" feature an add-on to trying to sell you books. -- Masem ( t) 15:31, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

Masem, thank you. I also see this as different from, say, Amazon sales pages; I prefer Open Library or similar, but Google Books is useful and I feel less bad now. Guy ( help! - typo?) 15:47, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

Yeah, I'm sure that underneath Google's attempt to digitize books from Universities when it started the project was a financial goal (no corporate company does something like this without that), its not clearly a direct financial/revenue benefit to them as Amazon, which was already selling books and just duplicated the feature (roughly speaking). I agree it is better when we can to link to Archive.org or similar open projects if we can (the current lawsuit from publishers pending) but Google books isn't an issue while Amazon is. -- Masem ( t) 16:01, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

Are https://web.archive.org/web/20160305074921/http://txy.chnrailway.com/news/20120827095100.shtml and http://cxnews.zjol.com.cn/cxnews/system/2013/07/01/016597095.shtml RS for information about the station? Slatersteven ( talk) 15:39, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

The first is from China Railway Network ( About page), which describes itself as under the National Development and Reform Commission (co-organized with other Chinese national organizations & a magazine), so it's more of an WP:ABOUTSELF source. The second is a local newspaper for Changxing County. They're usable in some but not all contexts. — MarkH₂₁ ^talk 15:56, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

The issue is notability. Slatersteven ( talk) 15:57, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

For instance, I wouldn't count the first source for GNG in the AfD for Changxing railway station, but it could be usable for basic information.

The second is a local newspaper and not a major news outlet. In general, I would only borderline count local news coverage towards GNG; they're not the best sources for demonstrating notability. — MarkH₂₁ ^talk 16:02, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

Personally, given that Changxing County has a population of 620,000, I would consider it a large enough place for its local news to probably be reliable. Devonian Wombat ( talk) 00:57, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

• If the issue is notability neither counts. If the question is just whether or not they can be used China Railways is ok for about self and the local paper is a no-go. Horse Eye's Back ( talk) 16:16, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

WION News has a reputation that is unusual in India for being not state-owned but still spreading alot of nationalistic propaganda. They seem to be more of a rumor mill which puts out articles after reliable sources like Times of India or Doordoshan News. The best analogy might be Breibart News in the US. I would say that thier written articles are much better than thier youtube channel, but again, thats not saying much. Albertaont ( talk) 04:16, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

Albertaont, firstly please read WP:RFC. Since WION hasn't been discussed here before and because this is not formatted like an RfC, I'll treat it as a general query. For the whether WION is reliable or not, I'd say no. It's not really independent from the state due to its ownership being in the hands of a ruling party backed member of parliament and lack of segregation in its editorial and corporate leadership.

On a sidenote, The Times of India ( RSP entry) which has already went through an RfC isn't exactly reliable either while Doordarshan is the official state owned news broadcast and would be reliable for non-political information, it's pretty useful for basic facts on government schemes and such. Tayi Arajakate _Talk 12:27, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

I’d say that additional considerations apply, its independent of the state (in a democracy party =/= state) but the overall quality is just too low for it to be truly reliable. As Tayi Arajakate said theres not a good firewall between the corporate promotions business and the news business. That being said this is a source that has improved over the last few years quality wise which is a nice thing to see, this source has potential but its just not up there with what we generally consider WP:RS. I would say its fine to use in most cases as long as its attributed except when it comes to Indian politics in which case the BLP issues with using it cant really be surmounted. Horse Eye's Back ( talk) 16:01, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

One note though, WION does a better job of covering East and Southeast Asia than its Indian peers. Its not really enough to sway my vote today but I think it speaks to the fact that if the quality of the source and its editorial independence improve this is a source that could be very useful for us. Horse Eye's Back ( talk) 16:19, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

To me it looks reliable. You have not provided any cases where Wion has allegedly spread nationalistic propaganda and it seems like that is at a minimum needed to establish that this media channel is a serial purveyor of fake news. I would also say that the political connections of the founder shouldn't be enough to automatically disqualify the newspaper from being used. Many media outlets in the West are founded by people with political connections. From what I have seen of their reporting, especially reporting on world news, their articles and videos are incredibly well researched. Full of details that surpasses even the ones from Europe and English speaking countries. Many of the personalities working there used to work for other major media outlets and sometimes they interview leading experts from around the world to discuss various issues too. Fortliberty ( talk) 16:52, 14 October 2020 (UTC) see Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Waskerton

It's not only it's political connection that makes it problematic, although it does indicate a lack of independence. It's the connection combined with the kind of news it propagates, as it stands it appears to be recently active news outlet, set up just to spread the ruling party's propaganda and for the sake of making my stance clearer, I'd recommend against kind of use other than in uncontroversial self descriptions. Within the short span that it has been active (since 2016), there's multiple questionable and outright fake reports that can be attributed to it. A few recent examples would be as follows:

• Publishing reports of a mass cremation in Wuhan with the help of an unrelated forecasted model being presented as satellite images, along with its counterparts at The Daily Mail ( RSP entry), The Sun ( RSP entry) and IndiaTimes (online tabloid which was segregated a few years ago from The Times of India). For example, The Daily Mail and IndiaTimes retracted this report but it's still up on the WION website as of today ( Archived link).

• Claiming that Narendra Modi was apparently selected as the leader of an international task force on covid, which is outright false.

• Repeated promotion of the Chinese lab virus conspiracy theory. Sometimes it is attributed to a certain virologist while at other times it's left ambiguous or outright presented as a statement of fact. Compare this and this and this, for example.

• It even published the sensationalist hoax of Hanta Virus being this "deadly new disease" from China after Coronavirus (See this for example) and the sensationalist claim that the ozone layer was healing due to lockdown caused by coronavirus.

• Multiple other examples of reports taken from social media without any sight of basic fact checking, such as this this or this.

• etc, etc. Tayi Arajakate _Talk 05:01, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

I've removed "RfC:" from the section heading, as this discussion is not formatted as a formal request for comment. Please see WP:RFC for a guide on the RfC process. —  Newslinger  talk 08:58, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

Wafa.ps is the news agency of the Palestinian National Authority (the interim government in the PA), as such it should not be considered a RS and should only be used with inline attribution, when absolutely necessary. It is currently being used in many articles, and especially in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict area where it surely shouldn't be used at all. I would love to depreciate it considering there is absolutely zero fact checking but I just want to open this up for discussion. Sir Joseph ^(talk) 00:04, 7 October 2020 (UTC)

It seems to be quoted for facts by New York Times, Washington Post, BBC News, Reuters etc. VR _talk 02:03, 7 October 2020 (UTC)

Vice regent, No, it's quoted inline for "as per Wafa," which is not what I'm asking here.

We've had cases here before where NYTimes used a source and we still ruled it wasn't a RS. We aren't the NY Times, and if Wafa is an official mouthpiece of a government and isn't RS, then we shouldn't be using it.

Plus, as the NY Times article mentions, it explicitly calls out that Wafa is the "official Palestinian news agency," IOW, that is not something we should be using without inline attribution at the least, (which is what the NY Times did). Sir Joseph ^(talk) 02:32, 7 October 2020 (UTC)

Er, yes, WAFA is a very reliable news agency. Not sure why you would think otherwise? By Western standards, its web site is bare bones, but that is an advantage to Palestinians who browse with bandwidth-limited mobile phones. Generally, if Israel bombs Gaza, WAFA will have something up within a few hours at most.

True, WAFA "spins" news; if Israel bombs Gaza, WAFA might "forget" to note that PIJ fired rockets into Israel earlier in the day. But that is par for the course and Israeli media is equally guilty of "spinning" news. WAFAs factual reporting is very rarely incorrect. Furthermore, its reporting is often more detailed than Israeli or Western sources. While they might report: "Israel bombed targets in Gaza," WAFA might report: "Israeli warplanes struck three targets in Gaza; Khan Younis, Rafah and Beit Hanoun, causing material damage but no injuries." If what it reports isn't cross-checked, it will report it as "according to local sources ... " or "according to local activist Mohammed Something ..." exactly like other news agencies.

WAFA is frequently cited by other Middle Eastern media houses. For example, by IMEMC, Anadolu Agency, Al-Monitor, Middle East Monitor, and Palestine Chronicle. It's even cited by Israeli news sites like Times of Israel, Jerusalem Post, and Haaretz. And by UN's media reviews.

If that isn't enough to convince you, then I don't know what would. Sometimes, when Palestinians are killed by Israeli soldiers, B'Tselem publishes investigative reports months later. For example, here is WAFA's report of the killing of Ibrahim Mustafa Abu-Yaaqoub and here is B'Tselem's investigation. As seen, their reports correlate well.

Frankly, I'm alarmed by this campaign to blacklist more and more news sources. The effect is that events that Western media doesn't think are important can't be noted on Wikipedia. There is no replacement for WAFA. If you blacklist that (and by extension, all Palestinian news outlets that are objectively worse), the end result would be that you'd have exactly zero Palestinian news agencies that would be permissible on Wikipedia. And it doesn't stop there, you'd have to blacklist the vast majority of African, Middle Eastern and Latin American news agencies too. ImTheIP ( talk) 03:11, 7 October 2020 (UTC)

ImTheIP, We try very hard not to use official government news agencies. And note, all the "ACCORDING TO WAFA." That is not the same as using the source as a "ref" tag, without inline cite, which would be better. You can't say "X did this" and source it to Wafa without saying, "According to Wafa...." That should be the bare minimum here. Sir Joseph ^(talk) 03:30, 7 October 2020 (UTC)

My point is that news orgs trust WAFA. Especially Israeli news orgs which is significant because due to their physical proximity to the OPTs, they are better judges of WAFA's trustworthiness than Western news orgs.

Read the Times of Israel article. Boxerman's article is a derivative of a WAFA report; he relies on WAFA for the photos, the video, and the quotes from the involved doctors. Here is another recent article by Boxerman where he credits WAFA for the image. He doesn't credit WAFA for the content, but he clearly "borrowed" the "meters away" formulation from WAFA's report published an hour earlier.

These aren't isolated examples. Sometimes when Israeli journalists write stories based on WAFA's reporting they don't credit WAFA and then it is of course difficult to prove that they relied on WAFA if there isn't an obvious temporal correlation and some key phrases reused. ^[1] Sometimes they write: "According to the Palestinian Wafa news agency, Mohammad Majd Kamil died after falling from a high place while being chased by Israeli police in the Galilee town of Arrabat al-Bottuf on Tuesday." The "according to ... Wafa" clause isn't there because WAFA is considered untrustworthy, it's there because citing your sources is good journalistic practice. If they thought WAFA was untrustworthy why would they cite WAFA at all!?

I cannot see any rule about government-affiliated news agencies in WP:RS. And we cite BBC, Yle, NRK, RAI, France 2, PBS, etc, all the time. On List of Palestinian rocket attacks on Israel in 2014 we cite the IDF spokesperson's twitter account and on List of Palestinian rocket attacks on Israel in 2015 we cite Shin Bet. If we can cite Shin Bet (without "according to" qualification, mind you) I think we can cite WAFA.

I agree that "according to ..." is required for controversial content. But the content that you removed that was sourced to WAFA wasn't controversial. A 16-year-old Palestinian was shot in the foot by an Israeli soldier during clashes in Beit Ummar north of Hebron.[10] I fail to see how prefixing this sentence with "According to Wafa, ..." makes anything better. Can one remove the "according to Wafa" if MEMO writes about the clashes or does one have to wait until (and if) the Jerusalem Post covers it? Does the "according to" have to be applied to COVID-19 pandemic in the State of Palestine? "According to WAFA, Mai Alkaila confirmed 806 new cases ... According to WAFA, Mai Alkaila confirmed 433 new case ... According to WAFA, ai Alkaila confirmed 632 ne ..."

tl;dr WAFA isn't Sputnik News, don't get fooled by the website's layout, don't blacklist the most reliable English-language Palestinian news source. ImTheIP ( talk) 05:43, 7 October 2020 (UTC)

ImTheIP, What is your evidence that this is "the most reliable English-language Palestinian news source"? ( t · c) buidhe 06:10, 7 October 2020 (UTC)

• Some government news sources are reliable. Usually they are those like BBC, Deutsche Welle, which have editorial independence from their government. On the other hand, there are other government sources such as RT or Telewizja Polska which are infamous for spreading propaganda and disinformation; these ones tend to be controlled by the ruling party of the country. Who runs Wafa and is it editorially independent from Fatah? (If not, at the very least, it cannot be considered an independent source for Palestinian politics). BTW, if some event is only reported by the IDF but not covered by any independent sources, then it is probably not DUE in mainspace either.
• It is possible for a journalist to cite sources without using the "according to" construction: just state the fact while including an external link underneath to the source. Use of the "according to" construction indicates that the secondary source is not taking responsibility for the accuracy of information. Wikipedia should follow suit by attributing in any controversial case (not COVID cases, these are reported according to official govt statistics, no matter how dubious). ( t · c) buidhe 06:04, 7 October 2020 (UTC)

• unreliable propaganda like RT. See Wafa's about: "WAFA was established as an independent body that was structurally, politically and administratively linked to the PLO Executive Committee" (so not independent). President Abbas exerts control: "On May 9, 2011, President Abbas also issued a presidential decree on the organization of WAFA’s work pursuant to Item II of Article VI on drawing up WAFA’s administrative and organizational structure, which ushered in a new institutional structure for WAFA in terms of job specializations and tasks.". Going on to their functions: "1. Gather news... accordance with the provisions of the presidential decree", "3. Contribute to the fulfillment of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s public policies in line with the higher Palestinian interests". Eostrix  ( ^{🦉 hoot} _hoot🦉) 06:12, 7 October 2020 (UTC)
• Unreliable Like Eostrix noted No independent news board they similar to RT or SPUTNIK. Shrike ( talk) 06:29, 7 October 2020 (UTC)

• Mainly Reliable

Federation of Arab News Agencies (FANA), "the Palestinian News & Information Agency (WAFA) won the best report Award 2019"

Strengthening and funding WAFA development and Palestinian media legislation saw the active involvement of UNESCO; a recent report found nothing adverse other than Wafa's privileged access in a market where there is a plurality of private media (that were encouraged to set up by the PA) UNESCO Office Ramallah (24 November 2014). Assessment of media development in Palestine: based on UNESCO's media development indicators. UNESCO. pp. 49–. ISBN  978-92-3-100021-8.

The Italian Government provided US $1.5 million as far back as 1997 for the strengthening of Wafa. This newsorg has been around for a long time and one has to wonder why is this just coming up now? This listing seems ill-motivated, where are the examples of false reporting or errors of fact? Selfstudier ( talk) 13:45, 7 October 2020 (UTC)

• Generally unreliable, reliable only for what Abbas/PLO says. Besides being a stated propaganda mouthpiece controlled by the PLO, WAFA is known for routinely publishing laughable conspiracy theories. For instance: [28] [29] [30]

  Rats have become an Israeli weapon to displace and expel Arab residents of the occupied Old City of Jerusalem

  The same report notes that WAFA also has pig conspiracy theories:

  Wafa , controlled and funded by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' office, has in the past accused Israel of using wild pigs to drive Palestinians out of their homes and fields in the West Bank.

  In case you were wondering, they are stilling doing it in 2017: [31]( copy)

  A wild pig attacked, on Friday night, a 10-year-old child in the town of Yamoun ... Palestinians say Israeli settlers let wild pigs run loose in the fields to attack farmers and villagers as a way to keep them off their land.

