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India: A Country Study, Federal Research Division, Library of Congress

Source: Heitzman, James; Worden, Robert, eds. (1995), India: A Country Study (PDF), Federal Research Division, Library of Congress, p. 571

Statement in source: "There was some opposition to this move within the cabinet by those who did not agree with referring the Kashmir dispute to the UN. The UN mediation process brought the war to a close on January 1, 1949. In all, 1,500 soldiers died on each side during the war."

Discussion: Talk:Indo-Pakistani War of 1947–1948#6000 casualties figure

Statement to be supported: Result in infobox per this edit

Summary: This is a highly partisan topic and is subject to DS. The talk page discussion started by questioning Pakistani casualties quoted as 6,000 killed, citing Globalsecurity.org and a figure of 1,500 killed. There is no consensus as to the reliability of that source but it actually cites India: A Country Study (the subject of this post). The Indo-Pakistani War of 1947–1948 was initially fought by proxy until the ultimate engagement of both national militaries. It is unclear from the other sources cited precisely what they are reporting as casualties (ie national military casualties v total combatant casualties). The other sources are not great, in that they are largely Indian in origin. The subject edit would add the 1,500 figure to both sides. However, the reliability of the source (India: A Country Study) has since been questioned, citing WP:CONTEXTMATTERS.

Question: Is the subject source (India: A Country Study) sufficiently reliable to support the edit made to the infobox in respect to casualties.

Cinderella157 (talk) 11:16, 13 December 2021 (UTC) I have no ties to either country.

Comments (India: A Country Study)

• Not a reliable source for the purpose.
  • That being said, what is the end-game? A majority of men employed by Pakistan were irregulars supplied with arms-stashes and money; who had recorded those casualties? There is a reason why even semi-official histories (see Shuja Nawaz et al) skips mentioning casualty-counts. TrangaBellam (talk) 11:47, 13 December 2021 (UTC)
• The time of the event is around late 1940's. This makes it very difficult to gather enough information on the casualty figures. Wikipedia was earlier quoting an indian figure which seems to have no official source and was not reliable enough. The 1,500 casualty figure estimate is the most neutral source on the internet neutral source at page 571 and is quoted by global security.org . It is also cited in some university work. No concensus can even be reached on global security.org not being suitable for being quoted. It has been cited in over 25,000 articles and also by Reuters and new york times as well as Washington Post which are considered reliable sources and its citation in some 25,000 articles on Google Scholar. It is only logical to quote both the 1,500 and 6000 figures as an estimate. Going by what TrangaBellam, that would mean removal of all the casualty section as this argument will even apply for the 6000 figure, which also it not a sure shot reliable source. Truthwins018 (talk) 13:49, 13 December 2021 (UTC)
• Not reliable for the purpose, as I already said on the article talk page. It looks to me that somebody sitting in Washington DC just made a wild guess. The Indian History of the War says the following:

During the long campaign, the Indian Army lost 76 officers, 31 JCOs and 996 Other Ranks killed, making a total of 1103. The wounded totalled 3152, including 81 officers and 107 JCOs. Apart from these casualties, it appears that the J & K State Forces lost no less than 1990 officers and men killed, died of wounds, or missing presumed killed . The small RIAF lost a total of 32 officers and men who laid down their lives for the nation during these operations. In this roll of honour, there were no less than 9 officers. The enemy casualties were definitely many times the total of Indian Army and RIAF casualties, and one estimate concluded that the enemy suffered 20,000 casualties, including 6,000 killed.

So, the Indian casualties were in excess of 3,000 and the Washington estimate misses it by a wide margin. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 18:16, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

The India country Study states 1500 Indian soldiers died, so it's off by 397 from the Indian History of the War. However, it's unclear whether it includes the J&K/AJK/GB/Chitral forces for either side and if it does, it would indeed be off by a wide margin. Cipher21 (talk) 20:40, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

There may be some confusion of terminology. Casualty is killed+wounded. It's apples and oranges to compare 1,500 killed with over 3,000 casualty. -- GreenC 03:47, 14 December 2021 (UTC)

• This source doesn't rule out that the 1,500 figure is wrong. The 6000 Pakistani casualty figure and 3000 indian casualty figure still turns out to be an indian claim. The 1,500 comes out to be a seperate estimate of casualties, not related with }}. No official pakistani casualty figures were released and thus the source cannot be ruled out. Your source only suggests thats the indian killed figure be changed to 1,500-3000 and Pakistani be kept at 1,500-6000. Truthwins018 (talk) 19:03, 13 December 2021 (UTC)
  • The question that is being discussed is whether it is reliable for the purpose. I gave evidence that proves that it is not. The best you can do is to quote it verbatim in the body. It is nor reasonable to split it up into pieces and format it in whatever way. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 23:44, 13 December 2021 (UTC)
• For the sake of including a neutral perspective I agree with using it. Currently, the article cites Indian figures. Cipher21 (talk) 20:40, 13 December 2021 (UTC)
• I agree with including it, as a range. The source is widely cited by other reliable sources as noted by Truthwins018. Furthermore reliable sources are not required to cite their sources to be reliable. A research division within the Library of Congress is not faultless, I doubt any numbers are definitive, but it would require more than Wiki editors disagreeing with the numbers to exclude it from the article, particularly when given as a range. -- GreenC 03:37, 14 December 2021 (UTC)

References

• Unreliable for the purpose. The source which is India: A Country Study is clearly not widely cited. The assertion that it is, is based on a different website called globalsecurity.org quoting it. The website globalsecurity.org which looks like a group blog, is the one being used as a source for an opinion in one NYT article and produces 25k+ results on google scholar (every result after the 8th is from the website itself). This is very marginal use in RS, not to mention its use is irrelevant to the actual query here. Searching for India: A Country Study itself produces similarly barebone results. The subject of the source is an overall profile of India and is not specific to the military history of the Kashmir Conflict. The topic area needs specialist academic sources, especially for things like casualty estimates. On a sidenote, looking at the infobox of the article, every single source without exception, that is cited for the casualties is similarly problematic in some respect or the other. Tayi Arajakate _Talk 08:06, 14 December 2021 (UTC)
• Wide citation of global security.org has already been mentioned by SpicyBiryani on the talk page of 1947-1948 indo-pak war.The founder of the website is John Pike. John Pike is one of the worlds leading expert on defence in the world and more can be read about him in the sources cited.Global security also has a reputed range of staff with wide experience in the field of defence.Global security has been cited in Reuters by an article worked upon by Reuters Staff. It has been cited in CNN . It has been cited in Washington Post here, here ,here. It has been cited by NYT [1], [2]. Some of the book citations are:

  • Fair, C. Christine. Fighting to the End: The Pakistan Army's Way of War. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014 ,ISBN 978 0 1998 9270 9.
  • Cordesman, Anthony H. Al-Rodhan, Khalid R. Gulf military forces in an era of asymmetric wars. Westport, Conn. : Praeger Security International ,2007.
  • Anthony H. Cordesman, Martin Kleiber, Iran's Military Forces and Warfighting Capabilities: The Threat in the Northern Gulf

All the book citations may be viewed here. It has been cited in numerous books on National Security. [3]

As for the subject issue, The book does concentrate on one of the participants of the war. The killed figures are given in a seperate National Security section. We till date are not equipped with accurate figures of the casualties from the war. An indian version of figures are available. A neutral version is established from this source. It is only wise to continue with an estimated range of casualty figures which gives all the figures Truthwins018 (talk) 10:09, 14 December 2021 (UTC)

• I see merit in the arguments of those who esteem the source unreliable for the purpose for which it is being used on the main page. There is hardly any correlation between the reliability of a source and the magnitude of hits it gets on a search engine. The tangible criteria are enumerated and enunciated at WP:RS and there is no indication that this source, which uses a broad-brush to coalesce the two countries' casualties under a single sentence with unwarranted brevity, measures up when the yardstick of WP:RSCONTEXT is applied. Kerberous (talk) 12:27, 14 December 2021 (UTC)

References

• It definetely fulfils on the criteria of WP:RS. Your opinion WP:OR is irrelevant in the present criteria. The source directly cites the material and its under a seperate section of Natural security. Vaious citations of globalsecurity.org does increase its reliability especially by already considered reliable sources and none of the discussion was aimed at " magnitude of hits"Truthwins018 (talk) 14:03, 14 December 2021 (UTC)

David Price writing in Counterpunch in Edward Said

Counterpunch was deprecated in this RFC, a decision that is being discussed up above in #De-deprecate_CounterPunch. But at Edward Said, David Price is used in writing in about his finding FBI surveillance of Said. Price is the author Threatening Anthropology: McCarthyism and the FBI’s Surveillance of Activist Anthropologists published by Duke University Press, and he is professor of anthropology and sociology at Saint Martin's University and author of a number of peer-reviewed journal articles (see his ResearchGate profile for examples). This specific Counterpunch article is also cited in academic journals, for example this article in Third World Quarterly published by Taylor & Francis discusses Price's findings at length (page 753). The citation has been removed and then tagged as unreliable. Is this article by David Price, an established expert published on specifically the topic of the US government surveillance of academics, writing in Counterpunch a reliable source for his finding the FBI surveilled Edward Said in the article Edward Said? I would like to avoid the wider discussion on deprecation being right or wrong here, and focus on if this source is reliable in this context? nableezy - 21:24, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

I don't want to discuss the deprecation of this particular source (in general I think we err on the side of deprecation too much) but I'd like to note that you can use other sources for this claim, for example The Nation, which is green now: [4]. Alaexis_¿question? 21:34, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

Yes, Price's findings are covered in the Nation as well, which references his Counterpunch article (where it says "David Price is a professor of anthropology at St. Martin’s University in Washington State. As anyone glancing through his excellent book Threatening Anthropology: McCarthyism and the FBI’s Surveillance of Activist Anthropologists will know, Price is expert at getting secret government documents through the Freedom of Information Act. Last year, on behalf of the newsletter CounterPunch (which I co-edit), Price requested the FBI’s file on Said."). Just like the Third World Quarterly article. My question is if Price's article itself is a reliable source for Price's findings. nableezy - 21:37, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

Yes. The appropriateness of his CounterPunch piece can't be seriously contested (except as an inference from the deprecation designation, i.e. by ignoring the fact that he fits the best criteria advised by WP:RS). We need the deprecation review context to avoid the time-consuming bother of repeatedly coming here to justify the inclusion of fine scholarly sources because some editors are taking deprecation as holy writ and Price is merely one recent victim of that holy war of blanket good riddancy.Nishidani (talk) 21:42, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

No, instead use the source that Alaexis provided. It seems to be an example of depreciation working in practice, where information that does not belong on the encylopedia is kept out, while information that does can be found elsewhere; if the information in question is suitable for inclusion, someone else will probably have published it in independent, reliable sources. BilledMammal (talk) 21:48, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

We literally have Generally Reliable sources for the specific claim. There is absolutely no necessity to add a deprecated source to an article to achieve full NPOV coverage. You don't want to accept the broad general consensus to deprecate, but you don't get to enforce your personal lack of acceptance - David Gerard (talk) 21:50, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

Your edit is obscene. Generally unreliable or even deprecated does not mean blacklisted and to be removed on sight. Honestly, you should be ashamed of yourself for removing a source cited in a number of peer-reviewed works. nableezy - 21:54, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

It does, however, presume that the source is bad, and overcoming that is not achieved by revert-warring and personal attacks - David Gerard (talk) 21:59, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

Yes, and if you had even pretended to read this section you would see evidence to overcome that presumption. You are removing things you are not even looking at, and you should be stopped. nableezy - 22:01, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

That you put a claimed justification is insufficient to overcome the presumption. Also, you're literally declaring an intent to be an edit warrior here - is that what you meant to do? - David Gerard (talk) 22:07, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

Excuse me, what? Where did I declare any such intent? And did you even pretend to read any of the sources you just removed? Or are you going to ignore our policies, which require that each source use be examined in context. nableezy - 22:10, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

Since apparently the only way to cite works published by scholars is to de-deprecate Counterpunch, and because we now have an editor in David Gerard going on an editing rampage removing unquestionably solid sources, I will start an RFC to that effect. nableezy - 21:57, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

Yes it is a rampage that is disturbing because it is taking place while the de-deprecation review is current and not closed. No need to complicate this by opening a third venue. The gravamen of this spate of reverts while we are reviewing this, preempting the review conclusions, should be noted in the section above on de-deprecation.Nishidani (talk) 22:07, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

No, that's not how it works. The source is deprecated. As has been pointed out already, you'd need to rerun the RFC to reverse it - David Gerard (talk) 22:09, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

WP:DEPS says exactly the opposite. nableezy - 22:11, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

If it was "unquestionable", multiple editors wouldn't be questioning it - David Gerard (talk) 22:09, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

Where exactly is there any response to David Price writing in Counterpunch being a reliable source here? Who has questioned that? nableezy - 22:17, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

You have already admitted in this section we already have an RS for the claim that isn't Counterpunch. You don't need Counterpunch at all for this. You're just attempting to get a deprecated source in even when it's redundant - David Gerard (talk) 22:20, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

No, I am attempting to use the actual source here. David Price is the person who uncovered the FBI surveillance of Said. He is an expert on the topic of the US surveilling academic activists. Why would he not be cited by us when he is cited in peer-reviewed journal articles? nableezy - 22:21, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

And we have editors in the other discussion saying it's OK (including myself) and up there and down here saying it's not. We can't go on like that. The deprecation "policy" needs an add.Selfstudier (talk) 22:24, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

The deprecation guideline already disallows the indiscriminate removal, despite the bluster of David when he says No, that's not how it works. The source is deprecated. It actually is how it works, WP:DEPS requires each use be examined, not indiscriminately removed. nableezy - 22:28, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

As I already pointed out to you at WP:ANI - your fourth thread on literally the same dispute - DEPS is an information page, listing the results of deprecation RFCs. It specifically disclaims being even a guideline, let alone a policy. It cannot require anything whatsoever. You're citing the explanatory text for an information listing as if it's hard policy. It is not - David Gerard (talk) 22:51, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

ANI is about your editing, not about any one source. Kindly dont muddy the waters here. nableezy - 22:54, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

• Note: Nableezy has brought this particular sourcing question to a fourth thread on WP:ANI - David Gerard (talk) 23:24, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

  No I brought your indiscriminate removal of sources, including ABOUTSELF links and sources not Counterpunch but removed because you are editing in a careless manner, to ANI. Please do not muddy the waters. Your user conduct is discussed on ANI, not any source. nableezy - 23:30, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

• Am I not understanding this here, or is there a reason why you can't simply use the secondary citations? Counterpunch's reliability is irrelevant when citing a reliable secondary source describing or summarizing something published in Counterpunch (with the obvious caveat that that means you can only base the article on what is said in that secondary source.) In fact, that's the usual way we cover significant things that are written or which occur in unreliable publications. Whether or not you can cite it via SPS, it doesn't matter, because SPS is a weak way of citing things - if a better / non-SPS source exists for the same statement, removing the weaker source is obvious irrespective of whether the weaker source would otherwise meet the threshold for usability. --Aquillion (talk) 03:33, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

  I dont think it is a weak source here, it is specifically cited in other reliable sources, and WP:UBO would seem to say that if this specific article is treated as reliable by other reliable sources, then it is also reliable. I actually think this is a much better citation than The Nation, Cockburn is just relaying what the actual expert reported. We should cite the most authoritative source, and here it is Price. Also, the sources that cover it do so by covering Price uncovering the information from his FOI request and his writing about it in CP. The incident has weight, per its coverage in multiple sources, and the source is an established expert on this specific topic. Not even just generally anthropology and the relationship with the government and academics, but specifically on the US government surveillance of activist academics. Why wouldn't we actually cite him? nableezy - 04:40, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

  A SPS is a weak source by definition - that's why WP:SPS says to use them cautiously. The strongest source is of course an expert published in a reliable publisher, but I would generally consider a secondary source describing the position of an expert to be a stronger source than a direct citation to the expert unless the place where the secondary source is published is noticeably weaker, even in cases where the expert was published in a RS, let alone in cases where the expert wasn't published in an RS. The secondary source adds the weight and reputation of its publisher, as well as the WP:DUE weight of the primary source receiving secondary coverage in a reputable source, while covering (and therefore reinforcing) the reputation and significance of the primary source in a way that lets us directly discuss it as part of an in-line citation without risk of synthesis. --Aquillion (talk) 04:49, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

  I disagree that a SPS by an established expert is a weak source. The use cautiously is in relation to SPS sources as a whole, including by non-experts. But what it says is Self-published expert sources may be considered reliable when produced by an established subject-matter expert, whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable, independent publications. They may be considered reliable, not weakly reliable, not so-so. When somebody has a history of academic expertise in a specific topic, and I dont see anybody disputing that Price is that in this specific topic, then they are the source. They are reliable. And it would honestly be silly to have in our article that David Price, writing for Counterpunch, uncovered the FBI surveillance program of Said and not cite that article. If people want to argue that SPS should not be used in general they can make that argument, but that isnt what our policy says. nableezy - 04:56, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

  If I understand the situation, there are reliable secondary sources that point directly to Price's articles in Counterpunch. In most cases, when a RS goes "According to an article published in (other RS)" we should always follow the source and use the original ("other RS") article. In a case where we have a weak or non-RS as that "other RS", it is reasonable to include both the original article alongside the referring RS to provide both the original context and evidence that a reliable source trusts that work as well for this purpose. This is not always required, particularly if the original source is a clearly no-go as an acceptable source, but in this case, a Price article on Counterpunch is not going to be that critical an issue. --Masem (t) 18:50, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

• David Price, as a Professor of Anthropology specialised in surveillance, is clearly exactly the kind of established subject-matter expert that WP:SPS goes out of its way to note may be considered reliable when published in other independent, reliable sources, like Price has been, in Anthropology Today and Critique of Anthropology. Unless there is specific evidence that Counterpunch doctors its op-eds/commentaries from subject-matter experts, it is rather moot whether Counterpunch is reliable, generally unreliable or deprecated, because Price is still a subject-matter expert. Iskandar323 (talk) 05:40, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

RFC: Counterpunch

Should articles published in CounterPunch be treated as WP:SPS? Nableezy 22:54, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

initial question was phrased Should articles written by established academic experts (as discussed in WP:SPS) writing in Counterpunch be de-deprecated and treated as WP:SPS?

Notified: [[centralized discussion]]. Selfstudier (talk) 12:40, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

Removed from CENT on 24 December.Selfstudier (talk) 13:53, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

• Yes - In the above example we have an author of scholarship focused specifically on the topic of the US government surveillance of academics is writing about that topic, and whose column is covered in peer-reviewed journal articles (see cites here or this). Nobody is challenging that Counterpunch also publishes things that are not suitable as a reliable source. It however also does publish the work of numerous academic experts, and that work is being indiscriminately removed from our articles. If David Price wrote this on his geocities page it would be usable per WP:SPS. There is no reason to treat the work of an established academic expert as being less reliable due to it being on Counterpunch as opposed to it being on their personal blog. Nobody is arguing that Counterpunch articles by non-experts should be cited here. But here, we have a very real example of actual scholarship being removed from our articles. And that should be reversed. nableezy - 22:54, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

  Further comment. It is incredibly disingenuous to claim that usable sources are covered by existing allowances here, but where such allowances are explicitly allowed to claim that an ABOUTSELF source cannot be used because if you absolutely need a deprecated source, you don't have a source. This specific case, and many others like it, involves an actual expert source, with pristine credentials, published on this specific topic in peer-reviewed works or books published by academic presses. Users are expunging sources that are themselves treated as reliable by peer-reviewed works. This article is cited by a journal article in Third World Quarterly, it is covered in The Nation. Countless other Counterpunch articles written by noted experts in their field are likewise cited. But because other articles are not written by experts that makes these scholars somehow less reliable? The fact that the only answer to why should David Price or Sara Roy or Neve Gordon or Dean Baker not be cited in Counterpunch is "because Counterpunch is deprecated" is both circular and illogical, and this board should reject this blatant appeal to emotion and association fallacy. There are crap articles on Counterpunch? Cool, dont cite those. But this is the work of an established scholar, cited by other reliable sources, and it should be able to be cited here. It is silly that people are saying that Patrick Cockburn writing in the Nation about an article in the magazine he edited is usable to relay the contents of the material in the article itself, but the article, oh dear no cant have that. nableezy - 02:36, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

  The William P. Quigley appears to be a case of an editor misapplying policy, and the correct response is to correctly apply policy, rather than using it to claim that existing policy is flawed. As such, I've restored the content, although I can see an argument being made that a spouses profession is WP:UNDUE. BilledMammal (talk) 02:47, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

  Yeah, I tried that, however editors are using the deprecation decision (his own in fact), to claim that any usage is disallowed. I was initially trying to address one single source, one that is unquestionably reliable (written by a subject matter expert, cited by other reliable sources), but again, that was shut down on the basis of CP being deprecated. That level of circular logic is, as a matter of fact, degrading our articles. I agree with all of the people that say CP published a bunch of bullshit by unknown non-experts. And those things should not be cited. But, again, that is not all that they publish. And I still defy a single person to explain why, for example, this is not a reliable source. When people are using deprecation to remove obviously reliable sources, then I see nothing else to do but to challenge the deprecation. I posit that if people are aware that the decision to deprecate CP was not actually in keeping with what WP:DEPS says, that is that each individual source should be examined to see if it overcomes the presumption of unreliability, and saw that people are wholsale expunging sources like David Price ([5]), Sara Roy ([6]), Gabriel Kolko ([7]) Robert Fisk ([8]) and other expert sources and not antisemitic conspiracy theories and 9/11 truther articles as was reputed to be what CP was actually used around here for that they may well have said maybe deprecation is a bit much here. nableezy - 03:53, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

*No It's impossible to de-deprecate specific articles, deprecation applies to the medium the articles appear in. And Counterpunch as medium has already been deprecated for lack of editorial control and for pushing fringe articles. If the author is an established expert, it should be incredibly easy to find other actually reliable sources for the same claime. --Mvbaron (talk) 23:05, 21 December 2021 (UTC) EDIT: struck because the RFC question changed. --Mvbaron (talk) 23:41, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

• Comment: Might I add that this is a duplicate discussion to this: Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard#De-deprecate_CounterPunch Whay are we discussing this here as well? Why are we discussing this on four different location? This looks more and more like forumshopping. --Mvbaron (talk) 23:05, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

  Because only a new RFC can overturn the old? The closer specifically said that a new RFC is required. So here is that RFC. nableezy - 23:11, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

  hmm, I think in that case you should probably rephrase this RFC to something like "Should the deprecation of Counterpunch be overturned" because right now it's a bit confusing. Mvbaron (talk) 23:13, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

• No. The RFC question is bad, and should be written as "Should articles published in CounterPunch be considered self published sources?", as that appears to be the neutral version of what the opening statement is asking. However, the answer is still no - articles published in CounterPunch are not self-published sources, and per WP:SOURCES the publisher of the work affects the reliability of the work, and per the recent RFC the publisher of the work is extremely unreliable, to the point that there was a strong consensus for deprecation. Further, WP:SPS tells us to exercise caution when using such sources: if the information in question is suitable for inclusion, someone else will probably have published it in independent, reliable sources and the principle would apply here; if the information is suitable, someone would have published it elsewhere, such as with the example provided, where the information is also obtainable from The Nation. BilledMammal (talk) 23:12, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

  Sure, can change that. But I am only challenging the usage of established experts. Not non-experts. nableezy - 23:21, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

  I understand, but since WP:SPS only allows experts to be used, you still wouldn't be challenging the usage of non-experts. BilledMammal (talk) 23:26, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

  I will change it with a note now. nableezy - 23:27, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

  • No, for the moment. I've considered this further, the question is still problematic; we shouldn't be decided whether CounterPunch should be "treated" like a SPS, we should be deciding if it is a self-published source. This isn't as clear as it may appear; it does have an editorial process that will affect content, but so does Medium, and there is an open question about how much control this process has over the published works, per the assertions of some editors. If it can be established that their editorial process consists of little more than accepting or rejecting works as is (no direct control), and that their method of choosing which works to publish does not encourage creators to alter their work to increase their chances of being accepted (no indirect control), then I believe it would be appropriate to classify it as a self-published source. However, this has yet to be established, and as they have editors there is the presumption of an editorial process that establishes sufficient control to prevent it from being a self-published source, and so for the moment, until evidence and arguments can be provided that it is a self-published source, my position remains no. BilledMammal (talk) 10:35, 2 January 2022 (UTC)
• Comment: Previous RFC on deprecation of counterpunch can be found here: [9] --Mvbaron (talk) 23:20, 21 December 2021 (UTC)
  • Archive link: Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 355#RfC: CounterPunch BilledMammal (talk) 23:22, 21 December 2021 (UTC)
• Yes If the same article was published on Medium or Blogspot, it would be fine to cite. In this particular example, the suggestion that CounterPunch is unreliable, but it's fine to cite a piece by an editor of CounterPunch (Alexander Cockburn) that is basically a shorter introduction to Said's article that directly advertises the full article because it's in the Nation instead is kinda absurd. Anyone writing an academic work would cite the actual article instead of a summary. RoseCherry64 (talk) 23:25, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

  Since the question was edited to be less about a specific example, to clarify, I have not seen any example where the publication have significantly twisted or edited articles submitted to them, so I would treat them as more or less as self-published articles speaking for the author, and not the publication as a whole. RoseCherry64 (talk) 23:53, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

• No - superfluous with previous RFC, where this editor asked this question specifically. Covered by existing allowances, in the remarkably few cases where it's allowed - David Gerard (talk) 23:30, 21 December 2021 (UTC)
• No - to the new question: Counterpunch has editorial staff (see here: [10]) and their guideline to submission speaks about editorial control: What are the guidelines for submitting an article to CounterPunch? ... We don’t pay for web contributions, nor do the editors guarantee any response to submissions. I don't see how this is compatible with WP:SPS. Counterpunch has been deprecated in the previous RFC because of bad editorial judgements and a track record of published falsehoods. --Mvbaron (talk) 23:40, 21 December 2021 (UTC)
• Weak yes. As long as there is no evidence of misrepresenting experts' opinions, I think that it's reliable. As with other SPS, always DUE applies. The editor who wishes to add something from CP should be able to demonstrate that it's DUE. Alaexis_¿question? 06:45, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

  It has been noted below that CP is not really a SPS since they have some editorial policy and decide what to publish. I struck through the reference to SPS, otherwise my opinion is unchanged. Alaexis_¿question? 21:30, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

• Yes. We should base our use of sources on the evidence for their reliability. Nobody has provided any evidence that CounterPunch mangles the articles written by its authors, or in fact has any involvement in the text of its articles other than deciding which articles to publish. So there is no reason to suspect that what is published is not the opinion of the author. When that author is an acknowledged area expert, the situation is almost the same as a publication on the author's blog. Indeed, it is no different to an op-ed by the expert in a mainstream newspaper. (The claim that mainstream newspapers "fact-check" op-eds is a wiki-myth.) In summary, whether we can cite an article in CounterPunch should depend only on the expertise of the author in the relevant field. Zero^talk 08:11, 22 December 2021 (UTC)
• No and Bad RfC. The problem with CounterPunch is not that there is no editorial review (editors indeed do select the pieces that they want to publish before they appear on the website), but that the editorial review is awful. The publication is deliberate in pushing ideas from the fringes without doing much at all in the vein of fact-checking. Unless the author is on the editorial staff, it isn’t really self-published. We should stop trying to wikilawyer around deprecation here; if WP:DAILYMAIL had a history professor write an op-ed on a historical topic we wouldn’t dare think about citing it as a source for facts in a Wikipedia article—there is no “I really like the author” exception to deprecation. Self-published sources can also be deprecated, so this RfC isn’t even something that can change the relevant deprecation status of the source. And, substantially changing the RfC question after people have responded is a great way to irreparably taint an RfC. — Mhawk10 (talk) 12:54, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

  Drop the fatuous Daily Mail analogy. It's sand in the eyes, for a dozen reasons, most of which concern the fact that major scholars in their respective fields regularly express themselves on CounterPunch's site. Alexander Cockburn who set it up and ran it until his death, was a distinguished journalist with an excellent mainstream presence in major newspapers, not a tabloid hack.Nishidani (talk) 14:05, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

  Two people had responded, and both had asked me to change the question. And it has not been substantially changed. nableezy - 15:58, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

• Yes I am at a loss to understand the zealotry here. An opinion by a recognized expert anywhere (not just in Counterpunch, Countercurrents say, which is similar, is also SPS as a practical matter) shouldn't be dissed, only because of where they decided to publish it. If anyone wish to contest some material, they can do that, starting at the article talk page as usual, but no indiscriminate removals.Selfstudier (talk) 16:27, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

  Sorry, but an article published in a magazine with editorial control is per definition not self-published (not even "as a practical matter"). BUT such pieces by experts are all fine for use with attribution. The unique situation here is just that in a previous RFC counterpunch has been deprecated. If it weren't deprecated, we could just cite Price and all the experts normally (with attribution). Mvbaron (talk) 17:33, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

  As per link I gave (2008!) "Countercurrents should be treated as an SPS, and we should follow the CounterPunch/FPM method of looking at the author's expertise for guidance." Deprecation should not have the effect of source deletion for an expert.Selfstudier (talk) 17:51, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

  Erm, that's just the opinion of one random editor from a 2008 post... But like I said, normally expert opinions are fine to cite with attribution - but no one really knows what our policy is for deprecated sources + an expert piece. Mvbaron (talk) 18:06, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

  Well that is currently being decided by one editor removing every expert view and ABOUTSELF link to CP on the basis of it being deprecated. If you are of the view that expert opinions from CP may be cited then perhaps you should rethink your oppose !vote, because the effect of deprecation, as enforced by the admin who is somehow uninvolved yet edit-warring to remove ABOUTSELF links and expert opinions and voting in this RFC, is that those expert views are being expunged indiscriminately. nableezy - 18:12, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

  yeah nableezy, it really is an interesting problem... I believe that the Price piece is prima facie reliable (it's even cited in the book that I just added to the Said article). But I also believe that CP is correctly deprecated. Our deprecation policy doesn't really say anything about this. I might need to change my vote, but for now I believe deprecation trumps expert pieces - simply because it should be easy to find the expert opinion elsewhere. Mvbaron (talk) 18:18, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

  OK then, as I commented in the De-deprecate CounterPunch section above, I would like to clarify that and hopefully this RFC will do so (by a consensus of random editors:)Selfstudier (talk) 18:15, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

• Yes per Nableezy and Zero. Very few editors here cite Counterpunch regularly. They do so after evaluating the quality of the article referred to, and the stature among their colleagues and peers. We cannot afford to impoverish our sourcing by a blanket veto that would deprive Wikipedia of work written by several scores of eminent scholars and journalists who fail to see the problems some wikipedians worry over and who choose to use that venue. As Selfstudier says, the intelligent solution is to leave challenges to the relevant talk pages, case by case (and the cases are few and far between). Nishidani (talk) 16:32, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

  Very few editors here cite Counterpunch regularly is not a very convincing argument that the source is reliable… isn’t this a sign that editors generally have a low confidence in the publication? — Mhawk10 (talk) 23:06, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

  No, it's a sign that editors are discerning and only cite what is written by established experts published academically in their field. Still hoping anybody can answer how this is not a RS. nableezy - 23:17, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

  Very few editors here cite Counterpunch regularly. And yet, even after an alleged "rampage" of removals, we have over 1,000 pages citing it. Literally the first one I looked at was an unattributed quotation from a piece by Diana Barahona, whose only other internet presence is on the Nazi website Voltaire Net, accusing Reporters Without Borders of being disinformation agents without any evidence. BobFromBrockley (talk) 09:09, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

• Has anyone here read WP:DEPS? The answer is yes and we don't need an RfC to demonstrate that. Disruptive indiscriminate removals should be addressed at ANI. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 18:26, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

  Doesnt seem to be working, as those disruptive indiscriminate removals are ongoing despite attempting to address them at ANI. With the closing admin of the last RFC declaring WP:DEPS is not even a guideline and that even ABOUTSELF links are to be removed indiscriminately. nableezy - 18:35, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

  I have read DEPS, but it doesn't say anything about self-publishing and it also doesn't say that we can use deprecated sources for anything else than ABOUTSELF (unless in a local consensus ofc). But maybe I missed it? Can you point me to these two points? Mvbaron (talk) 18:40, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

  Just says V applies as usual. So round in circles.(I do think we are making too much of a meal out of "editorial control" here, the Mail is one thing, Cp quite another.Selfstudier (talk) 19:27, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

  I would say that the only effect of deprecation alone is to explicitly codify the source’s pre-existing status, as already determined by Wikipedia’s sourcing requirements. It does not inherently change how they are evaluated under those requirements. Deprecated sources should not be considered to be either unique or uniquely unreliable., from the lead of WP:DEPS, and Deprecation is a status indicating that a source almost always falls below Wikipedia's standards of reliability, and that uses of the source must fall within one of the established acceptable uses. Establishing new types of acceptable use requires a demonstration that the source is uniquely reliable in those particular circumstances compared to other possible uses of the source.Deprecating a source is a weaker measure than blocking or banning it, and the terms are not comparable to each other., from the section "What deprecation is and isn't" pretty clearly establishes how deprecated sources may or may not be used. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 21:20, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

• No - This has been discussed before. A SPS indicates that the author simply clicks a button and their article automatically gets posted. At CP, people submit their articles to the editorial staff. The staff don't indiscriminately post every articles that they receive. They actively choose articles that fit CP's ideological agenda--conspiracism, genocide denial, antisemitism, etc. (check the previous RfC for more examples and links). In other words, people go to CP to get published (FYI - CounterPunch even publishes books). Hence, this source not only fails WP:SPS but also fails every aspect of WP:RS. This is just an attempt to redefine the meaning of a SPS in order to ignore the consensus of the deprecation. If someone wants to use CP as a source (I seriously don't understand why) then stick to the expectations in WP:DEPRECATED#Acceptable uses of deprecated sources. Of course, other policies and guidelines like WP:WEIGHT, WP:FALSEBALANCE, and WP:FRINGE apply too. Dr. Swag Lord (talk) 19:27, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

CP's ideological agenda--conspiracism, genocide denial, antisemitism, etc

Thanks. That gives the game away. Such a vapidly inane recalcitrantly contrafactual claim hardly needs rebuttal, though it should figure in any new edition of a work by the CounterPunch founders and editors Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair, their edited volume The Politics of Anti-Semitism as one more of the endless instances of the abuse of anti-Semitic accusations in order to silence critical dissent. As for what Cockburn who ruled the roost there for most of the period your 'data' is hacked from, he wrote The 9/11 Conspiracy Nuts, where conspiracy mongers are dissected and mocked. Genocide denial was its 'ideological agenda'? Odd that its Jewish writers never noticed, and mourned the passing of the greatest historian of the Holocaust on CounterPunch. This is real sleaze smearing, a simpleton's approach to analysis, and should be ignored.Nishidani (talk) 21:04, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

it only "gives the game away" that they read the extensive sourcing for that claim in the previous RFC. If you can rebut it, you should, because at present it's well-backed - David Gerard (talk) 21:20, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

Oh, sure. We must pay attention to others, as they ignore our comments. No one troubled to answer my detailed remarks in the RfC point by point. I'd be quite happy to pull his patchwork case apart if some effort was made to answer the point above, regarding the contrafactual fatuousness of their generalization, which only tells me Swag googled the odd piece of crap out of over 60,000 articles and came up with his short list. It is contrafactual to use the terms he used when offspring of holocaust victims or camp survivors cannot see what his skimpy screed insinuated, since they publish there. It is profoundly obscene for an anonymous wiki editor to assert that specialist Jewish scholars of that Holocaust background cannot see what our singular Wikipedian caught, just as none of the several hundred writers or scholars broadly identified as of the left contributing to it are aware, that according to a 2015 blog of far greater pretensions to comprehensive analysis ( Cited by BobfromBrockley above), that they are all being 'suckerpunched' into supporting the radical far right which is, conspiracy again, the hidden agenda apparently of Cockburn and co. Nishidani (talk) 22:51, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

"Gives the game away" is right on the money.Selfstudier (talk) 22:39, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

Swag’s swag re Counterpunch was a shabby Potemkin Village charade of googled diffs which, if checked, collapses its compiler's agenda. It was so poorly shaped that I never troubled to reply. I thought it wasn't worth the effort and that most editors could see through it. Nope.In the earlier RfC many voters were influenced by Swag's evidence. Over 2 decades, extrapolating from figures given Jeffrey St.Clair in 2015, CounterPunch has published over 70,000 articles. Swag's case consisted of the following skerricks and tidbits:

• (1) Jovan Byford, a Uk psychologist who has written on conspiracy theories says so.

  Actually not only does CounterPunch feature many articles debunking conspiracy theories, but has hosted an article citing Byford’s work on the topic

As Jovan Byford notes in a https://link.springer.com/book/10.1057/9780230349216worthy and comprehensive study of the phenomenon: ‘conspiracy theorists, by definition, deal with imperfect evidence: they are concerned with matters that are inherently secret and which the most powerful forces in the world are working hard to suppress. Conspiracy theories can, therefore, never offer incontrovertible proof’. Tony McKenna Anatomy of a Conspiracy Theory CounterPunch 27 September 2019

If you actually trouble yourself to check Jovan Byford, Conspiracy Theories: A Critical Introduction, Springer 2011 978-0-230-27279-8 p.148 he writes

It is therefore enough to glance at any contemporary conspiracy theory purporting to explain 9/11, the origins of HIV and AIDS, the New World Order, or the machinations of ‘the Lo0bby’, to realise that post-modern tongue-in-cheek playfulness and the ‘self-reflexive’ ironic tones are few and far between. On the contrary, the ideological single-mindedness of the conspiracy tradition, whether expounded on Russia Today, in yet another best-seller from Jim Marrs or on the pages of CounterPunch remains firmly entrenched in the realm where tales of clashes between civilisations, the implementation of truth, and battles between moral extremes are elaborated without even the smallest dose of post-modern irony.’

That is not an argument buttressed by any evidence. It is a throw-away line, which fails to address the consistent dismissal of conspiracy theories in CounterPunch’s record, cites no evidence from the mag and essentially redefines conspiracy as rigid viewpoints lacking post-modernist irony. Really? Most political statements about one’s party’s adversaries are conspiratorial by that definition. Useless as tits on a bull.

• (2) A Stanford researcher (Jonah G. Willihnganz) included CounterPunch on a list of prominent conspiracy sites Conspiracy Theory PWR 1 Fall Quarter 2008

Swag didn’t read his own link. Counterpunch is included in a short list, of hundreds, if not thousands, of websites, blogs, and newsgroups that promote, discuss, debunk, lament, praise, and vilify conspiracy theories.

In short another owngoal.

• (3)It has published occasional articles down to 2015 by

  (a)Israel Shamir. True. He’s totally unreliable for anything, even his own life. Most of his 20 odd contributions are on Russia.

  (b) 9/11 truther Paul Craig Roberts. This research paper frames Roberts, whose articles on CounterPunch have from memory been focused on a conservative right-wing opposition to US trade policies, in the following way:

  Leftist intellectuals such as Noam Chomsky and Alexander Cockburn, along with activist organizations such as the antiwar movement, have generally gone out of their way to distance themselves from the Truth Movement (Bratich, 2008; Fenster, 2008). More frequently than not, they deride Truthers as conspiracy theorists whose ideas only serve to divide the left and distract their adherents from real and pressing problems of social injustice stemming from the country’s major political and economic institutions and policies. However, there is at least some sympathy for Truthers on the left. Recently, for example, the well-known leftwing newsletter Counterpunch strayed from its traditional policy by allowing one of its most popular contributors. Stephen M. E. Marmura, Likely and Unlikely Stories: Conspiracy Theories in an Age of Propaganda International Journal of Communication 8 (2014), 2377-2395 p.2388

  The author clearly states that hosting Roberts’s article (Early doubts: The 11th anniversary of 9/11 on CounterPunch strayed from its traditional line, and from the known views of its editor A Cockburn.

  (c)Wayne Madsen. Per Sonny Bunch March of the Conspiracy Theorists CBS News 26 September 2005. The CounterPunch article it mentions by Madsen appeared in CounterPunch on 1 November 2002, Exposing Karl Rove. It is a long list of incidents where Rove is reported as using disinformation and dirty tricks in numerous election campaigns to destroy honorable people. Not a conspiracy, politics.

  (d) Mark Crispin Miller mentioned at Gabe Stutman NYU Professor Uses Tenure to Advance 9/11 Hoax Theory in The Observer 26 July 2017 as a person interviewed for CounterPunch radio, Miller attacks the loose use of ‘conspiracy theory’ to brand dissenting opinions. New York University hasn’t fired him for teaching a class to be wary of the mainstream 9/11 narrative. Why should CounterPunch be deprecated for allowing a venue for him? That’s what libertarians do, host even contrarian ideas they disagree with. Cockburn and his friend Louis Proyect attacked Miller’s 9/Trutherism belief om an article which also is critical of leftists who defend Assad.

• (4) John Feffer, Stephen Zunes Sharp Attack Unwarranted 27 June 2008 refers among many other sources, to an article by George Ciccariello-Maher, Einstein Turns in His Grave. Counterpunch 16 April 2008 which (a) argues that Gene Sharp‘s Albert Einstein Institute is partially funded by the US State Department and (b) reproduces Gene Sharp’s response to the critique, asking also Cockburn and St. Clair to publish corrections and retract those statements. Feffer and Zunes don’t tell you that. They simply say it is outrageous that CounterPunch should have published a piece which raised concerns about that institute’s independence. Ciccariello-Maher‘s evidence strikes me as flimsy, but he has his sources. Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky, both at times contributors to CounterPunch, have of course defended Sharp’s integrity. That is how open democratic discourse functions – nothing argued is suppressed, but vigorously debated.
• (5) Nonsense claims documented in the, wait for it, Algemeiner. Yeah Adam Levick who? a CAMERA hack who works for a source I believe deprecated here. ‘Guardian Praises Anti-Semitic Site “Counterpunch” as Progressive. Algemeiner 25 July 2012.
• (5) The Algemeiner!

  Readers of the Algemeiner are familiar with the fact that any criticism of Israel is ‘antisemitic’. It’s trash, written by a hack whose ire was roused by an article in the Guardian praising the progressive journalism of Alexander Cockburn and his family. No, the hack argues, they are (yawn) enablers of antisemitism. It cites 10 cases many without damning links, re Gilad Atzmon, Alison Weir (the so-called blood libel accusation is based on this article in Counterpunch, which lists numerous Israeli mainstream sources on the issue of unlawful organ use;

The article asserts Counterpunch made a cause célèbre of Holocaust denier Ernst Zundel, No citation given where this occurred on Counterpunch. All I can find is this which examinees problems with his judicial record.

Alexander Cockburn’s Support Their Troops? 15 July 2007 is spun there for instance as an example of him acting as a cheerleader for 'mass-murdering Islamic Terrorists in Iraq'. Read the fucking article. The insinuation is crap, faked news etc.etc.etc.

Swag's proof therefore is just montage and sham, whose persuasiveness relies on editors not reading up and checking the supposed evidence, and the evidental skerricks are used to deprecate Counterpunch as antisemitic, genocidal, holocaust denying website. There are in all those diffs two to three possible cases of execrable judgement, in a record of 70,000. No doubt there are many more but the above doesn't prove it. Nishidani (talk) 22:14, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

This is a highly personalised attack (see WP:AGF) on an editor who is not even pinged. Can I take up the Paul Craig Roberts point? The passage on Counterpunch from the journal article[11] continues after the quote is cut: "the well-known leftwing newsletter Counterpunch strayed from traditional policy by allowing one of its most popular contributors, Paul Craig Roberts, to air his Truther arguments on their website... Roberts...is a regular a contributor to infowars.com as well as Counterpunch. From 2004 to 2017, Roberts, a right-winger, was one of the most published writers in CP, contributing weekly or more.[12] Our article about him says "Since retiring [i.e. in the period he wrote for CP], he has been accused of antisemitism and conspiracy theorizing by the Anti-Defamation League, Southern Poverty Law Centre and others... In the 2000s Roberts wrote a newspaper column syndicated by Creators Syndicate. Later, he contributed to CounterPunch, becoming one of its most popular writers. He has been a regular guest on programs broadcast by RT (formerly known as Russia Today). As of 2008, he was part of the editorial collective of the far right website VDARE. He has been funded by the Unz Foundation and he contributes to the Unz Review. His writings are published by Veterans Today, InfoWars, PressTV and GlobalResearch, and he is frequently a guest on the podcasts, radio shows and video channels of the Council of Conservative Citizens, Max Keiser and 9/11 truther Kevin Barrett. His own website publishes the work of Israel Shamir and Diana Johnstone. In other words, not one exceptional article, but a large part of the publication's content, is authored by someone who writes almost exclusively for deprecated websites. While there may be an argument for some case by case use of CP, we should clearly proceed with the presumption of unreliability. BobFromBrockley (talk) 09:29, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

• No and Bad RFC WP:DEPS is quite clear there only small set of allowed uses of such sources. The reason why source was depreciated is exactly that to not discuss it every time if we should use it or not. We shouldn't as consensus in the last RFC has decided --Shrike (talk) 21:18, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

  For the nth time, Shrike, the word is spelt 'deprecated', if you are paying attention. Nishidani (talk) 22:57, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

  I for one think we should fully dump all of CounterPunch's dollar reserves _signed, Rosguill ^talk 00:21, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

• Yes, pr User:RoseCherry64; (I am frankly at a loss why anyone should vote no here; do you believe Counterpunch falcifies David Price?) Huldra (talk) 23:40, 22 December 2021 (UTC)
• No, and keep deprecated – Dr.Swag Lord, Ph.d makes the point that as CP has an editorial board, so cannot be regarded as "self-published" any more than the Daily Mail can for its columnist's articles. Given the people that they do publish — for example, Grover "Stalin literally did nothing wrong" Furr — I'm comfortable with the deprecation consensus from a couple of months ago. Sceptre (talk) 09:54, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

  The last time Grover Furr was published in Counterpunch was March 2017, i.e. almost 5 years ago. More importantly, Counterpunch has also published articles by scholars in which they exposed and debunked Furr's work. Ijon Tichy (talk) 14:19, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

  E.g.Louis Proyect What Caused the Holodomor? CounterPunch 24 March 2017. What's going on here displays the worst vices of the googler who fishes for damning clickbait torn of all context. Swag's 'evidence', apparently so persuasive to speedreaders who didn't distrust the mustering of specious diffs, if you check it, collapses. We are drowning in a superficiality that clogs all logical and evidential clarity. (Even more context Proyect, who died a few months ago, was a personal friend of both Cockburn and St. Clair, who hosted his columns while often mocking his Trotskyism)Nishidani (talk) 14:47, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

  @Sceptre, you and some others make the same mistaken reading of the question. Nobody is claiming that articles in CP are self-published. Of course they are not; CP is the publisher. The question is whether those articles should be "treated as WP:SPS", which is different. Zero^talk 11:29, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

  I would think that those editors recognize that, and their response is to point out that they are not self-published, with all that is implied from that. BilledMammal (talk) 12:54, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

  The "should we treat this as a self-published source?" question is, fundamentally, trying to lawyer out an exemption from deprecation by people who opposed its deprecation in the first place. CounterPunch is a rag, and I would question the sense of anyone choosing to publish on their website; hell, if Isaac Newton rose from the grave and published "2+2=4" on the site, I'd ask for a second opinion. Sceptre (talk) 22:54, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

  Hah:) Well, it may end up being RFC'd again, that's true. Afaics, the objection seems to be more the way the old cites are being removed rather than an inability to cite new material, I have never cited CP myself although there seems on inspection to be quite a number of apparently unwise people publishing stuff there. It is not entirely clear to me that experts (which are also "sources") need an exemption any more than they need one for a "merely" unreliable source. Apart from that, there appears to be no evidence that CP edits the material of those experts that do publish in it? So it being published there is practically no different than if it were actually self published on a blog, say.Selfstudier (talk) 10:08, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

The "editorial policy" thing is bothering me a bit: Every submission to our website is checked for accuracy, libel, copyright and style before it is posted. Any posted article that is subsequently found to contain factual inaccuracies, potentially libellous material or material that violates copyright is either amended or removed as soon as we become aware of this. For editorial style, we follow the Economist Style Guide. is obviously an editorial policy but it seems to be that just deciding what will and won't publish is not an "editorial policy" worthy of the name.Selfstudier (talk) 11:32, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

• Yes. I wouldn't have put it like that (SPS imposes limits on how a source can be used), but am in favour of de-deprecating articles by established experts published on the site. --Andreas JN466 13:18, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

  This RFC can't even do that. We'd need a close challenge or an unambiguous RFC that asks the deprecation challenge again. Mvbaron (talk) 13:21, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

  I don't see any reason why this RFC can't do that, if there is a consensus for it.Selfstudier (talk) 13:32, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

  This RFC doesn't ask the question ("de-deprecate articles by established experts published on the site"). So it can't decide it, right? Mvbaron (talk) 13:45, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

  Treat as SPS amounts to the same thing imo but even if that wasn't the case, it doesn't prevent a separate/additional consensus although most often done as a "sub RFC". A slightly awkward thing here is all the pieces are kind of related to each other, SPS, expert opinion, effect of deprecation, V, RS and so on.Selfstudier (talk) 13:52, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

  The RFC did ask that, until you objected to the question. nableezy - 16:03, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

• Yes, and I don't think this is at odds with the previous discussion on the source, which correctly decided that articles are not reliable/significant due to publication. The closing summary read Most, if not all, respondents concur that the site is unreliable, more akin to a blogging platform than a news site. It is agreed by all respondents that they do, however, assert some editorial discretion in who blogs there. I think this suffices as an argument that CounterPunch articles are as reliable as the author is, just like with blogs. For an expert author, that makes it (sometimes) usable. I've not seen any claims that the website inserts conspiracy theories or otherwise tampers with submissions it receives, just selectively publishes some of them. Fundamentally, we have a very real example of actual scholarship being removed from our articles. And that should be reversed, to quote nableezy at the top of the discussion. — Bilorv (talk) 11:52, 24 December 2021 (UTC)
  • Are you saying that a blog post would somehow qualify as WP:SCHOLARSHIP? And CounterPunch published both a print newsletter and a print magazine until 2020, so I'm not exactly sure that the statement is supposed to be interpreted broadly that it has always been a blogging platform. I'm really having trouble understanding how content submitted by external authors and compiled into a print magazine by a separate editorial team who exercises discretion over what content to include could be in any way considered to be self-published. This isn't a WP:FORBESCON situation. — Mhawk10 (talk) 20:22, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

    a blog post would somehow qualify as WP:SCHOLARSHIP? That's what SPS is, essentially. You and some others are way too hung up on the publisher rather than the author Wikipedia:Frequently misinterpreted sourcing policy#Wikipedia over-focuses on publisher instead of author reputability Selfstudier (talk) 22:28, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

• No. The site doesn’t really meet the definition of a WP:SPS, and I don’t see any particular benefit to the encyclopedia in creating a blanket exception here. There’s room to debate on a case-by-case basis whether a particular author’s credentials warrant allowing a citation to CounterPunch. Brendan N. Moody 12:45, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

  Except people are not allowing case-by-case examinations of a particular author's credentials on the basis of it being deprecated. Thats the entire problem here. Treating it as a SPS would allow for that examination, nothing more. nableezy - 15:40, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

  So is your point that this is not actually a self-published source, but that it should be treated as such? — Mhawk10 (talk) 04:08, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

  Yeah, I think that has been fairly consistently my position here. My point is reliability of an article on CP should depend on the author. Like in the parent section of this RFC, where an obviously reliable source is being essentially shut down on the basis of deprecation. If we accept self-published sources by experts, the only part that should matter on an expert publishing on CP is if CP faithfully reproduced their words. And there is zero evidence that they have ever doctored a column in any way. Where we would accept an author writing on his or her blog, there is no substantive reason to not accept them writing on CP. nableezy - 04:15, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

  Then why not follow the guideline in the WP:Guideline on deprecation and seek an affirmative consensus to use the source in appropriate contexts? — Mhawk10 (talk) 16:23, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

  I tried that up above. People are shutting down discussion of the individual source in appropriate context on the basis of it being deprecated. Like I wrote above in the de-deprecate section, Im actually totally fine with CP being considered default unreliable so long as an examination of an individual column's reliability is conducted where needed to see if it can overcome that presumption of unreliability. Seriously, look at the parent section. The article in question is repeatedly cited as authoritative and factual in other reliable sources. The author is a noted expert on that specific topic. But it, and other literal world class scholarly experts on the topic they are writing on, are being expunged on the basis of CP being deprecated. You have people here saying deprectaed is fine because individual articles can be examined as needed, but the editors in article space disallowing any individual article to be examined. Do you think this piece is not a reliable source solely due to it being published in CP? Because that is what is being enforced here. nableezy - 17:00, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

  nableezy you never tried opening an RFC at Talk:Edward Said about whether to include Price's piece... Mvbaron (talk) 17:17, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

  No, I just opened an RSN thread on it in the parent section above here instead. nableezy - 17:20, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

• No. CP is not self published. It has editors, and editorial policies. It occasionally re-published material published elsewhere, eg on blogs, but largely publishes exclusively. It occasionally publishes experts (often material they can’t get published elsewhere because fringe or because it fails other publications’ editorial standards) but it is not a site for experts to self-publish; expert contributions go through its editorial process. If the question is, “should deprecated sources be acceptable for use under the same exceptional conditions when SPSs are considered acceptable”, then that’s a very different question which should be raised at the correct forum. BobFromBrockley (talk) 11:36, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

  It is entirely untrue that often material they can’t get published elsewhere because fringe or because it fails other publications’ editorial standards, based on nothing at all but an editors imagination. The source under discussion up above is published on CP because the scholar wanted to publish it on CP, and the fact that the paper is cited as factual and authoritative over and over again belies the meme that CP articles are fringe or fail some other standard. It is a mantra that has been repeated without evidence, and pertinent evidence has been provided to refute it, but yet it continues to be repeated without change or evidence. nableezy - 15:38, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

  It's not a different question, that is the question - "be treated as WP:SPS". This also seems as good a forum as any. Selfstudier (talk) 13:45, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

• Comment This seems to be the correct forum, afaics, Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#Can we decide what the heck "deprecation" means, or alternately, use a different word? is a relevant discussion just closed at ANI with a closing note that here or village pump is a better venue for it. Is it necessary to transfer it here or is the link sufficient? Selfstudier (talk) 11:50, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

  As part of that discussion, a draft RFC for discussion was created Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Deprecated_and_unreliable_sources, if anyone wants to run with that.Selfstudier (talk) 11:54, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

• Just highlighting an example of "when several people say emphatically that documentation isn't clear and/or doesn't match with practice (including practice about what actions we are/aren't willing to stop), maybe it's not useful to say 'it's totally clear and it's your fault if you can't see that'". In practice, deprecated sources are simply removed the overwhelming majority of the time. We've built a structure for deprecation that saves those who want to remove a source the hassle of making the same arguments over and over, giving a lot of weight automatically to the "remove" position. The idea that deprecation doesn't actually change how we evaluate sources is not rooted in wikireality. Maybe it shouldn't, but of course it does. The whole point of these RfCs is to consolidate arguments. Because the position of removing a deprecated source is so strong by default (as it should be), any exceptions need to be carefully spelled out in the documentation. Vague wording will automatically lead to the strictest interpretation given the nature of deprecation. Presently, the "acceptable uses" section is meaningful only insofar as it carves out possible exceptions for material an author or publication write about themselves. The language of that section is inadequate for carving out any other possible exception (such as for experts writing about their area of expertise in a lousy publication). If other exceptions are desirable, it should be changed to be more explicit, even if heavily qualified. ....but an RfC about a single source isn't the way to do that. No to this, because CounterPunch is not particularly unique in this matter. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 15:20, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

  an RfC about a single source isn't the way to do that. Is the RFC mentioned above the way to do that? This one, Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Deprecated and unreliable sources. Selfstudier (talk) 15:48, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

  tbh, I would say that an RFC at, say, Talk:Edward Said about whether to include Price writing in CP is the way to do it. Generalizing: If the source is deprecated but there are good arguments to include a piece by an expert somewhere anyways, then use local consensus at a specific article talk page (if needed per RFC). Mvbaron (talk) 17:15, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

  Tried that, and got this answer. We cant pretend that these exceptions that the people saying are not impacted by deprecation are in fact not impacted by deprecation when others are using deprecation to disallow those exceptions. nableezy - 17:18, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

  Right, an automated process would work better, I'm sure. In principle, that which is to be removed is first flagged and the flag signifies autoremoval in some time period unless a specified something is done to prevent it. This in general terms per the draft RFC not about Price issue specifically which is merely symptomatic of the general problem(s). Selfstudier (talk) 18:09, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

• No Ultimately, I don't see any other way to answer the specific question that is actually being posed. The idea (as paraphrased above) that it is not actually a self-published source, but that it should be treated as such is a bizarre pretzel of logic that ignores the plain meaning of all the terms involved. Rather than calling a spade a spade, it attempts to redefine one particular spade as quasi-legalistically a not-shovel for rhetorical purposes. I think Rhododendrites is right: if there's an acceptable use case for deprecated sources that the current meaning of deprecation does not include, then that case should be added — but this is not the way to do that. Indeed, to me it seems more like trying to find an exploit in policy, getting content into the encyclopedia by the analogue of privilege escalation. XOR'easter (talk) 17:23, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

  Citing tweets by experts in order to dismiss a scholarly article in a peer reviewed journal is OK by you, right? Selfstudier (talk) 18:09, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

