Talk:Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections

RfC: Should the article include material about Felix Sater's communication with Vladimir Putin's aid and related emails to Trump’s lawyer?

Should the article include material about Felix Sater's communication with Vladimir Putin's aid, and Trump's lawyer Michael Cohen in which he wrote "Buddy our boy [Trump] can become President of the USA and we can engineer it. I will get all of Putins team to buy in on this, I will manage this process." and material about Sater's series of emails to Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen?

See above discussion for further background.- MrX 13:26, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

Corrected: added text in blue.- MrX 22:38, 5 September 2017 (UTC)

---

• This is incorrect. Sater sent that email ("Buddy our boy [Trump] can become President of the USA and we can engineer it. I will get all of Putins team to buy in on this, I will manage this process.") to Michael Cohen, Trump's lawyer, not to an aid of Putin. No article I've read discusses any contact Sater might have had with Putin, because the evidence they possess are Cohen's emails. I'd suggest you check the news source and edit this, because right now people are voting on false information. Red Rock Canyon (talk) 23:58, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

Support

Support

• And move to Trump: A Russian agent. Saturnalia0 (talk) 14:43, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

Striking joke vote. Jdcomix (talk) 14:28, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

Is that a joke (and therefore actually an oppose vote)? Not helpful. Fyddlestix (talk) 17:31, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

• Clearly relevant to the subject and needed per WP:DUE.Casprings (talk) 15:12, 31 August 2017 (UTC)
• When the logical connection (an attempt, or at least an offer to use Russian Government officials to -directly or indirectly- aid a US election) is this obvious, and when the sources themselves are explicitly making the connection in their voices (note the use of the plural there), then this is a no brainer. Hell yes, we should include it.^{See comment in "Oppose" subheading} But if we're going to include it now, we need to find sources critical of those making the connection to balance. If we can't wait until we're using hindsight to examine the issue, we can at least try to be as balanced about it as we can. Also, we shouldn't be stating anything in wikivoice unless it's something that both political sides agree on. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 15:27, 31 August 2017 (UTC)
• Support. It is obviously relevant to the topic at hand. Lizzius (talk) 18:31, 31 August 2017 (UTC)
• Support, but Links between Trump associates and Russian officials is a good 2nd choice. ValarianB (talk) 11:37, 1 September 2017 (UTC)
• Support - There is an obvious connection to the 2016 election made by the sources. This material ties in closely with investigation into collusion with Russia by the Trump campaign.- MrX 03:30, 4 September 2017 (UTC)
• Support - obviously relevant and well sourced. Volunteer Marek  04:44, 5 September 2017 (UTC)

• Support, subject to correcting recipient, relevant and neutrally phrased. Links between Trump associates and Russian officials would be a good 2nd choice. As with other political scandals, the character of those surrounding the principal is as relevant as the actions of the principal themselves. Would you buy a used political campaign from this person? Pincrete (talk) 07:26, 5 September 2017 (UTC)
• Support. The sources clearly connect it to Russian interference in the election: "The emails show that, from the earliest months of Mr. Trump’s campaign, some of his associates viewed close ties with Moscow as a political advantage. Those ties are now under investigation by the Justice Department and multiple congressional committees. American intelligence agencies have concluded that the Russian government interfered with the 2016 presidential election to try to help Mr. Trump. Investigators want to know whether anyone on Mr. Trump’s team was part of that process." We have to follow their judgment in terms of focus and weight, which means including things that they cover as relevant to this topic even if some editors personally feel that the papers are making a mistake or exaggerating it. I also don't see how anyone can credibly claim that it's WP:RECENTISM given that the sources are at least a month old; given the level and depth of coverage it received, at this point it clearly deserves at least a sentence or two in the article. --Aquillion (talk) 02:35, 28 September 2017 (UTC)
• Support Documented psy-ops messin' per RS. SPECIFICO talk 02:40, 28 September 2017 (UTC)
• Support If it is sourced, relevant fact, it should be included. TP ✎ ✓ 16:32, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

Oppose

Oppose

• The article scope is alleged Russian interference in the 2016 US elections. Based on current reporting, the Felix Sater story doesn't seem to involve any Russian interference in the US elections. This article isn't a WP:COATRACK for all stories involving the words "Trump," "Russia" and "election." If there is a strong desire to include the Mr. Sater story in this article, I suggest a name change: Trump, Russia, you connect the dots was only half in jest, since it's what some editors seem to desire out of this article. -Thucydides411 (talk) 16:17, 31 August 2017 (UTC)
• I agree with Thucydides411. The scope here is Russian interference in the election, not links between Trump associates and Russians. As Objective suggests, if this is included the more appropriate article would be Links between Trump associates and Russian officials. Even there the title restricts its scope to links to Russian officials. James J. Lambden (talk) 18:40, 31 August 2017 (UTC)
• Per Objective3000 below, add to Links_between_Trump_associates_and_Russian_officials instead. The links are clearly there, but it's a much stronger linkage with that article than this one. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 19:49, 31 August 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose. Off-topic. This material has nothing to do with any "election" "interference" by "Russia." Also, MrX misrepresents the sources above—the "our boy" quote is from an email from Trump business associate Sater to Trump lawyer Cohen. By misattributing this hyperbolic statement to an exchange between Cohen and Peskov, MrX falsely implies that Peskov (and perhaps Putin himself) considered Trump "our boy." The RfC should probably be amended, or else we are all debating a false premise.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 22:00, 31 August 2017 (UTC)
• Not here, but in the "links" article. That was good suggestion from Objective3000. Sater keeps turning up in these Russia connections, but there is no evidence he actually helped Russia interfere with the election; he seems to have been more of a freelancer with one foot in Russia and one foot in the Trump camp. --MelanieN (talk) 22:12, 31 August 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose. As far as I've read, this story has nothing to do with actual Russian government efforts to interfere in the election. The way reliable sources present it, Sater just sounds like a braggart who didn't know what he was talking about, and who had no real contact with any Russian officials of note. If anything concrete comes of this, we can add it, but right now he's so completely irrelevant to this topic as to not merit mention. Red Rock Canyon (talk) 23:55, 31 August 2017 (UTC)
• Strong oppose - Off topic. Jdcomix (talk) 14:26, 1 September 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose - Unless it literally says the 2016 United States election or something similar then it can't be included here. Links between Trump associates and Russian officials is a different matter though. Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 14:35, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

It literally says "he could engineer Putin’s support for a Trump Tower in Moscow and thus, somehow, a victory in the US presidential election." Volunteer Marek (talk) 22:25, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

That's speculation. My grandma could have "somehow" walked on the Moon too. — JFG ^talk 05:58, 2 September 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose – Source is grasping at straws. Indeed, Trump, Russia, connect the dots would be the best title. — JFG ^talk 05:58, 2 September 2017 (UTC)
• OPPOSE because we're an encyclopedia, not a newspaper, not even a digest of periodicals, and not on a deadline. Rushing sensational material into an article is wrong no matter whose POV it favors.

Someone accused editors who oppose going with this just now of pushing POV. When the US's leading progressive political journal ran an article questioning the Obama administration intelligence community's assessment that the Russians hacked the DNC Emails, it got called "fake news" on this page several times, which will doubtless be a shock to The Nation and its subscribers. Usually, it's conservatives saying bad things about The Nation.

WP:NOTNEWSPAPER WP:SENSATION and WP:NODEADLINE - if there's anything to it, it'll still be includable later. When we do allude to the Sater Email, we need to weight it properly by including the statement by the Email's recipient, Mr. Cohen (President Trump's attorney). loupgarous (talk) 06:31, 5 September 2017 (UTC)

loupgarous, I moved this from the 'threaded discussion' to the 'oppose' section. I presume that was your intention. Pincrete (talk) 07:29, 5 September 2017 (UTC)

• Strong oppose, this looks like WP:RECENTISM. There is absolutely no evidence suggesting that Sater actually had a hand in getting Trump elected. This is just another gossip story that was boosted by "Russiagate" media trend. --S. Roix (talk) 18:55, 5 September 2017 (UTC)

Threaded discussion

• Two minds, whilst I think it shows that there were some with (very) tenuous ties to the Trump campaign seeking Russian assistance it is also true that this was not his campaign directly (or even indirectly) doing this.Slatersteven (talk) 13:31, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

Cohen, being Trump's lawyer, is a pretty direct connection. Also this source puts Sater "at the heart of the Trump-Russia inquiry".Volunteer Marek (talk) 15:23, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

It also doesn't seem to involve any actions taken by the Russian government. Russian actions are, after all, the topic this article purports to cover. -Thucydides411 (talk) 16:19, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

Please stop being obscurantist. So what if it doesn't directly "involve any actions taken by the Russian government". It involves Trump associates SEEKING Russian government to take actions. There's the fact of interference happening. And there's WHY and HOW it happened. This is the second part.

The problem here for you is that you reject the idea of Russian interference a priori. So to YOU whenever a source tries to explain the WHY and HOW Russian interference happened, of course you're going to think it's not irrelevant because you don't such a thing happened in the first place. But that is YOUR own POV, that is YOU trying to impose your personal opinions on the article, that is YOU refusing to follow the policy of reliable sources. That is YOU breaking Wikipedia policy and now, edit warring in contravention of it. Not clear why we should put up with this.Volunteer Marek (talk) 16:33, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

Capitalizing random words doesn't make your point any clearer. This material isn't relevant, but you're trying to coatrack it into the article. And really, you're the last person who should be throwing around accusations of POV-pushing or policy violation. -Thucydides411 (talk) 17:01, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

They're not "random". The capitalization stress the "YOU", as in Thucydides411, for a reason - to emphasize that YOU are trying to cram your own personal opinions down everyone's throat here, rather than relying on reliable sources per WP:RS. It's gone on long enough.Volunteer Marek (talk) 21:13, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

What opinions have I tried to "cram down everyone's throat"? I've been arguing all along for a more cautious approach in this article that doesn't strongly state any side's opinion. My personal opinions on Russiagate are very different from any content I've proposed to add to the article. I don't think you've exercised any comparable caution in how you've approached the article.

Just look at the current situation, for example: you're trying to add in new content, which I and a number of editors think does not fall under the subject area of this article, alleged Russian interference in the 2016 US elections. From my perspective, it looks a lot like you're trying to ram something into the article that, at best, has only a tenuous relation to the subject area, and then you're throwing around accusations when you don't immediately get your way. -Thucydides411 (talk) 22:32, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

a number of editors Hope you’re not including me. I’m ambivalent on this subject and looking for a compromise. But, I agree with VM’s comments. I also think you should remove your comments from the HT talk page as I think they are harmful to HT, and not useful to the project. Objective3000 (talk) 00:17, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

Ok, I got to ask Thucy, on HT's talk page you say that "JFG is one of the few regular editors I interact with in American politics articles". Now, since you pretty much edit only this article, where exactly have you interacted with JFG in "American politics articles"? Or with HT for that matter, since the ONLY pages you've ever edited together are drama boards [1], not even here. Is it some kind of enemy of my enemy is someone I will try to get unblocked kind of thing? (And if you think this is off topic - it's much less so than bringing up 8 year old ArbCom cases just to be a deeayceekay) Volunteer Marek (talk) 10:50, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

Volunteer Marek is exactly right. Thucydides411 is engaged in long-term tendentious editing on this article. His conduct should be reviewed at WP:AE. I began documenting a case three months ago, but unfortunately, I've been too busy to complete and file it.- MrX 17:25, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

Thuc, please keep your "personal opinions" off this page. WP editing is not about anybody's opinions. It's about conveying the weight of RS discourse on the subject. And by "subject" we mean the subject of this article, which -- as you know -- is not "alleged Russian interference..." RS tell us in some detail that psy-ops to create chatter among folks in Trump's circle is Russian interference. I'm not going to repeat the details here, because the current discussion is more limited in scope. All these Russian-Trumpan connections are understood by RS accounts to be elements of the extensive and wildly successful psy-ops campaign. SPECIFICO talk 23:08, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

What I meant was that there is no evidence that any one fro the Trump campaign took him up on the offer. Thus the link is no more then Bert from the pub sending an e-mail to Cohen saying he get get trump two ounces of snout can be used to prove trump smokes dodgy fags.Slatersteven (talk) 16:26, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

I get what you're saying, but the subject in the sentence that is the article title isn't Trump; It's Russia. So to keep with the weed (I think it's weed, my euphemisms are more American than yours) analogy, we're not including "so and so offered to buy Trump two ounces of cheap weed" in an article about Trump, we're including "so and so said Backstreet Larry can get him weed at cheap prices" in an article about Backstreet Larry's drug-dealing. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 16:49, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

Yes, but anyone can claim they can do something, the issue is whether or not this is credible (and it seems not). Simply put this is a bet business man trying to sell a bridge and failing.There is no evidence that anyone took him seriously, or even actually had any contacts with the Russians to any meaningful degree.This really is some back street shyster getting for more publicity then his influence deserves, it's a nothing. The more I think about it the less relevant it all seems.Slatersteven (talk) 16:55, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

The sources seem to disagree with you. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 18:11, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

No, Slatersteven accurately paraphrases The New York Times: "There is no evidence in the emails that Mr. Sater delivered on his promises, and one email suggests that Mr. Sater overstated his Russian ties. In January 2016, Mr. Cohen wrote to Mr. Putin's spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, asking for help restarting the Trump Tower project, which had stalled. But Mr. Cohen did not appear to have Mr. Peskov's direct email, and instead wrote to a general inbox for press inquiries. ... As a broker for the Trump Organization, Mr. Sater had an incentive to overstate his business-making acumen." Nowhere does America's paper of record endorse a connection to election interference; to the contrary, it explicitly states "The emails obtained by The Times make no mention of Russian efforts to damage Hillary Clinton's campaign or the hacking of Democrats' emails."TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 22:00, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

Ever heard of a disclaimer? News outlets like to do that. They make a claim, then they point out that the claim isn't 100% certain to cover their asses if they have to recant later. Cherry picking the sources to support an interpretation isn't a particularly smart thing to do when you're discussing things with people who've read the sources themselves, because it just reflects poorly on your judgement. And before you end up on a podium again:

The emails show that, from the earliest months of Mr. Trump’s campaign, some of his associates viewed close ties with Moscow as a political advantage. Those ties are now under investigation by the Justice Department and multiple congressional committees.