  11Fox11 ( talk) 06:27, 8 October 2020 (UTC)

Se below for a discussion of these claims.

• Generally reliable for facts in the Palestinian territories. As shown by ImTheIP, Wafa is widely quoted by Western reliable sources for facts in the Palestinian territories as well positions of the PNA. It seems like one of the most reliable Palestinian sources for news. Wafa is probably a WP:BIASEDSOURCE when it comes to reports that involves those opposed to the PNA (mainly Israel and Hamas) and caution should be exercised in those cases. VR _talk 16:49, 8 October 2020 (UTC)

• Generally unreliable, except for official PLO statements. It is the media arm of the PLO, controlled tightly by it. It is the sort of place that publishes "Palestinian man killed at checkpoint" while omitting that the man was a suicide bomber with 50 pounds of explosives strapped to his chest. -- Hippeus ( talk) 11:11, 9 October 2020 (UTC)

• Not generally reliable Since the source is under the editorial control of the Palestinian authority, it is not an independent source with regards to Palestinian politics or the I/P conflict. Similar to official statements by the Israeli government, incidents covered in WAFA lack due weight if not reported by an independent source. Should be attributed, especially when the content is controversial (injuries and deaths related to the I/P conflict are always controversial). ( t · c) buidhe 11:26, 9 October 2020 (UTC)

• Reliable for Palestine-related POV: Reliability != neutrality, and likewise partisan != unreliable. Reliability of a source is not dependent on whether or not a source is partisan. Per WP:NPOV#Bias in sources, "reliable sources are not required to be neutral, unbiased, or objective". In other words, the POV policy makes it clear that sources are allowed to be biased. Furthermore: a quick search on Wiki indicates that several "gov.il" websites are cited close to 9,000 times on Wikipedia. If the official websites of the settler-colonial apartheid regime in Palestine are allowed to be cited on Wikipedia - all in the name of presenting the Israeli POV and all that - then there should be ZERO problems with using Wafa, with proper attribution if necessary. Al-Andalusi ( talk) 23:18, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

• Generally reliable, case-by-case on controversial topics - the source is used extensively by generally reliable media sources as ImTheIP has thoroughly shown below. Al-Andalusi makes a very good point that the Israeli government website is cited 9,000 times, so excluding this source because it has affiliation with the Palestinian government would make little sense. It is important that local Palestinian reporting is available for the Palestinian territories. Caution is required for both Palestinian and Israeli sources when they report on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. For basic noncontroversial news, WAFA is completely fine. For the specific case of the content that was removed, which states that "A 16-year-old Palestinian was shot in the foot by an Israeli soldier during clashes in Beit Ummar north of Hebron.[10]", WAFA can be used. This statement is not controversial. -- Guest2625 ( talk) 12:28, 13 October 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for that, I did wonder why this was coming up just now and now I see that it is because the lister had already reverted edits the day before the listing claiming that wafa was not an rs. So this was nothing more than an attempt to obtain post fact confirmation of an edit/claim already done/made. Selfstudier ( talk) 13:19, 13 October 2020 (UTC)

• Unreliable fake news. WAFA has no journalistic standards, it is controlled by Palestinian politicians, and regularly publishes fake news, treating Palestinian folkloric beliefs and antisemitic conspiracy theories as fact. For example: Israel Floods Gaza Neighborhood with Rainwater stating as fact that: "Almost every year, the Israeli authorities open the floodgates to their dams in the direction of Gaza and without prior notice, to discharge massive quantities of water...". Total fake, as according to AFP: "no such dam exists in Israel that could control the flow of water into Gaza". Vici Vidi ( talk) 05:48, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

See comments below refuting your arguments here. Selfstudier ( talk) 11:49, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

Nothing refuted. You showed that the WP:DAILYMAIL and other media was confused by the 100% fake Palestinian propaganda and published it, with attribution back to the Palestinian officials. The Daily Mail, and other media, retracted their stories, recognizing they shouldn't have even published this libel to begin with. WAFA did not retract, and it published these claims without attribution, stating as a WAFA-fakt that Israel does this every year. Thank you for showing that WAFA has less journalistic integrity than the banned Dali Mail. Vici Vidi ( talk) 12:33, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

• Generally Reliable per WP:NEWSORG. Though caveat emptor applies. I.e. controversial claims should be attributed and/or sourced from more reliable publishers (Reuters, BBC, ...). ImTheIP ( talk) 10:40, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

Basic facts about WAFA

The Palestine News and Information Agency (WAFA) was founded by the PLO in 1972. In 1994 it became part of the Palestinian Authority (PA). It was reformed between 2008 and 2011 to bring it closer to the presidency. Donor pressure unhappy with what they saw as inciting content was perhaps the reason. ^[2] WAFA, the Palestinian Public Radio and Television Corporation, and Al-Hayat al-Jadeeda (daily news) are the main media channels of the PA. All Fatah-affiliated. Only WAFA publishes in English.

There are only a handful news orgs based in the OPTs publishing in English. WAFA's competitors are the Hamas-affiliated Quds News Network, the "independent" Palestinian Information Center (PIC), and the palestine news network (pnn). Their reporting is more often than not derivative of WAFA's. For example, WAFA's report about settlers attacking olive harvesters is the basis for both pnn's short article and PIC's article. Thus, if you blacklist WAFA you have to blacklist these news orgs too since they publish rewrites of WAFA's articles.

How does WAFA make news? Like all other wire services it relies on a network of freelancers. When they see stuff happen, they record it on video, they take photos, and they talk to witnesses. Then they send their material to WAFA which publishes it. If the news is interesting enough, it is broadcast on tv, otherwise it's just pushed on the news feed. Exactly how all other wire services in the world operate. And it is not true that WAFA has no editorial control. Kholoud Assaf is WAFA's editor-in-chief.

Here is a bunch of reporting from the BBC that in part or in full relies on WAFA:

1999: [32], [33], 2001: [34], 2002: [35], [36], [37], [38], 2003: [39], [40], 2006: [41], 2007: [42], [43], [44], [45], 2011: [46], 2012: [47], [48], 2013: [49], [50], [51], 2014: [52], 2015: [53], 2016: [54], [55], [56], 2017: [57], 2018: [58], [59], [60], 2019: [61], [62], 2020: [63], [64]

By no means is this an exhaustive list - there are hundreds more BBC articles that cite WAFA and a similar list could be made for virtually every news org in the world. Just to drive the point home that WAFA is reliable and has been around for a loong time, here is some of WaPo's reporting from the Lebanese Civil War in the late 70's early 80's that in part or in full relies on WAFA:

1977: [65], 1978: [66], [67], [68], [69], 1979: [70], [71], [72], [73], [74], [75], 1980: [76], [77], [78], [79], 1981: [80], [81], [82], 1982: [83], [84], [85], [86], [87], [88], [89], [90], [91], [92], 1983: [93], [94], [95], [96], [97] , 1985: [98]

In these artices WaPo is actually sourcing WAFA for facts. For example, in this article from 1981 WaPo writes in its lead paragraph: Waves of Israeli warplanes bombed heavily populated Palestinian neighborhoods in Beirut and targets in southern Lebanon today, killing at least 123 persons and wounding hundreds more in Israel's most devastating attack here since its invasion in 1978. How does WaPo know that at least 123 persons were killed? It relies on WAFA: As of late afternoon, the Palestinian news agency WAFA reported that the death toll had reached 123 but later the Phalangist radio put the figure at 150. ImTheIP ( talk) 15:50, 7 October 2020 (UTC)

In these cases, as far as I can tell, WAFA is attributed, i.e. the source repeating the information is not taking full responsibility for whether WAFA's reporting is accurate. ( t · c) buidhe 00:55, 8 October 2020 (UTC)

It appears that you are asking me to do something nigh impossible to prove WAFA's reliability. I'm tasked to find articles that sources WAFA for facts but does not credit WAFA as the source for these facts. I'm sure you understand why finding such articles would be difficult? You can yourself try to find articles on the BBC that sources Haaretz for facts but does not credit Haaretz as the source for these facts. While not impossible, it is time consuming to find such articles because you have to match keyword phrases that indictate that the journalist in question engaged in some copy-pasting. I provided one example above where Boxerman borrowed facts from WAFA without crediting WAFA. Are more examples needed or do you trust me when I assert that that happens frequently?

Likewise, I have no idea what taking "full responsibility for" means. Media houses in general don't take responsibility for each others reporting. The BBC reports: Crusader winery found under house in Israel. How does the BBC know? The townspeople have been working together to shore up the ruins of the 12th century King's Castle that dominates their Galilee skyline under the guidance of local archaeologist Rabei Khamisy, the Haaretz newspaper reports. Is the BBC taking "full responsibility"?

The BBC reports: Palestinian Mohammad Abu Khdair 'was burned alive'. How does the BBC know? The Palestinian official news agency Wafa quoted the attorney-general as saying that Mr Aloul had reported fire dust in the respiratory canal, meaning the victim had "inhaled this material while he was burnt alive". Is the BBC taking "full responsibility"?

I think I have provided much evidence that shows that WAFA is considered a reliable wire service, both in Israel and in the rest of the Western world. Those who claim that WAFA is not reliable have not provided any evidence of journalistic malpractice or of dubious reporting. I think this case should be dismissed with prejudice since it is based on a falsehood: "there is absolutely zero fact checking" There clearly is fact-checking. ImTheIP ( talk) 02:48, 8 October 2020 (UTC)

The Daily Mail is also quoted by others. WAFA is often quoted by others to convey official Palestinian statements or in the funny section to laugh about conspiracy theories they publish. For instance: [99] [100] [101]

Rats have become an Israeli weapon to displace and expel Arab residents of the occupied Old City of Jerusalem

The same report notes that WAFA also has pig conspiracy theories:

Wafa , controlled and funded by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' office, has in the past accused Israel of using wild pigs to drive Palestinians out of their homes and fields in the West Bank.

In case you were wondering, they are stilling doing it in 2017: [102]( copy)

A wild pig attacked, on Friday night, a 10-year-old child in the town of Yamoun ... Palestinians say Israeli settlers let wild pigs run loose in the fields to attack farmers and villagers as a way to keep them off their land.

11Fox11 ( talk) 06:27, 8 October 2020 (UTC)

Yeah promoting wild anti-Semitic theories about animals doesn't sound too reliable for me -- Shrike ( talk) 07:43, 8 October 2020 (UTC)

The zero-evidence train of innuendo and dubious inference promulgated by the pro-Israel crowd is simply laughable. Ironically, WAFA was initially set up to counter Israeli propaganda and has done a pretty good job of it. This isn't the Jewish Virtual Library full of errors of fact and omission with no oversight, this is a perfectly respectable newsorg with an inside track to the Palestinian leadership, that's all. There is nothing else. Selfstudier ( talk) 09:01, 8 October 2020 (UTC)

If so, why is it reporting conspiracy theories with no evidence? ( t · c) buidhe 11:52, 8 October 2020 (UTC)

The reprints above seem to say that Wafa is reporting what it was told by Palestinian residents. Can someone find the original Wafa article? There is a difference in promoting a conspiracy theory and reporting on one and what else does Wafa say in its coverage. Newspapers will and should report on conspiracy theories common among their audience. VR _talk 16:52, 8 October 2020 (UTC)

Levels of responsibility is important to journalism. For example, sometimes Reuters will report something but attribute it to a different news source or an individual. This is different from reporting it in their own voice. See Jonathan Fenby, The International News Services (1986) p. 25. ( t · c) buidhe 11:50, 8 October 2020 (UTC)

If pig conspiracy theories is your best shot, give up now. Selfstudier ( talk) 12:54, 8 October 2020 (UTC)

The boar story

There is a Western tradition of treating Palestinians as liars-by-default. Unless confirmed by a non-Arab, a Palestinian's claim is more often than not seen as "the product of the well-known over-imaginative Arab mind."

The "wild pigs" story described by 11Fox11 sounds similarly outlandish if you don't know about the context.

The West Bank population of wild boars have exploded in the recent decades and is a serious menace. Why the population has exploded is unknown; some blame the construction of the West Bank barrier, others the decline of the number of hyenas which are the wild boars natural predators.

A single pack of wild boars can inflict almost catastrophic destruction to agricultural lands. Palestinian farmers are effectively defenseless against wild boar attacks; they are neither allowed to have firearms nor to kill them using poison traps. Settlers, on the other hand are, and they shot at wild boars that get too close to their settlements. Wild boars are wickedly smart animals and learn to stay away from settlements and instead they gather in Palestinian areas. ^[3]

Many Palestinians are afraid of wild boars and consider them unclean animals. Fully-grown wild boars weigh upwards of 200 kg. An attacking wild boars can cause serious injury to children. Palestinian farmers fault Israel for refraining from culling the wild boar population. They also suspect that it is part of a strategy to make their lives miserable. Likewise, some farmers fault settlers for letting wild boars roam instead of shooting them.

There have been multiple reports of settlers using wild boars to harass Palestinians. Nothing has (afaik) been confirmed. Thus, we don't know if the reports are true or the product of over-imaginative Arab minds. Settlers have probably not dumped truckloads of wild boars into Palestinian areas. However, it is not beyond the pale to suspect that armed extremist settlers have intentionally driven packs of wild boars into Palestinian built-up areas and agricultural lands. There is an infamous settlement known as Yitzhar in the Northern West Bank and its inhabitants are known to act like utter pricks against their Palestinian neighbours. ^[4]

Here are some reporting on the wild boar problem:

• The Wild Boar and Feces Epidemic in Palestine by Vice
• Cooperation with Wild Boars in Palestine by a blogger
• Wild Boars in West Bank Causing Damage to Palestinian Villages and Farms by POICA
• FROM ANIN TO ZBUBA by Oakland Institute
• Jenin residents fend off hyenas by Times of Israel
• قطعان الخنازير .. أداة المستوطنين الجديدة للاستيلاء على الأراضي الزراعية by Al-Quds from 2020.

The al-Quds article is very indepth and interviews numerous Palestinian officials and farmers affected by the wild boars. A number of them claim that settlers have "released wild boars" and a number of them claim to have been injured by wild boars. I cannot tell if the article is "pure propaganda". If it is, then it's damn convincing propaganda.

Let's investigate the Wafa article in question:

A wild pig attacked on Friday night a 10-year-old child in the town of Yamoun, west of Jenin, causing her injury in her hand, according to local sources. They said Alaa Houshieh was admitted to hospital after she as bit in her hand by a pig.

Note that the story is credited to local sources and that the report doesn't mention settlers.

Palestinians say Israeli settlers let wild pigs run loose in the fields to attack farmers and villagers as a way to keep them off their land.

That is indeed what many Palestinians say.

The residents, who say they never before had wild pigs in the West Bank until the settlers came there, have urged the Palestinian Authority to help get rid of the wild pigs in their areas, which have become a threat to them, particularly children.

The first part is, afaik, an exaggeration; wild boars are indigenous to the West Bank, even though they are a much bigger problem now than ever before. Wafa's report is one-sided - it doesn't give the settlers nor the Israeli government's view of the story - but the actual reporting seem to be sound: a 10-year-old girl in Yamoun was bit in the hand by a wild boar, according to local sources.

