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Deprecation RfC: CounterPunch

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
Even though the original question was only about whether to overturn the previous RfC's closure about deprecation, there is more than enough material for the RSP entry to be amended appropriately. Short answer: no consensus for deprecation. The long answer will be unfortunately long.

According to definition, Deprecated sources are highly questionable sources that editors are discouraged from citing in articles, because they fail the reliable sources guideline in nearly all circumstances.. The page also says that uses of the source must fall within one of the established acceptable uses, which in most cases boils down to WP:ABOUTSELF.

For the arguments in favour of deprecation to be persuasive, there must be both demonstration that the source is highly questionable and that any source will almost never get cited in Wikipedia if we follow policies. The proponents of deprecation have spent an enormous amount of energy to show that the source publishes truther, anti-Semitic, anti-vax and other conspiracies or denialist content, and this is noted, but they failed to demonstrate that most of the articles aren't suitable for citation altogether for non-ABOUTSELF purposes (due to CounterPunch endorsing the views, disproportionately allowing fringe contributors, or other reasons). Of course, it is not feasible for anyone of us to read all 70,000 sources to determine the exact percentage of conspiracist, denialist or extremist content. Several users, however, noted that the publication also publishes legitimate opinion pieces (including anti-anti-vax and anti-denialist ones) and scholars within their domain of expertise, and thus we should be able to cite them without any problems. This, combined with the demonstration that the outlet is not uniquely conspiracist or close to that (the presence of conspiracists seems to be significant but not overwhelming) and that its articles get cited in scholarly sources for facts, obliges me to deny deprecation of CounterPunch.

However, editors have identified several big problems with the source. CounterPunch is an opinion magazine and does not even pretend to be reporting news, so all uses of the publication must be attributed (if there is anything cited as fact from CounterPunch, we should use that source instead), unless published by a subject-matter expert within their domain of expertise, in which case we may cite it for facts (however, in this case, a much better alternative is to cite scholarly papers instead). Even though there is technically an editorial board that determines which articles get published and which don't, it is pretty much meaningless; therefore, while not being a self-published source, we should consider it as essentially equivalent to a collection of self-published sources for all intents and purposes. The opinions (unless published by subject-matter experts in their domain of expertise) should not establish notability. The final dilemma might be about how to list this on RSP. Based on the discussion, I can say there is consensus for the publication to be listed as generally unreliable due to its indiscriminate publication of content, including conspiratorial and denialist pieces. The italics in "generally" are intentional - CounterPunch per se does not confer (un)reliability on an article - it's the contributors who do, and each piece must be evaluated separately, in particular its WP:DUEness and reliability.

The RSP entry will be edited to reflect the closure. (non-admin closure) Szmenderowiecki (talk) 18:46, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

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)