  What does a dispute over the history of Babylonian mathematics have to do with the question of whether articles published in CounterPunch should be treated as self-published sources? If you're going to accuse me of hypocrisy, at least pick something relevant. XOR'easter (talk) 22:17, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

  I never mentioned any dispute. What I was referring to was your OK'ing of tweets from experts to dismiss a paper in a journal. Presumably if Price had tweeted his opinion instead of publishing it in CP you would have been OK with that as well?Selfstudier (talk) 22:21, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

  You're not answering the question. If Price had written something somewhere other than CounterPunch, how would that make CounterPunch a self-published source? It's completely tangential to the question that the RfC actually asked. XOR'easter (talk) 22:28, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

  Nobody is saying CounterPunch is a self-published source. The question is should it be treated as though it were, where reliability of any one piece rests on the reliability of the author. nableezy - 23:35, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

  I am trying to ascertain how you would have treated Price's expert opinion if he had tweeted it? Selfstudier (talk) 22:34, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

  That would be a matter of WP:DUE, WP:SPS, and all the other relevant policies and guidelines, as considered in the specific context where citing his opinion was proposed... and you still have not answered why it would have anything to do with whether or not articles in CounterPunch are self-published sources. XOR'easter (talk) 22:39, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

  I never said it did. That's the question in this RFC? "treat as SPS". What I conclude from your reply is that is strictly because the expert opinion is in CP that you say no, a bizarre pretzel of logic. We all know that already though, that's the point of having the RFC, right? Selfstudier (talk) 22:45, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

  (edit conflict) The question posed by the RfC is, to copy-and-paste, Should articles published in CounterPunch be treated as WP:SPS?. I'm saying no, they shouldn't. You seem to be trying for a "gotcha!" moment based on my opinion in a situation that wasn't even analogous. Surely I've said something in my years here that is actually hypocritical about this... but even that would just make me a hypocrite; it wouldn't make articles in CounterPunch self-published sources. XOR'easter (talk) 22:55, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

  No gotcha, just trying to understand your position which is is basically "agree with current policy practice", right? Selfstudier (talk) 23:03, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

  I believe my position is in line with current practice, yes. XOR'easter (talk) 23:12, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

  Just to be completely clear about where I (and some others) are coming from, if the outcome here should be no then it is likely that we would then proceed (subsequently or in parallel) to Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Deprecated and unreliable sources and/or another CP RFC, given the level of opposition that has been expressed up to now, I think the matter will not easily go away.Selfstudier (talk) 22:50, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

  just make a close challenge - nobody has done that even. Mvbaron (talk) 22:52, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

  I tend to agree with Nableezy that there is little to be gained doing that, it needs a new one but before we do that I think we need to have an in between step that clarifies all that has occurred up until now because as a number of persons have pointed out, there is a lot of confusion around this. Selfstudier (talk) 23:01, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

  The logic of those arguing for yes here seems to be that CP is not an SPS but should be treated like one because it occasionally publishes experts and their expert status trumps any problems with the publisher. If this is the case, then reliability would only be determined on the basis of authors and not publishers (any publisher could potentially publish the experts; many deprecated ones actually do). This effectively means our entire history of determining the reliability of sources via consensus should now be ignored because only the expertise of the author is relevant. That’s actually a pretty extreme position, a massive policy change. Or am I missing something? BobFromBrockley (talk) 10:38, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

  seems to be that CP is not an SPS but should be treated like one Not quite, the articles by experts are to be treated as SPS, not that CP is to be treated as SPS. Also, article, author as well as publisher are all "sources" per V.Selfstudier (talk) 10:44, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

  All this reminds me of months misspent in early youth teasing out theological positions in medieval philosophy (on the ontological arguments for the existence of God from St Anselm onwards). I.e. we have two policies and editors are trying to assess the relative weight of various traditions about the implications drawn about a deprecated source and WP:SPI with regard to an anomaly that has arisen: editors differ about which reading of either policy might put paid to the anomaly (i.e. excellent scholarly and professional work of encyclopedic values does appear in a formally deprecated source). Well, as with theology, you can argue till the cows come home, since the assumptions of two or more positions are dogmatically fixed, and partisans only apply logic to finesse their respective takes. Fortunately the rise of scientific method buried all that argufying by stating that the premises themselves were provisional, evidence trumps doctrine, and logic (and commonsense) should determine how we evaluate a crux. The policies we have are not perfect, they often vie in tension, and occasionally require emendment. If an anomaly in the impacts of interpretation emerges - we are throwing obviously good material out by a provisional consensus that might simply signify the aleatory outcome of random aggregations of editors who note this discussion - then we should drop the 'theology' (policy interpretations) and look at the quality our process has recently deemed suspect on 'principle'. That is the modern, scientific, commonsensical, empirical approach to problem solving. And that is the kind of thing most of this section is systematically and fussily ignoring. If over 3 score of top academics and professional investigate journalists choose CounterPunch as a venue, unaware that anomymous editors on Wikipedia rebuff it as an 'anti-Semitic, conspiracy-mongering, holocaust-denying, hate-pushing genocide-promoting' (all ballistically absurd charges in my view), then what deliberation is necessary to allow those articles to be cited here. Nishidani (talk) 11:04, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

haha your comparison is quite apt! We need more policy exegesis! :D But, let's be honest, Price at al only chose CP because they knew they couldn't or didn't want to publish such less rigorous and more blog-y pieces in an actual academic journal. Let's not pretend a column in CP is anything like a peer-reviewed article, top academic or not. --Mvbaron (talk) 17:01, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

I don't think anyone is pretending that, I think Nishidani is saying the expert opinion is frequently better and I agree with him. Because it's an opinion, we attribute rather than saying it in Wikivoice and honor is thereby satisfied. It's not an accident that more and more sources are blurring the line between fact and opinion.Selfstudier (talk) 17:55, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

Thats nonsense, he published there because he is on record as believing in the site, see here. nableezy - 21:51, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

• No and as already mentioned this RFC has no justification. There is reason for WP:DEPS and the reason is to avoid time and again pushing trashy sources back. There are plenty of reliable, neutral sources that covers all this topic's. Hatemongering, conspiracy theorists are not the standards of Wikipedia.Tritomex (talk) 21:23, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

  Nobody is proposing to use hatemongering conspiracy theorists. Maybe dont make things like that up. nableezy - 21:51, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

  Well, Israel Shamir a well known Holocaust denier and conspiracy theorist and an outlet, like this one [13] that publishes his views is worthless and trashy.Tritomex (talk) 23:15, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

  Is anybody citing Israel Shamir? Again, nobody is proposing that hatemongering conspiracy theorists be cited. nableezy - 23:18, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

  I said that an outlet that by publishing promotes the views of a racist bigot and Holocaust denier, like Israel Shamir, or whatever his real name is, lost all credentials to be used as reliable source at any field, not just on subject related to Arab_Israeli conflict. Tritomex (talk) 23:32, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

  Pretty sure no-one is seriously disputing that CP (the "publisher") is unreliable. That's not the question. Imagine that CP articles were treated as SPS and someone tried to cite that guy, how far you think they would get? Selfstudier (talk) 23:41, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

  The next question raised has also obvious awnser. Articles published in CounterPunch are not self-published sources and cant be tranformed or declared as such for any purpose.Tritomex (talk) 11:17, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

  That's why the RFC asks "...be treated as WP:SPS?" Selfstudier (talk) 11:24, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

  CounterPunch did not 'promote' Shamir's views. It published them, mainly on Russia, occasionally down to 2015. If interviewing or publishing the views of people accused of racism indicted newspapers that do so, most Israeli papers would have trouble reporting on a considerable number of Knesset members. Arutz Sheva is not deprecated, and it hosts racists like Baruch Marzel. The POV war consists in huffing and puffing about CP because it is highly receptive to criticism of Israel , and quietly editing stuff culled from that racist rag, or from Israel Hayom and a dozen other newspapers with even less credibility than CP, or never making an issue of that double standard. Nishidani (talk) 19:35, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

• Yes per comments made above, and we need more recognition here that the original RSN discussion was brigaded by sockpuppets. @David Gerard, BilledMammal, and Sceptre: you each made comments above referencing the outcome of the previous RfC from September. I had a look at that today – in the three months since that RfC, six of the “deprecate” voters (one quarter of them) were outed as socks. That is an extraordinary number to be outed in such a short space of time. It is reasonable to assume that not all the involved socks in the brigade have been outed yet. So we might be talking between a third and a half of all “deprecate” voters in that RfC representing a sock brigade, plus the halo effect from their talking points being repeated as a group. Without them that RfC would have been closed as no consensus. Discouraging sockpuppetry requires ensuring their “work” has no permanence. Onceinawhile (talk) 01:46, 3 January 2022 (UTC)
  • I've requested clarification of a related matter; as things stand I believe the consensus is still strong. BilledMammal (talk) 05:33, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

Comment: I note this discussion is currently at 11-11, i.e. no consensus. It should now pause while the Deprecation RfC plays out below, so I am commenting here to keep it from auto-archiving. If the Deprecation RfC reaches a consensus for "No", this RfC becomes irrelevant. But I presume if the RfC reaches a consensus for "Yes", we'd need to return to this discussion to see if we can reach consensus that CounterPunch should be treated differently from other deprecated sources. Have I got that right? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bobfrombrockley (talk • contribs) 09:59, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

sounds right to me --Mvbaron (talk) 10:02, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

• No per previous RFC which concluded it should be deprecated. AllOtherNamesWereTaken (talk) 19:19, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

RFC on apa.az use for Armenia/Nagorno-Karabakh articles

Is www.apa.az website a reliable source for Armenia/Nagorno-Karabakh related articles? --Armatura (talk) 00:19, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

Examples from its publications:

• Armenia's crimes condemned in Los Angeles-VIDEO
• Armenia continues “mine terror”-ANALYSIS
• Reasons and purposes of Armenian provocations on border-ANALYSIS
• International media and journalists in crosshairs of Armenian terrorism - ANALYSIS
• Illegal visit of German MPs to Khankendi: Armenia is committed to the ideology of fascism - ANALYSIS
• Why Armenia, in a difficult situation, is resorting to provocation? - ANALYSIS
• Finally, apa.az is happy to present what happened in Khojali as Khojali genocide (no wide international consensus for this term) without quote marks and yet it is so-called “Armenian genocide” in quote marks for widely recognised genocide that only Azerbaijan and Turkey deny.

The reason why apa.az got scrutinised is this talk page discussion. --Armatura (talk) 00:23, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

Discussion:

• Comment. I am not familiar with the topic area, but the impression I got from the three examples I read is of consistently strong bias and propaganda and poor journalism. I am not sure I would consider anything published by this site as reliable on this topic, unless supported by another completely independent source from another country not involved in the conflict. They also appear to be badly translated, or written by someone with a poor command of English, which could be part of the problem. Cheers, · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 06:10, 26 December 2021 (UTC)
• No. They are not used by RS and Eurasianet writes that they get instructions what to write directly from the Azerbaijani government. Alaexis_¿question? 06:59, 26 December 2021 (UTC)
• No - Based on the language that the website uses, I think it's pretty safe to say that it shouldn't be considered RS. The extreme bias, COI and advocacy just speaks for itself. ZaniGiovanni (talk) 12:52, 26 December 2021 (UTC)
• Depends on context. In general, Azerbaijani and Armenian sources cannot be trusted on Nagorno-Karabakh related issues, as both are engaged in propaganda due to the conflict between the two countries. But if this news agency reports simple facts as, for example, inauguration of a railway station, or construction of a school, or a visit of a country official or his public statement, I see no reason why it should not be trusted. Grandmaster 13:04, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

  I agree regarding simple facts about Azerbaijan. The RfC question is however about its reporting on Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh. Alaexis_¿question? 15:38, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

• Comment. In general, "news analysis" pieces are just opinion pieces with a different label thrown on them. Using these sorts of pieces are subject to WP:RSOPINION and the principle of due weight, but they should not be treated as news reporting. Reading through the website's news coverage in English, it seems like the site is just relatively low quality all-around. I can't say the same for its Azeri or Russian reporting, as I can't read either of those languages, so I can't comment more broadly on the site. I am seeing 580ish uses in articles on Wikipedia currently, ranging from Death of Michael Jackson and Occupy movement to Steve Cohen (politician) and 2014 Armenian–Azerbaijani clashes. — Mhawk10 (talk) 16:36, 26 December 2021 (UTC)
• Comment: I haven't had the time to look into this source yet, but I would note the last two examples look to be APA quoting the Azerbaijani President, and so don't speak to the reliability of the source. I will say though that the Eurasianet article suggests there are significant problems with using the APA group, as well as Trend News Agency, Axar, and Sas. BilledMammal (talk) 01:47, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

Request for comment on citing Patheos

Moved from Wikipedia talk:Reliable sources/Perennial sources § Request for comment on citing Patheos

 – Tayi Arajakate _Talk 13:07, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

Can Patheos be cited on Wikipedia? Who decides which columnists on Patheos may be cited? (This topic was last visited in 2015.) RoyLeban (talk) 11:12, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

Discussion (Patheos)

Background: Editor Hammersoft has argued here that Hemant Mehta, one of the top 6 columnists on Patheos, cannot be cited on Wikipedia. In the same talk page, editor Cullen328 has asserted (incorrectly) that Mehta is "affiliated with a Satanic group" and is trying to "promote a contrived controversy". I believe that Mehta is a well-written, independent columnist who writes well (and fairly neutrally) on a variety of topics. I would guess that the fact that this topic concerns religion accounts for the strong disagreements.

This query shows that Patheos is cited 911 times on Wikipedia. I'm going to hazard a guess that the vast majority of those references are to columnists that are not in the top 6. So where is the line and who gets to decide? The guidance given here, last updated in 2015, has two problems. 1) It is very vague — vague enough that an editor can exclude references to a respected, independent columnist, citing this policy; and 2) IMO, "cited together with a source that is more reliable" is an unreasonable standard — a reference is either reliable or it is not (and note: it was not hard to find articles whose only citation is to Patheos).

I believe the guidance from 6 years ago should be revisited, updated, and clarified. RoyLeban (talk) 11:18, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

Its not an RS, so should not really be used. It is a blog, so it maybe that its use is to cite the views of an expert, who is Hemant Mehta?Slatersteven (talk) 13:15, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

I see no evidence that anything has changed about Patheos in the past 6 years that would affect how we treat it. AFAICT, it's still a collection of blogs with little editorial oversight i.e. which are basically self published so it's not a reliable secondary source in general. When it comes to the specific individual blogs they should be treated like any self published source. They cannot be used for any claims about living persons except in cases where WP:ABOUTSELF applies. For other situations, they can only be used where the author is a subject matter expert. I don't know what the OP means by "top 6" but I guess either this is view count or number of articles published. But it's sort of moot since both cases are largely irrelevant in determining whether someone is a subject matter expert. I'm guessing the number of authors on Patheos is large enough and changes enough that it's not useful for us to analyse every single author there. But to give specific examples, I'm not sure if Hemant Mehta can really be considered a subject matter expert of anything going by a quick read of their article. However Daniel C. Peterson is potentially a subject matter expert on some aspects of Islam and the Arabic language, but possibly not on anything related to the LDS. Nil Einne (talk) 16:19, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

Ahh, no I do not see any indication they are an acknowledged expert on Satanism.Slatersteven (talk) 16:30, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

• Bad RfC Patheos is a blog hosting service and as such there can be no flat answer to the RfC question. Each individual blog on Patheos requires individual reliability evaluation. We cannot say ahead of time that any Patheos blog is acceptable or unacceptable. The second RfC question isn't really even a question, it's a complaint. The stricto sensu answer is obvious: the community of editors that chooses to comment on a particular article's talk page decides. The obvious displeasure of the OP that their source was not accepted at Talk:Peace Cross makes it clear they wish the "who decides" was "not who commented there". Unfortunately, that is exactly who decides on any article talk page. Neither question is answerable through a blanket RfC on the site. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 18:23, 28 December 2021 (UTC)
• It seems that Patheos (not Pantheos) hosts some content such as religious documents and peer reviewed articles that may be acceptable to use as references with caution. But these days, it is best known for hosting about 450 blogs on various religious topics plus atheism. The blog in question is written by Hemant Mehta, a blogger, podcaster and atheist activist whose academic background is in math education. There is no evidence that he has expertise in the naming of National Trust for Historic Preservation sites or interpretation of Supreme Court decisions. The specific blog post in question was published two weeks before the alleged renaming and is based almost entirely on a press release issued by the Satanic Temple and statements by its leader, Lucien Greaves. Accordingly, it is the furthest thing from an independent, reliable source and basing a "Naming controversy" section on this plus the primary statement from the Satanists is entirely inappropriate. There is no controversy. There is only a non-notable publicity stunt. Cullen328 (talk) 19:38, 28 December 2021 (UTC)
• You should focus on asking about the specific citation to Pathos being used, because the answer for Pathos as a whole is going to be that as a blogging platform it is a WP:SPS. Experts there can be cited within the (very strict) restrictions of SPS, but simply being a "top blogger" on Pathos means nothing in and of itself - to demonstrate that you could cite someone via it you'd need to establish that they're a major expert in the field, that they have reliably published things on the same topic, and so on. In those situations the specific things you are citing him for matter a great deal and it would be a good idea to link to the diffs (for example, if you want to cite his blog to discuss a legal precedent or the law, he would need to be a published legal expert; and it would be absolutely unacceptable to ever cite him for something about a BLP, anything WP:EXCEPTIONAL, or anything which is unduly self-serving.) Looking at the dispute, it looks to me like you're trying to cite him for his opinion on legal matters despite his total lack of legal expertise - I would probably argue against citing him even if his opinion was published in a valid WP:RSOPINION source due to that lack of expertise, but it's definitely a no as a SPS. (Worse, it was being used to cite something as fact in the article voice! Again, we couldn't use it like that even via valid RSOPINION source, let alone a blog.) Can't you find any more reliable sources covering the ruling? --Aquillion (talk) 22:30, 28 December 2021 (UTC)
• I have to concur with Nil Einne: "I see no evidence that anything has changed about Patheos in the past 6 years that would affect how we treat it. AFAICT, it's still a collection of blogs with little editorial oversight i.e. which are basically self published so it's not a reliable secondary source in general. When it comes to the specific individual blogs they should be treated like any self published source."
  Also concur with Eggishorn: "Patheos is a blog hosting service and as such there can be no flat answer to the RfC question. Each individual blog on Patheos requires individual reliability evaluation" – and in the context of self-published source treatment with the WP:RSSELF limitations.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:31, 29 December 2021 (UTC)
• I don't know what Patheos was 6 years ago, but today it is not "a blog". "Patheos is a non-denominational, non-partisan online media company providing information and commentary from various religious and nonreligious perspectives." (from Patheos). That page says that Patheos has both columnists and bloggers, and lists Hemant Mehta as a "prominent contributor" and you can read more about Mehta on Wikipedia itself. One commenter made the false assertion that Mehta was affiliated with The Satanic Temple, when he clearly is not. So, if any columnist on Patheos is a reasonable reference, I would put Mehta toward the top of the list. Yes, others may disagree. But the current situation is that one editor can state their opinion that Mehta is not reliable and my opinion that he is both reliable and independent gets ignored. I posted this about Patheos because Hammersoft was making the argument that Patheos, pretty much as a whole, was not reliable. The 911 other references to Patheos indicate that the current situation is problematic. I'm not making that up. And apparently, the issue keeps arising. We can ignore what is an actual problem here, or we can do something about it. If as some suggest, reliability should be assessed on a case by case basis, then the guidance here should be updated to indicate that and a page should be created indicating which Patheos columnists are considered reliable. I would suggest that Mehta along with most others mentioned in the Wikipedia article should be considered reliable by default. Medium presents a similar problem, and there are more than 7,000 citations to it on Wikipedia. Extra note: Cullen328 states Mehta's article was written before the naming event. That is true with the initial version of the article, but is clear that it was updated after the event. RoyLeban (talk) 02:46, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

  Nobody is saying that Patheos is "a blog" but rather that it is a website that hosts about 450 separate blogs. Zero evidence has been presented that the work written by Hemant Mehta is subject to any professional editorial control or fact checking, so it is a blog that some people want to call a "column". And the blog post or "column" in question was largely based on a press release by the Satanist group and an official statement by its founder. Accordingly, it is not an independent reliable source and it would not make any difference if this "column" was published in a widely respected newspaper or magazine. It is utterly inadequate for the purpose of stating in Wikipedia's voice that there is any sort of actual "controversy" about the name of this monument. If there actually was a controversy instead of a two bit publicity stunt, then genuinely reliable independent sources with professional editorial control would have discussed it in detail and called it a controversy. Cullen328 (talk) 04:46, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

  But the current situation is that one editor can state their opinion that Mehta is not reliable and my opinion that he is both reliable and independent gets ignored. Yet again, @RoyLeban:, you are ignoring the actual discussion and creating your own alternate reality. You stated your opinion and Not One Other Editor out of multiple ones here, at the article talk, at the ANI thread, or at the multiple editor talk pages you have brought this to has agreed. This five-month effort fails to understand that Wikipedia does not create notability or coverage it reflects notability through the coverage in reliable sources. You have not produced a reliable source, despite WP:FORUMSHOPPING extensively to attempt to gain agreement the ones in question qualify. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 05:10, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

  Whether it is one editor or ten on one side or the other, the point is that it is arbitrary and inconsistent. It just took me five seconds to find citations to articles by Hemant Mehta on these pages: Flying Spaghetti Monster, Skepticon, Sally Kern. Wikipedia says there are 54 pages with his name on them, including the page about him; I don't know how many are citations. What makes those ok and not this one? I'm not ignoring the actual discussion. I'm pointing out hypocrisy. What makes this article different from the other articles? Who decides that Mehta isn't reliable and, if he's not reliable, why are those other citations allowed? If nothing from Patheos is allowed, should we do something about the other 900 citations? And even if I'm wrong and articles about The Satanic Temple by Mehta aren't allowed while other articles by him are allowed, as well as other citations to Patheos, then Wikipedia still deserves a clearer guideline. The current one allows people to justify arbitrary decisions.

  You can disagree with me, but I honestly don't see how you disagree with the desire for greater clarity.

  And please note: the word "controversy" was mine, and not Mehta's, and it was a mistake. I used it to try to be NPOV and it was wrong. RoyLeban (talk) 05:40, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

  You still seem to think that Wikipedia has some sort of central authority that determines that Mehta is universally a reliable source that is "allowed" and that an editor who objects to Mehta's blog being cited this way in this article is somehow obligated to search for and evaluate every other use of Mehta in this encyclopedia. That is not how things work in an encyclopedia of 6,430,000 articles. The fact of the matter is that your behavior, by trying to push this inappropriate content into this article, has attracted heightened scrutiny of this particular article and your increasingly disruptive I didn't hear that behavior. There is plenty of time to take care of those other articles if Mehta has been cited inappropriately there. But right now, we are discussing one article and the poor quality source that one editor (you) is bound and determined to jam into that article, despite the fact that not a single other experienced editor thinks that it is acceptable. Cullen328 (talk) 06:00, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

  I came back because I didn't want people to think my previous comment was uncivil. I gave the final example I did because it's impossible to not think of that as a possible explanation. I certainly hear that other people don't think this citation is acceptable. What I haven't heard is why, at least not in any way that holds water. Cullen328 above says it is "poor quality" as if it is a fact. It's not. It's an opinion. Maybe even a majority opinion. But why? How is this article by Mehta different from the others? Why have people reached that conclusion here but not in other places? The answer is "because" and that's a bad thing.

  Is the problem everything on Patheos, just Hemant Mehta, or just this one article by Patheos? That's a reasonable question and the answer seems to be the last one. And, if that's the case, then we have a big problem.

  On a side note, I am not being disruptive. I haven't engaged in disruptive editing. I am simply asking the same questions over and over again and not getting an actual answer. I am going through appropriate channels, as suggested by others, and I am trying to get clarification. It saddens me that anybody would think no clarification is needed, that the problem is not the naked emperor, but the little boy who says the emperor has no clothes. RoyLeban (talk) 06:37, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

  What would make a difference is academics or RS off this website using him as a go-to expert for facts. Or to have been published in peer-reviewed academic journals, or to hold a high-level academic post in a respected academic institution. In other words, not just a blogger.Slatersteven (talk) 10:49, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

  WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS is not an accepted argument as well as the fact that we don't have a universal reviewing process, so just because Patheos or the specific author is used a few dozen times on WP elsewhere doesn't make it right. --Masem (t) 13:03, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

  On a side note, I am not being disruptive. I haven't engaged in disruptive editing., Um. Yes, @you: are and yes, you have. WP:BLUDGEON is being disruptive. Filing baseless ANI reports is being disruptive. Casting WP:ASPERSIONS is being disruptive. The persistent I don't hear that behavior you've displayed for five months in widespread fora is such a classic example of disruptive editing that it we define IDHT in a section of the Disruptive Editing behavioral guideline. I could go on and if you continue being disruptive I might. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 16:10, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

• Like Aquillion wrote, it would be more useful to know the specific context for each instance. There may be cases where a particular article may be useful, especially in cases like WP:ABOUTSELF in a WP:BLP, perhaps sometimes for WP:PARITY on a topic if from a notable credible person. In general as others pointed out WP:BLOG applies. I've personally found Patheos to host interesting material but also a lot of inaccurate information (including about the doctrines of religious groups). —PaleoNeonate – 14:42, 29 December 2021 (UTC)
• Patheos appears to be WP:SPS Summoned by bot. There's no description of who the editors are, nor any particular description of it doing reporting or being, other than as a host for religion writers. It does not appear to bear the hallmarks of either WP:RS or WP:RSOPINION. As an outsider, it seems like this discussion (how to talk about and source the potential claims of the Satanic Temple to a monument after a first amendment ruling) has kinda gone a little too deep. Surely, if this has happened, there are other sources? Chris vLS (talk) 02:39, 30 December 2021 (UTC)
• Blog host for SPS content. Contributors can put up blog posts themselves. Mehta's posts are just blog posts by him, and should be treated accordingly - David Gerard (talk) 09:26, 30 December 2021 (UTC)
• Treat as WP:SPS. If a Patheos blog is written by a subject-matter expert, the blog's articles can be cited pursuant to the limitations set at WP:SPS. In the case of Hemant Mehta, I'd argue that Mehta should be considered a subject-matter expert on the topic of religion, given that his work has been published by reliable, independent publications as required under WP:SPS. feminist (talk) 04:58, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

Columns at Skeptical Inquirer

Would columns at Skeptical Inquirer be considered Self-Published Sources WP:NEWSBLOGS and/or WP:QS? Updated to match discussion, see below BilledMammal (talk) 14:51, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

The standard definition of columns and columnists would suggest that they are, and while the editorial policy doesn't discuss columns specifically, it does state that "The Editor will often send manuscripts dealing with technical or controversial matters to reviewers. The authors, however, are responsible for the accuracy of fact and perspective", which suggests a general lack of editorial control that would extend to columns.

Further, if they are would Susan Gerbic (column) be considered a subject matter expert for scientific skepticism and associated topics?

This is in relation to this ongoing discussion at COIN, and is of relevance to a number of articles, including BLP's. BilledMammal (talk) 09:49, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

I think Gerbic definitely has a long history of writing on the topic, but from my readings of her work I'd say she is an expert on scientific skeptic conferences and organizations in Europe and US, but not the movement as a whole. As far as I know she has no academic background on the subject (a professional photographer) and all her work is published in publications with what seems like lax editorial oversight, so I'd probably categorize her in the same way I'd do Joan Didion or Hunter S. Thompson (and other New Journalists). However, I don't think Gerbic is an expert on pseudoscience so I wouldn't use her as a source there. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 10:58, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

• It's not WP:SELFPUB because the content creators and and content publishers are distinct parties (except in maybe some cases when an editor publishes their own work without review, if that happens). Alexbrn (talk) 11:04, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

  WP:NOTRS also includes Questionable sources, described as those lack[ing] meaningful editorial oversight, which would fit (in my opinion) BilledMammal's quote, which then means it could be used in the same way as selfpub in WP:ABOUTSELF contexts. I do agree that Skeptical Inquirer is not an SPS, but if consensus is that they are a questionable source then there's not much difference in how it should be used on wiki. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 11:30, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

  This except in maybe some cases when an editor publishes their own work without review, if that happens is the point where things get unclear in my opinion; most columns don't have a review process like most content (although it appears that the review process at SI is generally weak), and I think that Santacruz makes a good point about treating at least the columns as a questionable source, and possibly the entire publications due to the lack of meaningful editorial oversight - I note a lot is written by actual experts, and should remain usable.

  Separately, I am wondering now if WP:NEWSBLOGS would apply to the online columns? It doesn't help us with the offline columns, but the definition appears to fit, and it does allow us to use the professionals who write such columns. BilledMammal (talk) 11:39, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

  Looking at their last four articles, for example:

  • an opinion piece
  • what seems like a historic analysis from a reputable expert
  • a movie review
  • an entertainment video

  Just thought I'd link them here in case it's useful to the discussion (hopefully the list doesn't mess with the indent formatting of the thread). Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 11:49, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

It's essentially an opinion column from one of their authors. As the submission guidelines state, the authors are responsible for the accuracy of fact and perspective, which shows a lack of editorial control. Perfectly acceptable for the opinions of the columnist, unacceptable for BLPs. Also, looking at the tone of the latest column, it shows even more-so that it should not be used in a BLP. Thomas John Flanagan, better known as the Manhattan Medium, the Seatbelt Psychic guy, drag queen Lady Vera Parker, and a grief vampire...[14] ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 11:39, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

• Is there an actual example of use on WP to consider? Alexbrn (talk) 11:48, 6 January 2022 (UTC)
  • Many; from the COIN thread, Suzane Northrop (1) and Thomas John Flanagan (1 2). The second are also referenced to the NYT's and the Las Vegas Review Journal, but as far as I can tell neither state Gerbal's position in their own voice, so the fact that we are doing so comes entirely from Gerbal's column. BilledMammal (talk) 11:53, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

    Yeah I don't think her sting operations should be cited, especially not in the leads of BLPs. The publication does not fact check them at all nor is she an expert in the subject.Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 12:14, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

    The Skeptical Inquirer is not self-published, no. Which does not make op-eds the same as a journalistic piece. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 13:20, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

    Neither of those uses in the current ledes are particularly contentious. Why would they need an extremely high quality source? They aren't alleging criminal acts or anything that the subject would disagree with... I'm not sure why the use of these sources in those article ledes would be an issue. You could probably state those things without any source at all, per WP:V. — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 00:50, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

    Versions from when the above was linked: Suzane Northrop and Thomas John Flanagan. The issues are also not limited to the lede. BilledMammal (talk) 01:01, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

No it is not an SPS, it also does not seem to be well known for making stuff up.Slatersteven (talk) 13:21, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

Skeptical Inquirer is def not a SPS. Contributors (approved in advance due to their expertise) submit articles which are worked on by editors either for the printed magazine or for the website. Additionally, if necessary due to content, their legal staff does a content review to approve the article. Rp2006 (talk) 06:45, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

No, it's not an SPS. If it's an opinion column, treat it accordingly; if it's another type of column, bring evidence of its quality (or lack thereof), preferably in the context of use on Wikipedia, and we can evaluate it that way. As for Gerbic, I don't see a reason why she wouldn't be considered a reliable source on the skepticism movement (trying to distinguish between authority on "skepticism conferences" and skepticism more broadly is, frankly, bizarre). That doesn't mean that she knows everything about every science, obviously, but the skepticism movement is as much a sociological, political, rhetorical, organizational, etc. subject as science subject. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 14:23, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

What I meant by not an expert on the movement is that as far as I know she doesn't do much analysis of the movement in a historical sense. She doesn't break it down or try to see, for example, how it is connected to other movements (e.g. radical atheism through its overlap with speakers such as Richard Dawkins) as much as she is a good (for lack of a better term) diarist for the movement as it is now. She certainly creates valuable documentation on the evolution of its organizations, how it is attempting to maintain its relevance in an online world, etc. but she doesn't analyze it per say. I'd call her an expert on the movement if her articles were less 'check out this cool new podcast' and more academic/removed from the subject. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 14:53, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

"as far as I know" or wp:or, how do you know what she does, have you ever met her (let alone examined all of the work she has ever done)?Slatersteven (talk) 14:58, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

Have you? However, it seems the best way to address this question would be for editors who are aware of her conducting such analysis to provide examples for us to consider. BilledMammal (talk) 15:02, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

Most of her work on skepticism are either conference reports, personal stories and wiki-related analysis, or interviews. What I mean by analysis would be closer to "Insider Baseball" by Joan Didion or the type of monograph you'd see in academia. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 15:07, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

And stuff like this [[15]], seems fairlery in-depth to me (but it does nmentiuon an accidental sting).Slatersteven (talk) 15:10, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

I'm not sure dispelling the notion that mediums have powers is indicative of expertise. Hell, anyone could do that. Additionally, the publication does not fact-check anything related to the sting (from what I understand, based on their editing policy) so I wouldn't even call the sting reliable. Again, my point was her not being in-depth about the skepticism movement and the subject of the article is a drag queen medium, not a skeptic. It's also not in-depth as much as just terribly long. There's a difference between sharp, detailed analysis and just adding more and more volunteers to an "operation". Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 15:21, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

It is in depth enough to show she did research, and a lot mrope than just interviews and reports on conferancies. It is as in depth as most news paper reports of an incident. Nor does she have to be an experts, as that would only apply if this was an SPS, its not. As to "her not being in-depth about the skepticism movement", as she is not reporting on them, why would she need to be?Slatersteven (talk) 15:30, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

To me, this whole tangent is unnecessary. If she's an expert or not, or on what, doesn't matter. Generally, we shouldn't be allowing someone with a platform with no editorial oversight for columns, where the authors are responsible for the accuracy of fact and perspective to perform a sting operation and then have huge, undue amounts of negative content added to a BLP based on it. If Captain Picard had a column in Space Captains Bimonthly Journal of Space Captains and ran a sting on some other captain saying that the other captain was looking at Spacebook pages for aliens in contravention of the Prime Directive, we wouldn't include that either. If a secondary source, say Wolf-359 Times, does a story, and provides secondary coverage, then we can look into including information as it shows that it has widespread coverage, and has some editorial oversight. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 15:40, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

On this I note that the New York Times when they reported on one of her stings did not back her conclusions with their own voice. BilledMammal (talk) 15:58, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

It is in depth enough to show she did research, and a lot mrope than just interviews and reports on conferancies. [sic] There is no guarantee her research is actually correct. It is as in depth as most news paper reports of an incident. This is a generalization without evidence, nor does it deal with the point I made on the character of the analysis made in the article. Nor does she have to be an experts, as that would only apply if this was an SPS, its not. It does apply if it is a questionable source, which SI is in my opinion. Additionally, the question of whether she is an expert or not is the one posed by BilledMammal at the beginning of the discussion. As to "her not being in-depth about the skepticism movement", as she is not reporting on them, why would she need to be? That is the criteria I use to judge whether someone is an expert on a subject: can they write in-depth, analytical, and thoughtful pieces on a subject backed by either strong credentials, a rigorous system of peer-review by the publisher, or are they called experts (verbatim) by RS. I'm not saying it's the criteria everyone should use or the correct one (consensus will determine that and I trust the wiki process more than myself), but it is the one I use. Therefore, I don't judge Gerbic to be an expert on the skepticism movement, but I do think she is an expert on skeptic conferences and organizations in the US and Europe (I guess I'd add the Commonwealth just to have NZ in there). Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 15:44, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

As far as I can ascertain, the thing Gerbic is recognized for within the skeptical community is not the study of that community, or its conferences and organizations. She is recognized for her activism investigating and reporting on those she terms "grief vampires." And of course for her work with GSoW. Those two things earned her recognition, and earned her non-profit a grant from James Randi. Rp2006 (talk) 06:51, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

Rp2006 I trust you on that. I think she'd definitely be an expert on GSOW (and I'd additionally give her some credit for her wide knowledge on skeptic organizations as I did above), but I'm hesitant to call her an expert on mediums (what she calls "grief vampires", a characterization which I agree with but is infinitely hard to justify using in wiki-voice). All her work on them is published through SI and a book (which as far as I understand still upcoming), a publication that does not take responsibility for the accuracy of information, she is not a trained psychologist, nor has she written (as far as I am aware) any academic works on the subject. Again, dispeling the idea that mediums have powers is not a hard thing to do nor does it require much understanding of why people still trust mediums, how the psychology of the mediee (idk what the term is) functions during a reading, etc. That is the type of questions I'd expect to be more prominent in the writings of an expert on the subject, and which I have found lacking in her writing on the subject. So while she's certainly done a bunch of work in the subject I don't think quantity is more important than quality at determining expertise.Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 08:36, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

For once we agree. Gerbic is not an expert on the psychology involved in either the people who claim to speak for the dead, nor of those fooled into believing it. She has not claimed to be. (I doubt there is such an "expert" on Earth, as this certainly has not been scientifically studied.)

However, learning about HOW the cons work and how people are deceived, and educating the public to reduce the number of people harmed, IS what she is a recognized expert at (by the skeptical community as well as the media). And that is what she writes about primarily. As for your claim "dispelling the idea that mediums have powers is not a hard thing to do." Really? Then why do upwards of 40% of Americans (and likely other humans) still believe it? Why do countless people lose their life savings to these con-artists? Are you aware of this? Do you care? We do. Rp2006 (talk) 16:46, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

Many people believe in many things for irrational, emotional reasons. If humans were perfectly rational beings, things like parasocial relationships wouldn't exist. I'd appreciate if you could link some sources were Gerbic is cited as an expert in mediums. I don't doubt they might exist, but until you provide those sources my opinion is strong (if weakly held) that she is not an expert in this area. Giving mediums fake stories to get "Gotcha'!" moments does not make you an expert. Your rhetorical questions don't affect the fact you must provide proof she is an expert if there is no consensus she is. In a kingdom of opinions, fact is king. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 17:04, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

So are you retracting your claim that "dispelling the idea that mediums have powers is not a hard thing to do."? You clearly said that to imply there are no experts in this field, and indeed no expertise is needed because (I guess) you think anyone can do it. This is the Dunning–Kruger effect on full display. In realty, it takes a level of "expertise" gained via much experience to successfully unmask these con-artists, and to get results worthy of coverage by the NYT. In fact, I see no one else at all doing this now besides Gerbic. That is why James Randi (who used to debunk paranormal claims) awarded her a grant from the JREF before his passing. It contributes to why she was elected fellow at CSI. It is why she has been covered and consulted by media as prestigious as the NYT here and here in the rare instances they cover this topic at all. Rp2006 (talk) 21:55, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

Could you or someone else please share the exact way she is characterized in the articles? NYT is paywalled to me. I disagree by the way, it's not hard to prove a medium is a scam as long as you have the time for it.Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 22:07, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

Priceless. It's not hard to be a pilot for a commercial airline, or an astrophysicist, or an MD, as long as you have the time for it. Rp2006 (talk) 22:23, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

Her work is covered, but her claims are not endorsed, while she is described as a "psychic skeptic". It wouldn't seem to endorse the claim that she is an expert in this field, just that she is a prominent sceptic of it. BilledMammal (talk) 01:29, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

Then I don't see any reason to characterize her as an expert on mediums if the only RS describing her work on the topic does not characterize her as such. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 22:44, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

If you're not familiar with the history of debunking mediums and spiritualists (and how difficult it could and can be), I would highly recommend reading about it. Any competent biography of Houdini is a good place to start, but in keeping with the Skeptic movement theme I'll recommend "Houdini, His Life and Art" by James Randi. - MrOllie (talk) 22:13, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

I find it precious that she just admitted that she has not read the articles in the NYT but has a strong opinion on them. Also that she does not know how to get around a paywall, that's beginning GSoW training BTW. One more thing that I should mention - when the New York Times reaches out to someone for comment on an article they are writing about a psychic, and you are the lone person asked to do so. That means that the NYT thinks of that person as an expert. When they write a full article about you in the NYT Magazine, even more so. That is considered a very big deal ACS. Belittling the work I have done over the years as "easy" and something you could do is insulting, not only to me, but to the few other experts on the subject. If you are not up on the topic, then I suggest you refrain from commenting. You do know who James Randi is, right? Sgerbic (talk) 23:21, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

I am literally acting in good faith and asking someone to provide the quotes in the article that support you as an expert. Strong opinions weakly held means that if I am shown proof my opinion is wrong I am quick to admit so, but until then I maintain my positions resolutely. I am just asking for one or two sentences, and the attacks on my character or the lack of assuming good faith on my part in this discussion are both unnecessary to resolving the topic of this RSN thread. I apologize if you feel offended that I think the methodology you use is simplistic. However, that is my opinion and I shouldn't need to shy away my thoughts on your reliability just because you happen to be reading. It is your choice to read discussions regarding your expertise. If you cannot handle professional assessments without feeling personally offended I suggest you do not participate in these threads. Hope you enjoy the weekend.Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 23:35, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

I think a more pertinent question would be are columns written about stings that the author ran considered a primary source for the sting? If there is no secondary sourcing about the sting, should we be inserting it into an article, especially a BLP? ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 14:26, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

That is a better objection, but it's more about undue than RS (assuming we are talking about stings, and not (for example) investigations).Slatersteven (talk) 15:00, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

I agree with Slatersteven that the question might not be usually discussed in this noticeboard but I'll still give my two cents. I'd say the columns on the stings are primary sources. As there are no secondary sources and they are published in a magazine that does not take responsibility for the accuracy of the information they should absolutely not be mentioned in a BLP or anywhere in articles. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 08:36, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

relative to something mentioned above, we have never accepted the fact that a newspaper, even the NYT, asks someone to comment on something indicates their notability; it doesn't necessarily indicate they're a RS either, since a journalist normally uses a range of familiar sources. If anything, it indicates that the newspaper is not taking responsibility for what the source is quoted as saying. (I intend this as general, not the specific situation here) DGG ( talk ) 01:43, 9 January 2022 (UTC) �

Yes, but I actually think there is a supplement somewhere that states that many multiple RSes all quoting someone as an expert is good enough to call them an expert, right? Am I misremembering that? I can't think of where it is specifically or find it, at the moment. But I thought it was buried somewhere in a supplement. — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 00:53, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

Just as a note, in the latest issue of SI they describe a breaching experiment conducted on Wikipedia [16], where the author created a fake article and left it up for 13 years, with meatpuppetry to try to retain it after it was nominated for AfD. I'm not sure to what extent it is relevant, but breaching experiments sit in an ethical gray area which tends to raise concerns. I worry about publications which uncritically publish these sorts of articles, and concerns have been raised in the past when this has happened elsewhere. - Bilby (talk) 13:14, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

@Bilby: is the full text of that piece available anywhere? That sort of behaviour is concerning on a wider level than whether or not SI is a reliable source or not. Sideswipe9th (talk) 20:58, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

@Sideswipe9th:, sorry, but the full text is only available to subscribers, as far as I know. As a summary: the author claims to have requested the creation of the Eachy article in July 2006 as a breaching experiment through WP:AFC. The hoax article was created by User:Kevin, who was not aware of the hoax. It was nominated for deletion in August 2019. According to the author, "An appeal to my Fortean and skeptical colleagues then resulted in some edits to the page. In my first intervention in the article for several years, I argued that it should be kept, because I managed to find an article that bizarrely mentioned in passing Victorian accounts of the monster (Robinson 2017)." [17]. They were usuccessful and it was deleted. - Bilby (talk) 21:31, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

It might be relevant to see who edited that page. BilledMammal (talk) 22:39, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

The only edit in the AfD that fits the description was this one. - Bilby (talk) 22:52, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

Sorry, I meant the article itself, in reference to this "An appeal to my Fortean and skeptical colleagues then resulted in some edits to the page" - although I think this edit is more likely, as it seems unlikely to be User:Dream Focus. BilledMammal (talk) 22:54, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

No problem. The only significant edits to the article after it was nominated for AfD were by an IP. In regard to the AfD vote, I find DreamFocus to be unlikely, but the problem is that the author is claiming to have added a reference to "Robertson 2017", which is the reference given by DreamFocus in their edit. The reference given by Tullimonstrum isn't by the same author. I guess if it isn't DreamFocus - which I hope it isn't - then the author is lying about the edit, which speaks to the reliability of the source. - Bilby (talk) 23:04, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

Good points, particularly about the reliability. BilledMammal (talk) 23:10, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

I second this. A. C. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 08:23, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

At https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Eachy I scratched out what I said before and voted to redirect it to another article, so it clearly not me. That was back in 2019. Only one editor still said Keep in that discussion and they edit these types of pages a lot. Special:Contributions/Tullimonstrum. Anyway, you'd have to be able to view the deleted article to see who added what sources to it, and who just quoted those in the AFD, or found them on their own by clicking the AFD search options. Dream Focus 05:09, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

• I found this at https://twitter.com/CharlesPaxton4 Dec 29, 2021 Create a false fact on Wikipedia with no support. Then someone uses that fact beyond Wikipedia. Then that usage can be used to justify the Wikipedia article. People can now point to Eachy articles to justify the existence of a Wikipedia article about the Eachy.
• And his post before that was: Dec 29, 2021 Replying to @CharlesPaxton4 My article lasted just over 13 years on Wikipedia, and successfully, as you can see above created a monster tradition. See also.
• So this guy made a fake article. Dream Focus 05:21, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

@Dream Focus: I'm really glad to hear you say that it wasn't you. However, the author states that they were the one who provided the Robertson 2017 source in the AfD, which was only used by you in your keep argument. Just to be clear, you are saying that the author of the SI article falsely claimed to have made the edit you made? If so, that suggests a significant problem with SI's reliability if it is publishing false statements about editors here. - Bilby (talk) 06:26, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

Searching for "Eachy" shows the article is at https://cryptidz.fandom.com/wiki/Eachy and it says Bassenthwaite Lake as the location. Search for that location and its name and you get plenty to sort through. [18] Since the AFD was years ago I assume I just searched through that. I linked to the official Facebook page for the area it is reported in, as well as a reference to The National Cryptid Society and quoted them mentioning it as the "The Beast of Bassenthwaite Lake". Not sure how these seems even remotely suspicious to you. Whoever put the article over on the fandom didn't do the most recent version. If I was trying to save the information I would've done a full history export to it as I have done for a large number of articles to various wikias/fandoms over the years. Dream Focus 06:45, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

@Dream Focus: All good. I'm not worried about how you found the source. I'm concerned that SI is making false statements about editors, such as claiming that the author made an edit that they didn't make, because it was made by you instead. If you are not the author of the article, which I assume is what you are saying, then the article has not been sufficiently verified by the editor, and that makes me suspicious of the source and suggests that it is unreliable, which was the main thrust of the discussion here. - Bilby (talk) 07:00, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

I'm getting really lost in this thread, personally. Could someone please reply with the questions that are being asked in this thread about Skeptical Inquirer? A. C. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 11:32, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

Additional question, seeing how contentious this topic area is, I think it might be a good idea to request a closure once it is clear no more comments are forthcoming (not yet, obviously). What are y'all's opinion on this? I feel having a formal close to the discussion would help avoid later stonewalling when the results of the discussion here are applied in relevant articles. A. C. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 21:40, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

This isn't a deprecation RFC, a closure won't accomplish anything useful. MrOllie (talk) 21:47, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

Having a consensus outlined after a discussion is helpful to point to for content disputes is highly fraught topic areas. I think it could be handy. I don't know how much consensus is going to be gleaned from this discussion though. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 21:49, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

Even if not a strong consensus, outlining the major points or positions brought forward by the community would still be helpful. A. C. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 22:11, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

• Yes, these columns are like WP:NEWSBLOGs in the sense that they should be used with caution because blogs may not be subject to the news organization's normal fact-checking process. The following hasn't been directly asked here, but it's probably worth noting that magazines published by advocacy-based groups like the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry generally fail WP:INDEPENDENT. Skeptical Inquirer is not a source that has no vested interest in a given Wikipedia topic and therefore is commonly expected to cover the topic from a disinterested perspective. This means that it should not be considered generally reliable. Since it's quite clearly WP:PARTISAN, it should in many cases be attributed in-text when it is used. The only, important exception is its very legitimate use per WP:PARITY (where all other possible alternative sources are equally non-independent or otherwise unreliable): in these cases it can also be used without in-text attribution. But wherever better sources are available, its use should just be avoided entirely. ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 13:27, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

  Yes i would agree they should be used with caution. But some likely are subject to some fact-checking, as described above they also often send out for review. I have only, so far, seen uses that are actually uncontroversial and likely do not need a source at all, or a questionable source would even be fine (the examples given above). I would be interested to see any example uses of these blogs that are defamatory or may violate BLP and are not supported by any other sources. — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 00:57, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

• When they're opinion pieces, they're WP:RSOPINION, just like anything else. When they're not opinion (for example Steven Novella's 'Science of Medicine' column), they're reliable. - MrOllie (talk) 21:59, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

Arbitrary Break 1 (Columns at Skeptical Inquirer)

• I've hit some significant problems with this as a source before. Other than the recent issue where the author claimed to have made edits on WP that were actually made by someone else, (and I should mention that this is the second time it has happened in SI), we hit a number of problems with [19] on the D. Gary Young article. On multiple occasions claims in the SI article were counter to what was said in the sources they used, or at least not supported by the sources. I'm not going to regard it as automatically unreliable, but I think Apaugasma's points are pertinent: as a partisan source, it should be used with considerable caution, especially where living people are concerned. - Bilby (talk) 14:22, 13 January 2022 (UTC)
• Boy do I agree with Bilby that D. Gary Young is an example of how SI is being used. And boy do I disagree with his characterization. The reason pro fringe editors want to minimize SI, is because it is often the only WP:Parity response to the one two punch of ABOUTSELF and BLP. X person says they can fly. Nobody but a skeptic is going to waist their time disproving this claim. An editor attempts to put X "falsely" claims they can fly, is told they are lacking sources and NPOV. An article in SI that says X cannot actually fly is called not WP:RS, so until and unless the NYT writes about how X cannot fly, the wikipedia page would say X can fly. And conversely and perversely, if X has also claimed that they are a two headed dragon, and an editor wanted to include this claim on their page (IRL see Rain Drop Method and D. Gary Young claiming to have made distillers that killed a man). Editors who want X to look good will keep this claim off the page by saying, "there is no good source for this silly claim. X himself cannot be citied on this" So X's business partners and followers can use wikipedia to promote the idea that X can fly while hiding the fact that X claimed to have two heads. Only skeptical publications like SI stand in the gap on FRINGE and PARITY.DolyaIskrina (talk) 15:20, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

  What does this have to do with how we should judge SI's reliability? I am strongly opposed to the idea we should decide a source is reliable because we 'need' to use it to dispel fringe. You are assuming that the claim X can fly cannot be refuted without SI sourcing. I heavily disagree, as it can just be removed outright. The only way it would be justifiably kept in an article is if it is mentioned in RS, and I'm pretty sure any site that says a human can fly is most definitely not RS. Thus, it seems unnecessary to me to argue for SI's reliability based on some unnecessary hypothetical. A. C. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 15:29, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

  We absolutely should consider what we need so that wikipedia doesn't become Goopipedia. Blogs, podcasts, youtube videos, Twitter are regularly dismissed when they should be allowed for WP:FRINGE and WP:PARITY. And SI is much better than those outlets, even if you want to cherry pick the worst moments in SI. I could compile a long list of false things printed in the New York Times. DolyaIskrina (talk) 22:17, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

  DolyaIskrina I'd appreciate if you could rephrase your comment, as I'm not sure I understand two things: why youtube videos and tweets are relevant to a discussion on the reliability of SI and why the NYT is worth comparing to SI. A. C. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 22:37, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

  Parity (and WP:MEDRS actually) allows lesser quality sources to counter fringe claims if there are no better sources to be had. Most editors don't know this and will ding YT, Twitter, blogs, etc claiming they are not "as good" as the sources that promote the fringe claim. SI, while hardly as good as the NYT, is generally better than those other Twitter type platforms (I'm talking about a ratio of quality content to bad content). And yet Twitter can actually be used for Parity. For instance, a renowned epidemiologist's Tweets about a disease are pretty good for Parity or even WP:MEDRS (though most editors don't know this). So SI has had some bad content. How much bad content? If you were to do such a comparison of good to bad with a highly regarded source like Snopes (many will argue this) or NYT (fewer but still some would argue that this is a good source) you will still find that they had wrong, retracted, never corrected or biased content. So reliability is not just determined by cherrypicking the bad content. DolyaIskrina (talk) 00:37, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

  The only thing sourced only to SI is Young also founded and operated the Young Life Wellness Center, a medical clinic in Chula Vista, California, which in 1988 was ordered by a court judge to be shut down which isn't exactly what the source says. The SI source says, The district attorney’s office convinced a Superior Court judge to issue a temporary restraining order prohibiting the operators of the Chula Vista and Rosarita Beach clinics from advertising and selling misleading and deceptive health cures and to schedule a hearing for an injunction. In June 1988, the judge issued a preliminary injunction against the Youngs and Crow prohibiting operation of the Chula Vista clinic. One of the defendants told the court that the clinic already ceased operation. Everything else has better sources, except for providing the name of his non-notable second wife. Assuming that the Chula Vista clinic closure wasn't widely covered, would it really hurt the article to be missing that? Would someone read that and go "Oh, well he might have actually cured cancer. If only there was one other factoid about how the guy was an obvious quack and constantly in legal trouble, then I wouldn't think essential oils would cure cancer. COI disclosure: I put essential oils in the soap I make, but not to cure cancer. It smells good, and cedar oil helps repel some insects. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 15:36, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

  Essential oils?! Really?! And I thought I was dealing with a rational pro-science editor, rather than a pro-fringe quack. My disappointment is immeasurable and my day is ruined. /s A. C. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 15:43, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

  I also really really like cedar oil as part of scented waxes, but... I am sorry to say I actually think the quote you gave is a fair summary of the source. The judge really did order the clinic to be shut down. It was already shut down, but the judge did order it. Do you think we are somehow defaming the subject by including this? We could supplement with a primary source, probably. It's not a contentious statement if the judge really did order that, and it's DUE if the SI column covers it, and this guy doesn't get much coverage anyway. The SI coverage is part of how we determine DUE. — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 01:00, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

  I that using a soap with a decent amount of cedar oil in it, I pick up far fewer ticks. As far as the quote, I was more pointing out that it's the only thing sourced to SI, and although it is a summary, I think it's a bit NPOV not to mention it was already shut down. I didn't care enough to edit it, however. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 01:11, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

  Then I would just add that fact. I agree, it is more NPOV with the fact added, as long as it isn't done in too long of prose. Given that we only have one source in an article with few sources already per WP:DUE. — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 04:30, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

  Wow, I read that thread you linked to with the incorrect and NPOV title D. Gary Young claiming to have made distillers that killed a man. That is the exact type of editing that is a problem. Trying to coatrack the worst things you can find that are tangentially related to someone into their article. Someone died in a work accident, no one was charged, no lawsuit was filed. Lets make sure to mention it in this guy's article. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 15:51, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

  Not going to lie, after reading that thread DolyaIskrina, I am somewhat concerned about your use of sources. Not only are people in that thread saying that you are misrepresenting what the sources say, but your comment above strongly indicates a WP:RGW mindset within this topic area. A. C. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 16:01, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

  Exactly. Bringing up your want to include WP:SYNTH and WP:UNDUE in the DGY page here is just another way to attempt to secure support for your WP:POVPUSHing. The issue with DGY is not about sources being reliable, but about trying to tie multiple sources together to say that he killed someone. Not sure why this is even a discussion for this noticeboard. --CNMall41 (talk) 16:56, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

  The SI article quotes the OSHA report which says he designed the entire operation. One Secondary and one primary source. DolyaIskrina (talk) 22:08, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

  I didn't bring DGY up. You'll have to talk to Bilby about that. DolyaIskrina (talk) 04:27, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

@DolyaIskrina:, my apologies for the accusation on who brought it up. I have amended accordingly. --CNMall41 (talk) 16:30, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

• Sorry for starting this whole tangent. I raised that article because there have been three instances where clear errors were in SI articles that I have encountered - two related to Wikipedia editing (edits claimed by the author were made by different people) and one was the article I linked to, in which there were problems with claims in the article not matching the source material. I didn't want this to focus on how it was used - just that there have been errors in SI articles. - Bilby (talk) 04:36, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

@Bilby:, my apologies as that was meant for DolyaIskrina and I got it wrong about who started it. Reading more in-depth, I don't think there was any issue bringing it up. It just opened the door for editors of that page to bring the dispute here and conflate the issues. --CNMall41 (talk) 16:33, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

• @ScottishFinnishRadish I agree that's a POV thread title that never should have been written. — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 01:03, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

  @DolyaIskrina: please don't call editors whom you disagree with "pro fringe" unless you have very good cause to do so (i.e., the kind of thing you could take them to ANI for if it formed a pattern). As for the substance of your comment: yes, WP:PARITY applies. If someone is notable for claiming to be able to fly, and if there are no better sources than the ones who would take such a claim (semi-)seriously (lifestyle magazines, sensationalist press, etc.), SI can be used without a second thought. Just don't reverse WP:PARITY's logic: the fact that a source like SI can be used when all other sources are of the same quality or (probably) worse does not automagically render SI reliable outside of that context. Always look for the WP:BESTSOURCES. ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 17:57, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

  I didn't know "pro-fringe" was an official accusation, I'll refrain. DolyaIskrina (talk) 22:37, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

  I would overall agree with this comment about PARITY. We should always strive to use the best sources, but sometimes SI is all that's available. It is those times that SI (and its columns especially) is likely appropriate. — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 01:22, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

  While I agree, WP:PARITY doesn't override BLP, and PARITY doesn't say that we can use unreliable sources - more that how we determine reliability is broadened. - Bilby (talk) 02:11, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

  @DolyaIskrina: Do you have any COI with SI, such as affiliation with GSoW? I would also mention that WP:ABOUTSELF forbids material that is unduly self-serving or an exceptional claim, so it would not support the inclusion of such a claim and can be handled without having to rely on Blogs, podcasts, youtube videos, Twitter or other unreliable sources. BilledMammal (talk) 22:55, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

  @BilledMammal I would tell you that asking questions like this is likely unproductive, and I would put it on the same level as the place where @DolyaIskrina describes another user as "pro-fringe" above. Neither are very helpful contributions to the conversation and should be ommitted moving forward if at all possible.— Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 01:24, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

  I think the question of whether someone has a potential COI with the source (or article, though that is not relevant here) being discussed is relevant to the conversation, though perhaps I should have taken it to the users talk page first. BilledMammal (talk) 01:27, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

  Let me get specific. Donald Gary Young claims to have invented the Raindrop Technique which some other equally unreliable sources have called a dangerous technique. It's being kept off his page because editors are calling it (going from memory here) fringe, not WP:RS, implausible etc. The net result is that a popular and dangerous technique that he claims to have invented and that has been criticized by others in his industry stays off his page, and readers don't get any sort of warning about it. So this would be an example of an exceptional claim that should be included, but is expediently excluded by editors who like essential oils. So this is my "two heads" idea from my hypothetical. They keep the flying, but ding the two heads. I don't have a COI with SI, unless you count a subscription as one. DolyaIskrina (talk) 00:17, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

  If it were popular enough to be notable, then it would have coverage. It's not the place of an encyclopedia to list non-notable things that may be dangerous then debunk them. Also, stop claiming editors who disagree with you are pro-fringe or "like essential oils." ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 00:26, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

  This section is way too large to edit effectively on mobile. Pretend my last comment doesn't have random capital letters and typos. Thanks BilledMammal! ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 00:36, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

  So we can have a page that presents as a businessman someone who made a fortune off of essential oils, but we can't mention any dangerous treatments they claim to have invented unless they are proven popular enough by... whom? His own promotional material which lauds it to the heavens and even has it trade marked? Oh, no. Now we cant trust the source. This is why we need sources like SI or we are going to continue to get played in this way by well funded PR departments in the wellness industry. Welcome to Goopipedia. DolyaIskrina (talk) 00:49, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

  I don't have a COI with SI, unless you count a subscription as one: Before I respond to the rest, could I clarify whether you are associated with GSoW? BilledMammal (talk) 00:27, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

  Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the Communist Party? nableezy - 00:34, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

  This exactly why a GSoW scope for the upcoming arb case is the wrong idea. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 00:38, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

  I note that this isn't a fishing expedition, and so long as the question about whether membership of GSoW causes a COI with SI is open I consider it a relevant question in the context of this discussion. BilledMammal (talk) 00:40, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

  Do we even know what determines "membership," particularly? Is there an iron-on badge or some such? Dumuzid (talk) 01:56, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

  I'm pretty sure it's a face tattoo. I heard Mike Tyson is a member. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 02:06, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

  I'm not sure I believe that claim, SFR, on account on his difficulties pronouncing "thkepticth". A. C. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 10:13, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

Back to discussing the reliability of SI

• From my understanding, the position that seems the most reasonable to me is that:

  A) SI is not a SPS

  B) whether SI is a source of questionable reliability has not reached community consensus in favor or againt, at least numerically.