CNN touches on the wild boars problem in 3 cars torched, mosque defaced in West Bank:

"This is not the first time Deir Istiya village (has) come under attack by the settlers," Salman said. "Deir Istiya is surrounded by nine Israeli settlements, and we are attacked and harassed by settlers on daily basis." Salman said settlers released some 300 wild pigs into the farming fields of the village, which destroyed and damaged the seasonal crops of the Palestinian farmers.

I frankly fail to see much difference between CNN's take and Wafa's. Here is one article in the BBC about Israeli "guard pigs":

Rabbis back Israeli 'guard pigs'

Under Jewish law, pigs are seen as unclean

An organisation in Israel has gained rabbinical approval to train pigs to guard Jewish settlements in the West Bank.

If that article had been published in Wafa it would have been called blood libel. But now it's published in the BBC. So what gives? Last year the Jerusalem Post reported that Israeli scientists would have "a complete cure for cancer in a year". Earlier this year it was fooled to publish slanderous op-eds by deepfaked author profiles. Wafa is absolutely not the best news agency, but it is also far from the worst. As a source for incident reports, e.g. A 16-year-old Palestinian was shot in the foot by an Israeli soldier during clashes in Beit Ummar north of Hebron.[10], it is very reliable. ImTheIP ( talk) 22:08, 8 October 2020 (UTC)

Oxfam has also described boar attacks: here is a constantly present risk of seeing the settlers turn up in the fields to attack Palestinian farmers – a frequent occurrence here. In addition to this violence, there is also the tactic of letting loose wild boars, which wreck crops and scare the villagers. ^[5] According to Arutz Sheva, Combatants for Peace has also spread the wild boars story. ^[6] I don't think the boar story is true, but I also don't think it is proof that Wafa is unreliable since so many other media outlets have featured it (among them CNN). ImTheIP ( talk) 01:05, 11 October 2020 (UTC)

The rat story

In 2008, rat infestation was a major problem in Jerusalem. ^[7] The Muslim quarter is densely built, run-down, and leaky sewage pipes are common. ^[8] Perfect conditions for rats. Hasan Khater exists and he has complained about Israeli policies in East Jerusalem (which the Old City is part of). ^[9] One common complaint among Palestinians is that Israel is trying to "Judaize" Jerusalem (i.e. increase the fraction of the population that is Jewish). Palestinians allege that as part of this goal, Israel denies them permits for construction and renovation works.

There exists groups of aggressive religious settlers that tries to take over Palestinian property in Jerusalem. ^[10] The quotes from the supposed Wafa article (I haven't been able to find the original article) implies that it is these groups that are described ("dozens of settlers come to the alleyways and streets of the Old City"). If Wafa has reported a rumour about them releasing rats as if it were facts, that is of course wrong. However, calling it anti-Semitic blood libel is a stretch. Persistent rumors about organ harvesting circulated among Palestinians in the 1990s. They were also "anti-Semitic blood libel" until they were proven true. It's hard to know what is fact or fiction.

Perhaps it is also relevant that the Jerusalem Post journalist that wrote the article, Khaled Abu Toameh, is a fellow at the Gatestone Institute, run by Amir Taheri... ImTheIP ( talk) 01:57, 10 October 2020 (UTC)

Nothing was proven to be true. This wrong medicine practice was specifically not against Palestinians but it was done to slain Israeli Soldiers too. Repeating anti-Semitic label is a beyond the pale. Shrike ( talk) 05:59, 10 October 2020 (UTC)

The point is that rumors of organ harvesting spread among Palestinians already in the late 1980's. ^[11] Brave whistle blowers proved the rumors true in the early 2000's or so. ^[12] That the organ harvesting also affected Israelis is beside the point. ^[13]

Israel-related animal conspiracy theories refers. There, the rat nonsense is referenced to an opinion piece of 2008 in an Irish newspaper that I found in the wayback machine. It says the story was in two Palestinian newspapers but does not mention their names and specifically does not mention WAFA. So the article misrepresents the source to have said WAFA, when it does not. I think I have wasted quite enough time on this tripe. Selfstudier ( talk) 09:11, 10 October 2020 (UTC)

What Its have to do with opinion piece from 2012? It was report from 2008 by JPOST that first spotted the story. Shrike ( talk) 10:03, 10 October 2020 (UTC)

See the article I mentioned, first sentence of the rat section, sourcing it to the Irish columnist (in 2008, the way back is 2012, perhaps the story gets better with each retelling?) and asserting that HE mentioned WAFA, which he did not. ImtheIP already dealt with the JP article. Significant that the actual Wafa article cannot be found. There WAS mice and rat infestation in 2008, complained of by Palestinians as "deliberate and willful neglect by the Municipality of Arab neighborhoods in the Old City of Jerusalem" and covered here here,Israeli violations in Jerusalem during the month of June, 2008. Perhaps this story was made up and circulated to cover this. Selfstudier ( talk) 11:42, 10 October 2020 (UTC)

This pro Israel archival source identifies the two Palestinian papers responsible,Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, controlled by the office of Mahmoud Abbas, July 18, 2008 & Al-Ayyam, July 17, 2008. Note that neither of these is Wafa and that this also agrees with the Irish reporter account leaving our friend at JP as the outlier. So that's the end of that. Selfstudier ( talk) 15:15, 10 October 2020 (UTC)

What Irish blogger?The op-ed is from 2012 Please give a direct link/quote.Anyhow it doesn't matter several Palestinian news outlets might have been printing the same anti-Semitic label -- Shrike ( talk) 15:25, 10 October 2020 (UTC)

Are you actually reading anything I am writing? This matter is closed, it wasn't Wafa..end of. Selfstudier ( talk) 15:47, 10 October 2020 (UTC)

Yes I did read you didn't proven anything your wild speculation doesn't count.JP is reputable source with history of accuracy Shrike ( talk) 15:51, 10 October 2020 (UTC)

I am not speculating, I provided two independent sources contradicting the JP account and the actual Palestinian newspapers that made the story have been identified, neither of them being Wafa, which also explains why the claimed Wafa article cannot be located. Selfstudier ( talk) 16:34, 10 October 2020 (UTC)

Again being printed in two other papers don't preclude it being printed in WAFA as per JPOST report Shrike ( talk) 17:06, 10 October 2020 (UTC)

You have zero evidence for that assertion whereas I have produced a concrete source...with quotes and dates just a few days before the JP article. And it is from a pro Israel source that that JP author has written for. Like I said, this stuff and pigs is all you got, give it up. Selfstudier ( talk) 17:42, 10 October 2020 (UTC)

What's the specific question?

"Is Wafa an RS?" is far too broad a question to answer. Is there a specific use of Wafa that you want evaluated? What's the context for this request? These broad deprecation discussions are really getting out of hand. WP:RSN used to be for specific questions about whether sources were reliable in specific contexts, not general free-for-all discussions about all aspects of a source. Wafa is a major news agency. It will probably be reliable in most contexts, but like many news agencies, there are probably specific contexts in which it should be used with caution or compared against other sources (e.g., for highly contentious subjects in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, you might want to compare what Palestinian, Israeli and international news agencies are reporting). A specific question is answerable. A general discussion about whether Wafa is at all reliable will lead nowhere, or worse, will end up with yet another overly broad deprecation of the kind we've seen too often over the past year. - Thucydides411 ( talk) 22:37, 9 October 2020 (UTC)

Fake news, making up non-existent dams

Every WAFA story has a grain of truth. The typical mold is that something bad happened in Palestine, and usually that has some factual basis. However WAFA typically presents such events as being controlled and directed by Israel, settlers, or "the Jews". Thus, Israel is responsible for rain, in 2015 WAFA published: Israel Floods Gaza Neighborhood with Rainwater, stating as a factual assertion that:

Almost every year, the Israeli authorities open the floodgates to their dams in the direction of Gaza and without prior notice, to discharge massive quantities of water that had accumulated due to the heavy rains in the Naqab region.

However, this was pure fake news, there are no dams that allow for control of flow of water in the Wadi, according to AFP:

But no such dam exists in Israel that could control the flow of water into Gaza, according to a team of AFP reporters on the ground as well as interviews with Israeli and international experts.

This outright lie by WAFA is typical, spinning the events of the moment to suit political purposes, even when the lie itself is easily refuted as false. Vici Vidi ( talk) 05:48, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

You notably failed to mention that Al Jazeera posted this material and that it was repeated by AFP (they might have been the first, on 22nd), by the Daily Fail and many other news media, including Wafa. AJ identified Brigadier General Said Al-Saudi, chief of the civil defence agency in Gaza as the source for the allegations (as did Wafa) and later retracted the article. I assume you will now be looking to delist AJ, AFP and others in addition to Wafa as fake news providers? You stated that Wafa "regularly publishes fake news" and yet you have only managed to contrive this example? Or are you too relying on boars and rats? (you claimed they are "treating Palestinian folkloric beliefs and antisemitic conspiracy theories as fact" but provided no evidence for this assertion) Selfstudier ( talk) 11:46, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

Al Jazeera, WP:DAILYMAIL, and other media were confused by the 100% fake Palestinian propaganda and published it, usually with attribution back to the Palestinian officials. Al Jazeera, the Daily Mail, and other media, retracted their stories. WAFA did not retract, and it published these claims without attribution, stating as a WAFA-fakt that Israel does this every year. There's a big difference here, and it actually demonstrates that WAFA operates at a lower journalistic integrity than the Daily Mail which is banned from Wikipedia because of its poor integrity. Vici Vidi ( talk) 12:33, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

No, all it demonstrates is that you are trying to hold Wafa to a higher standard of behavior than AFP, AJ who did exactly the same as Wafa did. They were all misled by the Gaza Brigadier at his news conference. So, have you anything else except this one story? I am still waiting for evidence to support the assertions "regularly publishes fake news" and "treating Palestinian folkloric beliefs and antisemitic conspiracy theories as fact" Selfstudier ( talk) 12:45, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

This is silly. You are arguing that Wafa disseminates lies and half-truths by disseminating lies and half-truths. Here is an article about how a an Israeli dam burst in 2001 and what impact it had on the surrounding ecosystem, including Gaza: The Nahal Oz Reservoir dam-break flood: Geomorphic impact on a small ephemeral loess-channel in the semi-arid Negev Desert, Israel. It has lots of pictures so you can see exactly where the wadis and reservoirs are located.

The claim that Israel couldn't flood Gaza is false since a dam-break in 2001 in fact flooded Gaza.

There are three wadis in Gaza; Wadi Beit Hanoun in northern Gaza, Wadi Gaza in central Gaza, and Wadi Silka in the southern Gaza. Water to Wadi Beit Hanoun and Wadi Gaza comes from wadis in Israel such as Besor. Israel has built an interlinked system of reservoirs and channels to harvest rainwater from the wadis in the Negev. This has caused the downstream Wadi Beit Hanoun and Wadi Gaza to dry up. In this way, Israel is diverting 30 mcm of water per year which otherwise would have benefited Gazan farmers. When Israel's rainwater capture system overflows, it results in sudden flash floods in Gaza, as described in this report from 2007, many years before flood libel became a thing:

Floods generally occur in the wadis only once every two years. The peak discharge and thus flood volumes are directly related to catchment size (Amit et al., 2007). Generally, water runs in the Gaza Strip wadis for a short time during the winter season; they remain dry for the rest of the year. Flooding in the Gaza Strip rarely occurs, and seems to take place only when the volumes of water in Israeli dams exceed their capacities. Table 1 summarizes the characteristics of the wadis in the Gaza Strip.

The Israelis don't warn the Palestinians when the system is about to overflow. There is at least one dam (proper "dam" - not reservoir) in the Negev, the Yeruham Dam, and it is indeed used for flood control. ImTheIP ( talk) 14:29, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

The repetition of debunked fake news above is silly. As AFP states: "no such dam exists in Israel that could control the flow of water into Gaza". You are confusing water reservoirs (which did not burst in 2015) and very small fixed dams with no control mechanisms, as pointed out by AFP:

What does exist here is a low stone structure, barely a metre high, next to a shallow concrete channel, which is sometimes referred to as a "diversion dam" -- whose purpose is to slow the flow of water so some of it can be diverted into a nearby reservoir for irrigation purposes, Kretschmer explained. It has no gates, nor openings, and when the flood waters hit, they simply glide over it as if it did not exist. "If it does anything, it actually reduces the quantity of water flowing towards Gaza, and not the opposite," Shahaf said.

There are small fixed diversion dams, that if at all reduce flood surges towards Gaza, and that are fixed stone structures. The allegation that Israel opened dams was false, as dams with control structures that could cause such a large release do not exist. Al Jazeera retracted, even the WP:DAILYMAIL [103] retracted. WAFA printed bullshit (and this is basic geography any local source should know, this is hardly an honest mistake), it did not bother to retract, it is still sitting with all its fake glory with no attribution. They even continue to repeat the dam bullshit years later: January 2019, January 2020, a regular January story on WAFA, ignored just like any other fake WAFA story. Vici Vidi ( talk) 15:18, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

Once again, what "other fake WAFA story"? a) it's an AFP, AJ and loads of other media fake story, not just Wafa and b) it's still only one story not many as you keep implying. And Wafa did attribute, so that statement is also false. Selfstudier ( talk) 16:44, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

Fwiw, the earliest version of this story I could find goes back to 2010, a reliefweb (OCHA) story stating "In addition to the natural disaster, Israel has worsened the situation by opening a dam located in the Green Line which borders the Gaza Valley." and pointing to a source article from the Palestinian Red Crescent but that article only says "What has worsened the situation is the flooding of water from the Green Line area which borders the Gaza Valley." and says nothing about a dam. If OCHA claimed that in its own voice in 2010, which seems to be the case, then it's hardly surprising that the local citizenry believe it. Selfstudier ( talk) 12:01, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

Working on articles dealing with involvement of hackers for instance

• Dmitri Sergejewitsch Badin

I come across the media outlet the Insider( [104]) for above mentioned case specifically "Clown" from the GRU. Who hacked into Angela Merkel's mail? A search on wikipedia revealed the source domain used previously , but the media outlet does not seem to have an article describing it on enwiki. Do we know anything about the media outlet? The media outlet is mentioned in the Awards section of Bellingcat but not in the European Press Prize article listing the aforementioned award. Mysteriumen•♪Ⓜ ^•♪talk _{♪• look} 17:32, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

Fox is correctly considered dubious for politics, does this prevent use of Fox as a source for political endorsements? Guy ( help! - typo?) 13:34, 9 October 2020 (UTC)

Background

WP:POLEND states:

1. Lists of endorsements should only include endorsements by notable people.
2. Lists of endorsements should only include endorsements which have been covered by reliable independent sources.
3. Lists of endorsements should only include endorsements which are specifically articulated as "endorsements".

This was adopted after a community-wide RfC and is an obvious extension of WP:BLP given the potential impact of an erroneous claim of endorsement of one candidate or another.