American intelligence agencies have concluded that the Russian government interfered with the 2016 presidential election to try to help Mr. Trump. Investigators want to know whether anyone on Mr. Trump’s team was part of that process.

Or perhaps:

The Trump Organization on Monday turned over emails to the House Intelligence Committee, which is investigating Russian meddling in the presidential election and whether anyone in Mr. Trump’s campaign was involved. Some of the emails were obtained by The Times.

Or maybe:

Mr. Trump, who began praising Mr. Putin years before the presidential campaign, has said there was no collusion with Russian officials. Previously released emails, however, revealed that his campaign was willing to receive damaging information about Mrs. Clinton from Russian sources.

For a source not drawing a connection, they sure seem to write quite a bit about the election inteference. Those quotes I gave aren't all of the coverage that article gives to the interference, and yet they still make up about 15-20% of the article themselves. I'm sorry, but when 20% or more of an article is devoted to a subject that's not in the headline, the assertion that the source isn't drawing a link between the headline and that subject is just complete bullshit.

It's surprising, really. There's a situation in which the Trump campaign was offered a chance to interfere in the election and they ignored it. To editors not so dead-eyed focused on defending Trump against any hint of wrongdoing (to the point of consistently denying the involvement of Russia to begin with), this seems like the sort of thing that would help balance out the views. It's a chance to show that the Trump campaign had standards, if not of ethics then at least of competence. Besides, you haven't been paying attention to the !voting, above. I actually !voted to exclude it from this article and add it to a more relevant article. So all you're accomplishing here is showing off your political POV, and we've all already seen it. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 22:17, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

• Saturnalia, please read WP:POINT.Volunteer Marek (talk) 15:21, 31 August 2017 (UTC)
• I’d remove it from here, add it to Links_between_Trump_associates_and_Russian_officials and call it a day. If and when the story expands, then restore it here with additional info. Objective3000 (talk) 18:14, 31 August 2017 (UTC)
• this is part of the long-documented and ongoing Russian psy-ops on the Trump team. It is not clear to me that we have enough context and detail to give a good encyclopedic balance to this content. RS clearly discuss the Russians having messed with the minds of the Trump circle, but the details, at least as publicly reported by RS, are not fully elaborated just yet. This may be one of those things that's not worth the trouble and will become clear with time. SPECIFICO talk
  • Uh, what, SPECIFICO? No reliable source that I have seen suggests anything remotely resembling your spectacular, unsupported assertion that a plan for a Trump Tower in Moscow—proposed by a Trump business associate and completely ignored by the Russian government, which made no attempt to help the project along in any way, shape, or form—"is part of the long-documented and ongoing Russian psy-ops on the Trump team"—certainly not The Washington Post or The New York Times, which broke the story. Can you provide any sources to substantiate your claim, or is this yet more original research?TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 20:50, 5 September 2017 (UTC)
• Suggest placing a list of sources at the top of the RfC so that un-involved editors who are invited via the RfC process don't have to read through the lengthy discussion to find out what developments have been made per wp:rs and wp:v - which are the main things which would affect my decision to support or not support this proposal. Thank you. Edaham (talk) 04:54, 18 September 2017 (UTC)

Verifiable data

[Prompted by MelanieN's reference to 'data'; thx]

1) Per WP:PRIMARY: "Primary sources are original materials that are close to an event, and are often accounts written by people who are directly involved." Per WP:SECONDARY: "A secondary source provides an author's own thinking based on primary sources, generally at least one step removed from an event …"

Agency heads are not primary sources as they, presumably, did not conduct the purported 'research'; they are, at best, secondary sources. News media are further removed.

2) Re ODNI report: "the declassified report does not and cannot include the full supporting information, including specific intelligence and sources and methods."

Without supporting information — "including specific intelligence and sources and methods" — claims cannot be verified.

Suggest removal of all claims made in agency 'reports'. Humanengr (talk) 03:16, 4 September 2017 (UTC)

That suggestion makes no sense. We routinely report material from (what we consider to be) Reliable Sources where the supporting information is not given. We often cite reporting from the New York Times, the Washington Post, etc. which is based on anonymous sources known to the reporter but not revealed to us - "White House sources", "sources close to the investigation", "Justice Department sources", "three people with knowledge of the situation". We report such material without any hesitation. The requirement is that the source "have a reputation for fact checking and accuracy". There is no requirement that the source show us their "sources and methods", and in fact we usually don't have that information. But we report it, sometimes in Wikipedia's voice, most commonly attributing it the reporting agency. As we do at this article. --MelanieN (talk) 03:30, 4 September 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia lends no presumption of accuracy to statements made by any national intelligence service. It doesn't consider the Russian FSB to be a reliable source for anything but uncontroversial statements, and likewise would not consider the CIA or NSA to be reliable for anything beyond straightforward, uncontroversial statements (e.g., country statistics found in the CIA World Factbook). Unlike newspapers, intelligence agencies aren't in the business of providing the public with accurate, unbiased information. Unlike newspapers, they don't "have a reputation for fact checking and accuracy." In fact, it's entirely plausible that intelligence agencies might intentionally deceive the public for strategic reasons. In short, they're unreliable sources.

That does not mean, however, that we should leave what they say out of the article. Even unreliable sources may be used when their statements themselves are important to the subject. In such cases, statements must be clearly attributed to their sources, and should not be made in Wikipedia's authoritative voice. The claims made by US intelligence agencies about Russian interference in the Presidential election are central to this article, and they must be covered. It's important that those claims be presented in a way that makes it clear who is making what statement, and which does not imply in Wikipedia's voice that those claims are true. We couldn't write this article without referencing claims made by US intelligence extensively. However, those claims should not be treated in the same way as if they had been made by a reliable source - a newspaper, for example. -Thucydides411 (talk) 04:32, 4 September 2017 (UTC)

@MelanieN — 1) re "The requirement is that the source 'have a reputation for fact checking and accuracy'.": Were any facts presented to the 'Reliable Sources' that they could check? 2) Re "Wikipedia's voice": The article title is in Wikipedia's voice, declaring that Russia interfered, rather than "attributing it [to] the reporting agency. As we do at this article." Humanengr (talk) 05:43, 4 September 2017 (UTC)

@Thucydides411 — 1) re "Unlike newspapers, they don't 'have a reputation for fact checking and accuracy.'": From Gallup Sept 2016 poll: "Americans' trust and confidence in the mass media 'to report the news fully, accurately and fairly' has dropped to its lowest level in Gallup polling history, with 32% saying they have a great deal or fair amount of trust in the media. This is down eight percentage points from last year." http://www.gallup.com/poll/195542/americans-trust-mass-media-sinks-new-low.aspx. (That poll was not linked to by WaPo or NYT.) 2) re "statements must be clearly attributed to their sources, and should not be made in Wikipedia's authoritative voice.": See #2 above in my reply to MelanieN. The title is Wikipedia's voice. Humanengr (talk) 07:31, 4 September 2017 (UTC)

In this article, intelligence agencies are cited only as evidence of what intelligence agencies say, and even then only sparsely, to supplement secondary sources (as according to policy on use of primary sources). The vast majority of sources are reliable secondary sources as defined by wikipedia policy. If a large portion of reliable secondary sources say something in their authoritative voice, it is not our place to question their sources and methods. If you're arguing that this Gallup poll should be used as evidence in changing the way reliable sources are defined, or that we should start examining reliable sources' use of data ourselves (which would generally be considered original research), then this article's talk page is the wrong place to bring it up. Go to the reliable sources discussion and see if you can get long-standing policies on reliable sources changed. Until those policies are changed, you should stop bringing up this same complaint over and over again. Red Rock Canyon (talk) 11:00, 4 September 2017 (UTC)

1) Re "reliable sources discussion": thx for the suggestion. 2) Re "to supplement secondary sources": Is there any data in the article that was checked by secondary sources news media? 3)Re "this same complaint": As I wrote to Slatersteven below, the goal here is different. Humanengr (talk) 21:03, 4 September 2017 (UTC)

This is now tendentious editing, it did not work the first time nor will it work the next time.Slatersteven (talk) 09:02, 4 September 2017 (UTC)

WP:CON: "Tendentious editing. The continuous, aggressive pursuit of an editorial goal …" is n/a. Goal as stated: "removal of all claims made in agency 'reports'" not raised previously. Humanengr (talk) 13:50, 4 September 2017 (UTC)

" Re "Wikipedia's voice": The article title is in Wikipedia's voice, declaring that Russia interfered, rather than "attributing it [to] the reporting agency. As we do at this article." ". Your words,this is what this is all about (again).Slatersteven (talk) 08:46, 5 September 2017 (UTC)

Yet another demand for an OR fishing expedition to undermine what RS say. Sorry. Not going to work. We report what they say and don't bow to opinions which are clearly inspired by unreliable sources. This is not going to be turned into Trump's and Putin's pulpit. -- BullRangifer (talk) 06:30, 5 September 2017 (UTC)

@Red Rock Canyon Thx for the feedback, which prompted me to work my way through the article more thoroughly. One upshot from that is a minor adjustment (see here) that would have been relatively non-controversial if done when the lede was redone. My fault for missing it then. Humanengr (talk) 15:38, 9 September 2017 (UTC)

@MelanieN Thx for the feedback and I agree re citing reports based on anonymous sources (as long as such reliance is explicitly declared). And I'll accept that agency reports (as they implicitly carry a declaration of anonymous employees) can be cited if they carry the caveat re methods and sources (as done,e.g., in the ODNI report section of the WP article). So I'll withdraw my proposal.

But your cmt did lead to some interesting finds re 'reliable source' I'll address separately. Humanengr (talk) 20:45, 9 September 2017 (UTC)

Re Thucydides411 "statements must be clearly attributed to their sources, and should not be made in Wikipedia's authoritative voice": Except that the title violates that policy. Humanengr (talk) 14:07, 21 September 2017 (UTC)

Re: {{u|BullRangifer]] "... a fishing expedition to undermine what RS say... We report what they say and don't bow to opinions which are clearly inspired by unreliable sources." That begs the question of how reliable news sources which ordinarily are considered RS are in a tight news cycle where the sources go to press with minimal fact-checking - the precise situation covered by WP:NOTNEWSPAPER WP:SENSATION and WP:NODEADLINE. This entire article gives blow-by-blow coverage of on-going investigations, which is deprecated by WP:NOTNEWSPAPER. This article isn't encyclopedic, it's weighing in wikivoice on an on-going controversy - and that's necessarily WP:NOT what we're here for.