  C) the use of SI is sometimes necessary in the interest of WP:PARITY, but not strictly necessary outside of that

  D) as there is no fact-checking done by the editors, but the site often features experts, it's use can be supported under cases like WP:RSOPINION. However,

  E) using SI to quote non-experts (say, on anorexia) is best avoided and

  F) as there is no editorial fact-checking, their use in BLPs is potentially dangerous as it could introduce false information that would greatly harm a living person's reputation could be introduced in articles

  Please let me know what y'all think of this summary. I thought I'd summarize a bit to keep the conversation a bit focused. I also think having an RfC on B would be useful.A. C. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 01:33, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

  (C) - huh? when is a source "necessary"?

  (D) and (F): where was it decided that "there is no editorial fact-checking"? Are you conflating that with "no editorial oversight"?

  (E) I'd dispute this, but mainly because of the bizarre expertise-related claims that have been made by some of the SI/GSOW/Gerbic critics in these discussions — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 20:05, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

  For D and F, see their article submission guidelines. The Editor will often send manuscripts dealing with technical or controversial matters to reviewers. The authors, however, are responsible for the accuracy of fact and perspective. We advise having knowledgeable colleagues review drafts before submission. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 20:12, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

  Rhododendrites I mentioned E as a consequence of D. While expertise as related to humanities articles is much more nuanced and should be analyzed on a case-by-case basis, things like using RS:OPINION sources in a medical article (like anorexia) is best avoided, or in cases where the opinion of a psychologist is added to an article on UFO sightings where the psychologist makes statements on light refraction (for example). Those are the kinds of cases that I mean by E, and where SI is most often used in what I see as a misguided fashion. A. C. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 09:24, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

  Not entirely sure if WP:MEDPOP is the proper guideline to mention in this case, as I'm not aware of a general science version of this but think it is still applicable, even if only on the SI MED articles case and not all. A. C. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 09:32, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

  huh? when is a source "necessary"? my thoughts exactly. I think the OP was trying to say: "not preferred" but I think their point about WP:PARITY is well taken. — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 14:45, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

  as there is no editorial fact-checking I was under the impression that there is occasional fact checking about contentious claims, just that it is not universal, as is the case with many media outlets. Per SFR above. Am I wrong about this? — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 14:46, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

  The issue is that if there is occasional fact checking we should treat it as no guarantee a particular fact has been checked. As in, we cannot tell if fact x cited in controversial article y has been fact checked and so should assume it has not in the interest of being accurate. Thus, we should attribute it to the author of the article from which x is cited. I'm struggling to find the exact words, but that is roughly what I think should be done in this case. A. C. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 22:33, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

  No source guarantees that every fact has been checked, that's not how publishing works anywhere. MrOllie (talk) 22:37, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

  But normally reliable sources don't say The authors, however, are responsible for the accuracy of fact and perspective. We advise having knowledgeable colleagues review drafts before submission. That's the opposite of editorial oversight. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 22:47, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

  It's very similar to how editorials/expert columns/opinion columns in places like The Conversation and The New York Times are set up, though. And we generally consider those reliable for statements of fact, but attributed for statements of opinion. (as long as the author is reliable or generally considered to be an expert on that topic) — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 00:12, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

  Based on the Dream Focus discussion above, I am not certain we can consider them reliable for statements of fact. BilledMammal (talk) 00:15, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

  I read that discussion, and I see very little cause for concern. Where did SI state a consequential falsehood directly? (I'm pointedly not referring to who made a certain wikipedia edit, as that is the most inconsequential example I have ever heard -- worse fact checking inaccuracies are introduced into every single issue of every RS used on this site). AFAICT, the more sustained issue is that an SI columnist perpetrated a hoax. Lots of descriptions of hoaxes have been published in the pages of RSes such as the New York Times, Scientific American, etc. Consider, for example, the Sokal affair, which was published in the esteemed Lingua Franca. — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 00:19, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

  The author claimed to be responsible for an edit that was made by Dream Focus - "In my first intervention in the article for several years, I argued that it should be kept, because I managed to find an article that bizarrely mentioned in passing Victorian accounts of the monster (Robinson 2017)" BilledMammal (talk) 00:25, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

  There is an ocean of between misremembering who added which source, and reliably stating that a sting took place. — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 00:33, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

  Not when it is trivial to verify who added which source, and the fact that they somehow failed to do this raises serious questions. BilledMammal (talk) 00:38, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

  You could literally do this kind of "factcheck sniping" for any article at most RSes. Here's an example: "A Shrinking Band of Southern Nurses, Neck-Deep in Another Covid Wave" published today. It was the first link I clicked on the NYT home page just now.

  It states (emphasis mine):
  

  Ms. Sison, a nurse manager at Pascagoula Hospital, slammed on the brakes, made a U-turn and raced to fetch her. “We have staff members dropping like flies from Covid so there was no way I was going to leave her on the side of the road,” Ms. Sison said a few hours later as she walked the corridors of her 350-bed hospital.

  But Pascagoula Hospital is actually a 435-bed hospital. [20] [21] [22]

  Do you think I should put up an RfC about how the New York Times should no longer be GR because of this egregious fact checking error? Or maybe we should only care about errors that actually matter... — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 00:44, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

  Or maybe we should only care about errors that actually matter: We should, but this one does matter. Unlike your example, which is contextual information, this is directly related to the substance of the article, and unlike your example, where the author is unrelated to the claim, this claim is directly related to the author. BilledMammal (talk) 00:55, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

  Then how do we handle a sting operation? With that, we're not talking scientific facts stated by an expert. The fact/opinion line is a bit blurred in that case.

  I don't think we should be using a source that explicitly says the authors are responsible for their own fact checking as a reliable source for anything but the opinion of the author. If there is an expert making a statement if scientific fact, there should be a better source than a magazine without any fact checking. I can see some WP:PARITY reasons to use it, but it definitely shouldn't be used for claims about living people. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 00:21, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

  Do we have any actual reason to believe the outlet is making up sting operations? — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 00:32, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

  And we generally consider those reliable for statements of fact, but attributed for statements of opinion. Since when is this done? I am not aware of this being the case. A. C. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 08:59, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

The subject here is "Columns at Skeptical Inquirer". A column is something that is in every issue and written by the same author, and much of the reasoning above has been based on things said about columns specifically. Now, this is suddenly about the whole of SI. See Ship of Theseus. Of course, most of SI content is articles by non-columnists, and those should be judged separately. --Hob Gadling (talk) 19:37, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

I personally would treat columns and non-columns identically here: in my opinion they are all opinion pieces due to the lack of fact-checking by the publisher. A. C. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 10:03, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

I would disagree that such things should be treated similarly. We have no reason to believe that Skeptical Inquirer treats them the same. — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 00:15, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

Shibbolethink The authors, however, are responsible for the accuracy of fact and perspective. We advise having knowledgeable colleagues review drafts before submission. [...] Reports of original research, especially highly technical experimental or statistical studies, are best submitted to a formal scientific journal, although a nontechnical summary may be submitted to the Skeptical Inquirer. is literally the second paragraph in their article submission guidelines. There is no indication anywhere that columns are held to a higher standard, so I believe we should assume they are not. A. C. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 08:56, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

When we say that a the New York Times is a reliable source, we mean it is a reliable source for news, i.e., what happened today, not that its analysis or editorials are reliable sources. Those must be evaluated based on the expertise of the writers. The same applies here. Actual reporting by SI is reliable, but most article must be evaluated on the expertise of the writers. Expert in this case doesn't mean a journalist or freelance writer who is familiar with and has written about a topic, but someone who has published academic papers and is regarded as an expert by academics. TFD (talk) 22:57, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

I would agree with this assessment by TFD. This is how we treat many sources, and it should be how we treat these SI columns. They're columns! Just like in editorial pages or places like The Conversation. Meaning we should attribute statements of opinion, and only wiki-voice statements of clear and uncontroversial fact. — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 00:14, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

My main concern with this source is it's use making claims about BLPs. Should we be including opinions, and especially an author's report of a sting they ran, as fact in a BLP? ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 00:28, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

I would say it should be included as an attributed statement. We have tons of attributed statements in other BLPs, why would this be any different? Do we have concerns from any events, articles, or other means that the actual sting didn't take place? — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 00:31, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

I believe there are two differences. First, it is rare for these statements to be primary sources; they are typically statements by an expert who has reviewed the primary sources. Second, I don't believe that author meets the definition of expert on this topic, as provided by TFD. BilledMammal (talk) 00:35, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

Let me give an example edit, [23]. Should we be using that source to claim, in wikivoice, a BLP subject was caught doing something? ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 00:55, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

According to The Center for Investigative Reporting magazine's ethics guide, "Ethics Guide" ("Fairness Section"), "Subjects of our stories should have many opportunities to respond to our findings and facts. Whenever practical, multiple attempts should be made to contact anyone named in our stories, particularly those cast in a negative light, and those attempts should begin as early as possible in the reporting process. Reporters and producers should discuss with their editors what is appropriate in terms of notice and attempts to obtain comment or response." Since that does not appear to have been done here, it cannot be considered professional investigative journalism and therefore fails rs.

While it is rs for its writer's opinion, the facts they state are not opinions and therefore cannot be included. In this case sincce no opinions were expressed, nothing would be usable.

If the author had expressed an opinion, then we would have to establish weight in order to include it. That would require secondary sources that reported the opinion.

To express it without Wikipedia jargon, it isn't fair to report a claim by a non-expert that they have exposed someone without allowing that person to reply. And we should not draw attention to information that has received little or no attention in professional news reporting or academic scholarhip.

TFD (talk) 01:57, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

The amount of energy being spent here to save Goliath from David is impressive. SI is often the lone PARITY source to hold back a tide of well positioned propaganda. Take a look at how long Havana Syndrome was a page parroting all sorts of fringe claims leaked to Politico by off-the-record CIA agents and tort lawyers. Or how Wim Hof can turn a couple medical studies and a bunch of anecdotes into proof positive that panting before an ice bath cures cancer. Even with the help of SI, these pages have remained more pro than anti fringe. BLP concerns with SI are obviously addressable on a case-by-case basis. The impugning of SI here seems to be a Motte-and-bailey fallacy. DolyaIskrina (talk) 05:42, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

I fail to see how my summary above does not account for that PARITY, DolyaIskrina A. C. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 11:29, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

Xi Jinping Strengthens His Grip Over Chinese Media

The Dispatch – Xi Jinping Strengthens His Grip Over Chinese Media

What are the implications of the CCP exercising increased control over Chinese media on Wikipedia coverage of Chinese topics? Does it contribute to increased systemic bias against topics local to China, and if so, how can we mitigate this? feminist (talk) 14:41, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

Yes, and yes. It will increase problems with using Chinese sources because those Chinese sources will have an increased Systemic bias. And there is no way to mitigate this, we cannot weaken our sourcing rules to allow outright propaganda sources to be used for statements of fact.Slatersteven (talk) 14:50, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

We can mitigate it by not using sources that are under the grip of Xi Jinping. We do this to some degree, but nowhere near enough. See WP:XINHUA for example. We try to distinguish areas where China "may have a reason to use it for propaganda or disinformation." News flash: we are not omniscient. Also, see WP:SCMP. The South China Morning Post was once a terrific source, but Hong Kong's freedom is rapidly coming to an end. See Jimmy Lai.

There is also the problem of academic "research" that is under Xi's thumb. In that area, we haven't done anything. We should. Adoring nanny (talk) 02:46, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

We already have a strong systemic bias in Chinese-related topics, in the opposite direction from what you're suggesting. Ruling out Chinese sources will only make that systemic bias even worse.

Ruling out high-quality sources like Caixin, which is an excellent finance and investigative journalism outlet, would leave Wikipedia in a worse position. Caixin's reporting on China is often of a much higher quality than that of major Western outlets, and Western outlets often rely on Caixin for basic reporting. The same goes for SCMP. -Thucydides411 (talk) 03:10, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

I see Caixin has been gagged.[24] Being excellent is apparently not allowed. As a general matter, I agree that sources that have been banned by Beijing have a better chance of being reliable. Apple Daily is another example. Adoring nanny (talk) 06:00, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

The article you linked does not indicate that there's any problem with Caixin's reporting. In fact, it says that Caixin has reported critically on issues inside China.

If we go along with what you're proposing and ban all Chinese sources, we'll lose Caixin's excellent, well informed reporting. We'll end up relying heavily on outlets that often have less informed coverage, and which have their own strong biases.

See, for example, Bloomberg's irresponsible reporting back in March 2020 on conspiracy theories about vastly inflated death tolls in China. Bloomberg took an accurate, non-sensationalist report from Caixin, mixed it with conspiracy theories from Chinese social media, and uncritically presented crazy death tolls. And it's not just Bloomberg that did this. A bunch of outlets did it too: [25] [26] [27] [28] [29]. Scientific research into both excess mortality and seroprevalence ([30] [31]) in China has debunked these conspiracy theories. Why did these outlandish conspiracy theories get such wide play in the media in the first place? Because they played to the biases that these outlets have. -Thucydides411 (talk) 20:17, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

The vast majority of domestic Chinese topics are mundane, which Chinese state media is still reliable for. The topics where CCP have a reason for misinformation are generally already widely covered by Western sources so we would already typically be using them instead. Jumpytoo Talk 04:10, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

Yes, —PaleoNeonate – 23:59, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

The South China Morning Post is no better than the rest of Chinese propaganda media outlets and is arguably more sinister because it is tailored to a broader, more international audience. The recent decision by their *newsroom* chief to publish a bizarre video comparing press freedom in China/HK — i.e. the lack thereof — to the Assange case says a lot about the decline of HK media in general and this newspaper in particular. Normchou ^💬 01:34, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

I would not write off the SCMP just yet. Comparing China/HK's press freedom to US press freedom is certainly bizarre, but less so in the context of the Assange case, and I think newspaper editors should be allowed to express their own opinions on Twitter. It was SCMP that reported that secret Chinese government documents put November 17 as the date of the first confirmed COVID case, even though the Chinese government claims it was December 19. Of course, I do wonder why they haven't released the Chinese government documents to the public, in the way AP have (see below). We will just have to watch them very closely. LondonIP (talk) 01:01, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

The implications are that Chinese journalism is biased towards a Chinese government's position on the issues by virtue of the fact that they exist in a state that has heavy media censorship. This has always been the case in mainland China and is also now starting to become the case in Hong Kong/Macau. No offence, but this article demonstrates no meaningful change in Chinese press freedom. The WSJ article the linked piece is based on explains it pretty well as "Many of the restrictions described in Friday’s draft have existed in some form for years, according to media scholars, but China’s large internet companies have long operated in a legal gray area when it comes to online news content." This isn't a radical change in the Chinese media environment, but a further clamping down over dissent.

All this being said, I do believe we have a heavy pro-Western bias and we should not rule out Chinese sources by virtue of the fact they're Chinese. Like WP:XINHUA, China Daily, or whatever else, it's possible for us to take a middle ground on these issues. Mitigating systemic bias would mean that we can use these sources to present China's position on many issues while clarifying that these sources are state-run or potentially biased. Chess (talk) (please use {{reply to|Chess}} on reply) 03:28, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

Mitigating systemic bias would mean that we can use these sources to present China's position on many issues while clarifying that these sources are state-run or potentially biased
I 100% agree with this view. We should A) describe the controversy, but also B) fairly represent the Chinese academic view as the scientific view given that the academic sources and the government sources help us frame the current scientific consensus. We can then describe the fact that many outlets find these sources questionable given the risk of government censorship. All of this is fair game, and none of it should be entirely excluded, but rather proportionally represented. This is also what WP:BESTSOURCES tells us to do. — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 14:24, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

AP: Xi Jinping restricts publishing of COVID-19 data and research

According to internal documents obtained by the AP, any data or research on COVID-19 must be approved by a new task force managed by China’s cabinet, under direct orders from President Xi Jinping. These orders affect the Chinese CDC, as well as independent scientists, both of whom have published papers in international journals, some of which are being cited to argue that contentious claims. We may need to discuss this gag order and how it effects the reliability of Chinese scholarship on COVID-19, just as we would with its reliability for Traditional Chinese medicine and The Three Ts. LondonIP (talk) 00:46, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

This may affect some studies but if a study is peer-reviewed, including by non-chinese scientists, then the study is as good as any other peer-reviewed study. also please do not duplicate discussions. Xoltered (talk) 08:10, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

No. It does not make sense to expect them to present a neutral and fact-based summary of the events but rather a pro-Chinese government view that will deflect from reality. NavjotSR (talk) 04:22, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

You provide no justification for this ridiculous view, as previously stated, peer review is a process that prevents this. Xoltered (talk) 12:05, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

Except that peer reviewers wouldn't be able to tell if data has been completely misrepresented, so long as the data is internally consistent as if it was actually collected that way. So a paper being peer reviewed in such a case doesn't mean the data or results are inherently reliable. Silverseren^C 04:26, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

You do not seem to understand how peer-review works, if this was actually the case, it would be a common issue throughout science, but it is not. It would be helpful for you to think through your points and see if they immediately fall flat before making them. Xoltered (talk) 12:05, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

• I consider this remark to be complacent. Peer review can work well, with referees taking a sufficiently broad perspective to recognise all the reasons why the data might not be representative, but it often doesn't and this should not be surprising. The Chinese government putting their thumbs on the scales in this way is something we should take into account in evaluating research that depends on data coming from China. Cf. the remarks of Michael Eisen, First, and foremost, we need to get past the antiquated idea that the singular act of publication – or publication in a particular journal – should signal for all eternity that a paper is valid, let alone important. Even when people take peer review seriously, it is still just represents the views of 2 or 3 people at a fixed point in time. To invest the judgment of these people with so much meaning is nuts. [32].— Charles Stewart (talk) 13:39, 18 January 2022 (UTC)
• it would be a common issue throughout science, but it is not
• Except it is. Elizabeth Bik's entire (recent) career is based around calling out the numerous cases of bad and outright falsified data that was published and went through peer review. It happens all the time and, in most cases, the journals refuse to retract or do anything about the studies even when the falsification is pointed out. Silverseren^C 18:31, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

@Thucydides411, Mx. Granger, and Novem Linguae: Also pinging some people who this was linked to by another editor Xoltered (talk) 12:05, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

Quick tip: A good neutral way to alert both sides to discussions like these is to leave a {{Please see}} on a relevant talk page.

This is like the 5th page I've seen this "is China fudging their COVID statistics" debate overflow to, and it must be a bit exhausting for the participants to keep making the same arguments over and over. Would be nice if editors would stop WP:FORUMSHOPping this and just hold a proper RFC somewhere, such as at Talk:Chinese government response to COVID-19.

In case anybody is curious, I still 100% agree with Thucydides411. He has read the scientific papers, understands them, and makes convincing arguments that they are trustworthy (e.g. international peer review, the various types of data agreeing and supporting each other), despite the Chinese government's attempts to influence the media. –Novem Linguae (talk) 12:24, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

e.g. international peer review, the various types of data agreeing and supporting each other

That is a meaningless statement. Chinese researchers were already caught falsifying data and publishing in international journals and getting through peer review just fine. Over 400 papers published in a wide variety of journals and scientific fields. Here's the full list and you'll note that only about half had any sort of "expression of concern" or retraction done about them. And that's just from one paper mill. Silverseren^C 18:37, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

To paraphrase: Some scientists from country X did this bad thing, so we should disregard all research done by scientists from country X.

I'm sure everyone sees what the problem with that sort of thinking is. We're talking about peer-reviewed research in leading journals like The BMJ, The Lancet and Nature, and ruling out these sources when the authors have a certain nationality would be repugnant. I'm surprised and disappointed that we're even having this conversation. -Thucydides411 (talk) 19:55, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

• I think you're making a straw man. I don't think we are at the point where the evidence of interference is of the sort that would justify 'ruling out these sources when the authors have a certain nationality' although I can conceive of interference that would lead me to recommend exactly that. What I am saying and I take Silver seren to be saying as well, is that there is evidence of interference and this does justify caution. I think we should generally be a bit more cautious about trusting the imprimatur of publication in empirical fields where replication rates are not high, although that's another kettle of fish. — Charles Stewart (talk) 21:01, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

• Yes. Additionally, this isn't just "some scientists", this is hundreds of scientists. As the article from Science that I linked noted, there are no common authors between these papers. They're all "independent" groups of scientists across all the hospitals in China. It encompasses most of the top level physicians who work in hospitals in the country. Furthermore, the bigger point I was making is that this directly shows that peer review in international journals doesn't mean anything at all in terms of inherent reliability of the data. Because peer review can't see through completely fabricated data, as the consistency in the data is only within itself. Saying that the data is consistent between the different papers put out from these research groups, as Thucydides411 has been using as an argument, means nothing if that data is wholesale fabricated and distributed to be consistent between them on purpose. Silverseren^C 00:41, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

  It's a pretty serious claim you're making here, that the data in all these papers in leading international scientific journals is faked. That's the kind of claim you should either justify or retract. Better yet, you should call up the editors at Nature, The Lancet, The BMJ and all the other journals and tell them about your startling revelations. Once you get the journals to retract these papers, as I'm sure they will if there's any basis to your claims, then come back and let us know. Until then, however, everyone here should disregard your speculation about mass data-faking in leading scientific journals. -Thucydides411 (talk) 04:39, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

  UPE farms have been discovered and dealt with on Wikipedia. Does the discovery of one UPE farm invalidate our entire encyclopedia? Also, the fact that these fake papers were discovered is actually a strong argument that fake papers WOULD be caught. –Novem Linguae (talk) 11:50, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for the tip, and I strongly agree, this discussion should be at one page, and not 5 different ones. Xoltered (talk) 12:48, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

Because of this order, I would treat all such sources as having a severe conflict of interest. According to the order, people who don't comply will be "held accountable". The unfortunate fact is that for the authors, disclosure of information the CCP wants to hide would come at tremendous personal risk. Adoring nanny (talk) 12:55, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

Or maybe China's zero-COVID policy worked, just like it worked for Australia, eastern Canada, New Zealand, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, and Vietnam, and China isn't hiding anything. –Novem Linguae (talk) 13:11, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

Are you implying that the AP's document is not genuine? Or that it's not a smoking gun of hiding information? If they "aren't hiding anything", why did the WHO say China didn't release the list of early patients, Wuhan blood samples, and swabs? And why do I get a 404 at [33]? Adoring nanny (talk) 14:52, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

It sounds like 1) the Chinese government ordered its media and scientists to present information a positive light, and 2) China had an excellent response to COVID-19. Believe it or not, these two things can occur simultaneously. I understand that #2 is suspicious due to #1, but if upon examination no evidence emerges that #2 is fake (and no evidence has emerged, as Thucydides and the scientific papers he quotes indicate), then this hypothesis that #2 is fake due to #1 should be dropped. –Novem Linguae (talk) 15:05, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

Yes, it sounds very much like #2 is due to #1. We know from this AP report that Xi ordered these restrictions and we know from Bloomberg why he might be doing this, so we should not be naive about Chinese "scientific" publications. I made a list of sources questioning China statistics on the China Government Response page and I would like to see how scholarly sources contradict them. Can you make the list? ScrumptiousFood (talk) 17:24, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

Many of the citations from Chinese government response to COVID-19#Case and death count statistics likely fit your criteria. –Novem Linguae (talk) 17:54, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

An "excellent response" like silencing doctors who knew by New Years' day that it could be transmitted from person to person, forbidding said doctors from wearing PPE in the early weeks, reporting a disease of "unknown cause" when they had the viral DNA sequence, delaying the release of the viral DNA sequence, going ahead with their 40,000 person gathering on Jan. 20, 2020?, without warning people that they could get the pandemic, which they were still pretending was unlikely to be spread from person to person.[34] Adoring nanny (talk) 18:22, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

China can both, make mistakes very early on in the pandemic and do a very good joh controlling the pandemic in the months after, again these statements, like the ones previously made, are not in contradiction. It's also irrelevent to this discussion, which is about if the sources are reliable, which we already explained how they are. This is why we should not have 5 different pages to discuss one thing. Xoltered (talk) 00:23, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

From my perspective, it seems as though the view broadly expressed here is China's government did bad things, so we should not believe they were good at controlling COVID-19 and getting low case counts. This is not how Wikipedia works. We do not care how moral or ethical the actions of governments are (the Chinese government was neither in this instance, imo). We only care about what the sources say, and fairly summarizing those sources in our articles. Sometimes that means wikipedia is wrong. But we are not trying to tell the truth, we are trying to summarize the state of existing knowledge through a very particular lens. — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 14:30, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

The sources are not reliable. The CCP document obtained by the AP is perfectly clear on this.[35] The order said communication and publication of research had to be orchestrated like “a game of chess” under instructions from Xi, and propaganda and public opinion teams were to “guide publication.” Adoring nanny (talk) 03:59, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

Nature, The Lancet and The BMJ are some of the most highly respected and competitive scientific journals. Just blanket saying "The sources are not reliable" is unserious. You're essentially arguing that we should throw out virtually all scientific research on the infection rate and mortality in China, because Chinese scientists have done most of that research.

The scientific sources are extremely clear on the extent of infection and mortality in China during the pandemic. If the scientific sources clash with your perception, that's not a reason to rule out the sources. -Thucydides411 (talk) 04:32, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

Have you actually read the responses to what you've said Adoring nanny? This has already been addressed countless times, please stop taking the discussion in circles. Xoltered (talk) 07:47, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

• It's worth recalling that The Lancet published Andrew Wakefield's fraudulent research suggesting a link between autism and the MMR vaccine. Although the GMC found problems with Wakefield's work quickly and Brian Deer published evidence of fraud five years later, it took the editors another seven years before they retracted the study, waiting until after the GMC found Wakefield guilty of malpractice. We can't avoid taking account of reputation, given how the publication game works at present, but that doesn't justify having illusions about the fallibility of peer review even at the best journals and the reluctance of most editors to admit and correct errors. — Charles Stewart (talk) 15:40, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

Perfectly serious. If an order said that Propaganda and public opinion teams were to “guide publication.”, I believe the order. To answer a question above, I routinely read the responses. The issue is not the prestige of the journals, it is the accuracy. There is a long history of prestigious sources publishing lies in situations where accuracy might offend powerful governments, i.e. Any report of a famine in Russia is today an exaggeration or malignant propaganda, published in the NYT in 1933. And here we have the smoking gun. Adoring nanny (talk) 17:59, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

• I would say the big difference is that Wakefield's study had high profile rebuttals ALSO published in academic venues. It was a primary source. And the secondary source response from scientists in academic journals was swift, concise, and disastrous. It does not take one long to find secondary MEDRS reviews which discuss how wrong the Wakefield paper was. [36] [37] [38] [39] Large scale studies were conducted showing the link between vaccination and autism was spurious: [40] [41]. In this case, like many others, Science was self-correcting. Sometimes it takes a year (or several) to really get that conversation going, but it does happen. And that is part of why Wikipedia's work is never done. — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 14:37, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

@Xoltered: please be mindful of WP:CANVASS. You should have pinged all participants from the China COVID-19 pandemic discussion . CutePeach (talk) 15:06, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

RFC: Can Chinese academic publications be considered independent on subjects censored by the Chinese government?

Editors above dispute the reliability of Chinese academic publications on subjects censored by the Chinese government. Does the community think Chinese academic publications are WP:INDEPENDENT on subjects censored by the Chinese government?

• Option 1: Yes
• Option 2: No

CutePeach (talk) 16:05, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

Survey: Can Chinese academic publications be considered independent on subjects censored by the Chinese government?

• No since Chinese scientists are restricted by the Chinese government on what they can publish and must "coordinate" with a special task force to make sure anything they publish suits their narrative. Some Chinese scientists have even promoted Chinese traditional medicines as a treatment for COVID-19, which suits their narrative. Those who dissent face harsh punitive measures. CutePeach (talk) 16:11, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
• No relative to "on subjects censored by the Chinese government." On other subjects these sources might be used. Jehochman ^Talk 16:26, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
• Loaded question. AndyTheGrump (talk) 16:28, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
• Indeed an incredibly loaded question, as it implies the publications are all censored despite discussion above. CutePeach is also forumshopping by posting this same thing on multiple pages, I believe in an attempt to find editors who have not fully looked into the discussion to read the loaded question and say no. Xoltered (talk) 16:33, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
• I can't give either a yes or no answer here. Either would be a problematic oversimplification. Many academics outside China lack the kind of integrity and willingness to put questions of career aside needed to be truly regarded as independent and many scientists in China clearly have remarkable integrity. "Independent" is too tricky a concept for this RfC question to be useful. — Charles Stewart (talk) 16:43, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

• Postscript: It is both the case that high quality research on Covid-19 has been done in China that does not raise alarm bells and there is evidence of pressure from the government that does. I think there is a need for increased caution, but sources need to be assessed on a case-by-case basis. I don't regard this RfC as helpful because I think it discourages looking at sources on this case-by-case basis. — Charles Stewart (talk) 00:23, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

@Chalst: I agree with you on a meta level, but this RfC was born out of a discussion where editors decided to delete a section in Chinese government response to COVID-19 about the accuracy of China's COVID statistics, citing studies from Chinese scientists and even reports from Chinese government websites. That discussion and the The “2021 academic study are what precipitated this RfC. The only caveat that can be added is whether Chinese scientific publications can be used as WP:BALANCE reports like this one from the SCMP on the first confirmed case being traced back to Nov 17, or the reports of excess deaths in the early outbreak [42] [43] [44]. LondonIP (talk) 02:49, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

• What exactly is a Chinese academic publication? Written by a Chinese person? Written by a Chinese person outside of China? Written by somebody in China? Published by a Chinese publication? This RFC question is so incredibly broad that it is meaningless. nableezy - 16:47, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
  • Exactly. Withdraw RfC as embarrassing. Alexbrn (talk) 16:49, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
• I would encourage those who view this RfC to come see where this discussion originated, COVID-19_pandemic_in_mainland_China though it has spread to 5 other places now with some editors (including the one who made this RfC) seemingly forum shopping to find somewhere which will support their view. Xoltered (talk) 16:53, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
  • Isn't CutePeach in violation of their TBAN by launching this? Alexbrn (talk) 16:55, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

    I'd support this assessment. The loaded question seems like just a way to interact with the topic of "Origins of COVID-19, broadly construed". A. C. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 17:04, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

    I disagree. The intention of the TBAN was to allow continued editing in the broader COVID-19 topic area. The locus of this dispute is not related to the zoonosis v. lab leak discussions that led to the TBAN. Firefangledfeathers 17:34, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

    I'm generally against crucifying users for incidental violations of TBANs. If a potential TBAN violation has resulted in disruption in a related area, then that defeats the purpose of a narrowly defined sanction. Whether or not disruption has occurred is not clear to me. AlexEng^(TALK) 16:45, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

Alexbrn Do they have TBAN regarding this? If so that is very concerning as they have been making extensive edits on numerous pages regarding this topic for quite some time now. Xoltered (talk) 17:03, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

Yes, they have an indefinite topic ban from the Origins of COVID-19, broadly construed.. [45] Jehochman ^Talk 17:05, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

Xoltered they have a TBAN with Origins of COVID-19, see editor's talk page notice. A. C. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 17:06, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

Yeah... their !vote is a clear violation EvergreenFir (talk) 17:08, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

I see, it seems they are not heading the warning provided with their notice. Xoltered (talk) 17:09, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

Okay, so the t-ban is on the origins of COVID-19. This is not a violation of that. EvergreenFir (talk) 17:23, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

WP:BROADLY construed being the key. At least one admin determined this got close enough and placed a temporary ban. With the source of the sanctions revolving around a lab-leak (and subsequent cover-up by China), it's not a stretch to say "Chinese censorship of COVID" is the kind of 'edge nibbling' broadly construed topics are meant to cover. Or at least, close enough to seek clarification prior to editing on the topic, as WP:BROADLY recommends. Bakkster Man (talk) 17:45, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

@EvergreenFir: I suppose I would ask you: "Does this RfC also affect the TBAN'd area?" I think its up to interpretation, and the "broadly construed" is very clearly debatable. If this RfC passes, then many many publications on covid-19 origins pages would be affected. Does that not implicate CutePeach in violation of their TBAN? — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 21:33, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

@Shibboleth: Fair question. In my view, the outcome of the RfC possibly affecting origin-related sources is not a t-ban violation here because all of CutePeach's recent edits suggest the impetus for the RfC is about COVID-19 treatments. Further, I don't think a hypothetical removal of Chinese scientist authored publications on the origins of SARS CoV2 would substantially change the descriptions about its origin (assuming that the "lab leak" theory is what CutePeach was promoting/being tendentious about). EvergreenFir (talk) 21:38, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

It would preclude the future use of any publications about the origin which are based on mainland Chinese scientists who find closely related coronaviruses in the wild, further drawing a taxonomy in support of a natural origin. Because these publications would be "tainted." I agree that the impetus probably comes from a combination of COVID treatments and national death statistics in this case. But I wouldn't call the implication on origins papers to be a "happy accident." I don't know if CP has considered the implications, but the implications clearly are not good. In the end, though, I trust your judgment, EvergreenFir. — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 21:58, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

@EvergreenFir: Many of the highest-impact papers on SARS-CoV-2 have been authored by Chinese scientists. Here are two, just off the top of my head:

• Shi et al., Nature, 2020, "A pneumonia outbreak associated with a new coronavirus of probable bat origin". This paper has nearly 16,000 citations. It's the paper that first described RaTG13, which was, until recently, the closest known relative of SARS-CoV-2.
• Huang et al., The Lancet, 2020, "Clinical features of patients infected with 2019 novel coronavirus in Wuhan, China". This paper has nearly 39,000 citations.

Ruling out these seminal papers, because of the nationalities of the authors, would definitely impact Wikipedia. These papers have been judged important enough by the scientific community that they've been cited tens of thousands of times. We Wikipedia editors really have no business overruling that judgment, especially on broad arguments about certain nationalities of scientists being compromised. -Thucydides411 (talk) 22:12, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

What an elaborate straw man. No one has a problem citing Shi et al. or Huang et al for non contentious claims. The problem is citing low quality primary sources to counter reports from high quality RS like the BBC, Foreign Policy and Bloomberg. LondonIP (talk) 03:04, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

@LondonIP: Correct me if I'm wrong, but the original dispute (and wording of the RfC) appears to be broader than just low-quality sources and contentious claims. The RfC refers to "Chinese academic publications", but the dispute seems to revolve around mainland Chinese authors publishing in English-language international journals like BMJ. And that's the line where I think we disagree. In principle yes, Chinese sources subject to a gag order or government interference should not be considered independent. My disagreement is over whether this makes peer-reviewed research in major non-Chinese journals (not subject to Chinese oversight) unreliable, or if it's attempting to use wiki to WP:RGW. Bakkster Man (talk) 16:00, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

• Let's be absolutely clear about what CutePeach is proposing here. CutePeach is proposing that before we cite papers from leading scientific journals with peer-review and rigorous scientific editing, such as Nature, The Lancet or The BMJ, we should look at the nationalities of the authors, and if they appear to be Chinese, that we should reject them. CutePeach wants us to overrule the scientific editors (normally senior scientists in a related field) and peer reviewers (normally leading international experts in the given scientific subfield that the paper deals with), because we supposedly know better than them. It's worthwhile looking at what motivated this proposal from CutePeach. A number of editors have expressed their personal belief that China must be hiding its true death toll. When confronted with the fact that their personal belief is contradicted by a mass of scientific research into excess mortality and serology in China (and among people evacuated from China), they've gone over to arguing that we should ignore virtually all the scientific literature on the subject. Instead, they'd rather we relied on news articles published nearly two years ago that discussed conspiracy theories about massively larger death tolls (e.g., the infamous "urns" conspiracy theory from March 2020). It's getting tiring trying to explain the scientific literature on every single talk page on which the same group of editors bring this subject up, so please take a look at this for more details. -Thucydides411 (talk) 17:22, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

If what is meant by "Chinese academic publications" includes Nature, The Lancet or The BMJ because the author is Chinese, then gtfo yes. nableezy - 17:27, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

I read the proposal to mean Chinese publications, as in publications that are controlled by the Chinese government because they are located in China and subject to Chinese censorship. I agree that nationality of an author publishing in The Lancet is totally irrelevant. Jehochman ^Talk 17:30, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

This is what i meant when i said above "CutePeach is also forumshopping by posting this same thing on multiple pages, I believe in an attempt to find editors who have not fully looked into the discussion to read the loaded question and say no." Xoltered (talk) 17:39, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

• No They inherently can't be. And it's a major problem. Thucydides411 above is trying to just claim that they would all be reliable no matter what because they're peer reviewed papers. But that is an inherently self-defeating claim, as all of the journals (and many others besides) have published studies with falsified data before. And sometimes it took years to find out about the falsification. What makes it more difficult in this case is that the already verifiable crackdown by the Chinese government on what sort of information gets released about Covid, including what sort of scientific data is published, means they could quite easily control the very basis of what data is collected. They could ensure any actual case numbers are not recorded properly, that any deaths are not included in the data, ect. And that sort of data collection would not be something peer reviewers in the journals would be able to determine is incorrect. Because the falsification is happening on the very collection of data level. Silverseren^C 17:28, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

Claiming that peer-reviewed scientific sources are unreliable just because they might later be falsified is ridiculous, Wikipedia is not a crystal ball and what you are saying could be applied to all peer-reviewed studies as the studies in question are no different than any other peer reviewed studies and are published in reliable sources. Xoltered (talk) 17:35, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

• If we have a reliable source that the results of major studies were censored, let's cite them. If reliable peer-reviewed sources publish studies, it's up to them to retract them if they're faulty, not up to us to WP:RGW. Bakkster Man (talk) 17:45, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

Here are two such sources [46] [47]. The problem is we don't know which sources are being censored, and the AP report says it goes beyond censorship. Publications must be "orchestrated" like a "game of chase". ScrumptiousFood (talk) 17:57, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

I'm referring to reliable sources disputing peer-reviewed studies in generally reliable journals. My interpretation of WP:RGW and WP:V places the benefit of the doubt on a journal like Nature or Science not accepting studies if their results were subject to faulty collection methods, and we should be incredibly cautious in second-guessing their publishing. So caveat these studies with other WP:RS pointing to potential flaws, rather than marking these Science/Nature studies themselves as unreliable. Seems worryingly close to WP:OR. Bakkster Man (talk) 18:15, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

Check my list of RS questioning the accuracy of China's statistics. There isn't anything in Nature of Magazine articles that invalidate these RS, so that's just a giant red herring that has been used a lot in those discussions. We should take care of the WP:INDEPENDENT problem first. ScrumptiousFood (talk) 18:29, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

As stated probably over 100 times now, popular media speculation does not overide reliable peer-reviewed scientific studies published by reliable sources, and representing the scientific consensus. Simply mentioning that some popular media have questioned it is not the (original) thing in dispute. Xoltered (talk) 18:33, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

• Loaded question, and too broad. This RFC is the culmination of the dispute "Is China fudging their COVID-19 statistics?" Recommend closing this RFC and crafting a more specific question that is directly applicable to that dispute. –Novem Linguae (talk) 17:53, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

How would you frame the question? Haven't editors on your side cited Chinese academic sources to put down a question that Chinese censors don't like? ScrumptiousFood (talk) 18:01, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

At a minimum, a new RFC question should be more specific. "Are Chinese academic papers on the topic of COVID-19 statistics in China reliable?" But even that has issues. How do we define a Chinese academic paper? Is a paper published by The Lancet a Chinese academic paper? Seeing as the Lancet isn't Chinese, I think there's a strong argument that a paper published in the Lancet isn't Chinese. Or if we don't go by the nationality of the journal, what do we go by? Our original research on the nationality of the paper's authors? Honestly I think the difficulty crafting a good question here shows the weakness of the argument. But assuming good faith, some workshopping of the question beforehand could likely lead to a better RFC question. –Novem Linguae (talk) 18:20, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

Hi @ScrumptiousFood you appear to be new around here. Editors don't have "sides" and to say that they do is truly edging towards "us" and "them" territory in a very unhealthy way. We are all guilty of this, but I would urge you to avoid such arguments in the future. — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 21:36, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

• No. I watched the discussions on Talk:Chinese government response to COVID-19 and COVID-19 pandemic in mainland China where two completely different sets of editors suggested including significant views from reliable sources questioning the accuracy of China's statistics. In both discussions, the same group of editors are claiming that Chinese academic papers "prove" that the Chinese government is right, and ignore/deflect when asked about President Xi's gag order on Chinese scientists publishing COVID-19 data and research. When I posted a list of RS that question the accuracy of China's statistics, they counter with citations to Chinese scientific publications. Earlier in the discussion they even cited a Chinese government website to disprove something the BBC says! ScrumptiousFood (talk) 18:05, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

The gag order does not make peer-reviewed studies published in reliable sources such as Nature, The Lancet or The BMJ unreliable, also your claim that the discussions had "two completely different sets of editors" is not true at all, many editors on both sides of the discussion participated in both articles, though those who oppose the overwhelming scientific consensus and instead support popular media speculation have repeatedly brought the discussion to page after page, perhaps in search of editors who will agree with them. Xoltered (talk) 18:24, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

• Its a loaded question but as stated the answer is clearly "No" the problem comes with ascertaining what is and what isn't a subject censored by the Chinese government as there is some level of censorship in *every* subject in China even if some are censored to the point of the entire subject being censored (for example history and international relations). Horse Eye's Back (talk) 18:11, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

The stated answer is not "clearly no" as nearly all editors who responded but did not give an answer disagree with the implications of a simple "no" answer Xoltered (talk) 18:17, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

• Too vague to be answerable in an RfC. I suggest a speedy close and starting a new RfC with a clear question. What is meant by a "Chinese academic publication"? An academic publication published in China? An academic publication published outside of China where some of the contributors are in China? Where some contributors are Chinese citizens? Chinese government officials? Overseas Chinese? The RfC is impossible to answer in its current form. —Mx. Granger (talk · contribs) 18:24, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
• I also suggest a speedy close for the reasons above, I also suggest those who agree make their agreement explicitly known, as Granger and I have, to avoid some users mistakenly thinking the consensus is no. Xoltered (talk) 18:34, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

Xoltered please stop WP:BLUDGEONING. I see no good reason to close this RFC with any consensus. Most RFCs run for at least a month. ScrumptiousFood (talk) 18:37, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

The reasons are stated above by many editors, including quite clearly by Mx Granger. Xoltered (talk) 18:39, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

Loaded question and Poorly formed RfC. - Recommend speedy close. We have plenty of examples of mainland chinese citizens courageously speaking out in ways that the Chinese Government would find counter-productive. Li Wenliang [48], Shi Zhengli [49], Zhang Yongzhen [50]. and others. If this RfC were decided as "no," then publications by these individuals would be considered unreliable. Many mainland chinese scientists, if not most, do their jobs for the sake of scientific progress and bold inquiry. Scientists are, by and large, loyal to the scientific process above and beyond the influence of any government actors. This is part of why Mao's cultural revolution targeted scientists, engineers, journalists, etc. Because their loyalty to their craft superseded that of the party. Why would we buy into any narrative that paints Chinese scientists with such a broad brush? — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 21:29, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

None of the people you've listed seem relevant to the issue at hand? I had thought they were going to be examples of Chinese scientists speaking out against the censorship of their government against publishing negative news regarding Covid, but none of them are that. So they don't seem relevant to the current issue as noted by the Associated Press that the Chinese government is directly controlling what data and studies can be published and what information is allowed to be included in them when published. It is the reliability of this data that is of concern here, since if the data is manipulated from the very point of collection of it, then there's no way peer reviews even in international journals can tell that the data isn't accurate. The verified control over that data that the AP has notified on is the problem here. Because it brings into question whether the scientific data on Covid, particularly on Covid numbers and deaths, coming out of China is actually the true data. The government there could even do it in a blinded way and prevent even the Chinese scientists from accessing the accurate data and so they are only publishing on what they have been allowed to access, which is a biased data set. The scientists themselves could think they're doing proper science and be unaware of the selective data the government is letting them access. Since, again, we have verifiable reports that the Chinese government is controlling what data is allowed to go out. Silverseren^C 21:38, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I had thought they were going to be examples of Chinese scientists speaking out against the censorship of their government against publishing negative news regarding Covid, but none of them are that. They are scientists who spoke out about COVID in ways the government didn't like. Li Wenliang spoke out about COVID-19 and death tolls in Wuhan and human-to-human transmission when the government was very quiet about the issue. Shi Zhengli spoke out about the coronavirus' origins in Hubei province when the government wanted no one to talk about it at all, and instead support the idea that it originated in the US. Zhang Yngzhen's lab published the genome of the virus when the government wanted everyone to coordinate and publish together in support of a specific government-favored narrative. They did so in a way that benefited the world and put the needs of the many (7 billion) over the few (Chinese government's image). How is that not relevant? — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 21:41, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

Why do you think the only way to obtain death data in China is to go through the government? Do you understand how deaths are counted in America? It very often isn't done through the government. (E.g. see the public health whistleblower in Florida who was harassed by state officials when her counts didn't match up [51] [52]) There are many ways to estimate covid deaths with varying involvement from government data resources (from complete to very little), and not all of them are equally accurate either: (such as excess death estimates [53], machine learning using GIS data [54], [55]). It's bizarre to hoist these criticisms on China while not looking inward. I would actually call it xenophobic. — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 21:44, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

But, again, we know that they're actively clamping down on the information right now, as reported:

The government is handing out hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants to scientists researching the virus’ origins in southern China and affiliated with the military, the AP has found. But it is monitoring their findings and mandating that the publication of any data or research must be approved by a new task force managed by China’s cabinet, under direct orders from President Xi Jinping

The Chinese government, because of their societal structure, is much more capable of actively silencing dissent and controlling information reaching outside or even having it be obtainable by scientists there. It isn't comparable to Florida whatsoever. And, also, the situation in Florida did make us here on Wikipedia have to re-evaluate how we included information on Covid in the US and regarding Florida because of that. Shouldn't we similarly change how we cover information on China when we have verifiable information that the data is being suppressed and controlled for review by the Chinese government? Silverseren^C 22:00, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

Not if the conclusion is "we shouldn't trust any publications which come out of China." If the conclusion is "we should be careful and only use publications which are peer reviewed and edited by international scientists who are experts in these fields" then yes, I would support that. Otherwise our answer is not only xenophobic, it is short sighted and frankly wrong-headed. It will not help us more accurately cover anything, or be closer in line to the scientific consensus. It will drive us further from it. — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 22:02, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

Shouldn't we similarly change how we cover information on China when we have verifiable information that the data is being suppressed and controlled for review by the Chinese government? We should document the controversy, that these accusations exist in RSes. But we should not ignore things that Chinese scientists publish simply because of this suspicion. To do so would be ignorant, xenophobic, and wrong. It ignores the very fundamental reasons why we value academic research publications: their peer review and editorial processes. — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 22:06, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

How is peer review by others going to properly deal with the situation? If the data being allowed for release by the cabinet task force is purposefully biased, peer reviewers aren't going to be able to detect that. Since the issue isn't internal to the studies, but due to the data being collected from the beginning. I already noted a similar issue earlier in the thread above where it took years to identify that hundreds of papers being published by hundreds of top level physicians in China in every major hospital in the country were using falsified data. It was only identified as a problem in 2020 and some of the studies dated back to 2016. Worse still, the majority of them haven't even been retracted from the top level journals in question or even given a notice of concern on them. If that sort of thing can get by these peer reviewed international journals and take years to discover and that was just the medical researchers themselves working together to falsify the data, what sort of level of misuse can be done when the Chinese government is involved in controlling the data released? Silverseren^C 22:10, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

So what you're saying is, it only took 4 years to figure out the problem? Wow, that's pretty fast. I'm glad science is such a self-correcting process with international input from a wide variety of contributors, peer reviewers, post-reviewers, and editors. Wikipedia as a project is never "done" so I'm not sure why that is an issue of enough importance to greenlight systematic bias against any laboratory that happens to be located in China. — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 22:17, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

Also, your examples are from early 2020, whereas we're discussing government control of data that is being reported on right now, in addition to a government crackdown on news organizations and what they're allowed to report on, which is also happening right now and in the past 6 months especially. Silverseren^C 21:39, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

I'm unclear why you think the timing matters. Scientists who felt that way about the government in 2020 are very likely to still feel that way today. — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 21:43, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

The situation is very different now than it was in early 2020. The Chinese government has spent that time period ensuring greater control over what information gets distributed and who has access to it. Silverseren^C 22:00, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

This is the kind of argument which fuels conspiracy theories. It is non-falsifiable. Not saying it is a conspiracy theory, only that it is the sort of circular logic which can lead us in that direction. — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 22:04, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

There's no conspiracy theory here. Just direct reporting from the Associated Press on the cabinet task force being set up to control what data and studies are allowed to be published. Unless you think the AP journalists are lying and making it up? Silverseren^C 22:10, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

No, I think they're acting in good faith, just like I think most Chinese scientists are acting in good faith. I'm trying to be very cautious before we institute a consensus which perpetuates a systematic bias, and actually institutionalizes and codifies it. — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 22:19, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

• Bad question with worse implications. Context, the specific source, and the specific material being supported all still matter. VQuakr (talk) 23:13, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
• Yes: Per responses from Chalstnableezy, Jumpytoo, VQuakr, and shibbolethink. How is even thinkable to ban sources from a country? Of course we still have to take into account the context, background etc. of a source, but that's not new. If the consensus on this question was to be yes, than what would happen? Would every single source originating from the PRoC have to have proof it's not censored? There is an extreme amount of anti-China bias in the US and west in general, and generally reliable sources publish articles on how China is generally censoring free speech. One result on this would be extreme PoV pushing in articles against the Chinese government as a lot of sources with info that might make the PRoC seem good would simply be unable to be used. bop34 • talk • contribs 18:53, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
• No: China is noted for exercising top level censorship. Any publication that is related to them or went through their inspection should not be considered reliable or independent. --1990'sguy (talk) 20:07, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

Arbitrary break

• If the authors are under the physical control of the People's Republic of China, no. First of all, we need to be clear about what is and is not a problem. No problem with Taiwanese authors, for example, or ethnically Chinese authors who live in the USA. The issue comes with authors who are under the physical control of the PRC. At that point, we can't rely on them. It sucks, but it is what it is. Peng Shuai now says she was not sexually assaulted. Right. Adoring nanny (talk) 00:02, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
  • If Nature (journal) says X article by Y Chinese scientist meets our standard for publication then it meets our standard for use as a reliable source. Israel has a military censor. Does that mean that any Israeli newspaper or scholar writing in a non-Israeli journal, as being subject to that censorship, is unreliable? Of course not. And that isnt even addressing the issue of ruling out highly regarded publishers on the basis of the location and/or ethnicity of the author. nableezy - 00:09, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

  @Nableezy: you're assuming that we're talking about a Nature (journal) article that actually says X. I've asked Thucydides411 to quote the exact text from the Nature, BMJ and Lancet articles that they claim counter reports from the BBC, SCMP and Caixin about how China tallies COVID infections and fatalities [56] [57], but so far they haven't been able (or willing) to do that. Since you're taking a stand here, perhaps you can read the discussion and the Nature article in question. LondonIP (talk) 01:32, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

  No, Im not, Im basing my view of this off of the RFC question that is so insanely broad as to be meaningless, and the claims above and below. AN is arguing that even sources that cite Chinese sources should not be usable. You finding fault with my argument is because the RFC question is faulty. nableezy - 01:44, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

  You are taking a stand and you are holding up a source which doesn't even exist. The question of this RfC came up when editors brought up sources from Chinese scientists that even WP:FT/N put down as WP:PRIMARY and not WP:MEDRS [58]. Please read the sources that are being discussed here. LondonIP (talk) 01:59, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

  No, I am answering the RFC question as asked. But as far as your request, The BMJ. When presented with this and other sources, the response was You need to find independent western sources which lacks a WP:COI in the study and debunks these sources. If there is some specific source youd like to discuss then you should bring that. The problem with this RFC, and many RFCs at RSN tbh, is that it makes such a gross generalization that you have to consider the consequences of that question. If you see my initial answer I said I have no idea what a Chinese academic publication means. Down below you have a user complaining that when we cited Western sources that relied on Chinese data that we were VeryWrong™. You may be arguing something else entirely, but the question as posed is wide that it invites such answers. Make a better RFC question and you may get a different answer. nableezy - 02:14, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

@Nableezy: my question focuses very narrowly on 1) Chinese academic publications and whether they can be considered 2) independent sources on 3) censored subjects. Granted 1 and 2 can be narrowed down further, but taking these three criteria, my question is not insanely broad. I modeled this question on the one directly below #Are student newspapers considered independent RS when assessing notability of fellow students at the same university?. I don't see anyone there refusing to answer that question and attempting to speedy close it with spurious reasons. CutePeach (talk) 15:21, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

What exactly is a "Chinese academic publication". Everybody understands what a student newspaper is, it is a newspaper staffed by students at a university or college that largely focuses on campus matters. There is not any ambiguity there. What exactly do you mean by a "Chinese academic publication"? nableezy - 16:17, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

@Nableezy:, a "Chinese academic publication" in the context of my RFC question is any paper published by any Chinese academic on any subject censored by the Chinese government, and my question is narrowed down further asking if they should be considered WP:INDEPENDANT. Taken alone, "Chinese academic publications" may seem broad, but as Silver seren explains above, international journals are not able to check if a submission has been censored in some way, and as I told to AlexEng above, these journals have collaborated with the Chinese government's 中共中央宣传部 office to censor politically sensitive subjects. Taking all three criteria of my question, this RFC would affect only a handful of papers and how they are used, such as the BMJ article - discussed below - which was used to counterbalance reports from the Financial Times and other HQRS, and even WP:POVDELETE them [59] [60] [61]. Please don’t break the criteria of my RFC question to make it broader than it actually is, or that it would affect any more than a handful of papers, which are being used in the wrong way. CutePeach (talk) 14:47, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

"... any paper published by any Chinese academic ..." ← right, well we can close this now because papers published by an academic are self-published and not reliable. I thought you were talking about papers published by publishers (academic presses and the like) which were authored by chinese academics. Alexbrn (talk) 14:56, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

No I am obviously not referring to self published papers, as those were not even proposed. Hopefully the closer of this RFC will read the WP:RFCBEFORE discussions and understand which papers are being referred to. They are the papers published in BMJ, Nature and the Lancet, are all primary, and not usable for refuting high-quality secondary sources. CutePeach (talk) 15:30, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

It's not obvious at all, because you haven't said what you mean and when you try, you write nonsense. Alexbrn (talk) 15:50, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

You are the only editor to ask about self published sources, even though they have never been proposed, and you just got your answer. Please strike your uncivil comment. ScrumptiousFood (talk) 18:22, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

Wrong. The OP referred to "any paper published by any Chinese academic". It seems now they didn't actually mean that, but this is part of the problem: incompetence and imprecision. This is why this RfC is such a fucking mess. Alexbrn (talk) 18:34, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

I will say, "published by any Chinese academics" is ambiguous, and I too interpreted it as referring to WP:SPS. The process of editorial oversight and peer-review is very key to this question, and it's important to note that the OP is referring to articles which are not SPS, but in fact have been peer-reviewed and editorially reviewed before publication by an independent international journal. These papers are authored by Chinese academics. — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 18:56, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

I think what the OP might mean is "Any paper where any of the authors has a Chinese-sounding name". Alexbrn (talk) 05:29, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

Does your definition of "Chinese academics" include Chinese citizens who are working as academics abroad? Does it include non-Chinese citizen authors who are working in China? Does it include journals which are run by non-Chinese citizens? Does it include non-Chinese citizen authors who live abroad, are ethnically Chinese, and have immediate family in China? These are just a few of the many many questions that are raised by your broadly phrased RfC. At this point, so many editors have responded to the vague wording, and different interpretations have sprung up, that there is probably very little we can do to narrow the scope. — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 19:13, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

• Poor question The standard for determining whether a source is reliable is its acceptance in reliable sources. If other academic publications use its facts and findings,then it's reliable. What do we do if the information works its way into a textbook? Are we going to reject new discoveries on the far side of the moon because the Chinese found them? TFD (talk) 00:13, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
• No, as Academic freedom in China is severely limited, and even more restricted for COVID-19 research. I would have preferred an RfC in WP:OR/N as the BMJ, Nature and Lancet articles that are being tirelessly flashed around do not counter the claims of the BBC, SCMP, Caixin and the many other high-quality sources questioning the accuracy of China's COVID statistics. To address the question of this RfC, Chinese scientists cannot be considered independent, and I do not agree with Adoring nanny's point directly above, as Chinese scientists with family in the mainland may even be under duress when abroad, or they may choosing to self censor (as is common in China). Case in point: Shan-Lu Liu. LondonIP (talk) 02:26, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
• Bad RfC, suggest speedy close with no action This is getting into very dangerous territory here, where we are starting to discount sources just because of the authors nationality, regardless of all other circumstances. Florida has been accused of censoring COVID data (source), so does that mean all Floridan COVID academic studies are unreliable? No, that's ridiculous. If one wants to counter the sources by Chinese scientists, then they should provide other high quality academic sources with an opposing viewpoint. Not go make an RfC to try to get what you don't like blocked from Wikipedia. Jumpytoo Talk 02:35, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

  No one suggested sources should be discounted for the nationality of the authors. To do so would be xenophobia and I would strongly condemn such a motion. The problem here is that some scientists are subject to a special gag order on a specific subject (COVID-19) in their country (China). LondonIP (talk) 02:52, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

  Without a clear definition of "Chinese academic publications", I have to go with the broadest possible meaning, because people will definitely use a "No" consensus to discount anything associated to a Chinese scientist, even if they are not in China (for example, to quote yourself: I do not agree with Adoring nanny's point directly above, as Chinese scientists with family in the mainland may even be under duress when abroad, or they may choosing to self censor). This alone makes a bad RfC. Jumpytoo Talk 03:42, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

  If we follow the logic in the quote you've given from LondonIP, we'll have to discount any work by anyone who even has family in China. That would rule out a very large fraction of ethnically Chinese scientists around the world. This is just such a toxic proposal, and I'm a bit ashamed that we're even discussing it. -Thucydides411 (talk) 21:55, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

  we'll have to discount any work by anyone who even has family in China. Don't you get tired of this straw man argument? I didn't propose discounting sources wholesale. I don't consider these sources to be independent, and I think we need to exercise caution with them, and use attribution. Please don't put words in my mouth. LondonIP (talk) 00:06, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

  You just said that everyone with family in China is suspect: Chinese scientists with family in the mainland may even be under duress when abroad, or they may choosing to self censor How am I supposed to interpret that? You can't write things like that and then claim that No one suggested sources should be discounted for the nationality of the authors. You're going beyond arguing for discounting sources based on the nationalities of the authors. You're saying we should take the nationalities of their family members into account as well. -Thucydides411 (talk) 03:20, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

• No Least trustable sources as history has repeatedly proven. TolWol56 (talk) 15:30, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
• NO: Chinese academics are restricted from publishing data on COVID-19 and must "orchestrate" their publishing "like a game of Chess", according to government documents leaked to AP [62]. CNN and SCMP also reported leaked documents showing that the Chinese government concealed information about the disease and suppresses the freedom of Chinese academics. We should also not consider Chinese academics as independent source on Xi Jinping Thought. Dhuh! Francesco espo (talk) 20:45, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
• Bad (loaded and too broad) question with worse implications, poorly formed RfC, and suggest speedy close with no action per Bop34, Jumpytoo, Mx. Granger, Nableezy, Novem Linguae, TFD, Thucydides411, Shibbolethink, Xoltored, et al. — of course, censorship must be taken seriously and in account per Jehochman, though such sources may still be usable in context and with attribution, but this is not the way to do. As things stand, there are way better ways to improve things like attributing the studies, find better or equally reliable academic studies, and include the societal context, rather than dismissing the relevant and cited academic studies without no evidence yet they have been falsified (if they have been, I am sure it will come out but we should not right great wrongs until academia does it for us) because they are Chinese. Chalst and Xoltered have it right that both things can be true but it does not justify outright removal, rather than simply being more cautious or use attribution, and adding the societal context.