Opinions (Political endorsements: Fox)

• Looks like a yes, on its face. Guy ( help! - typo?) 13:38, 9 October 2020 (UTC)
• Context-dependent (not something we necessarily need a general yes/no for) - "no consensus" for Fox on politics (assuming we're not talking about the talk shows), which is why it's an open question (i.e. not generally reliable, not unreliable), so best to handle on a case-by-case basis. If some major national figure said something that other sources aren't considering an endorsement but Fox is, that might be cause for concern. On the other hand, if Fox is the only one to mention that some state senator made an endorsement and it seems more or less uncontroversial, I wouldn't see a problem with that (assuming the endorsement met the other criteria). — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 02:37, 10 October 2020 (UTC)
• Context-dependent. I should point out Fox News is not considered dubious for politics; rather there is no consensus on whether it is or isn't reliable in that subject area. That means we need to assess such reporting on a case-by-case basis following the guidance from WP:NEWSORG. -- Calidum 13:52, 13 October 2020 (UTC)
• Yes on the presumption we are talking likely a printed news story from the news/official op-ed side of Fox News that is similar to a NYtimes official endorsement, then it should fine. -- Masem ( t) 15:43, 13 October 2020 (UTC)

I think you misread the question. It's not about whether Fox's endorsements are reliable, but whether Fox is a reliable source for saying "Governor X endorsed Candidate Y for Senate." (The RFC is also worded in a confusing way, where a "yes" !vote means Fox is not reliable and a "no" !vote means it is reliable.) -- Calidum 15:56, 13 October 2020 (UTC)

• Only for itself and for professional politicians - Fox News should only be used as a source for the endorsements of Fox News and for professional politicians. That means elected office holders and such like not 'leaders of antifa' or 'very definatly a well respected political scientist'. El komodos drago ( talk to me) 08:46, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
• Yes The fact of an endorsement is typically not a contentious claim. So I wouldn't see any problem with using Fox for that. Adoring nanny ( talk) 23:30, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
• Does "yes" mean "yes prevent use of Fox" or "yes Fox is OK"? Le v!v ich 21:06, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

Threaded discussion (Political endorsements: Fox)

• Are we talking about Fox itself endorsing a candidate... or Fox reporting that someone else has endorsed a candidate? In the first situation, ABOUTSELF applies... in the second, we probably need a second source for confirmation. Blueboar ( talk) 13:47, 9 October 2020 (UTC)
• One issue with endorsements is what exactly constitutes an endorsement. Sometimes someone will say something positive about a political candidate. When is that an endorsement? I don't think Fox fabricates quotes, but if at all dubious two sources are definitely needed. ( t · c) buidhe 14:09, 9 October 2020 (UTC)

  @ Buidhe:, as mentioned in the background section, the guideline requires that endorsements in list of articles must be 'specifically articulated as "endorsements".' So simply saying something positive is not enough. While I haven't been involved in these matters, I assume it means even if New York Times and the Washington Post say person A endorsed person B, but all person A actually said is "I met person B and they seemed a great person", it would be rejected. (I don't think this is ever likely to happen, but I couldn't be bothered coming up with a more realistic example.) Nil Einne ( talk) 09:39, 13 October 2020 (UTC)

• I agree with Blueboar. If its an endorsement by Fox itself they’re reliable, if its a third party endorsement then a better source needs to be found. Horse Eye's Back ( talk) 15:12, 9 October 2020 (UTC)
• I'm in agreement with Buidhe here. I would at worst consider this on a case by case basis. Fox was not seen as outright unreliable with respect to politics. The things that readers identified as problematic were related to, IIRC, reporting what people saw as conspiracy theories or downplaying/questioning concerns other news agencies raised (directly or indirectly). I don't recall anything remotely like false claims of endorsements. I think this is a case where we need to assume reliable until some case is made why it isn't. If Fox quotes Mrs Doe saying she will vote for Senator Jane, are we seriously going to argue that Fox made up the quote? Certainly if other sources cover Mrs Doe's comments we have no issue. But, perhaps Mrs Doe isn't someone the other news sources are paying much attention to. Fox might be the only news source that covered this. If Mrs Doe is widely covered then we could argue this is UNDUE content. However, if Mrs Doe is someone with more limited coverage then Fox, a major national news site, reporting her endorsement adds significant weight to including this content in an article. Fox isn't deprecated. Absent evidence that the endorsement should be questioned (for example it is clearly questionable to interpret the provided quote/info as an endorsement or other sources refute the claim) it should be treated as reliable. Springee ( talk) 15:49, 9 October 2020 (UTC)

If Fox (or CNN, or NYT etc) is the ONLY outlet to mention Mrs. Doe’s endorsement of Senator Jane, I have to question whether Mrs. Doe’s endorsement is worth mentioning. Blueboar ( talk) 18:00, 9 October 2020 (UTC)

If we are talking about a well known Mrs Doe or Senator Jane I would agree. However, if one or both are more obscure there may not be as many sources covering them period. Perhaps this is a state or municipal election that Fox News (not a local affiliate) happens to take an interest in.

I think our issue is probably going to be with framing (thats where the Fox News “lies” tend to come in), the issue isnt going to be that "X endorsed Y" its going to be that "X, a radical leftist, endorsed Y” when X is neither radical or a leftist. Horse Eye's Back ( talk) 15:58, 9 October 2020 (UTC)

Remember that Fox News was taken to court for fabrication, and their defense was that nobody would reasonably accept them as a trustworthy source - and the court accepted this. That alone makes them seriously questionable for WP:BLP purposes, which require high quality sources - not yellow-rated ones - David Gerard ( talk) 23:39, 9 October 2020 (UTC)

Being clever enough to work you work out of a case does not mean you are not a reliable source. Emir of Wikipedia ( talk) 11:28, 10 October 2020 (UTC)

According to a recent US Court decision, it's perfectly legal to ban someone from Wikipedia for any reason, including "no reason at all". Sometimes it takes the law to reveal these shocking truths to the world. If someone ever challenges Wikipedia's right to call itself an "encyclopedia", you can imagine they would seek to mount a defence similar to Fox. Bosnian Curry Wurst ( talk) 14:14, 10 October 2020 (UTC)

And Wikipedia is not an RS, so your point is? Slatersteven ( talk) 14:24, 10 October 2020 (UTC)

That "encyclopedia" is now as much of a meaningless word as "news channel" when it comes to implied trust. In American law anyway. I mean, you clearly already know what the true implications of "Wikipedia is not an RS" are, namely that nobody bringing a court action on the basis Wikipedia is an encyclopedia has a chance in hell of succeeding, but I am guessing the same was known about "We are not a news channel" by the insiders at Fox. Bosnian Curry Wurst ( talk) 15:19, 10 October 2020 (UTC)

I fail to see what this has to do with Fox's reliability. But you do so fair enough, it does not sway me. Slatersteven ( talk) 15:23, 10 October 2020 (UTC)

• The question is unclear, but news articles on Fox News are perfectly fine for sourcing facts like who endorsed which political candidate, if that's what's being asked. Is there a specific claimed political endorsement you're asking about? - Thucydides411 ( talk) 16:00, 9 October 2020 (UTC)
• Fox is marked on WP:RSPas of questionable reliability for politics: "There is no consensus on the reliability of Fox News's coverage of politics and science. Use Fox News with caution to verify contentious claims." This suggests it would not be a good single source for what is, in fact, a claim about a living person - David Gerard ( talk) 18:33, 9 October 2020 (UTC)
  • I feel this has more to do with cases where they might claim, for example, "Newly released documents prove Clinton-Obama invented Russia story to discredit President Elect Trump". The specific facts of the newly released documents would be reliably reported but the conclusion drawn from those documents would be too much. The caution with an endorsement would come into play if the endorsement was not clear. However, if my Mrs Doe says, "I endorse X" in an interview with Fox we should treat that as a RS. Springee ( talk) 18:41, 9 October 2020 (UTC)
  • It is a RS. Some people politically disagree with it doesn't magically make it unreliable. Emir of Wikipedia ( talk) 21:21, 9 October 2020 (UTC)
    • For politics, it specifically is not, per RFC - David Gerard ( talk) 23:39, 9 October 2020 (UTC)
      • I don't take that RfC to mean it's not reliable for politics (category 3 from the RfC IIRC). Instead I took that to be category 2 which was use with caution. So if the claim is extraordinary or contradicted by others don't use it. However, if the claim is reasonable on its face and not contradicted by other sources then it could be used. It was not a ban on the use of Fox News for any political reporting. Springee ( talk) 03:27, 10 October 2020 (UTC)

        I took it that way too but for some reason Mx Gerard always seems to find a way of disagreeing with me. Emir of Wikipedia ( talk) 11:29, 10 October 2020 (UTC)

• Is there some background I'm missing here? I'm familiar with the previous RFC on Fox News as a whole, but surely there is a reason this was brought up? -- Calidum 19:37, 9 October 2020 (UTC)

  It is specifically referring to political endorsements, but I agreed it did not need to go to a RfC yet. Emir of Wikipedia ( talk) 21:22, 9 October 2020 (UTC)

• They would be RS for what they say, not for it being true. So (per about self) this would be OK, after all I doubt even fox would lie about who they support. Slatersteven ( talk) 13:30, 10 October 2020 (UTC)
• Does this even matter? Surely endorsements of this kind are of themselves public statements and should be a prime use of self-published material; i.e. the statements of endorsement themselves. Like the criterion of embarrassment, it's something that can't be lied about by involved parties. GPinkerton ( talk) 21:10, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

  @ GPinkerton: you may want to read/reread the background. For "lists of" articles, the community has established certain requirements, and one of those is that the endorsement must be covered in covered by "reliable independent sources". Self publication is explicitly not enough. See Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 164#RfC on inclusion criteria for lists of political endorsements and Wikipedia:Political endorsements for details. Although I didn't participate, if you read the RfC one of the issues supports for this criterion raised is significance i.e. if it matters, some RS should have noticed and reported on it. I wonder if this is part of the background User:Calidum is missing. (Apologies if I'm mistaken.) Does Fox News, a source which some call into question on political matters, establish that significance in the absence of other RS? Note that none of this applies to non "list of" articles, but I assume from the background above that the concern here is over such articles. Nil Einne ( talk) 09:35, 13 October 2020 (UTC)

  I'm familiar with the background, not that particular RFC you linked to, which seems to just reaffirm existing best practices. My question is why have this discussion now. Is there some ongoing dispute where Fox News claims one politician endorsed another when that person did not? -- Calidum 13:48, 13 October 2020 (UTC)

  Apologies then I don't know more. I would note though that per the RfC, it doesn't matter whether there is any dispute over someone endorsing someone. If it's not covered in a reliable independent source it shouldn't be in a list of article, period. Everyone on Wikipedia can agree that the endorsement happened, and everyone should agree until the RfC is overturned, it shouldn't be in a list of endorsements article. Nil Einne ( talk) 15:11, 13 October 2020 (UTC)

  I looked a bit more and I think this is the context [105] & [106]. While editing List of Donald Trump 2020 presidential campaign endorsements#References to clean up clear problems, Guy noticed 36 endorsements are cited to this article [107] along with about 11 to other Fox News articles. I did not check how many of these are exclusively sourced to Fox News but at least one was. I suspect most of these can be sourced to other reliable independent sources but whether all can, I don't think we will know until someone tries. As I mentioned, if Fox News isn't a reliable independent source for political endorsements, then they don't belong in that article. There may be no dispute that there has been an endorsement, or that Fox News is generally accurate on endorsements but it doesn't matter, we need a reliable independent source. I have no current opinion on the suitability of Fox News as an RS for political endorsements, but can understand why the question arose in User:JzG's mind. Nil Einne ( talk) 15:31, 13 October 2020 (UTC)

  Thank you, that's what I was looking for. -- Calidum 15:57, 13 October 2020 (UTC)

• The Astana Times was described by The Diplomat as a publication founded by a public relations firm at the behest of the Kazakh government ( source)

• EU Reporter seems to have a pro-Kazakh editorial bent and close ties to the Kazakh embassy in Belgium. (Sample articles: [108] [109] [110])

• Edgekz.com is run by the same PR company that runs The Astana Times. ( PR Agency's website)

Would other editors agree that we should not use these sources to describe Kazakhstan's human rights and environmental record? – MJL  ‐Talk‐ ^☖ 22:41, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

• I agree: they're not editorially independent from the Kazakh govt. If we're going to copy PR it should be attributed and not cited to fishy whitewashed sources at the bare minimum. ( t · c) buidhe 00:37, 16 October 2020 (UTC)
• Certainly not, the EU Reporter might have some independence but otherwise none of these should be used to describe human rights or environmental record of Kazakhstan. Tayi Arajakate _Talk 02:01, 16 October 2020 (UTC)

Is theaerodrome.com/ a reliable source? Context: this is in use on Friedrich Ritter von Röth. Rationale provided upon request by GA nominator was It is run by the very same authors who write authoritative aviation history books for Grub Street and Osprey Publishing. I doubt they tell the truth in print and lie on the website. I'm inclined to agree, but would appreciate a second opinion. Eddie891 ^Talk _Work 02:13, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

Eddie891, see Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_314#theaerodrome.com ( t · c) buidhe 02:24, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

Thanks buidhe! *mumbles* the one time I don't bother to check the RSN archives... Eddie891 ^Talk _Work 02:48, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

Worth having a productive discussion about these sources; the only meaningful thread I've found on RSN barely touched on the issue and mostly glanced off into irrelevance so it'd be nice to go back and have a more productive look. My main concern is the use of these publications:

• Skeptic (U.S. magazine)
• The Skeptic (UK magazine)
• Skeptical Inquirer

These sources are used throughout Wikipedia. The publications' wikipedia articles are heavily reliant on primary sourcing (which should hopefully be addressed at some point, but that's not neither here nor there), and are pretty terrible in terms of suggesting what makes them reliable.