It's hard to see the title of this article as not taking a position on a politically partisan controversy. If the special investigator and other impartial sources conclude after their investigation that significant Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections did not occur, which is still a possible verdict, then the statement we're making in wikivoice by saying it did occur in the title of an article, underpinning a conclusion still under investigation doesn't just make the project vulnerable to charges that it violated WP:NPOV. It'll be evidence we're clearly guilty of the charge. Regardless of the outcome of the investigation, moving this article out to article space with the title "Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections" is taking a position on a charge still under investigation. It is anything but an encyclopedic article - it's abuse of the project to push one particular POV. loupgarous (talk) 02:57, 5 October 2017 (UTC)

Editorializing/POV-push

@AmYisroelChai: you should not have made this edit without asking first. [2]. Geogene (talk) 21:37, 19 September 2017 (UTC)

im asking now didn't know i had to AmYisroelChai (talk) 14:54, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

Controversial edits on this type of article are best avoided. Run your ideas past other editors on the talk page to avoid problems. Otherwise be bold. As you get more experience you'll figure it out. -- BullRangifer (talk) 15:20, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

So does the source say that there is no proof for this reason?Slatersteven (talk) 15:25, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

The source given for this is a primary source - the entire transcript of Comey's testimony - and I did not read through the whole thing to see if it supports this edit. But in any case, something Comey said months ago might not accurately reflect the situation now. So I think we should leave it out. --MelanieN (talk) 14:54, 21 September 2017 (UTC)

Comey said that no US Intelligence or law enforcement agency has seen the servers so until they see those servers there is no proof to the allegation that they were hacked let alone by the russians we only have the word of a company hired by the DNC as proof which is like someone saying he was attacked but the only proof is on the say so of someone he hires to testify as such without law enforcement doing any kind of investigation AmYisroelChai (talk) 15:03, September 24, 2017‎ (UTC)

This is not the place to state your personal opinion. Wikipedia can only use content that's supported by the weight of mainstream, reliable sources. SPECIFICO talk 15:16, 24 September 2017 (UTC)

How is that a personal opinion? There is no verified proof of the russians hacking the DNC serversAmYisroelChai (talk) 19:00, 28 September 2017 (UTC)

Because your allegation is that "there is no verified proof" (I'm not sure what "verified proof" is supposed to mean, but the use of that qualifier here looks weaselly) and the source you gave doesn't say that. Even if it did, as a primary source, it would have to be presented as someone's opinion. That would look like, "Senator _____ said that there was no proof." Then we get into an issue of whether that random opinion carries enough weight to justify the mention. After all, there are senators that believe all kinds of bizarre and counterfactual things. That would require reliable secondary sources covering it to demonstrate that it's even worth mentioning. Finally, we have the fact that this is a fringe opinion that most reliable secondary sources would seem to refute. If the statement were true, why is Congress concerned about it? What is Mueller doing? Why don't we just delete this article and be done with it? So this is both editorializing and a POV-push. Geogene (talk) 19:43, 28 September 2017 (UTC)

no US intelligence or law enforcement agency has actually seen or investigated the servers that the DNC claim were hacked.

That is a fact. Perpetually excluding it for months is POV pushing, editorializing and shameful. Particularly since the article is largely nothing more than negative hyperbole and unsubstantiated rumor.

This is your personal, unsourced opinion. We have plenty of RS that speak on the subject, and we document what they say. The idea that just because the servers may not have been examined by others (they have been examined) does not exclude various other ways to verify what was on them, what was then leaked from them, who did it, who was secretly recorded describing who did it, who paid them, what country the hackers were from (the dossier says they were Romanian), and many other possibilities. BTW, remember to log in and not edit under your IP address. Use your registered account. -- BullRangifer (talk) 06:59, 29 September 2017 (UTC)

No it is not my personal opinion. It is an encyclopedic fact cited in numerous sources including the one the editor employed above. No US intelligence or law enforcement ever investigated the server that the DNC claimed were hacked. One security company did at the employ of the DNC. The fact that this security company has been grossly wrong in the past attributing hacks is immaterial to the encyclopedic continually withheld from this page for eight months fact that no US security or intelligence agency ever examined the hacked DNC servers. Using US intelligence agencies and law enforcement agencies unsubstantiated information while withholding the material information that they never actually examined the hacked server is POV pushing, editorializing and deceiving by omission. BTW, remember some were here hoping they find collusion not so long ago making it difficult to assume good faith editing. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.224.251.239 (talk) 09:02 29 September 2017 (UTC)

BTW, remember some were here hoping they find collusion not so long ago making it difficult to assume good faith editing. Irony, thy name is random IP address. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 12:37, 29 September 2017 (UTC)

This is the opinion of mainstream IP SPA pop-up posts on Wikipedia. SPECIFICO talk 12:52, 29 September 2017 (UTC)

not addressing an editors argument, but instead dismissively snarking about about how gauche the arguer is.... a Wikipedia tradition for well over a decade. 2600:1002:B11B:5FEC:FD09:2991:2BBF:FE6A (talk) 13:07, 29 September 2017 (UTC)

Welcome to Wikipedia 2600:1002:B11B:5FEC:FD09:2991:2BBF:FE6A. your keyboard seems to besticking. SPECIFICO talk 13:12, 29 September 2017 (UTC)

In point of fact, I was snarking about how gauche the argument was, not the arguer. The personalization inherent in the statement is an inevitable (and frankly, rather obvious) byproduct of the idiomatic reference I used. Damn, you people are so sensitive! ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 13:42, 29 September 2017 (UTC)

So you're a returning sockpuppet then? I suspected as much. After all, in various articles I watch, other suspicious accounts have been trying to say the same thing with that particular New York Times URL for months. There are many places the transcript can be found, why that URL? Geogene (talk) 14:43, 29 September 2017 (UTC)

maybe because thats the first one that pops up when you google comey transcriptAmYisroelChai (talk) 14:49, 3 October 2017 (UTC)

It's far from the first: https://www.google.com/search?q=comey+transcript&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8 -- BullRangifer (talk) 03:56, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

yes it is https://www.google.com/search?q=comey+senate+testimony+transcript&rlz=1C1GCEA_enUS754US754&oq=comey+senate+testimony+transcript&aqs=chrome..69i57.16719j0j1&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8AmYisroelChai (talk) 16:56, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

Google search results vary by your past searches. That hit doesn’t come up on my first two pages of results. Objective3000 (talk) 17:53, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

Facebook

We now have RS reporting that suggests we should remove any endorsement of facebook's narrative that they, the world's most sophisticated social media shop, were snookered by the tricky Russians and had no idea any weird stuff was being put up as targeted ads: [3]. Let's see how this develops over the next day or two so we can adjust the tone of the most recent language. SPECIFICO talk 23:20, 19 September 2017 (UTC)

Interesting new detail in that story: Facebook only began looking into this when Senator Warner went there and asked them point-blank if there had been any Russian advertising during the election. This was after Facebook had shut down thousands of Russian fake accounts related to the French election. I agree we don't put anything in the article just yet, but let's see what else develops. For one thing, it turns out the reason Mueller got so much more information than Congress did, is that Mueller got a search warrant so his people could go to Facebook and TAKE what they wanted. If the committee does get Facebook to testify, that would be a good time to expand the paragraph. --MelanieN (talk) 15:40, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

Thanks. I was struck by the disconnect that we might accept the crafted press release words of a company amid this investigation while elsewhere denying the US Intelligence Estimate. SPECIFICO talk 16:45, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

I don't see any "endorsement of Facebook's narrative" in Russian_interference_in_the_2016_United_States_elections#Social_media_and_internet_trolls at the moment. What endorsement are you referencing? I also don't see anything in the Washington Post article you linked that suggests that Facebook was aware of Russian election-related ads before they began their internal investigation. What specific passages in the WaPo article are you referencing?

In general, we don't take any unreliable parties at their word: neither Facebook nor US intelligence agencies. We can report their opinions as their opinions, and we can report notable reactions to those opinions. Currently, this Wiki article seriously underplays criticism of the December 29th JAR, but I don't see a similar problem in the Facebook section. -Thucydides411 (talk) 19:38, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

You'll need to read this talk page and the discussion hereupon. SPECIFICO talk 20:34, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

You didn't answer any of my questions. I honestly don't know what endorsement you're talking about, or what you're pointing to in the WaPo article. -Thucydides411 (talk) 20:56, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

So be it. SPECIFICO talk 21:13, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

@MelanieN: Are you okay with the way SPECIFICO is behaving here? -Thucydides411 (talk) 21:53, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

@SPECIFICO: you're being adversarial. Other editors would like to know what you're proposing and why you're proposing it, and your refusing to answer these very reasonable questions smacks of stonewalling someone out of petty resentment. It does not help your case in the slightest. Red Rock Canyon (talk) 07:33, 21 September 2017 (UTC)

Hello Rock. No, nothing adversarial here. The editor apparently can't even be bothered to review the lengthy thread above on this very page -- a thread in which he himself participated. I tried to politely direct him to review that, and as you may not know, he had also participated in an ill-fated discussion of the same topic on another editor's talk page to fast-track facebook's POV into the article. Anyway apparently both those slipped his mind and so he asked me for guidance and then commented on what he understands rather than what's being discussed. I feel his pain, but it's ultimately his choice whether to review the discussions and share his analysis here, hence my "so be it." SPECIFICO talk 23:43, 21 September 2017 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you're proposing, SPECIFICO. That's why I asked you to clarify. You responded in an adversarial manner, without clarifying anything. Do we currently have an "endorsement" of Facebook's views? What does the WaPo article you linked have to do with Facebook being "snookered by the tricky Russians"? How are you proposing, concretely, to change the text of the article? -Thucydides411 (talk) 00:13, 22 September 2017 (UTC)

New reporting

New reporting from the Daily Beast says that Russians used Facebook to organize demonstrations FOR TRUMP. If confirmed this is extremely important. Because up to now we have only heard about using fake accounts to promote divisive social issues - to make people more extreme in their feelings about (say) gays or immigrants. That may or may not have violated any laws. But if foreign money was used to promote a candidate, that is clearly illegal. This is definitely something to keep an eye on, and to add to the article if additional confirmation is forthcoming. --MelanieN (talk) 14:43, 21 September 2017 (UTC)

Also this [4]. Interesting bias on WP that on some issues, editors will uncritically accept new media and internet 2.0 cult of personality gurus while doubting the mainstream RS we are bound to represent. SPECIFICO talk 12:09, 23 September 2017 (UTC)

@MelanieN: And more. Innocent denials not looking so good [5] SPECIFICO talk 04:09, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

Wow, this second one is a bombshell. I hadn't previously seen this reported - "Facebook detected elements of the Russian information operation in June 2016 and then notified the FBI" - but the WaPo article lays it out in detail. Let me give some thought on how to condense that down into something for our article. I'm still hoping for independent confirmation on the Daily Beast's report about pro-Trump rallies. If none is forthcoming we may eventually use it anyhow, clearly sourced to The Beast. BTW is this stuff going into the Facebook article too? I don't follow that page. --MelanieN (talk) 14:30, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

It always amazes me how otherwise smart, worldly folks think their behavior will not come under scrutiny. And of all people cybergeekies ought to know about audit trails and traceable records. But in this case, it's just overlooking the possibility that somebody might track down the people they talked to. This is why I am so skeptical of any first-person narratives, especially those that are uncritically repeated by the media, and primary sourced statements. We'll see how this develops. SPECIFICO talk 16:45, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

The title of this section, "New Reporting", ought to tell us what to do - consult WP:NOTNEWSPAPER, WP:SENSATION and WP:NODEADLINE. If there's anything to this new reportage, it'll still be includable later - with any necessary retractions, qualifiers and disclaimers to explain away the sensationalism. Placing this in the article at this point, before the special investigator appointed to look into the matter (and who's been very aggressive in doing so) rules on the charge, isn't encyclopedic. It's "breaking news" and wikipedia is WP:NOTNEWSPAPER. Speculation based on those stories beyond what is in the stories themselves is WP:OR. loupgarous (talk) 03:11, 5 October 2017 (UTC)

I agree that some editors can be somewhat hasty in adding new material before we can determine whether it is notable enough to be included, but you seem to be advocating that we just delete the article until the US government investigations are complete. That's a position undermined by the very policies you cite: "Wikipedia does have many encyclopedia articles on topics of historical significance that are currently in the news, and can be updated with recently verified information", from WP:NOTNEWSPAPER, for example.