Davide King (talk) 20:54, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

• Not Wikipedia's role - The suggestion goes beyond normal source evaluation expectations. WP already avoids obviously unreliable sources and retracted articles and it is careful with the use of primary sources. It also cares about higher quality sources where relevant like WP:MEDRS. Not about the origin of the participants in normally high quality sources, on the assumption of a conspiracy. The current Indian government is known to promote AYUSH but that's not a valid reason to reject reliable sources with Indian participants. The US government also filters academic publishing to some point for national security concerns. —PaleoNeonate – 23:51, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
• No, at least for any publications related to politics, history and COVID-19. Speaking about publications in natural sciences though, this is not so simple. For example, First Departments in the former USSR did not allow certain works to be published, but they did not modify any content of specific scientific publications, simply because KGB censors did not understand any science, unlike politics, history and fiction. So, whatever passed through their filter and was published in natural sciences was generally an independent publication. But the censorship in China with regard to COVID-19 was too serious to ignore [63]. My very best wishes (talk) 00:13, 21 January 2022 (UTC)
• No Especially after this whole Covid episode it would be unwise to say otherwise. NavjotSR (talk) 11:38, 21 January 2022 (UTC)
• Far too broad "Chinese academic publications" is so open to interpretation as to render any close to this RfC worthless. Recommend speedy close and specification of question per above. BSMRD (talk) 05:36, 22 January 2022 (UTC)
• Running tally/summary: As of right now, we have 12 "no" and ~16 "too broad/speedy close" comments. This thread, like many in the lab leak/COVID-19 FRINGE space, has become bloated with multiple concurrent running threads and discussions which become small battle-grounds for various disagreements. The more this happens, the less and less likely a succinct/effective closure becomes. I would suggest to everyone that they take this thread as a lesson in how not to write an RfC that you actually want closed. Narrow questions get narrow responses get effective closures. — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 14:20, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

@Shibbolethink: please leave the job of closing to the closer, and remember WP:NOTDEMOCRACY and that closing is not just about tallying. Rushing to close this RFC on the claim that my question is too broad smacks of WP:STONEWALLING and even WP:POVRAILROADING. When taking all three criteria of my question together, it is not broad at all. There are only two editors who are not involved in this topic who say it is broad, and I have just answered them. By involved, I mean in Chinese politics, including Uyghur genocide, where the same tactics have been employed. CutePeach (talk) 15:06, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

I would take this accusation as an avoidance of the substantive questions and concerns that many many editors have expressed here. I count many more than 2 “uninvolved” editors who have expressed those same concerns, but as you’ve said, this is not a vote. And it is absolutely appropriate to summarize the current state of the discussion and to have a running tally. Many editors have invented add-ons and scripts to do just that. Would you suggest all those scripts should be deleted? The important part is that votes/tallies should not be the ‘’only’’ factor in a close. I have no intention of closing and have not suggested I would close, as I am certainly “involved.” You have not provided a “neutrally worded” summary that includes all the relevant facts of the situation, which is required when starting an RFC. Particularly with regards to which disputes are involved, how this dispute developed, etc. When asked to do so, you have not complied. It’s entirely appropriate, then, to dispute this RFC as malformed. As many “uninvolved” and “involved” editors have done. Many editors have suggested the negative implications of a broad RFC question which is not neutrally worded. You have yet to address these concerns. At this point, there’s no going back. Too many people have responded to your prompt. We’re now stuck waiting for this RFC to either somehow be closed (by some brave soul) or (more likely) to expire and be archived. My suggestion would be to withdraw the RFC and ask a truly neutral entirely uninvolved 3rd party to step in and write a more narrowly phrased RFC. Good luck… — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 18:43, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

@Shibbolethink: you didn't participate in the discussions that precipitated this RfC, so let me summarise them for you. In the "Alleged under-counting of cases and deaths" and "2021 academic study" discussions, the independence of Chinese academics sources was rejected by some editors due to China's gag order on them publishing their COVID data and research (which includes the Chinese CDC). In this diff an editor suggested we discuss it here on RSN, worded very closely to the question of this RfC, but with specificity to international journals. In both these discussions, editors elevated primary sources from Chinese academics to refute claims from secondary sources like the Financial Times, The Economist and Time Magazine, and another 20 sources that ScrumptiousFood kindly listed. The only comment you made in any of those discussions is to say Scrumptious's sources are not reliable for analysis of epidemiological data, without commenting on any of the sources offered in their stead. Your only participation in this RfC has been to put it down, and you haven't even commented on the primary source being discussed below, or suggested better wording for the RfC. Please don't talk about avoidance. LondonIP (talk) 01:03, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

The difference is that no one was asking me to do those things, and I never started any RfCs that required me to do those things. If CutePeach had provided this amount of background at the beginning of the RfC, and had done so in a more neutrally-worded manner (such as describing the primary sources as peer-reviewed, etc), then we wouldn't have this problem. I assess your summary here as biased as well. You neglect to say the primary sources are peer reviewed and published in international journals. You neglect to mention the MEDRS-compliant government body sources. You emphasize the number of sources and the venues of the sources that you prefer, and do not mention the number or venues of the sources that you do not prefer. All of this creates a biased picture in favor of your view. It's also a biased summary of my participation. First you say I have not participated, and then you describe comments I made in the aforementioned discussions. Which is it? — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 13:49, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

• Loaded Question/Malformed RFC Absolutely ridiculous way of framing the question, as per above. Parabolist (talk) 00:53, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

• Comment do any of the editors saying this RFC is too broad have any suggestions about narrowing it down? The AP reported that the Chinese government ordered CDC staff not to share any data, specimens or other information related to the coronavirus with outside institutions or individuals [64]. How exactly do you want to narrow down "Chinese academic publications" when the Chinese government censorship on publishing COVID data is this expansive? LondonIP (talk) 01:09, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

  Sure. Pick a diff that was being edit warred and caused COVID-19 pandemic in mainland China to get full protected, then start an RFC where folks are asked to pick version 1 or version 2 of the text being edit warred. Not saying we should start yet another RFC, since RFCs use a lot of community time and this one is not even closed yet, but after reflection, if I was given a time machine and able to redo this particular RFC, a narrow question like that is how we should have approached this. –Novem Linguae (talk) 01:56, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

  Describe in detail which sources are being used, and have editors pick between the versions relying on Source A or Source B. Pick a particular source and ask: "Is this reliable for this content?" Those are the narrow sort of RfC questions that actually get answered. — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 13:53, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

• "Subjects censored by the Chinese government" is way too broad to be useful. That could stretch from almost anything (Great Firewall) to much less depending on one's interpretation. I do not share the concerns of other editors about clarity in terms of nationality; as I see it, any academic publication published in China would be covered, and any academic publication not published in China, even by Chinese authors, would not be (though the very fact there is debate on this means it can't really be considered clear). That being said, such a blanket ban is just wrong, even ignoring the absence of clarity. The Chinese government is not omnipotent, and editors are responsible enough to evaluate the extent to which a source is influenced by the Chinese government. The vast majority of sources may in fact be influenced by the Chinese government in a way that compromises their reliability, but a blanket ban across a country of 1.4 billion people is just too draconian. Zoozaz1 (talk) 03:09, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

Discussion

The problem runs deep. Here is an example where we got pretty much everything wrong, not by relying on sources that are under Xi's control, but by using sources that used sources that are under Xi's control. It is a paragraph from the article that eventually became COVID-19 pandemic, from a version[65] dated January 8, 2019: As of 5 January 2020, 59 cases have occurred with seven in a critical condition, 163 contacts commenced monitoring and there were no reported cases of human-to-human transmission or presentations in healthcare workers.[6][8] Affected people have presented with fever and sometimes difficulty breathing, common to several respiratory illnesses at this time of year. X-rays of the chest have revealed signs in both lungs.[6][7] The cause of the pneumonia is currently unknown; however, viruses like seasonal flu, SARS, MERS and bird flu had been ruled out.[8][7][9] No new cases have been reported since 5 January 2020.[10] The outbreak has not shown signs of escalation.[6][7].

Let us count the ways in which this was wrong:

1. The case counts were suspect
2. there were sick healthcare workers by then
3. the cause was known
4. it was a SARS-like virus whose DNA had been sequenced
5. new cases were occurring daily
6. the outbreak was escalating.

Adoring nanny (talk) 00:26, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

1) Please provide an RS demonstrating those case counts are suspect, from that time. We cannot judge what they knew then with what we know now. Because much of what we know now, the Chinese govt also would not have known then.
2) I'm not sure any sources anywhere exist to demonstrate this point as true. AFAIK, Liang Wudong was the first HCWer to die of COVID, period And he died on Jan 29. Li Wenliang may have been one of the first HCWers to get infected, and he got infected on Jan 8th. Where do we have sources showing there were already sick HCWers at that time? And do you have any proof the Chinese govt was actively censoring that fact?
3) We had sources showing this from Chinese nationals by then, they just weren't used [66] [67] (and various WeChat posts which would not qualify as RSes). And much of this delay is due to the fact that we didn't have a MEDRS showing this, we didn't have any "true" RSes showing this, which makes sense because it takes time to show the modified Rivers' criteria for a novel virus [68]. It took time for SARS too [69]. I'm not sure I want to be using lower quality faster sourcing for something like that.
4) It's RNA, and the sequence was only verified by Jan 10th [70]. They were still vetting its accuracy with independent samples, a common practice. We actually know there were errors in that original sequence because they rushed it a little too much. [71] (there's actually been 3 revisions)

I don't understand what point you're trying to make. An outdated paragraph with outdated sourcing (and lacks the really really low quality sourcing that would be needed to show the other things you've indicated) is not indicative of any cover-up. It just means someone needed to update it with the sources that were out there, if any. The sources from Chinese nationals existed already which would have proven some of these points. And most of all, most of these "false" facts weren't sourced from scientific publications, were they? So would this RfC really have solved anything back then? — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 00:40, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

You seem to mistake our purpose here with being correct as opposed to documenting what other sources say is correct. We were wrong because the sources were wrong? Yeah, sounds about right. If there are better sources they should of course be used, but the idea that because a source uses information from China that makes it unusable is nonsensical, mostly because we rely on those sources to decide what is accurate, and if they are wrong then so to will we be. nableezy - 01:16, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

We're an encyclopedia. Breaking news stories are frequently inaccurate, which means that our articles on breaking news will be frequently inaccurate and is an excellent argument against rushing to create or update articles in response to breaking news events. Conversely, we're a volunteer encyclopedia and sometimes verifiably dated information will persist for a while. None of this is novel, unique to China or COVID, or warranting of changes or exceptions to our policies. VQuakr (talk) 01:39, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

Quite right. If anything, this example illustrates why we should cite retrospective studies in high-quality journals like The BMJ, when available. They are likely to be more accurate than early news reports. —Mx. Granger (talk · contribs) 17:57, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

Sounds like y'all want a focus on academic sources. Fine. Behold "The fight against fake-paper factories that churn out sham science". The title doesn't say "China", but the content is about Chinese academic fraud mills. And this is before the additional layer of lying imposed by Government authorities. [72] But Nature has tallied 370 articles retracted since January 2020, all from authors at Chinese hospitals, that either publishers or independent sleuths have alleged to come from paper mills (see ‘Fraud allegations’). Most were published in the past three years (see ‘Chinese hospital papers on the rise’). Publishers have added expressions of concern to another 45 such articles. Adoring nanny (talk) 14:20, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

And here are some Western examples of fake papers: The Atlantic: wrote 20 fake papers using fashionable jargon to argue for ridiculous conclusions, and tried to get them placed in high-profile journals in fields including gender studies, queer studies, and fat studies. Their success rate was remarkable: By the time they took their experiment public late on Tuesday, seven of their articles had been accepted for publication by ostensibly serious peer-reviewed journals The Guardian The researchers say some of her work is still being cited and accessed, even though she was barely literate in science and unable to recognise basic formulas taught to first-year chemistry students., The MMR & autism study It is intensely sceptical about the possibility of error, but totally trusting about the possibility of fraud.”1 Never has this been truer than of the 1998 Lancet paper that implied a link between the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine and a “new syndrome” of autism and bowel disease

There are many papers that are fraudulent, but we should not be trying to WP:RGW ourselves here by (quoting Thucydides here): look[ing] at the nationalities of the authors, and if they appear to be Chinese, that we should reject them. As people noted below, we can try to use review and secondary sources over primary academic sources when available. And if you have true concerns about a paper, go to the journal and make your appeal. This is disregarding how poor this RfC question is, as I've said before, how is "Chinese academic publications" defined? Is just having one Chinese author "too Chinese"? If there is even just one international author, does that make the paper "not Chinese"? Jumpytoo Talk 19:34, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

The state of this RfC is deplorable. People are talking past each other, and there are numerous complaints about the formulation of the original question. @CutePeach: please immediately clarify what you mean by "Chinese academic publications". Please give examples. You have been asked numerous times, often directly, to elaborate on the question, and you have not done so. As evidenced by the above survey responses, many editors take this to mean "Chinese journals", while many others take it to mean "contributions by Chinese scientists to any journal". Whatever the result of this RfC, it should ultimately be considered invalid unless there is actual consensus on what we are even talking about. AlexEng^(TALK) 17:28, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

You can find an example directly below. It's one of three papers cited to refute allegations from high quality secondary sources. The accuracy sections of the China government response page was deleted to make way for praise and pomp. ScrumptiousFood (talk) 00:16, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

The state of this RfC is deplorable. People are talking past each other it's indeed invalid yet a successful attempt to make noise... Both sections have had their reasonable answers and should probably be closed to prevent more disruption and waste of community time. —PaleoNeonate – 01:14, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

@AlexEng: it is very hard to WP:AGF with some of the editors questioning the definition of "Chinese academic publications", when they use the same tactics to argue that the Uyghur genocide can’t be defined as a genocide. The Chinese government has complete control over all publishing, so it would not be hard for them to control academic publishing, and they can now even censor Western academic journals publishing in China [73]. This RFC affects only a handful of papers that were debated in the WP:RFCBEFORE] discussions, which I mentioned in my answer to Nableezy below. This is a very unique case, because few countries invest as much as China does in censorship, and according to this report [74], they invest anywhere between $6.6B and $13B in internet censorship alone. We cannot ignore the effects of this censorship on the coverage of censored topics here on Wikipedia. CutePeach (talk) 14:54, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

Hi, I'm an editor who is very unclear about your definition of "Chinese academic publications" but I would simultaneously emphatically agree that the Uyghur genocide is clearly defined as a genocide. Please don't create strawman arguments that those who disagree with you are being unreasonable. There is good reason for confusion with the phrasing of your question, and how others are interpreting it to mean different things. E.g. above, londonIP broadens it to include people who are living abroad but have family in Mainland China. Do you intend it to be interpreted this way?

That link you provide to the case of China Quarterly has very little, if any, bearing on this discussion. China requested certain articles be inaccessible when surfing the internet in China, behind the Great Firewall. No actual edits were made to any articles. Since all of the English Wikipedia is already blocked in China, the horse has kind of already left the barn on that one. — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 18:47, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

@CutePeach: I don't know why you're raising the article Uyghur genocide in a discussion of reliable sourcing on COVID-19 mortality. It seems to me that you're bringing in an unrelated political issue, simply because it involves China. Is every discussion about China-related sourcing going to end with a litmus test on participants' views on Xi Jinping, Xinjiang, Tibet and the Opium Wars? -Thucydides411 (talk) 23:34, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

Is the specific study this discussion originated with (BMJ) reliable?

• Liu, Jiangmei; Zhang, Lan; Yan, Yaqiong; Zhou, Yuchang; Yin, Peng; Qi, Jinlei; Wang, Lijun; Pan, Jingju; You, Jinling; Yang, Jing; Zhao, Zhenping; Wang, Wei; Liu, Yunning; Lin, Lin; Wu, Jing; Li, Xinhua; Chen, Zhengming; Zhou, Maigeng (2021-02-24). "Excess mortality in Wuhan city and other parts of China during the three months of the covid-19 outbreak: findings from nationwide mortality registries". The BMJ. doi:10.1136/bmj.n415. ISSN 1756-1833.

The discussion on this page has been confused, with poorly phrased and biased RfC's regarding this, so I created this section to simplify it, hopefully we will find consensus and the original page will be unlocked. Xoltered (talk) 05:04, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

• Yes It is peer-reviewed and published in the BMJ, a reliable journal. Xoltered (talk) 05:04, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
• Yes, it's as reliable as any other peer-reviewed primary study in a high-quality journal. Which doesn't necessarily mean that it can't be incorrect or refuted/challenged by other sources (as a result of potential source data issues cited above, part of the reason any primary study has limits to its use), but we shouldn't be in the habit of second-guessing the reliability of peer-reviewed studies per WP:RGW and WP:OR. Bakkster Man (talk) 16:45, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

@Bakkster Man: you say this source can be refuted/challenged by other sources but do you think it can be used to refute/challenge secondary sources and even omit them? I'm not sure if you read the discussion in the China COVID-19 pandemic page, but that is what this dispute is about. Here are the omissions from Mx. Granger [75] and Thucydides411 [76] and restoration by Encyclopedia Lu [77]. Do you agree with these omissions and use of primary sources, or would you like to change your mind - and your !vote? CutePeach (talk) 15:03, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

@CutePeach: I got here through FTN, and the entire extent of the dispute is just not something I want to devote time to diving deep enough to weigh in on the original dispute. I'd prefer to weigh in specifically on the source question, which I'm concerned might be trying to make too-broad conclusions in the context of a too-narrow dispute. Bakkster Man (talk) 15:19, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

@CutePeach: You're not providing reliable secondary sources on epidemiology. You're providing popular magazine and news articles written by non-experts, and not subject to any kind of peer-review or rigorous scientific editing. Many of these articles are just discussing the urns conspiracy theory, which comes from social media.

The sources that I and other editors are pointing to are peer-reviewed papers on mortality and serology in China, published in leading international journals.

These two classes of sources are not even remotely on the same level. The popular media articles are junk in comparison to the peer-reviewed scientific literature. -Thucydides411 (talk) 16:34, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

• Fails MEDRS so not reliable for any claim in the realm of WP:Biomedical information, and while it may be "reliable" for other kinds of claim, as a primary source these would almost certainly be POV/UNDUE. Alexbrn (talk) 16:49, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

  It's a peer-reviewed study in one of the most prestigious medical journals in the world. In what world does it fail WP:MEDRS? This is the single best source available on mortality during the outbreak in China, by a very wide margin. -Thucydides411 (talk) 19:00, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

  It's primary research. Wikipedia generally wants secondary sources for biomedical material. Alexbrn (talk) 19:03, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

  I dont think thats true, the raw data in the mortality registries is the primary source there, the analysis of it is secondary. nableezy - 19:07, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

  It's true. From the data the authors selected the method and produced a novel result ("research"). For medical secondary sources in journals we typically want review articles, meta-analyses or systematic reviews. These all offer overviews of multiple pieces of primary research. Alexbrn (talk) 19:11, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

  Whether or not you consider this "primary" or "secondary" research, it's clearly the highest quality source available today on the subject of the death toll in China's initial COVID-19 outbreak. The question being discussed in this thread essentially boils down to: should we throw out this peer-reviewed study because of the nationalities of the authors, and replace it news articles from March/April 2020 that discuss social media speculation about vastly larger death tolls? This study is clearly on an entirely different level of reliability than those news articles, when it comes to making statements about the actual death toll. It would be great if we had a meta-analysis or review article of different mortality estimates, but what we have now is a peer-reviewed paper in a highly prestigious medical journal, and that's pretty darn good. -Thucydides411 (talk) 19:45, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

  95% + of peer-reviewed content in medical journals is research and completely unsuitable for Wikipedia, which is meant to be a reflection of "accepted knowledge". Once research has been validated by additional layers of verification (review article, etc.) it becomes eligible for our use. The problem with nearly all of this discussion about author nationality etc. is that it's irrelevant. A lot of research is just wrong so editors here deciding to use it are in effect indulging in WP:OR by deciding for themselves it's correct. Wait for truly reliable sources: there is no deadline. Alexbrn (talk) 19:52, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

  This is throwing out the baby with the bath water. In an attempt to improve source quality, you're arguing against using the highest-quality source available. The consequence will be that absolute junk (news articles discussing a social media conspiracy theory that is wildly inconsistent with all research on the subject) will be substituted in its place. Review articles are preferable to research articles, but research articles are still high-quality sources. In this case, this is clearly the highest-quality source available, by a wide margin. Not every scientific subject gets its own dedicated review article, and sources of this high caliber are used regularly in MEDRS articles. -Thucydides411 (talk) 20:06, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

  This is what we call POV-pushing. You've decided some claim needs to be included, and then (despite the lack of RS) try to find a way to include it. NPOV means representing what reliable sources say, not adding stuff to articles editors want. Alexbrn (talk) 20:10, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

  That's an absurd allegation, Alex. I'm just arguing that we use the highest-quality available sources. You should try to understand what the context of this discussion actually is before you wade into it. This discussion is about whether or not we will rule out peer-reviewed scientific papers on the basis of the nationalities of the authors and replace them with news articles that discuss social media speculation. -Thucydides411 (talk) 20:38, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

  If the "highest quality" is an unreliable source, stay silent. Silence is better than misinformation. As to the question, I do understand it. I have answered the (stupid) RfC question; and now this just-as-stupid question about whether a source (without context) is "reliable". I also appreciate the political shadow-boxing taking place. Alexbrn (talk) 20:47, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

  In this case, the highest-quality available source is not unreliable. You can argue about whether to classify it as primary or secondary, and what amount of attribution to use (e.g., "According to a study published in The BMJ, ..."), but this is not some speculative paper based on in vitro experiments that makes wild claims. It's a standard analysis of mortality data done by a third party, which has been subjected to rigorous peer review (5 reviewers, in fact, whose reports you can read on The BMJ's website) and published in a highly prestigious journal. -Thucydides411 (talk) 21:14, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

  You need to read WP:MEDRS. For background, WP:WHYMEDRS and WP:MEDFAQ are useful. This is just a replay of the same arguments the "lab leak" proponents tried to push to get their favoured research in. You either follow the WP:PAGs, or you don't. Alexbrn (talk) 07:30, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

  I'm already familiar with WP:MEDRS, and I don't agree with your interpretation of it. If we follow your interpretation, we will have to remove virtually all mortality estimates for all countries, including the CDC's estimate of COVID-19 mortality in the US. I think it's entirely reasonable, based on WP:MEDRS, to attribute the excess mortality estimates (to the CDC, to a paper in The BMJ, etc.), but policy does not require us to remove them entirely, nor would doing so be reasonable. -Thucydides411 (talk) 16:13, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

  As a major medical body, the CDC's position would meet MEDRS. Different thing entirely. Alexbrn (talk) 16:26, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

  The CDC's analysis is exactly analogous to the BMJ paper we're discussing. Scientists from the CDC published their methodology for determining excess mortality from available data in The Lancet Regional Health - Americas. That's primary research, according to the definition you're advancing (which I do not agree with). We're now citing that mortality estimate on Wikipedia. The analysis published in The BMJ is entirely analogous. Scientists from the major public health institution in China, the China CDC, publish an analysis of available disease surveillance data in a journal with very rigorous standards of peer review (5 reviewers in this case). We're discussing two exactly analogous situations. It's obvious that we wouldn't remove the most reliable estimate of COVID-19 mortality in the US, but if we follow your logic here, we'll have to do so. -Thucydides411 (talk) 23:23, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

  No its not, the Chinese CDC is restricted from publishing any COVID data or research without approval from the Chinese State Council and CCP propaganda office [78]. LondonIP (talk) 01:12, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

  If we follow WP:MEDRS to the letter as advocated above, the Chinese CDC is the most reliable source available and is the only MEDRS source of all the sources presented, since it is a position statements from national or international expert bodies. Interesting. –Novem Linguae (talk) 02:01, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

  Yes I would agree with Novem and Alexbrn here, it's a MEDRS because it's a position statement from a government body, even though it's technically a primary source. Different from academic journal articles of course. Primary sources CAN be used per MEDRS, but there should not be valid alternatives. See WP:MEDANIMAL and WP:MEDASSESS. — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 13:54, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

  @Thucydides411: I agree with Alexbrn. The best source doesn't always clear the threshold for reliability here. If WP:MEDRS standards apply here (and I believe they probably do), then we can't use primary sources. It would, however, also mean that the "absolute junk" sources couldn't be used either. Whatever the decision (I don't think RSN is the right place), it should be applied consistently. If BMJ can't be used because the information is WP:BMI, then the information might need to be left as unknown. Bakkster Man (talk) 21:11, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

  @Bakkster Man: If I go look at COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, the second sentence gives a death toll drawn from the website, Our World in Data, along with a statement about per capita mortality sourced to a Johns Hopkins University tracker, and the sidebar gives estimates of the death toll from the CDC (there's an associated peer-reviewed paper, which under the definition advanced above would be primary research) and a black-box machine learning model published by a popular magazine, The Economist (obviously not peer-reviewed, not necessarily even created by experts in the field, and which spits out absurd, impossible results for some countries). The paper we're discussing, published in The BMJ, is of far higher quality than any of those sources. In other words, the paper in The BMJ is of much higher quality than the references we're currently using to source similar information in analogous (and much more prominent) articles on Wikipedia. It's highly valuable to not just give government numbers, but to also give scientific estimates of death tolls and infection rates. The BMJ provides a much better source for doing so than is available for other articles. -Thucydides411 (talk) 21:44, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

  @Thucydides411: I think that could be a thread worth pulling on (is collating and republishing official data reasonable or not, and are case counts BMI), but I think it probably needs to happen in a better venue (WP:BMI for instance) out of the shadow of this "but China" RfC to give it a chance of actual consensus. Bakkster Man (talk) 22:36, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

  I think the relevant discussion is that this study's reliability will depend on WP:BMI and WP:MEDRS and whether we consider it primary or secondary (arguably a different noticeboard), not on whether or not the authors are Chinese. Bakkster Man (talk) 19:13, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

  Note to closer: the authors are Chinese has not been presented by any editors as the sole criterion for considering the reliability of this source. CutePeach (talk) 17:42, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

  @Alexbrn @VQuakr Here is where the paper is currently used, if you want to give your opinion: [79] [80]. Jumpytoo Talk 19:59, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

  I'll pass. The COVID-19 articles generally are a morass of poorly-sourced content. In years to come they'll get cleaned up. Maybe. All I can do now is try to explain what our sourcing guidelines actually say - though as we can see it's not what some editors want to hear, as this discussion is really just another proxy politics battleground, now isn't it. Alexbrn (talk) 20:05, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

@Jumpytoo: it's cited three times in a short paragraph, which is ugly (just cite it at the end of that para), but the info it's used to support isn't a MEDRS issue (it talks about mortality numbers, doesn't give medical advice) and isn't a red flag either: it's consistent with other reliable sources about total COVID deaths in China. Reasonable editors may disagree, but I'm not seeing any issue here and "because it's from China" is a non-starter of a reason to exclude. VQuakr (talk) 21:16, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

• Reliable to support what information? "is X reliable" is not a question that can be answered in the affirmative without context. It's a primary medical article, so as Alexbrn notes is fails MEDRS. It's a year old, so the information in it may be dated. BMJ is reliable in most contexts, though. VQuakr (talk) 16:53, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
• No per Alexbrn. Fails WP:RS when we use it on any COVID-19 page. TolWol56 (talk) 18:59, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

• Yes, the study in question is inarguably the best available source on mortality during the outbreak in China, by a very wide margin. It's a peer-reviewed study in one of the most prestigious medical journals in the world, The BMJ (formerly known as "The British Medical Journal"). It provides a detailed analysis of excess mortality due to a whole number of different causes in Wuhan, Hubei province (excluding Wuhan) and China (excluding Hubei province). Of particular interest, it calculates excess pneumonia mortality, which is attributable to COVID-19. Here is its bottom line:

  In Wuhan city (13 districts), 5954 additional (4573 pneumonia) deaths occurred in 2020 compared with 2019, with excess risks greater in central than in suburban districts (50% v 15%). In other parts of Hubei province (19 DSP areas), the observed mortality rates from pneumonia and chronic respiratory diseases were non-significantly 28% and 23% lower than the predicted rates, despite excess deaths from covid-19 related pneumonia. Outside Hubei (583 DSP areas), the observed total mortality rate was non-significantly lower than the predicted rate (675 v 715 per 100000), with significantly lower death rates from pneumonia (0.53, 0.46 to 0.63), chronic respiratory diseases (0.82, 0.71 to 0.96), and road traffic incidents (0.77, 0.68 to 0.88).

  Except in Wuhan, no increase in overall mortality was found during the three months of the covid-19 outbreak in other parts of China. The lower death rates from certain non-covid-19 related diseases might be attributable to the associated behaviour changes during lockdown.

The authors speculate that the slight decrease in pneumonia deaths outside Wuhan is due to a decrease in flu transmission during the lockdowns.

The findings of this study have proved to be consistent with a whole number of serology studies published in highly reputable international journals (such as Nature Medicine, The Lancet Regional Health Western Pacific and The Lancet Microbe) that look at infection rates in various regions of China.

The alternative to this study in The BMJ that some editors are proposing we use is literally a conspiracy theory from Chinese social media about the supposed number of urns delivered to Wuhan after the lockdown, which was briefly discussed in some news articles all the way back in March/April 2020 (see more here). The idea that we would run with that social media conspiracy theory but rule out peer-reviewed research in one of the world's top medical journals is laughable.

The fact that this source has even been called into question (purely on the basis of the nationalities of the authors) just goes to show how absurd this entire discussion is. We have to decide whether or not Wikipedia is a place that discriminates on the basis of nationality. I think it shouldn't. -Thucydides411 (talk) 19:32, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

• Yes, in context of this RfC, if this is a suitable article per WP:MEDRS and the primary/secondary argument is something that could be discussed, but the fact the authors are Chinese does not impact the reliability of this piece. Jumpytoo Talk 19:50, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
• No per Alexbrn and Xi's "Game of Chess". LondonIP (talk) 00:08, 21 January 2022 (UTC)
• No, in context of this RfC and also per Alexbrn who says it is WP:PRIMARY. Francesco espo (talk) 00:09, 21 January 2022 (UTC)
• No because it fails WP:MEDRS, and this is the case when WP:MEDRS does apply. My very best wishes (talk) 00:35, 21 January 2022 (UTC)
• NOTE If the consensus is that the study is reliable but fails MEDRS because it is a primary source, then that means reliable secondary sources refrencing the study ARE reliable. Also as previously noted above, other articles regarding COVID have primary sources for the claims of deaths and cases as typically they are the best source for this, should this also be changed? Xoltered (talk) 01:03, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

  Yes, secondary sources citing this study would likely meet MEDRS and therefore be the best available sources on this topic. — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 14:11, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

• No Not reliable due to pro-fringe background. NavjotSR (talk) 11:36, 21 January 2022 (UTC)
• WP:CONTEXTMATTERS. If this WP:PRIMARY source was being cited for ordinary non contentious claims, then perhaps YES​​. However, since it is being used to refute/challenge claims from high quality WP:SECONDARY sources like the Financial Times and the Economist [81], it's a NO. The applicable policy here is WP:BALANCE, which requires secondary or tertiary sources to describe the disagreement from a disinterested viewpoint. CutePeach (talk) 13:45, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

  The idea that popular media like The Financial Times or The Economist are reliable sources for epidemiological information - but that a peer-reviewed paper on excess mortality in one of the world's most prestigious medical journals isn't - is simply laughable. The Financial Times and The Economist aren't even remotely reliable for this sort of information. They're okay for current events. They have near-zero expertise in epidemiology. -Thucydides411 (talk) 14:46, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

  I'm inclined to agree. The Financial Times and The Economist are HQRS, but I feel like there's a problem if we rate them as better than a peer reviewed publication in an esteemed publication like The BMJ, on a issue in the journal's expertise. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 14:59, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

  I was about to make the very same argument. The Economist and FT are not "High quality" epidemiology journals. They are media outlets which are respected on matters of politics and economics.
  ' — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 14:15, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

  ProcrastinatingReader and Shibbolethink, contrary to what Thucydides411 claims, the "Alleged under-counting of cases and deaths" is not "epidemiological information", and the BMJ article does not even refute the claims of Foreign Policy, Financial Times and the Economist. I don't think the community has the patience for another massive throwdown at WP:BMI and I don't think your arguments here will persuade any admin to unblock the page. CutePeach (talk) 17:01, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

• No because this fails MEDRS per Alexbrn, the problem here is of course that MEDRS prohibits peer reviewed studies in publications like the BMJ, but thats a known issue with MEDRS. Only in death does duty end (talk) 13:58, 21 January 2022 (UTC)
• To those saying this is a primary source, genuine question, what's the difference between this discussion and a recent discussion here at RSN involving analysis of population data, where it was said that novel analysis of results to reach a novel conclusion is considered secondary if the authors didn't obtain the data? (I can't find the discussion at a skim but it was quite well attended IIRC). ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 14:56, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

@ProcrastinatingReader: the requirement for the use of WP:PRIMARY sources is that one cannot analyse or interpret them, which is clearly the case here. There is also WP:BALANCE which requires contradictory sources to be relatively equal in prominence and secondary or tertiary by type. CutePeach (talk) 15:55, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

The requirement is that editors don't analyse or interpret the results/contents of the primary source. As far as I can tell, the source obtained data from "China's Disease Surveillance Points" and the source analysed this data. I'm not entirely sure the 'primary source'/'secondary source' classification is ideal for this case, but IIRC previous RSN discussions covering similar situations have held that such cases are considered secondary sources. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 16:33, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

@ProcrastinatingReader: It's also worth noting that the BMJ paper on excess mortality in China is analogous to the CDC estimate of excess mortality in the US, which is considered the standard estimate for the US. Both are published in very similar ways: they're peer-reviewed analyses of data gathered by various disease surveillance networks. -Thucydides411 (talk) 16:47, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

• ProcrastinatingReader, I believe this is what you are looking for. nableezy - 17:05, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

  Yup, that's the one. Thanks nableezy. Having skimmed that discussion again it seems like surely its result should apply here since we have, in essence, the same situation: the papers' authors are using data obtained by another source, and reaching novel conclusions. That discussion found a consensus that this kind of source is considered secondary. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 18:43, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

• ProcrastinatingReader it's not just a primary source, it's primary research. If China is undercounting cases, then it's true figures would be a state secret, and all epidemiology submissions would be thoroughly vetted by a censor, and some papers would be commissioned by propagandists for… propaganda. This BMJ paper does not refute or even challenge the widely varied allegations of many HQRS that question the accuracy of China's statistics, so it's a giant red herring. The Nature and Lancet articles are also primary and don't refute anything. ScrumptiousFood (talk) 18:50, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

  @ScrumptiousFood: If you believe the data on which the paper in The BMJ is based is faked, then please take your concerns to the editors at The BMJ. Five expert peer-reviewers (who deal regularly with this sort of data) and the scientific editors at The BMJ vetted this paper. I'm sure they'll be interested to hear any evidence you have of data-faking, and if there's any merit to your claims, I'm sure they'll retract the paper. We are, after all, talking about one of the most prestigious medical journals in the world. But as things stand, this is a peer-reviewed paper in a leading journal, and there's absolutely no indication that the data is faked. -Thucydides411 (talk) 20:11, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

  @ProcrastinatingReader: you said The requirement is that editors don't analyse or interpret the results/contents of the primary source but that is exactly what editors are doing [82] [83] [84]. CutePeach (talk) 15:21, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

  Those edits you linked don't analyse or interpret the results but simply mention the findings of the study, what are you claiming is user analysis? Xoltered (talk) 09:06, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

@Xoltered: the edit summaries in the three edits I showed ProcrastinatingReader's point give an analysis of this WP:PRIMARY source, as if they are WP:SECONDARY sources describing opposing views clearly as per WP:BALANCE. They are not, and those edits are WP:POVDELETIONS. CutePeach (talk) 16:25, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

You are simply stating this, if you look at the edits you linked they simply mention the findings of the study, and do not present them as a secondary source. Xoltered (talk) 18:09, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

In the three diffs links above, you and two other editors removed content sourced to RS [85], due to this BMJ article supposedly refuting claims of China underreporting the extent of infections and deaths. Do you understand the problem with your edit and why we are here on RSN discussing this BMJ article and other sources brought to refute widely reported claims? CutePeach (talk) 14:04, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

• Only if there are no good secondary academic journal article sources available per WP:MEDRS, particularly WP:MEDANIMAL and WP:MEDASSESS. If there are secondary MEDRS-compliant sources available which cite these studies, those secondary sources should be used instead. — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 13:58, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

@Shibbolethink: this discussion is about a BMJ paper which supposedly refutes the claims of RS which you say aren't reliable [86]. Its really not clear from your answer here why you think these RS aren't reliable if the BMJ isn't a secondary academic journal article. WP:BALANCE requires that sources be relatively equal in prominence, and a primary source is never going to be as prominent as a secondary one. Please can you clarify for the benefit of the closer? CutePeach (talk) 17:17, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

Here are several secondary academic sources which support the conclusions drawn from the original paper in this discussion: [87] [88] [89] [90] That is also a misreading of BALANCE, which actually requires us to write our articles based on the proportion of those views in our WP:BESTSOURCES. The sources you provide do not trump scholarly work, which is what sets the tone here on Wikipedia. — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 00:28, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

Those sources, secondary as they are, have absolutely nothing to do with the topic at hand. They may perhaps support the conclusion of this BMJ paper - whatever it is - but they absolutely do not refute or challenge the claims found in over 20 RS about China allegedly underreporting the extent of COVID-19 infections and deaths. Looking at the dataset leaked to the Foreign Policy [91], I do not see where your secondary sources refute this report. There are hundreds of reports in RS that China underreported cases from the very start. It is a fact we can put in Wikivoice. CutePeach (talk) 14:16, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

• No In particular, I would note their conflicts statement: Competing interests: All authors have completed the ICMJE uniform disclosure form at www.icmje.org/coi_disclosure.pdf and declare: funding for the project through a grant (No 82073675) from the National Natural Science Foundation of China; no financial relationships with any organisations that might have an interest in the submitted work in the previous three years; no other relationships or activities that could appear to have influenced the submitted work. The portion about "no other relationships or activities" contradicts the document released by the AP. The authors all have a relationship with the Government of China. The AP document states that the Government of China must approve all publications in this area. This is a conflict, and a true conflicts statement would have mentioned it. Of course this sucks for the authors, who would likely not have been allowed by the Government of China to mention this particular conflict. But for our purposes, the bottom line is that because of the AP's document, the conflicts statement is verifiably false. Therefore, the source is not reliable. Adoring nanny (talk) 04:11, 27 January 2022 (UTC)
• Comment A further problem with the source, which I did not mention in my !vote above, is that it describes Chinese Government publications on the topic of mortality as "data". However, there is a slam-dunk case that certain deaths are deliberately not reported by their actual cause. See the article Organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners in China. China does report some executions, but not enough to account for the timely availability of human organs compatible with such a large number of recipients. The upshot is that the publications which the source describes as "data" must either exclude or misclassify some deaths where the cause of death is execution by the Government. Perhaps a user who reads Chinese can confirm this. Adoring nanny (talk) 11:27, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

This is completely unrelated to the topic being discussed, this is about COVID deaths and linking to an unrelated article which "The neutrality of this article is disputed" does not improve your point. Xoltered (talk)

Are student newspapers considered independent RS when assessing notability of fellow students at the same university?

My presumption was that they were covered under the reasoning "organizations/companies are not independent of their membership". In my opinion this is regardless of whether the newspaper is/calls itself "independent" of the university, since that applies to editorial and/or funding independence but not independence from the interests of the university nor from its student body. This seems consistent with community consensus alleged by DGG in this AfD close, and by Bearcat in numerous AfD comments, but has there been a more formal discussion anywhere? JoelleJay (talk) 19:45, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

• See WP:RSSM BilledMammal (talk) 19:48, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

  Thank you, I didn't think to search "student media" in wikipedia space, just "student newspapers". However, the section is mainly on whether student media is reliable; the part on whether it can be used for notability doesn't cite a prior discussion. Was it also covered in the cited reliability discussions? Or is it just considered a clear extension of the instructions at WP:INDY? JoelleJay (talk) 21:29, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

• Generally speaking, it's fine to sparingly use student media, so long as WP:GNG has already been covered off by stronger sources, to source a few stray facts that you really can't find anything better for; for instance, a student media outlet might sometimes be the only source you can find for the matter of where a notable person actually attended school. But you're correct that they aren't viewed as independent sources when it comes to topics relating to the university or college they serve, and they definitely aren't enough to bring the GNG all by themselves if a topic has no non-trivial coverage in general market media — for instance, the president of a university's or college's student government or a collegiate athlete is not going to clinch inclusion in an international encyclopedia just because they can show some coverage in their school's student newspaper, and student media isn't necessarily enough in and of itself to justify a standalone article about every individual building on campus, if there's no coverage in conventional commercial media to supplement it with.
  We treat student media as acceptable for sourcing additional facts after notability has already been fulfilled by stronger sources, but not contributing anything toward the initial question of whether a topic has cleared the notability bar in the first place. Bearcat (talk) 19:57, 8 January 2022 (UTC)
• I'd use them very sparingly. I wouldn't use them to connote notability - David Gerard (talk) 00:28, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

  SInce I was mentioned, I think Bearcat and David Gerard see it the same way I do. DGG ( talk ) 01:38, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

• My opinion is that coverage in student newspapers does nothing toward establishing notability of students at the same university where they are published, because those newspapers are inherently focused toward coverage of their own university, and internal matters at the school (including its students) would not necessarily be of note to the rest of the world. In addition, I would also be reluctant to use a student newspaper as a reliable source for anything controversial. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 04:48, 10 January 2022 (UTC)
• I would say no for fellow students. For alumni they can be used sparingly. If a student is so exceptional that they become notable before graduation, it will surely be covered in other sources. --SVTCobra 05:09, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

Now that it's closed, could people here perhaps address the "student media is independent" claims made in this AfD more directly? I think the confusion demonstrated here indicates more explicit instruction at RSP or RS or INDY is warranted. BilledMammal, Bearcat, David Gerard, DGG, Metropolitan90, SVTCobra. JoelleJay (talk) 21:24, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

• I don't fault the closer exactly but that's the sort of outcome that discredits the entire concept of subject notability guidelines. Mackensen (talk) 21:37, 14 January 2022 (UTC)
• I would place student newspapers in the same category as local small town papers. They might be reliable for specific facts, but coverage in them does not indicate notability. Perhaps we need WP:Big fish in a small pond to deal with people who get lots of local coverage, but nothing beyond that. Blueboar (talk) 21:48, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

• I am of this mindset as well. Sergecross73 msg me 18:24, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

  @Blueboar & @Sergecross73 Please see Draft:Big fish in a small pond and feel free to help write it. I have just put down a few initial thoughts, it needs a proper structure and flow as well as wikilinks to relevant P&G pages.Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 14:39, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

• My comments above cover this situation exactly. A profile of a student-athlete in a student newspaper at her own university doesn't count toward establishing her notability. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 18:56, 15 January 2022 (UTC)
  • An additional thought… in much of the English speaking world, university level athletics are (often) covered by at least regional news outlets. So, if a student run paper has covered a student athlete, there is a good chance that there is also at least some coverage of that athlete in non-student media. I would not necessarily expect this for other aspects of campus life (such as student dramatics or student government)… but the point is still valid: WP:BEFORE applies. Check for other sources. Blueboar (talk) 20:50, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

    Are you commenting specifically on the Dennis AfD, or just in general? JoelleJay (talk) 23:50, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

• I would generally consider that student publications wouldn't be applicable for general notability of subjects at their own university (and, arguably, related universities. For example: student newspapers covering the athletes of a conference rival's team). If a topic is actually generally notable, it should have coverage beyond those publications. Once it's deemed notable, WP:RSSM suggests those student publications can be reliable for describing the topic. Bakkster Man (talk) 16:25, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
• Not reliable for the context at AfD as these sources cannot be considered truly "independent" for the purposes of establishing notability. I would consider them reliable if we already have established notability using outside and wider-readership sources. But these outlets are too small and hyper-focused on these campuses to be useful for establishing wiki-worthy notability. This is most readily detailed in WP:RSSM — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 14:07, 23 January 2022 (UTC)
• Student media does not confer notability in practice, regardless of if student media is a reliable source for facts. Something is most likely not notable when the only source covering that thing is student media + one other independent non-trivial RS. Student media can be independent of a particular entity associated with its university, but not all are. At the University of Notre Dame, for instance, The Observer and The Irish Rover exert full editorial independence from the University's administration, but Scholastic has seen at least one story banned from publication by Notre Dame's administration in recent years. I'm fine citing reliable collegiate newspapers for basic facts (and even facts about controversies at the school) provided that the article has parity of sources and that we're abiding by due weight so as to not overemphasize the student perspective, but that isn't really an RS question. And obviously, while there exist reliable student newspapers, there also exist unreliable ones—these should be evaluated just like we would evaluate other local newspapers: for their fact-checking and editorial control, as well as editorial independence in the context for which the newspaper is being used as a source for facts. — Mhawk10 (talk) 04:52, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

EP Today

EP Today (eptoday.com) is identified as a fake news site both in a Wikipedia article (Fake_news_in_India#Fake_news_against_Pakistan) and in a report (https://www.disinfo.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/20191213_InfluencingPolicymakers-with-Fake-media-outlets.pdf) by the EU Disinformation Task Force. This was discussed briefly in an earlier Reliable Sources discussion without any resolution.

I propose that eptoday be blacklisted.

Currently, EPToday is referenced in 10 articles (one being the Fake News in India wiki article). Some of the references appear to have legitimate sources, but the topics are outside my expertise, so I don't think I'm the right person to fix these references. Using the search term "insource:eptoday.com" the articles are

1. Religion in Pakistan

   The focus of Islamic principles creates a system of institutionalised discrimination that filters down into society. Moreover, the Constitution sets up the Council of Islamic Ideology, tasked with ensuring Islamic ideology is followed in governmental decisions, actions and policy making.

2. Syed Ali Shah Geelani

   After record voting percentage in Kashmir, Geelani, along with other separatists, were criticised by Indian media for misleading people of Kashmir and for not representing true sentiments of Kashmiri people.

3. Fake news in India
4. All Parties Hurriyat Conference
5. Rod Rosenstein
6. Religious discrimination in Pakistan
7. Mark Hendrick
8. Religious Minorities in Pakistan
9. Edward McMillan-Scott
10. Forced conversion of minority girls in Pakistan

rsjaffe 🗩 🖉 21:09, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

rsjaffe, procedurally this is somewhat of a malformed RfC (see WP:RFC) so the tag should be removed. I also think the scope needs to be broadened, there are a lot of other obscure sites like this one with similar use cases. By the way, the link to the previous discussion is at Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 281 § Indian fake media outlets. Looking at it, the idea for blacklisting was brought up before but no one took it up after that. Since then the use case seems to have increased, so I'd think we should go forward with it now. Give me some time to gather a list of the most relevant sites and I'll start an RfC. Tayi Arajakate _Talk 14:23, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

OK. I removed the tag. rsjaffe 🗩 🖉 15:03, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

In Edward McMillan-Scott's article, it's an external link to an article he authored. At Rod Rosenstein the source was unnecessary and another could be used. I've not looked at the Indian/Pakistan related articles yet. Posting this at RSN was a good idea, as it may also result in an eventual RSP entry if discussed enough. Blacklisting would be more likely if the source was spammed. Deprecation may be possible but is unlikely at a first discussion or if it's easily manageable (there are few citations at current time). —PaleoNeonate – 00:59, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

The external link might be a BLP violation. See the follow-up story from BBC which states, "EU Chronicle was born in May this year when EP Today, a site flagged in the previous disinformation report, was simply discontinued and renamed...A group of MEPs appear regularly in the investigation. One of them, French MEP Thierry Mariani, has written two op-eds for EU Chronicle and was also part of a controversial visit to Indian-administered Kashmir last year...Two other MEPs named in the report - Angel Dzhambazki from Bulgaria and Grzegorz Tobiszowski from Poland - denied having written op-eds that were published on EU Chronicle." So it seems uncertain whether those who have articles attributed to them have truly written them, I'd think this at least needs a secondary source for any kind of inclusion. Tayi Arajakate _Talk 15:50, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

Interesting read and rather concerning. WP:ELNO has criteria 2 that may justify removing external links as well: "Any site that misleads the reader by use of factually inaccurate material or unverifiable research, except to a limited extent in articles about the viewpoints that the site is presenting." —PaleoNeonate – 05:22, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

RFC: Should deprecation RFCs be open to all users or restricted?

The Counterpunch deprecation RFC appeared to have multiple contributors who were fresh editors/accounts. WP:RFCs have conventionally allowed all contributors, including IPs. Is this appropriate to deprecation RFCs?

• Option 1: Keep open to all contributors, as per WP:RFC.
• Option 2: Require autoconfirmed status from contributors.
• Option 3: Similar requirements to extended confirmed protection: 30 days, 500 edits.
• Option 4: something else.

- David Gerard (talk) 18:40, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

Survey: Should deprecation RFCs be open to all users or restricted?

