This is an archive of past discussions on Wikipedia:Reliable sources. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current main page.
I want to paraphrase and add this to the article on Jihad:-
Jihadis frequently reinterpret the texts and distort their original meaning. For example, the idolaters and polytheists who are the subjects of hostile references are freely translated as Jews, Christians, Americans, Westerners in general, and Muslims who disagree with the jihadis.
Equally important, jihadis also often provide only part of a quotation. For example, the Verse of the Sword (9:5), perhaps the most quoted Qur’an excerpt (cited on p. 38), is often truncated to “Kill the idolaters (polytheists) wherever you find them... lie in wait for them at every place of ambush,” leaving out the tempering phrase “But if they turn [to God] ... let them go their way.”
The quotations presented in this chapter are in the form the jihadis most often use and therefore do not include the additional material that might change their meaning.[1]
However, I first want to know if jstor is a reliable source.-
JSTOR is just a collection of digital documents, which vary in quality from high-quality to junk. You appear to be trying to reference a chapter from this[1] book which is a compendium of the views of Jihadis, so that would be "reliable" for the individual views expressed; whether such content is WP:DUE and how it would be contextualized is another, more pertinent, question. Bon courage (talk) 08:25, 22 July 2024 (UTC)
I don’t think there’s a dispute, although in the specific example I think further context is needed to satisfy WP:DUE. The reinterpretations being made are not exactly novel, but draw on a clear tradition previous sources going back all the way to hadith if not the Quran itself.[3]
The issue I see is that none have a listing of editorial oversight so where do they get their information? Thesouthfirst is only two years old as far as domain age so clearly a blog and not reliable. Behindwoods has a section where you can pay to promote your content. Taking into consideration the information on 123Telugu above, I would in the LEAST not consider any of these reliable for notability purposes. --CNMall41 (talk) 04:57, 17 July 2024 (UTC)
I think the general reliability of the site Bloody Elbow as a source prior to March 2024, when it changed owners, [4] is questionable. While it currently seems to be a reliable source under the new owners, based on the masthead and the editorial mission statement pledging high journalistic ethics. [5], circumstances were very different prior to change in ownership, when Bloody Elbow was a blog. Please note that I have a conflict of interest as a consultant for WhiteHatWiki.com, which was paid by an organization, ONE Championship, that Bloody Elbow wrote about prior to the change in ownership.
The reliability of Bloody Elbow was discussed back in 2013 and the three editors who weighed in considered it to be a fan blog that was generally unreliable. When GRV bought Bloody Elbow in March 2024, [6] it laid off the existing staff and deleted much of its archival content, which doesn’t say much for GRV’s confidence in the editorial integrity of Bloody Elbow’s past work. Deleting 16-years of archives with all that web traffic must be a significant financial loss for the new owner, but it appears to be taking journalistic standards very seriously, so it’s understandable.
Despite the deletion of the archives, some pre-2024 content (like this post has been reprinted on other blogs and other stories can be found in the Internet Archive. I searched the Internet Archives’ Bloody Elbow page and I could not find a masthead or any information on editorial standards pre-March 2024. I identified perhaps 3 staff. With a staff that small, everyone tends to be focused on posting content rather than assuring it is accurate. Without a masthead or editorial standards, it's not possible to definitively determine whether there was adequate fact checking, a key criteria of WP:RS. It’s also very difficult to determine anything by checking the bylines. For example, I found one author profile on the Internet Archive that makes it seem like the user joined the site as a member and then began posting to the site a “guest author”, as well as leaving thousands of comments. Journalistic ethics discourages engaging with the comments section of other writers' stories because it compromises their neutrality on a topic they may be called upon to cover in the future. The inordinate volume of comments indicates more of a fan-like zeal than professional journalism.
The distinguishing characteristic of blogging sites is the publication of posts without fact checking or with minimal fact checking. Writers might sometimes get things right but they might also get things very wrong at a much higher frequency that reliable news publications.
Additionally, the media rarely cited to Bloody Elbow over its 16 year history, and when it did, it almost always referred to it as a blog. This lends strong support to the argument that it does not have a reputation for editorial accuracy. WP:USEBYOTHERS says: “How accepted and high-quality reliable sources use a given source provides evidence, positive or negative, for its reliability and reputation.” I thoroughly researched how other news sources treat Bloody Elbow. The only mentions of Bloody Elbow in news sources I could find was a story on a site called “Fannation” [7] which was written by a contributor to that publication; and story in a small Florida publication which refers to Bloody Elbow as “SB Nation’s comprehensive MMA blog.”
The Washington Post sports blogs also had several instances where Bloody Elbow was used to take quotes from fighters but it always identified it as a blog. [8],[9], [10].
Since Bloody Elbow is rarely mentioned by the news media and, when it is, it is identified as a blog, this suggests it fails WP:USEBYOTHERS.
My suggestion is that Bloody Elbow pre-March 2024 be treated as unreliable for statements of fact, but can be used for statements of opinion if attributed. Can anyone find more pre-March 2024 content that suggests it's more than a blog? Brucemyboy1212 (talk) 16:42, 19 July 2024 (UTC)
Whether it was a blog or news source pre-March 2024 is the issue. It was not self-published - it had different owners and employees. It has been cited more than 500 times on Wikipedia, such as on the page for Ultimate Fighting Championship more than 35 times, and on ONE Championship. I also think it is a blog and generally unreliable for the reasons above. But because the pre-March 2024 is treated like a reliable news source very often on Wikipedia, including on ONE Championship, this decision will directly impact how I treat the source when making proposals for edits. That's all I care about, not whether it gets list at RSP. @ActivelyDisinterested:, would you like a few examples of where it is treated like a news source so you can see what I mean? Brucemyboy1212 (talk)
You shouldn't edit archives, this can be discussed in the RFC. Also could you add a date and time to your signature, it's important for several different reasons. But to your general point being used as a reference on Wikipedia has zero bearing on whether a source is reliable or not. For instance Wikipedia itself is regularly used, even though is expressly against WP:CIRCULAR. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested«@» °∆t°22:20, 12 August 2024 (UTC)
There is also a The Japan Times#Controversy section in the article about the newspaper, but outside of this mention and several comments online (Reddit, personal blogs, etc.) I can't find a reliable assessment.
The article previously contained information that Sakujin Kirino fact-checked the book "African Samurai" by Thomas Lockley, which was proven not to be true and later amended. In addition, the language and viewpoint of the article appears very one-sided and contains some factual errors (for instance, "he [Yasuke] was addressed as “tono” (literally, “lord” or “master”)" - primary sources show this was contemporary speculation, not statement of fact).
For the purpose of this thread I am interested purely in The Japan Times as a reliable source:
- If it's "situationally" reliable, which sections are more reliable?
The Japan Times is a standard WP:NEWSORG and would be considered generally reliable, as ever generally doesn't mean always and specific articles could be less reliable than in general. Making corrections to article is a sign of a reliable source not a negative.
As to the specific issues with the article I would suggest using secondary sources from historians rather than lifestyle articles or primary sources.
RSP is a record of sources that have been regularly discussed, unless there is ongoing concerns with the source I don't think there's any need to add it. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested«@» °∆t°19:06, 14 July 2024 (UTC)
Generally speaking, it's rare for a source's overall reliability to change as a result of a single isolated incident unless that incident is truly seismic in its impact or fits into a larger pattern of problems. Reliability is about a source's overall reputation for fact-checking and accuracy, not about never getting anything wrong ever. And in this case they issued a correction, which is what RSes are supposed to do when they make a mistake. --Aquillion (talk) 20:15, 20 July 2024 (UTC)
By "quality" newspapers I mean newspapers that are considered to be quality press in the UK or equivalent newspapers from other countries (such as the New York Times, and presumably the newspapers listed at Newspaper of record#Examples of existing newspapers, though I have a limited knowledge of some of those newspapers). These newspapers are typically broadsheets or former broadsheets.
In relation to whether news reporting is reliable for statements of fact:
I propose that, for the purpose of RfCs at RSN, quality newspapers should be (1) presumed to be generally reliable for topics within competence of newspaper journalists (which would not, for exanple, include topics within the scope of WP:MEDPOP). If an RfC at RSN seeks to classify a quality newspaper as generally unreliable, or as unreliable for a particular topic within competence of newspaper journalists, the newspaper should be (2) presumed reliable until the contrary is proved; (3) the burden of proof and (4) the burden of consensus should be on those claiming the newspaper is not reliable; and (5) the standard of proof should be the Sagan standard.
I am not satisfied that the wording of WP:NEWSORG is sufficiently explicit, precise and unambiguous to prevent editors disputing whether it produces this result. So I suggest we discuss this directly.
I think it is common knowledge that the coverage of topics, within the competence of newspaper journalists, by quality newspapers is usually factually accurate. I think that a claim that a quality newspaper is generally unreliable, or is unreliable for a particular topic within competence of newspaper journalists, is an extraordinary claim.
I also think it would be dangerous to make it too easy to classify quality newspapers as unreliable. We do not want RSN to become a battleground for editors who want to deprecate newspapers whose political opinions they do not like. We do not want political activists to be able to get quality newspapers deprecated merely by shouting loudest and longest. We especially do not want RSN to become a battleground for agents or sympathisers of certain governments and paramilitary organisations who want to deprecate newspapers that are in the habit of saying uncomplimentary (but not factually inaccurate) things about them. And we especially do not want them bombarding us with militarily motivated RfCs during the middle of a war in which they are belligerents. The application of a "braking mechanism" to RfCs here would reduce the risk of these things happening.
WP:NEWSORG says "whether a specific news story is reliable for a fact or statement should be examined on a case-by-case basis". Since this proposal applies only to general reliability, and reliability for topics, and does not apply to reliability for particular facts or statements, I do not think it will make it difficult for us to exclude the actual errors that "even the most reputable reporting sometimes contains". James500 (talk) 09:12, 16 July 2024 (UTC)
Depends on your definition of "quality", though, which can change. As seen by the examples at the recent RSN, the UK Telegraph has gone from a sober and respected newspaper of record to one that is full of culture-warrior bigotry and promotion of conspiracy theories. Black Kite (talk)10:07, 16 July 2024 (UTC)
The New York Times appears to be one of the most generally reliable sources in the world. It is probably considered one of the two best newspapers in the world. We recently had a proposal to completely deprecate the New York Times (archive 430), something proposed several times before (see for example, archives 252, 287 and 350). The Wikipedia article on the New York Times has a "controversies" section that primarily relates to two narrow controversial topics on which we have recently had numerous RSN RfCs. Presumably the next step will be two RfCs to deprecate the New York Times on those two particular topics. Similar RSN proposals, and mainspace "controversies" or "criticism" sections, have been directed towards a number of other quality newspapers that are normally considered perfectly reliable. James500 (talk) 14:57, 18 July 2024 (UTC)
The first issue with this proposal that comes to mind is that journalists, even quality ones, aren’t required to deal exclusively in hard facts the way encyclopedists are. Documenting real life inherently involves gray areas, and the journalist’s job is often to illustrate or interpret them. Journalists, as standard operating procedure, routinely give the spotlight to the lived experience of people they talk to, and while they often, to varying degrees, attempt to situate it in context, the primary realm of an encyclopedia is essentially not the colorful and highly subjective individual experience.
It’s also outrageously common to see editors hiding behind the cited RS to justify their own editorial handiwork. The presentation style of a news source normatively shouldn’t be mapped directly into an encyclopedia article, on any structural level.
WP faces an additional hurdle because the goal it sets is far more comprehensive than the relatively humble Britannica or WEIRD COCK[a]World Book, the latter of which often, as of ten years ago when I was using it, had single authors stating their informed POV, or even puffing outdated textbook-style stuff, on contentious topics. WP, unlike them, has to present a global, universal summary of all human knowledge. (When you put it that way, it sounds like it’s meant to be spiritually meaningful.)
I also don’t think it’s a systemically healthy move to enshrine certain privileged sources as harder to challenge based on a nameplate rather than on an independent evaluation of methodology. Even pillars of the press sometimes have to print retractions, and sometimes even don’t do so when they really should. Newspapers with a global reach also have a complicating issue in that they routinely hire (or freelance contract) involved locals to contribute to contentious topics in varying degrees, rather than having some random white kid fly in and aloofly write something they have too much emotional distance to and can’t piece together the context of.
News sources are there to make the reader feel informed rather than to provide CIA Factbook-style data, and sometimes that entails weaving a story. This is enabled by the loose limits of the need to avoid falsehood or libel[b] rather than the comparative straitjacket of WP’s policies and guidelines.
^it’s surprisingly easy to rearrange the volumes that way
Why should news sources be given privileges that academic sources don't get? Definitely against presumed reliability, editors are expected to use their own good judgement on sources. The best 'grade' of source at RSN is only 'generally reliable', this would create a level above that. As to the Sagan standard, if you mean "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" well that a source can be unreliable is in no way an exceptional claim. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested«@» °∆t°11:42, 16 July 2024 (UTC)
As far as I can see, academic sources are not likely to be the subject of an RfC at RSN. An RfC on an academic source would not be likely to degenerate into massive partisan political POV pushing. Academic sources are not likely to be systematically targeted by politically motivated POV pushers who want to deprecate every source they consider sufficiently politically influential to be worth targeting. Academic sources are not few in number, and are not likely to be widely read, to have a massive influence on public opinion, to have a political stance, or to have political enemies who are determined and either numerous or powerful enough to make an impression on an RfC here. The proposal has nothing to do with "privilege", it would be a precautionary measure that would, in particular, prevent POV pushing that might be otherwise impossible to control. If you think that I am over-estimating the level of risk, or that the proposal would not be workable, that would be fair enough, but this is not about "privilege". James500 (talk) 01:27, 17 July 2024 (UTC)
Your 'precautionary measure' would be a positive boon not shared by others, or in more succinct terms a privilege.
The solution to the issue you state is involvement via wide spread notification, and closers judging the discussion by Wikipedia policies. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested«@» °∆t°10:15, 17 July 2024 (UTC)
It is not apparent that it would bring any advantage whatsoever to the newspapers. Some newspapers assert that links and other citations (in Wikipedia or any other external site or source) to their articles, and the inclusion of information (in Wikipedia or any other external site or source) that is also included in their newspapers, has the effect of bypassing their advertising and paywalls. The deprecation of the Daily Mail in 2017, for example, did not stop it from becoming the highest circulation newspaper in 2020. In any event, it is irrelevant whether citation does or does not benefit the source, because any argument that depends on that factor is whataboutism, and would be an argument for the elimination of all citations and links (which is out of the question). On the other hand, I am certainly not against alternative methods of preventing POV pushing, if they are actually effective. James500 (talk) 22:58, 17 July 2024 (UTC)
To the newspaper as a type of source on Wikipedia as opposed to other types of sources. I'm obviously not talking about the profitability of the newspaper themselves. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested«@» °∆t°23:09, 17 July 2024 (UTC)
The idea that we could "default to reliable" for a source, thereby falsely listing it on RSP as having a consensus of reliability, would be a massive boon to anyone who wants to use the source's potentially-inaccurate reporting to advance a particular POV. Overwhelmingly one-sided "default" outcomes are almost never helpful, since they discourage discussion and consensus-building; whatever side in a dispute feels favored by those defaults ends up with no incentive to come to the table or compromise. For sources where we fail to reach a consensus, yellow entries are the best way to encourage neutrality, since they lead to individual case-by-case discussion that requires actually delving into the facts of each dispute; green ones would reward POV-pushers who rally behind low-quality sources they agree with ideologically, since it would empower them to seize on dubious reporting that agrees with their POV, then simply steamroll opposition by falsely insisting on the reliability of a source that in fact enjoys no consensus. Ultimately we combat POV-pushing by raising the quality of sources and requiring the best ones available, not by watering it down and handing out green RSP entries so easily. --Aquillion (talk) 21:55, 19 July 2024 (UTC)
No, this is a terrible idea. Sources that were previously reliable can become unreliable, and sources that are reliable in some contexts can be unreliable in others; if there's no consensus on a source's reliability, then it isn't considered generally reliable by editors, and it would be inaccurate and misleading to allow an WP:RSP entry stating otherwise. More generally, newsorgs are by definition never sources of the highest quality; even a newspaper of record generally falls below the standard of a high-quality academic source. So it would be absurd to give them special protections. More generally, while you argue that this would be used to stop people from obtaining an RSP that you consider biased, this works, of course, in both directions; your proposal would make it easy for people who agree with the biases of well-known high-circulation newspapers to completely erase any hint of disagreement, defending factually inaccurate reporting and sources with poor reputations simply because they agree with them. A yellow / no-consensus entry on RSP (which is the situation you seem to prefer, in specific situations to be listed as green) does not prevent a source from being used; it merely makes it more likely that it will have to be discussed and individual consensuses reached when it is being used for something exceptional or or sensitive. It seems to me that trying to short-circuit such discussions is far more likely to introduce bias and encourage POV-pushing than accurately labeling sources on which we lack a consensus. --Aquillion (talk) 21:45, 19 July 2024 (UTC)
(1) Firstly, I would be grateful if you would stop twisting my words. The expression "quality newspapers" does not mean "high-circulation newspapers". The expression "quality newspapers" does not include "factually inaccurate reporting" or "sources with poor reputations" or "potentially-inaccurate" sources or "low-quality sources" or "dubious reporting" or sources that are not "the best ones available". (2) Creating a presumption in favour of the reliability of quality newspapers involves no risk whatsoever of POV pushing. If all quality newspapers are allowed, POV becomes impossible. The political stance of quality newspapers at one end of the political spectrum balances the political stance of quality newspapers at the other end. It would be POV pushing if you were to, for example, deprecate all centre-right quality newspapers, or deprecate all quality newspapers from NATO countries and their military allies outside the North Atlantic region, or deprecate all quality newspapers that criticise a particular government, or something like that. I think we can take it for granted, for example, that the intelligence and security agencies (and secret police) of certain countries (including counterintelligence states and dictatorships that practice massive censorship of their own press), that are enemies of, or hostile towards, NATO, would probably like to deprecate all the quality newspapers from NATO countries and their allies, because those newspapers are the ones that criticise those dictators and regimes. The proposal helps prevent that kind of politically selective deprecation, but your approach would allow it. Your approach would allow the dictators etc to send their spooks to WP:RSN to deprecate all the newspapers that criticise those dictators etc, and the allegedly oppressive and warmongering etc behaviour of those dictators etc, who will not be criticised by their own press which they have completely censored. (3) Newspapers are capable of being sources of the highest quality. James500 (talk) 03:23, 20 July 2024 (UTC)
But obviously defining quality newspapers requires a clear case-by-case consensus; determining whether something has factually inaccurate reporting or poor reputations or potentially-inaccurate or dubious reporting likewise means going to the community and asking them for that sort of consensus, and is something which (as we have seen time and again) editors often disagree on, especially when their own political beliefs come into play - in both directions. Yes, biases can push people towards declaring possibly-reliable sources unreliable, but they can also lead people to declare possibly-unreliable sources reliable and even to declare that they are of the "highest quality." The solution is to require in-depth discussion, not to short-circuit the discussion towards the people biased towards reliability; that means that when there's no consensus, we must say s. Like most proposals that would decrease the need for consensus-building, your suggestion is obviously something that POV-pushers would exploit - the security agencies and secret police and more typical POV-pushers you talk about would have a much easier time pushing us to give their mouthpieces the stamp of a reliable source, and to argue that their mouthpieces are "quality newspapers", than they would trying to depreciate an entire country. Indeed, the reason we have so many low-quality culture-war oriented deprecated and generally unreliable sources listed on WP:RSN is because people constantly tried to use them as reliable sources, and constantly tried to insist that they were high-quality and reliable, even in the face of overwhelming evidence. We already have a system to balance those competing needs out through a consensus-building process and to examine the actual evidence people can turn up; it's called RSN and RSP. Trying to put your thumb on that scale in one direction would damage our ability to reach accurate conclusions and would make POV-pushing easier, not harder, especially when the biggest danger in terms of POV-pushing is not "every source from America gets declared unreliable" (an absurd scenario that would require the entire community go mad) but "a few unreliable sources with strident voices slip through and are then used aggressively by POV-pushers who agree with what they say" (a very real and serious problem that happened constantly in the past.) --Aquillion (talk) 19:34, 20 July 2024 (UTC)
(As at a failing AfD, I've been refraining from commenting because it seems clear the proposal isn't going anywhere and I don't want OP to feel like everybody and their uncle is shooting him down, but for the record I agree with ActivelyDisinterested and Aquillion that it would be inappropriate to put a thumb on the scales and privilege some sources in this way (and especially to privilege newspapers over more reliable sources like academic sources); it would make POV problems worse. -sche (talk) 21:46, 20 July 2024 (UTC))
I posted this story from the Signpost last month. Things have evolved a bit and now Retraction bot handles {{Erratum}}, {{Expression of concern}}, and {{Retracted}}. These populate the following categories:
The first level ones need human review. The second level ones (intentional) have been reviewed.