The reason people open threads on recent reporting in the talk page is so we can discuss together whether these reports have lasting historical significance and decide whether and how the information should be incorporated into the article. More often than not, we decide not to add the information, or to wait days or weeks until more sources have covered the issue and it can be put in proper perspective. There is no policy on wikipedia that says we have to wait to add information of obvious encyclopedic and historical relevance until government investigations are concluded. Red Rock Canyon (talk) 06:29, 5 October 2017 (UTC)

External link: "Committee to Investigate Russia"

User:Jasonanaggie added an external link to the Committee to Investigate Russia. User:Thucydides411 removed it saying "doesn't look notable to me." User:SPECIFICO restored it saying "Link is AOK. WP:EL need not be Notable." (Strictly speaking, since it had been challenged it should not have been restored without discussion.) I removed it again, saying "This is just an advocacy organization - no indication of who is behind it or where they are getting their information. We can't give an ES listing to every anonymous advocacy organization in the world". SPECIFICO pointed out to me that the organization isn't quite anonymous - there is a "board of advisors" of five people, a couple of whom have some credibility. I still maintain that we should limit our external links to major or highly noteworthy publications and organizations. There must be dozens (at least) of organizations promoting one viewpoint or another on this subject. Thoughts from others? --MelanieN (talk) 23:05, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

Unless this organization is particularly notable, I'd leave it out. It looks like just another one of many such think-tank-backed groups. Looking through the "Further Reading" and "External Links" section more broadly, I can't see any consistent logic in what's included. It looks like a hodge-podge of random links and book suggestions. -Thucydides411 (talk) 23:26, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

Interesting site. But, we can't link to it. Objective3000 (talk) 23:33, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

Hi MelanieN, thanks for your note. I'm curious why this specific page should be linked? The website states of itself that it formed "to help Americans recognize and understand the gravity of Russia’s continuing attacks on our democracy." Of the Advisory Board, Boot has "lectured on behalf of the U.S. State Department and at many military institutions[6], Clapper directed US Intelligence, Ornstein and Sykes are journalists (Ornstein's also a part of the American Enterprise Institute think tank), and Reiner is an actor. Sure, it's an advocacy group, but why should it be promoted in the external links of this site? -Darouet (talk) 23:34, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

I agree with you. BTW if you Google for coverage about this group, none only one of those five "advisors" get the headlines. What reporting there is, is about two celebrities and one neocon: they say it was created by Rob Reiner and David Frum, and is headlined by Morgan Freeman. BTW its creation was announced (wait for it) today. --MelanieN (talk) 23:41, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

Today is so yesterday. We need news published in the future. Objective3000 (talk) 23:46, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

Guys, "Notable" is not the test one way or the other, so please drop that. I pointed that out in my edit summary when I reinstated the link. It's very disappointing to see it repeated here by editors who presumably have read the brief history of this little matter. (Off-topic, as an aside, RS have covered the formation of this group fairly widely and it may soon be NOTABLE and have its own article.) At any rate, we have Clapper, Frum, Ornstein, Sykes, and then among social commentator/public figures Freeman, & Reiner. The EL section is not a curated top ten list. It's links that editors have added that may be relevant and informative. I didn't add this one but I think that Template:Ping:Jasonanaggie made a valid contribution and certainly one that should not be reversed based on misinformation and misrepresentation of WP policy. This one meets WP:EL and up to now the arguments to exclude it are simply arbitrary or erroneous. At any rate, we should hear what Jasonanaggie has to say. SPECIFICO talk 23:49, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

No one is stopping Jasonanaggie from making a case. The cast of characters is very interesting. I’m sure the site is of value. But, I think it’s too soon with too little in the way of secondary mention, and, in any case, requires discussion before inclusion. Objective3000 (talk) 00:00, 21 September 2017 (UTC)

This is a very small issue. But the test for an External Link is not as strong as the test for article content. This site is run by many notable figures whose credentials are evident. It appears to aggregate content by the best of the best commentators and reporters on the subject. It's a typical "external link" site. My only point here has been that this link has not been challenged for any reason grounded in WP guidelines. Judging from their comments, it appeared to me that the editors who rushed to wipe it had not even scrutinized the site or the relevant WP guideline. If so, that was a mistake. SPECIFICO talk

What makes the site quite useful is that it is a bipartisan project; look at the people on the committee, both republican and democratic voices. They aim to make the large amount of information and events consumable by people who are new to the topic; it has timelines and summarizes all the players. This can give the narrative starting from zero for people just wanting to get up to speed on the issue. I found it to be a good source of knowledge and links to articles for people, but hey what do I know...Jasonanaggie (talk) 00:17, 21 September 2017 (UTC)

It may have both Republicans and Democrats on its committee, but its approach is very much advocacy. That's not just my opinion; that's how it was reported (to the extent that it was reported) in the media. A lot of the sourcing (Variety, Hollywood Reporter) was from entertainment-related publications that focused on its celebrity origins. Some reports (Newsweek, RT, the Daily Beast) featured Morgan Freeman and his insistence that the U.S. "is at war with Russia". Breitbart focused on how much, and how publicly, Reiner hates Trump. There was some neutral coverage - CNN, Fox, The Hill - based on the organization's press release and website, with no original reporting. All of this was opening-day coverage; will there be any more? We can give it a little time, to see if Neutral Reliable Sources begin to treat it as a valid, credible site. A few days or a few weeks won't hurt. In the meantime, as far as I am concerned it is just another advocacy site. BTW Thuc made a good point about the "Further reading" section; some of those links are one-sided advocacy books, others are news reports that ought to be sourced into the article if we are to use them at all. We need to take a look at that section. --MelanieN (talk) 01:57, 21 September 2017 (UTC)

I don't like advocacy sites, and I don't like external links generally. But looking at the relevant policy, I see WP:ELYES #3, WP:ELMAYBE #4, WP:ELNO #1, possibly #2 (because I can't factcheck everything there), and #11. Geogene (talk) 02:04, 21 September 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for listing specific criteria. My analysis:

• ELYES#3 - it remains to be seen if the information is neutral (doesn't sound very neutral) and accurate (time will tell). At this point, no.
• ELMAYBE#4 - "contains information about the subject from knowledgeable sources even if it doesn't qualify as a reliable source" - could be a maybe, depends on how it develops
• ELNO#1 - depends on how it develops
• ELNO#2 - depends on how it develops
• ELNO#11 - does not apply

My conclusion: maybe a little later, depending on how it develops and what independent sources say about it; does not qualify just yet. --MelanieN (talk) 02:41, 21 September 2017 (UTC)

• For now, I would oppose inclusion: it's mostly covered by celebrity mags, and with its dubious choice of experts and Hollywood-ish presentation style, it looks largely like a PR stunt exploiting a hot topic. --S. Roix (talk) 15:20, 21 September 2017 (UTC)

You linked to an opinion piece by a non-notable POV spinner who engages in various laughable deprecations of the site. The site apparently republishes noteworthy material from RS and NOTABLE commentators across a broad spectrum. Hard to reconcile that with the slam from Bloomberg. SPECIFICO talk 01:05, 22 September 2017 (UTC)

@S. Roix: That's an interesting article. Leonid Bershidsky is a well-known commentator and critic of Putin, by the way. The "War" video with Morgan Freeman speaks pretty heavily against InvestigateRussia's credibility. I don't think it's the sort of neutral resource we should be pointing readers to. -Thucydides411 (talk) 01:47, 22 September 2017 (UTC)

Russians agree. Fake news. [7] [8] [9] SPECIFICO talk 02:18, 22 September 2017 (UTC)

Are you saying we should discount Bershidsky's article (or that it's fake news) because he's from Russia? I hope I'm misunderstanding you. We don't discount commentators because of their national origin. -Thucydides411 (talk) 04:14, 22 September 2017 (UTC)

[10] SPECIFICO talk 10:30, 22 September 2017 (UTC)

Interesting link. It says there is a coordinated Russian attack (including paid social media trolls as well as named commenters) to discredit Morgan Freeman, and by extension this site. They must be scared of it. From our point of view, their reaction and the coverage it is getting may add to the site's notability. Not necessarily its credibility, though; that remains to be evaluated by independent observers. Interesting comment from your WaPo link: "But as ThinkProgress points out, the committee does not boast any actual Russian experts in its governing body."--MelanieN (talk) 19:06, 22 September 2017 (UTC)

Agree. And isn't that a strange bit of nonsense "No Russia experts in its board" echoing the less strange but no less nonsensical bit in the Bloomberg piece. Remember this site is an aggregator that's posting clippings from the notable and reliable worldwide media. It's like saying to reject the WaPo because Jeff Bezos can't see Russia from his house. SPECIFICO talk 21:24, 22 September 2017 (UTC)

WP:ELNO: "Except for a link to an official page of the article's subject, one should generally avoid providing external links to: Any site that does not provide a unique resource beyond what the article would contain if it became a featured article. In other words, the site should not merely repeat information that is already or should be in the article." Inclusion of this promotional link seems like a straightforward violation of the relevant policy. I cannot fathom why it is still being considered.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 21:32, 22 September 2017 (UTC)

Wrongeroo, the guideline doesn't say unique additional content or information. The it says unique "resource" - and thanks to the Advisory Board, the site provides a curated selection for what they call "one-stop shopping" so that the public can find a trove of significant information in one convenient easily-accessed facility. So it's ELNO_YES on that one. SPECIFICO talk 22:15, 22 September 2017 (UTC)

Agreed. CIR isn't a credible group. It may be interesting from a publicity angle (given its celebrity involvement), but it's not a place I would direct readers to for further information. -Thucydides411 (talk) 22:03, 22 September 2017 (UTC)

No reasoning, no WP guideline test, just a general disdain for the hollywood elite? It's not their information. They are the curators, not the authors. You may not find them "credible" but several previous presidential administrations have relied on their judgment and counsel, so in NPOV terms, yes they are credible. You'll need to find a different basis to impeach. SPECIFICO talk 22:15, 22 September 2017 (UTC)

@SPECIFICO:, by that logic, the VIPS people behind that Nation article are automatically credible because they used to work in the NSA, and yet I seem to recall you fighting heavily against that being added anywhere in the article (and rightfully so). Right now our external link section is very limited, with only a few links to pretty important primary sources. There's no reason whatsoever to add a link to this group that isn't also a reason to add a link to VIPS, and I think you and I agree that those guys are just an advocacy group with no credibility. The fact that the American government once trusted these people has absolutely no bearing on their credibility or noteworthiness on wikipedia, nor on whether adding that group to the external links would actually improve the article. Red Rock Canyon (talk) 17:26, 23 September 2017 (UTC)

Uno, we should not mix up the criteria for article content vs. the criterion for EL. #verydifferent. Due, This website is an aggregator of very high quality content from a range of reliable publishers. Tre, these are not an incoherent list of guys who retired 25+ years ago. These are currently active experts who enjoy broad apolitical recognition of their judgment and expertise. I mean the experts, not the publishers Reiner and Freeman. Advocacy Group? What do they say they're advocating? Dissemination of news? SPECIFICO talk 19:17, 23 September 2017 (UTC)

They make it very clear what they are advocating, starting with their launching video: "WHY IT MATTERS: Morgan Freeman warns Russia is waging war on the U.S. We need to pay attention before it's too late." That's a very strong POV and certainly sounds like they will choose to aggregate information that makes Russia look bad. Looking at their website today: Their current news reports are neutral and factual, but nothing you can't get everywhere else including here. Their choice of videos ("Do Russia's war games have a darker purpose?") seems a little more out there. My opinion remains: don't decide now. Give the site a week and see what they are like, what kind of news they aggregate, and see if independent neutral sources evaluate them as a resource - instead of just commenting on the celebrities involved. There is no harm in waiting a few days to get a better perspective on what this site really is. --MelanieN (talk) 21:18, 23 September 2017 (UTC)

That is a POV like, "Smoking is bad for your health and can cause emphysema and heart disease..." and then providing links to the best and most thorough reporting on clinical surveys and medical information. It's not a POV to say that the Russians attacked the Amercian democracy or the 2016 elections. That's what RS tell us in this article. If the article were written by the half-handful of editors here who deny that, I could understand this website would be POV and not a proper EL. I have not said we should rush to put this in. As you know I always put new findings up on the talk page and say let's see what develops. But to call this POV or advocacy is incorrect. The presentation of the sponsors, Reiner and whosis is typical of their personal styles, but that's true of all businesses, journals, think tanks, research institutes, and public parks. SPECIFICO talk 23:13, 23 September 2017 (UTC)

Molière said: "Trees that are slow to grow bear the best fruit." Give it some time and we'll see if it blossoms. Objective3000 (talk) 23:30, 23 September 2017 (UTC)

Exactly. However I'm very disappointed by the non-policy based and non-NPOV efforts to demean this fledgling resource. I'm astonished to see its advisory board called unfit to curate a group of mainstream media reports or of anyone denying the mainstream and WP view that the United States was attacked by the cyber-antics of the Russians. 23:33, 23 September 2017 (UTC)

As you say, it’s fledgling. Efforts to claim that there was no interference are not gaining traction here, and evidence to the contrary continues to mount. Patience will out. Objective3000 (talk) 00:10, 24 September 2017 (UTC)

This is why I've never thought it worth the time to scuffle much with the dwindling ranks of the deniers here. With investigations underway, their denials are rapidly becoming untenable as are their editing theses. If you compare where we are with this article today vs. 9 months ago, it's striking and I think we were correct not to get too much into the weeds with the false narratives that were being promoted earlier this year. I must say the time scale is greatly compressed now, with Mueller taking a fast track on a certain part of the investigation. I think that there are other parts, at least as far as public information is available, that are still in the very early stages. But Mueller may think that the individuals he's targeting now will lead him to substantive information on a wide range of topics that are less in the current news. SPECIFICO talk 00:20, 24 September 2017 (UTC)

I think withe sources like that one could easily create a page, Committee to Investigate Russia. Good or bad, but this is something notable. My very best wishes (talk) 13:34, 24 September 2017 (UTC)