• Option 3 for ALL RfCs and AfDs. -- Valjean (talk) 18:47, 11 January 2022 (UTC)
  • This is specifically for deprecation RFCs, but the latter might be an idea - David Gerard (talk) 19:01, 11 January 2022 (UTC)
• Option 1: If deprecation RfCs are the first type of RFC in the 20 year history of this site to require ECP to prevent disruption, I feel like that says more about deprecation RfCs than it does about non-EC editors. (That's excluding topical discussions, i.e. ARBPIA ones.) In the Jewish Chronicle RfC, the sockpuppets were all EC editors. Clearly there's some disruption going on in deprecation RfCs currently, but I don't think this sweeping restriction is a good way to manage it. And frankly there are many other issues with deprecation and its RfCs, as outlined in Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Deprecated and unreliable sources, that should be tackled rather than disenfranchising even more editors. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 18:48, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

  Also what is a "deprecation RfC"? Any RfC that has deprecation as a possible option, i.e. the modern standard format for RSN discussions? So an RfC started on the reliability of the BBC (i.e. clearly generally reliable) would also prohibit EC editors, since it would likely contain an option 4 option, even though no editor would seriously vote for it. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 18:50, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

• Option 3 - this is deep nuts and bolts of Wikipedia stuff. Views of fresh editors might be appropriate to the discussion, but not to the survey - David Gerard (talk) 19:01, 11 January 2022 (UTC)
• Option 1. RfCs are not a vote, so closers should evaluate consensus based on quality of arguments rather than pure vote counts. Moreover, restricting participation in discussions to autoconfirmed users goes against the founding principles of Wikipedia. – Anne drew 19:17, 11 January 2022 (UTC)
• Option 1. But obvious SPAs should be tagged and that should be considered at closing, as Wikipedia:Single-purpose account already advises. - MrOllie (talk) 19:20, 11 January 2022 (UTC)
• Weak option 1 - While RfCs are not votes, votes do have unconscious effects on those reading threads. I don't like the idea that editors without ample experience using sources should be able to influence the discussion on the depreciation of sources. However, I'm not entirely convinced of such a heavy restriction, at least for now.A. C. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 19:24, 11 January 2022 (UTC)
• Option 1 - shocker I know, but ECP is meant to deter socking, or at least that is why it was developed. And things like the CP RFC show why that is needed, especially for any source even tangentially related, as it allows, as another editor wrote in the AC clarification request, ECP-prohibited editors from the IP area can easily skew a discussion on sourcing when it is a general review rather than a close look at what the sources are being used for, because you can argue the broad review of a newspaper isnt covered by broadly construed, but you cant do so when the topic is specifically about IP. So for discussions on sources that are largely used in affected topic areas covered by ECP that prevention of socking basis for implementing ECP holds. But for anything else it does not. Lets say I, newbie editor adding a source to an article that interests me, finds that the source is challenged here and it devolves, as sadly too many threads here do, in to a deprecation RFC. Why shouldnt I be able to participate? The only basis for ECP is to prevent throwaway socks from swaying the content, and for some topic areas it is needed. Largely it is not. nableezy - 19:28, 11 January 2022 (UTC)
• Option 3 - I got your point Nableezy, but I believe an option 3 is still a correct approach under the current circumstances. That may change with time but not now. - GizzyCatBella🍁 21:16, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

@GizzyCatBella: What circumstances? Why is it correct? Pabsoluterince (talk) 05:48, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

• Options 1 or 2 - My impression is that an experienced closer would take in consideration SPAs and IP addresses, although it's admitedly common for them to generate a lot of noise during discussions. 2 might mitigate it slightly without being too restrictive. This may also be unnecessary since a page can occasionally be protected when required after significant disruption. —PaleoNeonate – 01:04, 12 January 2022 (UTC)
• Option 1, but note exceptions such as ARBPIA. Under the ARBPIA General Sanctions, non-ec editors are not allowed to participate in RfCs in the ARBPIA area. This is an Arbcom ruling that we can't change here. The same goes if there are similar Arbcom rulings in other areas. Zero^talk 01:25, 12 January 2022 (UTC)
• Option 2 - While I recommend that new users get involved in as much as they can, I doubt that a reader or a user with almost no experience regarding Wikipedia's running would have anything major - yet constructive - to say about it. Some kind of loose boundary may be appropriate for our inner workings. Liamyangll (talk to me! | My contribs!) 02:55, 12 January 2022 (UTC)
• Option 1 as per Nableezy. I understand the rationale for a change, but I think it would have negative un-intended consequences. Often discussions, including RfCs, on this noticeboard concern sources used in specialist areas, where specialist knowledge rather than experience of WP policy is useful. For example, if we were discussing Czech sources, an inexperienced, non-ECR editor who reads Czech and knows about Czech scholarship or Czech media may make a more useful contribution than an experienced ECR editor who doesn't. Excluding the former might lead to a less well informed decision, and also bake in our systemic biases. A decent closer isn't counting !votes anyway, but giving more weight to evidence-based and policy-based comments in determining consensus, so any less well-informed contributions of less experienced editors shouldn't harm the discussion. BobFromBrockley (talk) 12:57, 12 January 2022 (UTC)
• comment Not much more to add, often a new user will waste our time on arguments that are not policy based. This may not be an issue on normal talk pages. But here we really need policy-based arguments. I was going to go for one, but 3 will save a lot of time in explaining why an argument is flawed. But there is also the argument that a lot of experienced editors are not much better (especially where NPOV is concerned). So I am torn between 1 and 3. I guess I lean to 1 as I do not want to see cabals being able to force through what they want.Slatersteven (talk) 13:06, 12 January 2022 (UTC)
• Nope its Option 1 as I am unsure that this thread is a good example of how much better experienced editors are at behaving.Slatersteven (talk) 18:16, 12 January 2022 (UTC)
• Option 3 will weed out the off-site trolls who only have an interest in the supporting/opposing Counterpunch (and future ones), and no interest in its usage in the Wikipedia. ValarianB (talk) 13:09, 12 January 2022 (UTC)
• Option 3 - this is an area where the quality of our discussions will improve if the editors participating are required to have a modicum of experience. Levivich 14:34, 12 January 2022 (UTC)
• Option 3 - with sadness. But as said previously, I think it will improve discussions, and I hope, lessen the "deprecation-as-political-proxy-war" feeling that sometimes pervades the place. Cheers. Dumuzid (talk) 14:36, 12 January 2022 (UTC)
• Option 1 but also Option 4 - If we must have these general RSN RFCs then they should be open to as many commenters as possible and it is the job of the closer to weigh the !votes cast per Wikipedia:NOTAVOTE. However, it is very obvious that these general RFCs are very often simply opened to declare a source "bad", unconnected to any article-content, and this is the real problem that needs to be addressed. Editors should not be surprised that when they try to declare a source as effectively unusable, often as part of a "political proxy war" where they try to "kill" a source "with fire" (to quote a particularly prominent advocate of these general reliability RFCs), that their supporters come here to defend them. Option 4 is simply to stop having general reliability RFCs unless there is clear evidence of an actual existing article-content problem that is widespread in the encyclopaedia (e.g., the source is cited on more than a certain number of articles, for example 1000). FOARP (talk) 16:01, 12 January 2022 (UTC)
• Option 1 Wikipedia should not become a bubble restricted to those with certain qualifications. I strongly oppose option 3 for that reason. Unproductive comments will simply be ignored by the closer; there is very little harm in allowing ips and new accounts to participate, while openness in our processes and decisions is of the utmost importance. Zoozaz1 (talk) 17:59, 12 January 2022 (UTC)
• Option 3 Per David, Dumuzid and Levivich._signed, Rosguill ^talk 18:47, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

  Having read others' arguments and reflected on it more, while I think that Option 3 is preferable to the status quo (or perhaps more accurately, the status quo ante counterpunchum), I'm swayed by arguments that it doesn't make sense to codify essentially unprecedented bureaucracy around RSN RfCs while the very definition of deprecation remains up in the air. We may well want to consider removing the deprecation option from the "standard" reliability RfC, and would suggest that if we're going to keep deprecation as a process, it only be considered in cases where a source has already been subject to multiple discussions (perhaps: multiple discussions with consensuses for general unreliability) and where it's clear that a source cannot be trusted even for basic journalistic integrity (e.g. falsifies its own contributors' work) _signed, Rosguill ^talk 13:47, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

• Option 1 - RFCs should be open to all, including this subset of them. An issue that one finds particularly important might drive them to create an account or chime in without one. Discussions always have and should be open to all. — Godsy ^(TALK_CONT) 19:46, 12 January 2022 (UTC)
• Option 3, or failing that option 2. There is too much of an indication that they're being targeted by ban-evaders and the like, especially for RFCs on sources that cover controversial areas that are themselves under ECP protection. While it's certainly true that it is not a vote, the reality is that most closers are reluctant to close an RFC against a clear numerical consensus; and many people will not even want to bother to weigh in on an RFC where the numerical consensus seems clear (the sharply different results we're seeing in the previous vs. current Counterpunch RFCs point to this effect.) Yes, we have tools to limit the impact of socking or offsite canvassing; but those require significant time and effort on the part of both contributors and closers. The ability to take overwhelming results as a general indicator is important to avoid wasted energy; if socking and meatpuppetry and the like are at a level where RFCs regularly require laser-tight attention from everyone to prevent shenangians, that's not a sustainable situation. ECP exists specifically to prevent us from wasting energy and effort in those circumstances. --Aquillion (talk) 21:52, 12 January 2022 (UTC)
• Option 1. This seems like a bad idea to me, because it basically amounts to official formalization of a process that isn't even a policy or guideline. Wikipedia:Deprecated sources is an information page. The deprecation process itself is currently under discussion regarding what it actually means, how it should work, and what the outcome of deprecation should be -- if we don't know what the heck a process should be, it hardly seems like an appropriate time to be talking about how to more effectively gatekeep it. As ProcrastinatingReader mentioned above, if deprecation RfCs are truly such a cesspit that we need to adopt some bizarre practice that isn't done for any other type of RfC on the entire project, we should at least consider that it may be the process which needs to be changed, and not the type of editor allowed to participate in it. jp×g 05:28, 13 January 2022 (UTC)
• Option 1: Slatersteven says that often a new user will waste our time on arguments that are not policy based. Unfortunately, such is true of people with over 10,000 edits. ProcrastinatingReader makes a pretty compelling argument that this is not a clear/enforceable question, as "deprecation RfC" is not a particularly well-defined term: the problematic CounterPunch RfC had the same format as ones used to add uncontroversially reliable sources like The Mail & Guardian, which a non-ECP editor may plausibly be able to start. When it comes to disruption like socking at RfCs or AfDs, the problem is not in lacking rules to be able to enforce the situation, but in detection, or possibly in correct assessment of consensus by closers. It has become clear over the last few years that those who go all in with the goal of damaging Wikipedia can pass any new hurdle added (except—that we know of—adminship). — Bilorv (talk) 22:02, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

  I also said ". But there is also the argument that a lot of experienced editors are not much better (especially where NPOV is concerned".Slatersteven (talk) 12:43, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

• Option 1: consensus isn't a vote, and so bad arguments by new editors shouldn't carry much weight. Tol (talk | contribs) @ 05:29, 14 January 2022 (UTC)
• Option 4 A "Deprecation RFC" should be a straight yes or no open to all following a prior process discussing the source.Selfstudier (talk) 12:40, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

  No, it shouldn't. See WP:NOTAVOTE. There's no good reasons why this kind of RfC should follow any other format from the usual, time-tested one. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 14:06, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

  Well, if you define the "the usual, time-tested one" as a "Deprecation RFC", no there isn't.Selfstudier (talk) 14:16, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

  RfCs in general (what I was referring to), at RSN or elsewhere, have a well-defined format, and like all other discussions on Wikipedia, it is expected that contributors be able to back-up their "yes" or "no" with proper arguments. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 14:19, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

  I agree that whether it is a choice of 2 or a choice of 4, its not a vote. I am also aware of Wikipedia talk:Reliable sources/Noticeboard#RFC questions Selfstudier (talk) 14:25, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

• Option 1 IPs are humans too, and people making bad arguments (in RfCs or anywhere else) is not a problem unique to IPs or even to inexperienced users (see this, from an admin with no less than a 100000 edits!!), nor are canvassing or sockpuppetry concerns unique to anywhere (and when they do happen, it is usually not too hard to address them). This is WP:CREEP based on seemingly one current example (and making rules to address current "problems" is rarely a good usage of time, especially if it is not truly a widespread problem) which serves no useful purpose. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 14:06, 14 January 2022 (UTC)
• Option 1. Aside from the fact that this blatantly flies in the face of Wikipedia's standard that discussions are WP:NOTAVOTE, WP:ANYONECANEDIT, and the whole ideas that editors are equal, I could very easily abuse this process against non-ECP users by just starting a 4-option discussion/RfC whenever I am disputing the quality of source with a non ECP editor, rather than making a regular posting to RSN. Presto chango their opinions don't matter as when I go back to the discussion on the talk page I can point to the "global consensus" they weren't allowed to participate in. There's a saying called "hard cases make bad law" and it's highly applicable here. If we view this in the context of Counterpunch, an extreme outlier, I can see the urge to vote for Option 3. But we're really just telling editors to fuck off from any and all 4 option RfCs on sources and that's the majority of meaningful discussions here.

I also hate this idea that "new editors shouldn't start with internal Wikipedia processes". I started editing through countervandalism and NPP and all the complicated internal policy stuff. Maybe I'm an outlier, but I'd hazard a guess that there are others like me. So what if a new editor wants to start editing by commenting at RSN or AfD? There are other ways to help this encyclopedia than content creation. If they make bad votes the closer can easily disregard them in current practice. Chess (talk) (please use {{reply to|Chess}} on reply) 02:23, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

• Option 1. See my comment in the section below. Let's not get too focused on regulating a process that governs a process. Trust the judgement of the editors making discussions. An editor closing a discussion can discount arguments based on their strength. feminist (talk) 08:04, 15 January 2022 (UTC)
• Option 1 Closers are bright folks. They can assess the consensus and take into account SPA's and new accounts, and decide in context what weight to give their votes. If we are to exclude new editors from engaging in our central discussions, we hasten our demise. How else will we create new editors able to carry the project into the future? CaptainEek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 19:55, 15 January 2022 (UTC)
• Option 1. IPs and new-to-enwiki users may well have considerable expertise with esoteric or non-English sources. The closer should be able to discount or underweight comments that appear solicited or are unsupported by policy. Espresso Addict (talk) 23:17, 17 January 2022 (UTC)
• Option 1. Closers can appropriately weight contributions when necessary if there's a need to do so. Stifle (talk) 14:18, 18 January 2022 (UTC)
• Option 1 I understand the concern regarding off site sock/meat !votes but I have faith in our closers to keep that in mind. Additionally, a strong argument presented by an IP is still a strong argument and shouldn't be outright blocked even if we should discount unregistered "shows of support". Springee (talk) 14:46, 18 January 2022 (UTC)
• Option 4. Deprecation RfCs should end. Unfortunately in 2019 RFC: Moratorium on "general reliability" RFCs did not result in any restriction, but I think more people are starting to realize they're bad, so eventually I'm hopeful we can end them. It won't happen here, but if/when it does this RfC won't matter. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 15:35, 18 January 2022 (UTC)
• Option 4. I agree with Peter above. It's time to deprecate deprecation RfCs. This has gotten totally out of control. – wbm1058 (talk) 04:33, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
• Option 1 Counterpunch is an outlier because a large portion of its use on this website is in relation to PIA. The vast majority of sources are not, so putting restrictions on all source deprecation RFCs just to address a single outlier seems like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole, except that the square peg is actually a sledgehammer. Many, if not all of the !votes here for option 3 are in the context of Counterpunch, either explicitly or implicitly. If socking was a serious problem at the Counterpunch RFC (which it may have been, I don't know), then surely there must be another way to address it that doesn't involve banning IPs and new users from all source discussions. Mlb96 (talk) 04:36, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
• Option 1 - leave it open. I am also of the mind that common sense and knowing when to use IAR applies to deprecated sources in certain circumstances. Atsme 💬 📧 08:23, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
• Option 1. We don't restrict participation in other RFC types, so why start here? If problems arise in future RFCs here, we have tools to address them. Calidum 17:05, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
• Option 1. What specific issue would this solve? We have policies against sock-/meatpuppetry, vandalism, trolling, general uncivility, etc.; RfCs are not majority vote affairs, and why should (auto-)confirmed users make better arguments/be more knowledgeable about sources than new or IP users? The description of this RfC does not clarify why it should be appropriate to restrict participation in deprecation RfCs. TucanHolmes (talk) 09:38, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
• Option 1 We already have ways to handle SPAs and such, I see no need to restrict participation. — csc^-1 13:22, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
• Option 1 Flies in the face of WP:NOTAVOTE, WP:ANYONECANEDIT. RFCs are not votes. Closers should evaluate the strength of the arguments presented, not sure how socks and new editors can interfere with that. Especially don't like the diminishment of the contributions of new (or just low edit) editors. Pabsoluterince (talk) 16:22, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
• Option 3. Submitting any meaningful RfC does require some experience. My very best wishes (talk) 00:18, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

@My very best wishes: Did you see what Bobfrombrockley wrote above? That specialist knowledge can be more valuable to the discussion than experience on Wikipedia. Pabsoluterince (talk) 05:48, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

Imo, the main reason to go for option 3 is the unclarity around deprecation, otoh that is the main reason why I went for option 1, either way, it needs clarification.Selfstudier (talk) 11:02, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

Option 3 as we want to avoid the influence from canvassing, off-wiki coordination, political proxy battles, etc. Do we have means to contextualize these? yes. Are these means perfect or even all that good? No, not really. I think we need more precise ways to keep these Deprecation discussions on point, measured, and principled. I respect the contributions of anonymous editors or extremely new editors, but no one can deny these are vehicles for spurious input which may harm the project in these instances. We have demonstrated examples of this happening (e.g. IceWhiz alts, etc) where bad actors have used the system to their advantage, to make a mockery of the project. We must do all we can to avoid such things. — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 14:43, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

• Option 1 / weak Option 2 RfC's are not a vote. If it's really just that bad, maybe Option 2 could be used, but it seems that RfC's should be open to everyone, should we restrict them just because it's annoying to deal with certain people? TheGEICOgecko (talk) 20:04, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

Discussion: Should deprecation RFCs be open to all users or restricted?

• I filed this because it seems a good idea to me and some others, but it's a major change in how we approach RFCs, which have long been open to all comers - David Gerard (talk) 19:00, 11 January 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose per WP:CREEP We don't need to have a new policy that ban WP:SOCKs and WP:MEATs from specific RFCs. We already have those policies. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 18:55, 11 January 2022 (UTC)
• Comment Per above, "Deprecation RFC" is an undefined term. We should have a deprecation policy or at least a formal guideline before any more tinkering.Selfstudier (talk) 19:12, 11 January 2022 (UTC)
• Comment I think this discussion should be listed in WP:CENT because it is a drastic change. – Anne drew 19:15, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

  Agree. A. C. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 19:28, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

  Feel free - David Gerard (talk) 20:59, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

  Added to WP:CENT. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 14:43, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

• I should note also, there was also discussion asking to retrospectively declare that ECP applied to the CounterPunch deprecation RFC on the basis of WP:ARBPIA - David Gerard (talk) 20:59, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

Yes, discussions in topic areas covered by ECP should have ECP applied to the noticeboard discussions, including RSN RFCs. And the fact that those RFCs have such heavy socking demonstrates why. But outside of that I cant think of a basis for it. nableezy - 21:17, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

That gets really complicated in its own way, though, in that... to use Counterpunch as an example, say. Clearly it has taken a strident side on the ARBPIA issue, and clearly (based on, if nothing else, Icewhiz's focus) at least some of the sockpuppetry and the like was from editors whose opinion on the source was decided solely by that ARBPIA issue, which meant they were using the RFC to weigh in on an ECP topic area by proxy. At the same time, though, it's not like that's the sole defining feature of Counterpunch's coverage - people who were only vaguely familiar with the source might not realize it, and even when quickly going over secondary coverage of it it might not come up (eg. when I was searching for academic reactions to and discussions of Counterpunch, their position on Israel rarely came up directly.) There are absolutely situations where editors will eg. judge an entire source based on a handful of things related to an ECP topic area that are not necessarily actually that important in the grand scope of the source as a whole; and that is going to be tricky to apply ECP for on a case-by-case basis. Especially since (for example) Icewhiz is going to be smart enough to not mention Israel when saying why he's taking a position on a source with his latest sock, even if that's actually the only reason he's weighing in at all. Unless we already know it's him (in which case he'd just be banned), how would we prove an editor is taking a position on a source for its stance on an ECP topic? Especially if it's an editor in good standing, who we otherwise AGF about? --Aquillion (talk) 22:00, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

I dont think it actually is that complicated. The topics covered are, on purpose, defined to be very broadly construed. But just look at the threads IW has been having 4-6 socks at a time involved in. They are sources that are widely used in the topic areas that are restricted. Those topic areas are restricted because of the pervasive socking of people like NoCal100 and Icewhiz. By opening this well its a general review and not specifically about a topic area you are getting played. If you look at many of the past discussions on CP you will find they were often focused specifically on ARBPIA topics. For example, Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_181#What_is_the_verdict_of_the_2008_discussion_on_Counterpunch, Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_10#CounterPunch, Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_110#CounterPunch_reliability. Yes it covers other topics, obviously, but the reason you have IW and NoCal100 involved is to affect the topics that are EC-restricted. The entire point of EC, when it was first created, was to make sockpuppetry less of an issue in topic areas that have suffered sustained abusive sockpuppetry (and two NoCal100 socks being banned in one AC case is a pretty good example of that sustained issue). I dont think we need to prove anything about any users particular motivation. If the source is widely used in an ECP topic area, the noticeboard discussions should be treated as requiring EC to participate. Because we have seen, over and over, the impact of sockpuppetry has been significantly more disruptive than the positives of allowing unrestricted access. And CP, as well as the Jewish Chronicle RFC, demonstrate that better than I could ever try. That is two RFCs that IW by himself has been able to be a deciding factor in the outcome. There are a bunch of discussions on sources in the WP:APL topic area where the majority of commentators were IW socks. And I for the life of me cannot understand how users are supposedly in "good faith" making it easier for him to do so again. There is a reason "broadly construed" and not "narrowly construed" is how we determine what is or is not covered. nableezy - 16:28, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

Comment: Just to note that GizzyCatBella has applied this policy on this page below, although we have not reached a conclusion. Editors may think this is necessary to protect the integrity of that discussion, which I guess makes it a good example to think with in informing a decision here. BobFromBrockley (talk) 15:08, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

Thats a comment specifically about ARBPIA, and pretending like it does not fall under it is just silly. That has nothing to do with the wider question of should all RFCs be treated as such. So no, GCB did not apply this policy, GCB applied existing policy there. nableezy - 15:32, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

The policy is in effect as per ArbCom ruling until conclusion is reached. (why are we trying to overturn ArbCom’s ruling again?) - GizzyCatBella🍁 15:33, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

Although I support this RFC, I've unstruck the struck comment, because neither the comment nor the RFC it was made in are covered by ARBPIA. More detailed explanation in the thread. Levivich 16:23, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

That is absurd, the comment is specifically about an ARBPIA topic. Ill take this to AN. nableezy - 16:28, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

Here, let me get the diff for you: Special:Diff/1065201226. I'm looking forward to reading your explanation of which of the words in that diff relate to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Or are you gonna try and argue that if a non-ECP editor links to a source that mentions the conflict, they should have their entire comment struck, even if the comment doesn't mention the conflict, and it's made in an RFC that's not about the conflict? Like, you think 30/500 in ARBPIA means that a non-ECP editor can't even link to a source that mentions the conflict anywhere on Wikipedia without having the comment struck? I don't think that interpretation is gonna fly. Levivich 16:37, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

The words Israel Shamir. The RFC largely focuses on sources in the Arab-Israeli topic area. See for example my comments about Edward Said or Uri Avnery or Zero's list of sources. The RFC is covered, and I dont want to waste another keystroke discussing with people who so blatantly stick up for obvious socks and meatpuppets. nableezy - 16:54, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

No one here is defending socks and such accusation is not productive to say the least but more general question should be discussed does CP RFC covered by the restriction or no Shrike (talk) 17:00, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

Well besides users restoring comments by people they say no doubt is a sock then yeah maybe nobody else is defending socks. Maybe. nableezy - 17:30, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

"The words Israel Shamir": Are you saying it falls under ARBPIA because the word "Israel" is in his name? Because the quote was about the concept of genocide in an article about Russia, and the overwhelming majority of Shamir's CounterPunch articles are about Russia and Ukraine. This is extending the scope of ARBPIA to extraordinary lengths. Also, I was not "pretending" anything and am getting quite frustrated at the assumptions of bad faith going on here. BobFromBrockley (talk) 18:09, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

Im going to assume that this is a serious question and not a bad attempt at trolling, but no, not because his name is Israel (wtf???). See Talk:Israel Shamir for why discussing Israel Shamir is covered under ARBPIA. The topic of Israel Shamir is in the ARBPIA topic area. nableezy - 18:21, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

If you think there is a sock report them, but do not use just your assumptions or accusations to strike users comments. Launch a wp:spi and let admins do it.Slatersteven (talk) 17:07, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

lol. Maybe pay attention, the reason it was struck was because it is in the ARBPIA topic area. As far as obvious sock, do you mean I should strike something? Or Levivich saying no doubt the editor is a sock? Or maybe Shrike? jfc. nableezy - 17:29, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

I mean you do not get to decide who is a sock. There is a procedure for that.Slatersteven (talk) 17:40, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

And who said I did? nableezy - 17:55, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

I'm honest about obvious socking, and you're using that against me. Had I said "can't be sure if it's a sock", you would have used that against me, also. If I disagree with you, that's "defending a sock" or "sticking up for a sock". Can't win with you. It's either agree with you, or else I'm "demanding", "abusing process", "defending socks", etc. etc., ad hominem, ad hominem, ad hominem. Levivich 18:02, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

This is being discussed as AN can we drop this now, and also if you have an issue with users please just report them.Slatersteven (talk) 18:04, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

• Commenters may wish to review this discussion that is likely related. --Izno (talk) 18:14, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

  Closed version of that Selfstudier (talk) 18:21, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

  I have a hard time discerning what the consensus of arbs was in that discussion, but if it's summarized in this comment by L235: But a source that covers many things including some things that are related to an ECR topic is not covered (unless the RSN discussion substantially relates to the ECR topic). Again, this should be determined case-by-case. I think CounterPunch is such a source, and I personally don't think that the RSN discussion "substantially relates" to ARBPIA (because it's about general reliability, not about a specific use of a source in a specific article about ARBPIA). But if it's case-by-case, and this is a case, then I don't know how that ARCA helps us figure out if this RSN discussion is covered by ARBPIA? (And if it is, that's a whole separate grounds for enforcing 30/500, than the fact that a particular comment linked/quoted a particular person whose BLP is tagged with ARBPIA.) Levivich 18:29, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

  It doesn’t help. ArbCom didn’t answer the bigger question, the problem I posed in my statement. The general statement they did give wasn’t under dispute or subject to any confusion in the first place. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 07:33, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

• Here we have an RfC discussing who can participate on a subset of RfCs which concern a relatively recently-created internal process (WP:RSP) where the implications remain difficult to understand for many editors. Frankly, it's ridiculously meta and we are better off pondering why we got to this stage altogether. Do editors use bad sources for articles out of ignorance, incompetence, or because it helps the promotion of a particular point of view? And are we starting RfCs on reliability of sources to aid editors in citations, or as a backhanded approach of making the representation of certain viewpoints more difficult? feminist (talk) 08:03, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

This whole thing got started by a desire to "kill" the Daily Mail "with fire" (in the words of one of the main drivers of the DM ban). It was always political and never really about assisting editor in decision-making about sources. You can see this most prominently in the kind of stuff that gets brought to RSN for general reliability RFCs - it's always the subject of a political dispute and has no relation to the number of times its cited on Wikipedia. Indeed often there's no content dispute indicated at all, and no reason at all why we should be applying a blanket ban to that source. FOARP (talk) 21:17, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

• WP:CREEP applies. We already have a long-running and well-understood principle that closers can give appropriately reduced weight to contributions of new users when that is justified. Stifle (talk) 14:20, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

Deprecation RfC: CounterPunch

Should CounterPunch be deprecated?

• Option 1: Yes
• Option 2: No

RFCbefore Previous RFC

Selfstudier (talk) 22:31, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

Discussion (Deprecation RfC: CounterPunch)

• No unless expert authors who publish their articles in CP may be cited a la WP:SPS, then and only then,Yes. Selfstudier (talk) 22:49, 11 January 2022 (UTC)
• Yes, per the closing statement of the previous RFC. Per my statement in an earlier discussion, I will switch my !vote if it can be established in line with the assertions of some editors that their editorial process consists of little more than accepting or rejecting works as is (no direct control), and that their method of choosing which works to publish does not encourage creators to alter their work to increase their chances of being accepted (no indirect control), but as the evidence currently suggests that these assertions are incorrect I have to support option one per WP:SOURCES, which tells us that the reliability of a work is affected by the reliability of the publisher as well as the creator. BilledMammal (talk) 23:03, 11 January 2022 (UTC)
• No, because other reliable sources routinely cite CounterPunch articles when written by an established expert, and so too should we. For example:
  • Paul Craig Roberts work in CounterPunch has been routinely cited in other reliable sources, eg:
    • Cheyfitz, Eric (2017). The Disinformation Age: The Collapse of Liberal Democracy in the United States. Routledge Advances in American History. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 978-1-351-83908-2.
    • Bonner, Will; Wiggin, Addison (2009). The New Empire of Debt: The Rise and Fall of an Epic Financial Bubble. Wiley. ISBN 978-0-470-52871-6.
    • Wiil, U. (2011). Counterterrorism and Open Source Intelligence. Lecture Notes in Social Networks. Springer Vienna. ISBN 978-3-7091-0388-3.
  • David Price (anthropologist) work in CounterPunch has likewise been routinely cited in other reliable sources, eg:
    • Miller, Chris (2013). War on terror': The Oxford Amnesty Lectures. Oxford Amnesty Lectures. Manchester University Press. ISBN 978-1-84779-497-0.
    • Bangstad, Sindre (2017). Anthropology of Our Times: An Edited Anthology in Public Anthropology. Palgrave Macmillan US. ISBN 978-1-137-53849-9.
    • Falah, Ghazi-Walid (2008). "Geography in Ominous Intersection with Interrogation and Torture: reflections on detention in Israel". Third World Quarterly. 29 (4). Taylor & Francis: 749–766. doi:10.1080/01436590802052706. ISSN 0143-6597.
    • Brennan, Timmothy (2021). Places of Mind: A Life of Edward Said. Macmillan. ISBN 978-0-374-71471-0.
  • Edward Said work in CounterPunch has been routinely cited in other reliable sources, eg:
    • Carapico, S. (2014). Political Aid and Arab Activism: Democracy Promotion, Justice, and Representation. Cambridge Middle East Studies. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-19991-9.
    • Masalha, Nur; Isherwood, Lisa (2014). Theologies of Liberation in Palestine-Israel: Indigenous, Contextual, and Postcolonial Perspectives. Postmodern Ethics. Pickwick Publications. ISBN 978-1-61097-745-6.
    • Marrouchi, Mustapha (2012). Edward Said at the Limits. State University of New York Press. ISBN 978-0-7914-8572-9.
  • Noam Chomsky work in CounterPunch has been routinely cited in other reliable sources, eg:
    • Boggs, Carl (2013). Masters of War: Militarism and Blowback in the Era of American Empire. New Political Science Reader. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 978-1-136-72792-4.
    • Absher, Brandon (2021). The Rise of Neoliberal Philosophy: Human Capital, Profitable Knowledge, and the Love of Wisdom. Lexington Books. ISBN 978-1-7936-1599-2.

There are countless more examples of CounterPunch articles being treated as authoritative by other reliable sources. There are literal scores of world class scholars writing on CP, most days they form the majority of the columns. Beyond the named authors above, CP publishes work by Dean Baker,^[92] Charles R. Larson (scholar),^[93], Mark Weisbrot,^[94] Vijay Prashad,^[95] Neve Gordon,^[96] and a host of other noted scholars. Yes, CounterPunch has published bullshit by crackpots. They often also publish responses to that same bullshit. Yes, it published Grover Furr claiming Louis Proyect propagated "fascist lies" about the cause of the Holodomor. But that is a response to a column Proyect wrote on CP, and later rebutted, again on CP. But this was presented as though CP preferentially publishes Furr's propaganda, and not as a willingness by CP to publish all sorts of viewpoints. CP publishes a huge range of material, and some of it should not be anywhere near an encyclopedia article. But it also publishes the work of world class scholars, and it publishes material that is often times the very best possible source. David Price's uncovering of the FBI's surveillance of Edward Said is cited in every authoritative biography of Said. They all credit Price, they all cite his CP article. But we have users claiming that our biography of Said cannot include that? Deprecating CP has directly led to the degradation of our articles, the removal of authoritative scholars in their field whose work on CP is rightly cited in scores of other reliable sources. CP publishes bullshit too? Cool, dont cite that. But also dont remove sources so obviously reliable that the only reason anybody was able to present for removing it was by avoiding discussion of those sources entirely and focusing on the crap that nobody in their right mind would cite here anyway. And deprecation is being used by partisan editors who could never challenge a citation to this any other way, and it should not be permitted. If, as users argue in practice, a deprecated source may not be used under pretty much any circumstance, with users removing deprecated sources for mundane details like a person saying they are married, then CP should not be deprecated. It certainly should not be treated as though it grants some reliability to a source, but rather the reliability of any one CP article rests on the expertise of the author, and even then an author may be reliable for some topics, eg Paul Craig Roberts writing about the economy, and not for others, eg Paul Craig Roberts writing about 9/11 or really anything else. And in too many cases that is clearly reliable to deprecate, despite some users tossing out clearly reliable sources written by top quality scholars without regard for the damage they do to our articles. Also, given the extensive socking by Icewhiz and NoCal100 in the prior RFC, and the usage of this source in ARBPIA articles, and that specific examples about the source relate to the ARBPIA topic area, this should be restricted to extended-confirmed editors. nableezy - 23:05, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

• Comment This should probably be in the standard Option 1/2/3/4 format that is conventional for deprecation RFCs on RSN - David Gerard (talk) 23:10, 11 January 2022 (UTC)
• No I find deprecation to be too harsh. It's useful on a case on case basis, based on who is actually the author of the piece. The magazine publishes pieces by authors of varying quality, reliability and bias with no editorial control. It's not possible to make a general statement about the reliability of the publication. Some pieces are of great quality, some are reprinted with permission from other sources where the original might be in a print publication that is less accessible, but considered reliable source. And then there's a lot of pieces by amateur or otherwise unreliable authors. Deprecation should be for sources that are consistently unreliable, not inconsistently reliable. RoseCherry64 (talk) 00:23, 12 January 2022 (UTC)
• No, though a warning is appropriate. CP sometimes publishes articles of poor quality and we shouldn't cite them. However, the shot-gun approach of deprecation throws out the baby with the bath-water. Editors should be able to judge an article according to the expertise and reputation of the author. It is illogical to block use of a good article on the grounds that a different article is bad. In addition, the suitability of selective citation of CP is proved by its extensive citation in academic publications. The following examples are just from what is on my laptop, without any Google searching.

list of CP citations in academic publications on Zero's computer
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Ismael Abu-Saad, Palestinian Education In Israel: The Legacy Of The Military Government, Holy Land Studies, 5.1, 2006, 21-56 cites Academic freedom in Israel is central to resolving the conflict’, Counterpunch (21 May), http://www.counterpunch.com/bendor05212005.html Miriyam Aouragh, Hasbara 2.0: Israel’s Public Diplomacy in the Digital Age, Middle East Critique, cites M. Leas (2010) Delegitimizers of Israel, Counterpunch, May. Maia Carter Hallward, Negotiating Boundaries, Narrating Checkpoints: The Case of Machsom Watch. Critique Vol. 17, No. 1, 21–40, Spring 2008, cites Jonathan Cook, ‘Watching the checkpoints: daily indignities and humiliations,’ Counterpunch, 23 February 2007, available at http://www.counterpunch.org/cook02232007.html. David Kean and Valentina Azarov, UNESCO, Palestine and Archaeology in Conflict. Denver Journal of International Law and Policy, cites Ehud Krinis, David Shulman & Neve Gordon, Facing an Imminent Threat of Expulsion, Counterpunch (June 22-24, 2007), http://www.counterpunch.org/2007/06/22/facing-an-imminent-threat-of-expulsion/ . Mona Baker, Narratives of terrorism and security: ‘accurate’ translations, suspicious frames. Critical Studies in Terrorism, 3:3 (2010) 347-364. cites Harris, L., 2003. A note on MEMRI & translations. Counterpunch. 15 Jan. Available from: http://www.counterpunch.org/harris01152003.html Bashir Bashir, The Strenths and Weaknesses of Integrative Solutions for the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. The Middle East Journal, vol 70, 2 cites Edward Said, “What Price Oslo?,” CounterPunch, March 23, 2002, www.counterpunch.org/2002/03/23/what-price-oslo/ . Neil Caplan, Oom Shmoom Revisited: Sharett and Ben-Gurion (conference paper) cites Vijay Prashad, “The United Nations Equals Zero,” Counterpunch, January 16-18, 2009, http://www.counterpunch.org/prashad01162009.html . Anthony Julius, Trials of the Diaspora, Oxford Univ Press, cites Oren Ben-Dor, ‘The silencing of Oren Ben-Dor’, Counterpunch, 15–16 March 2008. Neil Caplan, The Israel-Palestine Conflict, Wiley-Blackwell, cites Roane Carey, "Dr. Benny and Mr. Morris: The Historian and the Tvlisted Politics of Expulsion," CounterPunch 19-20 July 2008, accessed 23 July 2008 at http:/lwww.counterpunch.orglcarey07192008.xhtml. Victoria Clark, Allies for Armageddon. Yale Univ Press, cites Greg Grandin, ‘Good Christ, Bad Christ?’, Counterpunch, 9/10.9.2006. and CP 27.07.2006, ‘John Bolton’s Dual Loyalties’ by Tom Barry. Orientalism & Conspiracy, eds. Graf, Fathi and Paul. I. B. Tauris. cites Lavie, A. (2003): “Partners in Pain, Arabs Study the Holocaust”, CounterPunch, 12 February 2003. Ronit Lentin, Traces of Racial Exception. Bloomsbury Academic. cites Neve Gordon and Mark LeVine, “After 50 years, time for a paradigm shift,” CounterPunch, June 8, 2017 Ronit Lentin, Co-memory and Melancholia. Manchester Univ Press cites Ophir, A. (2004) ‘Genocide hides behind expulsion: A Response to Benny Morris’, CounterPunch, 16 January www.counterpunch.org/ophir01162004.html

As well as that, there are several books by non-academic presses which are probably citable. Going to the internet, I won't list individual examples, but I'll note three counts: (1) The library of academic journals JStor cites CounterPunch over 1000 times. (2) The library of law journals HeinOnline cites CounterPunch over 800 times. (3) The Proquest One Academic database restricted to peer-reviewed publications has about 800 citations. In summary, the academic world does not consider CounterPunch to be a forbidden source, and neither should we. Zero^talk 02:56, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

Added: A more systematic estimate for JStor is that there are 700 articles which cite CounterPunch a total of 870 times. Zero^talk 01:16, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

• No - Even the list of CounterPunch citations in academic publications presented above indicates that the source should not be deprecated. - GizzyCatBella🍁 03:41, 12 January 2022 (UTC)
• No. It is absolutely true that people in the previous RFC identified a few articles whose views were indefensible; but a handful of bad articles do not discredit a source. A source's WP:RS status relies on their general reputation for fact-checking and accuracy. There is no indication that those articles had serious impact on Counterpunch's reputation; and plenty of reason to think that they were unfortunate anomolies. In addition to the WP:USEBYOTHERS above, see: , an in-depth look at high-quality anthropological research presented in Counterpunch and its implications for the ability to reach beyond the ivory tower; and , lists of progressive / alternative news sources for use in academia that specifically discuss and recommend it; and, for sources that simply use it, . The picture painted by this usage (which, note, largely postdates the objectionable articles that were the focus of the previous RFC) simply do not support the allegation that Counterpunch has a systematic problem that has harmed its reputation for fact-checking and accuracy. It is plainly a biased source and should be attributed; it is an alternative source and that has to be taken into consideration when considering WP:DUE weight. But among such sources it is plainly treated as high-quality in a way that the discussion in the previous RFC does not take into account; and it's baffling that the previous RFC was closed with, as far as I can tell, almost nobody citing any secondary sources. No matter how shockingly wrong any individual articles might seem to us, it is simply not acceptable to take the extreme step of depreciating a source based solely on our personal reading of it, especially since we're not qualified to assess whether such articles are shocking outliers or indicative of a more systemic problem. Doing my own search, coverage of the issues the previous RFC raised seems minimal and largely from partisan / opinion-oriented sources; even there, coverage often unambiguously describes it as an outlier from an otherwise high-quality source. (I don't think that the "journal of 911 studies" is an WP:RS, but the writer is at least academically-qualified and it is one of the few sources that discusses it at all.) --Aquillion (talk) 04:56, 12 January 2022 (UTC)
• Yes I'm going to quote @Mikehawk10:'s evidence from the original RFC in full here:

• Option 4: CounterPunch has a history of publishing false and fabricated information, including numerous conspiracy theories, and should be deprecated.
  1. As I noted in my comments above, the site's history of publishing 9/11 conspiracy theories is widespread. A 2019 piece claimed that WTC-7 was not hit by a plane like the rest of the complex but was bombed! The bombing let to WTC-7 being destroyed from a fire that burned for 7 hours — until the building collapsed at 5:20 p.m.. A 2021 piece endorses the conspiracy theory that the CIA deliberately planted explosives in WTC 1, WTC 2, and WTC 7 in order to ensure their collapse, citing a report by Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth. Another article seems to endorse the belief that "Zionists" were responsible for 9/11, stating that In the Western World, Corporatism has become ‘subject’ to Zionism and in consequence Capitalist Democracy has been usurped by the power of a concentrated accumulation of resources – and this- no mere product of ‘happenstance’ – but rather part of a systemic scheme whereby the rich are to get richer and the poor to get poorer? \ When 2.3 Trillion Dollars can ‘go missing’ from an Economy and disappear down a ‘memory hole’ as part of a historical revisionism aka denial; when the very day after the gone missing is ‘announced’ and the Rabbi Dov Zakheim as Comptroller is not held to account because it ‘happens’ there is an attack on the Twin Towers (also WTC 7) and the Pentagon which becomes the focus of attention and a casus belli for war then something is seriously wrong – and psycho political abuse is in operation? Let us also not forget the ‘weapons grade anthrax’ – such the ‘memory hole’?. This isn't the only piece that reiterates the antisemitic canard to attempt to tie Jews to 9/11.
  2. On the note of the piece holding "Zionists" responsible for 9/11, there's even more antisemitic conspiracy at this publication! This 2014 piece states that It is forbidden by the censors who channel acceptable opinion to draw parallels with the Nazis’ modus operandi. But if the shoe fits … \ There is Israel’s Mengelian experimentation on caged Gazans, apart from saturation bombing, with nerve gas, depleted uranium, white phosphorous and flechette shells. More, the model of the Reichstag fire false flag has been readily replicated, not least in the 1954 Lavon Affair and, most spectacularly, in 9/11 (whence the five dancing Israelis at Liberty Park?). Practice makes perfect with false flags. Add extra-judicial murders made to order. (For those unfamiliar with "dancing Israelis", see this ADL piece.)
  3. A 2017 piece in the magazine also appears to deny the Holodomor, calling it fiction.
  4. A 2018 piece appears to deny the existence of the Xinjiang internment camps, calling it a bald and barefaced accusation... made with nary a shred of supporting evidence. The piece also denies widespread abuses against Uyghurs in the region, stating that The deluge of fake news from Western corporate media since the beginning of this year seeks to demonize the Chinese government, painting it as a gross violator of human rights, when the truth is the exact opposite. Another 2018 piece described the internment of over 1 million Muslims as wild allegations. Another piece seems to recommend The Qiao Collective's Chinese state media-filled resource compilation on the topic, as well as content from deprecated source The Grayzone.
  5. And, to add on to the above, the website has a troubled history of supporting the bogus vaccine-autism conspiracy theory.
  6. Their editorial process is also rather suspect; the magazine has failed to vet the identity of freelance journalists to the extent that it has, in recent years, published literal propaganda made by the GRU without having a clue that the person they were giving a byline to did not exist. And, on top of that, the magazine didn't know that much of the language in those propaganda pieces had been plagiarized from other sources.

Taken together, I don't think consider CounterPunch as a source to be something we can use to verify facts, except possibly in an WP:ABOUTSELF fashion. (And, even with respect to ABOUTSELF, I'd use it with caution given its issues vetting who its contributors actually are.) This publication should be deprecated as a source for facts. — Mikehawk10 (talk) 03:12, 19 September 2021 (UTC)

The first bullet point was more than enough to more than convince me. A source that's claiming planes didn't hit the WTC on 9/11 belongs in the garbage. --RaiderAspect (talk) 09:06, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

Has someone tried to cite it? Zero^talk 11:52, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

• Yes, option 4. CounterPunch publishes vile material, like Israel Shamir, a Holocaust denier, who writes on CounterPunch on his definition of Genocide:

  ‘Genocide’ is a nasty invention. Just think of it: mankind lived for thousands of years, through raids of Genghis Khan and Crusades, through extermination of Native Americans, slave trade and WWI, happily butchering each other in millions, without being encumbered by the G word. This term was invented (or updated from Jewish traditional thought) by a Raphael Lemkin, a Polish Jewish lawyer, in the wake of Holocaust, in order to stress the difference between murdering Jews and killing lesser breeds. The word is quite meaningless otherwise.

  There are horrible items on CounterPunch. DoraExp (talk) 09:35, 12 January 2022 (UTC)— DoraExp (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. --Shrike (talk) 12:05, 12 January 2022 (UTC) Quote --> non-extended-confirmed editors may not make edits to internal project discussions related to the topic area, even within the "Talk:" namespace. Internal project discussions include, but are not limited to, AfDs, WikiProjects, RfCs, RMs, and noticeboard discussions.[97] - GizzyCatBella🍁 14:38, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

  Here we go again, 16 edits.99% sockpuppet profile, as in the last RfC. Nishidani (talk) 11:25, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

  Besides the obvious sock is obvious in having three edits in the last year and showing up to a noticeboard for their first edit in 5 months, this user is not extended-confirmed and is discussing the Arab-Israeli topic area (see the big banner at Talk:Israel Shamir) and should be removed. nableezy - 14:02, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

  This comment has nothing to do with ARBPIA, nor does this RFC fall under ARBPIA, as CounterPunch is not an ARBPIA-focused source. Mentioning Israel Shamir's writing about some non-ARBPIA topic doesn't make this an ARBPIA comment, and the fact that some parts of the Israel Shamir Wikipedia article are covered by ARBIA doesn't make every mention of the guy on any page covered by ARBPIA. Although I'm !voting in favor of ECPing these RFCs, that proposal doesn't have consensus yet, so there is no grounds to strike non-ECP !votes in this RFC. I've unstruck it. Leave it up to the closer to decide how to weigh !votes from new accounts. Levivich 16:22, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

• Comment: I did not previously argue for deprecation and still hesitate to do so because it does indeed sometimes publish experts, but I believe it is worse than the sources in the standard "generally unreliable" category. I'd urge anyone joining this conversation who has not already looked at the previous RfC do so (discounting the brief !vote comments made by the socks listed at the top of it, none of whom contributed substantively to the discussion). In addition to the extensive evidence from Mikehawk10 cited above, other evidence presented included the following.
  • Publication of anti-vaxx content, for example by Richard Gale, who is a hardcore anti-vaxx activist[98] who writes regularly for GlobalResearch[DOTca/author/richard-gale] and The Defender,[99] usually with Gary Null, and by Anne McElroy Dachel[100] of anti-vaxx/pro-Ivermectin/Hydroxychloroquine blog Age of Autism.[101]
  • An active preference for publishing extreme antisemitic and conspiracy theory writers such as Gilad Atzmon, Israel Shamir and Alison Weir. (who is Israel Shamir, Counterpunch's resident intelligence correspondent? Alternately known as Jöran Jermas and Adam Ermash, Shamir is a fringe writer who has devoted his professional life to exposing the supposed criminality of "Jewish power," a paranoid anti-Semite who curates a website full of links to Holocaust denial and neo-Nazi sites, defenses of blood libel myths, and references to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Ali Abunimah, Hussein Ibish, and Nigel Parry have warned their fellow Palestinian activists to avoid contact with Shamir--Reason.com 2010; Alison Weir, Israel Shamir and Gilad Atzmon] are three crypto-antisemites who have been openly circulated in the progressive world, appearing in supposedly leftist publications like CounterPunch in particular... CounterPunch...has published antisemitic writers for many years--Spencer Sunshine, Journal of Social Justice, 2019; CounterPunch keeps citing Global Research well into 2020--Emmee Bevensee, Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right , 2020 (Sunshine lists several examples here; The left-wing magazine CounterPunch has published a significant number of articles condemning Beijing’s repression of Uyghurs in Xinjiang. However, it has also occasionally featured pieces that deny any such thing is taking place.--CodaStory, 2020. See also Jovan Byford here.)
  • Publication of 9/11 truthers and Obama birthers Paul Craig Roberts [102], Wayne Madsen [103], and Mark Crispin Miller.[104]. On Miller: [9/11 and now Covid truther Mark Crispin Miller] said on an October 11 episode of CounterPunch Radio “...I now believe that anyone who uses that phrase [conspiracy theory] in a pejorative sense is a witting or unwitting CIA asset.”--Observer.com, 2017; On Roberts: "the well-known leftwing newsletter Counterpunch strayed from traditional policy by allowing one of its most popular contributors, Paul Craig Roberts, to air his Truther arguments on their website... Roberts...is a regular a contributor to infowars.com as well as Counterpunch.[105] From 2004 to 2017, Roberts, a right-winger, was one of the most published writers in CP, contributing weekly or more.[106] Our article about him says "Since retiring [i.e. in the period he wrote for CP], he has been accused of antisemitism and conspiracy theorizing by the Anti-Defamation League, Southern Poverty Law Centre and others... In the 2000s Roberts wrote a newspaper column syndicated by Creators Syndicate. Later, he contributed to CounterPunch, becoming one of its most popular writers. He has been a regular guest on programs broadcast by RT (formerly known as Russia Today). As of 2008, he was part of the editorial collective of the far right website VDARE. He has been funded by the Unz Foundation and he contributes to the Unz Review. His writings are published by Veterans Today, InfoWars, PressTV and GlobalResearch, and he is frequently a guest on the podcasts, radio shows and video channels of the Council of Conservative Citizens, Max Keiser and 9/11 truther Kevin Barrett. His own website publishes the work of Israel Shamir and Diana Johnstone. In other words, not one exceptional article, but a large part of the publication's content, is authored by someone who writes almost exclusively for deprecated websites.
  • A 2015 analysis done by one anti-Zionist activist showed that the content by significant leftist writers such as Pilger was dwarfed by the quantity of content by white supremacists and cranks, with Gilad Atzmon, Israel Shamir and Alison Weir getting a large number of columns, and Paul Craig Roberts and Franklin Lamb being among the most published authors.[107]
  • The "experts" published by editors defending CP here include: Gareth Porter, who says that Assad isn't responsible for chemical attacks in Syria; Ray McGovern, who compared 9/11 to the Reichstag fire and said the DNC hack was an inside job; Tariq Ali, who claimed the White Helmets are actually al-Qaeda[108]; Lenni Brenner, whose work is cited by Holocaust denialists and has been called an "antisemitic hoax";[109] and Diana Johnstone, whose work denies the basic facts of the Yugoslav war and who used her Counterpunch column to say that there's no evidence that Marine Le Pen is antisemitic.
  • They published a number of Russian propaganda pieces by "Alice Donovan" who turned out to be a fake identity created by Russian intelligence. Although they eventually investigated after prodding from the Washington Post, why they were seen as a publication to be targeted in this way, the preference for that sort of content and lack of editorial oversight revealed by the incident are worth considering. BobFromBrockley (talk) 09:47, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

Gareth Porter is an expert on the Vietnam War. He is not an expert on the Syrian Civil War. I am not aware of Lenni Brenner being a subject matter expert regularly cited in their area of expertise, same for Diana Johnstone, making that just the latest in a series of strawmen. This is not that complicated. Dont cite people when they write outside of the area of their expertise. This effort to require some sort of purity test on topics outside of a SME's area of expertise in order to cite them within their area of expertise is not in keeping with any of our policies. nableezy - 13:12, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

• No. Per Nableezy, Zero and Aquillion in particular. The argument for deprecation consisted in selecting a handful of googled items out of over 70,000 published on the webzine, views one can easily deplore, consists of highly misleading cherrypicking, ignoring the fact that the same magazine hosts writers who rubbish those views: numerous CP articles trash conspiracy theories. The same selective bias that vitiated the earlier RfC is being repeated here. Raider cites, for example, Mikehawk on Kremlin propaganda dismissals: the New Yorker dismissed it , but CounterPunch is deprecatable for hosting an article that held the same view. One piece is nipped for display to affirm CounterPunch denies the existence of Xinjiang internment camps, while pieces in CP affirming they exist are ignored in the arraignment; CP reported on the use of white phosphorus in Gaza? so did the New York Times; Counterpunch did not espouse 9/11 theories, though it published one or two authors for that view. Its authoritative creator and editor, Alexander Cockburn dismantled (see also here and here) such garbage as hairbrained nutter rubbish in numerous editorials. No editor opposed to deprecation argued we use such occasional nonsense from CP. To my knowledge, no one has. They argued that scores of top professionals in their fields, scholars, journalists, economists and the like do publish there and their work, evaluated on the strength of their credentials, should not be banned from Wikipedia. Bob. A word of advice. Drop the anti-Semitic insinuations. It just flies in the face of the fact that, thank God, numerous scholars and writers who happen to be Jewish publish there, which they certainly wouldn't do were CP a vehicle enabling hatred of people who have their same ethno-religious background. Evaluating everything in terms of the meme that criticism of Israel is a mask for hostility to Jews is a tiresome rhetorical trope that, in my view for one, by confusing the two, actually can enable anti-Semites, who make the same conflation. That Lenni Brenner's historical work is cited by anti-Semites - that the devil can cite scripture for his own nefarious purpose (ergo the Bible is invalidated and itself antisemitic)- is neither here nor there. Nishidani (talk) 10:07, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

I really hope you didn't read the Israel Shamir excerpt that has been posted, because anyone who doesn't think that is wildly anti-Semitic should not be editing. --RaiderAspect (talk) 10:33, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

You don't note that the quote from Shamir was posted by the expected sockpuppet, i.e. DorExp with 16 edits, and that as before this discussion is being subjected to the same abuse that vitiated the former? I read anti-Semites, just as I read a lot of literature contemptuous to the point of being racist regarding Palestinians regularly hosted in mainstream Israeli newspapers. The argument Shamir makes is stupid and racist, except for one point: the word 'genocide' should have no exclusivity attached to it, or be expropriated to refer to what an enemy does. Nishidani (talk) 11:25, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

If antisemitism identified by non-ECR editors doesn't count as antisemitism, how about "As the Jews considered themselves being the victims of G (this is an idea deeply ingrained in the Jewish tradition, though quite foreign to Christian thought) they tried to take revenge by poisoning millions of Germans."[110] "Auschwitz gathering is an annual Canossa of Western leaders where they bewail their historic failure to protect the Jews and swear their perennial obedience to them."[111] "While the present western regime is anti-Christian and anti-Muslim, it is pro-Jewish to an extent that defies a rational explanation. France had sent thousands of soldiers and policemen to defend Jewish institutions, though this defence antagonises their neighbours."[112] "Jews almost always win when they go to the court against their denigrators. (Full disclosure: I was also sued by LICRA, the French Jewish body, while my French publisher was devastated by their legal attacks)."[113] "The US is special, as this heir to the British Empire guided by Jewish spirit is the only country ever possessing the unique, expensive and uncomfortable desire to rule the whole of planet Earth."[114] "I welcomed every conspiratorial scheme in this case, as well as in 9/11 case. Not because I believe or even prefer this or other scheme. I see it as a useful device to release minds from the holding power of mass hysteria induced by mass media. It is necessary to sow doubt in order to release minds and regain sanity."[115] "Jews came to the Ukraine a thousand years ago, perhaps from Khazaria... One of the reasons why so many people of Jewish origin do well is that the ruling ethnic groups trust the Jews and rely upon their loyalty to the powerful and lack of compassion for their Gentile neighbours."[116] "No one was persecuted or discriminated because of his ethnic origin (yes, Jews complained, but they always complain)."[117] "Historically, the liberal–Nazi alliance did not work because the old Nazis were enemies of bankers and financial capital, and therefore anti-Jewish."[118] "Jews do not mind Nazis who do not target them."[119] These are just selections from the first Shamir articles in CP I looked at. There's loads more of this. He has been one of their most prolific contributors over an eight year period. Any publication that puts this out is beyond normal "generally unreliable". BobFromBrockley (talk) 15:01, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

Maybe you just mistakenly used the present tense of he has been instead of the correct past tense of he had been on accident, and maybe you mistakenly overstated how prolific Shamir was, but he has a total of 55 posts there, the last of which was 6+ years ago. Uri Avnery on the other hand has 579 posts there. Theres a reason why editors shouldnt be cherry-picking things that, most importantly, nobody in their right mind would cite here. All this in attempt to avoid the topic about things that people actually would cite. nableezy - 16:00, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

• Yes (weak?) - What we want of sources for this encyclopaedia are reliable, independent, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy. Based on the evidence above, this just simply isn't the case with CP. So much is even admitted by the people voting for no: Counterpunch did not espouse 9/11 theories, though it published one or two authors for that view. A publisher who publishes bullshit and doesn't retract it, just isn't a reliable source, period. The question whether CP is merely generally unreliable, or should be deprectated is an interesting one I haven't made up my mind yet. But in general CP seems to be sub-par. --Mvbaron (talk) 10:24, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

Comment. So authoritative scholars and journalists in their fields are not 'reliable and independent' and don't check their facts, despite the fact that to achieve that reputation they are trained to do so and repeatedly tested by their fellow profesdsionals precisely in terms of these criteria?Nishidani (talk) 10:33, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

There is a reason for editorial board and peer review . Even top professionals are vetted by their peers. Shrike (talk) 10:40, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

@Shrike.There is a certain epistemological naivity apparent in the ritual recitation of what we mean by a reliable source and fact checking. The encyclopedia does not deal only in facts: it covers significantly the interpretation of facts, esp. in articles with an historical dimension. Editorial oversight checks reportage for facts, it does not interfere generally with the contributors’ inferences from and interpretations of those facts (opinion). Facts themselves are selectively deployed: some are regarded as significant, others ignored. This is particularly evident in coverage of conflicts. It is obvious that newspapers cited for facts must optimally have editorial oversight. Editorial oversight in newspapers, monthlies or academic books, does not however regulate generally the interpretations of events provided by their contributors. At best they check the factual content. Adrian Bardon in his recent book The Truth About Denial: Bias and Self-Deception in Science, Politics, and Religion, (2019) tells us how man is hard-wired not to accept hard evidence that contradicts one’s beliefs. Newspapers in particular, a fundamental source for current events, rarely if ever check an article on conflicts for salient facts that are not mentioned by their contributors, facts whose presence would make the representation of an event far more complex than its readers might be comfortable with. The New York Times is stringently POV in its Middle East Reportage, missing much context and facts: but readers of The New York Review of Books are given a far broader coverage of the facts than the NYTs allow because area specialists write there, not journalists. Counter mainstream sources haven’t the financial muscle to hire a solid team of ‘fact checkers’ or peer-reviewers, and rely on volunteer pieces. Much of their content is just opinion (and none of us need care for that), but with webzines like CounterPunch the prestige of big names, whose professional qualifications bespeak thorough familiarity with the factual record, means deprecation runs close to a hard-wired ideological resistance to evaluating views, expert witnesses that discomfort our general outlook. WP:Due prioritizes a mainstream, quite understandably. It should not be used to make our documentation of reasoned, informed contrarian views even harder than it is. Indeed it explicitly allows for them. And editors of experience do learn to be less ideological in vetting reliability in grey areas by carefully looking at the evidence rather than refusing on principle to read closely.Nishidani (talk) 14:33, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