If the citation is no longer reliable, then the article needs to be updated, which could be as minor as the removal/replacement of the citation with a reliable one, to rewriting an entire section that was based on flawed premises. If the citation to a retracted paper was intentional, like in the context of a controversy noting that a paper was later retracted, you can replace {{retraction|...}} with {{retraction|...|intentional=yes}}/{{expression of concern|...}} with {{expression of concern|...|intentional=yes}}/{{Erratum|...}} with {{Erratum|...|checked=yes}}.
Hello! I edited one of the articles citing a retracted paper [here]. I do not have experience with this sort of editing but want to pitch in to help with the review log. Before I continue, I would like to ask if you could ensure that the edit I just did inserted '|intentional=yes' in the correct place and achieved the desired result since I wouldn't know what it is supposed to look like if I made a mistake visually. Relm (talk) 21:27, 20 July 2024 (UTC)
That looks correct. Also if you check the ref afterwards the red warning message is replaced with a blue notification, showing it template was updated correctly. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested«@» °∆t°10:24, 21 July 2024 (UTC)
The Print’s Press Release
There is an AfD, and Shshshsh is not ready to accept this article as a press release provided by SRV Media, a prominent sponsored PR news provider that falls under NEWSORGINDIA. The article clearly mentions that it is a press release from SRV Media. When I tell him these he starts to say “ Please use WP:RSN to gain consensus pertaining to the label you're using.” He is not ready to accept what WP:PRSOURCE says: “A press release is clearly not an independent source as it is usually written either by the business or organization it is written about.” I want to ask the community to tell him that what he is saying is wrong. GrabUp - Talk11:14, 21 July 2024 (UTC)
I'd be grateful to get a number of views about this - I don't think this thread should be used as a dispute resolution. It's enough to ask if it's reliable. I'm not saying it's not a press release. It's a sufficient source for the information it supports. That's it. Shahid • Talk2me11:47, 21 July 2024 (UTC)
You should have said this at the AfD, but no you said “You must be kidding - The Print is an online newspaper and the article cited is just used for the overage of the awards. All you said here is mere speculation.” GrabUp - Talk11:51, 21 July 2024 (UTC)
If the question for RSN is 'is this a press release?' then yes, it very obviously is. The clear nod to SRV media indicates
this is the case, along with a quick web search showing several other articles [12][13] published in other newspapers around the same time with similar/same language.
I will just note that while the reference to WP:NEWSORGINDIA is valid, I would be much more concerned if ThePrint article in question was being used as a reference for an article about the the founder of TalenTrack, Vineet Bajpai - the section at the end of the article on him and his company is clearly paid promotion. This is why WP:NEWSORGINDIA was created, and this type of paid promotion is what it cautions against. However, using a press release based article to state a fact about someone winning an award is probably ok and I don't think you can get around it - this is the case for many articles about Hollywood celebrities and walk of fame updates. (I wont speak to the notability of the award itself or whether the AFD in question meets GNG overall here since thats not OP's question). Schwinnspeed (talk) 14:05, 21 July 2024 (UTC)
This isn't exactly the paid promotion relevant meant by WP:NEWSORGINDIA, but it doesn't need to be. It's very obviously a press release, from the byline being 'ANI PR' and the tags at the end saying This story is provided by SRV Media. ANI will not be responsible in any way for the content of this article. (ANI/SRV Media) and This story is auto-generated from a syndicated feed. ThePrint holds no responsibility for its content. It might be reliable per WP:PRIMARY/WP:ABOUTSELF but is certainly not independent of the subject and so doesn't add anything to notability. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested«@» °∆t°14:21, 21 July 2024 (UTC)
The source is 2020 U.S. Religion Census published by the ASARB. It was being used as a citation in the LDS Church article for the statement As of 2020, the church was the fourth-largest Christian denomination in the U.S.. It has been argued that the source doesn't support this statement. I would argue it does based on text on page 76 of the report. It starts going through the largest organized religions for a commentary of demographics:
These groups, ranked by size, include the 1) Catholic Church, 2) non-denominational Christian Churches, 3) Southern Baptist Convention, 4) United Methodist Church, 5) Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, 6) Muslim, 7) Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, 8) Assemblies of God, and 9) Jehovah’s Witnesses... The Catholic Church has been the single-largest religious body in the United States... The third largest religious group is the United Methodist Church (5%)... The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (fourth largest, at 4.2% of total adherents)
I think there might be some confusion due to the later paragraphs dropping the "non-denominational Christian Churches" from the ordering when discussing organized religious bodies. It is also possible to look at the data in the table starting on page 88 and see that the reported percentages also support the statement. In my view the claim "4th largest Christian denomination in the US" is supported by the source. -- FyzixFighter (talk) 11:51, 20 July 2024 (UTC)
I'm not sure that this is really the venue for this question... I don't think anyone is actually questioning the reliability of the source and there does appear to be rather genuine ambiguity so its not really a strict V question. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 00:31, 22 July 2024 (UTC)
Oppose - Russ Rodgers' book is published by the University Press of Florida, and our WP:OR policy states that "Books published by university presses" are among "the most reliable sources." Rodgers is the command historian of the US Army and an adjunct professor of history. There are currently only two biographies of Muhammad written by military historians: this Russ Rodgers' book and Richard A. Gabriel's book published by the University of Oklahoma Press. I believe their perspectives are crucial given that Muhammad's life after moving to Medina was filled with battles, including the Battle of Badr (which was demoted from featured article status, apparently in part due to a lack of sources from military historians [14]). Rodgers' book has also been cited and reviewed positively by various other reliable sources [15] (not just random blogspots or websites). As for Maxime Rodinson, he was for many years a professor at the École Pratique des Hautes Études at the Sorbonne and, after working several years in Syria and Lebanon, supervised the Muslim section of the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris [16]. Some reviews of his book include [17][18]. — Kaalakaa(talk)05:58, 14 June 2024 (UTC)
I think these sources are RS per wikipedia's definitions. If anything, attribution would help to put some context if not an obvious claim. Ramos1990 (talk) 06:02, 14 June 2024 (UTC)
I don't see any problem with these sources. University of Florida Press and New York Review of Books are highly reliable sources. Vegan416 (talk) 10:37, 14 June 2024 (UTC)
Comment: Any claim that appears exclusively in one of these two books should not be included in the article without in-line attribution. These are popular works that don't generally engage with primary sources; there is no reason to believe that they make unique claims because of unique information. Muhammad is the subject of thousands of books. Very rarely is it productive to discuss claims in terms of their sourcing in such an article, because anything that deserves inclusion will be replicated across many valid options. You guys seem to be fighting over specific content. Each conflict should be an RFC on the Muhammad talk page (post notices wherever) with however many sources, arguments exist for each side. Don't waste everyone's time trying to win narrow and presumably well-sourced content disputes by end-running on process. GordonGlottal (talk) 13:44, 14 June 2024 (UTC)
Muhammad was a historical figure, like Napoleon, Buddha, Constantine, Joan of Arc. As such, the highest quality material we should be using are academic books published by historians because they are written by experts, and go through extensive peer review, and are written a very neutral and factual manner. Thus they typically represent the best sources. If you look at FA quality pages on figures such as al-Musta'li or Theodosius III they extensively use university press published works. The second book is published by the New York Review of Books, which is a publisher I am less familiar with and am not sure about the quality, but it appears to be less academic. So it may present slanted information. On any article with any kind of hotly debated or controversial topic, we should rely more on the highest quality sources (typically academic books by university presses) more and more. Harizotoh9 (talk) 07:03, 14 June 2024 (UTC)
Close RfC We have absolutely no context on why the books might be unreliable at the first place. I have read Rodinson and his views, though scholarly, are now-antiquated; so, it becomes a question of DUE. TrangaBellam (talk) 10:54, 14 June 2024 (UTC)
Replace - Russ Rodgers is a U.S. army military historian and not an Islamicist or any authority on Islamic studies. The University Press of Florida is indeed a reliable source but as Harizotoh9 noted, we should use the highest-quality sources as possible. Rodgers' most famous book is Nierstein and Oppenheim 1945 about World War II and he has written only around 3 books related to Islam. As i highlighted on the article's talk page, people like David Bukay (an Israeli political scientist who is known to be an anti-Arab and Islamophobic person), Russ Rodgers (a U.S. Army military historian), Ram Swarup (an Indian leader of the Hindu revivalist movement), William E. Phipps (a ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) are nowhere close to WP:RS. This article should contain the work of classical Islamicists and Orientalists such as W. Montgomery Watt. I'm actually surprised how dedicated orientalists like Watt have so less citations now than people like Bukay, Rodgers etc. FA articles such as Khalid ibn al-Walid, Amr ibn al-As, Mu'awiya I, Yazid I, all of whom are controversial figures between Shia Muslims and Sunni Muslims, but nevertheless these articles are written neutrally neither from a Shia point of view nor a Sunni point of view and having reliable orientalists and Islamicists such as Fred Donner, Wilferd Madelung, Meir Jacob Kister, Patricia Crone, Hugh N. Kennedy, R. Stephen Humphreys and not anti-Arab political scientists, Hindu revivalists or U.S. military historians. ProudRafidi (talk) 11:33, 14 June 2024 (UTC)Sockstrike☿ Apaugasma (talk☉)21:49, 15 June 2024 (UTC)
Comment. As others have said, the New York Review of Books is not the original publisher of Rodinson. The book was originally published in French in 1961 and subsequently published in English (translation by Anne Carter). The New York Review of Books has reprinted the book. I've updated the citation to clarify the situation. I can't speak to its reliability, but sixty years is a long time in academic publishing on a major topic. Mackensen(talk)11:41, 14 June 2024 (UTC)
These sources have been the subject of contention since late 2023. For context for those unfamiliar, back in 2023, Kaalakaa decided to rewrite the Muhammad article, using primarily the two books mentioned in this RfC for references. On the talkpage, the reaction to Kaalakaa's rewrite and to these sources has been mixed to say the least. I don't really think anybody other than Kaalakaa would object if the article was reworked to rely less on or remove these sources, but the fundamental issue is that nobody seems to be able/willing to do this (I don't feel comfortable doing this due to lacking in depth knowledge of the source material) leading to people just arguing in circles. Does anyone have recommendations for recent up to date scholarly biographies of Muhammad? Hemiauchenia (talk) 12:07, 14 June 2024 (UTC)
Bad RFC This completely ignores both the instructions in the noticeboard header and the edit notice. Discussions should take place before starting an RFC. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested«@» °∆t°12:57, 14 June 2024 (UTC)
That's better, still, looking at that and then this, seems more like a discussion that ought to be at the article talk page, along the lines of what are WP:BESTSOURCES for the subject. Selfstudier (talk) 13:59, 14 June 2024 (UTC)
This matches my opinion, this appears to be about what sources to use and what content should be included in the article. Also the question of this RFC Should both be replaced with other sources, thereby deeming these two sources unreliable? is a non sequitur, using different sources in the article would not 'deem' these sources as unreliable. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested«@» °∆t°15:33, 14 June 2024 (UTC)
Comment Russ Rodgers' claims "about military history" may or may not be reliable (since he's a military historian), but whatever he has to say about other scholarly subjects regarding Muhammad is obviously irrelevant. Maxime Rodinson's book was published in 1961, which makes it unsuitable for claims that have since been superseded and redundant for everything else. M.Bitton (talk) 17:19, 14 June 2024 (UTC)
Replace Rodgers because it's a WP:FRINGE source. The OP is the only person in past discussions on Talk:Muhammad who considers the Rodgers book reliable, because he assumes, wrongly, that merely being published by a university press is a rubber-stamp of reliability, and that parroting the words from WP:OR is justification for including it. That is emphatically not the case. While publication by a university press is a good indicator of reliability, it is by no means infallible, because University presses can and do publish fringe views deliberately. This is one example. Rodgers is the only source available for certain extraordinary claims about Muhammad, and extraordary claims require extraordinary evidence, such as multiple corroborating sources. He seems to be more of a hobbyist author with an interest in history, and his book is ignored by academia with very few citations to that book. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Anachronist (talk • contribs) 23:21, 15 June 2024 (UTC)
Just for an information, @Hydrangeans appears to have shown that @Anachronist's essay above contradicts the sources used in it [19]. And @Just Step Sideways and @AndyTheGrump agree that the essay "belongs in user space" [20][21]. @AndyTheGrump also put @Anachronist's understanding of WP:FRINGE into question [22]. Furthermore, if one looks at the article, many statements cited to Rodgers also have supporting sources. Moreover, that Rodgers' book has also been cited and reviewed positively by various other reliable sources [23][24] (not just random blogspots or websites). So this seems to be yet another instance of @Anachronist misunderstanding our policies and guidelines, aside from what has been listed here. — Kaalakaa(talk)08:13, 19 June 2024 (UTC)
What Kaalakaa conveniently omitted, is that the essay's assessment of Rodgers is based on past community discussion (now cited in the essay), which showed a clear concensus summarized in that essay. Kaalakaa is the only editor promoting that source, for the sole reason that it's published by a university press, which that essay demonstrates shouldn't be considered a rubber stamp of reliability. ~Anachronist (talk) 17:55, 25 June 2024 (UTC)
Comment: it is important to distinguish three kinds of reporting in these, and all other sources about the prophet Muhammad:
Objective statements that are not disputed (eg Muhammad ordered raids on Meccan caravans)
Objective statements that are disputed (eg Muhammad recited the satanic verses)
Subjective statements (any statement that seeks to pass any kind of judgement on Muhammad)
It goes without saying any statements that fall in the latter two categories should always be attributed and not stated in wikivoice. Whether these statements belong in the main article Muhammad, or subarticles like Criticism of Muhammad depends on weight and editorial discretion about what constitutes encyclopedic material.VR(Please ping on reply)03:41, 16 June 2024 (UTC)
Comment: On the second kind of report, It does seem like Rodgers at times misrepresented the primary sources he quotes. One example is, On page 145, he uses a statement by members of Banu Qurayza:
"We have no treaty with Muhammad"
as proof that no treaty had taken place. His source was Sirat Ibn Ishaq page 453. But when actually reviewing Sirat Ibn Ishaq, it is made clear that this was a satirical statement. To use it as actual historic proof for his narrative seems quite like deliberate distortion. QcTheCat (talk) 06:47, 16 June 2024 (UTC)
Oppose - vague RFC, no specified flaws and no proposed edits shown - WP should mention all the major views and these appear to be prominent ones. The RFC has just not shown an article cite where any of the WP:RS principles are deficient, let alone such sweeping removal for 100+ cites, nor any basis to believe there are replacements for those 100+ cites. For example, in one place is a mention that Rodgers infers something and in that WP:RSCONTEXT it seems obvious that a Rodgers book is the best cite. Without reasons to change and without actual edits proposed I'd say clearly no. Try one-by-one and not a vague unfounded want. Cheers Markbassett (talk) 00:46, 17 June 2024 (UTC)
Rodgers' views are far from "prominent", in fact they stand out as extraordinary claims unsupported by other sources. ~Anachronist (talk) 01:15, 17 June 2024 (UTC)
Oppose. I'd have to read both books, and be more familiar with general scholarship about Muhammad, to really have a strong opinion. But the books both have the imprimatur of respectable publishing houses. They look very usable. Even if they express minority-held views, they're still of value, because showing our readers multiple scholarly points of view on Muhammad is a good thing, not a bad thing. If the concern is that the books are over-cited in the Muhammad article, I think it's better to achieve due balance by adding more sources, or by putting more information in the article from previously-cited sources, not by removing sources. Pecopteris (talk) 01:40, 17 June 2024 (UTC)