I believe we should wait a bit, and if the publicity doesn't die off, a separate article can be a good idea. Just like VIPS, it may turn out not to be suitable for this article, but notable on its own. --S. Roix (talk) 15:07, 24 September 2017 (UTC)

puh-leeze! Nobody has suggested adding anything about this website to the article text. Let's keep clear the guidelines WP gives us to create good pages here. SPECIFICO talk 15:18, 24 September 2017 (UTC)

User:Thucydides411 acted properly according (even if he didn't cite them at the time) to the criteria MelanieN listed above. Regardless of its composition, the "Committee to Investigate Russia" isn't an officially-appointed group. It is not officially bipartisan, nor is it neutral on the topic of this article. And it is vulnerable to the same criticisms VIPS was on findings based on its investigations - more so, for it lacks VIPS's track record in exposing abuses of the national intelligence community. It fails as an encyclopedic source unless its findings (nowhere in evidence) are confirmed in other reliable sources outside of a sensationalistic press cycle (not WP:SENSATION) to themselves be reliable. We ought to wait for those findings to emerge and be evaluated next to the official independent investigation before linking to them. loupgarous (talk) 03:29, 5 October 2017 (UTC)

Attempted Hacking of State Databases

Here's some information about the Department of Homeland Security's messages to state election authorities. From NPR, NY Times, and the AP:

1. ) The DHS informed 21 states that hackers attempted to get into their elections systems - Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Wisconsin, Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, Minnesota, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Texas and Washington.
2. ) The hacking attempts targeted voting registration databases, not software systems having to do with vote counting or tallying.
3. ) The attempts failed, except in Illinois, where some voter registration information was accessed (nothing was added, changed or deleted, but the hackers may have acquired voter data for 200,000 people - more here)
4. ) In DHS messages to the states, they did not say who was behind the hacking, but the many of the state elections boards said that the attacks came from Russia.
5. ) The DHS first said that there were hacking attempts against state elections systems 1 year ago, but had not informed any of the individual states until now, despite many of them repeatedly asking whether their systems were among those targeted.

From reading the articles, these seem to be the key points. I think this definitely should be in the article - it's already partly covered in the section Intrusions into state voter-registration systems, which looks like the natural place to add the newer information. Attempted breaches of 21 state election systems seems like an unnecessary addition, since it's basically covering the same event again simply because more information has been released. I think this is part of a systemic issue with the article, which is that it's organized chronologically based on when certain information was made public, even when later announcements simply expanded upon earlier ones about the same events, and therefore it covers the same ground repeatedly according to some confusing and non-intuitive logic. But that's a separate issue. Where should we add this information? Red Rock Canyon (talk) 17:09, 23 September 2017 (UTC)

I think this is important information and you have summarized it well. My feeling is that most of what you have summarized should go into the article - obviously, in prose paragraphs rather than list form like this. I don't think we need to name the states, or if we do let's put it in a footnote. Someone has already started a (one-sentence) subsection called "Attempted breaches of 21 state election systems" under "U.S. Intelligence analysis". I'd leave out the number 21 but otherwise that seems like a good place for it. Actually on second thought I agree with you that it should be an expansion of the "Intrusions into state voter-registration systems" section. --MelanieN (talk) 21:24, 23 September 2017 (UTC)

They have since backtracked on Wisconsin.[11] TFD (talk) 00:47, 27 September 2017 (UTC)

Newer information

New descriptions of the Russian-bought ads shared with CNN suggest that the apparent goal of the Russian buyers was to amplify political discord and fuel an atmosphere of incivility and chaos, though not necessarily to promote one candidate or cause over another.

http://money.cnn.com/2017/09/27/media/facebook-black-lives-matter-targeting/index.html

The entire article and the 24 or so related articles revolve around Russia colluding/ interfering/hacking on behalf of Donald Trump in opposition to Hillary Clinton. 71.224.251.239 02:44, September 29, 2017‎ (UTC)

The messages of those ads spanned the political spectrum. One account spent $7,000 on ads to promote a documentary called “You’ve Been Trumped,” a film about Donald J. Trump’s efforts to build a golf course in Scotland along an environmentally sensitive coastline. Another spent $36,000 on ads questioning whether President Barack Obama needed to resign. Yet another bought ads to promote political merchandise for Mr. Obama.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/09/technology/google-russian-ads.html

Hmm the academic speculation regarding the Russian trolls still in the article, the encyclopedic facts above still not in the article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.224.251.239 (talk) 20:39, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

??

The article begins “… concluded with high confidence that the Russian government interfered”, citing a 10/7/2016 article that referenced the DHS-ODNI Joint Statement. That release said “… we are not now in a position to attribute this activity to the Russian Government.” Humanengr (talk) 14:23, 29 September 2017 (UTC)

Fixed. Incidentally, sources are not required in the lead where they already exist in the body. Geogene (talk) 14:58, 29 September 2017 (UTC)

@Geogene Thx. Adding [2] was helpful. How about using DNI Report: High Confidence Russia Interfered With U.S. Election instead of your [1]? The title matches the phrasing in the lede sentence. Humanengr (talk) 06:51, 30 September 2017 (UTC)

I don't strongly oppose, but that reads like an opinion piece. Geogene (talk) 20:31, 30 September 2017 (UTC)

"reads like an opinion piece." So what? We are supposed to also use opinion pieces. We just attribute them. Keep in mind that our job is to document "the sum total of human reality" (Jimbo), and opinions are a large part of that reality. --- BullRangifer (talk) 04:00, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

@Geogene Thx … the key here is that any cite for the lede sentence include the 'high confidence' phrasing. Make sense? Humanengr (talk) 21:50, 3 October 2017 (UTC)

Any other comments before changing the cite as discussed above? Humanengr (talk) 13:49, 5 October 2017 (UTC)

Inclusion of WaPo statement as counterpose is NPOV

Trump's transition team used the term "same people” without indicating whether that referred to analysts, their superiors, or agency heads. The WaPo statement — which refers only to 'analysts' — might fit elsewhere in this article. But it is improperly counterposed here. Humanengr (talk) 20:24, 30 September 2017 (UTC)

Exactly. Anyone with a basic grasp of English grammar can see that the word "people" can refer to not only individuals, but groups. And especially with Trump, who does not always use the King's English, to say the least. At the very least, the statement should be attributed to the Washington Post, and not put in the voice of Wikipedia, because it makes us look either semi-literate or as if we're peddling an agenda and selectively interpreting Trump's use of the word 'people' to mean that which will make him look the worst. Marteau (talk) 22:06, 30 September 2017 (UTC)

@Neutrality In your revert, you said the WaPo statement “seems clearly relevant”. How is it relevant? Humanengr (talk) 13:26, 1 October 2017 (UTC)

Did you read the WaPo article? It clearly discusses Trump's claim and directly states that"the intelligence analysts who worked on Middle East WMDs are not going to be the same as analysts focused on Russian cyber-behavior." Neutrality^talk 16:47, 1 October 2017 (UTC)

And the WaPo's implicit assumption that by "people" he can only be referring directly to those analysts and not any of the other many meanings the word "people" could take is inexplicably sloppy work for such a normally fine column. That some editors either do not see this (or refuse to see this) and instead hold up WP:RS as if it were some kind of ward against evil while ignoring WP:COMMON_SENSE is par for the course in political articles. Marteau (talk) 17:02, 1 October 2017 (UTC)

The fact that you disagree with the WaPo is fine, but it's not a justification of expunging the source. Your statement is in the nature of media criticism. The key thing is that if Trump's claim is noteworthy, so are the well-regarded sources that undercut or debunk the claim. Neutrality^talk 18:01, 1 October 2017 (UTC)

As Barton Swain points out in an opinion piece in the Wapo ("When pundits say ‘the same people,’ they usually mean different people"), the term "the same people" is not meant literally. I think we can expect readers to have a reasonable command of the English language and understand that. The editors who support inclusion are the same people who objected to twisting Obama's "You didn't build that" statement. TFD (talk) 19:29, 1 October 2017 (UTC)

"The fact that you disagree with the WaPo is fine, but it's not a justification of expunging the source." Actually, yes, it is. WP:COMMON_SENSE. Unlike some editors, I do not share the fetish for keeping obviously incorrect material in the encyclopedia simply because a source with a history of being reliable says it. At a minimum, and as a compromise, I attempted to at least take it out of Wikipedia's voice and add attribution of the statement to the Washington Post, but that was shot down on the grounds of the alleged impeccability of the column in question. It's absolute ludicrous, incorrect, damaging to the encylopedia's content and reputation, and does violence to logic. Marteau (talk) 19:50, 1 October 2017 (UTC)

No, this is merely an ipse dixit statement on your part. You claim that "common sense" supports you and that the Washington Post is "obviously incorrect." I don't accept that, and no source has been brought to bear to actually support those claims. Neutrality^talk 22:06, 1 October 2017 (UTC)

@Neutrality Do you take the two expressions 1) "same people" and 2) "the intelligence analysts" to refer to the same set of individuals? Humanengr (talk) 20:04, 1 October 2017 (UTC)

It doesn't matter what I think; what matters is what the sources think. Neutrality^talk 22:06, 1 October 2017 (UTC)

Another aspect of the interpretation of what "people" mean in Trump-speak, is that this particular attack of Trump's was categorized as an attack on the CIA by reliable sources at the time. See, for e.g. http://www.cnn.com/2016/12/10/politics/donald-trump-response-russian-hacking/index.html where it says:

"President-elect Donald Trump's transition team slammed the CIA Friday..."

Not that he "slammed intelligence analysts" but that he slammed the agency in general. Clearly, CNN believes "people" in Trump's quotation was a slam at the agency. That the WaPo chooses to parse "people" as meaning only individual persons with no allowance for him possibly meaning the agency in general is an error of basic grammar, logic and fairness. Marteau (talk) 21:51, 1 October 2017 (UTC)

The fact that you personally think the WaPo was wrong is not really relevant. Has there been a retraction? Have other reliable sources cast doubt on the WaPo claim? The answers appear to be "no" and "no." Neutrality^talk 22:06, 1 October 2017 (UTC)

Whether we think a source is wrong, personally, should be completely relevant to our editing and our handling of the encyclopedia. "Ignore All Rules" and such, as is highlighted at the very top of your user page. Our editors admirably ignored the WP:RS rule when Clock Boy was being said to have "invented" a clock by multiple reliable sources, and properly removed insertions of his clock being an "invention" so I know using common sense is not forbidden on Wikipedia in general, just here at the moment. Marteau (talk) 23:00, 1 October 2017 (UTC)

The sentence is a clear testable fact, sourced to a factual reliable source. I think instead of whether or not it should be attributed to the Washington post, the real issue is whether this fact check warrants mention at all. I think it should probably be removed - it simply doesn't improve the article. If this was a major important claim that Trump had made, and the fact check made a significant difference in its meaning, then that would be good to put in. But various fact checkers have come out saying that hundreds of Trump's statements are false. If we included a correction on every false statement by Trump, we'd basically have to add a sentence every time he's mentioned. This fact check is such a minor correction based on a strict and atypical reading of his language. Most readers who understand English would probably not come away from this section believing that the exact same people who were responsible for the Iraq intelligence are also responsible for the Russia intelligence. Claim/counterclaim makes for awkward reading, and it's just unnecessary in this case. Red Rock Canyon (talk) 04:12, 2 October 2017 (UTC)

Agreed. Two points:

1. The fact check is overly pedantic in the first place. I think everyone knows that Trump was talking about the CIA in general, and not the specific analysts who made the assessments. From that standpoint, the fact check is sort of silly.
2. The sentence we have now doesn't really sum up the results of the fact check, which is "Not Quite Right." The WaPo fact check focuses on whether or not CIA analysts correctly assessed the (non-)existence of Iraqi WMD, and only briefly mentions that the analysts working on Russia today are likely different than the analysts working on Iraq 15 years ago. The WaPo conclusion is that the intelligence was spun by politicians, and that it was faulty, which is why it rates Trump's statement "Not Quite Right."