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,[1] Charles R. Larson (scholar),[2], Mark Weisbrot,[3] Vijay Prashad,[4] Neve Gordon,[5] 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. Zerotalk 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. Zerotalk 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: [1], an in-depth look at high-quality anthropological research presented in Counterpunch and its implications for the ability to reach beyond the ivory tower; [2] and [3], lists of progressive / alternative news sources for use in academia that specifically discuss and recommend it; and, for sources that simply use it, [4][5][6][7][8]. 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? Zerotalk 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.[6] - 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[7] who writes regularly for GlobalResearch[DOTca/author/richard-gale] and The Defender,[8] usually with Gary Null, and by Anne McElroy Dachel[9] of anti-vaxx/pro-Ivermectin/Hydroxychloroquine blog Age of Autism.[10]
    • 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 [11], Wayne Madsen [12], and Mark Crispin Miller.[13]. 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.[14] From 2004 to 2017, Roberts, a right-winger, was one of the most published writers in CP, contributing weekly or more.[15] 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.[9] Later, he contributed to CounterPunch, becoming one of its most popular writers.[10] He has been a regular guest on programs broadcast by RT (formerly known as Russia Today).[11] As of 2008, he was part of the editorial collective of the far right website VDARE.[12] He has been funded by the Unz Foundation and he contributes to the Unz Review.[13] 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.[11] His own website publishes the work of Israel Shamir and Diana Johnstone.[11] 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.[16]
    • 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[17]; Lenni Brenner, whose work is cited by Holocaust denialists and has been called an "antisemitic hoax";[18] 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."[19] "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."[20] "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."[21] "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)."[22] "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."[23] "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."[24] "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."[25] "No one was persecuted or discriminated because of his ethnic origin (yes, Jews complained, but they always complain)."[26] "Historically, the liberal–Nazi alliance did not work because the old Nazis were enemies of bankers and financial capital, and therefore anti-Jewish."[27] "Jews do not mind Nazis who do not target them."[28] 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,
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[14] 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.[15] (this is not really surprising though, CP is supporter of Russia Today)[16]
  • 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"[17] 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.”[18]
  • 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.[19]
  • 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"[20][21]
  • 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. [29] 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." [30]
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."[31]
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. [32] 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." [33]
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: [34], 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. Zerotalk 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.[22][23][24][25] 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)
  • 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.”"[35] 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,[36] 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,[37] as well as by David Swanson[38] and Norman Pollack, a guest on Null's show.[39] Richard Gale has himself contributed to CounterPunch (the article looks like it might be written with Gale?)[40] 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)
    For those wondering, the collapsed section below is wherein several editors disagreed with Nableezy's placement of a custom tag after Crystalfile's and others' !votes, but Nableezy collapsed it because apparently he wants everyone to see his tags, but not to see the criticism of his tags. There is an established effort by one side here to subvert our process, Nableezy wrote in a comment in the same edit that collapsed the section. Levivich 18:27, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
Except I left the initial response to the tag outside the collapsed section, and that discussion is entirely off-topic to should CP be deprecated. It would be great if you would stop disrupting that discussion. If you want to challenge my tag go do it in a place where that matters. As far as established effort, that refers to the 6 Icewhiz and NoCal100 socks in the last RFC and to Yaniv stealth canvassing in both the last and this RFC. An established effort aided by users who continue to distract from the topic of this RFC. Be a lot cooler if you stopped. nableezy - 18:51, 29 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: Israel? Levivich 17:27, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
That is WP:Shifting the goalposts You attributed to me a possible 'suggestion' that the source I cited attributed to a known policy of the government of Israel. Then you insinuated by a rhetorical question that I attributed this policy to Israelis (qua Jews). I.e. you ethnicized the argument and squirrilled in the innuendo that my remark might echo a notorious thesis of the Protocols of Zion. Wriggle the goalposts or play the anti-Semitic card all you like, but the facts I noted won't budge. Nishidani (talk) 18:32, 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)
"Bludgeoning the process is where someone attempts to force their point of view by the sheer volume of comments, such as contradicting every viewpoint that is different from their own. Typically, this means making the same argument over and over, to different people. This can happen on a talk page, deletion discussion or in any discussion at Wikipedia. It is undesirable. Doing so may be considered a form of disruptive editing."Wikipedia:Don't bludgeon the process Horse Eye's Back (talk) 18:38, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
The only thing Ive contradicted here is the caricature of my argument by you that I and others who oppose deprecation say it doesn't matter because I like the source. I dont see any merit in anything else youve said, and as such have seen no reason to respond to it. But if somebody is going to lie about my argument I will correct that record. nableezy - 18:54, 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)
If theres a related discussion to be had then we should have it. But it either has to be before or after we decide on this issue, we can't do both at the same time. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 18:38, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Deprecated and unreliable sources I think we have had it, at least there has not been any comments for a while now. Hard to say anything about it other than no consensus which is why I commented like that above.Selfstudier (talk) 18:45, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
No consensus would mean that we stay with the status quo, which in this case is the Daily Mail style dozens condemning thousands iteration of deprecation. I agree that our policy probably needs some more nuance. That discussion looks like it got a little muddied, maybe we need a tighter focus. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 19:06, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
I would agree with "status quo" if that was covered by any kind of formal guideline or policy, it's not though. Selfstudier (talk) 19:15, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
Exactly how much evidence do you want before you can accept the deprecation of a source? Are you looking for a certain percent of articles? 1% of pieces? That would be around 700+ sources if we use the 70,000 figure. At what point are you ever OK With deprecation? Chess (talk) (please use {{reply to|Chess}} on reply) 04:17, 30 January 2022 (UTC)
The first and the last question are general and not CP specific. Leaving aside the absence of a formal guideline on deprecation, I think that most people are willing to accept fabrication by a source as grounds for deprecation. But how are we deciding on other possible grounds? Returning to CP specifically, there is no evidence that CP has fabricated anything, their "crime" is accepting some quite limited number of dubious contributing sources (authors of CP articles) and suggest that because these few are conspiratorial, antisemitic or something else, then this is grounds for blacklisting all of CP, which seems unreasonable. If CP is gunrel instead, then these errant sources remain unciteable in WP but expert authors may be cited in line with SPS.Selfstudier (talk) 09:53, 30 January 2022 (UTC)
  • No. A relatively small number of authors on CP (conspiracy theorists etc) should not be cited as reliable sources on WP, and I have confidence in the ability of WP editors to reject the work of these particular CP authors by applying the normal WP policies, guidelines and consensus-building process. But CP also publishes the work of many world-class scholars, experts, investigative journalists and authors, which could easily be cited as reliable sources on WP and help improve the encyclopedia. Thus, in my view, CP should be treated as some type of WP:SPS, not deprecated. Ijon Tichy (talk) 07:31, 30 January 2022 (UTC)
  • No I concur precisely with the comment made by Blueboar: 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. Sums up my position well. Onceinawhile (talk) 22:36, 30 January 2022 (UTC)
  • No I concur with Austronesier. A minority of CP articles are definitely fringe/nonsense but that does not negate the vast corpus of work, produced by famed journalists, academics etc. TrangaBellam (talk) 10:59, 3 February 2022 (UTC)
  • No and I still oppose this "deprecation" system. Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 19:01, 6 February 2022 (UTC)