With respect only to the Rodgers source, the author bio blurbed by the publisher got me wondering what being a "command historian for the US Army" means, which led me to this quaint 1990s era autoethnography, which indicates that for the most part they're history PhDs and only some are mentally handicapped. I didn't find many reviews of Rodgers 2012, but this one by a self-described "Islamicist" found it impressive and better than expected if sometimes speculative, and specifically praised its incorporation of hadith materials. The Rodgers source is TWL-accessible via Project Muse, and while the ten-page bibliography feels scant at first blush, apparently the entire enterprise is a more accessible extension of an earlier Rodgers work, Fundamentals of Islamic Asymmetric Warfare (2008), which according to the publisher's blurbed reviews, has excellent sourcing, which we can believe the author did not forget about entirely in the course of the production of the 2012 book.Having said that, this whole RFC feels off, with a framing intended to produce blanket approval for the sources listed, where the issue in practice appears to be an imbalance of sourcing (my bystander take, having not edited articles citing these sources, unless perhaps in forgotten gnoming). Add to that an arbcom case request (my route to here) filed by the RFC initiator against an editor who has taken issue with the use of these sources, and my feeling is mostly bad RFC. Folly Mox (talk) 11:24, 17 June 2024 (UTC)
Oh incidentally I was not able to confirm anything about University Press of Florida's peer review process a decade and a half ago, although Internet Archive have a fairly complete snapshot of the site at that time. The earliest snapshot of their editorial board is from 2021. Then, as now, they have several historians on the board, including at least one named chair, which I always like to visualise as a literal named chair. Of course, that any of them concentrate in mediaeval Islamic texts is an improbability, but anyway I'm not sure if I have a point to make. Folly Mox (talk) 12:01, 17 June 2024 (UTC)
Comment There are plenty of academics who devote their careers to studying Muhammad, and even more historical specialists in the field of the Middle East in Late Antiquity. Russ Rodgers is not one of them. His work seems to be well-regarded, so it's probably good to use for the narrow field of analyzing Muhammad's military command, but little else. I wouldn't call it unreliable, but it's overused in our current article. The Rodinson source shouldn't be used at all. Historical knowledge and methods have changed a lot since 1961, there's no reason to use a source that old except in the few fields where nothing more recent has been published. Red Rock Canyon (talk) 09:46, 18 June 2024 (UTC)
Comment: While I raise my eyebrow at Anachronist's circular skepticism of university presses, starting this RFC seems pointy, in the sense of trying to score a point and 'shore up' OP's defense of Rodgers's book rather than seeking resolution to a question. I share Red Rock Canyon's sense that citations to Rodgers and Rodinson are overrepresented. Rodgers's' Generalship was relatively well-reviewed in H-Net, by John Walbridge, but military history is just one aspect of the topic's life. Walbridge's own review notes that Generalship is inattentive to the religious dimensions of the subject, which is frankly something that needs to be front and center in Wikipedia's article, since the source's primary notability comes from his influence in religion and status as the prophet of Islam. Military history in general seems overrepresented, with Richard Gabriel's Islam's First Great General also being cited more than 30 times. As is, there are very relevant authors who are minimally cited or entirely uncited. Only two citations to anything written by Karen Armstrong, for instance, one of the classic biographer's in English?As for Rodinson's book, religious studies has changed a lot since 1961. A historian or biographer's in-depth study might cite Rodinson in order to understand the historiography over time, but for Wikipedia's encyclopedic overview purposes, we really should be citing something much less outdated. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 19:57, 19 June 2024 (UTC)
Thank you for your comment, Hydrangeans. However, one thing to note is that Muhammad's life is divided into two periods: his life in Mecca and in Medina. The Medina period is when reports about his life are clearer and more organized, because it was after he moved to that city that he gained many more followers, particularly from the Banu Khazraj and Banu Aws. His life in that city was filled with battles, so much so that he was reported to have ordered raids at least 95 times on trade caravans and surrounding tribes. It was also during this time that the major battles with the Quraysh (Battle of Badr, Battle of Uhud, Battle of the Trench) and the Jews (Siege of Banu Qaynuqa, Invasion of Banu Nadir, Siege of Banu Qurayza, Battle of Khaybar) occurred. That is why many statements are cited to military historians like Rodgers. Regarding Karen Armstrong, there have been several discussions questioning her, primarily seemingly because Karen only majored in English, which is unrelated to the topic [25][26][27]. Some even argue that if Karen Armstrong is used, then Robert B. Spencer should also be used [28][29][30]. It might also be worth noting that Kecia Ali, in her book The Lives of Muhammad, published by Harvard University Press, around pages 189-190, points out that Karen Armstrong references a primary source, Tabari, for a particular statement, but that statement does not align with what Tabari actually said [31][32]. Meanwhile, on page 270, Kecia Ali states, "A more measured assessment of Muhammad’s military skills can be found in Rodgers, The Generalship of Muhammad." Jonathan E. Brockopp, in his book Muhammad's Heirs: The Rise of Muslim Scholarly Communities, 622–950, published by Cambridge University Press, on page 28, seems to classify Karen Armstrong among modern authors who "misrepresent the earliest period of Islam" by "downplay[ing] the confusion of the early community on how to be a Muslim." — Kaalakaa(talk)01:28, 20 June 2024 (UTC)
Yes, there were plenty of battles in his life, but that doesn't mean there wasn't also plenty of religion. One might well say that, say, George Washington's life was filled with battles, before his presidency, but I'd consider an overemphasis of military history, over and against political history, in the George Washington article just as much of an issue.
Fair enough that Armstrong doesn't have as many academic credentials as certain other authors, but it remains that her biography, A Prophet for Our Time, was published by a major mainstream publisher, HarperCollins. Meanwhile, Robert B. Spencer shouldn't be cited is because his axe-grinding interpretations aren't part of mainstream scholarly thought, weren't published by major mainstream publishers, and if incorporated into the article would likely violate WP:NPOV.Also, you bring up Kecia Ali and Jonathan Brockopp for a couple of errors on Armstrong's part; yet Ali is cited only once, and Brockopp only 6 times. If we can agree that Ali and Brockopp are academically published authors of WP:SCHOLARSHIP about the topic, why are they so underrepresented, especially compared to Rodinson's sixty-year-old book? Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 17:59, 20 June 2024 (UTC)
Kecia Ali's book, The Lives of Muhammad (note that the word used is not "life" in the singular but "lives" in the plural), does not discuss the life of Muhammad but rather the works of various authors, both Muslim and non-Muslim, who explore Muhammad's life. As for Brockopp's "Muhammad's Heirs: The Rise of Muslim Scholarly Communities," as the title suggests, it discusses "The Rise of Muslim Scholarly Communities." There are indeed many books about Muhammad, but those that specifically chronologically discuss his life from birth to death by reliable secular authors and publishers are very few, and the books by Rodgers, Rodinson, and Richard A. Gabriel are among them. Others generally only discuss specific aspects of his life (or other matters), like this book, which only discusses stories about Muhammad's meeting with a figure named Bahira. I am not saying that religiosity is not a part of Muhammad's life; I am saying that Muhammad's generalship is an important part of his life and the spread of his religion. If you look at the article (which is quite long), many other sources besides military historians are also cited for other statements. As I write this comment, the total citations in the article are 419, while the citations to Rodgers are 43. — Kaalakaa(talk)01:59, 21 June 2024 (UTC)
Thanks for quantifying the underlying issue, which was never one of reliability but always one of weight, dueness, onus and a hint of ECREE. There is no way Rodgers accounts for, or is owed by way of use by others, a one-tenth weighting within the corpus of relevant biographies. Nor is Glubb worthy of 30+ citations, or Rodinson 50+ citations. That's a quarter of the total referencing lent out to sources now at the margins of the body of modern scholarship. Iskandar323 (talk) 04:32, 21 June 2024 (UTC)
Iskandar323 puts it well. 43 may be relatively few compared to 419, but that's some tenth of all sources cited. And with Rodinson cited over 50 times, more than 10% of all citations are coming from sixty-year-old scholarship! A source doesn't need to be a cradle-to-grave biography to be useful for the article (Generalship, for instance, isn't one such biography), and it may not even need to be book length. Surely there are peer-reviewed journal articles in Muslim history and religious studies that could and should be cited? Some partial biographies focusing on episodes of his life outside of wars and battles? Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 18:53, 21 June 2024 (UTC)
Feel free, Hydrangeans, if you have sources as you described, to add them to the article. Rodgers and Richard A. Gabriel, unlike several other authors, provide citations for almost every one of their statements, whether it's to primary sources or other secondary sources, making it easy to verify whether their statements are extraordinary or not. Other sources that align with their statements are also given in the article as supporting sources. Actually, when one reads the scholarship about Muhammad, it is easy to see that the general view is that he is the founder of Islam, and that his religion spread as it did mostly because of his military strategy skills, not because of angelic assistance. So the truly extraordinary claim should be that Islam spread widely at that time because of angelic assistance, not because of Muhammad's generalship. — Kaalakaa(talk)23:18, 21 June 2024 (UTC)
It's not as if the only two choices are "military strategy skills" or "angelic assistance". The point isn't that there should be no reference to battles in the biography but that other aspects of his life also matter: the appeal of his religious ideals, institution building, personal dimensions, etc. You speak of reading the scholarship, so I trust that between us you would be the one familiar with more recent sources than Rodinson, and less militarily focused ones than Rodgers. You asked this board for feedback on these sources, and you're receiving it. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 00:26, 22 June 2024 (UTC)
Yes, and I think those other aspects have more or less been covered, with sources also besides military historians, in my last version of the article (not sure about now, as there seem to have been some deletions and changes for various reasons). However, if you believe it is still lacking, as I mentioned before, feel free to add to it using the sources you previously described. We can't convey some expressions or intonations through text, but I appreciate your comments, as well as others' comments above and those to come. Thank you. :) — Kaalakaa(talk)01:26, 22 June 2024 (UTC)
I have no problem with Russ Rodgers being used in the article. The problem is with the standard of reliability. Since Rodgers is reliable because his work was published by a University press, then sources such as Brown, Ramadan, Serjeant, Watt, Eposito and all the others should be reliable too. And as you said before, if WP:CHOPSY is not relevant, then the reason you provided that these sources "seem to parrot Muslim sources" would also not relevant. QcTheCat (talk) 10:30, 23 June 2024 (UTC)
Thanks, but this section pertains to the RfC for the two sources listed above. If you want to discuss other sources, feel free to open a new section. If you wish to push for the wording "Banu Qurayza broke their treaty with Muhammad" without attributing the statement to Muhammad or Islamic sources, please open a new section in WP:NPOVN. I will refrain from commenting on those two matters here because it would be off-topic. — Kaalakaa(talk)02:43, 24 June 2024 (UTC)
Must use opinions with attribution. Kaalakaa seems to have been using these two sources to push a POV. Reading these sources, it does seem they are at least WP:BIASED. That bias doesn't make them unreliable, but we can't state them in wikivoice either. For example, on page 104 alone Gabriel criticized Muhammad: "[Muhammad's] hatred of poets was well known", "Muhammad hired his own poets to spread his propaganda among the tribes" and "killed on Muhammad’s order...These killings were political murders carried out for ideological reasons or personal revenge." Kaalakaa then proceeds to add at least one of these claims in wikivoice, and this is a violation of WP:NPOV. VR(Please ping on reply)10:51, 28 June 2024 (UTC)
Oppose Non serious RSN. These are undoubtedly important sources that offer insightful information on Muhammad's life and the early days of Islam.
Rodgers (2012), Russell. Muhammad's Generalship: The Prophet of Allah's Wars and Expeditions. This book examines Muhammad's leadership techniques and strategies from a military point of view. Understanding the conflicts and campaigns that molded the early Muslim community can benefit much from it. But it's crucial to remember that this is only one particular perspective on Muhammad's life, and that other sources might provide a different analysis.
Maxime Rodinson (2021) [1961]. Muhammad. This is a classic biography of Muhammad that was translated into English after it was first published in French. It seeks to provide an informed and impartial account of Muhammad. ND61F (talk) 08:44, 16 July 2024 (UTC)
As shown at Pfander Films, no surviving Islamic sources exist from the first hundred years after Muhammad's death. So the Muslims are making it up as they go along. JRSpriggs (talk) 04:20, 22 July 2024 (UTC)
Not really sure why anyone would be interested in a YouTube video, given this is the reliable sources noticeboard. In any case, a nice book on this subject that came out recently that I didn't see anyone mention is Anthony, Sean W. (2020). Muhammad and the empires of faith: the making of the prophet of Islam. Oakland: University of California Press. ISBN978-0-520-97452-4.
I would like to know if this website is reliable. I’m pretty sure it is because it seems very official and knowledgeable. And all that is stated is facts online. Sanam786 (talk) 19:09, 17 July 2024 (UTC)
Hi @Sanam786 at the bottom of the pages, it states PAK Magazine is an individual effort to compile and preserve the Pakistan history online so this is a self-published source which are generally not acceptable. S0091 (talk) 14:25, 19 July 2024 (UTC)
@ActivelyDisinterestedPak Film Magazine, is operated by Mazhar Iqbal as part of pakmag.net. He is a film archivist based in Denmark and is definitely a subject-matter expert on film-related topics. I'd not use this website for WP:GNG purposes as it is primarily a database. However, it is definitely a good source to fill gaps in information. The Express Tribune covered the website in detail ([33]) and the website is likely notable per WP:NWEB criteria. 87.201.20.195 (talk) 22:11, 22 July 2024 (UTC)
For the purposes of self published sources the authors are meant to be experts previously published in other reliable sources. Do you know if they've previously had any works published? The Tribune article is interesting, but it just confirms that this is someone's personal passion project. Intestesting and useful for information, but not necessarily reliable.
It's reliable for the details, but it's a briefing note per the details at the top of the article and the url. So it's just another press release that is not independent of the subject. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested«@» °∆t°13:53, 23 July 2024 (UTC)
https://www.airdisaster.ru/ is a Russian-language website that is currently cited on 575 articles here, mostly aviation accidents in the Soviet Union, Russia, and other former Soviet countries. I admit that I must rely on machine translation to read the site, but it seems to me to be a SPS without any evidence of editorial oversight. Indeed, the home page of the site states that its purpose is to collect and present information that is not available in published sources, and it encourages readers to write in with extra information they might have about the accidents listed on the site. Beyond that, in the few dozen pages that I spot-checked, I did not find a single one that cited any sources for its information. Without that, or any visible editorial policy, or credentials of the site publishers (Дмитрий Ерцов, Александр Фетисов -- Dmitriy Ertsov, Alexander Fetisov), I think that any information published there must be treated as highly suspect and unsuitable as a source for Wikipedia. The absence of citations over there (and its aim of presenting "new" information about these accidents) also makes it of very limited use for chasing down reliable sources. How do others here see it? --Rlandmann (talk) 13:16, 20 July 2024 (UTC)
Definitely not RS. Pretty much everything .ru is either propaganda-loaded or unverifiable or both. This site is no exception. This question shouldn't even need raising. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 15:45, 20 July 2024 (UTC)
There's no details of who runs the site, or if they have an expertise in the area. It hosts the primary text of crash investigation documents and transcripts, but no original documents. These do have some limited use by others as a sources (Routledge[35][36], Springer[37]), but I would still only use them cautiously as it has to be taken for granted that the text is a genuine copy of the source.
The database entries appear more problematic, and it's not clear where details beyond the primary sources come from. I would avoid those.