-Thucydides411 (talk) 06:04, 2 October 2017 (UTC)

The WaPo conclusion is that the intelligence was spun by politicians - Glad to see that reiterated here. Because the text that I inserted to clarify that has recently been reverted here and needs to be restored to the article. If not, we have the article supporting Trump's POV (or calculated deflection) that the incompetent, erratic, or dishonest intelligence community fooled everyone on the Iraq2 WMD claim. This point has been made abundantly clear in virtually all the RS reporting on the WMD issue, including extensive reporting on the Colin Powell UN speech, Cheney's Mushroom Cloud, and other misrepresentations of intelligence. SPECIFICO talk 15:32, 2 October 2017 (UTC)

What I said was that The WaPo conclusion is that the intelligence was spun by politicians, and that it was faulty. The WaPo fact-check entry doesn't really go into a third aspect of what happened with Iraq - the complicity of the intelligence community in the Bush administration's spinning of intelligence. The national intelligence estimate put out in the run-up to the Iraq War was itself heavily spun, because the entire direction of policy at the time was in favor of war. The NIE assessed, for example, that Iraq was importing aluminum tubes to be used in centrifuges, despite DOE analysis showing that the tubes were unsuited for this purpose. It wasn't purely administration spinning - the spin extended into the intelligence agencies. -Thucydides411 (talk) 21:39, 2 October 2017 (UTC)

Since December 2016, SPECIFICO has made numerous incomprehensible edits denying that the CIA ever said Iraq had WMD in order to paint the CIA as infallible. (See, for example, here, here, and here.) She is only able to generate this remarkable conclusion by way of deliberate cherrypicking and misrepresentation of sources, similar to her misquoting of Thucydides411 above. Her false, unsupported assertions have been repeatedly debunked on this talk page, for example here, here, and here. The text being debated in this thread was a compromise proposed by me and implemented by FallingGravity after SPECIFICO insisted that the Trump transition team's uncontroversial statement of fact needed to be counterbalanced by some criticism, however spurious. For those interested in the details of Glenn Kessler's fact check of both Trump and Nancy Pelosi, and SPECIFICO's distortion of what Kessler actually said to buttress Pelosi's revisionist talking point that the CIA never said Iraq had WMDs, they can be found below.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 18:50, 2 October 2017 (UTC)

Extended content:

Kessler: "Before the October 2002 NIE [National Intelligence Estimate], some intelligence agencies assessed that the Iraqi government was reconstituting a nuclear weapons program, while others disagreed. The NIE reflected a majority view that it was being reconstituted." cf. 2008 Senate Intelligence Committee report: "Statements by the president, vice president, secretary of state, and the national security advisor regarding a possible Iraqi nuclear weapons program were generally substantiated by the intelligence community, but did not convey the substantial disagreements that existed in the intelligence community." Kessler: "The intelligence community consistently stated between the late 1990s and 2003 that Iraq retained biological warfare agents and the capability to produce more." cf. 2008 Senate report: "Statements in the major speeches analyzed, as well as additional statements, regarding Iraq's possession of biological agents, weapons, production capability and use of mobile biological laboratories were substantiated by intelligence information." Kessler: "The October NIE said that Iraq retained between 100 and 500 metric tons of chemical weapons. The intelligence community assessed that Hussein wanted to have chemical weapons capability and that Iraq was seeking to hide its capability in its dual-use chemical industry. However, intelligence assessments clearly stated that analysts could not confirm that production [emphasis added] was ongoing." cf. 2008 Senate report: "Statements in the major speeches analyzed, as well as additional statements, regarding Iraq's possession of chemical weapons were substantiated by intelligence information. Statements by the president and vice president prior to the October 2002 NIE ... did not [reflect] the intelligence community's uncertainties as to whether such production was ongoing." Michael Morell: "Does the CIA get everything right? Absolutely not. Was Iraq WMD one of our biggest failures? Yes. But the CIA gets most things right." Kessler: "The clearest example of stretching the intelligence concerned Saddam Hussein's links to al-Qaeda and by extension the 9/11 attacks, which were thin and nonexistent—but which the Bush administration (especially Vice President Cheney) suggested were deeply suspicious. ... The [2008 Senate] report said such Iraq/al-Qaeda statements were 'not substantiated by the intelligence,' adding that multiple CIA reports dismissed the claim that Iraq and al-Qaeda were cooperating partners—and that there was no intelligence information that supported administration statements that Iraq would provide weapons of mass destruction to al-Qaeda. However, the Trump team kept its complaint isolated to intelligence findings that Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. In this case, the Senate report found that remarks by administration officials generally reflected the intelligence, but failed to convey 'substantial disagreements that existed in the intelligence community.'" Kessler: "Neither Trump nor Pelosi gets this correct. The intelligence community's assessments on Iraq's WMD stockpiles and programs turned out to be woefully wrong, largely because analysts believed that Iraq had kept on a path of building its programs rather than largely abandoning them after the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Thus the stockpiles theoretically got larger as time went on. But at the same time, Bush administration officials often hyped the intelligence that supported their policy goals—while ignoring or playing down dissents or caveats from within the intelligence community." SPECIFICO's summary: "However, the intelligence analysts involved in monitoring Russian activities are most likely different from those who assessed that Iraq had stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, and a 2008 Senate Intelligence Committee report concluded that the Bush Administration's claims on the subject were 'not substantiated by the intelligence.'"TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 18:50, 2 October 2017 (UTC)

• Coming into this discussion having glanced at it a few times and then giving it a quick read-through, I'm seeing valid points by both sides. First, the WaPo article absolutely makes the link between the "analysts" they say are different, and the "people" Trump blamed for the WMDs. But on the other side, it's pretty damn clear that the US Intelligence community thought that Iraq had a WMD program back before the invasion. (That doesn't absolve the Bush administration from blame for hyping that up to the Nth degree, as if Saddam was about to start launching nukes at Israel, Iran or both, of course.)

I can understand the arguments about a false balance here, but I think they're missing the point that Trump's complaints aren't infallible. If we're going to include Trump saying something which the RSes say is false, then we need to include an RS saying that it's false. Unless there are RSes defending Trump's statement, this isn't really controversial.

This claim was published explicitly as a fact check of both Trump's statement and the claim about the intelligence community not being to blame WMDs, and it raises several valid critiques of Trump's claim. The fact that an editor who supports inclusion has made edits which suggest that the Bush administration was more to blame than the intelligence community is really irrelevant. (And for the record, I accept the notion that SPEC's edits were "denying that the CIA ever said Iraq had WMD". Sorry SPEC, but this is pretty clear). ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 19:14, 2 October 2017 (UTC)

To reiterate, Kessler does not assert that Trump's statement was "false," only that it is mostly true but "not quite right." I agree that Kessler raises several important caveats, but none of them refute Trump's essential point that the CIA has a checkered past: "Trump's complaint about this semi-ancient history is a bit odd because a) the intelligence analysts who worked on Middle East WMDs are not going to be the same as analysts focused on Russian cyber-behavior; b) the intelligence collection for hacking in the United States by overseas powers would be different from assessing illicit weapons programs in the Middle East; and c) reforms were put in place after the Iraq War to make it harder for suspect intelligence to bubble up to the top ranks without careful scrutiny. (For instance, a new procedure required heads of intelligence agencies to vouch personally for the credibility of any of their own agency's sources that are used in a major estimate.)" Some of this nuance was lost in translation by FallingGravity's edit, which reduced Kessler's argument to a minor semantic quibble.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 19:34, 2 October 2017 (UTC)

How's this?TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 19:56, 2 October 2017 (UTC)

(edit conflict)The Kessler article never uses the phrase "not quite right". In fact, it states "Neither Trump nor Pelosi gets this correct." in the first sentence of the last paragraph. I don't agree that FallingGravity's edit makes this into a "minor semantic quibble", though I'm a little confused by why the edit says "most likely" when the source leaves no room for doubt. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 19:58, 2 October 2017 (UTC)

TTAAC I do actually like that edit better as it better describes what was said. And I'm okay with attribution, since Trump's comments are attributed as well. But I still think the "most likely" needs to go. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 19:59, 2 October 2017 (UTC)

"The Kessler article never uses the phrase 'not quite right'." Not in the body, but every one of Kessler's fact checks ends with a "Share The Facts" graphic repeating the disputed statement and assigning it a rating. In this case, Kessler's rating is "Not Quite Right."TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 21:42, 2 October 2017 (UTC)

Point of fact: the Kessler article labels Trump's statement "Not Quite Right." It's right at the bottom of the page, in the "Share the facts" box. If you click the button to share the Kessler article on Twitter, for example, you get a little box with Trump's quote and "Not Quite Right." But I'm just a moronic liar, so what do I know. -Thucydides411 (talk) 21:45, 2 October 2017 (UTC)

Agree in re the "most likely" needing to go. The statement is directly attributed to the gentleman and he never qualified it in any way. Our saying he did is incorrect. Marteau (talk) 22:18, 2 October 2017 (UTC)

Although I have to admit I don't follow the logic of your initially reverting my edit when I gave attribution to the quote, citing WP:YESPOV, but now because since "Trump's comments are attributed as well you're "OK" with it. MPants at work, what happened to WP:YESPOV? Or are we ignoring that rule now? Marteau (talk) 01:38, 3 October 2017 (UTC)

I have thought about this issue and I've just reviewed WP:YESPOV as you (Pants) advised and it does indeed point out that uncontroversial factual assertions made by reliable sources should be stated in Wikipedia's voice. As was also pointed out to me, the Post has not retracted this, nor have any other sources criticized this interpretation, therefore, as WP:YESPOV is policy, the attribution must go. I'm going to go ahead and remove it and return the statement to Wikipedia's voice. My apologies for my strident advocacy for ignoring policy on this issue. Editors going off and choosing which policy to follow would lead to chaos and I stand corrected. Marteau (talk) 09:26, 6 October 2017 (UTC)

The WaPo statement in question appears in a subsection of ‘Commentary and reactions’. Do any other subsections of this section include a counter to a statement by the subject of that subsection? Humanengr (talk) 04:55, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

Commentary and reactions - Donald Trump

Substituting one POV for another? Here's the direct quote as cited by the Bloomberg source:

“These are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction,” Trump’s transition team said in a brief statement late Friday, referring to now discredited U.S. assertions during the George W. Bush administration that Iraq had such weapons, which became a key rationale for the U.S. invasion in 2003.

“The election ended a long time ago in one of the biggest Electoral College victories in history. It’s now time to move on,” the team said in the statement.

Space4Time3Continuum2x (talk) 16:25, 2 October 2017 (UTC)

Trump’s company had more contact with Russia during campaign, according to documents turned over to investigators

More details for including:

[12]

Casprings (talk) 19:20, 2 October 2017 (UTC)

This would probably fit better in Links between Trump associates and Russian officials. ^Falling_Gravity 00:02, 5 October 2017 (UTC)

It’s part of the investigation so I think it fits here.

I agree with FallingGravity, the Washington Post article is about associates of Trump. PackMecEng (talk) 16:07, 5 October 2017 (UTC)

AP & business insider article - Spain extradites Pyotr Levashov

[13] AND [14] published 10.3.2017

Perhaps keep an eye out for more on this...DN (talk) 00:08, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

Need the section "Proof"

There needs to be the section listing the items that prove that the phenomenon asserted in the subject actually took place, preferably with bullet points. People read this article in search of proof, and are left with just a wall of text, and without a clear proof. "U.S. Intelligence Community was confident", "investigations are underway", "Barack Obama warned Putin ... to stop" - none of these prove Russian interference. Yurivict (talk) 14:21, 7 October 2017 (UTC)

Why?Slatersteven (talk) 15:09, 7 October 2017 (UTC)

There's no reason to discuss a statement in principle. Since you have identified a way in which you feel the article can be improved, the next step is for you to bring links to RS presentation of proof, and your proposed article text describing the proof, to this talk page. When there needs to be any kind of something it's up to someone or anyone to propose it. You did not do that last time you visited. SPECIFICO talk 15:28, 7 October 2017 (UTC)

On the contrary, I can't find the real proof in the text of the article. All proof can be reduced to the statement "CIA is convinced that the interference took place", which isn't a proof at all. Somebody should either create such section, or prepend "Conspiracy theories about the" to the the article's title, or explain how is this not a conspiracy theory. In its current form the article just doesn't answer any questions. Yurivict (talk) 22:30, 7 October 2017 (UTC)

Here's a start: The summary sentences in the lede, from "The United States Intelligence Community concluded …" through "In January 2017, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper …" make the following claims:

Claim	Proof	WP RS report claim as 'fact'
Russia interfered	??	yes
Trump ordered influence campaign	??	yes
Russia directed hacking of emails	??	yes
Russia hacked servers and forwarded contents to WikiLeaks	??	yes
Russia disseminated fake news	??	yes

Humanengr (talk) 00:10, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

WP:DENY He says the article needs to show the proof. Simple solution: Add the proof to the article. Not a solution: Say the article needs something and do nothing about improving it. SPECIFICO talk 01:03, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

Given that the agencies haven’t released any proof (under reasons of protecting methods and sources, etc.), perhaps the question marks in the above table should be replaced by “not provided by ODNI”. That seems well-documented. Humanengr (talk) 01:24, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

This is nonsense. We treat it like WP:RS treats these statements.Casprings (talk) 01:48, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

We cannot add proof because none has been presented in reliable sources. The article does mention the source of the claims. TFD (talk) 02:10, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

WP does not, and indeed cannot, provide proof of anything, ever. WP has no such authority. The only thing we do is present what the actual authorities say. This is the definition of an encyclopedia. --A D Monroe III^(talk) 02:14, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

@TFD, thx re "We cannot add proof because none has been presented in reliable sources." In view of WP:NEWSORG saying "Whether a specific news story is reliable for a fact or statement should be examined on a case-by-case basis.", on what basis can any RS be considered reliable when asserting a claim as fact without providing proof? Humanengr (talk) 02:40, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

For one thing, there are a ton of different reliable sources discussing this, and basically all of them agree. It'd be a bit of an abuse of the whole case-by-case policy to declare every single one of them unusable. Red Rock Canyon (talk) 03:03, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

In this case the reliable sources are news outlets and they are reliably reporting what intelligence officers say. TFD (talk) 03:18, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

@TFD, Intelligence officers have said x, y, z but have provided no proof. What then is justification for titling the article as fact? The refrain here seems to be “RS asserts it as fact.” But -all- such RS that state (or restate) claims as fact fail per the indicated RS policy. Humanengr (talk) 04:23, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

I agree the title is misleading and should be changed. (What about "Russiagate?") But the lead at least does not say the claim are true just that U.S. intelligence Community is highly confident it is true. Incidentally the phrasing seems to be wrong because we now know that it was a report by an ad hoc group of agents from several agencies. TFD (talk) 04:42, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

@TFD Do we know that? If you're talking about the January intelligence assessment, then that was a document published by the Office for the Director of National Intelligence. At the time, the people involved said this was an official report representing the US Intelligence Community. Since then, the new (current) Director of National Intelligence, Director of the CIA, and Director of the NSA have all confirmed that this represents the official position of the US Intelligence Community. I think we've been over this dozens of times since January, and unless you have some hitherto hidden evidence that somehow trumps all the public statements of all these government officials and all the analyses of secondary reliable sources, then our position should stay the same as it was before.