References

References

  1. ^ Checker, Melissa (2009). "Anthropology in the Public Sphere, 2008: Emerging Trends and Significant Impacts". American Anthropologist. 111 (2): 162–169. doi:10.1111/j.1548-1433.2009.01109.x. ISSN 1548-1433.
  2. ^ Lawrence, David. "A Selective and Annotated Listing of Politically Progressive Internet Sites Dealing with US Imperialism and Foreign Policy, War and Peace, and American Domestic Political Issues." Osaka Keidai Ronshu 56.3 (2005): 27-45.
  3. ^ Gorski, Paul (9 April 2007). "Beyond the Network News: Progressive Sources for the News You and Your Students Won't See on Fox or CNN". Multicultural Perspectives. 9 (1): 29–31. doi:10.1080/15210960701333971. ISSN 1521-0960.
  4. ^ Dodge, Chris (2008). "Collecting the Wretched Refuse: Lifting a Lamp to Zines, Military Newspapers, and Wisconsinalia". Library Trendfs. 56 (3): 667–677. doi:10.1353/lib.2008.0013. ISSN 1559-0682.
  5. ^ Khoury, Katalina (1 March 2019). "A Comparison Study of International Development-Caused Forced Displacement and Resettlement by the World Bank and Gentrification in Washington, DC". Practicing Anthropology. 41 (2): 29–33. doi:10.17730/0888-4552.41.2.29. ISSN 0888-4552.
  6. ^ Patrón-Vargas, Jasmin (2 October 2021). ""Ethnic studies now": Preparing to teach and support critical K–12 ethnic studies". Theory & Research in Social Education. 49 (4): 634–637. doi:10.1080/00933104.2021.1934807. ISSN 0093-3104.
  7. ^ Craft, Elizabeth Titrington (2018). "Headfirst into an Abyss: The Politics and Political Reception of Hamilton". American Music. 36 (4): 429–447. doi:10.5406/americanmusic.36.4.0429. ISSN 0734-4392.
  8. ^ Bakan, Abigail B.; Abu-Laban, Yasmeen (25 June 2009). "Palestinian resistance and international solidarity: the BDS campaign". Race & Class. 51 (1): 29–54. doi:10.1177/0306396809106162. ISSN 0306-3968.
  9. ^ "Washington Murdered Privacy at Home and Abroad, by". 25 March 2010. Archived from the original on 2015-09-23.
  10. ^ Marmura, Stephen (2014). "Likely and Unlikely Stories: Conspiracy Theories in an Age of Propaganda". International Journal of Communication. 8: 2388. Archived from the original on 2018-05-03. Retrieved 2019-01-20.
  11. ^ a b c Holland, Adam (April 1, 2014). "Paul Craig Roberts: Truther as Patriot". The Interpreter. Archived from the original on January 20, 2019. Retrieved January 19, 2019.
  12. ^ "VDARE". Southern Poverty Law Center. Retrieved 2021-07-14.
  13. ^ Cite error: The named reference Anti-Defamation League 2014 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  14. ^ DiResta, Renée (2020-09-20). "The Supply of Disinformation Will Soon Be Infinite". The Atlantic. Retrieved 2022-01-13.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  15. ^ Power, Shelley (2017-12-26). "Wanting Content, Publications on the Far-Left Easily Duped by Alice Donovan". Burningbird. Retrieved 2022-01-13.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  16. ^ Morgan, Dennis (2018-05-14). "Why I Support Russia Today (and So Should You)". CounterPunch. Retrieved 2022-01-13.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  17. ^ Leigh, David (2011-01-31). "Holocaust denier in charge of handling Moscow cables". The Guardian. Retrieved 2022-01-13.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  18. ^ Zunes, Stephen (2008-07-05). "Attacks on Gene Sharp and Albert Einstein Institution Unwarranted". HuffPost. Retrieved 2022-01-13.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  19. ^ Young, Cathy (2014-05-22). "Fascism Comes to Ukraine–From Russia". Reason. Retrieved 2022-01-13.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  20. ^ Thompson, Caitlyn (2020-07-30). "Enter the Grayzone: fringe leftists deny the scale of China's Uyghur oppression". Coda Story. Retrieved 2022-01-13.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  21. ^ Cheng, June (October 13, 2020). "Xinjiang deniers". World. Retrieved 2022-01-13.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  22. ^ Chanes, Jerome (2004). "Review essay: What's new and what's not about the new antisemitism". Jewish Political Studies Review. 16 (1/2). Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs: 111–124. ISSN 0792-335X. JSTOR 25834592. Retrieved 2022-01-17. Finally, there is Alexander Cockburn. What has not already been said about Cockburn, a fine wordsmith, a sharp polemicist - and, frankly, an intractable foe of Jewish interests? The tropes of "the Israel lobby" resonate throughout The Politics of Anti- Semitism, a collection of essays (co-edited by Jeffrey St. Clair), that culminate in a self-serving complaint by Cockburn himself ("My life as an 'Anti-Semite'") in which he offers his definition of antisemitism: "to have written an item that pisses off someone at The New Republic.
  23. ^ Sina Arnold & Blair Taylor (2019). "Antisemitism and the Left: Confronting an Invisible Racism". Journal of Social Justice. 9. ISSN 2164-7100. Retrieved 2022-01-17. A textbook example of downplaying is the book The Politics of AntiSemitism (Cockburn and St. Clair 2002). Widely available in left bookstores, where it is often the only book on the subject, it clearly announces its intention from the first page: "I think we should almost never take antisemitism seriously," and adding, "…maybe we should have some fun with it" (p. 1). On the rare occasion antisemitism is acknowledged to exist, it is trivialized: "Undoubtedly there is genuine antisemitism in the Arab world: the distribution of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the myths about stealing the blood of gentile babies. This is utterly inexcusable. So was your failure to answer Aunt Bee's last letter" (Cockburn and St. Clair 2002: 7). Ten out of the eighteen chapters address not antisemitism, but its "misuse" by groups who accuse pro-Palestinian activists of it. Not one contribution deals with the historical background of antisemitism in general, or the left in particular. Instead it assumes antisemitism is an irrelevant issue, especially in contrast to Islamophobia. This is perhaps unsurprising given the book is co-published by Counterpunch, an ostensibly left magazine that has given space to white nationalists and antisemites including Alison Weir, Israel Shamir, Paul Craig Roberts, Eric Walburg, and Gilad Atzmon (Levick 2002, Wolfe 2016). What is more surprising is that left authors and publishers would produce a book whose primary function is to downplay and deny the existence of antisemitism.
  24. ^ Hirsh, David (2007). "Anti-Zionism and Antisemitism: Cosmopolitan Reflections" (PDF). Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Antisemitism (YIISA) Occasional Papers. Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Antisemitism. Retrieved 2022-01-17. Michael Neumann, a philosophy professor at Trent University in Canada, is an extreme example of one who refuses to take political responsibility for the consequences of his anti-Zionism. He outlines his approach to the question in an email exchange with an antisemitic group (Jewish Tribal Review 2002). They ask him whether he thinks that their website is antisemitic. He replies "Um, yes, I do, but I don't get bent out of shape about it. I know you're site and it's brilliantly done. Maybe I should say that I'm not quite sure whether you guys are antisemitic in the 'bad' sense or not…. [I]n this world, your material, and to a lesser extent mine, is a gift to neo-Nazis and racists of all sorts. Unlike most people in my political niche, this doesn't alarm me: there are far more serious problems to worry about…. [O]f course you are not the least bit responsible for how others use your site."11 This discussion occurred five months after Neumann (2002) had published a piece entitled 'What is Antisemitism?' in which he argued that antisemitism is trivial compared to other racisms and that it is understandable that Israeli crimes result in a hatred of Jews in general. Here are some quotes from this piece by Neumann which illustrate a willful and showy refusal by somebody who considers himself to be an antiracist, to take antisemitism seriously
  25. ^ Spencer Sunshine (2019). "Looking Left at Antisemitism" (PDF). Journal of Social Justice. 9. ISSN 2164-7100. The anti-Zionist activist Michael Neumann did not deny the reality of antisemitism but rather justified it in the well-known anthology The Politics of Anti-Semitism, co-published by the anarchist AK Press and CounterPunch, the latter of which has published antisemitic writers for many years.
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Fijan petroglyphs supposedly deciphered as ancient Hebrew