The Skeptical Inquirer says they do some review of published work, but that it's primarily up to authors, which isn't a good sign. [111] The UK Sceptic used to say allows people to post blog posts, which means it seems like it would need to be evaluated on a case by case basis per WP:SPS [112] (the language is now gone on their current page, but doesn't really speak to how the blogs are run at all.) The US Skeptic actually has a proper masthead, but doesn't say what its editorial board actually does, and doesn't mention its review process at all. [113] (As a side note none of these publications actually pay contributors, which may or may not affect quality of submissions or editing but is worth calling out as a general rule.) None of these publications as far as I can tell are included in a rigorous citation index. My judgement at present would be that they are at best highly situational and probably need justification on a case-by-case basis per SPS based on who is writing them, as there are skeptics related to or attached to the magazines that have been quoted or profiled more extensively by publications such as the NYT, et al. Thoughts? Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^talk 16:29, 9 October 2020 (UTC)

Can just anyone write articles for them, could I? Slatersteven ( talk) 13:32, 10 October 2020 (UTC)

If you wanted. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^talk 20:40, 10 October 2020 (UTC)

Slatersteven, anyone can submit an article, but it won't get published without review. The Skeptic (the UK one) has recently changed hands and is edited by Marsh, latterly projects director of the Good Thinking Society and one of the best known and most intellectually honest skeptics in the UK if not the world. Skeptical Inquirer also has a high reputation, and is under the umbrella of CSI, the foremost skeptical organisation in the world. Skeptic is edited by Michael Shermer, whose star has been somewhat tarnished of latee, but nonetheless has a solid reputation. Guy ( help! - typo?) 21:25, 11 October 2020 (UTC)

That is true of any publication. Slatersteven ( talk) 12:18, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

• All three are reliable for investigation of questionable medical, paranormal and scientific claims, especially anything to do with cryptids, UFOs or the David Icke World Of Batshit. Basically if it's on Natural News, InfoWars or whale.to, then these are reliable sources for the reality-based perspective. Guy ( help! - typo?) 21:27, 11 October 2020 (UTC)

when you say, "all are reliable for the reality-based perspective", this means they are not reliable for describing the world view and arguments from the perspective of the proponents of these doctrines. We do not describe the doctrines of one group by the opinions of its enemies, regardless of which is clearly in the right.. The skeptical sources will naturally emphasize those views which they can most easily refute--which often means they will emphasise the most nonsensical. A clever enough writer can describe anything by ingenious exaggeration to make it appear ridiculous. DGG ( talk ) 22:25, 13 October 2020 (UTC)

Of course we allow supposed "enemies" to describe the doctorines of others. We allow feminist experts to explain the doctrines of the mens rights movement, we allow jewish professors to explain the doctrines of neo-nazis, we allow liberal economists to explain the doctrines of supply-siders,.... We do all of this because, yes, sometimes one side is right and the other one wrong and real neutrality means acknowleding that fact. IF you have evidence that these paticular sources are using exageration then that would go toward there reliabiltiy but otherwise you comment is to general to be useful in this discussion. AlmostFrancis ( talk) 16:17, 16 October 2020 (UTC)

I don't spend my life at RSN, and probably like a number of other editors the first point at which I realise something has got depreciated is with a change to an article on my watchlist. In this case this edit on the MGWR on Sir Ralph Smith Cusack altering me to WP:DEPS and a bit of deft searching will find it on WP:RSP, though not under 'T' (Its under a bundle at 'P' ... its quite easy to find if one know the old ctrl+F trick). The discussion was at a title which did not initially encompass Thepeerage.com; it being a third source added subsequenctly with less prominence; leading to possible inherited tainting from the other two sites. The RFC, see   2020, had some subtantial WP:VAGUEWAVE anti self published source feeling that is not always backed by Wikipedia:Identifying and using self-published works. WP:SPS and WP:BLPSPS seem to effectively bar the use for BLPs, so use at e.g. Jeremy Hosking is likely a problem - however that does not cover the case for the deceased biographies. The RFC was non-admin closed and had other irregularites including an unsigned comment (by JzG ), hints of some possible "antii-peerage" bias rather than concentrating on the source. The source compiler, a Darryl Lundy, has come to the attention of RSN on several occasions before, per [114]. There seems to be little doubt Darryl Lundy appears to do diligent checking and generally seems to cite his sources (usually Burks etc) and be open to notification of errors. Perhaps "unreliable" in Wikipedia speak but probably "unreliable" in real world speak. There is usually options of replacing the theppeerage.com with the cite reference or using WP:SAYWHEREYOUREADIT however there is really danger here of people simply replacing thepeerage.com with the underlying source without checking the underlying source. While the closure of the RFC may be technically correct and allows Wikipedian to smugly dismiss Darryl theppeerage.com as "unreliable" in Wikipedia world at Midland Great Western Railway seems almost slanderous at first reading. Djm-leighpark ( talk) 14:11, 12 October 2020 (UTC) Djm-leighpark ( talk) 14:45, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

SPS does not only apply to BLP's. If people do not check a source then they should not be adding it. Allowing a dubious source is not a solution to that. Slatersteven ( talk) 14:14, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

The Peerage isn't only a SPS its a low quality SPS, shocking that anyone would have tried to use that garbage source in the fist place. Lundy is a self promoting non-academic, nothing they have to say is reliable. Horse Eye's Back ( talk) 14:36, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

@ Horse Eye's Back I am somewhat concerned that may be taken as a personal attack. Djm-leighpark ( talk) 14:51, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

@ Djm-leighpark: Is Lundy an editor here? Please spell out for me the nature of this WP:personal attack if it concerns you so much. Horse Eye's Back ( talk) 15:03, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

@ Horse Eye's Back: Concerns me enough to raise a report at ANI. Djm-leighpark ( talk) 20:46, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

Yes Djm-leighpark, I noticed... You did place a template on my talk page after all as well as tag me in the post itself. This third notification is a bit much. Horse Eye's Back ( talk) 20:49, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

It might be a BLP violation, which applies to all pages. Slatersteven ( talk) 15:07, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

The “kook” part might be depending on how its interpreted, I meant it in the “harmless kook” way not the “dangerous kook” way. Everything else is objectively true and demonstrable. If you think “kook” goes too far in describing this author then I can strike it. Horse Eye's Back ( talk) 15:11, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

"kook with an obsession for self promotion" GOES TO FAR. Slatersteven ( talk) 15:14, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

Would you accept self promoting non-academic? Horse Eye's Back ( talk) 15:20, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

Not really, "non-expert" is all you need to say. Slatersteven ( talk) 15:24, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

I think hobbyist is the only term that would be technically supported by a source (although non-expert or non-academic both seem reasonable given "or any training in historical methods"), [115] although there aren’t many that aren’t published by Lundy (hence the self promotional part). Horse Eye's Back ( talk) 15:31, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

Whether or not a SPS is self promoting is important as it would perhaps preclude the use of the source even for WP:ABOUTSELF. Horse Eye's Back ( talk) 15:33, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

As RSP indicates, thepeerage.com has been discussed numerous times oves the years, the main issue is that it is just some guys website, and is no different than that say of a railfan, we should be using the sources that he is using, rather than thepeerage itself. Nothing indicates that lundy qualifies as an subject-matter expert according to wikipedia guidelines. Hemiauchenia ( talk) 16:33, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

But key points of those discussions were not brought to the RFC; at least in part due to the bundling. As far as I can tell thepeerage.com typically provides good citing of the sources used which is really useful. Self publichsed sources are able to be used BLP's per WP:BLPSPS however the thepeerage.com judicious use of citations means it possible to be used in non-BLP situations where only WP:V is required. A major problem with depreciating thepeerage.com is people will simply look at the citation it uses and provide that without actually looking it up, per WP:SAYWHEREYOUREADIT. The fact that it isn't even indexing properly on WP:RSP at present nor advice given on the correct way to use the sources it cites while perhaps technically ok is not really great for editors visiting WP:RSP ... its not leading them naturally into best practice. Djm-leighpark ( talk) 21:49, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

"...unless written or published by the subject of the article.", so we can use peerage.com for information about Lundy, but no one else. Slatersteven ( talk) 10:25, 13 October 2020 (UTC)

Djm-leighpark, there were instances of cites to Lundy tagged with a comment to cite the original, that had been in place for 8 years or more, and nobody fixed it.

There's evidence in {{ sps}} / {{ better source}} tags that people have been identifying Lundy as unreliable for at least a dozen years. Nobody fixed it.

The only tag that routinely gets fixed is {{ cn}}. Guy ( help! - typo?) 11:40, 13 October 2020 (UTC)

yep. I think we've proven by doing the test that anything other than removing the bad cite and replacing it with a {{ cn}} basically doesn't work to get a bad cite fixed - David Gerard ( talk) 12:40, 13 October 2020 (UTC)

With every damn deprecated or dodgy source. It is a waster of time tagging them. Slatersteven ( talk) 12:42, 13 October 2020 (UTC)

Its due diligence and best practice. Unfortunately it can be a waste of others time if its not tagged; and the time taken to fix constructively can take even more of one's life. Djm-leighpark ( talk) 17:11, 13 October 2020 (UTC)

So we tag it, and site there as it is all the time for years tagged until its finally removed, or we stop waiting time and just remove it. Sorry but timer and again this is the case, I myself removed tagged uses of depreciated sources where it has sat there for years. Sorry its now down to those who want this material to make the effort, we tried it your way and nothing was done. Slatersteven ( talk) 09:31, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

Are there editors here who don't know ctrl-F? Anyway, I don't see any reason to re-litigate the multiple discussions thepeerage.com has spawned: it's clearly an SPS by a non-expert, there's nothing more to say on the matter. JoelleJay ( talk) 02:27, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

If ctrl+F has to be used then its better to get rid of the index as the index on WP:RSP is misleading. And this isn't just for the benefit of editors, it can also be potentiallly traced in by readers (and a report 8 years ago claimed only 1 in 10 knew the ctrl-F shortcut). On at least one mobile web browserI use ctrl+F does't exist (though there is "find on page" from a dropdown menu. Actually the index on WP:RSP doesn't seem to be present on my phone browser, but I'm known for my blindness and was luddite about smartphones under I needed to scan by QR to go pray in the park and programming by 80 column Punched card more my thing. Most will likely search the table via the sort order which likely was never designed for multiple sources. The whole things not the greatest UX design but the first column wasn't likely though of to cater for bundled discussions. Djm-leighpark ( talk) 04:32, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

The question as to whether Lundy is an expert is actually far from clear. His band of expertise may be narrow in linking names to cited content in other publications; but within that scope he seems generally accurate. Google scholar shows citations for "thepeerage.com"; many will likeky be predatory journals, some I believe are not. In all events the bundling here is concern both in the handling of hte end result and perhaps even the credibility of the processes. Djm-leighpark ( talk) 05:26, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

Its "recognised expert", in other words other RS use him as a goto, he is widely published or has won awards. Its does ont mean "is not always wrong". Slatersteven ( talk) 09:27, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

Google scholar is beginning to show recognition of use of thepeerage.com and royalark.net; however many such; but I think not all; will be predatory journals. Even if depreciated thepeerage.com seems to finely define it sources making alternative sourcing of facts relatively .... it is a pity the money spent on book digitisation and the open library does not seem to extend to these sources ... some may have online access ... and perhaps more importantly volunteer time to resolve. royalark.net indicates its sources but these are wider and more difficult to place 1 to 1 against facts. The absolute minimum is the sources should not be bundled in the WP:RSP table to allow the indexing to work smoothly ... and the bundling simply allows cross tainting and trashing of sources. Djm-leighpark ( talk) 10:08, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

As far as I now only sources listed at RSP are counted as being on the RSP list, not sources they use. So no sources are not "bundled in" with peerage.com, they are judged on their own merits. Nor are sources required to be online. Slatersteven ( talk) 13:12, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

I think their complaint is that thepeerage.com, royalark.net, etc. were all handled by the same RfC and so are all in the same Perennial Sources listing, which means their alphabetization is also bundled. I agree that this is annoying—each listing ideally should show up as an individual alphabetized entry with at least a "see [bundled entry]" instruction. I can't really parse their argument for using Lundy, though. JoelleJay ( talk) 22:51, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

Ahh, if that is the case I agree, separate them in the RSP list. Slatersteven ( talk) 11:28, 16 October 2020 (UTC)

@ Slatersteven thankyou for agreeing the bundling in the RSP list source column should be unbundled. Given my current intake of stout I will now recuse from this discussion as I am inclined to use language I learnt to be necessary to request a pony to reverse a haycart shifter under a cock of hay and per the your contributions on my talk page such comments would likely be inappropriate. Thankyou. Djm-leighpark ( talk) 21:59, 16 October 2020 (UTC)

Hi guys I'm new to all this but I need a little assistant, I was editing the BROS the time page and used article from magazine published 17-9-1990 in relation to article discussing the success of bros two studio albums in the article its states that bros sold over 16 million albums with just 2 studio albums this being PUSH and the time, the article cites the PUSH was CBS bestselling debut album in the history of the record label, then can also been found on several blogs, site and media publication.

the magazine was published by Art Music and editor's were Anthony George, Katie Watkins, Marvin Jackson, Stephen Miller, the magazine was INDEPENDANT magazine such as those Smash Hit's and had know association with bros, their management. now I was editing the page adding the sales published in the article and was some targeted by two editor who reverted edits but could not provide any evidence to why they disproved the edit. i have been told numerous things, editors accepting the edit and others reverting the edit with valid explanation or help in away. I found 5 different sources all stating the same below are couple of links

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1b/Bros_article_1990.jpg permission granted https://www.discogs.com/artist/81613-Bros/images https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=1233382783669521&set=p.1233382783669521&__cft__[0]=AZVHZ6hp-6VfDz95oBjmDRfEKqMcFS4QOk9FKaXfKr5qbz4S3QN1bZib4VqDaAA06jKJCemLBt1b9BJg-agkDWqMn2HeJO_7XZM7GrUb97Slk4UWFjvSAl6k20vmh6kH3bCOckEIvcnjhVxWO3l5kdxFMXdFBjOxcMUMq4tbEXpayPuXM08jztTRe8qCMYn9O5wXJTV6Vxoqc1rtoIyGnUWrsU_eWDe-l9Vl77lPMPhGAQ&__tn__=EH-y-R http://www.brosusic.co.uk — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:C7D:3136:4500:ED89:CF30:324A:32D ( talk)

Not sure any of those are RS. Slatersteven ( talk) 14:05, 20 October 2020 (UTC)

Few things for reference, article The Time (Bros album) where I suggest having a look at both the edits and talk page. Also IP seems to WP:QUACK looking at this amazing list of socks. At least they now appear to be trying to get consensus but think when advised what they may not like to hear, won't listen to it. NZFC ^{(talk) (cont)} 14:57, 20 October 2020 (UTC)

the question is are magazine article sources that can be used on wiki is very simple after checking WR.PS answer yes and it's not up to uploaded editor to disprove its edits but the editor who can disprove the source. this how people win court cases the defendant but disprove the claimant case if they can't the source show be allowed.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:C7D:3136:4500:ED89:CF30:324A:32D ( talk)

Sometimes yes, sometimes no. It depends on the magazine. Slatersteven ( talk) 16:20, 20 October 2020 (UTC)

@ Slatersteven: exactly, and this is the point the OP will not accept. The Facebook upload above comes from the Bros Link fanzine produced at the time – you can see a copy here on a fan website which I am sure is the OP's own website... scroll down to the bottom of the linked webpage to see the page in question. If you look through other copies of the fanzine you can see it has no credited authors, no editorial team (apart from the chief editor who used the pseudonym "Julie Juiceheart"), and is simply a fanzine produced for devoted fans of the group, with a heavy bias towards showing them in a good light, and fails WP:SPS. It clearly isn't independent in the sense of being an impartial source about the group, and therefore any claims they make about sales figures will also not be impartial. Richard3120 ( talk) 22:12, 20 October 2020 (UTC)

Note: Editor has been banned for socking, and the IP accounts used, including this one, have been blocked for three months. Richard3120 ( talk) 13:20, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

Have there been prior discussions of this site? My own opinion is that the information is unreliable unless the author of a particular piece is known asan expert, and that it's interviews exists for the purpose of PR. DGG ( talk ) 05:21, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

This site is one of the many new media outlets (disclaimer: I actually used to read it a lot a while back). I guess the key question is what editorial oversight they have, and what distinguishes them from blogs... Right now, I consider contnet from that site weakly reliable, with a note that they do have some sponsored/ad content, but I think that is easy to vet out. -- _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 05:25, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

• DGG see Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 174 § Self-published blogs run by Gawker Media, Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 102 § Lifehacker (a third mention is lifehacker.jp, which may be unrelated). I concur with your analysis of the source itself. Guy ( help! - typo?) 16:48, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

  JP is somewhat related. Emir of Wikipedia ( talk) 14:01, 17 October 2020 (UTC)