@Humanengr So you're saying that we should just ignore all RS, at our own discretion. Do you see how that could be problematic? I'm more sympathetic to the idea that we include a section on the limitations of the evidence publicly presented by the US government, since it does seem that enough sources discussed that topic to make a decent section about it. But that would have to be in addition to what we already have. Otherwise we'd be blatantly ignoring the vast majority of RS simply because we don't think what they're saying is true. That's not how wikipedia is run. Red Rock Canyon (talk) 04:56, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

@Red Rock Canyon, When RS make claims w/o supporting proof — which they cannot provide since none has been made available — it’s not a matter of arbitrary discretion to regard a claim as unsupported. I am not saying here to ignore RS for all claims (e.g., that Y said such-and-such), but that their claim that x is fact is clearly unsupported. If it’s unsupported, it’s entirely degrading to WP and misleading to the reader to present it as fact anywhere, most egregiously in a title as the title frames reader expectations for what the article will present. Humanengr (talk) 05:22, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

I don't think that's how it works. That sounds like you coming up with an ad-hoc rule so you can change the article to your liking despite the lack on any reliable sources supporting you. If there were other sources more suited to the article - scholarly articles, published political science or history books - then maybe it would make sense to ignore the newspapers. But the only authoritative sources we've got are the newspapers. We either use them or delete the article and wait a few years for something better to come along. Picking and choosing which of what they say is true or false is original research. Red Rock Canyon (talk) 05:50, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

Fortunately that problem does not arise because the media do not say the opinions in the report are true, they merely say they are what they were. TFD (talk) 05:56, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

I think what was said was that the DNI represented 16 intelligence agencies, but that got reported as 17 organizations involved. In fact, it was only the DNI, CIA, FBI and NSA.[15] The report has the seal of the DNI. Presumably the Director selected members from the three agencies. The term "represents" here is non-standard. We normally don't say that soldiers are represented by their officers or workers are represented by their bosses. TFD (talk) 05:54, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

I've read that politifact article. The people who said "all 17 agencies" were involved were incorrect, but nowhere in this article do we make that claim. Which part of the article are you talking about? The only time "represent" is used in that fashion seems to be in the section about Vladimir Putin. I'm not sure why it's written like that - the language seems odd and confused, if not wrong. In general, the ODNI is in charge of the US intelligence community, and if they say some analysis or conclusion reflects the opinion of the US intelligence community, they are automatically right - unless there's some inner battle between agencies that breaks into the public. Red Rock Canyon (talk) 06:12, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

The article begins, "The United States Intelligence Community concluded...." The IC is a "federation of 16 separate United States government agencies...headed by the Director of National Intelligence." While one could argue the opening sentence is factual, it is misleading. It implies that all these agencies were involved. In fact we don't know if any agencies were involved, just that the head of the DNI selected agents from three agencies. TFD (talk) 16:03, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

>For one thing, there are a ton of different reliable sources discussing this, and basically all of them agree.

You fail to see the conflict of interest they have here. These so called """"""""""""reliable source"""""""""""" make a lot of money by pushing this conspiracy theory.

It's shameful how blindly Wikipedians trust any and all big news sources. This kind of shit makes Wikipedia a fucking news aggregator and not an encyclopedia. Keyakakushi46 (talk) 15:39, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

The Wikipedia is not the platform to push the "mainstream media is fake news" narrative. ValarianB (talk) 19:24, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

That's not what the source you presented (or any source I know of) says. It says that the CIA, FBI, and NSA were involved in the assessment as organizations - not that they just chose some people from them to help out. But that's all beside the point. It doesn't matter who wrote the report. Its conclusions have the public backing of the intelligence community as a whole. We don't say that this particular report was written by some theoretical supercommittee consisting of every single person from every US intelligence agency. We say it represents the conclusions of the intelligence community, and that is a fact supported by the sources. Red Rock Canyon (talk) 16:51, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

@Red Rock Canyon, Accepted WP practice — which this article adheres to (for the most part) — is to properly refer to a claim as a claim and to properly cite its source. The most impactful place this is not done is the title. Why the inconsistency except to push a PoV. No satisfactory explanation for that exception has been given, it is that exception that is ad hoc. Humanengr (talk) 06:38, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

Ah, so it's about the title again. I recommend you go back to one the countless move article debates in the talk page archives. There you shall find page after page of explanation, and I hope you find it satisfactory. Red Rock Canyon (talk) 13:31, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

Consensus can change and it is not a good reason for violating policy, in this case "Neutrality in article titles." What do you think of "Russiagate," which is AFAIK the only term used? TFD (talk) 16:47, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

There appeared to be a consensus against Russiagate at Talk:Donald Trump/Archive_67#Russiagate. power~enwiki (π, ν) 16:49, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

That's not a lot of discussion and it was pointed out that there was no connection between all the Russia stories. But I think there is: the Kremlin allegedly put Trump in power because he was pro-Russian and Trump himself or his aides may be complicit. TFD (talk) 18:53, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

I don't refer to earlier title debates because I believe prior consensus is somehow set in stone, but because Humanengr is simply restating arguments that have been addressed over and over again, without any new evidence. There's a reason for the link at the top of the page to all the previous movement requests, and that's to avoid repeating the same discussions over and over. Red Rock Canyon (talk) 15:02, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

Boys and girls why do you jump in for another episode of dancing with the trolls every time a drive-by throws up this same kind of diversionary BS? SPECIFICO talk 15:10, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

• Tsk tsk SPECIFICO, I'm going to give you a templated warning for that comment. Having said that, yes, y'all have been taken for a ride. I have left the original commentator a note about discretionary sanctions. Carry on, Drmies (talk) 21:38, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

@Drmies: Sure, go on, continue to enable that sort of behavior. -Thucydides411 (talk) 02:11, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

Thucydides411, that applies to you in the first place, enabling someone who is clearly here to either promote an agenda or, at the very least, prevent article progress and drop a time sink on the talk page. Drmies (talk) 02:20, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

Yurivict asked a reasonable question and made a proposal about article content. Calling them a troll is demeaning. I don't really expect you to object to SPECIFICO's insult, since you've made it clear that you only apply civility standards in one direction. -Thucydides411 (talk) 03:29, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

…since you've made it clear that you only apply civility standards in one direction. I’ve run out of appendages counting the number of editors that you have accused of bad faith over the last year. At some point, you might consider the possibility that the editor with an agenda is you. Just a suggestion. Objective3000 (talk) 11:31, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

@Red Rock Canyon, re prior discussion — for reference, MjolnirPants wrote: "RSes aren't calling it 'alleged' or 'purported' or 'supposed' or 'claimed' or 'accused'. They're calling it interference/involvement. So that's what we do. Second guessing reliable sources based on our own analysis is blatant WP:OR." in a discussion titled "Shouldn't this be 'alleged involvement'?" For the sake of discussion, I'll accept MjolnirPants's argument that because RS's aren't calling it 'alleged', the title should not use that term. The problem is, however, that everywhere else we rely on RS's saying something, we attribute the statement to them in a cite. But that isn't being done (even implicitly) in the title itself. That's what's wrong. AFAICS, nowhere in the talk pages has this inconsistency been addressed. Humanengr (talk) 04:00, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

I would say that for any controversial topic, there is a tipping point where the need to specify "a source says X did Y" transitions into simply saying "X did Y", because the clear majority of sources consistently and reliably report it as such. We're long past the point where Russian meddling in the election is idle speculation. ValarianB (talk) 12:25, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

@ValarianB, Thx — we agree it’s controversial. Is there any other controversial topic in WP where the title does not clearly indicate the controversy? I don’t see any. (Exclude from that any in the List of conspiracy theories, where the nature of the debate is otherwise prominently indicated.) Humanengr (talk) 13:56, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

Controversial does not mean objectionable. The Pizzagate conspiracy theory is controversial, but that does not mean that the pro-pizzagate acolytes get their say, as their point of view is universally derided. The article even begins with "...is a debunked conspiracy theory", not "sources claim it is debunked". The title of this article reflects the assessment of the intelligence community ans how the majority of reliable sources discuss it; Russia interfered in the 2016 US Presidential election. Not "claimed", bot "according to..". They did it. Finally, please do not ping me in an discussion I am already participating in. Entirely unnecessary. ValarianB (talk) 14:13, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

I’m not sure if you saw my edit where I added a parenthetical to indicate I was excluding ‘conspiracy theories’ —which highlight, as you say, that characterization is the article. Are you saying that not believing Russia interfered in the election is a conspiracy theory. Humanengr (talk) 16:02, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

Humanengr, I can't speak for ValarianB, but I can answer your question in the affirmative.

An alliance consisting of the Russian FSB, Putin, Wikileaks, Trump administration, Breitbart, Infowars, Daily Caller, RT, Sputnik, etc. have created a conspiracy theory which accuses the DNC and Hillary Clinton of masterminding a false flag operation, and that it was them which created the whole Russiagate series of invents, even though this began long before the campaigns and makes no sense. They posit that Russia and Trump are innocent of any collusion and that the DNC actually hacked itself, leaving false leads which pointed toward Russia.

So yes, there is such a conspiracy theory, but it lacks any good evidence and is only posited by unreliable sources as part of an obvious attempt to cover-up a series of crimes.

The actual Russiagate events are backed by much more and better evidence which actually make sense. -- BullRangifer (talk) 02:58, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

@BullRangifer, thx, that packs in a lot to respond to. I’ll start here: 1) Is that the only basis on which a reasonable person can conclude that the ‘Russia interfered’ meme is either false or grossly overhyped? 2) How would you say that list of conspirators differs from a ‘neocon enemies list’ (assuming you accept that as a term of reference)? Humanengr (talk) 18:15, 12 October 2017 (UTC)

I'm not traveling down this road of semantic gymnastics with you, sorry. The title of this article fits the subject matter, there's nothing else to this angle. ValarianB (talk) 19:24, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

This is silly. It's no longer controversial that Russia interfered in the election - enough RS have reported on enough aspects of this that to argue that Russia didn't interfere (or to claim that "there's no proof" of it) is now the REDFLAG claim. Anyone who has been reading (reputable) newspapers should be able to see that by now. Fyddlestix (talk) 14:27, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

The Washington Post: Google uncovers Russian-bought ads on YouTube, Gmail and other platforms

Continued details to include.Casprings (talk) 11:25, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2017/10/09/google-uncovers-russian-bought-ads-on-youtube-gmail-and-other-platforms/

Requested move 9 October 2017

Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections → Russian Interference with the 2016 United States Presidental election – Per pervious discussion here:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Russian_interference_in_the_2016_United_States_elections/Archive_14

I think we should consider a slight change of title. Rationale is:

1. Matches what "this" is being called in official documents: See: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/73/Appointment_of_Special_Counsel_to_Investigate_Russian_Interference_with_the_2016_Presidential_Election_and_Related_Matters.pdf

2. I think the interference is about one election. It may have happened in multiple states, but it seems clear that Russia interfered in the Presidential election Casprings (talk) 15:53, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

Survey

Feel free to state your position on the renaming proposal by beginning a new line in this section with *'''Support''' or *'''Oppose''', then sign your comment with ~~~~. Since polling is not a substitute for discussion, please explain your reasons, taking into account Wikipedia's policy on article titles.