• Yes Even a bit of paper is right twice a day, that does not mean we can use it to tell the time. The fact they publish conspiracy theories as fact and holocaust denial is a serious problem.Slatersteven (talk) 10:59, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

They do neither.Nishidani (talk) 11:26, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

I suggest you read many of the articles linked to above.Slatersteven (talk) 11:40, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

I suggest that 16 years of reading CP desultorily left me amazed that of 70,000+ articles, editors with no familiarity with its background or nature could convince people that it is infested by anti-Semitic, holocaust-denying, conspiracy-mongering, genocide-denialist articles. A lesson: when you see a diff used to assert some general claim, spend a half an hour on each, examining whether an organ like the CP contains far more articles denying that claim. In every case of these rafts of diffs I examined in the previous discussion, the 'evidence' collapsed under examination. Nishidani (talk) 14:49, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

It does not have to be infested, it just to have to do it enough for it to be an issue. Does it "deny" these claims within the articles or publish them uncritically? Does it make it easy to tell the BS from actual well-researched facts? The issue is can ALL articles on it be trusted. And if not, how can we tell the difference?Slatersteven (talk) 14:54, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

That is certainly not the issue. I for one don't 'trust' any venue mainstream or otherwise, let alone CP. As for CP, the argument is, must we deprecate, for example ideologically Desmond Tutu's writing in CounterPunch, even if reliable academic sources don't, because on a number of occasions CP has hosted fringe controversialists? That is guilt by association, either a recipe for editorial laziness or the use of deprecation to limit our coverage of controversial but legitimate views. Nishidani (talk) 15:12, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

It is the issue for me, how can I know to trust any given article hosted there. What makes an RS is the fact that I can have confidence that any article I am reading is not likey to pedestal lies, conspiracies or racism dressed up as "questions". If I do not have that confidence its not an RS.Slatersteven (talk) 15:30, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

You evaluate if the author is an expert in the field they are writing in, seeing if they have academic publications on the topic and how widely cited they are by other sources. The way you would with any other source. Nobody is suggesting CP confers any reliability on a column. Everybody who supports being able to use it acknowledges that it is not itself a reliable source. But we also acknowledge that it contains reliable sources, such as, again this widely cited piece by a noted scholar in the field. nableezy - 15:38, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

To add to what Nableezy wrote above, several cited scholarly books and academic journals did not feel the need to ask such a question and cited the reliable piece in question without such caveats. If there is any evidence that CP did not accurately reflect the views of its authors, that would be something and may be a reason for deprecation a la Daily Mail. As things stand, Masem's suggestion to tag "much of what it publishes are RSOPINIONS by field experts recognized by other more reliable sources, and that editors should treat such statements as attributed opinions", including "some of these opinions are towards conspiracy theories and other similar fringe views, but that's something we filter via RSOPINION and UNDUE", seems reasonable. Davide King (talk) 15:48, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

• Comment This kind of thing is interesting, the instinctive "Counterpunch? Seriously? No." edit summary used to justify the reversion of an expert opinion. Note that the reversion reverts two cites, one being Fisk publishing in CP and the identical article in the Independent. Notice also that the revert is to a version created by a now blocked sock. Ridiculous.Selfstudier (talk) 12:03, 12 January 2022 (UTC)
• No per Aquillion, Nableezy, Zero, et al., Option 2 (experts)/Option 3 (general) — while it is undeniably true that they have published crackpots, and I personally think that is disgraceful, I do not think that is enough to warrant deprecation and its citations in academic publications presented above show why; as long as no evidence is given or showed that CounterPunch falsifies the pieces written by experts, I see no reason not to cite them, of course alongside secondary coverage in light with WP:DUE. Perhaps we may note in its entry that it has published experts and crackpots, and it should only be used and relied on for the former and not the latter. Davide King (talk) 12:20, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

• Addendum — WP:COUNTERPUNCH currently says: "Multiple examples were provided of misleading, fringe, or downright false statements published on the site." See my comment about how CounterPunch is not a straight news outlet like the Daily Maily, and Nableezy and Nishidani's comment for how this was misleading and cherry picked. "Many users agreed that the site itself leans towards favoring fringe viewpoints, and publishes such viewpoints preferentially, not indiscriminately." I am not sure the best sources actually support this; they have criticized it for publishing crackpots but they are not the issue of this CP's mess, are they? This academic article says that "the well-known leftwing newsletter Counterpunch strayed from traditional policy by allowing one of its most popular contributors, Paul Craig Roberts, to air his Truther arguments on their website ... ." I believe Masem's suggestions would make a better entry. Davide King (talk) 09:43, 14 January 2022 (UTC)
• It seems as though several users in favour of deprecation think that the publisher makes the author themselves unreliable, and while I may agree on this personally, I do not think this is supported by academic sources and thus it does not convince me to change my !no precisely because if it were deprecated, the usable citations will still be removed because the publisher is unreliable, even though academic sources have had no issue citing the author's primary source article as a reliable source, something that is not done for InfoWars or other false balance examples that can be primarily and overwhelmingly defined by either conspiracy theories or fake news, which is why they have been deprecated or black listed and I do not think applies to CounterPunch; even though I maintain my disgust from the shit they have published, I remain unconvinced that is what they primarily publish or prioritize per Bilorv, Nableezy, Nishidani, Rosguill, and others that have not been debunked or that do not support deprecation as a whole.
• With no evidence of falsification, or scholarly sources agreeing and describing it primarily as a conspiracy theory or fake news website, rather than having hosted an amount of crackpots, not including experts and the editor themselves who have rebuked such crackposs, I do not see why we should not cite the primary article from CounterPunch, plus more reliable sources that make its usage due on a case-by-case analysis, which general unreliability and/or additional considerations apply. We really do need to understand the context and nature of the publication, which is not a straight news website or something that at least attempts to appear to be legitimate; it is clearly an opinion publication. While I personally do question why they would allow to publish that in the first place, the fact they include debunking and rebuttals, and pieces by legitimate experts, something than warranted deprecated sources such as InfoWars and the likes never do, it shows it is more due to their contrarian stance than being like InfoWars.
• That is the argument based on a rational analysis of about the website and what cited sources actually say more about the individual authors more than the website as a whole, plus the fact it has published a significant amount of usable citation that is unlike any other currently deprecated source, the practical argument is that I fear it will result in practice in blacklisted rather the deprecated, which currently would allow such usage in theory but has not been followed in practice, and will make it worse despite good intentions. Surely there are better ways to deprecate pieces that no one would cite as reliable sources for facts, while still using the many due articles also cited in academic publications and reliable popular press books, which should make everyone fine with it, without deprecating it de jure as a whole, which may well result in blacklisting de facto. Davide King (talk) 20:26, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

• No, but it definitely should be tagged that much of what it publishes are RSOPINIONS by field experts recognized by other more reliable sources, and that editors should treat such statements as attributed opinions. Yes, some of these opinions are towards conspiracy theories and other similar fringe views, but that's something we filter via RSOPINION and UNDUE. Other opinions are held in respect (as opinions) by other RSes so we should not be throwing out the baby with the bathwater. --Masem (t) 13:29, 12 January 2022 (UTC)
• Unreliable or Deprecated. Neither of these options precludes using expert opinions published in it where relevant. We should defer to editors' judgement. The RfC should have used the regular 4-way template. Alaexis_¿question? 13:39, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

  yeah it really should have... I can just yet another 1234 RFC coming along where we need to decide if it is a "generally unreliable" source; because this RFC doesn't settle that question. but alas we are too far into this one now. Mvbaron (talk) 13:44, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

  Several editors have stated that deprecation permits a purge of everything, expert opinions included, and have even put their opinion into practice. Had they not done so, I think we would not be here now. Selfstudier (talk) 13:54, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

• Yes if you're only going to offer me those two choices, but this should have been a regular 4-option RfC in which case I'd say Unreliable. That some works are cited by others doesn't "cancel out" the massive problems with other works by this publisher. "Generally reliable" means generally reliable and this publication isn't generally reliable, only some articles are reliable. It should be red at RSP and if the only way to make that happen is to vote for deprecation, then I'm voting for deprecation. Levivich 14:31, 12 January 2022 (UTC)
  • Changing my !vote to unequivocal yes after reading more examples from my colleagues. This source is absolute trash. If an expert published in Stormfront, would we treat it as WP:SPS? If a website published that Black people were responsible for 9/11 or compared Palestinians to Nazis, would any of my colleagues ever cite to that website in an article, saying just use the non-racist parts? RT, Breitbart, The Daily Caller all occasionally get cited by RS--so what? That doesn't change our view of the deprecation of those sources. Why the hell do we need to be citing to a source that publishes racism and conspiracy theories? What is it we need from Counterpunch that we can't find in a better source? Delink all of it. Gerard was right. Levivich 13:51, 13 January 2022 (UTC)
• Yes The occasional antivaxxer screed, 9/11 Truther opinion, etc...poisons the well for the rest of it. If your only source for potential material to add to the Wikipedia is Counterpunch, then it isn't material worth adding. ValarianB (talk) 15:02, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

Good grief. In an RfC one should make an effort to read and check. Anti-vaxxers promoted by Counterpunch? You mean, citing just the first half dozen articles on that topic in the last few months,

• Anthony DiMaggio Killer Disinformation: How Anti-Vaccine Propaganda Hijacked American Political Discourse Counterpunch 6 August 2021
• David Rosen Anti-Vaxxers and the Unvaccinated: False Consciousness in a Time of Pandemic Counterpunch 19 August 2021
• Daniel Warner, Anti-Vaxxers and Climate Change Deniers: Living in a Post-Fact World Counterpunch 18 October 2021
• Eve Ottenberg Anti-Vaxxers Go Berserk Counterpunch 19 November 2021
• Thomas Klikauer, Meg Young The Nazi Language of German Anti-Vaxxers Counterpunch 20 December 2021
• Thomas Klikauer, Catherine Link The Origins of Germany’s Anti-Vaxxers Counterpunch 29 December 2021

Selection bias once more in votes. Get one idiot diff, and ignore the dozens of diffs which rebut it on the same source, just as one would expect in an open webzine.Nishidani (talk) 15:28, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

It is fun to watch people using one fallacious argument after another though. nableezy - 15:35, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

It is equally fun to watch you denigrate, harass, and bludgeon everyone with whom you disagree with, but I shall decline to engage further than this. My opinion on the uselessness of Counterpunch remains, and there's nothing you will do about that. ValarianB (talk) 17:59, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

It may be time to let people have their say, without the badgering.Slatersteven (talk) 15:48, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

Also don't appreciate having my comment being called a "idiot diff". Is that acceptable WP conduct? OK, CounterPunch publishes some true things about vaccines as well as anti-vaccine disinformation, but a reliable source is one that publishes only true things about vaccines and doesn't give a platform to dangerous anti-vaxx propaganda. BobFromBrockley (talk) 15:57, 12 January 2022 (UTC) [Striking my response to "idiot diff", as it appears not to have been directed at me. BobFromBrockley (talk) 10:11, 14 January 2022 (UTC)]

Based on the context, I believe Nishidani is using the word diff incorrectly to refer to CP columns. He is calling the anti-vax piece idiotic, and saying the pieces that refute that are being ignored. nableezy - 16:12, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

Bob. Come on now. Don't personalize things. 'Idiot diff' was in context shorthand for diffs of idiotic articles. And it was certainly not directed at your diffs. You add 'a reliable source is one that publishes only true things about vaccines'. This is new to me. See WP:TRUTH. Wikipedia is programmed not to be like Pravda, which in Russian means 'truth'. If you want to know what I mean, it is the methodological error, frequent here, of using a small sample of cherrypicked exceptions to mischaracterize a source as promoting the views in those diffs. You cited the Meldungen blog above. I.e. you used an admittedly non-RS blogger's page to argue against CP's reliability. You are using there a non-RS source (blog) as though it were reliable for proving CP is non-RS. Methodologically that is unacceptable. I told you in the RfC that its author knows nothing of statistics, evidence by the fact that she concluded what all believe to be a left-wing magazine to be in fact, unknown to its contributors, readers and editors, in fact deviously an enabler of the far right which it incessantly targets. Talk about conspiracy theories! Some basic awareness of method is necessary here. Just having an opinion is not enough. Nishidani (talk) 20:20, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

The list of things that make something deprecable keeps growing. We should make a list. Still, 75 or so articles a week, is that about right? How many articles published by individuals have we found to be "bad", exactly? And how many of them would pass the SPS test of being published elsewhere? Selfstudier (talk) 16:06, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

• No and also Bad RFC - "Deprecated" is not at all defined and as we have seen time and time again has no actual agreed meaning, it is therefore not actually clear what people are being asked to agreed to here. No evidence is presented here that this source is used generally here in Wikipedia such that a general RFC is appropriate. In fact I am not clear at all what the actual content dispute here is. FOARP (talk) 16:08, 12 January 2022 (UTC)
• Yes, very unreliable, CounterPunch publishes experts such as chemistry professor John Scales Avery who writes that the September 11 attacks was deliberately made worse than it otherwise would have been by US government agents who planted explosives. A chhemisty professor, an expert in chemistry and exposives. CounterPunch is an open webzine where some very opinionated academics write items they can not publish anywhere else, because any sane site would reject conspiracy nonesense. Read Avery's description of 9/11 in https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/09/02/lies-about-how-the-attack-on-afghanistan-started/ --Ali Ali Dan (talk) 18:49, 12 January 2022 (UTC) — Ali Ali Dan (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. Striked due to user being blocked indefinitely.
• No, throwing the baby out with the bathwater as a source that publishes relevant material from verifiable subject-matter experts as well as less reputable material. Mere publication in Counterpunch should not establish reliability for our purposes, but neither should it remove reliability from experts whose work is DUE in their field by dint of their expertise. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 20:15, 12 January 2022 (UTC)
• Yes? Or generally unreliable. Or treat as SPS. It doesn't appear there is any editorial control here, so it shouldn't be used for statements of fact. It's essentially a self-publishing platform that you need a certain amount of clout or notability to use. It's fine to cite for the opinions and statements of whoever wrote the article, which can be used in their own BLP if about themselves, or cited for someone's opinion on something, if that opinion is WP:DUE. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 20:29, 12 January 2022 (UTC)
• No I'm against all such overgeneralizations. This one even more so for the reasons discussed above. North8000 (talk) 21:35, 12 January 2022 (UTC)
• Yes: one of the most out-there publications of the crank left, and other editors (especially Bobfrombrockley, Mikehawk10) have shown their propensity to publish anything that conforms to the house bias, even if those contributors are not credible in any way whatsoever. Their propensity to continue to publish genocide denial and conspiracy theories casts a shadow on the entire source, and even if it's only a minority of articles, they are still publishing those articles. The RS policy requires sources to have editorial control, and I am not convinced that Counterpunch has such control, or if they do, they don't exercise it to the standards that we require of reliable sources. If this source wasn't entrenched in the perennial RIGHTGREATWRONGS arena of I/P, we wouldn't question deprecation; we've deprecated plenty of sources for publishing conspiracy theories and barely disguised state propaganda, after all. I also oppose any attempt to make carve-outs for experts; deprecation is deprecation, and we can't declare a source with editorial control an SPS because they publish something we agree with. If that was the case, what would stop someone citing the Scum if Chris Whitty decided to write an article about Covid precautions for the newspaper with the highest circulation in Britain? Sceptre (talk) 00:11, 13 January 2022 (UTC)
• No (but in an ordinary RSN RfC I'd call them Option 3: generally unreliable): While they claim to have some sort of editorial process, it appears extremely likely that they in fact do not, or at least they don't really reject or correct submitted articles. This would make them a WP:SPS, and thus unreliable but not deprecatable. "Deprecated" in my view requires a source to be anti-reliable: not just that it publishes things that it hasn't verified but that it either actively and deliberately lies, or else things which it publishes can be relied upon to be false, which doesn't seem to be the case here. Loki (talk) 00:40, 13 January 2022 (UTC)
• Yes per my comments in the previous RfC. The above use-by-others argument is not very convincing. High-quality sources sometimes do cite unreliable sources for facts (e.g, Daily Mail). What's more important is determining what do reliable sources actually state about a particular source. In the last RfC, I included a quote from a study that described CP as a "an ostensibly left magazine that has given space to white nationalists and antisemites". If that's not convincing enough, let me look other sources state about CP.

• Publishing Russian Fake (and plagiarized) News As per Shelley Powers, "Donovan duped several far-left sites into publishing ‘her’ material. CounterPunch danced all around the issue in its effort to excuse it’s lax vetting. Ultimately, it accepted some blame…after first blaming the FBI. (this is not really surprising though, CP is supporter of Russia Today)
• The aforementioned Israel Shamir nonsense: "Shamir's byline is on two previous articles pillorying the Swedish women who complained about Assange. On 27 August, in Counterpunch, a small radical US publication, Shamir said Assange was framed by "spies" and "crazy feminists"...Shamir then wrote a piece of grovelling pro-Lukashenko propaganda in Counterpunch, claiming "the people were happy, fully employed, and satisfied with their government" Per Geoffrey Cain , "The notorious Holocaust denier, Israel Shamir, has been making the rounds among Cambodia watchers this week. This time, he’s praising Pol Pot in an article for the far-left magazine Counterpunch...We must admit we were swayed when Shamir provided conclusive proof that the KR genocides were either inept or out-and-out fabrications: he alerted us to the fact that the population of Cambodia has doubled since 1970. We eagerly await his next Counterpunch article, “Population of Europe has increased by a factor of six since 1939, therefore World War II never happened.”
• Falsehoods that have literally ended up on Wikipedia: "Counterpunch readers were recently informed that the Albert Einstein Institution plays “a central role in a new generation of warfare, one which has incorporated the heroic examples of past nonviolent resistance into a strategy of obfuscation and misdirection that does the work of empire.” Absolutely none of these claims is true. Yet such articles have been widely circulated on progressive websites and list serves. Such false allegations have even ended up as part of entries on the Albert Einstein Institution in SourceWatch, Wikipedia, and other reference web sites...In another article, recently posted on the Counterpunch web site, George Cicariello-Miller falsely accuses Sharp of having links with right-wing assassins and terrorists and offering training “toward the formulation of what was called ‘Operation Guarimba,’ a series of often-violent street blockades that resulted in several deaths.”
• Other falsehoods: "Even apart from being dated, the widely cited Counterpunch piece contains several inaccuracies. It misidentifies unaffiliated Education Minister Serhiy Kvit as a Svoboda member, describes national security chief Andriy Parubiy as a "co-founder of Svoboda" without mentioning his post-2004 move to moderate and even left-of-center parties, and promotes Dmitro Yarosh, head of the paramilitary group Right Sector, to deputy national security chief when in fact he sought that position but did not get it.
• Uighur genocide denial: "...Western far-left Xinjiang deniers use similar tactics. They question the motives of the U.S. government’s push against Chinese actions in Xinjiang and try to discredit researchers as well as the Uighur diaspora who speak out against the camps. They try to prove the reports are based on shoddy research while whole-heartedly accepting Chinese propaganda as fact. Some deniers write for smaller online publications such as Black Agenda Report, L.A. Progressive, Popular Resistance, and the magazine CounterPunch"

• That's just a small snippet of quotes/articles. I was unable to find any reliable sources who had something nice to say about Counterpunch (except the people who write for CP). Has anyone provided evidence from reliable third-party sources that CP is a quality, fact-driven magazine? If not, then this is a plainly a fringe source whose use should be avoided as much as possible. Dr. Swag Lord (talk) 08:22, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

Comment. Again all this greening outrage is useless. Dr. Swag Lord, I wrote in the earlier RfC your ostensible ‘evidence‘ against CounterPunch turns out under a cursory glance to be a shabby Potemkin Village charade of googled diffs which, if checked, collapses its compiler's agenda.’ You never replied. And now you are recycling that shambles with a few more bits whose gravamen collapses if checked. So once again.

• Dennis Morgan Why I Support Russia Today (and So Should You) Counterpunch 14 May 2018 So Counterpunch published one paper by a tenured professor of linguistics in defense of Russia Today. That is spun as ‘CP is supporter’ of Russia Today. Rubbish. Your inference is that of a database of 70,000 articles in CP, one advocating RT as deserving support means CP endorses it.
• Israel Shamir is an antisemitic or Jewish (if he is Jewish, which I personally doubt) self-hating nutter, no doubt. But if CP is deprecable because it once gave occasional space for his views then The Jewish journal The Tablet did an indepth interview with Israel Shamir (Will Yakowicz His Jewish Problem 1, His Jewish Problem 2. The The Tablet 17 May 2011) where this stooge was quoted at length with all of his moronic inanities, i.e. his views were set forth to a wider reading public. Does that mean we should deprecate The Tablet? No. Does the fact he was a conduit for WikiLeaks invalidate the content of Wikileaks or add one more nail to the coffining of Julian Assange. No.
• You quote Zunes’ papers again as an example of a source arguing ‘Falsehoods that have literally ended up on Wikipedia‘. Outrageously false
• Re Zunes I will just copy what I wrote when you first used it. I.e.

John Feffer, Stephen Zunes Sharp Attack Unwarranted 27 June 2008 refers among many other sources, to an article by George Ciccariello-Maher, Einstein Turns in His Grave. Counterpunch 16 April 2008 which (a) argues that Gene Sharp‘s Albert Einstein Institute is partially funded by the US State Department and (b) reproduces Gene Sharp’s response to the critique, asking also Cockburn and St. Clair to publish corrections and retract those statements. Feffer and Zunes don’t tell you that. They simply say it is outrageous that CounterPunch should have published a piece which raised concerns about that institute’s independence. Ciccariello-Maher‘s evidence strikes me as flimsy, but he has his sources. Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky, both at times contributors to CounterPunch, have of course defended Sharp’s integrity. That is how open democratic discourse functions – nothing argued is suppressed, but vigorously debated.

• Other falsehoods? One article in CP got details of party attachment wrong ergo . . Well, the NYTs has posted articles written by staff supporters that the Golan Heights is in Israel, ergo?
• Cathy Young, writing for the economic libertarian Reason Free Minds Free Markets states that articles in The Guardian, by John Pilger, and in CP by Gary Leupp, ‘ Ukraine: The Sovereignty Argument, and the Real Problem of Fascism Ukraine: The Sovereignty Argument, and the Real Problem of Fascism CP 10 March 2014 get some technical details about the leaders there wrong. Pilger writes also for Counterpunch. So, is he reliable when writing the same things on the Guardian, but not reliable if he uses CP? As for Leupp, he is authoritative on Japan, perhaps also on gender issues, and the Far East generally. Has anyone used that article in CP on a topic area he has no familiarity with? No.
• You cite a two claims from a Coda Media (libertarian) and World, a Christian magazine that mentions CounterPunch as a denier of the Uyghur gulags. You take them at their word which is hostility to the ‘far-left’. I.e. you trust two pointy sources’s word. So why does counterpunch run the following articles?

Christopher Brauchli, Camps From Here to China 7 December 2018

Nick Pemberton, Does The Left Stand With Uighurs? CP 31 July 2020

Louis Proyect, Short History of Uighur Resistance 9 March 2021

J.P. Linstroth, Will Ethnocide in Western China Become Genocide? 8 March 2019

Nicky Reid, The Empire That Cried Genocide: Washington’s Exploitation of Ethnic Brutality from Rwanda to Xinjiang CP 7 January 2022

Ezra Kronfeld, China’s Persecution of the Uyghur People CP 20 September 2017

Louis Proyect, China, Saudia Arabia and the Fate of the Uyghurs CP 1 March 2019

Chandra Muzaffar, The Uighur Question: A Civil Society Solution CP January 4, 2019 (Neutral. Send a fact-finding mission)

On the other hand they hgosted Thomas Hon Wing Polin, Gerry Brown Xinjiang: The New Great Game 24 September 2018 which argued that Chinese measures are calculated to stamp out terrorism. Nonsense, but the other viewpoint is given

Julia Kassem Civil Rights Groups and Pro-war Republicans–An unholy Alliance in the Soft War Against China CP 12 April, 2019 idem

The only inference from that representative selection, if all are read together is that CP hosts a majority of articles deploring the Chinese camps (b) lends its pages to a neutral plea for an international committee to examine the contested places and verify or challenge the claims made by Uyghurs and Chinese (c) and allows 2 sceptics to outline their views. (d) Between (a) and (c) there is a common theme ignored by a large amount of the Western mainstream press consisting of the clear geopolitical interest selective US protests about Chinese treatment of the Uyghurs bears. I.e. there is a degree of hypocrisy in the US maintheming human rights abuses carried out by its major trade and imperial competitor, while maintaining a notorious silence when similar forms of ethnic violence are conducted by US allies. Counterpunch, in that regard, is quite useful in documenting the contradictions in US policy, hypermoralism re Uyghurs because China is a perceived threat, and amoralism for whatever its violent allies elsewhere do (Duarte in the Philippines for example). Note that it hadn’t a line: it gives several distinct perspectives. What so many editors are objecting to here appears to be dislike of hearing many sides to any complex narrative, esp. from a libertarian/leftist free-for-all argumentative magazine like CP. Why this discomfort with dissonance? We're hard wired to be complacent?Nishidani (talk) 18:37, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

• I think you missed the point because no one is arguing that CP is a quality, fact-driven magazine. From what I have seen, CounterPunch is mainly an WP:OPINION outlet, and there is no evidence that they falsify their own authors' pieces. In this, as much I personally dislike it, I do not think it warrants deprecation, for they are criticism of opinion pieces written in the magazine. It does hit them, in that I would question anyone who would publish such things, but it does not warrant deprecation because WP:RSOPINION pieces by experts in their field (e.g. David Price) are routinely cited by academic and scholarly sources, and is what separate them from Stormfront; if deprecation, in practice, means that even such sources cannot ever be used, even though this is contrary to current deprecation rules, I am against this on pragmatic grounds, as it has failed.
• There is at least Adrian Chen in The New Yorker describing it as a "respected left-leaning" publication but I am not going to waste my time on this because there is already consensus it is generally unreliable, being an opinion-based magazine. As long as there is no evidence they have falsified the authors' pieces themselves, which would be proper grounds for deprecation, I see no reason not to use expert pieces alongside secondary coverage. In conclusion, I am not persuaded to change my ! by such arguments because I still find Aquillion's, Nableezy's, and Nishidani's counter-arguments strong enough, in particular that it does look like there was cherry picking and thinking CP as straight-news magazine rather than opinion magazine, when it is clearly the latter, and ignore published opinions against crackpots. They are not like the Daily Mail or Breitbart where they pretend to be fact-based, they mainly publish opinion pieces. Just today, they published an article about the nationalization of vaccine manufacturers by the author of Sex, Sin & Subversion: The Transformation of 1950s New York's Forbidden into America's New Normal (Skyhorse, 2015), and "Destroying Democracy: China in Hong Kong" by Mel Gurtov, Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Portland State University and editor-in-chief of Asian Perspective. Unless we have reliable sources calling this out, I do not think that makes those authors and scholars less reliable just because they chose to write an article for CounterPunch. In the end, unfortunately I have to agree with NSH001 below that the deprecation experiment has failed and I cannot support it. Davide King (talk) 18:32, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

• No, certainly a reliable source for opinions per WP:RSOPINION. --Nug (talk) 06:43, 13 January 2022 (UTC)
• No If an article written by an established expert and published in CounterPunch, it should be just as reliable as if it were self-published. This is unneccessary. TFD (talk) 06:51, 13 January 2022 (UTC)
• No. I'm grateful to David Gerard for demonstrating, if unintentionally, why deprecating this "source" would be disastrous, and to Nableezy for his thorough debunking of the arguments from Bob and MikeHawk. --NSH001 (talk) 07:42, 13 January 2022 (UTC)
• No. It mostly publishes opinion articles, and they may be used for what opinion articles are useful for, namely citing the opinion of the author. Gratitude to David Gerard and Nableezy, respectively, as above. --GRuban (talk) 20:45, 13 January 2022 (UTC)
• No, as it is not clear that deprecated sources would be subject to WP:SPS usage, and in practice deprecation often leads to overly zealous removal. I sympathise with those who are rightly offended by much of the conspiracy theories in CounterPunch, but if we view it as a platform that has no real fact-based oversight, only one of selecting (or self-selecting) authors based on political views, then it should be clear that WP:SPS applies as much as it does on blog-hosting websites or any other way in which an expert may choose to write without peer review. That there is genuine usage for CounterPunch articles written by experts is demonstrated clearly by Zero0000, Nableezy and others. — Bilorv (talk) 22:17, 13 January 2022 (UTC)
• No, per the excellent points made above by Nableezy, Aquillion, etc. Parabolist (talk) 22:35, 13 January 2022 (UTC)
• No following Nableezy, Zero and Aquillion. The arguments for deprecation rely on cherry-picked lists of opinion pieces that the cherry-pickers disagree with. Not a reason for deprecation. Cambial — foliar❧ 00:43, 14 January 2022 (UTC)
• No, mostly pr -NSH001. CP has pulished lots of expert opinion, which have been removed by David Gerard after the last RfC. Does anyone believe that CP falsifies these experts writing? Obviously not. It is true that CP also has published NRS; that can be dealt with on an individual basis. (Undisputeable WP:RS have also published untrue stuff (say, NYT and Saddam's WMD), and they have not always admitted it. Eg Luke Harding 100% false piece about Paul Manafort meeting Julian Assange is still up on The Guardian; nobody(?) wants to depreciate The Guardian for that), Huldra (talk) 21:51, 14 January 2022 (UTC)
• No - I see counterpunch more as an opinion journalism hosting site than a news outlet. Some authors that publish through it are quite reliable, others are not reliable at all. That would mean that the determination should be based on the specific author, not the venue of publication. Blueboar (talk) 22:25, 14 January 2022 (UTC)
• I wrote a long sarcastic comment and decided not to post it, but I'd like to add one more op-ed. [120] One wonders what the author meant when they said that a "violent solution" to the "(((Zionist))) question" (triple parentheses added by me to emphasize what the author really meant by that) would happen if Israel was not peacefully destroyed. It certainly cannot be a dogwhistle to Hitler's Final Solution to the Jewish Question which was done after Jews were not peacefully removed from occupied Europe & Nazi Germany. Anyways yes, deprecate this neo-Nazi anti-Semitic rag. The fact that people with Jewish-sounding names publish in it is meaningless when Alfred Rosenberg was one of the main Nazi theorists. Chess (talk) (please use {{reply to|Chess}} on reply) 03:25, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

  I know I said I wouldnt say anything else here, but that has to be responded to. Thats a pretty outrageous attack on a living person. The reference is to the Jewish question and Theodor Herzl's Der Judenstaat, in which he offers Palestine as the "Proposal of a modern solution for the Jewish question". not the Final Solution to the Jewish Question. The person you are slandering here, M. Shahid Alam, is also the author of a widely cited book called Israeli Exceptionalism: The Destabilizing Logic of Zionism. You should read it. Your Jewish sounding names bit is nearly as offensive as the rest. Im sure Norman Finkelstein Or Uri Avnery or Gideon Levy or Alan Dershowitz (yes he published there too) would appreciate being called somebody with a Jewish sounding name. nableezy - 03:41, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

  I can see bringing up the "Zionist question" and maybe even a "solution" to be innocuous, but bringing in a "violent solution" after the Jewish population fails to leave is pretty much directly comparable to the "Final Solution". And this isn't just one op-ed. This is many, many op-eds in the same magazine all using anti-Semitic dogwhistles about "zionists". How many dogwhistles do we have to see before we can admit there's a pattern in this publication? Even if we assume this individual author was completely innocuous in invoking "violent solutions" to a Zionist question that they openly admit is really an extension of the Jewish Question and totally meant an oblique reference to Theodore Herzl's "modern solution", it's very hard to believe that all these cases of op-eds are just people misinterpreting their words in an anti-Semitic manner. That there's no pattern of anti-Semitism at CounterPunch.

  And the Jewish sounding names bit is a reference to the people speculating about Israel Shamir and others being Jewish. The fact that someone has a Jewish sounding last name does not mean they cannot be an anti-Semite. Chess (talk) (please use {{reply to|Chess}} on reply) 04:24, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

That is not what the article says, it does not say anything about the Jewish population fails to leave, what it says is Israel cannot render justice to the Palestinians without abolishing its exclusively Jewish character, without dismantling the apartheid that grinds the Palestinians and No colonialism yet has restrained itself because the colonial masters had acquired a conscience. It was force that stopped them: countervailing force, with or without violence. That is the violence it refers to in the final sentence, a violence against colonialism and expansionism. You can disagree with calling Zionism colonialism, you can disagree with calling for it to not have an exclusively Jewish character, but you cannot make things up about what the article says in an attempt to paint a living person a racist and a neo-Nazi. That is beyond the pale, and in any normal circumstance you would be required to provide reliable sources for such slanderous attacks. This is the equivalent of reddit bros trying to solve the Boston marathon bombings, unqualified people on the internet attempting to dissect things they dont understand by cherrypicking whatever triggers their outrage meter. nableezy - 04:56, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

It's going to be incredibly hard to debate whether or not CounterPunch is dogwhistling anti-Semitism if we cannot provide examples of specific op-eds in which this dogwhistling seems to be apparent. You've said in another comment that "Theres a reason why editors shouldnt be cherry-picking things that, most importantly, nobody in their right mind would cite here", but now, when I'm choosing something other than the most blatant examples of really obvious anti-Semitism (I chose a slightly hidden example) you're accusing me of violating BLP pretty much immediately and saying I cannot use that op-ed to demonstrate my point. Pick one or the other, because I'm not seeing that here. Anyways, here's some more sources.

"What made the Jewish minorities different was that they carried a weight that far outweighed their numbers. Over the course of the nineteenth century, they had become an important, often vital, part of the financial, industrial, commercial, and intellectual elites in several of the most important Western countries, including Britain, France, Germany, Russia, and the United States. Moreover, the most prominent members of these elites had cultivated ties with each other across national boundaries." [121]

Also written by this M. Shahid Alam person. Now, he's saying that the "Jewish elites" in many different countries had a bunch of control over the financial/commercial/etc industries and control over the intellectuals. He's also saying that these "elites" had some kind of deep connections with others across international boundaries. He says this created the background for this Zionist endeavour. What did he mean by this?

"Starting with World War II, the pro-Zionist Jews would slowly build a network of organizations, develop their rhetoric, and take leadership positions in important sectors of American civil society until they had gained the ability to define the parameters within which the United States could operate in the Middle East."[122]

What did he mean by this? These "Zionist Jews" decide to "build a network" in American civil society. Hmm...

Here's another fun op-ed where the author examines "Israeli exceptionalism" but bases it all on Jewish theology ensuring that Jews feel that they're a "master race" superior and dehumanizing others. [123] I'll link Antisemitic canard#Racism which shows that yes, the idea that the Jewish theology preaches that Jews are superior to the non-human others is an anti-semitic canard.

And here's another op-ed, where he says: "It was directed from the United States, where the Jewish community had grown to command considerable influence over the media, the Congress and the Presidency." [124]

There sure is a lot of language here. Talking about the Jewish elites working across borders, talking about how these Jewish elites had all this power in the finance industry, talking about how these Jewish elites have power in intellectual circles, talking about how these Zionist Jews were building a "network" in the United States, talking about about how these Zionist Jews feel as though they're superior to others due to their religion, and even talking about the Jewish control over the media/US government. Is this truly all just a coincidence that CounterPunch happens to publish all these pieces talking about the Jews control everything? Are we not allowed to use our judgement to even mention that this is anti-Semitism, and that CounterPunch has a long history of publishing anti-Semitism? Chess (talk) (please use {{reply to|Chess}} on reply) 06:04, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

No, it is not incredibly difficult, what you would need to do is provide sources that say CP is dogwhistling antisemitism. As far as your latest set of cherries, those pro-Zionist Jews (you use that with scare-quotes as though you think such a thing does not exist) built and created such organizations as the American Jewish Conference, the American Zion Commonwealth, and the Jewish Federations of North America. And they all did contribute hugely to the success of the Zionist project. You keep using these scare quotes as though they betray something about the author and not yourself. Yes, when distinguishing between Zionist and non-Zionist Jews you may see somebody say "Zionist Jews". Again, you are making things up about Shahid. He does not say that Jewish theology preaches that Jews are superior to the non-human others. That is fabrication, repeated at that. nableezy - 06:18, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

I'm using quotes to indicate direct terminologies taken from the author. One of the problems is the specific terms he is using. Saying that the theological doctrine of chosenness implies that Jews think they are a "master race"; implicitly being superior to others is part of that. Reading stuff like "The doctrine of election did not merely set the Jews apart from other nations; it also set them above other nations. Over time, this has encouraged racist tendencies". The idea that this fundamental theological doctrine to Judaism somehow "encouraged racist tendencies" is anti-Semitic. If some Jewish people happen to be racist and use their religion to justify that it's wrong; but alleging that they're racist because they were "encouraged" by the religion itself is a typical anti-Semitic canard. And again, you ignore pretty much all of the other terms. Sure, all of the organizations like the AJC or the AZC or whatever (you missed AIPAC?) you're talking about exist. But this person wasn't saying that the American Jewish Conference was founded to promote Zionism, he was complaining about how the Jewish community controls "the media, the Congress, and the Presidency". The idea that there's Jewish control over the media is a very common canard. So on and so forth. These are very common dogwhistles that are used by anti-Semites. Going out and using them makes a source unreliable in my view.

I'm not interested in drawing this out much further. At this point we're talking in circles. Neither of us is going to convince the other and we're past the post of being able to further elucidate our positions to observers through spirited debate. I guess throw in the last word because I probably won't reply to it. Chess (talk) (please use {{reply to|Chess}} on reply) 07:53, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

Again, he does not say that, what he says is However, it was the theological doctrine of chosenness that would most convincingly settle the morality of Zionist claims to Palestine. and he cites This was starting point, the chief inspiration for nearly all the early Zionists. Anita Shapir writes: “One of the covert assumptions present among all the poet and the majority of Zionist thinkers and leaders was that Jews had a special right to the Land of Israel, that is, Palestine.” Ahad Ha-Am also commented that this was “a land to which our historical right is beyond doubt and has no need for farfetched proofs.” Anita Shapira, Land and power: The Zionist resort to force, 1881-1948 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992): 40-41. Again, you can disagree with his positions, but claiming some sort of racist or even more absurdly neo-Nazi intent is a BLP violation and you do need sources for such severe accusations. nableezy - 14:25, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

@Chess: I am (ethnically) Jewish and I'm behind Nableezy here on two points. The first is that, with the exception of the reference to "the Jewish question", I don't think that there's anything anti-semitic about that piece. (I think Nableezy is probably right about that being intended as a reference to a quote by Theodore Hertzl, but I still think the author shouldn't have used it, because it's far more well-known as an anti-semitic dog whistle than its use in an obscure pro-Zionist quote.) The rest of the piece distinguishes Zionism from Judaism reasonably well overall, and I don't think that an implicit call for violence against Israel, distasteful as it may be, is a call for violence against Jews in general. The second is that your own reference to "Jewish-sounding names" is itself very anti-semitic, seeing as it's attacking the Judaism of several Jews, and I'd like to request that you strike it. Loki (talk) 05:51, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

@LokiTheLiar: I just replied to Nableezy linking a bunch of other cases where the same author said a whole lot more interesting stuff. All of them in CounterPunch magazine. Chess (talk) (please use {{reply to|Chess}} on reply) 06:06, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

@Chess: Reading all your sources in more detail, I think you're mostly just cherry-picking quotes that sound bad out of context. The author repeatedly mentions Evangelical Zionists and non-Zionist Jews, and in fact goes out of his way to mention that most Jews at the time were not Zionist and did not behave as the early Zionist movement wanted them to, which sort of gives the lie to the idea that he's postulating some sort of Protocols-esque Jewish conspiracy.

One characteristic example of this cherry-picking is: [125], which you claim is an example of an antisemitic canard. You link Antisemitic canard#Racism to attempt to prove your point, apparently ignorant that critiques of the concept of chosenness are common within Judaism itself, and the very section you link links to Jews as the chosen people#ethnocentrism which goes over such criticisms in great detail. Yes, including specifically the idea that "Jews are the chosen people" is racist; that's really a very common critique among lefty Jews, to the point where the article on the concept of Jews as the chosen people goes into great detail over how Reconstructionist Judaism rejects the theological concept entirely specifically because they regard it as racist.

I would also, again, politely request that you strike your comment about "Jewish-sounding names", because it is, again, very anti-semitic. Loki (talk) 10:09, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

I dont think there is even an implicit call to violence there, there is an explicit call to the West, and the US in particular, to institute non-violent pressure so as to forestall violence. nableezy - 06:17, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

And Chess, by the way, I dont even dispute that CP has published anti-semites and antisemitic columns, and I wish they had never had an association with ShahakShamir. I cant explain it besides attracted to the appeal of Wikileaks, but yes, it is certainly a mark against CP that they were ever associated with ShahakShamir. And I havent argued against that at all. But this is bs. nableezy - 06:37, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

Nableezy. I think you are confusing two people who happen to be diametrically opposed in all dimensions: Israel Shahak with Israel Shamir, a golden apple (Sappho allusion) and something tasteless, indeed distasteful. I'm trying to resist the temptation to comment on the exchange above, triggered by an extraordinary ignorance of the tensions between Judaism and Zionism. Loki has the gist of that (thanks), but a glance at Michael Neumann, Jewish Opposition to Zionism Counterpunch 5 June 2006, not to get into the vast technical literature, would clarify much. Much of what Alam writes in his CounterPunch essays reflects a substantial vein of Jewish anti-Zionist literature (Timeline of anti-Zionism). You can hardly assault a scholar (of Arab background -is that the problem?) for familiarizing himself with extensive infra-Jewish polemics, many with a theological edge, in order to write a commendably trenchant and well-received book about these core issues. Nishidani (talk) 10:47, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

You right, fixed. nableezy - 14:22, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

I'll just note: to a historian of Zionism there is nothing at all obscure about the phrase "the Jewish question" and none would associate it with Nazism without a Nazi context. Although it was often employed by antisemites, in the late 19th and early-mid 20th century "the Jewish question" was a ubiquitous phrase in Zionist circles (more than 5,000 hits in the Jewish newspapers online at the National Library of Israel). Predating Herzl, Leon Pinsker wrote in his seminal work Auto-Emancipation: "The age-old problem of the Jewish Question is causing emotions to run high today, as it has over the ages. Like the quadrature of the circle, it is an unsolved problem, but unlike it, it remains the burning question of the day." To a Zionist, the phrase represented the problem that Zionism was meant to solve, even if its exact meaning was difficult to pin down. In summary, it is a bad mistake to jump on the phrase in the context of a scholarly discussion of Zionism and impute ill motives to the author. Zero^talk 11:22, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

Just as a follow-up note on Zero's point. The most influential early post-war analysis of anti-Semitism, that by Jean-Paul Sartre, Réflexions sur la question juive,, published in the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust (1946) uses the phrase without inverted commas. Since, in writing it, he never consulted any Jewish books, he was probably unfamiliar with its use as documented by Zero. That made no difference. For Sartre, posing a 'Jewish question' was, itself, problematic. Antisemites, in speaking of 'Jews' or venting their enmity, are, he concluded, talking only about (and revealing) themselves, and what they say has nothing to tell us of 'Jews', though it can have lethal consequences for the latter.Nishidani (talk) 10:12, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

I have to agree that we do need secondary coverage, preferably scholarly and about the magazine as a whole to prove this and make it due and significant, rather than the primary sources themselves. If it was not for removing legitimate pieces written by experts in their field, especially when more reliable sources were added to prove it was due and warranted, deprecation may have been valid because, at least in theory, it can still be used in exceptional circumstances; however, I still do not think that CP hits the criteria for deprecation precisely because it can be used for more than exceptional circumstances, as for all its crackpots pieces, there is just an equal, and at this point I would say more, that are either written by experts in their fields, written by experts outside their field that are not totally fringe (contrary to others that may be) and may be fine for it as opinion (keeping in might weight), and normal opinion pieces like others in left-wing publications and opinion pieces in general. Davide King (talk) 09:42, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

We can find lots of reliable secondary sources, including major scholars of antisemitism, describing at as using dog whistle antisemitism or engaging in the denial and minimisation of antisemitism, including using such terms to describe the editors' own positions and those of books it has published (e.g. by Michael Neumann or Cockburn and St Clair) as well as op eds. The question is whether this is enough to deprecate. These are just opinion pieces that we shouldn't use for facts anyway and which would not likely be due as this isn't a reliable source. But if there is a consistent editorial policy to promote (or even deny) antisemitism that might push into deprecation territory. BobFromBrockley (talk) 11:01, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

We should be really careful on deprecating sources where they have a stance against a topic that, broadly on Wikipedia we take one way due to broad scientific, academic, or scholarly agreement, but otherwise are not directly fabricating material or purposely leading a misinformation charges. Moreso when this is only one facet within the work's coverage. This would clearly make the source likely unreliable for citing facts (except about themselves), but not under RSOPINION, which then is guided for inclusion using UNDUE/FRINGE. That probably would make the source very unlikely to be used, but still accessible in case an opinion that is DUE is published within it. --Masem (t) 13:36, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

• Yes I think there is a consensus that the source is Generally unreliable but there is an argument that it prints sometimes experts in their fields so we can use it. And I ask myself if some expert would be printed in InfoWars can we cite it? And I say no if he chooses to print is such a source he could probably not find any other respectable outlets to print his views because it couldn't probably pass an editorial control or peer review--Shrike (talk) 12:03, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

If InfoWars changed their format and started to routinely publish respected, reliable experts (as CP does) - I would argue that we should re-evaluate our current assessment of InfoWars. Until then, however, the two are not comparable. Blueboar (talk) 15:17, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

• I know that Wikipedia is not reliable but "InfoWars is an American far-right conspiracy theory and fake news website owned by Alex Jones." While they have published conspiracy theorists, I do not think "American far-left conspiracy theory and fake news online magazine" would be an accurate summary of CP according to reliable sources. InfoWars' pieces are not cited in academic publications for facts, while expert pieces in CP are. Such slippery slopes and fallacies do not help in convincing me to change my mind. Understanding Media Propaganda in the 21st Century: Manufacturing Consent Revisited and Revised (2021) is an interesting source but I do not have it and am not able to read what is the context. CP is described as "left-wing journal" and seems to be positively cited at p. 24. At p. 153, it is described as "notoriously right-wing fascist." Davide King (talk) 14:53, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

  The right wing is when Foley is commenting on https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/09/24/bill-gates-global-agenda-and-how-we-can-resist-his-war-on-life/ and the left wing when he comments on https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/02/22/90663/ and https://www.counterpunch.org/2016/10/14/the-ruling-classs-hatred-of-trump-is-different-than-yours/ (he refers to CP as "the same left wing outfit").Selfstudier (talk) 15:35, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

• No, fits option 3, generally unreliable best of our standard RS/N options. They do publish garbage, but they have published quality material that we, as an encyclopedia, ought to be able to link to. I'd single out the many pieces of Edward Said, linked to in nableezy's opinion, which are a mixture of opinion and secondary sources, as resources we should not pass on. — Charles Stewart (talk) 15:18, 15 January 2022 (UTC)
• No per Aquillion, Nableezy, Nishidani et al., but especially per Davide King. The reductive tool of deprecation cannot properly handle a complex source like CP, which should better be treated as a collection of sources: each piece in CP speaks for itself and should be weighed for itself. We have sufficient tools to indivudually assess reliability of pieces published in CP on a case-by-case basis. Like Davide King, I find the fact that CP occasionally has allowed people to publish utter garbage on their agora of opinions just disgraceful. But whether we like this editorial practice or not: this fact doesn't render quality pieces in CP (written by established subject-matter experts published and cited in academic sources) worthless, or unciteable for our purposes. –Austronesier (talk) 22:24, 15 January 2022 (UTC)
• yes A trashy site that promotes conspiracy theories, antisemitism, blatantly falls histoiric non senses, antivaxx theories and pseudoscientific narratives is for deprecation. Examples for how low this site can go are already given many times in this and previous RFC.Tritomex (talk) 10:46, 17 January 2022 (UTC) If any notable person writes something for disgraceful outlet and a notable secondary academic source makes reflection on that issue, it doesnt elevate the status of disgraceful outlet. We dont need to make special exceptions and give space for potencial violations of Wikipedia policy and standards.Tritomex (talk) 11:01, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

If you actually cite prior discussions, you should be familiar with them, and not distort them. The meme you repeat:'promotes conspiracy theories, antisemitism, blatantly falls histoiric non senses, antivaxx theories and pseudoscientific narratives' has, in its ostensible details, been shown to be deeply problemical, in those earlier discussions, and here. A cogent vote, per WP:CONSENSUS, relies on quality judgment and personal familiarity with the topic, not the repetition of a hostile and frail assumption.Nishidani (talk) 14:30, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Nishidani accusing me in countless occasions for different kind of unconstructive attitude sometimes like now through personal atacks and labeling my views as hostile and fraile assumptions, while you got above a clear list (by Mikehawk10, to which I would add artickles published by a racist Holocaust denier under the pseudonym of Israel Shamir) that proves my words is a violation of WP:CIVIL.Tritomex (talk) 15:37, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Oh dear. It's not a personal attack. I am outlining what best procedure calls for. So far, unlike the other, travesty of procedure, this has been a very level-headed discussion on all sides, with arguments and evidence, and counter-arguments and evidence. You used the word 'promote'. By its nature, CP doesn't 'promote' anything other than a wide variety of basically counter-mainstream views. There is zero evidence that it promotes Holocaust-denial: to the contrary.Nishidani (talk) 17:16, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

• Folks… we DO have the option of deprecating individual contributors to CP, without deprecating CP as a whole. That might resolve some of the issues here. Blueboar (talk) 16:24, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

  Good idea, individual contributors are also sources. Mind you, I remain unclear as to how many of these awful sources have actually been cited by anyone. Selfstudier (talk) 16:27, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

  Certainly Israel Shamir's opinions, wherever they appear, CP or elsewhere should be deprecated. His views on Russian policies constitute virtually all that he contributed to CP, and they are useless. But I don't think this would be a CPO-specific issue. Nishidani (talk) 17:16, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

  There are more than a dozen CP contributors who could be deprecated just on the evidence presented in this RfC. --RaiderAspect (talk) 14:27, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

• Mark as generally unreliable, but allow usage of certain authors - Chomsky and Price are examples of probably usable writers in their specific fields of expertise, but given the sheer amount of garbage this site has been shown above to publish, we generally shouldn't be using this at all except for those very small areas where the author would meet WP:SPS and WP:DUEWEIGHT. Hog Farm _Talk 22:26, 17 January 2022 (UTC)
• Yes I'm sorry, but any source which would knowingly publish 9/11 and ZOG conspiracy theories is on the same level as InfoWars, and this doesn't appear to have been a one-time thing. Trying to blame it on the contributor instead of the publisher is not how this works, the publisher is the one that chooses what gets published. If they're repeatedly publishing conspiracy theories, then I can't trust anything they put out, no matter who wrote it. Those expert authors should pick a more respectable venue if they want to disseminate their ideas. Mlb96 (talk) 04:49, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

' If they're repeatedly publishing conspiracy theories. .' Yes, of course, but they have not repeatedly done any such thing. Its founder and many contributors have, as shown, written numerous essays pulling apart a conspiratorial mindset.Nishidani (talk) 11:15, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

I would strongly recommend you to strike that comment. Numerous cases of Counterpunch publishing conspiracy theories have posted in the course of this discussion. --RaiderAspect (talk) 14:33, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

And numerous rebuttals of the notion spread here that CP repeatedly hosts conspiracy theories have also been published here. Voting that just repeats one side of an argument briefly constitutes a refusal to examine the evidence, esp. when it comes from a passing editor with 1,400 edits in 5 years who remarkably was galvanized to comment with a cliché by happening randomly on this complex discussion. In evaluating this kind of 'evidence' one should at a minimum consider the statistical relevance of citing as proof of frequency ('repeatedly') the proportion of a handful of conspiracy-leaning articles, as opposed to articles that attack conspiracy theories, in the 70/80,000 articles CP has published. If one does that, the evidence given is of nugatory weight, and cannot be spun to characterize 'conspiracy mongering' as a feature of that webzine. This is elementary, and I am astonished that the obvious flaw in this approach is ignored.Nishidani (talk) 10:28, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

Ex-fucking-cuse me? What exactly are you implying here? You can fuck right off with those aspersions. This is classic PIA bullshit, “everyone who disagrees with me was canvassed and/or is a sockpuppet.” Did you consider the fact that the discussion directly above this one, which is literally about this discussion, is listed on CENT? Or did you simply ignore that fact because it doesn’t fit your narrative (which, uncoincidentally, is exactly what you’re doing with respect to Counterpunch and conspiracy theories)? And get a handle on your superiority complex, you’re not better or smarter or more thoughtful than me or anybody else just because you have a higher edit count. Considering that there was a terrorist incident yesterday which involved the perpetrator espousing these exact conspiracy theories, you’ll have to forgive me for thinking that we should have a zero-tolerance policy here. Maybe you don’t think there’s anything wrong with anti-Semitism, but Wikipedia should have no part in promoting it or in promoting the institutions that promote it. Mlb96 (talk) 15:45, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

Would you quit bludgeoning already? Instances of them publishing conspiracy theories as recently as last year have been posted in this very thread and your primary response seems to be that we should simply give them a pass because they also publish articles which don't peddle conspiracy theories. Sorry, but that's not how it works. I'm sure Newsmax and OANN have published legitimate journalism as well, but that doesn't make up for the bullshit they put out. I'm not going to just overlook the fact that they've published 9/11 and ZOG conspiracy theories. Mlb96 (talk) 21:41, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

• Yes Counterpunch has minimal editorial oversight - no guidelines, fact-checking, corrections or retractions - and is awash with conspiratorial nonsense as MikeHawk10 clearly demonstrated in previous RFC. AllOtherNamesWereTaken (talk) 19:24, 19 January 2022 (UTC) — AllOtherNamesWereTaken (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. . The user also has fewer than 500 edits and is ineligible to contribute to project discussions related the Arab-Israeli conflict topic area. nableezy - 19:48, 19 January 2022 (UTC) This discussion is not related to the Arab-Israeli conflict topic area. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 16:17, 20 January 2022 (UTC)Yes, thats why over half the comments directly comment on topics or authors that are listed as being in the topic area, or why Icewhiz had 5 socks (or more) last time around. nableezy - 16:29, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

  As far as I know, the author, whose page I've been editing of late, published children's stories and nothing to do with the Arab-Israeli conflict. I can see that you have insinuated on several occasions that I am a sock of a banned editor. I am not. Please delete those allegations. AllOtherNamesWereTaken (talk) 14:40, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

• There is no uninvolved admin determination that discussion is related Shrike (talk) 20:09, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

Or that it is not, which is why it is noted for the closer to consider and not just stricken out as ineligible. nableezy - 20:20, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

Perhaps they !voted based on the 9/11 conspiracy theories, for all we know. Chess (talk) (please use {{reply to|Chess}} on reply) 23:34, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

A. doesnt matter, this discussion clearly is related to the topic area, b. at the time of their first vote on CP, that was their 9th ever edit and 3rd in two years. Oh and just as an aside, the edit on this page prior to that was an Icewhiz sock. Care to guess what their earlier edits were about? Shocker. nableezy - 23:47, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

• No Clearly the source should not be treated as reliable and "published by CP" should be given the same weight as self published by author on their personal blog. If the author is an expert treat it like SPS. If the author isn't a clear expert, treat it like SPS from a nobody. The only reason to deprecate is if we know CP alters, manipulates or falsely presents material provided by others. That doesn't appear to be the case here. Since we have the WP:RSP list we shouldn't be concerned that editors would think CP is considered a RS. If the general understanding is treat this the same as a SPS I don't think we are going to have issues with lots of CP citations all over Wikipedia. Springee (talk) 20:00, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
• No. The meaning of deprecation comes from the way we treat deprecated sources. If CounterPunch offers a sleu of expert articles and a sprinkle of horrific ones, can we indiscriminately remove all references to CounterPunch? I don't think so. Given the treatment of CounterPunch references in that way, I am inclined to elevate its status. Pabsoluterince (talk) 17:15, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
• Yes The most notable thing about this outlet appears to be its lack of editorial control and penchant for publishing fringe conspiracy theorists. Any valuable information here can surely be found elsewhere, and there is no reason to pretend this is anything resembling a reliable source. Toa Nidhiki05 18:12, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

The same can be said about YouTube… and yet we haven’t deprecated YouTube as a whole. Instead, we judge videos posted there based on the person who created it (ie the “author” of the video). While most video creators (and their videos) are deemed unreliable, some are considered quite reliable - and we allow citations to those videos. If we can make this distinction with video, why can we not do the same for written material? Blueboar (talk) 18:33, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

• No Taking the vague "deprecation" treatment too far is poor editorial judgement on our part. The standard treatment for opinion and context should be enough, here -- sure, the standard requires more thinking, but we dis-serve our purpose when we shy away from more thinking. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 20:51, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
• Yes/No. I agree with people who say this is not a reliable source. Certainly, it is not. But I think it should be treated as WP:SPS, not depreciated. Same with many other sources that have been depreciated on this noticeboard. That would provide a better flexibility, for example with citing views by experts per WP:SPS. Same would apply to anything, even Daily Mail. My very best wishes (talk) 00:53, 21 January 2022 (UTC)
• Yes, certainly. If any so called experts publish something in such place, they are either not experts or hold fringe views. Was it cited or not in releiable sources is irrelevant. Even Kavkaz Center was cited a lot, but this is not an RS per se. My very best wishes (talk) 22:54, 26 January 2022 (UTC)
• No I'm not in favor of deprecating sources. On sourcing, I believe in a case by case approach, decided through local consensus and good faith discussion. If the consensus building process is disrupted by bad actors, discussions can be escalated to noticeboards or WP:DR. I understand why editors want to deprecate this source and this is not an !vote for allowing it to be used for anything other than an WP:SPS in the most benign of cases, or for expert views where editors agree they are due. CutePeach (talk) 15:46, 21 January 2022 (UTC)
• No, I have not seen the source being used a lot, either on here or social media, but as many have previously stated it does not appear to be as grandiose as it was thought to be. With that said, the source appears partisan, so extra precautions should be undertaken when choosing to use CounterPunch as a citation. Furthermore, the source received a mostly factual rating from media bias fact check, but with a far-left bias rating, which should indicate that the source is at the very least not complete junk. MarioSuperstar77 (talk) 21:53, 21 January 2022 (UTC)This user has fewer than 500 edits and is ineligible to contribute to project discussions related the Arab-Israeli conflict topic area. nableezy - 22:31, 21 January 2022 (UTC)
• Yes Plenty of evidence of why to distrust the outlet has been provided in both this and the previous RfC, and it has shown that it has not been an isolated incident. An ad hoc criteria can be applied for exceptions if needed. --NoonIcarus (talk) 00:18, 22 January 2022 (UTC)
• No Hell of an RfC huh? From what I can gather, CP is a hosting site for opinia from literally the entire political spectrum including some very well respected authors. Unfortunately, this also means there is a serious lack of editorial standards that would in a normal RfC render it generally unreliable. However, this is not the usual RSN RfC, and deprecation would preclude the usage of the source in cases where it could be warranted. Not much more I can say that hasn't been said already, but I will add that I agree that they have hosted certain authors who likely should be deprecated, especially the more conspiritorial ones. BSMRD (talk) 05:16, 22 January 2022 (UTC)
• Yes. I could repaste my initial rationale from the prior discussion, but somebody has already done that above. There are a number of people who claim that CounterPunch is merely an opinion hosing site. That argument should be given very little weight—CounterPunch published a print magazine from 1993 to 2020 and it's entirely unreasonable to claim that this sort of thing is merely a platform and not a selective publisher. Submissions put up on the CounterPunch website aren't mere blog posts that anybody can put up, either—there is a gatekeeping process between the material being submitted and it being published. And, that gatekeeping process is incredibly rotten for a publication that says it tells the facts. Separately publishing that the U.S. government and the Jews (or "Zionists") did 9/11 is Press TV territory. This is what moves it into deprecation territory for me rather than mere unreliability—it publishes conspiratorial material as a matter of preference and particular choice. — Mhawk10 (talk) 04:29, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

Comment

I could repaste my initial rationale from the prior discussion, but somebody has already done that above.