I want to draw attention/editors to Ndakunimba Stones, concerning petroglyphs in Fiji. The article states:

More recent versions say that the Rogovoka arrived from Egypt with the stone(s). In 2016, a team of scientists from Israel supposedly visited the site to compare the writings they had found in Israel and on the pyramid [sic] in Egypt with the stones. They identified the writing as Hebrew, based on a local explanation of one symbol as meaning "Y", representing Yahweh.

This statement is sourced from the newspaper The Fiji Times Dec. 2017: https://www.fijitimes.com/mysterious-writings-at-dakuniba/

My concerns are on the Talk page, namely that a newspaper is not a good source for an extraordinary claim about ancient history that has not been academically published. I have not found such a publication, nor any academic response to it. This response was seemingly not written by a linguist or epigraphist, and responds only to the newspaper, not to any peer-reviewed publication. I'm fairly new to Wikipedia and not sure how to handle this situation. I apologize if I posted on the wrong noticeboard. 2601:441:4400:1740:3177:7AD6:4BF8:3864 (talk) 20:22, 7 February 2022 (UTC)

These are good reasons to simply delete the content. Geogene (talk) 20:37, 7 February 2022 (UTC)
Clearly either the Phoenicians or St. Brendan. Only possibilities. Dumuzid (talk) 20:43, 7 February 2022 (UTC)
I've removed the claims. Woodroar (talk) 03:13, 8 February 2022 (UTC)
  • Definitely an extraordinary claim and the newspaper should be flagged for false reporting. If it were true, they would give the names of the Israeli scientists. Pious Brother (talk) 22:51, 10 February 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)[41] and by Studies (journal)[42], 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)
This is the norm in Europe; is it the same in USA? I have reasons to suspect against. TrangaBellam (talk) 21:24, 30 January 2022 (UTC)
This independence is also the norm in the U.S. There may be a very small number of universities, such as Liberty University, where this is not true, but at a major university like Georgetown, there's independence.Chris (talk) 00:23, 5 February 2022 (UTC)
Independent governance doesn't necessarily equate to full editorial independence for controversial claims as the author is likely to have a bias. Pious Brother (talk) 23:28, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

Discussion at Talk:New South Wales Police Force strip search scandal § Use of Social Media Content

 You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:New South Wales Police Force strip search scandal § Use of Social Media Content. -- Marchjuly (talk) 01:54, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

Essentially the same question has also been asked at Talk:Issues relating to the use of drug detection dogs in New South Wales and Talk:New South Wales Police Force strip search scandal (list of reported incidents). It might be best to try to keep everything in one place: either on the talk page of what appears to be the main article (linked to above in this section's heading) or perhaps moved here. I believe it mainly has to do with edits like this, this, this and this as well as Talk:New South Wales Police Force strip search scandal#Facebook citations, but there may be other reasons as well. -- Marchjuly (talk) 02:05, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

The Indian Constitution: A Case Study of Backward Classes

Is this book reliable for caste related articles.the auther described the current status of a perticular caste see . thanks Nobita456 (talk) 00:54, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

It is a book published by a university press publisher. It 's main drawback is that it 's half a century old. I wouldn't use it to be honest, but if you wish, you can cite it for uncontested material. Though, dont use it heavily. Cinadon36 09:27, 10 February 2022 (UTC)
Agree with you. Further, this is work on legal sociology and not fit for determining the (heavily-contested) caste-status of a community; reliability depends on context. TrangaBellam (talk) 06:14, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

Nieuw Volendam: undisclosed advertorial for homeopathic COVID medicine

https://www.nieuw-volendam.nl/ search

This is a local newspaper from Volendam. Please see https://www.nieuw-volendam.nl/nieuwvolendam/edam-volendam/volendam/algemeen/het-is-een-oplossing-voor-het-probleem-covid-19. This is a story about some homeopathic COVID medicine. To save you some reading: it's bullshit. According to the writer Eddy Veerman it's actually an advertorial and paid for.[43] But absolutely nothing on the site indicates this fact, the header "Algemeen" means "General". As such, any article from this newspaper has to be considered a possible advertorial. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 16:56, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

I only read the article translated in English, but the fact that they included a link to the website and an email (!) of the company aligns with the undisclosed advertorial suspicions. I could not review Veerman's claim, however, since I don't speak Dutch: you may want to notify WikiProject Netherlands of this discussion in a neutral manner, on their talk page. From what I can see, this is the first time this publication appears on RSN, so other independent analysis of Nieuw Volendam, as well as its paid contributions policy, should be sought. Pilaz (talk) 18:25, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

Is Viktor Krivopuskov reliable source?