• Oppose Since the U.S. does not, unlike France, have separate presidential elections, any interference will affect the election of officials at all levels. TFD (talk) 18:50, 9 October 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose I stand with TFD. Anyway, the change would not be likely to change search engine results landing on the article. There were primaries, there were state campaigns, targeted interference in the state elections and possibly at the polls. It seems like "elections" is OK. SPECIFICO talk 19:08, 9 October 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose A significant part of the interference seems to have been in the form of ads and propaganda focusing on issues as well as candidates. This may have had effects on any office up for vote in the general election, not just the president. Even if the goal was to influence the presidential race, many of the methods were non-specific, and the election itself is integrated. Red Rock Canyon (talk) 19:10, 9 October 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose Per Red Rock Canyon, changing it to "Presidential election" would be incorrect, as it was broad ranging disinformation targeting all candidates of all elections. I also think that capitalizing "interference" would be grammatically incorrect. Titles do not have to match official documents, it's an encyclopedia and not a transcription service._{ZXCVBNM (TALK)} 23:18, 9 October 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose - The interference by Russia was not limited to the Presidential election.- MrX 14:06, 10 October 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose as the scope is broader than just the federal election, e.g. Russia's attempts to meddle in the Democratic primary. ValarianB (talk) 19:26, 10 October 2017 (UTC)
• Strong oppose per above, considering they reportedly tried to interfere with the DNC. Jdcomix (talk) 15:03, 12 October 2017 (UTC)

Discussion

Any additional comments:

I think this is unneeded precision and detail. Do you have any evidence showing this could be confused with something else? Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 16:06, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

Limitations of evidence publicly presented

Following on from Red Rock Canyon’s offering above re “a section on the limitations of the evidence publicly presented by the US government” — here’s a start:

The ODNI, in its 1/6/2017 report, indicated that the report "does not include the full supporting information on key elements of the influence campaign".[ref]

The New York Times stated that "What is missing from the public report is … hard evidence to back up the agencies' claims that the Russian government engineered the election attack. … [T]he message from the agencies essentially amounts to 'trust us.' There is no discussion of the forensics used to recognize the handiwork of known hacking groups, no mention of intercepted communications between the Kremlin and the hackers, no hint of spies reporting from inside Moscow's propaganda machinery."

Humanengr (talk) 01:57, October 10, 2017‎ (UTC)

In the first sentence, I'd like to see two words added (CAPS here): "...indicated that the PUBLIC report DELIBERATELY..." -- BullRangifer (talk) 04:32, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

It's important to not imply that the NYTimes article expresses anything but a wish for more information, not an accusation that the information doesn't exist. The ODNI and other sources make it plain that such information does exist in the full classified report, but it is not YET provided to the public, which makes complete sense. Key information MUST be withheld until the right time. -- BullRangifer (talk) 04:45, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

It's more than just a desire for more information. The author discusses the doubts that many people have about the report, given that it contains so little new information or hard evidence. The article closes with

But this report is unlikely to change the minds of skeptics who, like the president-elect, remember the intelligence agencies’ faulty assessments on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and fear being misled again.

-Thucydides411 (talk) 04:59, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

That doesn't change my point, but actually reinforces it; it recognizes that these skeptics do erroneously and illogically infer from the lack of detail that it doesn't exist, and they don't have the sense or patience to wait for the end of the investigation when it will be revealed. Instead they posit that the lack is proof the evidence doesn't exist. This shows they don't understand that "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence".

This demonstrates how there is no amount of evidence or preliminary provision of some information which can change the mind of this type of skeptic. They are ideologically blind and will insist on believing what they wish to believe. You are a good example, and you doggedly persist right here on these pages. We see it by your endless repetition of the same arguments month after month. IIRC, this is called "stonewalling" (or maybe some other term(s) fits better). -- BullRangifer (talk) 05:15, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

The NY Times article doesn't say the skeptics are wrong or illogical. It says they aren't willing to trust the intelligence agencies, precisely because so little evidence has been supplied, and because of the history of the intel agencies (e.g., about Iraqi WMD). The article says nothing about skeptics being "ideologically blind" or insisting on "believing what they wish to believe." You've seriously mischaracterized the article. -Thucydides411 (talk) 05:21, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

And, like flat earth skeptics, 9-11 skeptics, and the JFK's alive in Tanzania crowd, there are virtually none of that ilk represented in published discourse. Hence we ignore them. SPECIFICO talk 21:19, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

There are a lot of articles that talk about the problems of believing these intelligence-agency claims without evidence. The New York Times article being discussed above is one of them. The Süddeutsche Zeitung article about the JAR that you wanted to exclude is another. A lot of these articles bring up the misrepresentation that occurred in the run-up to the Iraq War as a reason why skepticism exists about current-day US intelligence-agency claims, especially when those claims are made without evidence.

Devolving into incivility Jdcomix (talk) 20:17, 12 October 2017 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
I get that you're trying to push the view that US intelligence agency claims are absolute truth, because in this case they align with your political views, but Wikipedia can't take that line. -Thucydides411 (talk) 20:58, 11 October 2017 (UTC) How very rude of you! I have no views about your American politics. Maybe that's why it's easy for me to edit according to WP neutrality policy. I have no opinions. It's pure process -- like flipping flapjacks. One up, one down, one to go, on to the next. SPECIFICO talk 22:33, 11 October 2017 (UTC) That's funny. Tell me another joke. I'm sure that trying to exclude the Süddeutsche Zeitung as a supposedly fringe source was as part of your commitment to neutrality. -Thucydides411 (talk) 06:01, 12 October 2017 (UTC)

@BullRangifer, how about this as 1st para:

The ODNI, in its public report of 1/6/2017, indicated that the report “does not include the full supporting information on key elements of the influence campaign.” (This appears in a header at the top of each page of the report prefaced by “This report is a declassified version of a highly classified assessment; its conclusions are identical to those in the highly classified assessment, …”.)[ref]

Humanengr (talk) 14:29, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

We're getting closer. The real difference in content between the classified and declassified reports should be stated explicitly, so using those words would help. Let's see how this looks:

The ODNI, in its public report of 1/6/2017, indicated that the DECLASSIFIED report "does not include the full supporting information on key elements of the influence campaign" contained in the CLASSIFIED REPORT.[ref]

Is that accurate? -- BullRangifer (talk) 03:15, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

We don't know if there is significant evidence in the classified report, so the wording shouldn't give the reader any impression that we're stating such evidence exists. It might exist, but all we have is the word of an unreliable source. -Thucydides411 (talk) 21:00, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

We have months of additional revelations of Russian interference. O3000 (talk) 21:33, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

I agree that we shouldn't say that there is evidence contained in the classified report (not until we have some reliable sources that have seen it), but we should tell readers that the ODNI says that. This might be a better way of presenting it, as direct words from the report:

The ODNI states in its public report "“Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections” is a declassified version of a highly classified assessment....  [T]he declassified report does not and cannot include the full supporting information, including specific intelligence and sources and methods."

I think it makes sense to include something like that as context, alongside any discussion about the lack of evidence. The NY Times article here quotes that section, and I think many other articles about the lack of evidence acknowledge this as the agencies' excuse. - Red Rock Canyon (talk) 01:46, 12 October 2017 (UTC)

RRC, That looks good to me. Of course, that is exactly what the fringe sources deny and so I sure hope we do not resume discussing them here 9 months after they've been rejected and discredited. SPECIFICO talk 02:01, 12 October 2017 (UTC)

As this section is about the "lack of evidence", the lede sentence should lead on that point rather than burying it with couching. As my last version above indicates, I agree the couching from the report should be included, but after the "lack of evidence" is clearly indicated. Humanengr (talk) 02:44, 12 October 2017 (UTC)

Pardon me, but that's not gonna happen. The article starts off with, like, what? "There is no evidence of Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections". SPECIFICO talk 03:15, 12 October 2017 (UTC)

From the article:

The absence of any proof is especially surprising in light of promises on Thursday from the director of national intelligence, James R. Clapper Jr., that he would “push the envelope” to try to make more information public. Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, said that Mr. Obama had directed officials to “make as much of it public as they possibly can.”

…

Susan Hennessey, a former intelligence agency lawyer who is now the managing editor of the online journal Lawfare, wrote : “The unclassified report is underwhelming at best. There is essentially no new information for those who have been paying attention.”

Humanengr (talk) 03:41, 12 October 2017 (UTC)

As many editors agreed each of the previous times we addressed this complaint, the JAR is not a very important part of the story and it's only marginally related to the topic of this article. The event itself is the topic, not the unclassified report. SPECIFICO talk 03:51, 12 October 2017 (UTC)

Excuse me? The JAR is only marginally related to the topic of the article? You mean the most comprehensive report in which US intelligence agencies have accused Russia of interfering in the 2016 US Presidential election is only marginally related to "Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections"?

The JAR is a central part of this story, and our article does a terrible job of summarizing the reaction to it. -Thucydides411 (talk) 06:00, 12 October 2017 (UTC)

@SPECIFICO The proposed text and the comments I quoted refer to the 1/6/2017 statement. Humanengr (talk) 11:45, 12 October 2017 (UTC)

Humanengr - Oh, yes. I think you're right - this line doesn't have to be the first sentence of the section. I think it'd be better to lead with a general statement summarizing the criticism in the sources, and then also include the quote from the assessment. SPECIFICO - this is about a specific section in the article that summarizes criticism of the lack of evidence in the publicly released US intelligence assessments - not just the JAR. These assessments are an important part of the story (and the article obviously agrees, since the very first words reference them), and many reliable sources carried some mention of their lack of publicly available evidence, which would improve the article if included. Also, Humanengr was talking about the lead of this section - nobody is talking about starting the article with "there's no evidence this happened" or changing the article lead at all. No need to get so defensive. Red Rock Canyon (talk) 20:30, 12 October 2017 (UTC)

Also, here are some sources that might be helpful. This article went into some detail about the lack of evidence in the January 7th report. Here are some others from around then that mention the lack of evidence, but not in any detail: Newsweek, USA Today, Fox. Red Rock Canyon (talk) 21:37, 12 October 2017 (UTC)

Oppose The longstanding consensus has been against this, except for a compromise that we achieved involving a piece by Kevin Poulson. That compromise involved about three sentences in total. Nothing has changed in the meantime that would require a reevaluation. It's surprising to see it suggested that it carries enough weight to warrant its own subsection, and to do so would be to give it much more attention than sources ever did. Also, see WP:CRITS, anyone that hasn't. Geogene (talk) 22:29, 12 October 2017 (UTC)

This isn't a vote, and nothing concrete has been presented, so I think you're kind of jumping the gun here. The goal isn't to add a "criticism" section to the article, it's include mainstream views on the ICA assessment that currently aren't in the article - this would probably be done best via a paragraph added to the existing ICA section, as per the "integrated" guideline on the CRITICISM page you suggested we read.

Additionally, the discussion and compromise you mention (about Kevin Poulson) was about a December 2016 analysis released by the Department of Homeland Security specifically about hacking. What we're proposing is something about January 2017 assessment released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. They're completely separate things - separate documents written by separate organizations on separate subjects. I think you shouldn't just blindly oppose something when you clearly don't even know what it is. Regarding the sources, in the days after the ICA was released, several major newspapers devoted significant sections to discussing its complete lack of evidence, and many major newspapers that covered the document mentioned its lack of evidence. Red Rock Canyon (talk) 22:51, 12 October 2017 (UTC)

My understanding, from this section and the section above it, is that you want to add a section about limitations in the report. That's not appropriate weight. You're right that nothing concrete has been presented, other than your intent to dedicate an entire section to this. It doesn't merit a whole paragraph either. Geogene (talk) 23:06, 12 October 2017 (UTC)

I'm a little confused. So if I had initially said "add a sentence" then that would change your mind? Or "add 3 words"? How long is a sentence or a section or a paragraph? There is nothing concrete right now. If I thought you were opposed to this on general principle, then that would make sense, but you seem to have been very confused as to what the topic of this proposal even was until 15 minutes ago, so it's strange that you have such a strong opinion about it. Red Rock Canyon (talk) 23:17, 12 October 2017 (UTC)

It's not nice to tell people they're confused unless you're sure that that's the case. Here's a diff to help your memory [16]. It's not an old diff at all. Geogene (talk) 23:30, 12 October 2017 (UTC)

RR, we've had extensive discussions of this and rejected UNDUE weight to these dissections of the unclassified report. None of the sources you listed is of current interest. They are from 9 months ago when much less corroborating public information was available. The intelligence reports are not of lasting significance. A couple of years hence, the article will not start with the intelligence report. It will more likely start with facts established in US court or congressional proceedings. SPECIFICO talk 23:36, 12 October 2017 (UTC)