It's possible to differentiate the three types (investigation reports, transcripsts, and database entries) from their URLs (/reports, /cvr, /database). -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested«@» °∆t°16:54, 21 July 2024 (UTC)
RFC: The Sun, a broadsheet newspaper published from 1964 to 1969
This RFC has run it's course, and no examples of the source being unreliable or policies reasons for it being unreliable have been shown. Also the 1964–1969 phase of the paper before the Murdoch acquisition was never mentioned in the 2019 RFC. As such the deprecation of the tabloid newspaper called The Sun does not apply to the broadsheet published between 1964–1969 of the same name.WP:RFCEND states "If the matter under discussion is not contentious and the consensus is obvious to the participants, then formal closure is neither necessary nor advisable", but as this has already been closed and reopened I'm adding a formal close. I've commented on this RFC but as no case for the source being unreliable has been made I do not see this as controversial. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested«@» °∆t°14:25, 25 July 2024 (UTC)
The following discussion 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.
The Sun was a broadsheet newspaper published in the United Kingdom from 1964 to 1969. It was a replacement for a similar broadsheet newspaper called the Daily Herald, which it resembled. It was owned by the International Publishing Corporation and the Mirror Group. Rupert Murdoch and Kelvin Mackenzie had nothing to do with it. In 1969, it was replaced by a very different and disimilar tabloid newspaper with the same name, called The Sun, which was owned by Rupert Murdoch. That tabloid newspaper has an entry in WP:RSP located at WP:THESUN. Unfortunately that entry fails to indicate whether it applies to the previous broadsheet newspaper, and the broadsheet newspaper does not appear to have been discussed during previous discussions of "The Sun" at RSN. We need to decide whether the broadsheet newspaper published from 1964 to 1969 is reliable, so that the entry at WP:THESUN can be clarified.
Accordingly this Request for Comment asks:
What is the reliability of the national daily broadsheet newspaper published in the United Kingdom from 1964 to 1969 called The Sun?
Survey (The Sun, a broadsheet newspaper published from 1964 to 1969)
Option 1: Generally reliable. To begin with WP:NEWSORG says "news reporting from well-established news outlets is generally considered to be reliable for statements of fact (though even the most reputable reporting sometimes contains errors)". That is the case here. This broadsheet newspaper was indeed a "well-established news outlet" having existed as a reputable broadsheet with a high circulation, under a different name, since 1912. As a broadsheet newspaper similar to the Daily Herald, and owned and run by the same people, this appears, on the face of it, to be a very reliable newspaper, similar in reliability to The Guardian or The Independent. There is, at this point, no evidence whatsoever that so much as a single error ever appeared in the broadsheet newspaper published from 1964 to 1969. It has been repeatedly described by writers as "worthy" and "boring" (see articles by Patrick Brogan, Stephen Daisley, and the BBC). A newspaper that is "worthy" and "boring" is likely to be very reliable. The BBC says that it had "high aspirations and ideals" and was published to "stop [the] sort of populist, right-wing" tabloid newspaper that replaced it: [38]. Such a newspaper is likely to be very reliable. Bill Grundy said that the writers were "good" and "fine", including John Akass, Nancy Banks-Smith, Geoffrey Goodman, Harold Hutchinson and Allan Hall: [39]. Grundy said they did good work at the old broadsheet Sun. As far as I can tell, they all left The Sun when Murdoch arrived in 1969. A newspaper with writers like that is likely to be very reliable. The editor Dick Dinsdale also left in 1969, so we can say there is a lack of continuity in staff between the broadsheet and the tabloid. The political stance of the newspaper was moderate and centrist (on the left wing), and it aimed to be independent of all political parties. It was not far left or far right. Such a newspaper is likely to be reliable. I have analysed the front page of the first edition (15 September 1964): It looks like a respectable broadsheet newspaper, written for educated people. It promises to "set itself the highest journalistic standards", that it will have no "preconceived bias" and that if any errors are published inadvertantly in good faith, they will be "corrected with frankness and without delay". I have found no errors in it. It looks like something that one would expect to be obviously very reliable. The old broadsheet newspaper should not be tainted by perceived association with a very different later tabloid newspaper that happens to have the same name. The old broadsheet newspaper was simply not "trashy" in any way at all. All the factual inaccuracies Wikipedians have detected in the tabloid newspaper date from after 1969 and primarily from the 1980s onwards, as far as I can tell. The old broadsheet (1964 to 1969) was not discussed at all during the previous RfC for the Sun, and it appears obvious that the participants in that discussion had no idea the old broadsheet newspaper even existed. Further information: [40][41]. James500 (talk) 08:18, 25 June 2024 (UTC)
Option 1 I don't doubt that a pre-Murdoch broadsheet with wide distribution was generally reliable, especially one unaffiliated to political parties unlike other broadsheets during that period. I would however like to know more about this "radical" agenda they described as; as far as I understand this was slang for "good" or "cool" in the 60s, but might be worth clarifying for editors under the age of 60. CNC (talk) 11:59, 25 June 2024 (UTC)
They said that they were "radical" in the sense of being "ready to praise or criticise without preconceived bias". It is on the front page of the first issue. Apparently not having "preconceived bias" (which would include not having a party political bias) was considered "radical" in 1964. James500 (talk) 22:38, 25 June 2024 (UTC)
Bad RFC per the noticeboard header and the edit notice. Prior discussions should be had before starting a RFC, which has not happened. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested«@» °∆t°16:32, 25 June 2024 (UTC)
Rather than have a whole discussion here where most of the participants will never have seen an issue of the elder Sun, I think we can just edit WP:THESUN to specify that it only applies to the newspaper after 1969. --GRuban (talk) 16:40, 25 June 2024 (UTC)
WP:THESUN presently links to the article The Sun (United Kingdom). That article includes both the old broadsheet newspaper and the new tabloid newspaper. WP:THESUN does not specify which of those newspapers it is about. I was under the impression that the previous discussions that led to WP:THESUN satisfy the requirement for previous discussions. I was under the impression that it would not be possible to edit WP:THESUN without an RfC, because WP:THESUN is meant to restate the outcome of a previous RfC in 2019. If WP:THESUN can be edited to say that it does not include the old broadsheet newspaper without an RfC, I have no problem with that. I assumed that it was procedurally impossible to change the summary of an RfC without another RfC. If you want me to edit WP:THESUN myself, I would prefer to have clear authorisation from the community. James500 (talk) 21:54, 25 June 2024 (UTC)
Maybe this could have been resolved without an RfC, and only a discussion on this board, but given the The Sun is currently GUNREL then it doesn't do any harm to have one. For all we know there are editors who believe it is MREL or still GUNREL for other reasons. Furthermore editors are not obliged to comment, even if requested, and it's certainly not a "bad RfC". The board clearly states that an RfC shouldn't be opened "unless the source is widely used and has been repeatedly discussed"; with 15 prior discussions, that's certainly enough. Non-policy arguments such as WP:BEFORERFC aren't relevant either, as what you "should do" and required to do are two separate concepts. As long as editors criticise the RfC itself and not the proposal, there's a good chance the proposed changes can be made sooner rather than later. CNC (talk) 22:55, 25 June 2024 (UTC)
I agree with ActivelyDisinterested. I'm not convinced this is so contentious that it needs a Request for Comment to resolve it. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 22:37, 25 June 2024 (UTC)
Bad RFC, very premature. Show that there is any live issue here at all first. Are there previous discussions where this is a point of contention? The purpose of RFCs on RSN is for discussion of live issues, not to categorise sources in the absence of an actual live issue - David Gerard (talk) 00:12, 26 June 2024 (UTC)
David, there have been 15 prior discussions of The Sun, and its use has been in extreme contention for a long time. You were a participant in those discussions, and you were strongly opposed to any use of The Sun whatsoever. You have been systematically ripping all references to The Sun out of articles citing WP:THESUN in your edit summaries. You do that more or less every day at such high speed and on such a scale that it would be impossible for anyone to monitor exactly what was being ripped out. How do I know that references to the old broadsheet newspaper are not being ripped out with the rest of the references to The Sun? The present text of WP:THESUN, so far as it links to The Sun (United Kingdom) without further explanation, is likely to produce that result even if you were to promise not to do it yourself and even if you were to confirm you have not done it yourself. The point is that the text of WP:THESUN is so unclear that it is not remotely adequate. In any event, if you cannot positively prove that no-one is removing references to the old broadsheet newspaper, I think we are entitled to presume that they probably are, because anyone can see that is likely to happen because of the text of WP:THESUN, and it would be impossible to actually monitor accross all the articles of the encyclopedia (WP:FAIT). James500 (talk) 01:06, 26 June 2024 (UTC)
It would not be reasonably practical to find diffs of references being removed without a script or tool that is capable of finding them. Do you know of a script or tool that can do that? If you do not, then you are demanding that I find diffs by manually examining every mainspace edit made since 2019 (which is probably tens of millions). That would be a completely inappropriate request and would violate WP:FAIT. James500 (talk) 10:19, 26 June 2024 (UTC)
So in other words there is no current issue. If someone removes one of the current references to the earlier publication revert them and open a discussion with them, if that fails come here for a third opinion.
Removing references to The Sun where appropriate is fine given the consensus that it is unreliable. Obviously any such removals should be done with care, and any mistakes discussed with the editor removing the reference. All of which follows the wording of WP:FAIT.
This edit is wikilawyering and WP:POINT. David cannot claim that the RfC is "bad" because the old broadsheet has not been discussed before, and then claim that we need an RfC to change WP:THESUN because the old broadsheet was included in the 2019 RfC. He cannot have it both ways. And it is no good claiming that the RfC was withdrawn when I specifically stated that I would only withdraw the RfC on condition that the community agreed that an RfC was not necessary to make that change to RSP, and on condition that the change was not reverted. Anyway, David's revert proves that there is a "live issue" and a "point of contention", because his editing constitutes one. James500 (talk) 13:43, 27 June 2024 (UTC)
Comment Although this issue can be easily resolved by simply fixing WP:THESUN to post-1969, are we - or have we - actually used the 1964-69 Sun as a source at any point, and have such references been removed by editors quoting the RfC about the tabloid? Black Kite (talk)07:26, 26 June 2024 (UTC)
We do have references to the old broadsheet Sun in articles right now at this very moment. I am not aware of any script or tool that can detect whether references to the old broadsheet Sun have been removed in the past, let alone determine if they have been removed in the five years since the RfC in 2019. James500 (talk) 09:12, 26 June 2024 (UTC)
Proposal to end this. A number of editors have suggested that the text of WP:THESUN can be amended without an RfC. I do not see anyone saying they will revert such an amendment. I propose we treat that as an emerging consensus, since that text does not accurately reflect the consensus established in 2019 anyway. I propose to WP:BOLDly amend the text of WP:THESUN by adding "The following consensus applies only to the tabloid newspaper published from 1969 onwards; it does not apply to the broadsheet newspaper published from 1964 to 1969". Unless there is an immediate howl of protest, I am going to do this now, because I think that it would be better for all of us to end this as quickly as possible. If no-one reverts or objects to the amendment, I am happy to withdraw this RfC, and for it to be closed. James500 (talk) 15:29, 26 June 2024 (UTC)
Done with this edit. The correct edit summary is in the following edit. (Unfortunately WP:RSP is far too large to load conveniently on a browser). If no one reverts that edit, I have no problem with this RfC being closed as withdrawn and resolved. James500 (talk) 15:44, 26 June 2024 (UTC)
I closed this RfC on 26 June due to the RSP amendment and James500's above statement (closing diff). The RSP amendment was reverted on 27 June, so I've re-opened the RfC. It's evident that the change is contentious and that further discussion is needed. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 12:37, 27 June 2024 (UTC)
I would still suggest closing this, this needs a discussion at most. Jumping straight to the most bureaucratic option is just bad pratice. Also there is still no evidence that this is an actual issue. If someone has removed such a reference and disagreed with reinstating it then it hasn't been shown. As long as that is the case no-one is stating that The Sun (the broadsheet published from 64-69) is unreliable then there is zero need for any discussion. If no-one say it's unreliable and editors believe in their good judgement that it is reliable, then it is reliable. No need for any RFC, discussion or update to the RSP. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested«@» °∆t°20:11, 27 June 2024 (UTC)
WP:THESUN clearly clearly states that the newspaper is WP:GUNREL, including 64-69. This is why there is an RfC right now, that could have been settled if it weren't for revert of RSP. The revert speaks volumes. CNC (talk) 20:22, 27 June 2024 (UTC)
On the face of it, this editis an assertion that the 1964 to 1969 broadsheet is generally unreliable and that the consensus of the 2019 RfC applies to it. It is true that the prima facie assertion of unreliability appears to be baseless, and no substantial reasons or evidence are given for the assertion, but it is not clear that makes any difference. James500 (talk) 20:24, 27 June 2024 (UTC)
That was because you claimed "I'll withdraw my RFC if you treat it like it passed," and lol no. I don't see how you can reasonably treat it as discussion of the paper. If that's the best evidence you have of a live issue, you don't have a live issue - David Gerard (talk) 19:26, 28 June 2024 (UTC)
If you revert someone's edit, and they do not agree with that revert, that is ipso facto a live issue. There is clearly a live issue about what the text of WP:THESUN should say, because you are reverting changes to it. There is no policy, guideline or consensus that authorises you to revert an edit and then prevent all community discussion of that revert, or of whether the edit should be reinstated. That is the exact opposite of consensus and the exact opposite of WP:BRD. The procedure is "Bold, Revert, Discuss". It is certainly not "Bold, Revert, Silence community discussion of the revert by wikilawyering alleged procedural rules that do not exist". I would now like to shut up and let other people !vote. James500 (talk) 21:04, 28 June 2024 (UTC)
So you really don't have an example of a dispute over the source in article space? That being the usual sense of "live issue". None whatsoever, just an edit on the summary page of a discussion board, and zero examples you can present of any dispute or discussion of the source in an actual article before you raised this? That's a yes or no question, and if it's a yes please cite the issues. You seem overly interested in proceduralism and long-winded discussions that are short on clear examples (see your claims of "citogenesis" on WP:RSP above, where you seem to have misunderstood the word and not let that stop you proceduralising furiously) and not so much with an actual live dispute about anything in article space. But if you can evidence such discussions in article space (the usual sense of "live issue" on this board), please do - David Gerard (talk) 21:39, 28 June 2024 (UTC)
As David Gerard has objected to the ways proposed to close this topic without a long discussion, it seems certain that the topic is ripe for discussion. Walsh90210 (talk) 21:43, 28 June 2024 (UTC)
I think people have talked enough; I wish they'd stop. This "live issue" is nothing more than a straw man argument. Hundreds of sources are discussed here, as to whether they reliable or not, without there being "live issues". Please stop bludgeoning attempts to gain consensus and read the room. CNC (talk) 22:06, 28 June 2024 (UTC)
Bad RfC "Option 4" deprecation (or depreciation as someone people seem to think it is) should only be proposed as part of an RfC with a very good reason, it should not be a standard option on an RfC at this noticeboard. Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 19:41, 30 June 2024 (UTC)
User:Emir of Wikipedia, I have removed option 4 from the list included in the proposal since you oppose it, and no-one has made any substantial arguments in support of it. I have actually !voted for option 1. Will you now withdraw your opposition to this RfC, if that is the only thing you object to? James500 (talk) 20:47, 30 June 2024 (UTC)
Option 1 - The source under discussion appears reasonably reliable. While there is quite a bit of arguing about wikibureaucracy, no persuasive argument has been made for actual unreliability.--Staberinde (talk) 18:11, 23 July 2024 (UTC)
David Gerard reverting the change to RSP per discussion above begs to differ. [42] As the closer and re-opener commented " It's evident that the change is contentious and that further discussion is needed". CNC (talk) 19:03, 23 July 2024 (UTC)
Then this should just be SNOW closed with a note that the RSP entry doesn't apply to the 1964–1969 broadsheet, as no case made that it isn't reliable. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested«@» °∆t°20:33, 23 July 2024 (UTC)
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.
TechTimes
Only 1 previous discussion, not discussions, exists, so I can't start a RfC. An editor objected to my use of that source, saying it was |certain= that it is unreliable. After reading the previous discussion, I agree the source is unreliable because
Also, for the modest price of $600, you can hire someone on Upwork to make a "guest post" for you on TechTimes.com so that your own website can get linked to and result in higher visibility in Google searches. I wish I were joking — User:Pilaz20:33, 23 January 2022 (UTC)
. However, there are 500+ uses on Wikipedia. 1. This accusation of spam goes beyond user-generated content. Therefore, I think we should discuss this source in order to later hold an RfC deprecating or blacklisting the source to remove the 500+ potentially spam usages. 142.113.140.146 (talk) 12:09, 25 July 2024 (UTC)
Blacklisting or deprecating the source won't remove the uses of it, only editors going and doing the hard work of reviewing it's uses and replacing it will do that. If you come across a source that you know to be unreliable you can replace or remove it. You don't need some special approval from this board.