Source: https://regnum.ru/news/polit/1131088.html

Article: Anti-Armenian sentiment

Content and statement used from the source:

In the article Anti-Armenian sentiment in Azerbaijan Viktor Krivopuskov's speech, which was quoted by the news regnum.ru, used as a source for the following statement(Bold):

Sumgait pogrom was never given a due assessment by the state; the perpetrators not only remained unpunished but some of them gained titles of national heroes as well as high positions in the government.


Summary: The article from the regnum news site, which quotes Viktor Krivopuskov's speech is not a reliable source. 1. It quotes Viktor Krivopuskov's speech in Yerevan at a ceremony dedicated to the 21st anniversary of the pogroms of Armenians in the Azerbaijani city of Sumgayit. However, there are no sources confirming what Victor said, neither he provided any in his speech.

2. Neutrality of the Viktor Krivopuskov and his speech at a ceremony dedicated to the 21st anniversary of the Sumgait pogroms is under question. Victor is also The Chairman of the Russian Society for Friendship and Cooperation with Armenia.

3. There is no official transcript of Victor's speech, but even if we take Regnum as a reliable source - it is not possible to verify the statement of Victor that "the perpetrators not only remained unpunished but some of them gained titles of national heroes as well as high positions in the government.", because there no reliable sources confirming that.

Question: Is source reliable and neutral enough to support such a strong statement as "the perpetrators not only remained unpunished but some of them gained titles of national heroes as well as high positions in the government." ?

--Abrvagl (talk) 20:05, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

Regnum.ru seems to be a questionable publication due to its publication of pro-Russian propaganda (at least, as the Russian version of the article says so, and its editor-in-chief is banned from Ukraine and the Baltic states; though that might be political). That said, we normally give wide latitude even to sources that disseminate carefully curated messages when citing government employees - Krivopuskov at the time, according to this source, just started his work as the advisor to the ambassador of Russia in Armenia (or was about to start it?). Either way, while regnum.ru might be unreliable, it is reliable enough to provide an accurate quote of what he said.
However, there are two problems with Krivopuskov: first, Krivopuskov does not appear to be speaking of the Sumgait massacre perpetrators being promoted to govt positions specifically but criminals [against Armenians] in general, so this statement is not supported by the source; secondly, Krivopuskov is certainly not a neutral speaker, and because he's essentially a guy with close government ties, he isn't reliable for facts, just like politicians in general are (I can't rule out some exaggerations here, particularly that his quote says that "Azerbaijan continues de facto the policies of genocide laid down in late 19th-early 20th century"); however, he is reliable for his opinion. DUE questions are for the NPOV noticeboard.
However, much of that sentence is in fact supported by scholarly sources. This publication in German, p. 62-3 and War and Peace in the Caucasus: Russia's Troubled Frontier, p. 111 are much better sources for the "remained unpunished part". The part about them being hailed as national heroes may be found here, in Thomas de Waal, Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan Through Peace and War (2003), p. 41, in Modern Hatreds: The Symbolic Politics of Ethnic War, pp. 65, 205 and in War and Peace in the Caucasus. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 21:34, 10 February 2022 (UTC)
Regarding "perpetrators remaining unpunished" part, this had more to do with the government of the USSR, and not Azerbaijan SSR, as it was the Soviet Union that was in control of law enforcement and judiciary at the time. Therefore, is this part directly relevant to this particular article? Grandmaster 23:42, 10 February 2022 (UTC)
Basically what the article says, after the rewriting, is that the Soviet authorities failed to properly investigate the problem, which was the reason why the Azeris became more radicalised, or so Memorial says. Even if we assume the problem originated was 100% in Moscow and none of it was in Baku or Sumgait (the local party secretary of the city, essentially mayor, was missing, and that played a role), we still have the fact that no one held them accountable for unkown reasons (bad prosecutors, or local pressure not to prosecute, whatever) and that it served as a trigger for further intensification of anti-Armenian sentiment. So yes, it's relevant. But this being the RSN and not the talk page of the dedicated article, for any further queries related to article content, please write on the article's talk. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 00:38, 11 February 2022 (UTC)
Ok, thank you. There are other questionable sources discussed at talk, your input will be appreciated. Grandmaster 01:00, 11 February 2022 (UTC)
Better sources can surely be found to talk about the Sumgait pogrom and the anti-Armenian sentiment in general. Regnum is a reliable source for Krivopuskov's words - I don't think they've ever misrepresented someone's words - but Krivopuskov's opinion is not necessarily DUE. Alaexis¿question? 19:25, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

Boundary 2

A source is disputed at the article on F. William Engdahl. There is content cited to a peer-reviewed journal published by the Duke University Press, Boundary 2. Links at the publication's website masthead page provide current descriptive documentation. An editor has repeatedly removed content cited to the journal, as at this diff. Do editors agree that this publication is disqualified for BLP content per the removing editor's assertion? Thanks. I've notified the article talk page. SPECIFICO talk 18:47, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