Perhaps then it is worthwhile examining your evidence overall, since you have not replied to specific rebuttals of pieces of it.

1. (1) Widespread publication ofconspiracy theories.'

(a) David Rosen The Epstein Story Continues to Unravel CP November 8, 2019 writes:

Similarly, there is a growing chorus of skeptics who see the collapse of 7 World Trade Center as separate and different from the 9/11 attacks on the WTC.

This occurs in an article reporting forensic evidence from an autopsy that Epstein’s death wasn’t suicide, but perhaps caused by strangulation. It is a parenthesis and states a fact, that numerous skeptics distinguish ther collapse of 7 World Trade Center, from the Twin Towers downed by al-Qaedaì’s hijacked planes. It does not endorse that skepticism but notes it. Perhaps Rosen is convinced of it. Who knows?

(b) John Scales Avery Lies About How the Attack on Afghanistan Started, CP September 2, 2021

This repeats Susan Lindauer’s accusations about CIA foreknowledge putatively via Richard Fuisz and also mentions the 2015 Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth report. Silly, except for the remark I’d never heard of how Donald Rumsfeld reacted some hours after the attacks in a wing of the Pentagon, jumping on it as an excuse to go wild.

(c) Stephen Martin The Zionist Elephant in the Room of Geopolitics, CP October 31, 2014

No doubt this was written by a quarter-baked fool who believes Corporativism bows to Zionism (ergo he is antisemitic) Dov S. Zakheim was, according to the wiki bio ‘tasked (as Defense Comptoller) to trace the Pentagon's 2.3 trillion dollars' worth of unaccounted transactions.

So, of the 70,000 + articles in CP you found 3, one mentioning parenthetically either growing scepticism about one of the 3 buildings, and two, one of which is antisemitic, subscribing to the conspiracy. This is the basis for your assertion that:’ the site's history of publishing 9/11 conspiracy theories is widespread.’ That is a silly inference, in the face of the numerous articles in CP which dismiss such theories as lunatic, as documented.

1. (2) Evan Jones (retired political economist from the University of Sydney and widely published in magazines there) The Pariah State August 1, 2014 devotes a very long article to selecting well known points about Israel malpractices against Palestinians, and writes with outrage. Embedded is the cite re the dancing Israelis meme, the factual aspects of which are given here, not in the link given to the piece from the Anti-Defamation League, -not particularly reliable in these areas -which neatly sidesteps the fact that the FBI did arrest 5 Israelis, detained them in isolation for months , two of whom were [[Mossad] ] and all of whom were reported by eyewitnesses to be dancing and high-fiving as the towers crashed. The [[The Herald (Glasgow) |Scottish Herald] ] reported this in minute detail, so did many other sites. But it can’t be mentioned on CounterPunch without being antisemitic? You dislike the False flag insinuation? That is the term used by Vincent Cannistraro regarding what investigators of the incident thought at the time. The Lavon Affair , which you don’t bold, was a red flag precedent. Israeli agents blew up Egyptian, American, and British-owned civilian cinemas, libraries, and educational centers in such a way that the Muslim Brotherhood would be blamed for the terrorism. Not unique by any means, i.e., Front for the Liberation of Lebanon from Foreigners. None of this proves anything, and it is true that these facts have been adopted by conspiracy sites, but you are objecting to the mention of the facts as though citing them itself is intrinsdically antisemitic.
2. (3) Grover Furr’s article, The “Holodomor” and the Film “Bitter Harvest” are Fascist Lies was carried by CP March 3, 2017 and is cited as proof CP appears to deny the Holodomor. Rubbish (and Nableezy already demolished this insinuation above nableezy - 23:05, 11 January 2022). That was written in direct response to a CP article by Louis Proyect , Socialism Betrayed? Inside the Ukrainian Holodomor CP February 24, 2017. Proyect replied to it Louis Proyect What Caused the Holodomor? CP March 24, 2017 All you have here an altercation between a Trotskyite Marxist, Proyect, challenged by Stalinist-apologist, and professor of medieval English literature, where Proyect gets the upper hand in the rebuttal piece, duly published after Furr’s silly article. CP allowed them a venue to argue their opinions. So?
3. (4) ‘A 2018 piece appears to deny the existence of the Xinjiang internment camps.’ That was challenged as selectively ignoring the evidence on Xinjiang camps in CP here and elsewhere and you never replied. Again, CP doesn’t push for the truth, it hosts views from many sides, and as in that case, several articles affirming their existence cannot be ignored in order to assert that one with the Chinese government line constitutes CP advocacy for an untruth.
4. (5) the website has a troubled history of supporting the bogus vaccine-autism conspiracy theory.’ Nope. In response I cited 6 articles just over the past several months mocking antivaxxers. You never replied. Once again, CP hosts all kinds of views but on the key ‘problems’ the evidence is overwhelming that the majority of its thematic articles don’t push conspiracy theories. It is just that they don’t silence dissenting, or even silly minority views completely. The evidence must be understood as meaningly in the statistical context of percentages of 70,000, and so far we have a score of assertions, or stupid pieces, the latter illustrating nothing more than that occasionally, nutters and one or two anti-Semites have aired their views there vs the fact that very sane scholars, and Jewish thinkers, remain untroubled by that murmur in CP's margins.
5. (6) ‘Their editorial process is also rather suspect.’.

No one is arguing that CP is a standard newspaper RS citable invariably for facts. They are arrguing that (a) deprecation was based on cherrypicked bits of evidence spun into huge claims that CP was a holocaust-denying, gen ocide-promoting, antisemitic, antivaxxer rag, which was clearly a nonsensical travesty of its record. Since numerous quality scholars and journalists publish there, (b) it should not be subject to just a generic deprecatory ban, esp. given the thinness of the evidence adduced in favour of deprecation.Nishidani (talk) 20:05, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

Having a look at this attempted refutation. Re (1) David Rosen seems to flirt with 9/11 trutherism (using the term "skeptics" for conspiracy theorists is an example of this) as well as with Epstein conspiracy theories. Nishidani earlier on this page deployed Rosen as an example of CounterPunch opposition to anti-vaxxers. He has a recent article in CP saying "Serious concerns have been raised about the health impacts of smart phone technology... In a January 2020 piece, Richard Gale and Gary Null noted, “… it is no surprise to find ALEC’s fingerprints all over the aggressive push to roll out 5G technology across the nation.”"[126] Rosen then goes on to quote Gale and Null at length, positively. The link is to a piece in GlobalResearch. Our article on Gary Null says he is "an American talk radio host and author who advocates pseudoscientific alternative medicine and produces a line of questionable dietary supplements." Although it's true some CP authors have criticised Null,[127] a quick search shows that Null is regularly promoted by other CP writers, such as "Mickey Z", who quotes him as an authority for the claim that AIDS and HIV are un-related,[128] as well as by David Swanson[129] and Norman Pollack, a guest on Null's show.[130] Richard Gale has himself contributed to CounterPunch (the article looks like it might be written with Gale?)[131] and contributes regularly to GlobalResearch. I won't link there but some of his recent titles, mostly co-authored with Null, are: "The 5G Roll Out: EMF Radiation, Devastating Health Impacts, Social and Economic Implications. Crimes Against Humanity?", "Woke Critical Race Theory as a Reality Deficit Disorder", "Why Are Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin Being Officially Suppressed?" and "The Woke Culture: A Pathology of Post-Modern Tribalism". So, even if these examples don't prove that conspiracy theories are "widespread", it shows they are a regular feature of the website. I am still not sure if deprecation is appropriate, but it seems to me that promoting these kinds of narratives is actually dangerous, and allowing citations of this publication outside of a few very exceptional cases. BobFromBrockley (talk) 17:11, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

I don’t think anyone is arguing that conspiracy crap like that is reliable or appropriate. The argument is that we should allow the more reliable stuff. The solution to this is to deprecate specific authors. Blueboar (talk) 17:24, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

As Blueboar said. I'd be the first to agree that you can find crap from nutters on CP, and I have always argued that it cannot be taken as we do with numerous mainstream papers, as a regular RS. But Bob, you and several others are again using a faulty technique. Whereas I am arguing (a) the article base for editors to assess CP is some 70,000è articles over two decades (b) a few score nutter articles can be googled up (c) but if editors hostile to CP don't exercise scruple (neutrality) by checking the CP data base to see how many articles confute or make counter-arguments of the ideas we deplorethen (d) they are at fault methodologically. Time and again above, some crackpot opinion has been cited, and dutifully, it has been shown that the opinion is a minority view. A handful of conspiracy theorists? Well Cockburn pulled that viewpoint apart authoritatively as have several other CP contributers. Anti-vax nonsense, well, I cited 6 articles appearing over three months that went for the jugular against anti-vaxxers. Unlike mainstream papers CP hosts an open forum of conflicting viewpoints, without censoring the occasional nonsense this or that writer has touted. And, in statistical terms the couple of score of articles cited are insignificant as an index of what CP publishes. All they document is that CP thinks of itself as a web agora where arguments within a broad libertarian-left congeries of communities are given space. It leaves readers to decide. It does not preempt its readership by dictating a narrow band of what is sayable and thinkable. And as Blueboar states, what interests Wikipedia is the quality, quite abundant, that appears there, under easily recognizable professional authors' names. The rest has no place on Wikipedia.Nishidani (talk) 17:52, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

I'm sympathetic to Blueboar's suggestion we deprecate some authors rather than the publication. I wonder if it's practical. Just some of the strong candidates mentioned in this discussion include Grover Furr, David Rosen, John Scales Avery, Thomas Hon Wing Polin, Steven Higgs, Rchard Gale, Anne McElroy Dachel, Robert J. Burrowes, John Kendall Hawkins, Gary Null, Isael Shamir, Gilad Atzmon, Alison Weir, Paul Craig Roberts, Wayne Madsen, and Mark Crispin Miller, Diana Johnstone, Franklin Lamb, Ray McGovern, Lenni Brenner, and of course Alice Donovan. BobFromBrockley (talk) 18:42, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

I've now looked at the John Avery Scales piece. This is published as recently as September and is unambiguously a case of 9/11 trutherism. I had been under the impression that CounterPunch had considerably improved under Joshua Frank and in particular since the Alice Donovan affair, but the more I look the more I realise they keep on publishing this sort of stuff. Moving on to point (2) re the Evan Jones article, this is what the article says: It is forbidden by the censors who channel acceptable opinion to draw parallels with the Nazis’ modus operandi. But if the shoe fits… More, the model of the Reichstag fire false flag has been readily replicated, not least in the 1954 Lavon Affair and, most spectacularly, in 9/11 (whence the five dancing Israelis at Liberty Park?). Practice makes perfect with false flags. This is not a simple "mention" of some controversial facts; it's a straight-up claim 9/11 was a false flag attack: pure conspiracy fantasy. The article also approvingly cites Alison Weir, a 2011 article by her in CounterPunch, illustrating how its editorial policies mean that conspiracy fantasy material is amplified. Given how much conspiracy material they have in their back catalogue, sending our readers there in our footnotes is not simply not good practice for an encyclopedia. It doesn't matter if this material is a large or a small proportion of the overall content of CP; what matters is there is a lot of it, and seeing CP as a legitimate source legimates it. BobFromBrockley (talk) 10:25, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

a) No, it doesn't and b) This detailed examination of one article serves no useful purpose here, being simply a repetition of the argument that a couple dozen bad articles invalidates 70,000. Selfstudier (talk) 10:34, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

Have just edited my comment slightly to be clear I'm refering to two different articles discussed in the comments above, the first by Scales and the second by Jones. Other readers can judge for themselves if they are examples of conspiracy theory or not. The point is it's more than a couple of articles; it may not be all 70,000 but the problem is endemic. BobFromBrockley (talk) 14:28, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

I agree it's not a couple, I said a couple dozen (my guesstimate of the number discussed here and in the previous RFC), I don't agree that its endemic and there is no evidence of that. Selfstudier (talk) 14:34, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

• Yes The site unashamedly publishes conspiracy theories and has no editorial control or policies so is in effect a self-published source. It can be used to prove the author's opinions but not for substantiating any facts.Crystalfile (talk) 01:27, 27 January 2022 (UTC) — Crystalfile (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. The user also has fewer than 500 edits and is ineligible to contribute to project discussions related the Arab-Israeli conflict topic area. nableezy - 01:31, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

  How is my view about CP's bogus claims about vaccines or 9/11 connected to the Arab-Israeli conflict? If you keep on seeing conspiracies everyehere they might actually agree to publish an article of yours.Crystalfile (talk) 02:20, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

discussion on the relevance of a tag
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
I leave it to the closer to take a look at your contributions as to the relevance of the big banner up top about canvassing and as to your chosen topic areas in the years past when you were editing wrt the relation of this RFC and the ARBPIA topic area. nableezy - 03:16, 27 January 2022 (UTC) I think it's pretty clear they're an SPA but at the same time other people are discussing this for reasons other than WP:PIA. Personally, I don't see why you can't just leave the regular Template:SPA rather than writing your own custom thingy. There's no conceivable benefit to saying that "The user also has fewer than 500 edits and is ineligible to contribute to project discussions related the Arab-Israeli conflict topic area." Either you're implying/saying that this editor has violated 500/30 by commenting here, in which case you can go to WP:AE and ask an actual admin to moderate this, or you're not implying the editor has violated anything regarding 500/30 in which case there's no actual purpose to your addendum to the template. Others have told you that your 500/30 warning is unwelcome and unnecessary. Chess (talk) (please use {{reply to|Chess}} on reply) 06:45, 27 January 2022 (UTC) If this discussion is covered by ARBPIA, and just your contribution to it should demonstrate to any person editing in good faith that it very obviously is, then no editors with fewer than 500 edits may participate. Just based on the extensive socking by Icewhiz and NoCal100 in the last one, and the mass emailing by Yaniv in both this and the last one, I likewise dont find that any editor in good faith can claim that it is not either, but some editors have disruptively attempted to maintain the !votes of ineligible accounts, in a way I find to be right on the edge of meatpuppeting and/or proxying, already, so instead of merely striking the votes of clearly ineligible users I have noted which ones are ineligible to participate. No admin has made a decision either way on this, and I have asked that somebody do so. Yes, I am directly saying this is a violation of 500/30. But the list of things that I care about does not include what you feel unwelcome or unnecessary, and I will continue to note the obviously canvassed and ARBPIA violating accounts as they come in. nableezy - 13:39, 27 January 2022 (UTC)—User:Nableezy (talk • contribs) should stop inventing their own ways to tag other users, lest other users decide to tag them as well. Chess (talk) (please use {{reply to|Chess}} on reply) 16:42, 27 January 2022 (UTC) The presence of a couple of editors who are focused on ARBPIA topics is not itself a reason to call this is an ARBPIA topic. Comments above relate to vaccine disinformation, 9/11 denial, the Holodomor, camps in Xinjiang and any number of other topics. If this happens again, please just add the SPA tag and leave it up to the closer to sort the wheat from the chaff. BobFromBrockley (talk) 16:39, 27 January 2022 (UTC) I dont know if you are being purposely obtuse or not, but no I have never said that the presence of a couple of editors who are focused on ARBPIA topics is itself a reason to call this is an ARBPIA topic. What I have said is that this discussion substantially focuses on ARBPIA topics, and because of that reason it is covered by ARBPIA. As for your request, no. nableezy - 16:46, 27 January 2022 (UTC) Nableezy is correct. Most of the socks identified as disrupters in both the earlier RfC and this one have PIA interests. Much of the material adduced as 'damning evidence' directly concerns Israel. And of course Israel, for the 6th time (to my knowledge) has gone public in these last few days stationg that it will bankroll attempts to influence any social media that deal with its interests. Those familiar with that area know that it is regularly subjected to challenges from people who are highly protective of that nation's image. Some of it is financed officially by Israel, which has no problem in publically announcing as it did just in these last few days that it is providing '250 million shekels to fund covert pro-Israeli propaganda and “consciousness shaping” activities on social networks.' Wikipedia undoubtedly falls within that remit.(Refaella Goichman, This anti-BDS Initiative Failed. So Israel Throws Another $30 Million at It,'Haaretz 26 January 2022) It is only sensible practice to scrutinize new editors or low performers who suddenly jump in to a discussion like this, esp. since CP is highly critical of that country's abuse of human rights.Nishidani (talk) 17:22, 27 January 2022 (UTC) It is only sensible practice to scrutinize new editors or low performers who suddenly jump in to a discussion like this because they might be Israelis trying to control social media, is what you're saying? Levivich 02:11, 29 January 2022 (UTC) What a tiresomely cheap insinuation. Really, that is an inept attempt to punch under the belt, with all the heft of Goofy throwing a punch at Black Pete. People who know the topic area will be familiar with this baiting logic. (a) are you, Nishidani, suggesting 'Israelis might be trying to control social media?' (b) subtext. The protocols of Zion assert Jews aspire to control the world and anti-Semitic literature is rife with claims that Jews control the media and everything else. ergo, Nishidani's 'suggestion' smacks of a veiled endorsement of the Protocols of Zion thesis, and is potentially motivated by anti-Semitism. (d) therefore, ignore his evidence and insinuate a covert motive in one's interlocutor's argument that, by poisoning the well with such suspicions, deflects scrutiny from the evidence given, personalizing the issue as one essentially about Nishidani's attitude regarding 'Jews'. Cheap, dumb and illiterate because (1)I did not suggest 'Israelis might be trying to hijack social media'. It was Haaretz which documented a public fact, that Israel invests in attempt to covertly manipulate media. (2)Israel is a government, Israelis are something else. What the government does cannot be construed, except with malicious intent to distort, as what Israelis, Jews or Arabs, engage in. Note the ineptness of your assumption that Israel= Israelis (qua Jews). Israelis can be Jews or Arabs. (3) I happen to be published on the broader issue of governments investing in mass media in order to 'shape' or manipulate world opinion regarding them, specifically the attempt programmed in the mid-eighties by the Japanese government to influence foreign research through financial strings, and the implementation of monitoring bodies with a structure to enable rapid official and unofficial responses to any criticism. The US has consistently done that, notoriously with |Encounter and, closer to the I/P area, Al-Hiwar, not to speak of the ongoing efforts of countries like China and Russia. You should be familiar with my view. The historical fact of cancerous antisemitism in Europe, and its consummation in the Holocaust cannot allow discussion about Israel to be subject to a taboo that would confer on it the status of privileged exemption, as exceptional to the nature of historical states. It is shameful that this kind of Chinese whispering tends to infect every argument apropos, crippling evidence and analysis.Nishidani (talk) 12:37, 29 January 2022 (UTC) It is only sensible practice to scrutinize new editors or low performers who suddenly jump in to a discussion like this because Israeli money is being used to covertly manipulate media, is what you're saying? The source you linked to says The extent of the initiative’s failure revealed itself during the violent riots in mixed cities in May 2021, alongside Operation Guardian of the Walls in Gaza during the same period. Led by pro-Palestinian activists, the Palestinian narrative dominated social networks. And when Israel failed to develop any counter-propaganda initiatives, celebrities like Noa Tishby and Bar Refaeli stepped into the vacuum. But you don't seem to think we need to scrutinize new editors or low performers who suddenly jump in to a discussion like this to see if they're pro-Palestinian activists whose narrative dominates social networks. You also don't seem concerned about American money, or Russian money, or anyone else's money being used to covertly manipulate media. I guess it's only Israelis we have to watch out for. Maybe instead of having these arguments about {{spa}} tags or custom 30/500 tags, we should just use some simple icon to identify new editors or low performers who suddenly jump in to a discussion like this, something like: ? Levivich 17:27, 29 January 2022 (UTC) Impressive the misdirection here. There is an established effort by one side here to subvert our process. And you want to pretend that somebody is racist, but not really say it outright just wink at it. All of this is of course entirely irrelevant and it would be great if discussion of it would stop. You dont like my tagging these accounts? Ah well. Lots of things on the internet disappoint me too. I am going to collapse this as wholly irrelevant. nableezy - 18:20, 29 January 2022 (UTC) If the Israeli government actually wanted to spend that money on influencing Wikipedia I think they'd do a better job than just throwing SPAs at the problem. You'd think with a budget that large they could afford to purchase accounts with EC perms at the very least. Chess (talk) (please use {{reply to|Chess}} on reply) 02:24, 29 January 2022 (UTC) It's the usual thing, action and $ at a distance, part of overall lobbying efforts. Anyway, it's not just Israel that does it.Selfstudier (talk) 11:15, 29 January 2022 (UTC) Apologies Nableezy if I've misunderstood. I read If this discussion is covered by ARBPIA, and just your contribution to it should demonstrate to any person editing in good faith that it very obviously is and Just based on the extensive socking by Icewhiz and NoCal100 in the last one, and the mass emailing by Yaniv in both this and the last one, I likewise dont find that any editor in good faith can claim that it is not either and read that as meaning that the participation of such people was the evidence. Anyway, a very small proportion of this discussion, a very small proportion of the "damning evidence", a very small proportion of CP's coverage, and a minority of the uses of CP that have been removed from Wikipedia are connected to PIA, so I just don't get this. BobFromBrockley (talk) 18:27, 27 January 2022 (UTC) Chess's contribution was about a person writing about Zionism and Chess making some fairly obscene BLP violations in calling that living person essentially a Nazi. It is the content of his contribution that relates to the topic area, not that he is an editor who is focused on the topic area (he isnt afaik anyway). There is zero reading of this discussion that supports the contention a very small proportion of this discussion ... [is] connected to PIA. A huge proportion of the comments relate directly to the ARBPIA topic area, and if you include the ones that are per such and such user that do so then an overwhelming proportion of comments are related. Including yours (you cite Gilad Atzmon, Israel Shamir and Alison Weir, which a look at each of their talk pages will show are included in the ARBPIA topic area). nableezy - 18:37, 27 January 2022 (UTC) If you really believe that Chess made "obscene BLP violations" then per WP:BLP you *must* remove their comments and are welcome to open a noticeboard discussion. Until then WP:NPA and WP:ASPERSIONS apply. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 15:59, 28 January 2022 (UTC) Go report me then. nableezy - 16:42, 28 January 2022 (UTC) The user have more then 350 edits in various topics we usually don't call such users WP:SPA Shrike (talk) 19:02, 27 January 2022 (UTC) Sure, that contribution list is not nearly entirely focused on the ARBPIA topic. Wonder how he saw this discussion to make his first edit in seven months. And then his very next edit, you wont believe it, comes in the re-run 3 months later. You say excepting 9 edits, with 7 coming over a few days in March, his first two edits in 6 years just happened to find these two RFCs? Wow, what a shocking coincidence. If you arent trying to be so transparent in your motives here it is not working. nableezy - 19:09, 27 January 2022 (UTC) You appear to be confusing the concept probable sock with SPA, nothing you just said addresses then being an SPA. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 15:59, 28 January 2022 (UTC) No, you appear to be confusing the two. I dont think this is a sock at all, this is an editor who has had as his sole focus the ARBPIA topic area. Also known as a single-purpose account. But you can assume I dont actually care what you think about this and as such there is no need to engage me with your thoughts and feelings. nableezy - 16:42, 28 January 2022 (UTC) What does "shocking coincidence" have to do with SPA? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 16:50, 28 January 2022 (UTC) you can assume I dont actually care what you think about this and as such there is no need to engage me with your thoughts and feelings. nableezy - 16:53, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

• Deprecate but for a different reason. Magazine sources tend to be terrible sources of information in general compared to their newspaper counterparts. They talk a lot of gossip and the standards they have mean that tabloid papers can be filled with baloney that slants the truth to one direction or another. We already deprecated WP:DAILYMAIL and similar sources almost a few years ago, it is time to deprecate this source as well. I think of magazine sources as an absolute last resort - if there is anything better, use that first. There are a few exceptions, like when magazine sources are the only source for a particular topic (like gaming or fashion). But outside of that these tabloids do a terrible job at reporting straight, hard facts. Aasim - Herrscher of Wikis 00:22, 28 January 2022 (UTC)
• Yes/Deprecate/Option 4 per my comments in the previous recent RFC: "Option 4 per Mikehawk10 and Dr. Swag Lord. I think the deprecation should be a blanket one, because many of the issues are egregious and spread across many topic areas. GretLomborg (talk) 21:57, 20 September 2021 (UTC)" Also, Bad RFC. Why isn't this in the usual format? There's usually 3 non-deprecate options, so which of those does "no" mean here? - GretLomborg (talk) 00:51, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

  Not in the usual format because it's not a usual rfc, the prior close being in dispute. No was left to the discussion to determine, my assumption was that a deprecated source that was undeprecated would default to gunrel ie the next one "up". That also seems to reflect what is being said in the discussion, many seem happy to use the source for expert opinions a la SPS which is what gunrel would allow and deprecate does not.Selfstudier (talk) 09:15, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

• Deprecate clearly unreliable but I think that the argument for deprecation is strong one given all of the nutjob content they've published. On the other side "Don't deprecate because I like X who has published work in it" is not now and will never be a valid argument to present at RSN. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 15:59, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

Well, I for one have closely examined the nutjob screeds, and have come up, sifting the 'evidence' with about a dozen instances among those googled up and cherrypicked from the 70,000+ CP data base. There's been no reply to that. As there has been no reply to the fact that three score scholars and professional journalists of standing regularly publish there. Deprecation means that any scholar of international standing cannot be cited if they chose to publish in CP because a handful of nutters were ferreted out of its archives. It is flawed to produce 'positive evidence' and silently ignore the abundant 'counter-evidence' and arguments that argue the positive evidence is statistically insignificant. Deprecation means that one must gut (as was done) our article on Raul Hilberg because scholars of distinction who knew him, like Norman Finkelstein and Michael Neumann commemorated the pathfinding scholar of the Holocaust, did so in Counterpunch, simply because somewhere in the thickets of that huge mass of material, a few anti-Semitic opinions were detected. This is the dilemma practical content builders face when blanket deprecation passes as the lazy way not to even read a source like CP, which, indisputably, contains a significant amount of material by highly respected scholars, thinkers and journalists. The application of dsprecation significantly harmed articles that used this quality of encyclopedic input.Nishidani (talk) 16:38, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

Yes you've already made this argument a half dozen times, why bludgeon? "Don't deprecate it because then we would have to gut X article which I love dearly" is not a valid argument to bring to RSN and amounts to complaining about the possibility that work will be required. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 16:48, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

The argument bears repetition since the opposite argument is being repeated ad nauseum, all of the nutjob content they've published without empirical evidence.Selfstudier (talk) 17:34, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

Bludgeoning does not excuse bludgeoning, just break the cycle.... Stop bludgeoning. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 17:38, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

My point is not to bludgeon. Anyone can have an opinion, but, for the last 2,500 years opinions that merit attention get it because they are the result of evolving debate in an open climate of evidential claims and logical analysis. In these forums, both sides have asserted a basic set of opinions about CP. The pro-CP group has expended a lot of energy is challenging the factual basis for assertions that deprecation is required. I do not see any response to those challenges, but rather meme-reproduce tion ad nauseam. If this is not to be the usual numbers game one would expect arguments to be engaged, challenges to be responded to. That hasn't occurred. Every time the evidence for deprecation is scrutinized to test the claims made, the response has been one of silence, as the same frail claims are repeated by editors further down the page. WP:Consensus clearly states that opinions have less weight than reasoned argument, precisely to ensure that problems where we disagree are addressed analytically, which, unfortunately, is something that these humongous threads are consistently ignoring. Nishidani (talk) 11:40, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

I have seen no-one suggest that these articles were never published, unless someone can do that there really isn't much of an argument against deprecation unless we want to change our standards. What challenge to the factual basis for assertions that deprecation is required are you thinking of? And keep in mind that the factual basis is the existence of published disinformation so any challenge must successfully challenge the actual existence of those articles which I haven't seen. "Yes they're real but it doesn't matter because I like the source" isn't worth engaging with. This is a RSN discussion, whether or not one is pro or anti CP is not relevant and if it is then those editors have a conflict of interest which is preventing them from editing dispassionately. Personally I like counterpoint and read them often, but I don't let that get in the way of the fact that they are clearly deprecation worthy. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 16:27, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

There very obviously is an argument against it, and the caricature of that argument as it doesn't matter because I like the source is horseshit. Your view on what is clear is just that, yours, and very obviously disputed by a large number of editors. Who all very clearly disagree that the cherry-picked articles written by non-experts that the cherry-pickers dislike mean that scholars writing in the area of their expertise should be expunged from an encyclopedia. nableezy - 16:53, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

That is a broad criticism of the deprecation process and not specifically germane to the discussion here. If those articles exist (note that in the RSN context there is no prohibition against cherrypicking) then theres an issue here. The way our current system is set up a dozen bad articles can condemn 100,0000 good ones. Now you can disagree on whether that is a feature or a fault but this is not the place to discuss it. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 17:04, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

You just saying something does not make it true, sorry. The majority view in this RFC is that no, a dozen bad articles do not condemn 100,000 good ones, it condemns those dozen by non-experts. Nobody has been able to show how a CP article by an expert writing in the area of his or her expertise should not be cited. Nobody has been able to answer why this article, itself widely cited by other reliable sources, written by an established expert, who himself academically published and widely cited in this specific topic, should not be cited because some other article written by some non-expert made some objectionable claim. You can insist that your view is the way things are by definition, but as of right now that is a distinct minority view of the way things are. And in a project governed by consensus, guess what? That makes it not the way things are. nableezy - 17:14, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

This is the sort of bludgeoning I was talking about before. "Because thats how deprecation works" is the answer, but you won't accept it. Refusing to accept the answer is not the same as nobody being able to answer your question. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 17:27, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

You just saying something does not make it true, sorry ... You can insist that your view is the way things are by definition, but as of right now that is a distinct minority view of the way things are. And in a project governed by consensus, guess what? That makes it not the way things are. nableezy - 18:05, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

I think it is also the case that it is by no means clear how "deprecation works" given the related discussion of that issue specifically.Selfstudier (talk) 18:08, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

References

References

RfC: Srivastava Group

Srivastava Group is a holding company registered in India which was found to be operating a disinformation network with at least 265 identified fake news websites. The websites either use bought out domains of defunct news publishers, domains pretending to be associated with newspapers that don't exist (e.g timesofgeneva.com) or misleading domains which are pretending to be websites of mainstream newspapers (e.g timesoflosangeles.com). To provide more credibility to their websites and to inflate their content, they also plagiarise from other news publishers in violation of copyright. Read these articles for additional context; BBC 1 BBC 2 CBC Quint 1 Quint 2 (Primary sources: EU Disinfo Lab, Interactive Map)

The main websites of the network are newdelhitimes.com  , eptoday.com  , timesofgeneva.com  

I propose the following:

• Blacklisting of the above mentioned websites
• Blacklisting of other identified websites by referring them at WT:BLIST on an ad hoc basis (this will prevent the need for repeated RSN discussions for each individual website)

Tayi Arajakate _Talk 02:44, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

Survey (Srivastava Group)

• Support as proposer. Tayi Arajakate _Talk 02:49, 15 January 2022 (UTC)
• Support See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/New Delhi Times (newspaper) for further discussion about this group. Multiple newspaper articles reported on the findings by https://www.disinfo.eu/publications/uncovered-265-coordinated-fake-local-media-outlets-serving-indian-interests/. The number of total sites is quite large. And additional information is in Fake_news_in_India#Fake_news_against_Pakistan. -- rsjaffe 🗩 🖉 03:25, 15 January 2022 (UTC)
• Support Per nomination. TrangaBellam (talk) 08:33, 15 January 2022 (UTC)
• Support. This is pretty easy to support. Chess (talk) (please use {{reply to|Chess}} on reply) 09:26, 15 January 2022 (UTC)
• Support. No brainer. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 15:38, 15 January 2022 (UTC)
• Support indeed obvious Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 16:55, 15 January 2022 (UTC)
• Support per nom as unambiguous. Chompy Ace 00:25, 16 January 2022 (UTC)
• Support from everything I have seen, it's all copyright violations or fake news. --SVTCobra 01:55, 17 January 2022 (UTC)
• Support - Considering how the suggested sources describe it. —PaleoNeonate – 03:56, 21 January 2022 (UTC)
• Support per nom. hemantha (brief) 15:58, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

Discussion (Srivastava Group)

• Note I'm opening this RfC after the discussion above at Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard § EP Today and because there appears to be UPE attempts at legitimising these websites, see Wikipedia:Conflict of interest/Noticeboard § New Delhi Times (newspaper). Blacklisting these websites was also previously briefly discussed at Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 281 § Indian fake media. Tayi Arajakate _Talk 02:44, 15 January 2022 (UTC)
• I've extracted the 260 sites listed in the map that is associated with the report. Note that there are other sites listed in the text of the report that are not in the list. Due to the length of the list, I'm placing it a subpage of my user page rather than here: List of alleged fake news sites -- rsjaffe 🗩 🖉 21:11, 15 January 2022 (UTC)
• Note Since it's snowing, I've added all three above as blacklisted in WP:UPSD. I'll update if this closes with a different outcome. If someone has a list of all domains they used, please let me know and I'll update the script accordingly. (Edit: Nevermind, just saw rsjaffe's list) Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 17:11, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

RfC on Next Avenue

Am wondering if the website Next Avenue can be considered a reliable source for information within a BLP. Article: Morrison Polkinghorne, url of source is here. Appears to have an editorial staff, is published by PBS, and claims to adhere to the PBS Standards and Practices (which looks like it means this source qualifies as generally reliable). I was not able to find any discussion of it in the archives. What do others think? A loose necktie (talk) 02:52, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Why wouldn't it be? I'm curious to know why you think this rates an RfC. Edit war? — Isaac Rabinovitch (talk) 04:21, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

A previous editor of the article, Vexations had marked the source as possibly unreliable. A loose necktie (talk) 07:07, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

I felt that WP:FORBES applied there. The actual source is not Forbes, they just republished https://www.nextavenue.org/cambodia-second-act-business/. It would be better to cite the original and consider whether THAT is reliable. Note that the article is part of "America's Entrepreneurs," a Next Avenue initiative made possible by the Richard M. Schulze Family Foundation and EIX, the Entrepreneur Innovation Exchange. Vexations (talk) 15:21, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

That is what we are doing here. The source in the article has been changed to indicate its origin. WP:FORBES may have seemed appropriate at first glance, but that is no longer at issue. The question is, is Next Avenue reliable? Is that not what we are now discussing? A loose necktie (talk) 21:55, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

RfC Daily NK

Should Daily NK (website link) be considered an unreliable source? I noticed that Daily NK is used a lot in the article COVID-19 pandemic in North Korea, and noticed that it seemed to somewhat contradict the World Health Organization about Covid-19 in North Korea during April 2020, not a complete contradiction, but Daily NK reported a positive case from a dead North Korean defector, while a WHO representative reported 100% negative cases. Additionally, I could not find any other sources that confirmed North Korea is lying about cases, implying that Daily NK has not been able to show definitive evidence of anything.

Doing some more research into Daily NK, I found this article that also points to the unreliability of Daily NK and it's influence on misinformation in the Western world: Al Jazeera article.

Additionally, here are some Snopes articles, all which points to the unreliability of Daily NK: Heart surgery, Skinny jeans, Coronavirus

While it appears that Daily NK is not often being debunked, it appears that there is also no reason to particularly trust them as a reliable source. They use anonymous sources without further fact-checking (though I haven't found anything about them using defectors in particular as sources). While the number of sources that questions its reliability/call it unreliable seem a good bit limited, I have not been able to find a single source that confirms it as reliable. TheGEICOgecko (talk) 23:37, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

• Comment: See our "media coverage of North Korea" article for some general considerations about the topic. Given what all is laid out there it would come as no surprise if all sorts of otherwise reliable media outlets failed fact checks on the subject of North Korea. In some ways it's the simple nature of the situation. It can be difficult to accurately ascertain basic information about North Korea. This has probably only been exacerbated during the pandemic: the amount of defectors (who could constitute sources about what is happening throughout the country during the COVID-19 pandemic) radically dropped in 2020. Restrictions on foreigners (who could likewise be sources in some cases) entering the country have also radically increased: they were disallowed from entering the country since at least mid-January 2020 (1)(2). Since at least early March 2020, North Korean border guards have reportedly collaborated with Chinese police to keep people from crossing the border, shooting anybody attempting to cross (1)(2). Situation has evidently persisted to this day.

Even foreign diplomats, who occasionally constitute sources about what's happening in North Korea, have been subjected to various restrictions there such as 30-day quarantines, and many left the country entirely (1). Cargo shipments by freight train between China and North Korea entirely ceased for about 17 months (between mid 2020 and January 2022) (1)(2), and humanitarian aid has even been held in quarantine for months on end (1).

This is all to say that many of the inherent sourcing problems outlined at the media coverage of North Korea article have only worsened during the pandemic due to the government's pandemic restrictions. What was already a bad reliability situation seems to have worsened significantly. Unfortunately contradictory sources are common when it comes to North Korea. This report in NK News (quoted here by The Guardian) was somewhat critical of the usage of "rumors about North Korea based on anonymous sources" in mainstream media.

With this specific instance, the Daily NK's report (which is based on an anonymous source) does not even appear very confident that this suggests COVID-19 deaths. The wording is rather flimsy (e.g. "may have been caused by the novel coronavirus", "what appears to be COVID-19 infections") and it even describes the military report as originating from "data on the number of soldiers who had died after suffering from high fevers stemming from pneumonia, tuberculosis, asthma or colds". This could be euphemism, but that's of course speculative. The WHO report about 709 negatively-tested cases is apparently from Dr. Edwin Salvador, a WHO representative residing in North Korea (1)(2), who appears to be receiving weekly reports from the country's Ministry of Public Health.

Some other context worth noting: Daily NK is described by Vox as "a South Korean outlet run by North Korean defectors". According to The Atlantic in 2011, Daily NK then received notable WP:USEBYOTHERS and reportedly was used by South Korea's National Intelligence Service as a source of information.

IMO, a lot of the above has to inform a discussion about any source on the COVID-19 pandemic in North Korea, or for that matter, a lot of North Korea reporting in general post-2020. --Chillabit (talk) 11:40, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

I would say that I agree generally with Chillabit, although I would like to add that here is my own personal analysis of the sources:

The first two Snopes links say that the reports are unconfirmed, and not necessarily false. The first one is even labelled as "still developing," meaning it could change in the future.

The third one never even outright says the Daily NK is wrong. It just says the Daily claimed a certain amount of people died. In fact, the article given clearly says that this was a claim coming from an anonymous source. It says "A Daily NK source inside North Korea’s military reported on Mar. 6 that the military’s medical corps had sent a report detailing the impact of COVID-19 on the country’s soldiers to military leaders."

As for Al Jazeera, Mr. See Wong Koo never says that the Daily NK publishes false information. He says that CNN uses it the wrong way and distorts their reports.

Building upon Chillabit's argument, I would like to note that their FAQ, which in addition to explaining the problems it faces, clearly outlines that it has reported factual content far before Western sources picked it up, and provides a list of such cases.

The only place where I disagree with Chillabit is when he implies that the website is run by defectors. The Site's president as well as editor-in-chief hark from South Korea. They do use defectors at times but as their website outlines they are not a defector-run source. Dunutubble (talk) 19:05, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

Definitely not a unique fluke from Vox, I could have sworn I read that elsewhere as well and sure enough a cursory search brings me the BBC and the Times among others saying the same thing, that Daily NK is run by defectors. Leaves me to speculate if somebody along the way misstated Daily NK's reliance on defector-journalists as being "run" by them, and if that just got continuous repetition in the media afterward. --Chillabit (talk) 03:47, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

Dunutubble, yes, I'm sure that Daily NK reports true information far before Western sources, but that's because they report on one specific topic that Western sources do not put resources towards. But it doesn't make it a reliable source for them to sometimes report truth. I think that WP:QUESTIONABLE might be relevant depending on how much they are willing to trust anonymous sources without confirming their veracity. Since there seems to be no evidence that Daily NK has provided, then this may make them unreliable, since it doesn't seem that they have fact-checked via reliable methods.

Chillabit is there currently some kind of formal guidance about sources on the topic of North Korea, like WP:RSPSS? If not, would it be possible to discuss doing something of the sort with an (or this) RfC? Like you said, it seems that perhaps sources about North Korea should generally be considered with a lot more scrutiny, even when reliable sources like CNN or BBC report on the topic. Since there is a lack of information, perhaps there should be an expectation for sources to also provide evidence (or otherwise, the information seems like the kind of information that is more easily accessible), rather than just providing information. Bear in mind this train of thought is not guided by any of the guidelines or policies, albeit indirect connections to generic guidelines/policies like WP:Reliable Sources or WP:Verifiability, but it seems that something should be done to address the higher risk of sources' unreliability about North Korea. TheGEICOgecko (talk) 08:49, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

• Use with attribution pending the development of an actual policy. One of the criteria in WP:RS is having a corrections policy. On their site, I did find the following[132]: Daily NK welcomes complaints about errors that warrant correction. To report errors regarding our coverage or to send feedback or story ideas, email us at [email protected]. This is evidence that they are trying to get the story right in this difficult area. That said, I would strongly support the development of a policy for this type of situation. Adoring nanny (talk) 21:31, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

@Adoring nanny:, you mean a policy specifically dealing with circumstances where reliability is inherently uncertain? Also, it does seem to me too that they are trying to get the story right. But I do not believe them welcoming complaints increases their reliability enough to be considered provably reliable. TheGEICOgecko (talk) 20:13, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

• Reliable. For a small specialized outlet, they seem to do a solid job. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 16:53, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

Who's Who? publications

Who's Who publications rely on self-reporting by those included in the publication and are typically not fact checked. Many appear obvious scams, but even those where most entries are broadly accurate do not fact check; they simply report the text those sent questionnaires send them back (and even then return rates are secret. Where questionnaires are not returned the entries remain the same year after year). There are plenty of reasons, including commercial, for those included to nuance and even falsify their entries. As a class of publication, they do not seem reliable enough to amount to reliable sources for Wikipedia? Is there a Wikipedia position on Who's Whos? I apologise if the subject has been covered, which it may very well have been, but I am a less experienced editor and I cannot see a reference to it. All the best, Emmentalist (talk) 07:21, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

There are a number of previous related discussions in the RSN archives and there are some specific mentions at WP:RSP. Generally considered promotional and not independent enough. Interestingly, some time back when it was discussed again at RSN I did a search and found a number of promotional non-notable BLPs in user space created by single-purpose accounts that cited "Who's Who" publications, suggesting WP:PAID editing. —PaleoNeonate – 00:07, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

In terms of notability, I think a difference is generally made between those like the UK Who's Who which make their own decision on who to include, and the vanity versions which allow nearly anyone to be included if they pay. In terms of using them as a source, I agree given uncertainty over what level of fact checking they do even for those like the UK one, we can't really use them. I mean at best they should be treated as BLPSPS despite not really being self-published, but that's also the problem. Since they aren't really self published we have no idea if editors may have modified details for whatever reason. I seem to recall a BLP complaint where someone said they were the child of someone who had sent details to some vanity publication as an elderly person possibly with dementia or something and it was now creating problems. I thought this was some Who's Who but can't seem find this at BLPN so maybe it was some other similar pay for inclusion vanity publication. Nil Einne (talk) 15:02, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

The UK's isn't much better... Its the same self promotional schtick with a touch of class gatekeeping added, that actually makes it less useful as a source as far as I am concerned. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 15:05, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

Who's Who (UK) is much better, & should be an RS for basic bio details, though it won't contain criminal convictions, & might miss a first marriage etc. Anyone making a false claim in the UK one is likely to be found out, & the subject of huge ridicule - I think this has happened for relatively minor things. Johnbod (talk) 17:22, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

UK Who's Who just simply doesn't have the relevance it once had even two decades ago. I doubt anyone would care if someone was making stuff up in their questionaire. This Spectator article from 2004 notes a number of instances where people were making stuff up (including making theirs birthdays years later than they actually were), which is followed by [Publishing director for reference books] Jonathan Glasspool insists they can only go by what people tell them. "We’ve got 32,000 people in the book, and at least half the records every year are amended or corrected in some way, and a thousand new records a year. It would be impossible for us to check every fact." If an error is pointed out to Who’s Who they will raise it with the biographee, and Glasspool maintains that the vast majority of errors are sorted out by agreement in this way. But, to take one example, what if Jeffrey Archer insisted that his entry was correct when it wrongly states that he became a member of the Greater London Council in 1966? "We would have to take him at his word" says Mr Glasspool. Newspapers have in the past pointed out that Susan Hampshire’s entry gives the wrong date of birth. Who’os Who have written to her about this, but had no reply, so they let the current date stand. Wrong information remains in what is supposed to be a definitive reference book. If Who's Who can't even correct information if the person in question insists otherwise or doesn't respond, I can't see how it can be a reliable source. Hemiauchenia (talk) 22:25, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

Oh wow thats much worse than I though, that would put UK Who's Who solidly into deprecation territory. I don't think I've ever seen such a bold admission of knowingly publishing false information. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 17:08, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

Extensive use of a primary source from Cryptologic Quarterly, an internal NSA document, on Gulf of Tonkin incident

Our article on the Gulf of Tonkin incident makes use of extensive cites to a single primary source, - Cryptologic Quarterly, an internal publication distributed by the NSA for use within the US government (available today via FOIA requests, but not intended to be published outside the government.) It seems obvious to me that this source, as a primary source within the US government that can clearly be presumed to be WP:BIASED when it comes to US government policy, shouldn't be cited without attribution and shouldn't be relied on extensively; yet the majority of key facts in that article are cited to it, in the article voice, with no attribution or in-text indication as to the fact that this comes directly from the NSA. I attempted to tag this issue a while back but recently noticed it was reverted; since the article is low-traffic I figured it made more sense to raise the issue here. It is certainly true that some of these statements are uncontroversial in the sense that they can be cited elsewhere, but the precise tone and framing we get from the source matters, and we clearly cannot use internal NSA sources (which are clearly primary documents) without attribution in this context - if it is uncontroversial, that means that secondary sources are available, and they ought to be used, for which tagging citations as primary so people know to correct the problem in the future is an obvious first step. Note that I am not saying that Cryptologic Quarterly is entirely unreliable (it seems decent as far as plainly-biased primary sources go), but it obviously cannot be used in the fashion, and to the extent, that it is being used in that article - when discussing the actions of the US government, it can only be used with attribution, and ought to be used more sparingly to reflect the NSA's attributed position, never to establish facts in the article voice. Yet the article currently cites it twenty-two times, largely as a sole, unattributed source for statements of fact. --Aquillion (talk) 07:26, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

Support attribution in all instances of its use on the article for anything beyond the most trivial details. This is a context where this particular source cannot be taken at face value. Cambial — foliar❧ 08:33, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

It's not a "primary source" in the same way the Pentagon Papers aren't a primary source about the Vietnam War despite the creator (US Government) being involved in it. A corporate author that was involved in the events doesn't mean the person who's actually writing the work is drawing on their own personal experiences. While the source is likely to be biased in favour of the US government (and I would agree with attributing it, but I believe in attribution in general wherever possible), it is still very clearly a secondary source on the Gulf of Tonkin incident. The author is synthesizing the facts and providing their own original analysis of what occurred, providing in-depth inline citations to the sources that they used in creating the piece. The quote in particular that you've provided demonstrates this excellently, as the author is providing "for the first time ever" the assessment that individuals in the US Navy cherry-picked accurate signals intelligence to mislead the Johnson administration about the incident, while discounting the theory that there was a conspiracy within the Johnson administration to create entirely falsified signals intelligence to lie about the Gulf of Tonkin incident. Chess (talk) (please use {{reply to|Chess}} on reply) 15:04, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

Per the above, this is NOT a primary source. A primary source would be, say, a video of the incident, or the ships logs from that day, or the transcripts of the communications that occured as the incident was happening. What makes a primary source primary is that it is of the event itself and does not provide meaningful analysis. It is the raw data of the thing, not the after-the-fact analysis of the thing. This is clearly a secondary source as it is an after-the-fact analysis of the event. As a not-entirely-neutral source, it may be worth citing with attribution (i.e. say "According to the NSA... before quoting or paraphrasing), but it is NOT a primary source. --Jayron32 17:46, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

References

The History of the Medieval World: From the Conversion of Constantine to the First Crusade by Susan Wise Bauer

Is The History of the Medieval World: From the Conversion of Constantine to the First Crusade by Susan Wise Bauer a reliable source. The book was published by W. W. Norton, and its homepage does not indicate that it publishes peer-reviewed books ([133]). I understand the author is not a professional historian. She writes popular books mainly about education. Borsoka (talk) 16:52, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

History books do not receive peer reviews as such. At the level of detail an article like Middle Ages can go into, the book is probably reliable, but more specialized sources would be better. Johnbod (talk) 16:57, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

It's a popular history from a responsible publisher. I'd say it's an RS, though perhaps not for more controversial topics. Having listened to the audiobook, I daresay there's precious little controversial material in it. Cheers! Dumuzid (talk) 16:59, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

Yes, at least there's a lot of it - the last citation used covers up to p. 431, for the year 840. The material cited to it is pretty basic facty stuff. Johnbod (talk) 17:04, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

I largely agree with Johnbod & Dumuzid, I think. Norton aren't a primarily academic publisher (though I think e.g. the Norton Critical Editions tend to get proper academics to write their supplementary materials?), but they are well-known and respected. Added to that Bauer isn't a subject-matter expert, and I wouldn't want to cite her for anything too controversial, and suspect that better sources are probably available, but for basic facty stuff I don't think it's likely to be a major problem. Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 20:36, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for your answers. There are hundreds of reliable academic sources about the medieval period which are ignored in the Middle Ages article. Are we sure that a book written by an author who "isn't a subject-matter expert" and published by a primarily non-academic publisher adds value to an article about Middle Ages? Borsoka (talk) 02:45, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

Generally I agree with you – if you have a better source to hand, absolutely replace it. But by the standards of questionable sources used on wikipedia, I'm not super worried about it – I wouldn't revert an edit to an article purely for using it as a source, or scour the literature to find out whether any given claim sourced to it is nonsense just on general principle. Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 11:46, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

Not entirely, no. You should suggest better sources (in English). For most of these basic factual statements, no change in the text is likely to be necessary. Johnbod (talk) 18:50, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

Use it to understand the basic facts, but then use a better source to back it up. Just like college students use Wikipedia. JBchrch talk 22:19, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

Agree with everyone here, and just wanted to briefly chime in again. In my opinion, the work is a well-written surface-level overview that can be enjoyed even by someone with a fair degree of familiarity with the subject (like me). One of the reasons I am comfortable saying it is a reliable source (if not in the highest tier) is something I alluded to earlier: the author is cognizant of her remit and does not (to my memory) exceed it. That is, while she sometimes makes mention of more controversial theories, the structure of the book is almost entirely an uncontroversial recitation of basic fact. So, this leaves me where everyone else seems to be -- if a cite can be replaced with a more academic source, it's probably best to do so. But when cited to establish basic facts and chronology, there's no reason to be overly concerned. Cheers, all. Dumuzid (talk) 14:23, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

• Same as the above; I wouldn't go removing it, though Wikipedia articles that do use it may be better served by adding sources to more reliable texts, as an overview work, it is not unreliable enough to stricken from Wikipedia. Should we add better sources? Always. Should we remove this one? No. --Jayron32 17:42, 25 January 2022 (UTC)
• Yes just to be clear, that something is a "reliable source" does not make it useable for everything in every instance, but for general information on the topic, this Norton book is reliable enough to consider use, and in general not to remove. But arguably better not original and due research is still welcome. Alanscottwalker (talk) 20:27, 25 January 2022 (UTC)
• Yes W. W. Norton is a respected publisher and many of their books are used as academic textbooks. They would be very unlikely to be publish unreliable information given their reputation. Chris (talk) 15:58, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

Tech Times (techtimes.com), iTech Post (itechpost.com), Gamenguide (gamenguide.com)

What are your opinions regarding Tech Times, iTech Post and Gamenguide? iTech Post was added as a source on an article in my watchlist (diff), but I don't think it's a RS. To my knowledge, neither of these sources have ever made a standalone appearance on RSN.

I'm treating all three under the same section since they all list their address under "Tech Times LLC" in New York City on their contact pages [134], [135], [136]. Currently, Tech Times is used 603 times on Wikipedia, iTech Post 44 times, and Gamenguide 44 times.

There doesn't seem to be a clear editorial policy, and author bios are virtually inexistent across the board. Sponsored content seems to be their business model. This investigation by SocialPuncher, which seems to be an auditing firm specializing in digital ads, and which has been cited in RS in the past (e.g. BBC), links it to the generally unreliable IBT. On page 6, the report points out that hundreds of thousands of visitors from Tech Times vanished overnight, which is definitely suspicious. A 2018 Glassdoor review calls Tech Times a "content mill of rewritten articles" whose articles are created in low-income countries, and where the author doubts that they are based in New York (Socialpuncher, 9). According to Socialpuncher, not much is known about the owners of Tech Times or Tech Times LLC, other than a now-scrubbed bio of former IBT employee Surojit Chatterjee, who was listed in 2014 as founder, publisher and CEO (Socialpuncher, 7.) Some articles on Tech Times also seem to be undisclosed promotional content, in violation of Tech Times' very own Terms of Service (8.1): this article, for example, while not letting the reader know about paid-for content, lists Miss to Mrs Box as one of the best bridal box subscriptions, and links to another website which has a short disclaimer that states that "Miss To Mrs Box sponsored this post". I originally even thought that Miss to Mrs Box was run from Tech Times LLC itself because of this listing, but the former company is based in Canada, so I wouldn't look to deeply into that.