I doubt a few hundred uses is spamming, more likely just good faith editors misusing it as a source. Unless many of those additions are from the same editor. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested«@» °∆t°13:01, 25 July 2024 (UTC)
I think the overarching concern about TechTimes is legitimate, the very first use I find when I search is of this article [43] which does appear to be standard promotional content. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 17:44, 26 July 2024 (UTC)
Nigerian News Sources
I am starting these two subsections at once for two different sources in the same context: these came up from trying to think of an informed position on this AfD. -- D'n'B-t -- 19:50, 26 July 2024 (UTC)
I don't think I've come across Radio Nigeria much before--it certainly seems to have less readership than private sector news in Nigeria. That aside, the starting point for a source like this would be that it's a WP:NEWSORG with an obvious incentive for bias around its own political interests. In this case, the topic seems apolitical, and journalistic-quality-wise it actually seems a bit better than average for West African celebrity news websites--there's a clear byline, the reporting is if anything overly-monotone and factual rather than the puff prose we'd expect from PulseNG or even Vanguard if we're looking at the entertainment section signed, Rosguilltalk20:43, 26 July 2024 (UTC)
To answer briefly, yes, I consider VON and FRCN to be generally reliable. This is not solely due to their status as authoritative federal parastatals, but also because of the clear professionalism evident in their journalistic endeavours. They exhibit the qualities one would expect from a publication committed to high journalistic standards. Vanderwaalforces (talk) 21:09, 26 July 2024 (UTC)
Radio Nigeria and VON are both reliable. The reporting is clear and has pure byline like any new source will have. I wouldn't say there can't be, but I haven't seen any bias news reporting from them. Also they seem to be, infact, they are federal news too. Safari ScribeEdits!Talk!08:26, 27 July 2024 (UTC)
BBC News Pidgin
Honestly I'm surprised that I couldn't find some existing info on this, but how does BBC News Pidgin compare in reliability with say, the British-English BBC News website? For any topic in Nigeria, really. -- D'n'B-t -- 19:50, 26 July 2024 (UTC)
(edit conflict)I'm not aware of any reason to expect this edition of the BBC to differ in quality from any of its other editions (and looking through their front page, I'd be hard-pressed to describe any difference other than the language). At a glance, available literature on Google Scholar focuses primarily on the role of BBC Pidgin's effect on the languages and communities that speak them rather than their journalistic quality. signed, Rosguilltalk20:54, 26 July 2024 (UTC)
I don't think BBC News Pidgin has a different editorial standard (or a lower standard) compared to other versions. The only clear difference is the language it is committed to, nothing that affects the standards set by BBC News. Vanderwaalforces (talk) 21:11, 26 July 2024 (UTC)
Is there a reason you think it would be any less reliable than other BBC properties? not less reliable per se, but I did get the impression that it enjoys some autonomy from BBC News (That might evven be an advantage is some ways). Not all of the BBC is BBC News, so I think it was a reasonable question. -- D'n'B-t -- 05:42, 27 July 2024 (UTC)
What sources do we need to state political party membership numbers?
In this case it's the Reform UK party/limited company. It was using The Telegraph newspaper, now it's a tweet from Farage. The numbers are being stated in the Infobox as fac. I see for the Tories and Conservatives we used newspapers, for the Lib Dems their website. If this is the wrong board, sorry, what should I use? Doug Wellertalk12:39, 23 July 2024 (UTC)
This government report is from 2022 and for some sources, they use the numbers reported by the parties to the Electoral Commission but there doesn't seem to be any information for Reform. I think this is likely a figure many journalists are struggling to ascertain. Orange sticker (talk) 13:40, 23 July 2024 (UTC)
Farages as the leader/owner is reliable in an WP:ABOUTSELF way, but such statements are not meant to be unduly self-serving. Farages full tweet Reform UK now has 70,000 members. Join the revolt.🚀 shows he has a reason to want that figure to be as large as possible. I don't know what the previous figures from the Telegraph were, but if they are starkly different from the figure given by Farage then I would treat the figure from Farage with a grain of salt. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested«@» °∆t°14:01, 23 July 2024 (UTC)
I don't think a tweet from an involved politician is usable for numbers like that. As WP:ABOUTSELF material, it's obviously unduly self-serving; but on top of that, it's a claim about third parties. The purpose of ABOUTSELF is to let people say basic, uncontroversial non-self-serving things about themselves - they have a spouse and a house and some kids; they were born in X year in Y place, etc. Broad sweeping claims about the state of the country or the level of support a political party has are far, far outside the range of ABOUTSELF, even if they weren't self-serving. Like, is there any reason at all to believe the tweet has any connection to reality at all? Farage's twitter isn't a reliable source; it has no editorial controls and makes no claims as to accuracy or fact-checking. He can freely make up whatever he wants there, so a number sourced to that could just be his gut feeling or a dream he had or he squinted at one rally and decided, yeah, that sounds about right. --Aquillion (talk) 03:20, 26 July 2024 (UTC)
I agree with Aquillion that this isn't even an WP:ABOUTSELF issue in the first place, because Farage isn't Reform UK. If the president tweeted "there are 300,000,000 Americans", we could not use that as a reliable source about the population of the US. Loki (talk) 16:18, 26 July 2024 (UTC)
Farage is both the party leader and owner of Reform UK. If a CEO of a company made a statement about that company it would count as ABOUTSELF, the self being the company that the CEO is speaking for. But this is a side issue better discussed at WT:V, the tweet shouldn't be used because it's both controversial and self serving. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested«@» °∆t°21:14, 26 July 2024 (UTC)
If a CEO of a company made a statement about that company it would count as ABOUTSELF - it would depend on context. When applying it to an organization, only an official statement from the organization itself via its official channels (eg. uncontroversial details on it from its website) would count as ABOUTSELF. The CEO talking as the CEO at a press conference might count; but when the CEO tweets about something on their personal twitter account, they're not talking as the company, which means that it's usually going to be a statement about third parties. For political parties (where a leader's control is sometimes ambiguous) I would never consider a politician's personal twitter account to have the ability to speak for the party - imagine if eg. a politician said "we, the Purple Party, stand for X." Even if they're the party's candidate for the highest office in the country, that would just be them expressing their opinion; other factions even within the same party might disagree. So it wouldn't be usable via ABOUTSELF from the perspective of "this is the article-voice truth about the party" (although it could be ABOUTSELF for the personal opinion of that one politician, due weight permitting.) Or, if a specific example is needed - would we really want to allow every random thing Donald Trump says about the Republican party to count as if it comes from the party itself for WP:ABOUTSELF purposes, ie. stuff we could in theory drop into the article voice without attribution when describing the party itself? --Aquillion (talk) 07:37, 27 July 2024 (UTC)
The only faction within Reform UK is Farage - he has total control over all positions both political and appointments, this is not comparable to the Republican party which Trump doesn't personally own. Separately if a CEO tweets that the company will be expanding into "X" country then it would be reliable for the CEO saying that. But again this is off topic. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested«@» °∆t°12:20, 27 July 2024 (UTC)
The currentsource is The Telegraph saying 65,000 members, I csn see that much. What I can't find out is if they have any influence as Reform is a limited company. Doug Wellertalk18:37, 26 July 2024 (UTC)
I'm sceptical because their membership outnumbers the Greens who have been in existence for 30+ more years, have many more councillors and are quite embedded in many communities, but then again, Reform now have more MPs. Orange sticker (talk) 18:40, 26 July 2024 (UTC)
Social Blade as a reliable source
Social Blade has been discussed various times inside and out of RSN, but not much consensus has emerged on it. I'd like to advocate for its reliability as a primary source for YouTube and Twitch statistics. It's been cited as ostensibly reliable by various books, scholarly articles, and news outlets. I haven't seen much objection against its reliability from such sources, but I suppose that might have changed in recent times due to YouTube's API changes to its subscriber counts which Social Blade used in the past. At the very least, it should be usable as a source for historical stats on a channel, especially for ones confirmed as terminated. PantheonRadiance (talk) 01:15, 27 July 2024 (UTC)
[44] What is the reliability of this source and the news site overall for exceptional claims being made about deaths squads and human rights violations? Other than being a non notable source, it also appears to be an op-ed and questionable. Axedd (talk) 15:24, 3 August 2024 (UTC)
It's being used to support most of the content on Baloch genocide, about 10-12 times. The page lacks notability but there is consensus to merge reliable content on a relevant article. Axedd (talk) 17:48, 3 August 2024 (UTC)
My impression is that this source isn't sufficiently reliable for this estimate.
It's a "letter to the editor" sort of thing, not a peer-reviewed study.
Out of the authors, only Martin McKee seems to have any expertise on excess deaths; both Rasha Khatib and Salim Yusuf study cardiology.
This estimate is simply reached by multiplying the reported deaths by five, with no particular reasoning for why this is a good estimate. The source they are citing to argue this is a "conservative estimate" is a 2008 UN report. The report says the following: The lethal burden of armed conflict in 2004–07 was many times greater than the number of direct conflict deaths. A reasonable average estimate would be a ratio of four indirect deaths to one direct death in contemporary conflicts, which would represent at least 200,000 indirect conflict deaths per year, and possibly many more. This is particularly focused on the 2004–07 time period and says a four-to-one ratio is a "reasonable average estimate", not a "conservative estimate".
For these reasons I'm inclined to remove the source, but I'm taking this here first as I expect this may be controversial. Will also be notifying the talk pages of all relevant articles. Elli (talk | contribs) 02:29, 13 July 2024 (UTC)
I think it's a perfectly reliable source, however, its use should be attributed and be described as an estimate of possible indirect deaths by the end of the conflict from disease, famine, and other factors. SilverserenC02:46, 13 July 2024 (UTC)
No opinion on overall use of the source, but I do think the "at least ... and possibly many more" are indicating that this is meant to be a conservative estimate, and the associated footnote (3) takes us to:
This ‘reasonable estimate’ is based on the assumed under-counting of combat deaths, and conservative assumptions about indirect deaths. The figure is explained in more detail below.
While it's not peer reviewed, The Lancet doesn't just publish letters to the editor willy-nilly. I agree that it should be attributed, with a note that it's an estimate that the authors believe to be conservative. voorts (talk/contributions) 03:01, 13 July 2024 (UTC)
As a letter to the editor published in a reputable journal, the presumption is that it is at least facially not absurd/blatantly false. However, as something that has not been peer reviewed, the numbers/opinions/"facts" cited to it should be attributed to the author, with special consideration to whether the author's opinions/conclusions should be included in the first place. Merely getting your opinion published in a reputable journal as an opinion piece does not generally lend to it being more or less due than it otherwise would be. I do not have a final opinion on the DUE issue as I am not versed enough in the authors. I tend to agree with Elli that the reasoning they use for coming to their multiple of 5 (or a 4:1 ratio of unreported:reported deaths) that the number is likely not due weight. As the authors admit in their paper, estimates or later-confirmed/accepted numbers have ranged from 3x to 15x. So by that argument, I could go get an article published where I just say I picked 10x and come up with a completely different number. Ultimately, this reads as an opinion piece/advocacy piece that uses... very basic information and picks a number that "feels good" to support the advocacy it's intended to be for. For all of this, and the very "surface level" analysis, I find it hard to see how these authors' opinions will be DUE to include in any article at this time. -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez (User/say hi!) 03:13, 13 July 2024 (UTC)
Standard indirect death estimates appear to be between 3-15x. As the authors note, they took direct deaths and multiplied it by 5 to render a conservative estimate of indirect deaths. I'm not sure why a peer reviewed article is needed to multiply two numbers using what is by all accounts a standard methodology for arriving at these estimates. Additionally, citing a source to substantiate a particular estimate isn't undue. WP:UNDUE Is focused on presenting too much of a source's opinions, not verifying particular facts. By contrast, it would be undue to devote several paragraphs to describing the arguments made in the letter to the editor. voorts (talk/contributions) 04:24, 13 July 2024 (UTC)
Long term view, there will hopefully be actual studies of indirect and direct deaths, whenever this all ends. Until then, this letter is probably well-informed interpolation of an eventual toll. I think that is not something any other semi-reliable source really delves into, even if it is an opinionated source like this. Bluethricecreamman (talk) 05:26, 13 July 2024 (UTC)
Because why 5x? Why not 3x? Why not 15x? Why is their estimate somehow “more” reliable than all the other multipliers just because they had a couple paragraphs published as a letter to the editor (not peer reviewed) in a journal? -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez (User/say hi!) 06:12, 13 July 2024 (UTC)
Because 5x (ratio of 4:1) comes from this report (referenced in the Lancet letter itself): "A reasonable average estimate would be a ratio of four indirect deaths to one direct death in contemporary conflicts". It is also quoted elsewhere: "One path forward in the case of the post-9/11 wars is to generate a rough estimate by applying the Geneva Declaration Secretariat’s average ratio of four indirect for every one direct death...Across all the war zones, therefore, using an average four to one ratio can generate a reasonable and conservative estimate" (further evidence is inside that report). I trust that Berchanhimez will now stop accusing the number 4 of being a "feel good number".VR(Please ping on reply)07:03, 13 July 2024 (UTC)
The phrase across all war zones here is cumulative, the author does not mean "in any individual war zone". It does not endorse using the 5x average to estimate the death total of a specific conflict. GordonGlottal (talk) 16:05, 25 July 2024 (UTC)
"a couple paragraphs published as a letter to the editor (not peer reviewed) in a journal" 😂 could you try any harder to be a little bit more dismissive of being published in The Lancet? Levivich (talk) 12:37, 13 July 2024 (UTC)
That discussion was focused on the use of the source in that particular article, and not really on the reliability of the source in general. That discussion is also quite unclear and messy already and I doubt a useful consensus for all the pages the source is used on would emerge from it. Elli (talk | contribs) 04:31, 13 July 2024 (UTC)
Although it's not peer-reviewed, it was still chosen for publication by The Lancet. It's not self-published. But even if it were, it would be WP:EXPERTSPS. The fact that The Lancet published it means it is to be taken seriously. That doesn't mean The Lancet thinks it's true, but it does mean The Lancet thinks it's worth reading.
Out of the authors, only Martin McKee seems to have any expertise on excess deaths; both Rasha Khatib and Salim Yusuf study cardiology is not correct. I'm not sure why expertise in excess deaths would be the measure, but in any event Khatib and Yusuf do more than just study cardiology. Khatib has a PhD in clinical epidemiology, according to one bio has "70+ peer-reviewed journal publications" and is a principal investigator of the Prospective Urban and Rural Epidemiological study, a study of 225,000 participants in 1,000+ communities in 27 countries. According to another bio, she leads a team of epidemiologists and biostatisticians. Salim Yusuf, according to the Canadian Medical Hall of Fame[45]: "The leading North American clinical trialist, Dr. Salim Yusuf’s epidemiologic work in more than 60 countries shows the majority of risks of both cardiovascular and cerebrovascular disease are attributable to the same few risk factors. His large-scale studies involving several hundreds of thousands of individuals in dozens of countries have changed the way some of the world’s most deadly health conditions are prevented, treated and managed." All three authors seem very well-qualified to estimate indirect deaths.
They do give their reasoning for choosing 4x as a indirect:direct deaths ratio: the range is 3x-15x, and they chose a "conservative" estimate to illustrate the point. Their choosing to do so does not make them unreliable. It's not like some WP:FRINGE methodology, as evidenced by the Lancet publishing it.
While WP:USEBYOTHERS is too early to tell, France 24reports that Francesca Albanese tweeted it "as evidence of what she described as '9 months of genocide' taking place in Gaza," and that Doctors of the World deemed it "a 'credible' estimate." (It's certainly had a lot of mention by others.)