I'm more concerned about stating Engdhahl's conspiracy theories about Soros' role in fomenting "color revolutions" globally have been taken up by Max Blumenthal with a source that mentions Blumenthal twice, with neither instance saying that.
Among Consortium News’s stable of authors is Caitlin Johnstone, who calls for “shameless” alliances between the left and right in favor of the Kremlin’s interests, Pepe Escobar, who regularly appears at the conferences of Iran’s sanctioned, anti-Semitic New Horizon organization, and Max Blumenthal, who has been criticized for promoting conspiracy theories about Syria’s White Helmets and advocating a “multipolar world.”
and I collected the total number of tweets using the term “McCarthyite” over the last five years [Figure 6][137]. The top ranked twitter accounts included Glenn Greenwald at the top, with Maté ranked fifth and his GrayZone colleagues, Ben Norton and Max Blumenthal ranked second and third, respectively.
We don't even need to get into the reliability to see that the source doesn't support the proposed text. On the source itself, it looks as reliable as any other peer reviewed culture and literature at offering a diverse range of analyses and intellectually rigorous explorations. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 18:59, 11 February 2022 (UTC)
@ScottishFinnishRadish: I largely agree with your comments, but feel it’s important to point out that the source that Specifico wishes to use is in fact not the Duke University journal that he claims it is. Cambial — foliar❧ 21:29, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

As has often been the case with this editor previously, Specifico has misrepresented the facts in coming to this noticeboard. No citation to the Duke University journal Boundary 2 has been used on the page. The article, from another website, does not support the sentence Specifico wishes to include. Specifico’s claim relies on a sentence in a footnote which does not correlate with the content he has sought to include.

Like most journals published by University Publishing houses, the Boundary journal's main page is hosted on the University’s website. The citation inserted by Specifico is to "b2o", apparently a blog and side project of some of the Boundary journal’s staff, for articles which Duke University deemed not to publish. It is not published by Duke University. Its claims to practice "peer-review", at least in the case of the web page cited, apparently consisted of the blog's editors deciding it should be published, as noted at the top of the linked post.

The author of the post, Alexander Reid Ross, has a history of heated public disagreement with the subject of the sentence Specifico wants to include. The sentence Specifico wants to add entirely relies on a comment within a footnote [134]. The footnote states: "Regarding Venezuela, in an article co-written with RT host Dan Cohen, GrayZone founder Max Blumenthal cited GlobalResearch writer William Engdahl’s conspiracy theories about the “oily hands” of George Soros pertaining to Serbian pro-democracy group Otpor, see Cohen, D. and Blumenthal, M. “The Making of Juan Guaido: How the US Regime Change Laboratory Created Venezuela’s Coup Leader,” GrayZoneProject, January 29, 2019."

This claim does not support Specifico’s claim that the author had "taken up" "conspiracy theories" from Engdahl. Nowhere in the article referred to by Ross does it mention Soros or Engdahl. The article does not refer to any theories pushed by Engdahl. The majority of the citations in that article are to leaked emails from the consultancy firm Stratfor.

Engdahl seems to me to be a little-known author with a reputation for a cavalier attitude to evidence. It is unfortunate that Specifico wants to use Engdahl's page to exercise a similarly lax attitude to standards of evidence, in order to try to smear an individual unrelated to the article subject. Cambial — foliar❧ 20:49, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

I was not the originator of that text or citation, just saw RS being reverted with the claim it was not RS so I checked out the publication. If the deletion edit summary had stated "failed verification" that would have been a different matter. SPECIFICO talk 21:45, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

Reliability of kooora.com

Is kooora.com a reliable source? It appears in a large number of BLP's, sometimes as the only source such as at Abdel-Ru'ouf Al-Rawabdeh, but I haven't been able to determine anything about the editorial policy or their policy on paid content. There was a previous discussion about this in 2017, but it had minimal participation and did not provide any useful information. BilledMammal (talk) 04:00, 9 February 2022 (UTC)

I found the English version, but no about-page. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 10:01, 9 February 2022 (UTC)
Looking in the English version, I managed to find an about us page; they have three reporters, and many contributors and moderators, but no editors. I am uncertain how to interpret that. BilledMammal (talk) 11:02, 9 February 2022 (UTC)
It's not the best. "Moderator" could imply some WP:USERG. I'm leaning towards "not good enough for WP:GNG, anyway." Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 11:18, 9 February 2022 (UTC)
Looking further, on the English site it appears that all they do is publish wire content, from AFP, DPA etc. On the Arabic site their contributors write articles, while the activity of their moderators appears to be limited to a forum that is hosted on the same site. BilledMammal (talk) 11:15, 9 February 2022 (UTC)
For what I know, the site is reliable and employ actual reporters to write their articles (I know the guy who writes the articles about Lebanese football, and he is officially registered by the Lebanese Football Association as a journalist). They do have a forum section, though, which is definitely not reliable. I use their articles a lot for Arabic-language football-related content. Nehme1499 23:24, 9 February 2022 (UTC)
Thank you, that's useful. Do you have any information on what the difference is between the employees they classify as reporters, and those they classify as contributors? BilledMammal (talk) 23:33, 9 February 2022 (UTC)
Not really, though all these members seem to be related to the forum, not articles. I searched for a few names, and they only appear in forum posts (btw, if someone needs to ask me something, please ping me as I don't have this page under my watchlist). Nehme1499 15:00, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

Irish Daily Mail: specific instance

diff.

I have been lately working on improving Wikipedia's treatment of an ongoing evaluation of Erwin Schrödinger's legacy and accusations that he committed sexual abuse. I was alerted by the German Wikipedia discussion of a source from Irish Daily Mail that mentions one of the incidents we outline in our section. However, I am not sure whether there is consensus for excising such citations from Wikipedia or not, so I thought I would drop this here to see what the consensus of reliable source aficionados might be for this WP:BOLD inclusion.

N.b. there are discussions about the reliability of other sources being used for related content on the article talkpage as well as a WP:NPOVN notification I placed about a week ago.

Cheers!

jps (talk) 17:25, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

would like https://concerts.fandom.com/wiki/Vulcan_Gas_Company to be considered reliable source

I understand that fandom.com has been discussed in the past and considered unreliable.