Because of the unreliable parent company, I believe that all three publications should not be considered reliable sources. What do you think? Pilaz (talk) 20:09, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

Also, for the modest price of $600, you can hire someone on Upwork to make a "guest post" for you on TechTimes.com so that your own website can get linked to and result in higher visibility in Google searches. I wish I were joking. Pilaz (talk) 20:33, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

Glassdoor reviews are questionable, though the rest of the evidence is compelling. This seems to be a pretty clear cut case of an unreliable source. Chess (talk) (please use {{reply to|Chess}} on reply) 22:13, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

Added all three to WP:UPSD. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 18:27, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

AccuWeather and The Weather Channel

Since I didn't see AccuWeather (accuweather.com) and The Weather Channel (weather.com) on the perennial sources page, are these weather-related sources reliable so you could add them to that page? These website sources are mainly about weather forecasts with generally accurate temperature measures for every location and news from posts of significant weather and even natural disaster events. --Allen ^{(talk / ctrb)} 17:28, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

WP:RSP is for sources that are frequently discussed. It's meant to be a reference guide for sources that can be contentious. As far as I can tell I don't see a point to adding them to RSP if there's no actual dispute. That being said, maybe there is an argument for adding AccuWeather as a yellow entry given that they publish long-term forecasts based on what meteorologists generally agree is bs. [137] [138] I'd say we should declare their forecasts for more than 7 days out as unreliable, given that their long-term forecasting abilities are questionable. Chess (talk) (please use {{reply to|Chess}} on reply) 22:11, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

Allen2, you might ask at WP:WikiProject Weather to see what their views of those two sites are. Schazjmd (talk) 22:23, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

Chess – in general, I think we probably shouldn't be including weather forecasts on Wikipedia at all, whether they are speculative long-term forecasts or more reliable short-term ones by the respected organisations like the Met Office or National Weather Service. If the predicted movements of really major weather systems (like, Hurricane Katrina major) are being discussed in reliable sources outside of just weather forecasts, that might be acceptable, but in general it seems dangerously close to WP:CRYSTAL and WP:NOTNEWS Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 11:38, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

Personally, I don't edit in weather related subjects that often, so I'm unaware whether or not these sources would ever need to be cited or how typical including weather forecasts are. I more or less got the info about AccuWeather's long term forecasting from our Wikipedia article on them and not my own in depth research/knowledge. Chess (talk) (please use {{reply to|Chess}} on reply) 02:31, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

• I can come up with zero use for any weather forecasts at Wikipedia (written in Wikipedia's voice), but insofar as those organization have actual historical weather data available (i.e. what the weather actually was like), if we need to use it, I find them perfectly reliable for such uses. Like the above, these are not contentious, often-discussed sources, and don't need an entry at WP:RSP. Under most circumstances, unless there is some actual challenge, most people are expected to be able to apply the criteria at WP:RS themselves and don't need prior approval to use sources. In terms of what these would be used for at Wikipedia, there's nothing contentious about them. --Jayron32 17:39, 25 January 2022 (UTC)
• Regarding historical weather data, I don’t see why they would be anything but reliable—is there any source that calls into question the accuracy of their historical data? I don’t find it convincing that we would slap a yellow label on a site because of its weather forecasts being wrong. I agree with Chess that long-term weather forecasts are not reliable, but also with Jayron32 that this is not really within the realm of use cases I would think we would ever see from either of these websites. — Mhawk10 (talk) 13:37, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

Heterodox Academy

Not quite sure where else to post this -- an IP over on this page has been adding information about a podcast associated with the subject, with some cites, although about which I have qualms. They have now added cites to college syllabi -- which causes more qualms. This is not a case where the IP is wildly wrong, but if people wanted to go have a look and weigh in (and my qualms might well be unwarranted), I would appreciate it. Cheers. Dumuzid (talk) 21:05, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

At a glance, it looks like the dispute is largely over someone trying to use ListenNotes as a source. Their pages on individual podcasts are WP:USERGENERATED (I'm definitely seeing an edit button there.) The statistics seem to be automated somehow but given that the site itself plainly isn't an WP:RS I don't think it's a usable source for them. They just describe their Listen Score vaguely as a mathematical model and there is no indication that anyone else cares about it. I would classify it as remove-on-sight. --Aquillion (talk) 23:43, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

Is a book published by Georgetown University Press a reliable source on Georgetown University?

While conducting the GA review of 1838 Jesuit slave sale I saw that one of the books used was The Bicentennial History of Georgetown University: From Academy to University, 1789–1889. Is this book a reliable source on the history of Georgetown University? The author, Robert Emmett Curran, was a professor of history at Georgetown. He has written other academic books (John Dooley's Civil War published by University of Tennessee Press and Papist Devils: Catholics in British America, 1574–1783 published by Catholic University of America Press). This book was positively reviewed by Theological Studies (journal)[139] and by Studies (journal)[140], both peer reviewed journals. So the source seems reliable enough. My only concern is whether Georgetown University Press is an WP:INDEPENDENT source on Georgetown University.VR _talk 05:11, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

If the author is a respected academic historian, it’s probably fine. That the historian has published a book on early Catholicism in North America bolsters his credentials in this particular case—the history of early Jesuit education in the US seems to fall within his area of academic competence. I don’t necessarily see independence issues with respect to university academic presses; the presses generally are not censored by their respective universities and I don’t see why Georgetown’s press would be any different. If the source is peer-reviewed and has received positive commentary from independent academic-quality sources regarding the quality of the book, it seems fine in this context. The only thing that jumps out at me is that the book was published in 1993. Histories of Georgetown published more recently might have been made with access to better information than the original book if there was relevant new information discovered in the past ~30 years. — Mhawk10 (talk) 13:18, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

Thanks, Mhawk10, that helps and I agree.VR _talk 15:12, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

I advise caution and not using this source for controversial claims as both the publisher and the author are clearly not independent of the subject. In my experience, historians who focus on higher education in the U.S. often do not look favorably on histories commissioned and published by institutions as they are often biased in favor of the institution; these "house histories" are sometimes intended to celebrate and promote the institution instead of accurately describing its past. That doesn't mean that this is an unreliable source but it's certainly not an independent one so due weight considerations are very possible. ElKevbo (talk) 23:04, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

As an professor, I will point out that if you publish a book with an academic press, your work has to pass peer review. It is also standard to get feedback from other scholars when writing your book. Given these factors I would rate this university press books as some of the most reliable sources you can find. University presses are not obliged to bias their publications in favor of their respective university as another person mentioned above. More generally, I find that a set of Wikipedia editors is more focused on the the independence rule than the larger purpose of Wikipedia. The point of that rule is that some people are likely to be self serving. However, one should also use some discretion. If a person, especially an author or academic, has a history of publishing reliable work in respectable outlets, there is no reason to suspect them of self-serving bias. Using them as a source is likely to enrich Wikipedia articles which serves the mission of Wikipedia. This factor must also be considered. Chris (talk) 15:54, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

It's not an independent source. And there are many authors who publish reliable work in respectable outlets then leverage their reputation to make money by promoting stuff. While I am unaware if this is the case here, it's not an argument to say that because a person published a lot of unbiased stuff in the past they can't become biased later. The suspicion of self serving bias already happens because of the inherent conflict of interest in writing about a school while having the work be published by the school. This is something that needs to be actively disproved. Chess (talk) (please use {{reply to|Chess}} on reply) 02:38, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

Reputable university presses are usually governed separately from the university leadership. I don't know if that applies to GUP in particular, but I presume it does. So it's not like Georgetown's PR department can excise embarrassing material from a book published by the press. AleatoryPonderings (???) (!!!) 15:50, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

Is a preprint quoted in an article by someone not a DNA specialist ok as a source for DNA?

The text I'm concerned about is "Also, Gourdine et al conducted short tandem repeat's (STR's) analysis of samples from royal mummies of the Eighteenth Dynasty and Nineteenth Dynasty, including Rameses III, which determined the genomes had a 41.7% to 93.9% affilitation with sub-Saharan African populations.

"Gourdine et al", quoted in the source above, is the preprint at [141], the link is in the text of the article as you can see if you read it. Also of some concern is that the author of the article in African American Archaeological Review turns out to be a pharmacology and infectious disease specialist.[142] Pinging User:WikiUser4020 who I think has been adding this is good faith. Doug Weller talk 08:17, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

References

The journal is African Archaeological Review to be correct. A preprint is essentially a scientific paper prior to public server. The author is an academic and his work has been published in a peer-review journal. Keita and Bard are also referenced in the wider article despite their backgrounds as historians/bio-anthropologists. The issue is the unbalanced weight of work. Serological evidence from Paoli and Diop were edited out, despite being peer-reviewed evidence due to the view that this evidence was out of date. Yet, the opposing view permits blood group evidence from 1981 from Paoli which links ancient and modern Egyptians without reference to the fact the latter has shared blood group linkages with West African populations in a separate study conducted by the same author. — Preceding unsigned comment added by WikiUser4020 (talk • contribs)

Sorry, no idea how "American" got there. The problem is that the preprint after several years hasn't been published and is not peer reviewed. The authors may have decided not to publish it for various reasons, including discovering problems with the data or methodology. Crawford being an academic in one field does not make him a reliable source in a different field. Doug Weller talk 09:25, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

As for WP:PREPRINTS, preprints aren't reliable sources for anything. Plus, one can only wonder why is an infectious disease specialist allowed to write an ancient history article, moreover using as sources scholars who were/are frequently accused of pseudo-historicism like Cheikh Anta Diop and Martin Bernal, the latter more likely to be entirely WP:FRINGE. Lone-078 (talk) 09:49, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

Yep, per PREPRINT, this can't be used. Not a reliable source. And bizarre that it hasn't been published in 4 years, and was only edited in 2019. This smacks of something very possibly wrong with the methodology that peer reviewers really didn't like. At the very least, they could get it published in a really crappy journal! But preprints are even worse than PRIMARY sources. So we really need a secondary source citing a legitimate primary source. — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 11:29, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

Dio wrote the initial Chapter on UNESCO History of Africa, an authoritative text on African historiography and was noted for his "painstakingly contributions"(General History of Africa II,pp55) in comparison to other scholars The consensus among Egyptologists, anthropologists and historians have reinforced his findings based on archaeological, linguistic, climatic, historical and cultural evidence.WikiUser4020 (talk) 10:18, 26 January 2022 (UTC)Critics accusing him of pseudo-historicism have themselves been criticised of misrepresenting his work.

The text is still in Ramesses III, Ancient Egypt and Ancient Egyptian race controversy (which is a mess with a lot of stuff not about the controversy itself but material that belongs in the articles discussing Egypt's population and DNA). Let's not get off-topic arguing about Diop (and this "consensus" is based on original research, ie not on an agreement among all those people about Diop). The issue still is that it's a preprint. Doug Weller talk 11:02, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

Another problem is that such DNA studies are controversial as well as often misinterpreted, not only prone to confirmation bias but also quote mined from to support particular positions. Unless reputable secondary sources put them in context, their use on Wikipedia tends to result in original research or potentially flawed conclusions; accumulating them in an article fails to meet the objectives of a tertiary source like Wikipedia: presenting a concise summary of the history of prominent views and the current scientific consensus (if any)... —PaleoNeonate – 12:07, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

WP:PREPRINTS is very clear about this: we can only use preprints as an OA resource for papers that were subsequently peer-reviewed and published . Otherwise, WP:SPS applies. We also have a consensus against using genetic primary research papers in such contexts as mentioned above, even if they have gone through peer-review and are published in respectable journals. Such sources are constantly misread or cherry-picked especially when ethnonationalist, pan-ethnic or other identity-related POVs come into play. –Austronesier (talk) 16:57, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

Yet, Gourdine et al are referenced in the article in the Ancient Egypt race debate ?. In relation to the consensus, I can provide several sources. This consensus is mirrored among Egyptologists such as Frank Yurco who see the Nile Valley peoples as "basically a homogeneous African population [that] had lived in the Nile Valley from ancient to modern times." Similarly authoritative anthropologists such as Nancy Lovell outlined in the 1999 Encyclopedia of the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt outlined ”There is now a sufficient body of evidence from modern studies of skeletal remains to indicate that the ancient Egyptians, especially southern Egyptians, exhibited physical characteristics that are within the range of variation for ancient and modern indigenous peoples of the Sahara and tropical Africa. The distribution of population characteristics seems to follow a clinal pattern from south to north, which may be explained by natural selection as well as gene flow between neighboring populations. In general, the inhabitants of Upper Egypt and Nubia had the greatest biological affinity to people of the Sahara and more southerly areas". All racist, competiting hypothesis including the Dynastic and Hamitic hypothesis have been discredited in the historiography and the consensus is that Ancient Egypt emerged from a Sudanic-Sahran context WikiUser4020 (talk) 21:40, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

I would suggest that this discussion highlights the need for an official policy statement on genetics sources, as expressed in my recent RfC. Hunan201p (talk) 14:57, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

"All racist, competiting hypothesis including the Dynastic and Hamitic hypothesis have been discredited in the historiography" is from a 1966 source. I'm afraid that doesn't work for me. Doug Weller talk 17:59, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

References

No serious academic work would discount peer-reviewed evidence, irrespective of publication dates. This reflects your judgement rather than the quality of evidence provided.— Preceding unsigned comment added by WikiUser4020 (talk • contribs)

Per WP:PREPRIMT, it would require exceptional circumstances to use this source, which there aren't. TFD (talk) 22:50, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

@WikiUser4020: can you clarify what you mean by No serious academic work would discount peer-reviewed evidence, irrespective of publication dates. The point about the Gourdine Preprint is that it wasn’t peer reviewed. DeCausa (talk) 22:55, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

That was directed at Doug Weller’s latter comments about the academic consensus on African historiography. On a separate note, the Gourdine references have been removed for the current time.

In that case, if it’s accepted that the Gourdine paper is not a reliable source, this thread has no further purpose?

@WikiUser4020: So you think that a 1966 work can be used to reflect academic consensus? Besides the fact that it's not clearcut that the source backs the text - I think it's too much of a stretch. Please explain why you think such an old source is appropriate and give quotes backing the text. I've read it. You brought up some new sources, so the thread is still appropriate. And please sign your posts. Doug Weller talk 07:44, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

WikiUser4020 (talk) 13:25, 28 January 2022 (UTC)The work and context of W. MacGaffey summarises the shifting trends and concepts of race in African historigography. He clearly outlines:

p4: In reference to the Hamitic hypothesis promulgated by Charles Seligman as "Hamitic is to be rejected as a racial label"

P4: He acknowledges that Diop's position was "very nearly right" that the “term Mediterranean is an anthropologists euphemism for the term Negroid”

P16: These hypothesis have based in racialist rather than historicial thinking. “Certain authors speak of the Brown race. This concept is without scientific evidence, and must be regarded as a myth with specific ideological function related to the colonial situation”.

Toby Wilkinson in his 1999 work, Early Dyanstic Egypt notes that "change in perception" among scholarship from the "discredited Dynastic race theory" and its view of a "master race" to "recognition of indigenous roots".

This view is echoed by authoritative Egypologist, Frank Yurco that a "The peoples of Egypt, the Sudan, and much of East African Ethiopia and Somalia are now generally regarded as a Nilotic continuity"

I have provided extensive evidence and sources from Egyptologists, historians and anthropologists about the current consensus about Ancient Egypt as emerging from localised, homogenous African context and the discredited racist hypothesis. This thread should be closed as the Gourdine references have been removed for "the current time".— Preceding unsigned comment added by WikiUser4020 (talk • contribs)

@WikiUser4020: I know one of them discusses Diop but without full backing. In fact McGaffey clearly states that Diop's attempt to explain why Egyptian civilization didn't spread all over Africa by claiming that tall Negroes didn't arrive in West Africa until 500 BC is unlikely. My post asking about Dio's chapter in the UNESCO volume seems not to have been saved. But I see you said "Dio wrote the initial Chapter on UNESCO History of Africa, an authoritative text on African historiograph". His chapter is clearly not a reliable source, do you understand why? I think it should be mentioned in his article with comments. I assume you've read it his chapter in the UNESCO volume and know what the problems are? And please, again, sign! Doug Weller talk 13:46, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

The post is in relation to Diop which was mentioned in a separate talk section and can be discussed there. McGaffey contests one aspect of Diop's theories. However, his core theories that early humankind began in East Africa and it was likely that people were black skinned and people populated other continents by moving either through the Sahara or the Nile Valley is correlated with a range of evidence. How are his contributions "clearly not a reliable source" ?. UNESCO is an authoritative, publication featuring a range of scholars and he was on the science committee. The historical, anthropological, archaoelogical evidence and geographic which Diop provides has a wealth of supporting, secondary evidence. Can you provide specific sources refuting the arguments presented in Chapter I of UNESCO History of Africa since you have not listed any range of sources ?14:13, 28 January 2022 (UTC)WikiUser4020 (talk).

I don't need to do that. I can just quote a review of the volume that says of his chapter that the volume "is marred by a shrill chapter by Cheikh Anta Diop arguing once again his idiosyncratic view of the bases of ancient Egyptian civilization. (The editor, G. Mokhtar, takes the unusual step of warning the reader that Diop's views are not accepted by all experts in the field - surely still something of an understatement - and of printing the lengthy report of a symposium on the matter." The review is by Ivor Wilks in the The International Journal of African Historical Studies.[143] On page 51 you can see "»NOTE BY THE EDITOR OF THE VOLUME The opinions expressed by Professor Cheikh Anta Diop in this chapter are those which he presented and developed at the Unesco symposium on 'The peopling of ancient Egypt' which was held in Cairo in 1974. A summary of the proceedings of this symposium will be found at the end of this chapter. The arguments put forward in this chapter have not been accepted by all the experts interested in the problem (cf. Introduction, above). Gamal Mokhtar " But you surely knew that? Doug Weller talk 15:11, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

References

Dun & Bradstreet

I see no RS policy regarding Dun & Bradstreet (a database of information about corporations, such as revenue, # of employees, etc.) though I see that it's used to source facts about companies (see infobox for this company). It is clearly a large database with the appearence of institutional "credibility", but I'm not clear on how the information is sourced, other than it appears companies can claim their page and add info, and other data is sourced from "third parties", and revenue estimates. But that would seem to align it with something like ZoomInfo, which I'm pretty sure is not RS, as it's a scraper, and also allows orgs to add info, I believe. Is there any precedent for this source? Here's an example of company info on the site. Pyrrho the Skipper (talk) 19:31, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

What exactly do you want to use and in which context? Things like revenue come from (public) companies' financial statements. In general, D&B is a well-known company and their data is used by many financial and non-financial institutions. Using D&B proprietary ratings and estimates is not a question of their reliability - we know for sure that if it's published on their site it's their estimate - but due weight. Alaexis_¿question? 19:54, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

Yes, I agree with what you're saying. The reason I brought it here is because I was researching revenue and number of employees for an edit request, and saw it listed at D&B however, the company (Accuride) is not a public company, and thus I have no idea where the figures come from. I assume they are self-reported, but according to the COI account that made the request, the figures were not public. Essentially, the edit request was to remove the info that was in the infobox, and in doing that, I attempted to track down the potential source of the unsourced info, and came across D&B as one potential source. But my decidion was to remove the info (as requested) because D&B did not disclose where this supposedly private data came from. Pyrrho the Skipper (talk) 21:08, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

No idea where D&B get their information, but they are certainly a reliable source for such figures--as such, we don't need to know where the information comes from, at least in my view. Cheers. Dumuzid (talk) 21:11, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

I would be extremely hesitant to use Dun & Bradstreet. When I've tried to use D&B to research companies in the past (for my day job, not Wikipedia), I've found their information to be outdated and unreliable. It might still be useful for their target audience, credit managers, who are using it as just one source of information in reaching a credit decision, but I have trouble thinking of a situation where I would want to cite them for Wikipedia. John M Baker (talk) 23:47, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

The database consists of self-reported information, so it comes under Self-published or questionable sources as sources on themselves. I would assume it to be accurate unless there is evidence to the contrary. Bear in mind that accounting is not an exact science and auditors do not guarantee the accuracy of financial statements. A great number of blue chip companies in the U.S. have turned out to be worthless. All we can provide is the information available. TFD (talk) 22:16, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

The problem with this approach, which otherwise sounds appealing, is that companies often fail to update their D&B information, so it often is information that was true, or claimed to be true, in the indeterminate past. John M Baker (talk) 01:47, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

This is absolutely true, and I have had this experience as well; I still think that it's such a widely used source that we can use it with attribution. But, as ever, happy to go with consensus. Cheers. Dumuzid (talk) 01:53, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

Decluttering WP:RSP

There's a bunch of entries at RSP that are kind of useless and just serve to clutter up the list. I think we can safely remove them as they're so uncontroversial as to not need an entry. To list a few I'd liket o remove:

• Weather2Travel.com. In 2012 we had two discussions over this. In the first one someone pretty much said the equivalent of "seems legit"[144] and in the second it was revealed after examining the ToS that it wasn't super legit because they expressly disclaim reliability.[145] In almost 10 years nobody has cared enough to bring it up again since it's obviously unreliable. It's not "perennial" by any means.
• ProPublica. In 2019 we had a "discussion" on whether or not this Pulitzer Prize winning entity was generally reliable, because somebody wanted to add it to WP:RSP.[146] Almost everyone agreed it was generally reliable. We also had an interesting thread in 2016 where someone misinterpreted a press release and said that a laundry list of reliable sources are now unreliable because of it. [147] There is no real reason to list ProPublica at RSP since everyone agrees that it is reliable and we haven't had any actual disputes over its reliability. There's no purpose to listing generally reliable sources that aren't the subject of discussion.
• MyLife. We've had three discussions on this. The first time was in 2017 when not much was known about the source and people still didn't like using it.[148] In 2019 it was re-discussed and literally everyone in the discussion agreed that it was unreliable. [149] Then the third "discussion" was when someone requested adding it to the spam blacklist, which was done with no discussion.[150] Is this really a perennially discussed source that needs its own entry? Everyone agrees it's unreliable and its entry at RSP likely benefits no one.
• Agence France-Presse. We have supposedly had two discussions on this. The first one [151] someone asked if wire services such as AFP ever report false information. This wasn't really a discussion about AFP but a question about the reliability of wire services in general. Likewise, another discussion happened when someone brought up an interestingly worded statement from AFP that sounded like they were taking payment to write sponsored content. People replied and said why they didn't believe it was an issue. Does this need an RSP entry given that it's only really been discussed once?
• HispanTV. There was a 4 option RfC on this in 2019. [152] Everyone agreed it's unreliable. It was used in a few articles at the time but it wasn't being perenially pushed or argued. For the record, I'd like to see this undeprecated and removed from RSP. It's plainly unreliable and nobody has seriously argued for it being included in years. [153] Someone listed it in a laundry list of similar sources in a dispute over Falkland Islands related pages several years ago. [154] [155] Some guy brought it up in 2015 to accuse Israel of doing certain things in a totally unrelated point to the actual article subject. [156] Then another person who didn't sign their comment linked it in a list of related sources saying "I found this information". [157] The rest of the discussions are bot messages from cyberbot II about modifying external links and someone asking for help to remove links to it. Exactly one person in this entire encyclopedia has appeared to have discussed HispanTV in the context of actually wanting to include it as a source in an article. Deprecation serves no purpose here but to just create more bureaucracy for a source nobody seriously wants to use and nobody seriously thinks is reliable.

Anyways, what do you guys think about removing these? HispanTV might need another RfC I guess but the first four we can probably get rid of through consensus here. Chess (talk) (please use {{reply to|Chess}} on reply) 06:34, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

Re HispanTV: The majority of participants !voted "bad question" or "option 1" or "option 2" or "option 3 or 4" or "between option 3 and option 4" in RfC: HispanTV], which was closed by El C as "The result was option 3 and 4. ..." I believe that a different closer might have found a different consensus, or in the best case agreed that the question was bad, but that's not enough for WP:CLOSECHALLENGE so I don't see a way to overturn now except via a new RfC. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 14:29, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

It's been a few years, so no objection to running a new RfC to gauge the current consensus. El_C 14:33, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

I don't really see it as clutter, as I generally just hit CTRL-F and look for whatever source I'm wondering about. I think having a centralized list is pretty handy, and theres no reason to really pull things off, even if it's just linking to the existing discussion/s on the source. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 14:45, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

Agreed. I would say that there is more risk of cluttering the Noticeboard than there is of cluttering the well-organized list at RSP. I don't think there is any need to remove any of them. If you want to undeprecate HispanTV, that's a different matter; there is a much better argument for limiting the number of deprecated sources. (I have no views as to whether HispanTV actually should be deprecated or not, but it seems like an issue that might appropriately be raised.) John M Baker (talk) 01:44, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

• If we're going to remove ProPublica why not also remove ABC News, the BBC, CNN, the New York Times and Washington Post, among others? (I'm not necessarily opposed to remove such entries, just throwing it out there). Calidum 04:01, 28 January 2022 (UTC)
• I don't think RSP should be "decluttered," and I find some of the "obvious" entries useful to demonstrate things that *should* be obvious but someone is still having difficulty with. Also it makes it more explanatory to have examples of all the different kinds of sources we've discussed, not just a distorted window presenting a few controversial ones. - GretLomborg (talk) 13:35, 28 January 2022 (UTC)
• Strongly disagree with the idea of "decluttering" the list. Like others have said, the list is best used via CTRL-F anyway so clutter isn't really a thing and its size is not a concern as long as the page still loads. The list isn't intended to be comprehensive by any means (nor can it ever be), but having more entries there is generally a good thing, especially in terms of providing an at-a-glance gauge of the community's general temperature on more obscure sources. If you don't think a particular source has been discussed enough to support its entry in the list you should start a discussion about that specific source, but the premise of that would have to be you asserting "I don't think there's actually a consensus to support this entry and I believe further discussion will show that fact" - ie. inviting people to argue otherwise by supporting the current entry. --Aquillion (talk) 23:24, 28 January 2022 (UTC)
• I don’t think “clutter” is the issue here. The issue is more “definition”. RSP is supposed to be for listing a narrowly defined subset of RS discussions - sources that have been repeatedly discussed… over and over and over again (ie perennial).

If there are sources listed that don’t fit that definition, then we probably should remove them from the list. Doing so won’t change the consensus on whether they are reliable or unreliable (it just means that the consensus isn’t recorded here, on this page). Blueboar (talk) 23:41, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

Blueboar has made the points I was going to make. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 23:43, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

• If the issue is just going to be over the name, I would prefer to just rename WP:RSP rather than remove things from it. Having an at-a-glance list that summarizes prior discussions of obscure sources in particular (which may not have a ton of discussion) is extremely useful and I don't see any benefit to removing them from it. If people don't feel that the amount discussion is sufficient to justify inclusion on such a page, that's a different story and we could talk about that (though again, the solution is probably "raise a discussion about sources you object to so a sufficient threshold is met", or possibly tweaking its wording / presentation to make it more clear when discussions are limited in number and scope), but removing them entirely because of the word "perennial" seems like pointless quibbling. Maybe the list was once intended solely to avoid repeated discussions on WP:RSN, but it has clearly grown in purpose beyond that and I would be strenuously opposed to any attempt to box it back into that original concept, at least unless someone gave a really, really convincing explanation for why we should and how doing so would benefit the wiki. --Aquillion (talk) 06:08, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

Official policy regarding genetics sources

Wikipedia does not currently have any language in existing policy or guidelines that addresses human genetic information, or more broadly, the origin of species and ethnic groups.

This is puzzling, because there are lots of articles about genetics and human ancestry on Wikipedia, and most articles about human ethnic groups contain "genetics" sections. And this content often generates edit wars and lengthly talk page battles.

As an example, see an archive of Talk:Recent African origin of modern humans. Sections 6, 8, 9, and 10 were created by people who claimed to have "debunked" the Out-of-Africa theory. One user cites a New York Post article with a sensationalist headline: "Humans Came From Europe Not Africa". In these talk page discussions, the respectable users went to great lengths to communicate against these trolls, including exhausting quotations of other sources to debunk the sensationalist source.

This is sad. Respectable editors should not have to waste time going through the minutia of the material to write summaries for the cranks.

The closest substitute for a policy or guideline that specifically mentions genetics is found at WP:SCIRS. It contains the following statement (from Respect primary sources):

[...] primary sources describing genetic or genomic research into human ancestry, ancient populations, ethnicity, race, and the like, should not be used to generate content about those subjects, which are controversial. High quality secondary sources as described above should be used instead. Genetic studies of human anatomy or phenotypes like intelligence should be sourced per WP:MEDRS.

The above text was added to WP:SCIRS as a result of this RfC. However, there's a caveat. WP:SCIRS is still an essay - it's not a policy or guideline. This is despite the fact that it has existed for over 10 years, with continuous improvements and relevance, as demonstrated by the above RfC. See also -- the very high linkage to WP:SCIRS across the Wiki itself.

Consequently, whenever someone references WP:SCIRS, a user will sometimes retort that that WP:SCIRS is 'just an essay', and that we do not, therefore, have to respect the statements regarding genetics sources -- even though they clearly reflect a consensus. Thus, with WP:SCIRS still stuck in its current status as an essay, the utility of the statement rests on shaky ground - despite being more necessary than ever.

Thus, I propose that we insert the consensus about genetics information in explicit language in to a a Wikipedia policy page. This could be accomplished by two actions:

1. Upgrade WP:SCIRS to official policy; or,
2. Orphan the WP:SCIRS statement to WP:MEDRS or similar page.

I understand this is a big proposal, but it is by no means a new one. There has been much talk of upgrading WP:SCIRS to official status for years. As always, I appreciate your time and input. Hunan201p (talk) 14:54, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

There are cranks writing aqbout many different issues, I don't see why this topic merits a special guideline. MEDRS was brought in because of the harm that could be caused to readers who relied on false and misleading information in articles. But there is a trade-off. It limits the sources to ones that are often inaccessible to editors and readers, and usually rules out the inclusion of new information.

Take for example Dragon Man (Homo longi). Scientists have conducted DNA research on its skull, which came to attention in 2018. Should we report their preliminary finds, even if we don't have MEDRS compliant sources? I don't see a problem with reporting what scientists say, even though their findings are preliminary. Also, even if the genetics information gets reported in reliable secondary sources, it may still fail MEDRS if the writers are not geneticists. They may be for example anthropologists who rely on expert research by geneticists.

There are already many policies and guidelines against entering unreliable information.

TFD (talk) 15:22, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

My thoughts: see WP:SBST. Wikipedia's main policy objective is to provide content with reliable, high quality sources. It is not to provide by-the-hour information, which is a task better suited to Wikinews.

Correcting the crisis of low-quality genetics sources on Wikipedia, which can range from pre-print papers to Tweets, is a much more urgent priority than providing around-the-clock updates about whatever pet-theory pops up in the news or on forums. Hunan201p (talk) 16:08, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure pre-print papers and tweets are already considered unreliable under existing policy. I don't see why we need another policy to explain this. We really don't need a science specific policy statement to tell people that synthesizing primary sources is wrong and that due weight should be given to secondary sources. This is encompassed at WP:DUE and WP:SYNTH and endless other policies. In my opinion just make the page WP:SUPPLEMENTAL since that's what WP:SCIRS really is. Then it's a pseudoPAG and everyone is happy. Chess (talk) (please use {{reply to|Chess}} on reply) 16:36, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

@Chess:Thanks for your comment. However, I would like to point out that we do have science-specific policy statements about this. See WP:MEDPRI. Policy pages like this are needed because certain sciences, particularly bioscience, are affected by the reproducibility crisis. And, as also noted at WP:MEDPRI, "... findings are often touted in the popular press as soon as primary research is reported, before the scientific community has analyzed and commented on the results."

I really believe another viable solution may be to orphan the genetics RfC statement to WP:MEDRS, because many people will argue that MEDRS only applies to medicine.

My concern is not so much that WP:SCIRS isn't policy, it's that an important consensus is in limbo as long as it's attached to an essay only. Hunan201p (talk) 17:01, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

• @The Four Deuces: I'll note that neither WP:MEDRS nor WP:BMI explicitly state their purpose as limiting harm from people taking medical advice from Wikipedia. Even WP:WHYMEDRS (an essay) doesn't give it top billing. The more direct concern has to do with primary studies on these topics most often not reflecting the mainstream accepted knowledge, and thus unreliable for an encyclopedia. The consensus around human genetics seems to fit within that same general category: primary studies on human genetics do not accurately reflect current knowledge. Whether their use results in bad medical advice or bad racial/ethnic stereotyping matters less than their not being WP:RS (particularly WP:SCHOLARSHIP), and seems a reasonable suggestion that elevation to policy would be appropriate here.

I'll add, Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine should probably be consulted as well if the target is MEDRS rather than SCHOLARSHIP. Personally, I think adding examples to WP:SCHOLARSHIP where secondary sources are required (not just recommended) might be a cleaner solution. Bakkster Man (talk) 17:03, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

MEDRS became a guideline as a result of an RfC where it was argued that it was necessary in order to protect readers from misleading and false medical information they might rely upon. It's caused its fair share of tendentious editing too, as some editors try to expand its scope beyond its intended purpose.

Certainly in medicine there are primary studies that cannot be replicated, but that is true of other fields as well and therefore there are policies to deal with them.

If you want to add new policies and guidelines, you need to explain why you think the existing ones are insufficient. Give us an example of a false or misleading statement that is reliably sourced and does not violate weight.

The real problem is that many people edit in bad faith and should be banned.

TFD (talk) 18:52, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

@The Four Deuces: I disagree. The argument for including the genetics RfC statement in Wiki policy is explained in the RfC itself. The RfC was the first step, policy is now the second step.

Banning people is not a viable solution, because we've tried it since day 1, and it hasn't worked.

Here is a table of Wikipedia sockpuppet activity supplied to me by Tamzin, an SPI clerk. Year after year, sockpuppet activity has increased, even as Wikipedia's active userbase declined.

Year	Sockblocks
2004 (23 Dec. onward)	35
2005	3336
2006	13237
2007	20482
2008	28487
2009	25457
2010	26384
2011	24257
2012	21689
2013	21983
2014	22631
2015	29768
2016	35668
2017	38451
2018	37020
2019	34222
2020	34055
2021	45479

Banning people has been like trying to stop a roach infestation with a BB gun. You can never stop the problem by picking them off one-by-one. Wikipedia must increase its content standards. Hunan201p (talk) 19:05, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

You can't eliminate roaches from existence. They exist and fester as long as there's a food supply to feed on. Chess (talk) (please use {{reply to|Chess}} on reply) 19:27, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

@Chess:That's true, but I think you'll agree that this is no excuse to not call pest control when a house is literally crawling with roaches. Improving content standards, e.g., WP:SCHOLARSHIP, is like our roach bomb. - Hunan201p (talk) 06:48, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

If we're going to keep stretching this simile/metaphor to the breaking point, improving content standards is preventative and is trying to stop the roaches from getting inside in the first place. Calling pest control is reactive and is designed to kill the roaches already inside. Chess (talk) (please use {{reply to|Chess}} on reply) 07:54, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

• @The Four Deuces: It sounds like your disagreement is purely about WP:MEDRS being the destination. Are you in agreement some other home in WP:PAGs would be appropriate for this consensus on sourcing? Bakkster Man (talk) 19:12, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

Although it may not show in the current version, MEDRS used to begin, "Wikipedia's articles are not meant to provide medical advice. Nevertheless, they are widely used among those seeking health information. For this reason, all biomedical information must be based on reliable, third-party published secondary sources, and must accurately reflect current knowledge." That's the only reason why the guideline was created.

Bakkster Man, If editors are not following current policy, I don't see how a new guideline would fix it. All it would do would be to provide ammunition for tendentious editors. You could sum up Wikipedia policy very briefly: use the best sources and summarize them accurately. We now have dozens of pages of explanations. So if someone tries to use a book on racial theory written in 1900, I can find a specific sentence that explains why it should not be used. But anyone with common sense, acting in good faith and knowledgable about the topic wouldn't do that anyway. We don't need yet another guideline to explain this to them.

As for you comment that Wikipedia is not a newspaper, we already have a policy for that so don't need a guideline specific to genetics. But articles are created and updated for important events. Joe Biden's article for example was edited to say that he was president as soon as he was sworn in. If we had a MEDRS like guideline, some editors would be arguing not to say that until reliable secondary sources say he was actually the president.

Also, MEDRS is only a guideline. Guidelines are routinely ignored when editors agree they don't apply, because "Editors should attempt to follow guidelines, though they are best treated with common sense, and occasional exceptions may apply."

TFD (talk) 19:46, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

Obviously, some topics needs higher standards for reliability than others. As noted at WP:MEDPRI, bioscience information has a low reproducibility rate. However, something like Biden's Presidential election result, is not so impoverished. By the time Biden was sworn in, multiple high-quality, third-party sources had already inicated that he was president-elect. Presidential elections are a subject where the high quality sources come in quickly and most tend to support eachother. Genetics is not. - Hunan201p (talk) 06:48, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

@Bakkster Man: I think you've got a good idea and that WP:SCHOLARSHIP is the path of least resistance. - Hunan201p (talk) 06:48, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

My main concern about the use of genetics is editors cherry-picking data from the main text of the article to use to proved some sort of point or just to add to an article. Eg. there's a study comparing two Egyptian mummies where they are linked together by their haplogroup. I've seen several editors use that to argue that the mummies must come from a sub-Saharan population, although the research was not designed to find a relationship with populations nor does the source mention sub-Saharan. Doug Weller talk 10:52, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

@Doug Weller:Indeed, and this isn't the first time you and I have been embroiled in such a dispute. This happens constantly on Wikipedia and it would be best if we could orphan the WP:SCIRS quote to something official in order to set precedent for future disputes -- because it apparently still isn't clear to ethnocentric cranks that you can't use primary sources for genetics articles.

As of now, citing WP:SCIRS is always met with retorts of "it's just an essay" despite the fact that this it has been consensus for years. We can't afford to have people duking it out with an uneding barrage of cranks on hundreds of different pages without any kind of standards. - Hunan201p (talk) 12:48, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

Doug Weller, there is already a policy (no synthesis) that says, "Do not combine material from multiple sources to reach or imply a conclusion not explicitly stated by any source." Using high quality sources doesn't address that.

If there is a significant problem in genetics related articles, the best approach would be to bring them under Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Discretionary sanctions, place a notice on each affected article, provide notices to each involved editor and take violations to AE.

TFD (talk) 15:12, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

That would of course require an ARBCOM case, which I think is unlikely. You are right that there is a policy, I'm simply supporting the idea of a specific guideline based on policy. Doug Weller talk 15:17, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

I mentioned this below, but if there are a bunch of people advocating something that is clearly and unambiguously fringe, holding an RFC to establish that it is fringe could help. After that WP:PROFRINGE applies to anyone who is plainly editing to advocate it. This approach was reasonably successful on Fascism and Race and intelligence, which were plagued by people advancing fringe views for a long time. --Aquillion (talk) 06:21, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

• Yeah. MEDRS is dangerous precisely because it's so powerful; like WP:BLP, that force is necessary in certain areas but we have to be very careful with it. With that said, it's worth pointing out that WP:FRINGE still applies, and on the whole WP:SCIRS is the logical implication of FRINGE. If a source is saying something about genetics that goes against the clear consensus of high-quality reliable sources, then that's fringe and ought to be treated as such. And if a particular fringe view on genetics is being constantly pressed in multiple articles, a general RFC to establish that it is fringe (like we had with race and intelligence or with people who disagree that fascism is right-wing) could be called for in order to avoid redundant discussions. In the example in question, it seems easy enough to hold an RFC on the out-of-africa theory and the dissent from it in order to establish that the dissent is largely fringe, after which discussions could be closed more quickly. Basically, we have more narrowly-targeted solutions than just applying something as heavy as MEDRS to an entire topic area. --Aquillion (talk) 06:21, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
• Genetics is part of Biomedicine. So, for any WP:Biomedical information in the genetics realm, WP:MEDRS would apply. Regular considerations like WP:EXCEPTIONAL may also be applicable. Alexbrn (talk) 07:26, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

  Ötzi the Iceman's Y chromosome haplogroup cannot "reasonably be perceived as relating to human health", in and of itself. The suggestion that we prohibit primary sources from being used in our archaeogenetics articles on the basis of WP:MEDRS is quite a stretch, and will do immense harm, not good, at least in my opinion. Most of the trouble in this area is caused by false summaries of primary sources, whether due to malice or lack of competence, or just good ol' OR in the form of SYNTH, both of which are already excluded from Wikipedia.  Tewdar (talk) 15:40, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

  Here, for example, is a perfect example of the sort of SYNTH that we see on these articles all the time, added by one Hunan201p, who seems to believe that, if "Corded Ware remains have blue eyes", so 'should' Western Steppe Herders! Sounds reasonable enough, doesn't it? 🤔  Tewdar (talk) 18:10, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

Statutes as sources

In this matter, I contend a statute is a primary source subject to interpretation, which explains why we have countless lawyers and judges, and cannot be used as a reliable source because it could be qualified in myriad ways by other statutes, regulations or exemptions that are not readily apparent. In a case that involves government officials or lawmakers, like this one, they may enjoy certain immunities that the statute doesn't mention, but are mentioned elsewhere. I contend editors cannot reliably make such a determination.

I don't see this discussed in policy. Can I get a ruling? Pinging Kkeeran and Boxer Brick. soibangla (talk) 22:03, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

Agree with you in general, but I see WP:SYNTH as the primary issue; my quick scan didn't find the statute name-checked in any of the sources, which would at least help the argument. As it stands, I would say that bit does not belong. Cheers, all. Dumuzid (talk) 22:07, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

Statutes are primary sources. Court Decisions can be both primary and secondary. Primary for new matters discussed, secondary for discussions included on previous decisions rendered. Given the statute seems to be used in that article to make a point not supported by secondary sources, its inappropriate as WP:SYNTH/WP:OR.Slywriter (talk) 22:16, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

I agree with Dumuzid about WP:SYNTH. Unless a secondary source states that specific law applies to the matter, citing the law is establishing an unsupported relationship. Schazjmd (talk) 22:29, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

It is implicit synthesis because it implies the law was broken. But there are legal questions whether a subpoena within the meaning of the act had been issued and whether anyone had refused to obey it. TFD (talk) 23:10, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

Statutes and court decisions are only WP:PRIMARY. They can be cited for factual statements as to what they say, but cannot be used for any interpretation. I think that’s rather clear-cut and axiomatic. As far as the linked to text is concerned, WP:SYNTHNOTJUXTAPOSITION. DeCausa (talk) 23:17, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

• It would be acceptable to quote the text of the statute in an article about the statute… and we can cite the statute itself (as a primary source) to reliably verify that quote.

However… per WP:No original research, any analysis of the statute, or interpretation of it, or conclusionary statement based upon it needs a secondary source. This is what is happening in the linked article. Blueboar (talk) 00:09, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

I would say that, normally, the text of a statute is a good primary source for what the statute says. But here I just don't see the relevance. It's a single sentence from the statutory scheme for legislative subpoenas, taken out of context and without any explanation of how it fits into the larger dispute. By itself, it adds nothing to our understanding of what happened. John M Baker (talk) 01:38, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

Everyone in this discussion should also take a look at Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#Steven_Crowder_YouTube_video. (Also it is extremely difficult to imagine a statute text being used legitimately as a source in an encyclopedia article.) --JBL (talk) 13:54, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

Barstool Sports

Is Barstool Sports reliable for entertainment/film/pop culture news? I am bringing it up as no one else has before. ― Kaleeb18^Talk_Caleb 03:35, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

I would doubt it. Has anyone tried to cite it as a reliable source? Calidum 03:47, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

• No. It's like Gawker, but with a Boston dudebro bent. Hemiauchenia (talk) 03:53, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

And, unlike some old Gawker or Gizmodo Media sites, they don't seem to do any in-depth reporting with editorial oversight to provide an exception to their general unreliability as a self-pub blog/podcast. Bakkster Man (talk) 14:47, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

• Generally, no. It doesn't have any form of proper quality or editorial control and has a long history of promoting misinformation on a number of subjects, even within entertainment fields. Silverseren^C 14:20, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

  I see ― Kaleeb18^Talk_Caleb 14:23, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

Principality of Wales research

This book : Burton, Robert (1730). The history of the principality of Wales. : In three parts. Paternoster Row, London. - A history of the Principlaity of Wales at Google Books, written in 1730 is specific for the era of the Principality of Wales spanning the centuries of 1216 - 1542. There is very little information available regarding the historical era of the Principality of Wales in the UK, and this book seems to be the missing work in completing the article which I've specified. Any consensus regarding the authenticity of the book and whether it is a reliable source please ?? Cltjames (talk) 17:20, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

@Cltjames It's not per se forbidden, see WP:OLDSOURCES, but obviously it's not optimal, you should try hard to find something more recent. I'd say use carefully, and with in-text attribution, like according to the 1730 The history of the principality of Wales. : In three parts by Robert Burton etc. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 19:49, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

• @Cltjames: I don't agree that there is little on this time period. For example there is a scholarly book The Principality of Wales in the Later Middle Ages. The Structure and Personnel of Government. Vol. i: South Wales, 1277-1536. by Ralph A. Griffiths. Search in Books and Scholar shows plenty of sources. Zero^talk 05:11, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

• It's not a reliable source, 1730 is too far into the past to be considered. The discipline of history was not near enough to its modern form yet and more modern sources will definitely exist. Boynamedsue (talk) 07:51, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

btw, my advice on researching this topic would be to consult any good general history of Wales. The Prince of Wales was simply a title and lands bestowed on the eldest son of the English king, Wales during this period is covered in History of Wales, Wales in the Late Middle Ages. Its political institutions are already covered in the article, and could easily be sourced from general Welsh history sources.Boynamedsue (talk) 08:05, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

• Per Zero, there’s modern scholarship on the subject as well general histories of Wales which well cover the subject. Reaching back to 1730 is unnecessary. But in any event, 1730 is too far back to be usable as a reliable source, obviously. You only need to look at the first sentence of the book: It is recorded in History that after the Universal Flood, the isles of the Gentiles were divided by the Posterity of Japhet…. I may be out on a limb but that may not be what we expect from a reliable source… DeCausa (talk) 08:52, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

The issue with the Principality is there isn't much to read about this time period, for instance, South Wales was not in the Principality. I have done enough research to know there not many books available on this time period and literally this book seems the perfect fit (you just have to observe the relevance of the title - Principality of Wales). So we have the issue of WP:OLDSOURCES, however the author and it's authenticity is not in question, which makes it a reliable source surely ? Cltjames (talk) 12:42, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

Have you actually looked at the book? It’s not usable. It isn’t even about the feudal Principality, which the article is about. It’s using the name “romantically” to just mean Wales, and it starts from the “flood”! It’s a collection, as would be expected from an early 18th century “history”, of antiquarian tales…Brutus, Arthur etc. “The author and ts authenticity is not in question”. Isn’t it? Who is he? I’m not sure why you say South Wales wasn’t in the principality. Griffiths work mentioned by Zero, The Structure and Personnel of Government. Vol. i: South Wales, 1277-1536 is about the two shires in the South that were within the principality: Cardigan and Camarthen. Griffiths was going to do an equivalent volume on the Principality’s remaining 3 shires which were in the North, but unfortunately never got round to it. There’s a great deal on the Principality in modern scholarship which you seem to have missed. DeCausa (talk) 13:49, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

I'd have to concur with DeCausa. The book in question isn't about the Principality of Wales and it is not by any standard a reliable source. There is some history in it, but it isn't history. Boynamedsue (talk) 14:35, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

Out of curiosity I’ve done a bit of digging on “Robert Burton” and it seems he didn’t exist (“the author and its authenticity is not in question”). It’s a pseudonym for a London bookseller called Nathaniel Crouch who repackaged other works he found and sold them under this name, like an 18th century Reader's Digest, apparently. DeCausa (talk) 15:33, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

Is Opencorporates a reliable/legitimate source?

Would it be appropriate to use in articles about organizations or individuals?

https://opencorporates.com/

are these sources fine?

hello, im trying to find reliable sources for this heated dicussion [[158]]... i added my source findings regarding in the article itself [[159]] but (if not against policies, ill post them here as well)

here are the sources to prove my argument that this topic COULD be worthy of WP:NMUSICIAN / WP:NACTOR. (i will use google translate because the topic is regarding Indonesian manner as i understand not everyone speaks Indonesian) - any thought ?

• https://correcto-id.translate.goog/beranda/read/47957/biografi-dan-profil-lengkap-agama-dan-umur-sarah-azhari-yang-kecantikannya-bikin-gagal-fokus?_x_tr_sl=id&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-US&_x_tr_pto=wapp
• https://www-kapanlagi-com.translate.goog/sarah-azhari/profil/?_x_tr_sl=id&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-US&_x_tr_pto=wapp
• https://palembang-tribunnews-com.translate.goog/2021/10/06/profil-sarah-azhari-wajahnya-tetap-menawan-di-usia-40-an-kini-hijrah-ke-la-amerika-serikat?_x_tr_sl=id&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-US&_x_tr_pto=wapp
• https://hits-grid-id.translate.goog/read/482704423/biodata-lengkap-sarah-azhari-model-seksi-era-2000an-yang-dinikahi-anak-pejabat?page=all&_x_tr_sl=id&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-US&_x_tr_pto=wapp
• https://hot-detik-com.translate.goog/celeb/d-5812161/sarah-azhari-masih-eksis-meliuk-seksi-di-dance-to-survive?_x_tr_sl=id&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-US&_x_tr_pto=sc
• https://celebrity-okezone-com.translate.goog/read/2021/11/11/33/2500468/biodata-dan-agama-ayu-azhari-artis-seksi-yang-pernah-alami-kasus-penyebaran-foto-bugil-di-internet?_x_tr_sl=id&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-US&_x_tr_pto=sc thank you Amoeba69th (talk) 23:45, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

Any thoughts? Yes. 'Profiles' and 'biographies' that look like either paid promotion or just tabloid fluff do nothing to establish notability. And you should probably read WP:BADGER. AndyTheGrump (talk) 23:58, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

• thanks I did read it, and apologized already for sounding aggressive and gave my reasoning on the talk page. Amoeba69th (talk) 00:13, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

Dozens of scraper-plagiarism websites

Lengthy list of plagiarism sites

eminetra.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com eminetra.com.au: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com eminetracanada.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com eminetra.co.za: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com eminetra.co.nz: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com eminetra.co.uk: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com californianewstimes.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com canewstoday.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com floridanewstimes.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com pennsylvanianewstoday.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com illinoisnewstoday.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com texasnewstoday.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com ohionewstime.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com newyorklatestnews.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com usanewslab.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com netherlandsnewslive.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com londonnewstime.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com singaporenewslive.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com francenewslive.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com ausnewslab.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com indianewsrepublic.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com sydneynewstoday.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com geekycraze.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com businessglitz.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com newskrack.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com mhepo.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com - The subdomain 'celebs.mhepo.com' uses the boilerplate, but other uses of this domain may need more investigation jioforme.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com cbsblogspot.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com newschant.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com remonews.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com verticallobby.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com commerceaffairs.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com mspk.news: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com world247365.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com nlvnomcr.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com - Domain may or may not be expired, but still listed in search results gonewsbook.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com abpnewsonline.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com crazecheck.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com

I have found a collection of websites which steal content from other websites and then use some kind of automated process to change them enough to make them appear original to search engines. All of these websites are connected by the same boilerplate in their "about" pages, with only superficial changes. None of these appear reliable. While looking into this, I found this news story from Monterey County Weekly about this group.

These are cited hundreds of times on Wikipedia. I haven't look at all of them, but so far, every source I've seen has been plagiarized from some other website. Only some of those original sources are reliable. Some are press releases, and some are tabloids like the Daily or niche blogs. Most (but not all) appear to include a link to the original story at the end, but they do not indicate that the story was a barely paraphrased copy of that story. They also do not credit these stories to the original authors.

Even the ones which come from reliable outlets have been modified in ways which makes them unreliable. As an example I've already fixed, one of these sites copied a story about runner Michał Rozmys losing his right shoe in mid-race and still finishing. This was changed to him losing his right leg in mid race and still finishing. What an athlete! That's indicative of the total lack of quality. This is more than plagiarism, it's just bad.

I posted an explanation of this to Wikiproject Spam. There, Beetstra recommended that I post this to Meta:Talk:Spam blacklist since some of these websites are being cited at other Wikipedias. Billinghurst in turn said that this needed consensus here, as these sites have been added as references by experienced editors and admins. Many editors have added these in good faith, but that's exactly the problem. Every experienced editor has mistakenly cited a bad sources, and these websites are designed to trick people.

As I said The Daily Mail seems like a popular source, as do sites with a paywall such as Financial Times. It's obvious why they are being cited on Wikipedia, but it doesn't change the problem. I cannot confidently say these are legally WP:ELNEVER copyright violations, but they sure look like it to me. Regardless, they are plagiarism, and they should all be removed. To prevent further confusion, they should also be blacklisted. Grayfell (talk) 00:47, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

I have blacklisted these on meta: scraper sites with plagiarized (copyvio?) material, likely properly marketed (SEOd) to appear high in google searches as to outperform the original source (and hence unknowing editors, including admins, are likely to use them), and possible spammed to Wikipedia (yes, we have nofollow, but that is easily solved with proper webbugs). Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 12:33, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

Weatherbase.com

I can't figure out why weatherbase.com is so widely used on Wikipedia. The site itself is so heavily loaded with advertising that it's almost impossible to scroll down to the footers on a data page like this one. The About page describes the team as a "self-described nerd" and someone looking to "hone her business school chops".

I'm really not sure what makes this our go-to site for climate data. Guettarda (talk) 01:00, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

Rfc for deprecation of pre-print repositories

There has been much discussion about pre-print repositories, such as bioRxiv, here at RSN. Several times, people have come here asking if they are reliable sources, and in each instance, most people seem to agree that they are not:

Example 1 2

Despite the widespread acknowledgement among elite editors that we should rely on peer-reviewed secondary sources, citations of bioRxiv content remain hugely popular, particularly at articles relating to human ethnicity or human genetic origins. Most of these articles are patrolled by smart people, who simply aren't noticing the problem.

By no means is it my intention to single out bioRxiv. I have nothing against them or their mission, and there are definitely other pre-print repositories just like them which are also cited on Wikipedia. Websites like preprints.org, thesiscommons, peerj.com, and the osf.io repository should be considered here as well.

The only point I am trying to make is that these types of sources evidently fail WP:RS, yet are widespread on Wikipedia. It looks to me like deprecation is a viable solution, so I'd like to hear all of your thoughts. Hunan201p (talk) 01:52, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

• Comment - Deprecation is too much. Preprints should normally be treated as self-published sources, so generally unreliable, but we do not generally go to the effort of deprecating self-published sources. However, there is nothing misleading about the editorial controls at the major preprint servers, which is what I take to be the property distinguishing generally unreliable sources from deprecated sources: they will tell you what versions were archived with them on which dates, and so on. Furthermore, there are many special cases: a preprint may be the only accessible form of an article that passed peer review; several journals, such as eLife are experimenting with post-publication peer review and I would like our rules to have some flexibility to adapt to changes in the literature; and some fields, such as verified mathematics, where correctness is not what gets articles past peer review but interest of the question. To the extent there is a problem, it is handled by our existing rules, and singling out preprints in this way has problems attached. — Charles Stewart (talk) 03:54, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

Although pre-prints are sometimes the only accessible sources of published articles thst passed review, these pre-prints also occasionally contain information that was omitted from the reviewed articles. That's a huge red flag. The difference between a pre-print and a published study can be significant. -- Hunan201p (talk) 14:00, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

• Comment. For biomedicine, I'd probably support deprecation due to how much can change during revisions and how topical material can be, plus they're basically excluded by MEDRS anyway. But in pure math preprints on the arXiv are cited all the time since it's understood papers can take literal years to get published. And some people exclusively publish there. For the most part I would say WP:DUE would cover whether a preprint (or published article) should be referenced; if a result hasn't garnered independent scholarly attention then it doesn't matter where it is or isn't published. JoelleJay (talk) 07:50, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
• Comment. I fully agree with the issue, but I think we should rather make the necessary amendments to WP:PREPRINT. The problem with the current wording of WP:PREPRINT that it gives the impression that authorship by a subject-matter expert heals everything (there has not even been a link to WP:SPS; I have fixed this). We should explicitly mention that any non-peer-reviewed source even by subject-matter experts is useless if it hasn't been cited yet in a sufficient number of secondary peer-reviewed academic sources (and by then, 99.9% of all former preprints will have appeared in print). And naturally, most hastily added references to new preprints will not fulfill this criterion. And yes, sadly enough these preprint references often stay here for years, even after the source has appeared in print and proven to be widely accepted. Barring the practice of recentist low-quality edits based on preprints (by whatever policy) will be immensely helpful to reach a higher standard, especially in articles relating to human ethnicity or human genetic origins.

And oh, here's example 3 for you: Talk:Corded_Ware_culture#Expansion_of_lede_section_based_on_a_preprint. –Austronesier (talk) 12:49, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

Amending WP:PREPRINT sounds like a great idea. It would also bypass the need to discriminate between the peer reviewed papers hosted by the repositories, as mentioned below. -- Hunan201p (talk) 13:55, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

• Oppose I agree that preprints are usually not WP:RS. It is further true that these sites contain a lot of preprints. However, that's not a reason to deprecate. The sites have a lot of published work too. Furthermore, these sites may be the easiest way to access and link to the published work.

Lastly, sometimes preprints do acquire enough WP:USEBYOTHERS that they gain some degree of reliability, even though they are still not academic sources. Adoring nanny (talk) 13:25, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

Providing open-access links is preferred, but we can do that in the form of a convenience link without referencing to a preprint service. If we reference to a preprint service, it's harder to verify whether the work was peer-reviewed and published. So from that point of view, it is not that unreasonable to expect references to published work. Cheers, Pyrite Pro (talk) 14:06, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

• Strongest possible oppose, deprecation would be an overreaction. Preprints are entirely fine for non-controversial routine information, per WP:SPS. Sure, Wikipedia cannot establish "X was discovered in 2020" based on a preprint paper, but it could be used to write "A team of researchers claimed to have discovered X". Other considerations like WP:DUE will apply, too, but a blanket ban on preprints is a no go. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 14:04, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

See also the advice in WP:VANPRED#Use in the real world vs use on Wikipedia. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 14:07, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

Websites used as sources, Battle of Montgisard

• Thoughtco.com appears to be written by Kennedy Hickman. He cites no sources for his article. Reliable source??

AND,

• Historyonthisday.com, unauthored, no references. Reliable source? --Kansas Bear (talk) 13:48, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Reliable sources#Stronger warning against using predatory journals as source

I want to add stronger warnings against the use of predatory journals / explanations for why those should not be cited on Wikipedia. Others disagree. Please comment. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 16:51, 29 January 2022 (UTC)