I don't think there is any question about this work's reliability. The question is how the work should be summarized in the various articles, e.g. how much is this work WP:DUE, but that really depends on the article. The general question of how to accurately describe this work's conclusions may be better for WP:NPOVN than WP:RSN. Levivich (talk) 05:35, 13 July 2024 (UTC)
It is worth noting Adam Gaffney in The Nation seems to have independently arrived at the same conclusion (though both sources of course cite the work of Geneva Declaration Secretariat): "For instance, the Geneva Declaration Secretariat’s review of prior conflicts found that indirect deaths have, for most conflicts since the 1990s, been three to fifteen-fold higher than direct deaths, and suggest a ratio of four to one as a “conservative” estimate. There are reasons to think this ratio could be on the low end in Gaza given, among other things, the protracted and brutal siege." VR(Please ping on reply)07:03, 13 July 2024 (UTC)
Never expected to see the reliability of content posted on the Lancet, one of the world's oldest and most prestigious medical journals, be questioned. Clearly, this is not a scientific paper so no peer reviewing is needed. That does not mean however that this is some sort of random letter to the editor with zero scientific credibility, as this was most certainly at least scrutinized by the journal, which would not risk its editorial reputation to propagate baseless claims. The source is definitely reliable, but how editors choose to display this information on WP is up for their judgement on the relevant article's talk page, not here. Makeandtoss (talk) 08:42, 13 July 2024 (UTC)
As I said when this article was first highlighted for inclusion in the Gaza genocide article, it could be used with other sources that have also provided estimates of higher numbers, to support a sentence stating that the number of dead may/is likely to be higher than the Health Ministry's reported number, I was against quoting specific numbers from it due to it's generality in it's assessment. Since then, unfortunately, multiple reputable news organisations have given extensive commentary on it, and undue weight to it's estimates, so it would behoove us to include mention of it specifically in some of the relevant articles, along with the criticism of it from other specialists in reputable sources. -- Cdjp1 (talk) 12:13, 13 July 2024 (UTC)
Unreliable per Elli. This is essentially a letter to the editor which reached its conclusions through methods that are little better than napkin math. I have no issues with using this source to discuss the opinions of the individual authors of the letter, but citing this source to show the total numbers of causalities in Gaza is grossly irresponsible. Spirit of Eagle (talk) 03:11, 15 July 2024 (UTC)
Reliable but don't use. The source is reliable for what it aims to convey – that there are many more indirect deaths resulting from the Israeli aggression than the reported direct killings. But the source also has limited applicability, unless we make it clear each time that the number includes indirect deaths and that it's only a rough estimate. I checked World War II, a well-developed article, and the numbers quoted there seem to be for direct casualties only, while additional, indirect deaths are discussed in the dedicated article World War II casualties. Of course, people dying for lack of medical care, lack of clean water or electricity, lack of emergency services, killing themselves because of trauma, etc., is part of every war. Still, what we normally quote in most places are direct deaths. — kashmīrīTALK17:50, 16 July 2024 (UTC)
Unreliable As I understand it, the essential claim for which this source is being used is that the average of general data collected by SAS in 2008 is still relevant to a specific 2023-2024 conflict. Yet looking at the SAS report, the indirect deaths ratio improved significantly between 1995 and 2008 and the ratios for US coalition wars were significantly lower than global average. The continued applicability of the 4:1 minimum average ratio in 2024, and its applicability to Israel-Gaza, deserves real treatment. Yet the Lancet letter says "in recent conflicts" completely disregarding that the data is now 15 years old and that the report itself shows that 15-year-old data would not have been predictive in 2008. It does not attempt to parse the data any further than the minimum average presented, but a "minimum average" is not the same thing as a minimum. It may be that the average of applicable parallels was higher or lower. A reliable source would consider these questions. GordonGlottal (talk) 18:10, 16 July 2024 (UTC)
A source isn't unreliable because an editor disagrees with its methodology or conclusions. If other WP:RS question the methodology as being unreliable, that'd be different. But absent contradicting RS, epidemiologists and The Lancet are more reliable than Wikipedia editors' WP:OR. Levivich (talk) 18:33, 16 July 2024 (UTC)
I'm not questioning their methodology, I'm pointing out that they don't give any. This is an essential difference between this kind of publication and an RS like the peer-reviewed sections of the Lancet. GordonGlottal (talk) 19:02, 16 July 2024 (UTC)
No that's not true. They do give a methodology, you explained it in your post, you pointed out several flaws in that methodology, and concluded it's not reliable because of those flaws in the methodology. And regardless, an editor's opinion that a source lacks methodology (or lacks a sound methodology) is still an editor's opinion. Levivich (talk) 22:18, 16 July 2024 (UTC)
All they do is multiply one number by another and tell you where the two numbers are from. There is no explanation of why this is an appropriate thing to do: a methodology. Analyses published in the Lancet proper are required to detail what criteria were used to determine whether data was relevant to the question considered. GordonGlottal (talk) 23:12, 16 July 2024 (UTC)
Wrong noticeboard. This is certainly reliable: we can be sure that the Lancet published the letter they received from Khatib et al and did not fabricate anything in it. However the real question is whether it should be mentioned in various articles about the current war and how. In other words, it's a due weight problem. If that was the question, then this should be mentioned somewhere in Casualties of Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip but certainly not in a prominent place like the infobox of the main article, since it's not a peer-reviewed article. As some other editors noted, the common practice in other articles about wars is to discuss (usually vague) indirect losses in a separate article/section. Alaexis¿question?13:34, 19 July 2024 (UTC)
I think my issue is the opposite. The source uses 37,000 direct deaths as their starting point. This number is false. It has been frozen since NOVEMBER 2023.
Because the occupation army intentionally targeted the ministry of health, and then all other hospitals, to stop the count. And they acheived that goal.
It is absolutely ridiculous to imagine that between November 2023 and July 2024 literally ZERO Palestinians have died.
So the number you need to multiply by 5 is actually more likely over 200,000, I agree with Ralph Nader's estimate on this.
I think that Che makes a good point about that the intentional targeting of the ministry of health makes it extremely difficult to count the number of dead, which explains the flattening of the official death toll curve despite increasing brutality combined with engineered starvation. We should probably try to find reliable sources to cite regarding this topic in the main articles. David A (talk) 04:41, 21 July 2024 (UTC)
Comment - It's really just a matter of time until someone suggests unreliability of a source based on their personal analysis of the relationship between fonts and reliability. Do we have any font experts here who would like to weigh in on the Lancet letter? Sean.hoyland (talk) 15:28, 20 July 2024 (UTC)
Wikipedia is fortunate to have so many epidemiologists amongst its volunteer editors who can point out "napkin math" and "dubious methods" in The Lancet... Levivich (talk) 15:40, 20 July 2024 (UTC)
I think it should be more than obvious that fonts are far less relevant than inflating the casualty estimates (themselves contested) by a factor of five. As an aside, sly comments that do not add to the discussion are unhelpful and unnecessary. Should be refrained from as a general rule. Captain Jack Sparrow (talk) 16:49, 20 July 2024 (UTC)
People who want to edit Wikipedia should have some humility. "I am not a reliable source" is a useful thing to remember in these kinds of discussions. Sean.hoyland (talk) 17:24, 20 July 2024 (UTC)
With all due respect, any good Wikipedia editor should be able to evaluate a source to determine both its reliability and the amount of weight to give it in an article. I’m an attorney, but you don’t need a law degree to know that an early 20th century treatise on civil rights is probably out of date, that a source on free speech in Michigan is probably not the best source for free speech in the United States as a whole, or that an article on Second Amendment law which contains no references to the Supreme Court likely has reliability issues. Making these determinations is not original research, but good editing. Regarding the source before us, my issue is not so much the specific methodology but the lack thereof. The authors get their figure by multiplying Gaza Health Ministry data by 5; their justification for doing so is a 2008 UN study on conflict from 2007-08. I agree that there are appropriate locations to cite this source, but this is not a sufficiently robust study to justify inclusion in an infobox or to write the article’s findings in wikivoice. Spirit of Eagle (talk) 15:45, 25 July 2024 (UTC)
@Spirit of Eagle: I think you give laypeople too much credit. When I read "you don’t need a law degree to know ... that a source on free speech in Michigan is probably not the best source for free speech in the United States as a whole," I was reminded of a discussion I had a few years ago where someone wrote "A 2nd-circuit finding would apply throughout the US." I do not believe that laypeople would generally know that a Michigan source on free speech is not the best source for the US as a whole, and at least in that one content dispute, a layperson believed a circuit decision applied nationwide.
But let's go with the analogy: someone reads an article in the Harvard Law Review, published in 2024, which cites and relies on a case from 2008. Is it proper for a lay editor to say "Well, 2008 is too old, therefore this Harvard Law Review article is unreliable"? I would say no. The editors of The Harvard Law Review know better than laypeople whether or not 2008 was too old. Similarly, the three epidemiologists and the editors of The Lancet know better than you or I (or any of us) as to whether this 2008 UN study was too old to use as a basis for an estimate in 2024. Your last sentence speaks to WP:NPOV (WP:DUE), not WP:RS (reliability). This source is reliable because of who its authors and publisher are, and because of how it's been reviewed or received by other RSes. It may not be due for inclusion in an infobox, or for statements in wikivoice, but that doesn't make it unreliable, and we can't decide that it's unreliable on the basis of lay editors questioning the source's methodology. Whether any source's methodology is sound is not for Wikipedia editors to decide; that's for other reliable sources to decide. Levivich (talk) 17:08, 25 July 2024 (UTC)
My fundamental issue here is that “Counting the Dead in Gaza” is a Correspondence piece not subject to peer review, not an actual article. The Lancet itself states that the Correspondence is letters not normally subject to external peer review [46] and that they are not even generally used to publish original research [47](page 6). You compared this piece to a law journal citing a 2008 court case, but I do not believe these are comparable. In a law journal, editors will hunt down and collect every court case cited to ensure that it remains good law (if it is being cited for the current law) and to ensure that it supports the proposition it is cited for; similar review happens for all other sources including books, web pages, journal articles, etc. Per the Lancet’s own statements, this has not happened here. Further, I still find the near total lack of methodology or Gaza specific information to be concerning-an actual article written to showcase original research would lay out both in great detail (and of course be subjected to rigorous review). While it may be appropriate to cite this publication as a source for the opinion of the authors in question, I do not believe that this source is reliable for statements of fact. Spirit of Eagle (talk) 01:23, 26 July 2024 (UTC)
Reliable But that doesn't mean it should be stuck into every article about the war, It think it is DUE in an articles like Casualties of the Israel–Hamas war, but I'm not sure it is for Israel-Hamas war which is a about the overall facts as they are, and I haven't the foggiest why it should be in Killing of journalists in the Israel–Hamas war. NadVolum (talk) 19:52, 20 July 2024 (UTC)
Unreliable for claims of direct casualties. Levivich said it the best: The fact that The Lancet published it means it is to be taken seriously. That doesn't mean The Lancet thinks it's true, but it does mean The Lancet thinks it's worth reading. The Lancet did not endorse the contents of the letter; so we can't consider it reliable just because it was published in The Lancet. The claim that the casualties are 4x higher than what the Gaza Health Ministry reports is a WP:EXCEPTIONAL claim and an WP:EXPERTSPS doesn't meet that bar. What we have here are challenged claims that are supported purely by primary or self-published sources or those with an apparent conflict of interest, which our verifiability policy says requires multiple high-quality sources, not one primary letter to the editor that was written by a doctor. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply)22:16, 25 July 2024 (UTC)
This is not self published. And it was written by three epidemiologists. Why is the claim an exceptional claim? Levivich (talk) 22:20, 25 July 2024 (UTC)
A publisher generally endorses or exercises editorial control over its content. You acknowledge The Lancet did not endorse or exercise editorial control over the piece, so we should treat the letter as if it were published by a group of three epidemiologists on a blog. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply)01:31, 30 July 2024 (UTC)
Huh? Journals don't endorse or agree with the articles they publish. But they do exercise editorial control over them simply by virtue of the fact that they select what they publishe. In any event, this is not self-published. The publisher and the authors are not the same. This is not peer reviewed, but that doesn't mean it's self-published. Levivich (talk) 02:59, 30 July 2024 (UTC)
I didn't look at how this source is being used in articles, but I read the source carefully and Chess is misrepresenting it. It does not say that "the casualties are 4x higher than what the Gaza Health Ministry reports". The 4x estimate is for "indirect deaths in the coming months and years". This is in no way exceptional, and the authors are qualified to make such estimates. Zerotalk03:26, 30 July 2024 (UTC)
Reliable the Lancet has a reputation for its reliability and editorial standards. The fact that this is a letter doesn’t nullify either. This particular study has also received coverage in mainstream outlets like MSNBC. Like others said, this isn’t an end-all be-all source; due weight still applies and the figures should be attributed correctly, but this definitely appears to be a reliable source to me. Elspamo4 (talk) 01:48, 26 July 2024 (UTC)
Is The Dorchester Review reliable for the statement A tooth and rib were found in the area in the 1990s and early 2000s, both of which were of animal origin.[1] that is for some reason currently in the lede of Kamloops Indian Residential School? The Wikipedia article for the Review says: In 2022, the Review posted an article by Jacques Rouillard on their blog, suggesting there was no concrete evidence of mass unmarked burials at Indian Residential Schools.[2] which was cited in an article in the United Kingdom's The Spectator.[3] In 2022, Canada's Crown-Indigenous Relations minister Marc Miller expressed concern about the rise of residential school denialism and rebuked those that criticized "the nature and validity of these and other recovery efforts" following the announcement of the discovery of potentially unmarked grave at the St Joseph's Mission School.[4][5] In a Dorchester Review blog entry, Tom Flanagan and Brian Giesbrecht replied to Miller.[6] In another Review blog post, anthropologist Hymie Rubenstein challenged Miller's statement about the reliability of indigenous knowledge.[7]Elinruby (talk) 22:01, 19 June 2024 (UTC)
Unless I'm missing something, the Dorchester Review article mentions neither a tooth nor a rib being discovered, animal or otherwise. There is some discussion in the comments of that article about childrens' teeth/bones which have allegedly been found, but comments by pseudonymous members of the public are clearly not a reliable source. Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 13:55, 20 June 2024 (UTC)
Not only do I think we should probably avoid that source, but I think the claims regarding teeth and bones are, as Caeciliusinhorto noted, wholly original to comments made on the article. I would support removal of that spurious claim that was originally made by an unqualified internet commentator who was seeking to delegitimize the search for buried bodies. ~ Pbritti (talk) 15:25, 20 June 2024 (UTC)
So am I hearing consensus that it should be removed because the source is not only not reliable but also misrepresented? I didn't actually check the text; I just know the source because I looked into it on previous occasions and every I have reference I have ever seen from it was always maddeningly inaccurate in obscure ways. I personally think it should be deprecated but it has to be discussed first und so wieder. Elinruby (talk) 11:08, 21 June 2024 (UTC)
I can't say I support full deprecation of DR at the moment, but it definitely has the trappings of a problematic source (I'd characterize it as a partisan source less suitable for the encyclopedia than National Review). In this case, though, the claim about bones definitely needs to be removed. That's a flat violation of WP:USERGEN and I'm glad your instincts told you something was off. ~ Pbritti (talk) 13:09, 21 June 2024 (UTC)
less suitable than the National Review works for me for now. I will try to get to removing that, but it won't hurt to give people a little more time to talk if they want to. I just feel the need to check if I am going to be the one who does it and I need a break right now, I had a lot of notifications last night when I came home. If somebody who has already looked and knows it's bad wants to remove it, I promise to throw confetti. Elinruby (talk) 13:39, 21 June 2024 (UTC)
I removed the statement and citation from the lede; there was no mention of this tooth in the body and I am unsure whether it is due in the lede anyway, in addition to all of the above. Elinruby (talk) 03:45, 22 June 2024 (UTC)
While agreeing with Abecedare, I wish to note (for posterity) that The Dorchester Review (TDR) ought to be treated as a GUNREL source. TDR claims to be a semi-annual journal of history and historical commentary but regrettably, not even a single article has managed to be cited in peer-reviewed literature in an approving manner till date.[a] It is mostly described as a conservative media outlet and all I see are fellow conservative and far-right media outlets harping about how great a magazine it is; now, while being a conservative media outlet is NOT grounds for unreliability, the rare academic reviews of articles published in TDR point to the lack of peer review among other things and bias-to-the-extent-of-wild-inaccuracies, which are all deal-breakers:
The commentary itself was clearly written to spark a debate. Like many of the editorials that fill Canadian newspapers, it is written in a conversational style without footnotes or references and – more importantly – it attempts to challenge what Coates’ sees as hegemonic narratives characterizing the study of Indian residential schools. And given that the online version of the article (like every page on The Dorchester Review website) is flanked by quotes from David Frum proclaiming that the journal is "Setting Canadian history right," the essay's ambition to upend the sacred cows of the Canadian historical profession, itself, are immediately apparent. — Cochrane, Donald (2015-04-07). "Setting Canadian History Right?: A Response to Ken Coates' 'Second Thoughts about Residential Schools'". Active History.
Contributing to The Dorchester Review (a journal whose mission is to "engage and challenge the politically correct vision of history often found in the media and in academe"), historian Ken Coates echoed Niezen in 2014, arguing that the IRS system's positive aspects had been downplayed, and "not all students left the residential school broken." The lack of nuance was troubling, he thought, and provided "the country with a distorted view of Indigenous realities." He therefore called for historians to focus on the future and move past the negative history. — MacDonald, David B. (2019-05-16), "Genocide and the Politics of Memory: Discussing Some Counterarguments", The Sleeping Giant Awakens: Genocide, Indian Residential Schools, and the Challenge of Conciliation, University of Toronto Press, pp. 146–162, ISBN978-1-4875-1804-2
[T]he notes on pages 345—51 [of Biggar's work] regurgitate known denialist talking points from questionable sources, like the right-wing outfit The Dorchester Review, to justify a lack of engagement with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada's (TRC) final report. This will be a red flag for most Canadian readers. — Perry, Adele; Carleton, Sean; Wahpasiw, Omeasoo (June 2024). "The Misuse of Indigenous and Canadian History in Colonialism". In Lester, Alan (ed.). The Truth About Empire: Real Histories of British Colonialism. Hurst (Oxford). ISBN9781911723097.
Result: consensus for option 3, generally unreliable
The following discussion 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.
After an initial discussion on whether there should be an RFC, the discussion settled into a debate about whether option 2 or 3, was the right way to go. There were about 3 !votes for option 2, 6 for option 3 and 2 for option 4. There has been long-running discussion at RS about bias and reliability. At the heart of the debate on this source was a high-quality discussion between 2 editors. One noted that 'lack of peer review is irrelevant', but 'it should not be used for WP:EXTRAORDINARY claims and care should be exercised when using for WP:BLPs', the other countered that the content guideline Wikipedia:SCHOLARSHIP states, "Journals that are not peer reviewed by the wider academic community should not be considered reliable". I gave the latter point a high weighting. There were other comments such as "they take no editorial responsibility for the reliability of their content" and "seem to have no fact-checking policies or way of distinguishing between the possibly fringe opinions of one author and what should be statements of fact," which I took into account.
Consensus: The discussion leant towards Option 3.
The source may still be used in some circumstances e.g. for uncontroversial self-descriptions, and content authored by established subject-matter experts. This option recognizes possible contributions, while emphasizing the need for reliability. Closed by editor Tpbradbury 16:31, 27 July 2024
No need for RfC How often is this source being used? It seems it's being mentioned only in context of the Canadian Indigenous Schools topic. Is the source being used so widely that we need a universal statement? Are we past the point where we can ask "is this source acceptable for this claim"? We really need to limit these general RfCs for cases where we have had many discussions regarding a source (Fox News for example). Since this isn't such a case I would suggest closing this RfC and focusing on specific uses. Note, my view is more procedural vs anything related to the specific use question above. Springee (talk) 15:08, 21 June 2024 (UTC)
In real life I'm a researcher. I have done a lot of research into disinformation publications and the Canadian far-right. The Dorchester Review is part of the Canadian far-right publication ecosystem, alongside publications such as the Post Millennial, True North, Rebel News, the Western Standard, etc, (which also share many authors among them). They are well-known for propagating many, many, many far-right conspiracy theories, and for their racism, homophobia, etc.