I just discovered https://concerts.fandom.com/wiki/Vulcan_Gas_Company yesterday. One of the founders of the Vulcan Gas Company, Don Hyde, and I, a primary employee in 1969-70, consider this Fandom page accurate, and valuable because of the excellent collection of images of posters from 1967-1970. I cited at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulcan_Gas_Company, not knowing that fandom.com had been considered unreliable, but my cite was undone.

I am requesting that an exception be made and citation to https://concerts.fandom.com/wiki/Vulcan_Gas_Company be accepted. CharlieSauer (talk) 00:36, 7 February 2022 (UTC)

I can't really see why Wikipedia should make an exception to the reliable sources guidelines based merely on an unverifiable assertion that the source is accurate. That would appear to make the guidelines more or less meaningless. AndyTheGrump (talk) 01:00, 7 February 2022 (UTC)
It's not subject to editorial control or fact-checking, and does not even begin to approach being a reliable source. --Orange Mike | Talk 01:02, 7 February 2022 (UTC)

It seems to me that the images are self-verifying -- they have names of bands, dates, signatures of poster artists. There well over 100 such self-verifying CC-BY-SA images contributed to https://concerts.fandom.com/wiki/Vulcan_Gas_Company. Many would argue that those posters, and thus these images, are the most important enduring legacy of the Vulcan Gas Company. CharlieSauer (talk) 01:48, 7 February 2022 (UTC)

CC-BY-SA images can be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons. We don't need to use fandom.com to host them. AndyTheGrump (talk) 01:57, 7 February 2022 (UTC)

I recognize that the images could be hosted elsewhere. Since whoever created the Fandom page has done it very well, and since there are 100+ images, not counting thumbnails, etc., rehosting the images again separately seems to be effort better spent otherwise. Rather than trying to integrate them into Wikipedia directly, it would probably be easier for me to host them separately from Fandom or Wikipedia, and that might even be appreciated by those who still discuss the historic Vulcan Gas Company on Facebook. CharlieSauer (talk) 03:02, 7 February 2022 (UTC)

Perhaps you could add it as an WP:ELMAYBE #4. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 08:52, 7 February 2022 (UTC)
While Fandom.com (and thus https://concerts.fandom.com/wiki/Vulcan_Gas_Company) is clearly an unreliable source, it seems to me that the posters themselves are primary sources that can be cited within our constraints on citing primary sources (i.e., they may be used only to make straightforward, descriptive statements of facts that can be verified by any educated person with access to the primary source but without further, specialized knowledge). I don't see a need for them to be rehosted elsewhere, unless Fandom.com has a reputation for publishing fictional or altered sources. John M Baker (talk) 15:59, 8 February 2022 (UTC)
Also, I don't see a problem with an external link to the Fandom.com poster collection. The link should be clear that it's a link to a collection of posters, and not just to a Fandom.com article. (I'm not sure what our general policy is on external links to Fandom.com, but a link to a poster collection should be fine.) John M Baker (talk) 16:05, 8 February 2022 (UTC)
Fandom.com is not reliable here as it is a wiki, a type of user-generated content. This means its content can be changed at any time by anonymous individuals, and so it is inherently unreliable for all claims of fact (except some claims about itself). If there is no reliable source to make a claim, then we can't make that claim. Wikipedia is limited in scope and cannot contain all true information, just all verifiable information. If the posters are published elsewhere then that's a different matter, but we can't cite posters that are not hosted by a reliable source as Wikipedia is based on reliable, published sources. — Bilorv (talk) 01:04, 13 February 2022 (UTC)

Sputnik, kind of

Sputnik is, of course, rather well known for being a Russian propaganda outlet that spreads disinformation, and has been deprecated since 2020. This news article is from RIA Novosti in 2008, one of the predecessors to Sputnik (which was established in 2014), but it's now hosted on sputniknews.com. This leads to a couple of questions:

  • Should pre-Sputnik content hosted on sputniknews.com be held to the same standard as Sputnik content (i.e. deprecated)?
  • Regardless of the deprecated status of the source organization(s), is the use of this content for describing the official Russian government position on an international dispute valid?

Thanks, ansh.666 04:15, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

To be honest, I really don't know that there is any reasonable way to frame 2008 RIA Novosti as somehow being bad at representing the Russian state position on things. This seems like one of those places where a reasonable exception to WP:DEPRECATION via WP:IAR if the only source that can be found is the Sputnik site (I suspect it's not, but it's possible). I'd generally have qualms with using deprecated state media sources to represent a state's position on an issue from a due weight perspective, but the position of the Russian Federation in a territorial dispute involving Russia is almost always going to be due anyway. — Mhawk10 (talk) 05:25, 12 February 2022 (UTC)
  • why should not it be held to the same standard?
  • why do we need to use a deprecated source? When the Russian government says something important, there is at least one non deprecated source that covers it. Renat 05:50, 12 February 2022 (UTC)
    • To the first point: because it wasn't produced by Sputnik. It's hosted there, but the news agency that made the piece was RIA Novosti. Sputnik was created in 2014 following a large shakeup in the structure of the state media apparatus that began the year prior. We can even find an archive of the RIA Novosti report, which should probably be cited instead of the live Sputnik link since link rot is bad.
    • To the second point, I agree that Sputnik should be avoided in most of these contexts. What I disagree with is that this RIA Novosti report is actually a Sputnik report that's somehow deprecated despite RIA being WP:MREL at WP:RSP. WP:RSP notes that Sputnik replaced the international edition of RIA Novosti, and it seems that there's editorial discontinuity enough to make different relevant source analyses here. — Mhawk10 (talk) 06:19, 12 February 2022 (UTC)
I would agree with Mhawk10 that RIA Novosti content should not be regarded as deprecated, seeing as it is listed separately at WP:RSP. I would use the archived link that he found to avoid any problems. —Compassionate727 (T·C) 15:41, 12 February 2022 (UTC)
Since RIA Novostri is the original source, the citation should directly link to their article instead of through Sputnik, it would also avoid confusion when checking for deprecated sources. Tayi Arajakate Talk 13:39, 13 February 2022 (UTC)