AS per the advice of Newslinger, I am proposing applying WP:IAR to using the Daily Mail as a source for interviews with the co-signers who are not getting enough media coverage or the opportunity to express their views. In WP:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_255#2nd_RfC:_The_Daily_Mail, the following paragraph said "Some editors suggested that the previous RfC needed to be overturned because there were non-controversial facts which were reported in the Daily Mail and nowhere else. We note that the use of the Daily Mail as a source in such instances, in addition to being allowed explicitly by the previous RfC, would be covered by WP:IAR in any case.". Right now, the Great Barrington Declaration article is in a very bad shape; a reader who reads this article won't get any context about the declaration or why the people who signed the declaration did it, and will have to go elsewhere on the Internet due to the lack of information in the article. In addition to the lack of WP:NPOV, the article in its current status will fit more with the title "Responses to the Great Barrington Declaration" than the current title. Consequently, I feel it is warranted to apply WP:IAR to include more context about the declaration and the reasons the signers/co-signers signed it for. Since many of the co-signers didn't get the chance to appear in main stream media due to the highly politicized nature of the subject, I feel that this is one of the exceptional cases that WP:IAR should apply to WP:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_255#2nd_RfC:_The_Daily_Mail specially that it includes only interviews with co-signers (window for co-signers to express their opinions) not factual information. What do you think? And will it help if I added an introductory statement like "In an interview with the Daily Mail" to warn the reader about the source? Knowledge Contributor0 ( talk) 19:59, 11 October 2020 (UTC) Blocked sock. David Gerard ( talk) 08:13, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

The CheckUser scan in Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Brian K Horton § 11 October 2020 determined that Knowledge Contributor0 was not a sockpuppet of Brian K Horton, so I've unstruck their comments. —  Newslinger  talk 16:13, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

@ Knowledge Contributor0: Quoting from the Daily Heil is not going to reduce politicization; quite the opposite. It's an extremist propaganda outlet with an egregiously poor reputation for fact-checking, accuracy, and misreporting interviews and misquoting interviewees. That, among other reasons, is why it is not allowed. COVID-19 is not a niche topic, and plenty of reliable sources that are not screeching tabloid horrowshows cover the subject at hand. We have no need of words printed on such rags as this. GPinkerton ( talk) 20:17, 11 October 2020 (UTC)

This is not about COVID-19 which I feel it is going this way but it shouldn't. This is about the title of the article which is the declaration, and trying to present information about the context the co-signers signed it for. When better sources are available to get their views, we won't need to quote the daily mail, but until enough media coverage - if it happened - is available I believe that WP:IAR is applicable in this case to provide the reader with the context information. Knowledge Contributor0 ( talk) 20:39, 11 October 2020 (UTC) Blocked sock. David Gerard ( talk) 08:13, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

That's poor reasoning at best, allowing a notoriously unreliable source because we can't find reliable sources. No way, no how. -- Orange Mike | Talk 20:19, 11 October 2020 (UTC)

+1. This is an attempted end run around verifiability, notability, etc. To my mind, not a good exemplar of a WP:IAR situation. Reasonable minds may certainly differ. Cheers. Dumuzid ( talk) 20:21, 11 October 2020 (UTC)

That's why I suggested adding "In an interview with the Daily Mail" to the text to highlight this fact to the reader. Given that some of the co-signers already expressed similar views in other verifiable sources, I see that the main reason that the source was deprecated doesn't apply in this case and the exception mentioned above in the RfC should apply. Applying WP:IAR will add to the quality of the article without compromising much about verifiability. Knowledge Contributor0 ( talk) 20:39, 11 October 2020 (UTC) Blocked sock. David Gerard ( talk) 08:13, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

Just an fyi, this is another brand new account looking to discuss the Daily Mail in as many days, I suspect that this another Brian K Horton sock, though considerably less conspicuous than last time, I am happy to be proven wrong though. Hemiauchenia ( talk) 20:54, 11 October 2020 (UTC)

Knowledge Contributor0, it is hard to think of a worse case for IAR than inclusion of content from a right-wing tabloid that nobody else has seen fit to cover.

Also, a request here citing IAR with your eighth edit is more than a little suspicious. Guy ( help! - typo?) 20:58, 11 October 2020 (UTC)

If the coverage is for the opinions of tens of prominent scientists including a Nobel Prize winner that many main stream media outlets chosen to ignore because the proposal defies the approach favored by the scientists that the media used to regularly quote, then many media outlets may be in direct conflict of interest with the declaration coverage because it undermines public trust in the media outlet's coverage of scientific issues given that the public and governments already acted based on the previously mentioned approach. This situation is kind of a once in lifetime situation that I didn't see before, and that's why I made this proposal to apply the WP:IAR exception to get enough coverage that for apparent reasons many main stream media outlets may be unwilling to cover. I hope that my proposal be evaluated based on its merits not on the person who made it. And after all, it is just a proposal, so if the majority are against it, I would consider it rejected and no harm is done anyway. Knowledge Contributor0 ( talk) 22:57, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

The Daily Mail has been caught fabricating direct quotes and entire interviews multiple times. If the interview is only found in The Daily Mail you have no idea whether or not it actually happened. If it is also in some other source, use that other source. -- Guy Macon ( talk) 21:00, 11 October 2020 (UTC)

I don't dispute that, but given that some of these scientists already mentioned their views in the declaration and in some other media outlets, the chance that the daily mail will fabricate an interview to confirm the declaration view is negligible given that it will make more sense to make the actual interview than to fabricate it. Knowledge Contributor0 ( talk) 22:57, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

To be fair, it likely shouldn't have its own article. I don't see what it's longstanding notability will be anymore than any other think tank declaration made every 2 to 3 weeks. Koncorde ( talk) 21:01, 11 October 2020 (UTC)

A think tank can make any declarations they want and it may go unnoticed. But tens of scientists including Nobel Prize winner declaring a new public policy proposal related to the field they are specialized in may not go unnoticed. For this declaration to be dismissed, it must have been dismissed in collective systematic reviews as per WP:RS/AC, otherwise Wikipedia editors will be making personal elections that is not theirs to make. Knowledge Contributor0 ( talk) 22:57, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

Lots of words, very little meaning. RS/AC is irrelevant - this is not a question of whether their statement is or is not consensus and whether it is "Academic" is debateable, it's a statement rather than an academic point of view being presented even if the people at the bottom are academics with a background.

The question is it significant enough outside of its own primary source nature to warrant an article that seems to just be there to promote a particular view point (and to do making requests to use the Daily Mail to support it).

Secondly, is the statement in and of itself particularly significant beyond what has already been said / tried by countries such as Sweden?

Thirdly is it treated as a significant / valid POV by other sources (i.e. peer review).

The answer is "not particularly", "not particularly" and "not going to happen as it's just a statement by a think tank paid for by the remaining Koch". Koncorde ( talk) 02:03, 13 October 2020 (UTC)

First, it is an academic view not just a statement. It was published as the editorial of the BMJ in May after the lockdowns were over under the name "Stratified Shielding" ^[1]. About its significance, if WHO thinks it makes a good point ^[2], and the US government met with its scientists ^[3], it is a matter of debate between tens of scientists ^[4], and UK updated its guidance today to shield the vulnerable ^{[5] [6]} after hinting to this few days ago ^[7]; then it looks like it is significant. But the real question is: who decide how significant it is? us as editors or we need an external source? And how do we decide about its significance? If we were able to measure its significance and decided that the article should be deleted because it is not significant, should we remove other Wikipedia articles of less significance?

Second, yes the statement is significant beyond what was applied in Sweden which was the do nothing or education approach, no shielding of any kind was applied to any group in the society. Sweden top epidemiologist Anders Tegnell already expressed his regrets for not doing enough to shield the elderly in nursing homes. ^[8]. But I don't really think that what's new about it is our call to make. We are supposed to be just editors summarizing information for the reader.

Third, yes, and actually peer reviewed studies are already being published on the effectiveness of the approach ^{[9] [10]} and how to identify individuals who should be shielded. ^[11] This again highlights the important point of not passing our scientific judgements to the readers, and instead sticking to Wikipedia spirit of trying to provide comprehensive coverage to the readers with WP:NPOV. Knowledge Contributor0 ( talk) 00:16, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

A public statement asking for mass signatures is not the same as an editorial in the BMJ which is not the same as being an academic statement. Everything after that I stopped reading because if you are misrepresenting right from the first instance I am not trusting anything else you link to as I am going to assume you are going to try and use unrelated sources in the same way. Koncorde ( talk) 00:28, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

You said that whether it is "Academic" or not is debateable, and I wanted to show one reference to their statement being academic by showing it in the editorial of a scientific journal. If that doesn't fit your definition, then please give me an example of an academic statement declaration so that I can check if this declaration fits the definition or not. Knowledge Contributor0 ( talk) 01:29, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

To be clear, you are saying because someone published an editorial in the BMJ that anyone sharing that POV (unclear, original research) is therefore publishing an academic source per RS/AC. After the fact you are backfilling the things associated with that viewpoint that may or may not have happened as a result of the BMJ editorial, or a.n.other study or source.

My point of view is that a statement by academics is not under the purview of RS/AC. It's simple. For example, Academic Consensus states:

A statement that all or most scientists or scholars hold a certain view requires reliable sourcing that directly says that all or most scientists or scholars hold that view. Otherwise, individual opinions should be identified as those of particular, named sources.

I struggle to see how a statement that can be signed by anyone, and has been, could possibly be considered a reliable source other than for those who signed the bit of paper at the top, and certainly should be attributed solely to them and not some broad spectrum of scientists (especially in the absence of any significant scientific content within the letter; which instead just states some broad stroke policy ideas).

Anyone signing what is effectively a glorified petition is subject to scrutiny in any case because it's easily spoofed. Koncorde ( talk) 02:35, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

No, I am saying that it is an academic point of view but I didn't say it is an academic source. I already gave examples of peer-reviewed papers that concluded that focused protection for the vulnerable can reduce the number of the deaths, these are academic sources. I included these only to demonstrate it is not a think tank making a statement which was your argument as to why this declaration shouldn't have an article. So, the statement as you said is a reliable source about the 3 signers/44 co-signers and it is attributed to them not to a think tank. Does it deserve its own article which is your original question? I would say yes given the weight of the signers/co-signers. Knowledge Contributor0 ( talk) 02:23, 16 October 2020 (UTC)

Then that is original research. Does it deserve its own article? Does 3very statement by a think tank deserve an article? There are lots of them. The WHO puts out lots of statements, we don't create an article for each one then opine on who does or doesn't agree with it either. Koncorde ( talk) 02:37, 16 October 2020 (UTC)

No, original research is research paper published without/before peer review, and this declaration is not presenting a research paper for review. There are already peer reviewed papers who talked about the focused protection approach under many names, and this declaration is mainly a statement and petition of what was presented in many other peer-reviewed published papers. So to answer your question, does every statement by a think tank deserve an article? No, not every statement deserves an article because it will depend on the weight of signers/co-signers and the nature of claims they make. If WHO made a declaration petitioning the whole world saying that many people globally will die needlessly, then it will need to have its own article. Tens of top scientists making a declaration that they can save many people from dying, petitioning the world to join them, and governments meeting with them; deserve their own article. Actually if this declaration doesn't deserve its own article, many many articles should be deleted from Wikipedia to avoid double standards. Knowledge Contributor0 ( talk) 03:09, 16 October 2020 (UTC)

For the record, we WP:IAR'd already in the Great_Barrington_Declaration#Authors section, citing an interview in Jacobin and pointing to some editorials the authors had published, some of which i did not see mentioned in other RS. fiveby( zero) 21:05, 11 October 2020 (UTC)

• The DM can't be used for attributed opinions and quotations... because they have been proven to fabricate them. Not for any other reason. ( t · c) buidhe 07:49, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

True, but in this case, it would be easier for Daily Mail to make the real interview than to fabricate, given that some of these scientists already expressed these views before. Knowledge Contributor0 ( talk) 22:57, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

No, per the above - David Gerard ( talk) 08:07, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

If its important RS will have picked it up, if they have not neither should we. The Daily Myth makes up quotes, alters it own historical content. It cannot be trusted. Slatersteven ( talk) 12:59, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

That's the exceptional situation in this case. Many main stream media outlets that represent the RS already promoted an approach favored by the scientists that the media used to regularly quote, the public and governments already acted based on it. It will be very hard for many media outlets to provide coverage of the declaration without undermining public trust in the media outlet's coverage of scientific issues. And that's why I think that the WP:IAR exception should apply in this case. At the very least, Daily Mail doesn't have this conflict of interest in this case and it is in their own benefit to make the actual interview and not fabricate unless they want to sabotage their own goals. Knowledge Contributor0 ( talk) 22:57, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

Given that we're talking content that also falls into the realm of MEDRS (that is, the proposed Declaration appears to have numerous medical experts calling it a Bad Idea (TM)) FRINGE likely applies and we should be wary of necessarily giving too much weight to the rational/science behind the declaration unless those are also backed by MEDRS-type sourcing. Which the DM is clearly not. -- Masem ( t) 16:29, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

There seem to be numerous medical experts on the side of the declaration with even more notable scientific output as well to the point that there is no proof so far that their view is a minority view in the absence of systematic reviews that explain the current landscape. Given the latest attack from WHO on lockdown approach favored by some experts who called the declaration a bad idea, and given that one of the WHO scientists said that the declaration makes a good point ^[12], I don't believe it is up to Wikipedia editors to dismiss the declaration as a fringe scientific view. Knowledge Contributor0 ( talk) 22:57, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

Even if the DM were not banned, it usually violates weight to include information that is only included in one publication. The reasoning is that readers want to know about important aspects of a topic, not unimportant or trivial aspects, and we determine what is significant by the degree of coverage. TFD ( talk) 23:25, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

Actually using the Daily Mail here is balance the weight since the quotes of the critics of the declaration are quote by many media outlets while the signers/co-signers of the declaration don't have much window to express their views. This skew in the media shouldn't be reflected in the article. Given that there are no systematic reviews published to explain the current landscape of theories and hypothesis and their weights (makes sense because COVID-19 is still new), the only option that I see is to provide a balanced view is weighting by the number of scientists which is not possible if some scientists are being ignored in main stream media outlets. The proposal is not quote only Daily Mail, the proposal is to quote daily mail when there is no better source to guarantee balanced weight based on the number of scientists until systematic reviews are available that can guide us towards the right weight. Knowledge Contributor0 ( talk) 00:19, 13 October 2020 (UTC)

Everyone has a bias which is reflected among other things by what information they find most important about a topic. Wikipedia has decided that weight be assigned to information "proportional to its treatment in the body of reliable, published material on the subject." Since in every article editors will disagree with what is most important, some criteria for deciding are necessary. To you, neutrality is achieved by balancing corporate media with the extreme right. But I really think that we would need a change in policy to do that. By the way, in may opinion, IAR means that we should ignore the letter of policy or guidelines when doing so would go against their spirit. That principle is the basis of equity law and is part of accounting standards in the UK. But the spirit of neutrality (which I always thought was misnamed) is reflecting mainstream bias. TFD ( talk) 01:06, 13 October 2020 (UTC)

If spirit of neutrality is reflecting mainstream bias in media coverage of scientists' views, did we apply that when creationism/ID was dominant in media (due to bias) and non-existent in Science? Knowledge Contributor0 ( talk) 01:09, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

If there is "no better source" than the Daily Mail for a particular point-of-view, then that point-of-view is irrelevant and should not be cited in this project. Zaathras ( talk) 01:48, 13 October 2020 (UTC)

So when do you think the WP:IAR exception to the DM mentioned in WP:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_255#2nd_RfC:_The_Daily_Mail should apply? Knowledge Contributor0 ( talk) 01:09, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