In particular, they are a big proponent of anti-Indigenous racism and Residential School denialism, which is a very big deal: Canada's Residential Schools have been identified as essential tools of Canada's genocide against Indigenous people.
Chris Champion is the editor of the Dorchester Review. He is well-known - and well-condemned - for being a Residential School denialist. For instance:
"Champion again generated controversy after claiming claiming Indigenous students at residential schools had an “absolute blast.”" [source]
Champion - alongside Tom Flanagan, author from the extremely unreliable far-right publication The Western Standard - co-authored a book of residential school denialism.[source]
My initial reaction is that this seems premature: the source has barely been discussed (just two tiny discussions of barely 1 screen each), and never outside of one very specific context; I have not seen evidence provided of whether the source is reliable or unreliable outside of that context: we need such evidence, and RFCBEFORE discussion of it as a general source, before having an RFC about it whether it is "generally reliable" or "generally unreliable". (In the most recent of the only two tiny discussions there've been about it, it turned out it wasn't even making the claim it was being cited for, so the reliability or unreliability of the source was irrelevant, the user who cited it had just erred.) -sche (talk) 15:30, 21 June 2024 (UTC)
Other users have provided some additional information in this RFC, and I have tried to evaluate the source myself. I looked for USEBYOTHERS and found blogs and other non-reliable sources (which are also conspicuously partisan) citing them, not much use of them by reliable news sources, and in my limited search of books they appear to mostly be cited for 'the opinion of So-and-So, writing in TDR, is...', which is RSOPINION or ≈ABOUTSELF and not much evidence of reliability or unreliability for general facts; this lines up with Barnards's assessment below that they look like a purveyor of RSOPINIONs, as well as with TrangaBellam's point that despite their description of themselves as a journal, they appear to be only a media outlet. If I had to !vote in "standard option" ("generally reliable" or "generally unreliable" for all topics) terms, I would say note their acknowledged bias, apply considerations (2), and don't add them to RSP yet because I think we should wait on judging general un/reliability until someone actually wants to use them for general things, and brings those uses up for discussion here. For the only narrow issue they've been discussed in relation to, Native American residential schools, their admitted outlier bias — discussed in other sources (cited by TrangaBellam) as fringe and historical denialist in at least some areas — conveys that they're not a BESTSOURCE for any controversial claims, and suggests that more factors should be considered than just reliability: for instance, if they're the only might-be-reliable source for a given claim, the claim is likely not DUE (if it is due, ATTRIBUTEPOV), whereas if better sources exist for the claim, use those. -sche (talk) 20:45, 3 July 2024 (UTC)
Agree with above comments that this is premature or unnecessary. This does not seem to be an especially notable source, so a thorough RFCBEFORE is required. The two previous discussions linked above are not particularly informative. Astaire (talk) 16:18, 21 June 2024 (UTC)
Bad RfC "Option 4" deprecation ((or depreciation as someone people seem to think it is) should only be proposed as part of an RfC with a very good reason, it should not be a standard option on an RfC at this noticeboard. Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 18:51, 21 June 2024 (UTC)
Comment: I for one am unwilling to slog through a discussion on Stephen Harper. Is it possible to modify the RfC to only address the denialist topic area? Elinruby (talk) 00:05, 22 June 2024 (UTC)
Option 3 as noted in previous discussions The Dorchester Review has been known to publish misinformation on some topics. Further it is noted by Media Bias Fact Check that the source has been rated mixed for factual reporting and has a right wing bias which is edging towards an extreme right bias. On the balance of things I'd say this source is not reliable and is generally unreliable. TarnishedPathtalk06:21, 22 June 2024 (UTC)
Media Bias Fact Check's ratings are considered unreliable, I fail to see why they should matter when discussing sources. I'm sure editors can see the publication's right-wing bias for themselves without needing a blog to tell them it's there. XeCyranium (talk) 18:42, 28 June 2024 (UTC)
Option 3 - I actually think it will come to deprecation but yes, actually, BEFORE. And in hopes that maybe we can find a consensus there for now. N.B. I am not critical of the RfC, just noting that the early returns are running against it. But I hope it succeeds. This is up to you of course, but since a lot of editors still seem to be processing that genocide is in in fact in common usage in the field, I personally would let this run. But I don't know how exciting a life you are willing to lead either. I think some quiet editors are going to start speaking up. I put a link to the Dorchester Review thread in the case I just opened at ANI. Not sure who I am supposed to notify but I did get the guy whose name is on it. No matter what, this source is part of a big problem, though, and I have removed it many times. On the topic of residential school graves, it claims that the deaths of children were a hoax, and we are being polite about this. No no no.Elinruby (talk) 07:09, 22 June 2024 (UTC)
Comment. Can we get some examples of false statements published by this source? Being accused of being far-right, or even actually being far-right, is not the same as being unreliable, nor is having an editor who holds certain beliefs, even if those beliefs are terrible. Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 09:36, 22 June 2024 (UTC)
From the story on their social media post liked above, "They were put through hell" and yet they are having an absolute blast on that play structure. What gives? That's clear propoganda pushing the position that there must not have been abuse because of the existence of a picture which showed them playing. TarnishedPathtalk10:30, 22 June 2024 (UTC)
But we're talking about the reliability of The Dorchester Review (the journal), not TheDorchesterReview (the Twitter account). Twitter is already generally unreliable. WP:RSPTWITTER. Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 10:45, 22 June 2024 (UTC)
Twitter is generally unreliable on the basis that most tweets are self-published. Tweets from the official accounts of a publisher should be taken as publications of that publisher. WP:RSPTWITTER states Twitter accounts should only be cited if the user's identity is confirmed in some way. Tweets that are not covered by reliable sources are likely to constitute undue weight. In this instance the user's identity is confirmed as being the official twitter account of the publication and we have what seems to be a reliable source discussing the tweet. TarnishedPathtalk11:03, 22 June 2024 (UTC)
Tweets from the official accounts of a publisher should be taken as publications of that publisher I disagree. Official social media accounts are often operated by different employees than would be involved in the activities of the rest of the organisation - and we have no information about what editorial process applies to the tweets. By its nature the medium is akin to an attention-grabbing WP:HEADLINE which we wouldn't treat as reliable even in a reliable publication. Bad tweets from an org don't automatically infect the parent org's reliability. Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 11:13, 22 June 2024 (UTC)
Option 3 TDR claims to be a semi-annual journal of history and historical commentary but regrettably, not even a single article has managed to be cited in peer-reviewed literature in an approving manner till date.[a] It is mostly described as a conservative media outlet and all I see are fellow conservative and far-right media outlets harping about how great a magazine it is; now, while being a conservative media outlet is NOT grounds for unreliability, the rare academic reviews of articles published in TDR point to the lack of peer review among other things and bias-to-the-extent-of-wild-inaccuracies, which are all deal-breakers:
The commentary itself was clearly written to spark a debate. Like many of the editorials that fill Canadian newspapers, it is written in a conversational style without footnotes or references and – more importantly – it attempts to challenge what Coates’ sees as hegemonic narratives characterizing the study of Indian residential schools. And given that the online version of the article (like every page on The Dorchester Review website) is flanked by quotes from David Frum proclaiming that the journal is "Setting Canadian history right," the essay's ambition to upend the sacred cows of the Canadian historical profession, itself, are immediately apparent. — Cochrane, Donald (2015-04-07). "Setting Canadian History Right?: A Response to Ken Coates' 'Second Thoughts about Residential Schools'". Active History.
Contributing to The Dorchester Review (a journal whose mission is to "engage and challenge the politically correct vision of history often found in the media and in academe"), historian Ken Coates echoed Niezen in 2014, arguing that the IRS system's positive aspects had been downplayed, and "not all students left the residential school broken." The lack of nuance was troubling, he thought, and provided "the country with a distorted view of Indigenous realities." He therefore called for historians to focus on the future and move past the negative history. — MacDonald, David B. (2019-05-16), "Genocide and the Politics of Memory: Discussing Some Counterarguments", The Sleeping Giant Awakens: Genocide, Indian Residential Schools, and the Challenge of Conciliation, University of Toronto Press, pp. 146–162, ISBN978-1-4875-1804-2
[T]he notes on pages 345—51 [of Biggar's work] regurgitate known denialist talking points from questionable sources, like the right-wing outfit The Dorchester Review, to justify a lack of engagement with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada's (TRC) final report. This will be a red flag for most Canadian readers. — Perry, Adele; Carleton, Sean; Wahpasiw, Omeasoo (June 2024). "The Misuse of Indigenous and Canadian History in Colonialism". In Lester, Alan (ed.). The Truth About Empire: Real Histories of British Colonialism. Hurst (Oxford). ISBN9781911723097.
Option 2 Limited use by others, gatekeeping process, physical personality by which it can be held liable for what it publishes. Grab-bag instances of errors, etc., aren't sufficient to classify it as unreliable, we need RS chronicling a pattern or propensity for false reporting. (Also, MediaBias/Factcheck is, itself, unreliable (see: WP:MB/FC) and shouldn't be used to determine the reliability of a person, place, or thing.) The lack of peer review is irrelevant as it doesn't portend to be a scholarly publication, 90% of the sources on the perennial sources list aren't peer reviewed. Similarly, the fact it doesn't publish footnotes is irrelevant; the Wall Street Journal doesn't publish footnotes in its articles, Popular Mechanics doesn't publish footnotes, CNN doesn't flash references across the screen. That said, as a "a journal of historical commentary" and self-described "robustly polemical" publication [50] it should not be used for WP:EXTRAORDINARY claims, unless attributed, and care should be exercised when using for WP:BLPs. Chetsford (talk) 10:24, 25 June 2024 (UTC)
Unlike CNN or NYT or WSJ, TDR has loftier aspirations. I have never heard Popular Mechanics claim that their goal is to prove how "establishment physicists" have gotten it all wrong. TDR seeks to "upend the sacred cows of the Canadian historical profession", and "engage and challenge the politically correct vision of history often found in the media and in academe"; as they openly admit, challenging "establishment historians" is their reason-of-existence. In other words, TDR is engaging in the realm of academic scholarship and has to be judged accordingly. TrangaBellam (talk) 12:11, 25 June 2024 (UTC)
History is socially constructed. Ergo, critical analysis of history is simply the application of framing devices which are, by definition, mediated lenses of analysis. This is quantifiably different than claiming the Sun revolves around the Earth. "In other words, TDR is engaging in the realm of academic scholarship and has to be judged accordingly." This invokes a standard that simply doesn't exist in our WP:RS policy. We don't have different "degrees" of RS. Moreover, if you're challenging academic scholarship you are ipso facto operating outside academic scholarship. One can't be judged by the standards of a thing outside of one's own existence. This is (a) consistent with a determination of "other considerations" versus "generally reliable", and, (b) we allow, as evidenced by our articles that cite the Wall Street Journal or USA Today or whatever. Chetsford (talk) 03:32, 27 June 2024 (UTC)
POV and peer review in journals – Care should be taken with journals that exist mainly to promote a particular point of view. A claim of peer review is not an indication that the journal is respected, or that any meaningful peer review occurs. Journals that are not peer reviewed by the wider academic community should not be considered reliable, except to show the views of the groups represented by those journals.
As far as I can see, this passage exists in WP:RS.
As to the "social construction" of history vis-a-vis hard sciences, that's, in my opinion, an inaccurate view but I won't spend any word to litigate a hackneyed debate that has occupied hundreds of scholars to no productive end.
That said, I remain curious about your views on this discussion concerning the reliability of Glaukopis? Do you believe that the community arrived at a correct decision? This is not a gotcha but I am genuinely trying to understand your position. And, in the spirit of WP:BLUDGEON, I won't reply any further.TrangaBellam (talk) 06:37, 27 June 2024 (UTC)
That seems to be an opinion blog which wouldn't be useable for statements of fact either way, does the site include more "official" news or articles? XeCyranium (talk) 18:47, 28 June 2024 (UTC)
Option 3. This publication appears to be primarily an outlet for editorial opinions, with a certain bias. It does not appear to be aimed at providing factual news pieces. I follow plenty of similar sites (with different editorial biases) but I wouldn't try to use them as reliable sources, either. Usable only for reporting on someone's opinion, credited as someone's opinion rather than as a statement of fact, and even in that case not likely to be a good source. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:13, 29 June 2024 (UTC)
Option 2 - No need for RfC How often is this source being used? as User:Springee said, there is no need to RFC. And it is also being based on invalid issues — there was no prior question about reliability here. The two prior discussions linked to were on content of a readers comment/blog post, and of an opinion piece. Neither of those reflect on the reliability here, so the RFC is not showing prior TALK on their reliability in question. Those were just not publication pieces to cite and not about the reliability of the publication. Cheers Markbassett (talk) 03:59, 30 June 2024 (UTC)
not sure where you are getting this idea. I have a post up right now about Dorchester Review being used to promote hoaxes about deaths at Canadian residential schools. It was definitely up before the RfC and may have triggered it for all I know. In my opinion this reflects the paucity of discussion reflects the neglect of these hoaxes on Wikipedia until just recently, and bringing them to light has been a hard road of being patronizingly portrayed as cray-cray. When it comes to the genocide at Canadian residential schools, they are beyond unreliable. They are actively tormenting thousands of people by promoting the idea that they are just out to make money off their dead relatives, or whatever the narrative is this week, and as far as I can tell they are promoting this idea out of racial animus with the goal of manipulating political discourse. This publication needs to have large flashing danger sign left right and center on this topic at least and I sincerely doubt that in other topics they would actually be any better Elinruby (talk) 07:28, 30 June 2024 (UTC)
Option 2 due to the text found in its footer: Because we are committed to publishing different points of view on controversial issues, the opinions of the authors whose work we have posted are not necessarily our own. Nor do their writings necessarily reflect the underlying ethos of this journal. This reads to me like a disclaimer that they take no editorial responsibility for the reliability of their content, and are thus a purveyor of WP:RSOPINION. I have seen no smoking gun evidence in the discussion above that they publish false information - just lots of insinuation that they are conservative, far-right, controversial, questionable, and non-peer-reviewed, none of which are synonyms for unreliable. Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 19:40, 3 July 2024 (UTC)
Option 3. I don't think they're unreliable because of a conservative bias or whatnot, but because they seem to have no fact-checking policies or way of distinguishing between the possibly fringe opinions of one author and what should be statements of fact. As it is everything in it seems more akin to a collaborative opinion blog than a real journal, academic or otherwise. There are an endless amount of unsourced figures mixed in with persuasive arguments but no reassurance from the journal that what's being published is given even a once over for accuracy. XeCyranium (talk) 19:27, 12 July 2024 (UTC)
{{The schools with which Ryerson was involved were designed for older students who attended voluntarily [footnote: as were the later residential schools — Ed.], and were intended to build upon the foundation established in local mission schools. Students spoke their native languages, [footnote: it is becoming increasingly clear, through research that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission has suppressed, that children at many later residential schools spoke, and were even taught in, their native languages. — Ed.] and were taught largely by teachers trained in the new Normal School, which Ryerson created, not by clergy. The religious instruction was more like Sunday school classes than the indoctrination of the federal schools. Students in those early schools were learning a marketable skill, not merely producing goods the sale of which would in turn finance the school. All of these are markedly different from the way many Canadians today understand the later federal residential schools.}}[54]
^After all, the academia is filled with post-modern woke Jehadis.
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.
New York Post broadsheet, published until 1942
WP:NEWYORKPOST presently says that the newspaper is considered "more reliable before it changed ownership in 1976". I think we need to clarify exactly how much "more reliable" it was. The New York Post was a broadsheet newspaper until 1942. During the RfC in 2020 there was no substantial discussion of the reliability of the broadsheet newspaper published from 1801 to 1942. No evidence whatsoever has been presented that the broadsheet newspaper published from 1801 to 1942 was unreliable, or that it contained even a single error. I find sources claiming it was "highly respected" etc eg [56]. As a broadsheet published for 141 years with an apparently good reputation, it appears to be "well established" within the meaning of WP:NEWSORG, and on the face of it, WP:NEWYORKPOST should be amended to say that the broadsheet newspaper published until 1942 was generally reliable for topics within the competence of newspaper journalists. Can we make this amendment without an RfC? James500 (talk) 18:32, 29 July 2024 (UTC)
This doesn't seem particularly controversial to me, and I don't think an RfC is needed. However, I would wait for a bit for people to see this post and confirm that this change is indeed not controversial. voorts (talk/contributions) 20:47, 29 July 2024 (UTC)
If the source hasn't been discussed then it should be handle in the same as the recent change to WP:THESUN in relation to the prior broadsheet of the same name, with a note added to WP:NEWYORKPOST saying that it doesn't apply to the broadsheet previous published between 1801 to 1942.
I would be opposed to adding wording that it is reliable, not because it's isn't but because RSP is a summary of RSN discussions and no discussion on the source has happened (and can only happen if someone is actively contesting that it isn't reliable). -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested«@» °∆t°22:07, 29 July 2024 (UTC)
Part of the problem is listing the number of shares vs percentage.