The Wire (India) relaible source

The Wire (India) is a relaible source to be used as a reference for Indian Politics et al ?LodoVena (talk) 12:10, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

What is a "relaible" source, and how does that differ from reliable sources? wbm1058 (talk) 15:36, 8 February 2022 (UTC)
What do you suspect? TrangaBellam (talk) 17:25, 8 February 2022 (UTC)
is there any previous discussion or consensu about the reliablity of the wire to be used as WPRS for Indian Politics et al LodoVena (talk) 17:38, 8 February 2022 (UTC)
You have been already informed. We do not need any consensus to deem a NEWSORG-compliant source as reliable. TrangaBellam (talk) 17:48, 8 February 2022 (UTC)
i do see a reason for discussion of the wire . if it can be used as RS or not . we need a consensus LodoVena (talk) 18:32, 8 February 2022 (UTC)
Do you believe "The Wire" to be unreliable? If so, you need to make a case for it. If not, this thread can be closed due to lack of arguments. TrangaBellam (talk) 18:41, 8 February 2022 (UTC)
Yes it's a standard reliable source. The policy on reliable sources require them to have a reputation for fact checking and accuracy, The Wire tends to exceed that and has a reputation of being a "investigative journalism outlet", "respected online news service", for carrying "award winning reporting", etc. Two of its founders are also the former editor in chief(s) of The Hindu (RSP entry) and The Financial Express, business news imprint of The Indian Express (RSP entry). Tayi Arajakate Talk 05:23, 9 February 2022 (UTC)
is there any consensus on using wire as WPRS on WPRSN?LodoVena (talk) 05:28, 9 February 2022 (UTC)
You don't need a discussion on every reliable source for them to be used. Tayi Arajakate Talk 05:31, 9 February 2022 (UTC)
WP:RSPMISSINGLodoVena (talk) 05:53, 9 February 2022 (UTC)
@LodoVena, which states [t]hat may be because the source you want to use is a stellar source, and we simply never needed to talk about it because it was so obvious? I will agree with such a characterization. TrangaBellam (talk) 05:56, 9 February 2022 (UTC)
The wire is not steller source like these most prestigious academic journals in the world, like Nature and The Lancet.. we need a consensus for wireLodoVena (talk) 06:04, 9 February 2022 (UTC)
I repeat what I wrote (to no reply): Do you believe "The Wire" to be unreliable? If so, you need to make a case for it. If not, this thread can be closed due to lack of arguments. TrangaBellam (talk) 07:27, 9 February 2022 (UTC)
  • Yes The Wire (India) is a standard reliable source. Op had started a duplicate thread on Talk:The Wire (India)#The wire reliable source?. Venkat TL (talk) 08:06, 9 February 2022 (UTC)
  • Yes. Reliable. Quite solid. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 12:58, 9 February 2022 (UTC)
  • Comment Although I may be wrong , but LodoVena seems to be same as DavidWood11 and Satdul judging purely on the basis of their edits on NDTV, The Wire etc. ChunnuBhai (talk) 13:08, 9 February 2022 (UTC)
    I seem to remember that DavidWood was at least able to write coherent English; this is seeming more and more like a serious competence issue. Vanamonde (Talk) 15:13, 9 February 2022 (UTC)
Looking through his contributions, DavidWood11 seems to also have struggled with grammar in a similar way to LodoVena, although any poorly educated Indian would have similar problems, and DavidWood11 could write multi-sentence thoughts, which LodoVena has yet to prove. I think it's possible they're related, and I'm debating filing SPI, but IMO we should just block LodoVena for incompetence and be done with it. —Compassionate727 (T·C) 15:30, 9 February 2022 (UTC)
  • Comment. I've seen that The Atlantic at one point used something called The Wire almost as if it were a news agency before. Is this related to the Indian news group? — Mhawk10 (talk) 04:22, 12 February 2022 (UTC)
    No, that would be The Atlantic Wire which existed as a seperate organisation of Atlantic Media for an year before being merged back into The Atlantic. Tayi Arajakate Talk 13:43, 13 February 2022 (UTC)

Hypebae

Hi, I'm planning to make a draft about a singer. More than one of the sources I found (ex. [44]) is to this site named Hypebae. I went to RS/PS to check, then I searched the archives, and found out it had never been discussed. Is this source reliable? wizzito | say hello! 17:20, 13 February 2022 (UTC)

Just did some research, they claim to be owned by Hypebeast. wizzito | say hello! 17:22, 13 February 2022 (UTC)
There is one discussion where 3 editors say their parent company, Hypebeast, is mostly reliable, so I'm going to end this discussion. wizzito | say hello! 17:23, 13 February 2022 (UTC)
I would be wary of using them for anything contentious, and I wouldn't rely on them to establish notability, as their primary goal is to sell things. Standing at the forefront of fashion and culture, Hypebeast Ltd. uncovers the latest, emerging trends and creates a lifestyle universe through highly-curated content and various business offerings that inspires, educates, and connects a global audience. The core motivation of Hypebeast Ltd. is to educate a global, influential audience within the realms of creativity in the context of fashion, arts, design, music in order to inspire, innovate, and drive culture forward. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 17:31, 13 February 2022 (UTC)
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_367&oldid=1081068474"