I just don't understand why we need to touch the DM here at all. I look through google news hits and I'm seeing a rather healthy (ha) discourse in sources on both sides (more tending to downplay the document obviously) that necessarily the interview with the three behind it isn't adding much, DM or not. This is where my NOT#NEWS soapbox comes out - not that this isn't a notable topic, but think about writing this as what the article will be like in 10 years time, not what is important "now". -- Masem ( t) 15:31, 13 October 2020 (UTC)

If Google decided to censor the website without explanation, then when the news went public they removed the censorship also without explanation, ^{[13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19]} then how do you know that what you see in the search results is not biased given that the search engine already took a side? By the way, the interviews I am referring to are not with the 3 main signers but with some of the co-signers, but it may happen in the future that one of the signers speaks to the Daily Mail and we will have to omit what was said if WP:IAR is not applied. Thinking long term, the article in my opinion will be in a state of continuous development giving the continuous development of events. So the article should summaries everything known about the topic right now, and definitely in 10 years things will be different because knowledge about the subject will be totally different. Imagine how Coronavirus disease 2019 will be in 10 years, and think if you should eliminate anything right now because it may not have value in 10 years. Knowledge Contributor0 ( talk) 01:09, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

You have neglected the conditional clause of IAR, namely If a rule prevents you from improving or maintaining WP, then (and only then) does IAR apply. Adding quotes which may be fabricated and have no reliable source is not an improvement or maintenance of WP. Therefore in this instance IAR does not apply and the rule not to include information sourced to the Daily Mail should be followed. Cambial foliage❧ 12:57, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

That's true if it is fabricated. But as I mentioned above, in this case the Daily Mail has direct interest in publishing the real interview rather than fabricate. Why fabricate if the real interview will say more than you hope for? Knowledge Contributor0 ( talk) 01:09, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

This is a forum for gathering wider opinion of the community, not for individuals to hammer away at the same point endlessly to all who differ. You opened a proposition for discussion, and within 3 days more than ten editors responded firmly in the negative, with barely a flicker of support. You have your answer. Cambial foliage❧ 22:39, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

You are right, I have my answer. But before I conclude and list all arguments made for and against, I want to see if there are any more arguments I can include in the summary. This whole discussion would be pointless, if it doesn't end up with a summary of all arguments raised to save other Wikipedia editors from going into the same discussion again. What do you think? Knowledge Contributor0 ( talk) 02:23, 16 October 2020 (UTC)

Summary

As I believe I waited enough to hear all arguments that can be raised, I think that the result is: almost every user rejected the proposal. For the sake of reference for any future discussion specially about policies, here is a summary of all arguments raised against and for the proposal.
Against:

1. Daily Mail can fabricate the interviews.
2. If no source other than the Daily Mail caught an interview then it may not be worth including in Wikipedia.
3. Wikipedia WP:NPOV means reflecting the bias in main stream media, so anything included in the Daily Mail and not in main stream media shouldn't be included in Wikipedia.

For:

1. Given that the interviewee expressed similar views in other sources, it is in Daily Mail's best interest to make the interview and not to fabricate.
2. If main stream media outlets already took a position claiming that science said something based on the opinions of some quotes scientists, then they can't quote scientists who declare different opinions because it undermines public trust in these media outlets. That's a direct conflict of interest that will prevent main stream media outlets from covering any opposing view to the view they already adopted, but Wikipedia's WP:NPOV shouldn't be affected by this bias in main stream media.
3. At many points in time, the bias in main stream media gave an unbalanced view that was not reflected in verifiable sources about certain subjects e.g. when the public perception of the scientific weight of creationism/ID was different from that reflected in academic sources, when homosexuality was perceived to be a disease … etc. Wikipedia WP:NPOV was never perceived to be aligning to main stream media, and so Daily Mail should be sued as a source when main stream media are biased.

Knowledge Contributor0 ( talk) 22:46, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

Is The Globe Post reliable for this edit? Please note that the content is verified by this source, too. -- Mhhossein ^talk 03:06, 16 October 2020 (UTC)

No. Can't find a correction's policy on their site. Adoring nanny ( talk) 03:09, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

Source: https://www.bestplaces.net/religion/city/oregon/portland
Article: Portland, Oregon
claim "Of the 35.9% of the city's residents who do identify as religious, Roman Catholics make up the largest group, at 15.8%"
The page is fully loaded with ads, does not show the source of data, when the data was gathered or compiled. There was same discussion in 2018 with no comment. Graywalls ( talk) 20:28, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

Looks like a mix of estate agency website and TripAdvisor. Not to be taken seriously. There is the census for these kinds of data. GPinkerton ( talk) 03:12, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

The United States Census doesn't ask about respondents' religion. However, I agree that this particular site (bestplaces.net) doesn't provide enough information about its sourcing to qualify as a reliable source regarding religious demographics. -- Metropolitan90 (talk) 04:05, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

Really? Well I don't see how such data could be collected if not officially, so the origin of these statistics is even more dubious. GPinkerton ( talk) 04:07, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

I came upon this survey by the Group for Analyzing, &c., hereafter Gamaan. Not only are the parts of the pie chart misaligned, it also purports that not more than one third of Iranians are Shia Muslims. I have no genuine hard evidence to back it up, but based on the wealth of other similarly recent sources also provided in this article, I find this survey's results to be totally preposterous.

Another inaccuracy in Gamaan's survey results exists in this document, a segment of which reads:

68% [of respondents] stated that they do not intend to vote in the parliamentary elections (Islamic Consultative Assembly) of March 2020, while 18% said that they will participate in the elections. Approximately 14% said they haven’t decided yet.

The turnout for these elections (which were actually held in February) was 42%. Making the (unreasonable) assumption that the entirety of respondents who said they would participate in the elections in addition to those who said that they had not decided all participated in the election still results in a 10% discrepancy between the statements of respondents to the poll and the actual behavior of Iranians.

Indeed the fact that these surveys are conducted online is a major cause of their unreliability, especially in Iran which is a conservative society resulting in even more left-wing and secular bias among internet users than is found in Western countries. For example, of respondents to the question "Who did you vote for in the 2017 presidential election?", 64% had voted for Hassan Rouhani and 4% had voted for Ebrahim Raisi, despite the actual results of the election being 41% for Rouhani and 28% for Raisi.

Generally I consider that this organisation is an unreliable source and ought not be given as much precedence as it currently is. Beaneater ( talk) 09:43, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

Stats shows that Ahmadinejad was believed to have been voted by the majority too, which many didn't believe, thus resulting in the 2009 Iranian presidential election protests. In a country where there are no basic human rights, why should the elections of all things be genuine? One third of Iranians being Shia Muslim doesn't sound too unrealistic either. If we can use a census by a government where irreligion and other religions are not recognized and may be subject to punishment, then I see no reason why we can't use this. -- HistoryofIran ( talk) 10:51, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

It sounds like a wide margin of error and statistics I would rather not see relied on for statements of fact. Shi'ism being a minority in Iran is on the face of it an extraordinary claim, at least according to the normally inclusive and generous criteria used for counting religious adherents in demographics. GPinkerton ( talk) 12:37, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

• They appear to use the commercial platform QuestionPro [116] to conduct their research, its definitely valuable to the right users but I would refrain from using anything from GAMAAN that hasn’t been published in a peer reviewed journal. Their findings are certainly interesting but they aren’t the sort of hard numbers we could use for say demographics of Iran. Horse Eye's Back ( talk) 15:43, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

Which of the following best describes the reliability of forces-war-records.co.uk?

• Option 1: Generally reliable for factual reporting
• Option 2: Unclear or additional considerations apply
• Option 3: Generally unreliable for factual reporting
• Option 4: Publishes false or fabricated information, and should be deprecated as in the 2017 RfC of the Daily Mail

FDW777 ( talk) 15:18, 17 October 2020 (UTC)

Background (forces-war-records.co.uk)

Briefly discussed at Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 311#forces-war-records.co.uk, however in the course of my cleanup some additional information has come to my attention. There are pages such as Prisoners of War of the Japanese 1939-1945 which do mention using Wikipedia as a reference (scroll all the way down to where it says Some of the material on this page was also partially derived from but without saying what information comes from where, rendering all information on the page worthless. However, in addition to that there are pages such as Unit History: Joint Services Command and Staff College (JSCSC) which was being used on the Cormorant article, and which doesn't mention any references at all. However that page says;

• The college crest features a cormorant (Phalacrocorax carbo), a symbol of all three armed services; Britain’s largest seabird flies, swims on the sea surface and catches its fish underwater, yet builds its nest on dry land (either on cliffs or in riverside trees). The Cormorant was derived from the symbol of the Joint Service Defence College.

Our article Joint Services Command and Staff College says;

• The college crest features a cormorant (Phalacrocorax carbo), a symbol of all three armed services; Britain's largest seabird flies, swims on the sea surface and catches its fish underwater, yet builds its nest on dry land (either on cliffs or in riverside trees). The cormorant was derived from the symbol of the Joint Service Defence College.

Since that demonstrates they are also apparently using Wikipedia as a reference without mentioning it, potentially every single page is worthless. FDW777 ( talk) 15:18, 17 October 2020 (UTC)

Responses (forces-war-records.co.uk)

• Option 3: There is likely to be information on the website that isn't from Wikipedia, such as some of the information on the Unit History: Middlesex Regiment page for example. But it's impossible to separate the good from the bad, and know what's reliable, what's circular referencing, and what's been fact-checked. FDW777 ( talk) 15:18, 17 October 2020 (UTC)
• Option 3: for much the same reasons as FDW777. Slatersteven ( talk) 15:24, 17 October 2020 (UTC)
• Option 3 The fact that they use WP as a source without always noting the fact is not a good sign. No evidence has been presented that it has a reputation for fact-checking or accuracy. ( t · c) buidhe 18:13, 17 October 2020 (UTC)

Discussion (forces-war-records.co.uk)

It may be worth distinguishing between the various sorts of info on the site - 1) The general historical background pieces and unit records hosted on the site - this seems to be mainly what people are talking about using as sources in articles - they don't make it clear where the info has come from. 2) "Historic Documents" hosted on the website - these have not been produced by the website so users will have to evaluate the sources individually. 3) Individual military records hosted by the site - these claim to have been transcribed and compiled by their researchers from various (mainly primary) sources, and seems to be core of their business. Nigel Ish ( talk) 14:05, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

I was expecting a close with some kind of caveat about being able to use the documents they host. I don't have much of an opinion either way on their transcribed records, so I'll let others sort that out. FDW777 ( talk) 16:29, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

The HAF is an unreliable source that has many allegations against its mission of neutrality. Here is a list of articles and references that I would point to, to argue that HAF has a history of bias, notably to Christianity.

https://www.hinduamerican.org https://theintercept.com/2019/09/25/howdy-modi-trump-hindu-nationalism/ https://theintercept.com/2019/01/05/tulsi-gabbard-2020-hindu-nationalist-modi/ http://circulate.it/r/7BUUNlbcRMitBCVM7DqFjo9PMgZKQJlIQfUQdf23YM3rOZbHFzYXkWKbdgFtWj9IAuBulBtWJNS-32yI7dl9_nVnkfs/www.coalitionagainstgenocide.org/press/cag.pr.07apr2014.php (this article speaks to "Hindu American Foundation exposed as foe of human rights and religious freedom") http://www.coalitionagainstgenocide.org/press/cag.pr.22apr2014.php http://www.coalitionagainstgenocide.org/press/cag.pr.22dec2013.php http://www.coalitionagainstgenocide.org/press/cag.pr.06dec2013.php (this article demonstrates the HAF's supremacist ideology through smear campaign against CAG and Indian Muslims — anti-Christian AND anti-Muslim)

This source is being cited on the Gospel For Asia Wikipedia page.

The HAF is cited as a source only for the HAF's opinion, for which they are naturally a reliable source, and the citation is accompanied by a third-party source to indicate that their opinion is worthy of note.The sources that the poster is using to condemn them are from The Intercept, which is noted at WP:RSNP as a biased source, and Coalition Against Genocide, which has its own problematic history noted in its article. -- Nat Gertler ( talk) 18:05, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

It should be removed as WP:UNDUE. Nearly any self-sourced opinion from a pressure group ought to be axed. The independent source does not mention HAF. ( t · c) buidhe 19:11, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

My apologies; I was misremembering the second source there. There are certainly sources that reflect's HAF's anti-GFA stance, if of a somewhat lesser tier. -- Nat Gertler ( talk) 20:12, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

• Perpetual virginity of Mary (  | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
• Dave Armstrong, National Catholic Register
• St. Paul Center
• Dr. Brant Pitre, Distinguished Research Professor of Scripture at The Augustine Institute
• Tim Staples, apologist at Catholic Answers
• "Thanks, but Dave Armstrong isn't a reliable source as defined by Wikipedia - RS for academic articles means someone with academic standing. Brant Pitre is RS, but the rest are not."
• " Here's the policy on scholarly sources - and an article like this is a scholarly article."
• I am curious to know if I read the policy document wrong. How have we defined "scholarly or academic articles" and how many I know when the heightened bar of WP:RS engages for such articles, disqualifying reliable secondary sources as worthless? Is this a situation like WP:MEDRS? Elizium23 ( talk) 06:12, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

None of these looks like anything I would accept as scholarly or worth citing. Indeed, reliance on them would certainly be undue, seeing that they are clearly biased. GPinkerton ( talk) 06:34, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

That is not what I asked. Elizium23 ( talk) 06:34, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

I think this is more of a due weight question. High-quality academic sources carry more weight than other sources that, despite meeting Wikipedia's reliability standards, are less thoroughly researched and vetted than peer-reviewed scholarship. This is most explicitly stated in WP:NPOV § Giving "equal validity" can create a false balance ( WP:VALID), which prioritizes "commonly accepted mainstream scholarship" over other sources to determine the relative prominence of competing views. This does not mean that non-academic sources are automatically excluded when academic sources are available, but it does mean that less reliable sources should have a lesser emphasis if they contradict the consensus of high-quality academic sources. No comment on the specific sources listed here. —  Newslinger  talk 06:45, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

But see: WP:USEBYOTHERS. Encyclopaedic content on theological matters is not usually sourced to devotional websites, denominational journalism, or whatever the "St. Paul Center" is. I'm dubious that Pitre is much needed either. His seems to be a proselytizing private university in Nowheresville and for a subject such as this there really are better sources by more reputable publishers. What standard work on the issue cites Pitre? What reviews has his work generated in academic journals? Who peer-reviews it? GPinkerton ( talk) 06:48, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

An organization's blog would almost certainly not be considered a high-quality academic source. No comment on Pitre. —  Newslinger  talk 07:23, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

Elizium23, you really should have informed me that you were opening this thread. Achar Sva ( talk) 07:26, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

Newslinger, except for WP:NEWSBLOG. Elizium23 ( talk) 07:28, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

Just to clarify, I didn't mean to say that an organization's blog is necessarily unreliable, but only that it is most likely considered less reliable than peer-reviewed scholarship. —  Newslinger  talk 07:35, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