The Financial Times doesn't list the number the shares [58] quoting again the percentage owned, displaying a graph of ownership and saying that "But as Farage owns 53 per cent of Reform UK Ltd, according to company filings, he is able to remove Tice as a director or take the decision to unilaterally dissolve the organisation, marking him as the party’s ultimate kingmaker. Tice has a minority holding of around one-third of all shares, while chief executive Paul Oakden and party treasurer Mehrtash A’zami each hold less than 7 per cent." But Ben Habib did say " he conceded that a private company, where control is vested in two people, was likely to be unsustainable in the long term." Note that this FT article is before the election.
The Conservative post [59] "The Reform UK Party Ltd. has 15 shares. The shareholders are Nigel Farage, who holds 8, and Richard Tice, who holds 5. Chief Executive Paul Oakden and Party Treasurer Mehrtahs A’Zami hold 1 share each."
The Guardian:[60] "The tensions go back to the formation in March 2019 of the Brexit party, which was renamed Reform UK in 2021. Determined to avoid the rebellions that had disrupted the Ukip party, Farage and others created a company that he could control rather than a conventional political party that had to be managed. "Farage owns a majority of shares in Reform UK Party Ltd, which is registered with Companies House. While four officers are named on the register, Farage is the only one named there as a “person with significant control”.
Bloomberg doesn't mention details, just says "Reform Uk Party Ltd was founded in 2018. The company's line of business includes membership organization established to promote the interests of a national, State, and local political party and candidate"https://www.bloomberg.com/profile/company/1974888D:LN?embedded-checkout=true] I found another Bloomberg article with more detail but have lost it. My search history says it might be [61] but it's paywalled.
Legal details at the government's filing list. [62]
Politicalcoeu[63] "It was formed in 2020 from the remnants of Farage’s previous project, the Brexit Party, which had in turn been formed from the remains of UKIP. Unusually, Reform was set up as a limited liability company, with Farage as its majority shareholder and honorary president."
Here Farage talks about it.[64] although I am not sure we can use that or two other sources, The Independent[65] which I originally used - not sure about that, or BylineTimes[66].
There is absolutely nothing wrong with those sources (well, not the Mirror or X), and there's definitely no BLP issue. DeFacto is simply being awkward here because he doesn't like the content. I would restore it and have commented as such on the talk page. Black Kite (talk)09:55, 28 July 2024 (UTC)
A BLP violation? That's an extremely odd claim. I say that you've got more than adequate sourcing to make statements about the companies ownership and if some consider it contentious in some way (I fail to see how they could) then WP:BLPPUBLIC more than adequately covers that where there is an abundance of sourcing about public figure's affairs then we are open to convey what the sourcing says. TarnishedPathtalk09:55, 28 July 2024 (UTC)
>no staff or review process information that I could find
staff page here: https://www.dsogaming.com/staff/ It is mainly one full time writer with two others mentioned on that page having contributed this year.
>absolutely plastered in advertisements
I disabled Ublock to test this and strangely I didn't see any advertisements at all. I also tried multiple networks to make sure I didn't have Network-level blocking enabled. It seems the website is mainly supported by Patreon.
Interestingly, DSOG seems to be sourced in a few books/journals. The most notable of which is "Moral Rights and Mods: Protecting Integrity Rights in Video Games" published in University of British Columbia Law Review, Volume 46, Issue 3, by Michela Fiorido (university page) which can be viewed here and "Violent Games: Rules, Realism and Effect" in Approaches to Digital Game Studies Volume 3 published by Bloomsbury Academic and authored by Gareth Schott, who is a professor and researcher at University of Waikato (university page, publications)
Here is the relevant quote from Schott (pp. 158-159):
the extent of the input required to generate an outcome, proves relevant to definitions of interactivity as “either the performer’s actions affecting the computer’s output, or the computer’s action affecting the performer’s output” (Garnett 2001). With reference to the latter, gaming software again becomes relevant in the evaluation of performance. Take, for example, Dark Side of Gaming’s PC performance analyses of games, and consider Papadopoulos’s (2014) review of Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare:
While the game came with somewhat low CPU requirements, it listed 6GB of RAM as its minimum RAM requirement. Contrary to COD: Ghosts’ Story, however, Advanced Warfare really needs more than 4GB of RAM . . . the actual game used more than 3.6GB of RAM. This suggests that even if PC gamers find a way to run this title with 4GB of RAM, they will face major stuttering issues . . . In order to find out whether this title can be played with constant 60fps on a variety of PC systems, we simulated a dual- core, a tri- core and a quad-core system. All of the aforementioned systems were able to push constant 60fps. However, we do have to note that on our simulated dual-core system there were noticeable stuttering issues that went away as soon as we enabled Hyper Threading.
DSOG also appears as the source for the Giant Pink Scorpion in Giant Pink Scorpions: Fighting Piracy with Novel Digital Rights Management Technology by Andrew V. Moshirnia (university page) in DePaul Journal of Art, Technology& Intellectual Property Law Volume 23 Issue 1: (pdf)
Croteam, developer of the Serious Sam first person shooter ("FPS") franchise, inserted such whimsical obstacles into its game Serious Sam 3: Before First Encounter.[201] As Sam "Serious" Stone, the player takes control of a wide arsenal of weapons to fight a variety of monsters. If the game detects an unlicensed copy, it triggers a giant, invincible, pink scorpion armed with two shotguns that relentlessly hunts the player.
In general, if you look at the citations DSOG receives in academic works, it is generally about technical details such as modding, performance, and DRM. There are some more citations on Google Scholar and I can show more examples if that would help.
Lastly, the previous discussion seems to be about using DSOG for game reviews ("no review process information I could find"). I am not suggesting here that we use DSOG for reviews, only certain technical details.
The reason I bring this up is that DSOG goes into more technical detail than most video game news sources, especially in the field of game engines. For example it is the only site that reported on GameTrailers' interview with Tim Sweeney about Unreal Engine 4's abandoning of Sparse Voxel Octree Global Illumination, which is now unavailable as GameTrailers has been shut down for years. (For the record, I did not add that source to UE4, it was already there in the Unreal Engine article and I don't think it should be removed. I did spend a few hours trying to find that interview, however, but to no avail, as it seems not to have been archived, with IA only having archived the page itself and not the video.) And as I mentioned above DSOG does interviews with game engine developers and hardware companies. I think those interviews show both the usefulness and credibility of DSOG, at least in the specific field of game engines, and at least where there is no other source that it can be replaced with.
Agreed. I am not suggesting to use one of DSOG's in depth analyses as a sole source for any topic. I only want to use it for a single factual claim (ie. without opinion attached to it such as a critical review or commentary on any fact presented by them). Thanks for clearing up that point. In terms of the specific point about DSOG being the only one to mention Ride 5 using unreal engine 4, it is also the only one to have done a performance analysis of the game. (The game seems to have mediocre sales and from what I've read it is considered worse than its predecessor Ride 4 so in depth review is scarce.) So it is not unexpected that other sites do not report on it. J2UDY7r00CRjH (talk) 18:49, 28 July 2024 (UTC)
@J2UDY7r00CRjH, this sounds like trying to get the whole site declared Officially™ Reliable, but what we actually want on this board is to know the article you want to edit, the sentence you want to add, and the exact source (=not the whole website) you want to use.
Try filling in this little form:
Link to article or section:
Link or citation for source:
Exact text you want to add to the Wikipedia article:
sentence from source: "Powered by Unreal Engine 4, it’s time now to benchmark RIDE 5 and examine its performance on the PC platform" J2UDY7r00CRjH (talk) 20:36, 28 July 2024 (UTC)
Thanks.
Now, does anyone actually believe that this website is unreliable for this specific sentence, in the specific article Ride 5? Note that "unreliable" means you've got some concern that the fact in question might be untrue, so we shouldn't trust that the source got the facts right. If your only concern is about whether it's UNDUE, then that's not a question that affects reliability. That question needs to be answered, but it does not need to be answered here at the Reliable sources/Noticeboard. That's a question for Wikipedia:Neutral point of view/Noticeboard or for the article's own talk page. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:40, 28 July 2024 (UTC)
Undid the edit as I don't know if I should participate there when I saw this discussion first. But there does seem to be some disagreement. --Super Goku V (talk) 02:34, 29 July 2024 (UTC)
@Super Goku V The engine is almost definitely Unreal Engine 4, as I showed below (starting from "I installed the game") albeit using original research. The only actual question is whether we can use the DSOG source or not. I wouldn't lend to much weight to IGN's "features" infobox. I'm pretty sure it has been wrong a few times, although I can't remember the exact ones that were wrong as I've viewed a few hundred of these engine related articles and I may be wrong entirely here. It's not really an article, its just a tag they added to the game's page, and probably is not held to the same editorial standards that the main articles have. J2UDY7r00CRjH (talk) 07:17, 29 July 2024 (UTC)
The only actual question is whether we can use the DSOG source or not. It does seem like IGN isn't an accurate assessment in this case, plus this is about DSOG. I will drop the matter as I don't believe I can help that much then. --Super Goku V (talk) 19:14, 29 July 2024 (UTC)
@NinjaRobotPirate, taking the model of 'All sources are reliable for something, and no source is reliable for everything', do you think this source is unreliable for the specific statement in question? A WikiProject doesn't have the right to completely ban sources from all uses per WP:LOCALCON and WP:PROJPAGE. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:20, 29 July 2024 (UTC)
Whoa there. No one is talking about banning. The video game Wikiproject has a consensus on the use of a video game website as a source on video game articles. The editor posing this question wishes to use it on articles related to video games. There's nothing wrong with any of that. Sergecross73msg me01:59, 29 July 2024 (UTC)
Let me be a little clearer then, @Sergecross73: "The video game Wikiproject" isn't actually allowed to have "a consensus" about what other editors get to do in video game articles. See WP:PROJPAGE (an actual community-approved formal guideline): "An advice page written by several participants of a project is a "local consensus" that is no more binding on editors than material written by any single individual editor."
The list seems very helpful in general, but it is not actually a valid reason to prevent someone from citing a source in a specific article. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:21, 29 July 2024 (UTC)
But no one is saying this RSN discussion's consensus wouldn't supersede a local consensus if it's created here. Ninja was simply explaining their revert. They agreed with previous editors who felt it was an unreliable source. This is all healthy, constructive discussion. You're looking too hard for misconduct here. Sergecross73msg me18:16, 29 July 2024 (UTC)
So far, the valid (i.e., a reason that is not directly prohibited by PROJPAGE and LOCALCON) reasons that Ninja has given is "it looks like a self-published group blog to me. And, no, I don't trust random blogs". This seems like a common sense objection to me.
You haven't provided any reasons based in either policy or common sense. Would you like to? It's difficult to form a consensus when editors don't provide valid reasons. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:37, 30 July 2024 (UTC)
I haven't provided any reasons because I haven't provided any stance at all yet. I merely interjected because I objected to your comments to Ninja. Sergecross73msg me15:52, 1 August 2024 (UTC)
>where is the consensus that this is a reliable source
If you would like, I can revert the edit again and wait for more responses on this page to see if anyone else disagrees with using this source for this specific claim.
>one person saying that it's likely undue emphasis
I don't think it is undue because the engine version is always notable, that's why it is a field in the video game infobox, and there is no opposing view that says otherwise to what DSOG stated, which is the main point of WP:UNDUE. That point from Woodroar seems to me like it was more of a general statement which I then clarified.
>another person saying that you should talk to me
That was after I already reverted the edit.
(I respond to these points above as only as clarification, not to imply you hold contrary to these two points I just made, as you mention them only in respect to the lack of consensus, ie, that "two people said something, and what they said was not something that contributed to consensus, rather the folowing: [...]," not as reasons for why the source is unreliable.) (Also, I did alert you to the discussion here, again, not to imply you have held otherwise.) J2UDY7r00CRjH (talk) 01:33, 29 July 2024 (UTC)
@WhatamIdoing: I've been an administrator for almost 8 years and a user for 15 years. I think I've read one of Wikipedia's core policies at least once. That's simply where the previous discussions about the site's reliability were, and the consensus of those discussions – much like WP:RSP, which is also an advice page that belongs to the WikiProject WP:Help Project. But since you seem to be interested in scoring petty points, here's one for you: WP:VG/RS is linked from MOS:VG, which is an official site-wide guideline, as a continuation of the statements about reliability.
As for this site, it looks like a self-published group blog to me. And, no, I don't trust random blogs. They tend to guess at stuff like this and phrase it authoritatively. When I do a google search for "ride 5" "unreal engine 5", the first result I get says "Ride 5 is developed by Milestone using Unreal Engine 5 and released 24th August 2023 for PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X" What makes this random source less reliable? NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 02:33, 29 July 2024 (UTC)
Now that I think about it I did see that site traxion.gg but it looked like a content farm so I quickly left the site after seeing they didn't site any sources.
>They tend to guess at stuff like this and phrase it authoritatively
This is an author whose specialty is reporting on game engines an performance analysis. And its not hard to find out if a game is using UE4 or 5. It can be seen in multiple ways for anyone who knows how to check. For example you can usually tell for error log. See for example this error for Ride 5: "The UE4-Ride 5 game will close:" https://www.reddit.com/r/CrackSupport/comments/1arorge/recently_got_ride_5_from_fitgirl_i_get_this_when/
Also, I don't think that @WhatamIdoing is trying to score "petty points." They are likely trying to have a meaningful discussion about the topic at hand, as evidenced by the fact that they phrased it as a question, not a statement or accusation. That doesn't seem like the right way for an admin to discuss issues. J2UDY7r00CRjH (talk) 03:13, 29 July 2024 (UTC)
Do not worry if we seem snippy, J2DUY; Ninja and I have both been around almost forever, known each other for years, and I like and value him. (He undersells himself: his account is 17.4 years old.) I wrote a good deal of both the LOCALCON and PROJPAGE rules back in the day, and the bottom line is that advice from a WikiProject, like advice from an individual, can be excellent advice, but if you want to think of it in legal terms, it's non-binding advice. (RSP is not an WP:Advice page written by members of a WP:WikiProject; it is an Wikipedia:Information page that documents the results of widely publicized RFCs and the most active content noticeboard.)
@NinjaRobotPirate, the OP says that the sole informal, unadvertised chat about this website at WT:VG/RS was a dozen years ago, and that the chat focused on facts that no longer appear to be true. Therefore, unlike anything at RSP, there is a risk that it is documenting a former consensus. For example, it is declared unreliable because one editor says "I couldn't find any staff page" – but that was true in 2012 and is not true now: https://www.dsogaming.com/staff/ Another says it is unreliable because in 2012 it was "absolutely plastered in advertisements" (a criteria that you will find in WP:ELNO but never in WP:V or WP:RS) – but when I checked a few pages just now, I saw no ads at all. If the 2024 version of the website were re-evaluated according to the criteria used in that discussion, it's possible that the result would be different.
Additionally, I am telling you that, unlike anything listed at RSP, this website was determined to be 'unreliable' as a result of one (1) discussion chat between exactly two (2) editors. Additionally, those two editors were considering only its general or hypothetical value, which can't overrule a choice to accept it for a specific instance. Many sources are generally unreliable for most uses but absolutely the best possible source for very specific instances (e.g., direct quotations, which should normally be cited to the original, authoritative primary source).
I'm hoping that we could actually treat this like a normal RSN question, in which editors look at the specific source (not primarily the whole website, but focusing on the individual page) and the specific fact that needs cited, instead of a knee-jerk reaction of "but it's on VG/RS and that proves that it's unreliable for anything and everything forever". WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:48, 29 July 2024 (UTC)
I installed the game, and used the method here to see the engine version, which showed unreal engine 4.27. Both methods work to show this. You can go to ride5/Binaries/Win64/ride5-Win64-Shipping and view the "File version" field in the "Details" tab in the exe's properties which will read "4.27.2.0". Or you can view the unreal version listed in %localappdata%/UnrealEngine. Additionally, PhysX3 can be seen in Engine/Binaries/ThirdParty. PhysX is not used in unreal engine 5. It was last used in Unreal Engine 4 (see Unreal_Engine_5#Other_features: "UE5 uses Niagara for fluid and particle dynamics and its own Chaos physics engine in place of PhysX.") Lastly, I opened ride5-Win64-Shipping.exe in Ghidra and searched for "UE4" which returned "++UE4+Release-4.27" which is the standard version label for Unreal Engine (screenshot). "UE5" returned no results. J2UDY7r00CRjH (talk) 04:45, 29 July 2024 (UTC)
Done with this edit. The correct edit summary is in the following edit. (Unfortunately WP:RSP is far too large to load conveniently on a browser). If no one reverts that edit, I have no problem with this RfC being closed as withdrawn and resolved. James500 (talk) 15:44, 26 June 2024 (UTC)
Agree CNC (talk) 21:08, 28 June 2024 (UTC)
I think people have talked enough; I wish they'd stop. This "live issue" is nothing more than a straw man argument. Hundreds of sources are discussed here, as to whether they reliable or not, without there being "live issues". Please stop bludgeoning attempts to gain consensus and read the room. CNC (talk) 22:06, 28 June 2024 (UTC)
. This accusation of spam goes beyond user-generated content. Therefore, I think we should discuss this source in order to later hold an RfC deprecating or blacklisting the source to remove the 500+ potentially spam usages. 142.113.140.146 (talk) 12:09, 25 July 2024 (UTC)
Closed by editor Tpbradbury 16:31, 27 July 2024