• If academic sources cover a topic, other sources should generally be replaced with scholarly ones. I have no doubt that there are many scholarly sources that discuss the concept of "perpetual virginity of Mary" so whatever can be replaced by scholarly citations should, and if it can't be sourced to scholarship should probably be deleted as UNDUE. ( t · c) buidhe 09:26, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
• What buidhe said. This is a topic that is the subject of a bazillion scholarly articles and books, we really don't need random apologists. Guy ( help! - typo?) 09:02, 15 October 2020 (UTC)
• They don’t look academic in the sense of a textbook or theses, but seems to me that an academic RS is likely not WP:BESTSOURCES in this area, it depends on WP:RSCONTEXT. I’d suggest in the area of religion look for WEIGHT of prominence or mention in other publications as more important - this isn’t a domain where collegiate publications has much relevance. Cheers Markbassett ( talk) 04:11, 20 October 2020 (UTC)
• Generally speaking, the best academic sources (and some of the best sources overall) are highly-cited peer-reviewed mainstream papers published in reputable high-impact journals - usually I would say that ones that summarize the overarching current scholarship on the topic are the best among those (ie. we want to avoid giving undue weight to one shocking paper.) As you get further away from each of those points, reliability decreases - an academic expert published in a non-peer-reviewed source is still an expert, but it doesn't carry quite as much weight; a paper where the author plainly acknowledges that their views are WP:FRINGE shouldn't be given undue weight (especially if they are highly-cited because everyone disagrees with them), and so on. Due to the contentious nature of religion as a topic, combined with the fact that it attracts massive amounts of high-quality academic interest, I would say that this is a topic area where collegiate publications are particularly relevant and where we should avoid giving much weight to non-academic sources - it is simply hard to justify using lower-quality sources when higher-quality ones exist. Apologetics are low-quality WP:PRIMARY sources about what a faith's adherents believe - if they say anything noteworthy than there ought to be an academic source documenting it that we can use to cover it from a more removed perspective. -- Aquillion ( talk) 04:31, 20 October 2020 (UTC)

I am editing a page where some court documents are used as inline citations. I have heard -- but cannot seem to confirm -- whether such court documents can in fact be used as a reference within a wiki page. On the one hand, the document is either a complaint or a response to a complaint, and as such is a document where the two parties don't seem to agree on the facts.... so that would lead me to think lawsuit documents cannot be used. BUT - you sign them under the agreement of truth, so that should stand for something? Also, if a news outlet reports on a story and uses information from court documents, as long as that particular media outlet is reliable, then that could be used, but since it would be just a regurgitation of the court documents, doesn't that lean toward "yes" court documents are considered a valid reference in a wiki page? Help! Thanks in advance. -- 10Sany1? ( talk) 21:56, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

What is it for? It is less tolerated for biography of living people pages. Graywalls ( talk) 21:58, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

What exactly are we talking about? “Court documents” is extremely broad, something like a deposition is going to be a lot less reliable than an official ruling or judgement. Horse Eye's Back ( talk) 22:01, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

Solid primary sources, but not evidence of noteworthiness of a fact. And it also depends what they are, e.g. a judgement is far more weighty than a filing or a deposition. What's the page? This probably depends a lot on context - David Gerard ( talk) 22:17, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

The page appears to be Caroline Casagrande, and the legal case appears to be this one: [117] [118] or possibly this one: [119] -- Guy Macon ( talk) 22:47, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

If it takes specialized knowledge to read it or the interpretation can be subjective, then we can't use it, period. We'd have to leave it to secondary source to make the analysis. Joey_Gibson_(political_activist) See the reference I used for birthday. That's a reasonable way to use it to show an uncontroversial fact, however if the specific document wasn't linked from a news article, it wouldn't be acceptable, because Wikipedia editors should not be relied on to identify the correct record. Graywalls ( talk) 22:57, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

Especially on BLP, intermediate court documents - basically anything not representing the judgement of the court - cannot be used as a source, because for all purposes we have to presume those are self-written sources (filed statements, court transcripts, etc.) and per BLPSPS not appropriate. Judgements from the court are okay, but this should presume the case has already been discussed in secondary sources about the person, and ideally, we should use secondary sources to conclude out the case. I have found, at times, that secondary sources do start to talk about the case but the case is then quietly resolved (perhaps settled, perhaps closed by the judge with no action) and the sources don't pick up on that, and if we have included the start of such cases where the BLP is the defendant or otherwise accused, we should also close the door and cite the court documents showing the case complete if the secondary sources fail to do so. -- Masem ( t) 23:43, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

Court documents should always be treated with care. As other said, documents submitted to the court are all but self published. Even court ruling need to be treated with care. Consider this passage from Gary Schwartz ^[1] talking about the caution that must be taken when viewing court conclusions in Grimshaw_v._Ford_Motor_Co.

For reasons quite beyond the court's control, its opinion must be treated cautiously as a source of actual facts. Because the defendant was appealing a jury verdict in favor of the plaintiffs, the court was under an obligation to view all the evidence in a way most favorable to the plaintiffs and essentially to ignore evidence in the record that might be favorable to the defendant. See id. at 773, 820, 174 Cal. Rptr. at 359, 388. In fact, Ford's basic position at trial-which the court's opinion at no point mentions-was that the approaching car (a Ford Galaxie) had not slowed down at all, and had struck the Gray car at a speed in excess of 50 miles per hour. There was an enormous amount of evidence at trial supporting each of the parties' factual claims as to the Galaxie's closing speed. Had the jury accepted Ford's speed estimate, there would not have been much of an issue of crashworthiness: for the plaintiffs' position throughout trial was that even a state-of-the-art fuel system could not maintain integrity in a 50 mile-per hour collision.

Basically because of the rules and procedures related to a legal case the court's opinions/finding may be narrow or restricted vs what a researcher might conclude. Springee ( talk) 03:49, 20 October 2020 (UTC)

Like other editors have said for a BLP there should be secondary sources. Spudlace ( talk) 04:06, 20 October 2020 (UTC)

Say what you will about the unreliable source, this is excellent: 5 Easy Ways to Spot a B.S. News Story on the Internet -- Guy Macon ( talk) 17:33, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

The "bullshit" story your source complains about that was published by the Daily Mail was also published by the BBC. [120] The University at Albany, SUNY released a press release about the study that the they reported. [121] TFD ( talk) 18:40, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

Most of the claims in the 2012 Daily Mail article are completely missing from the 2002 press release or from the BBC report on the press release. In other words, bullshit.

None of them even give a name of any scientific paper so we can verify the claims. Fortunately, our Gordon G. Gallup page does. here is the actual conclusion of the 2000 paper: [122]

"It is important to acknowledge that these data are preliminary and correlational in nature, and as such are only suggestive. More definitive evidence for antidepressant effects of semen would require more direct manipulation of the presence of semen in the reproductive tract and, ideally, the measurement of seminal components in the recipient’s blood."

A bit different from waht rea read in The Daily Mail, wouldn't you say? - Guy Macon ( talk) 20:48, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

The source was referring to the headline. It says, "Any Time You See a Headline Like..."Semen Is 'Good for Women's Health and Helps Fight Depression'" You Should Read It As ..."Bigfoot Caught Having Sex With Roswell Aliens."" The BBC headline was "Semen 'makes women happy'." The university's press release said, "University at Albany Study: Semen Eases Depression in Women." All the headlines are very similar.

So the claim that bullshit tabloids use shocking headlines while reliable sources don't is itself bullshit. The only different in the case of the Daily Mail is that it puts it on the front page, while the BBC put it in its "Health" section.

TFD ( talk) 21:17, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

• That's why we need subject specific guidelines for science, history, etc.—even reliable news orgs don't always get it right. The story discussed above is already be covered under MEDRS and not usable. ( t · c) buidhe 22:49, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

Guy Macon, oh man. The entire skeptic community is looking at 2020 and shouting "WE FUCKING TOLD YOU ABOUT THIS!" Guy ( help! - typo?) 23:13, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

I agree that newspapers are not reliable sources for medical information, nor are isolated studies. I just find that in this example at least "Five Easy Ways" is using a headline that could have occurred in any reliable news media to discredit tabloids. That does not mean that tabloids are reliable sources, just that "Five Easy Ways" probably is not well thought out. TFD ( talk) 23:35, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

One in five Mail stories is made up? This is a "fundamental truth" now is it? Who even writes such obvious nonsense? -Christine O'Connell (freelance journalist) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Christine O'Connell ( talk • contribs) Blocked sock. David Gerard ( talk) 21:18, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

JackTheJiller, you are honestly so bad at socking, your attempts are so formulaic, maybe be more creative next time? Hemiauchenia ( talk) 19:22, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

Blocked. See Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Brian K Horton/Archive. -- Guy Macon ( talk) 06:51, 20 October 2020 (UTC)

In the RSP list, they're green, just like regular Forbes and no distinction is made between contributors and staff. What is the reliability of non-staff articles on the Intercept like this one used in Proud Boys? That author does not have a publisher issued email address and he was not in the staff roster of the time that story was originally published. Another piece I randomly chose on their website https://theintercept.com/2020/10/19/blacks-for-trump-maurice-symonette-cult/ is authored by someone with a publisher email address and rostered in their current list. Are all pieces on The Intercept treated as reliable or are their contributor pieces similar to WP:FORBESCON ? Graywalls ( talk) 05:35, 20 October 2020 (UTC)

In general, I don't think non-staff contributors are automatically unreliable. Many media outlets regularly publish guest articles, and the reliable articles have undergone the same editorial oversight as staff-written articles. Contributor platforms like those of Forbes.com ( RSP entry) and (formerly) HuffPost ( RSP entry) are outliers because those platforms do not adequately vet content published by non-staff contributors. In 2014, the Columbia Journalism Review covered four publications with contributor platforms, and found that some publications (e.g. The Dallas Morning News) reviewed contributor pieces more thoroughly than others (e.g. Forbes.com). Since The Intercept prefers to accept pitches for articles before reviewing completed articles from contributors, I believe its contributor pieces are more reliable than those of Forbes.com's. —  Newslinger  talk 06:15, 20 October 2020 (UTC)

Is it journalism or is it opinion? That is, did the person who wrote the article do research, perform an investigation, get corroborating evidence, build a case, have the case reviewed by the editorial staff, and have the story published? Or, did they have something on their minds and wrote an eloquent story about what they believed? Guest editorials are still editorials. -- Jayron 32 14:47, 20 October 2020 (UTC)

Distractify is described by The New York Times as "a viral content site that fills Facebook news feeds with feel-good posts built largely on repackaging content from other websites" ( NYT). Crunchbase describes it as "creates and covers what's trending on the internet", and with only 2 "current team members" ( C). SimilarWeb states "specializes in content that sparks conversations around news, entertainment and pop culture" ( SW). Distractify is increasingly being used as a source, including in BLPs (e.g. blp). Should brakes be applied on the use of this website as a "reliable source"? Pyxis Solitary (yak). L not Q. 09:34, 17 October 2020 (UTC)

Is there a widespread dispute about its reliability, or is it just that one new user trying to edit war? I don't know that we need a large consensus discussion here over this self-evidently unreliable source if it isn't a source of widespread controversy at Wikipedia. -- Jayron 32 10:42, 17 October 2020 (UTC)

Also, as an aside, I put extended confirmed protection on the BLP article in question. That seems like a better tool to stop this specific problem than this unnecessary discussion here. -- Jayron 32 10:43, 17 October 2020 (UTC)

At some point a dispute about a source's reliability is bound to arise. This here is the point about Distractify/distractify.com. It is increasingly being used as a reliable source. And this is the reliable sources noticeboard. Pyxis Solitary (yak). L not Q. 06:33, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

Pyxis Solitary, not really, no. We don't have an RSP entry for The Onion either. Guy ( help! - typo?) 11:29, 20 October 2020 (UTC)

Har, har. Comparing a deliberately facetious publication with one that takes itself seriously is night and day. Pyxis Solitary (yak). L not Q. 09:48, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

I Oppose the idea that there are previously-undiscussed sources that we should not discuss. It would have taken less effort to simply reply to Pyxis Solitary with "Agree. this is a self-evidently unreliable source" (which it is). That would have taken 8 words instead of the 47 words used to say that we should not talk about it.

Most discussions on this noticeboard don't result in "a large consensus discussion", Most get one or maybe two responses and die out because nobody disagrees. Then the source is findable when you search the archives. I probably search for a source in the archives 10 times for every time I post here. -- Guy Macon ( talk) 14:27, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

The source is not reliable. Where did you think that I might have said it was? -- Jayron 32 12:48, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

I recently came across a citation on the page Urdu language, a language spoken in South Asia. It is to a grant proposal appearing on the internet: here. There is no indication that the proposal was funded, let alone a publication resulted in a peer-reviewed journal or book. The Principal Investigator (PI) has put other proposals on the internet; in some cases, they are preliminary ones, only a little more detailed than Letters of Intent. ( Most proposals have sections on the broad subject area of the topic being proposed and a review of the previous research. It is such a section that is being appealed to in the citation on Urdu.) The PI seems to be some kind of a digitized font programmer for different language scripts; the statement moreover being appealed to is in the background section on the history of the language and the script (in which the PI is not necessarily an expert). He has all sorts of other proposals on the internet on Soyombo script of Mongolia and Japan, Maithili Script of eastern India, Elymaic Script of Western Iran. I am looking for a clear statement of Wikipedia policy about citing such proposals. I would imagine it would have been spelled out by now. Fowler&fowler «Talk» 18:05, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

PS I did some rummaging which makes this even more perplexing. The cited proposal on Urdu is dated 2007. The author of the proposal is Anshuman Pandey. I found him on this GitHub web page. It says he was a post-doc at Berkeley during the year 2015–16. The Berkeley lab's page says, "Anshuman Pandey is a Post-Doctoral Researcher in the Department of Linguistics. He recently finished his Ph.D in History at the University of Michigan and since 2005 has been developing Unicode standards for scripts of south, south-east, and central Asia." So I checked U of M (History). It says he received his PhD in history in 2014. That means he was a graduate student when he wrote that proposal (in 2007). Fowler&fowler «Talk» 18:19, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

Hard to see how such a dodgy source would be WP:DUE on Urdu, a language which has been extensively studied in peer reviewed sources. ( t · c) buidhe 18:22, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

• Fratelli tutti (  | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
• Taylor Marshall - video podcast
• Taylor Marshall, Catholic apologist
• Veverve and Jzsj

Do Taylor Marshall's academic qualifications suffice to make his podcast reliable for commentary on Pope Francis' document Fratelli tutti? Followup: is he too biased against Francis himself to be reliable in this matter? Elizium23 ( talk) 15:05, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

• For context and the various arguments already proposed, see the conversation we have had on the talk page. Veverve ( talk) 15:15, 19 October 2020 (UTC)
• I would say WP:UNDUE. If he does not publish his assessment anywhere but his own podcast how much due weight does it have? I would say very little, if any, given the large number of RS that have covered the encyclical. ( t · c) buidhe 16:54, 19 October 2020 (UTC)
• I agree, this isn't a RS, this is a DUE issue, I agree with Buidhe and Veverve that Taylor Marshall isn't due weight for the article. Hemiauchenia ( talk) 18:32, 19 October 2020 (UTC)
• Just on principle I don't think any individual blog besides perhaps a theoretical one by Pope Francis would really make the cut here, Marshall’s blog would need to be mentioned by a WP:RS for its inclusion to be due. Horse Eye's Back ( talk) 15:37, 20 October 2020 (UTC)
• Not significant enough. RS on major religions should be found in print not on podcasts and YouTube. Marshall's opinions are important if someone else says so. Otherwise it's just hot air off the internet, anyone can do it. GPinkerton ( talk) 01:44, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

  Okay, this is the response I expected from Wikipedians in general; so thanks. Elizium23 ( talk) 21:08, 21 October 2020 (UTC)