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CounterPunch and Al Bawaba

I will bundle these two sources together because they both appear on Alex Saab’s page. An editor has placed an unreliable source tag against a number of statements sourced to CounterPunch and Al Bawaba. Counterpunch appears in the Perennial list with the description "There is no consensus regarding the reliability of CounterPunch. As a biased or opinionated source, its statements should be attributed". Al Bawaba does not appear in the Perennial list. It is used as a reference nearly 1,000 times within Wikipedia. I found one discussion about the reliability of Al Bawaba from 2015 which is not useful here.Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_198 The statements that have been tagged are:

  • On 24 August, according to CounterPunch, the US asked that the period allowed for its response be extended to 7 October.
  • In August 2021, Saab's defence team asked that the site of his detention be moved from the island of Sal to Praia. It said Saab's health had deteriorated and that he needed access to specialist medical care for his cancer. On 1 September 2021, the Barlavento Court of Appeal granted Saab's request.(sourced to Al Bawaba)
  • Saab's defence team asked the Cape Verde courts to refuse Saab's extradition on the grounds that there were legal irregularities associated with his arrest. By September 2021, the request had reached the Cape Verde Constitutional Court.(sourced to Al Bawaba)

In addition, the following statement sourced to CounterPunch was removed from the page with the edit summary "Per talk page. The most important reactions, including OHCHR's, ECOWAS Court's and Russia's are already covered by other sources. If other reactions are to be included, better sources should be used ".

  • Roger Harris, a board member of the Task Force on the Americas, wrote in CounterPunch that Iran, China, Russia, the United Nations, the African Union, ECOWAS, and Venezuela had written diplomatic letters to Cape Verde asking that Saab's extradition be refused based on the "principles of immunity and inviolability of consular rights.

Relevant points here are that

  • The statements sourced to CounterPunch are attributed as required.
  • The statements are factual rather than opinion.
  • The statements do not appear to be controversial.

I did ask on Saab’s talk page why the tags were added. The response was "Mostly BobFromBrockley's comments in its respective section, I will try to give more details briefly".

Does anyone have any thoughts about the reliability of the two sources for the statements that have been tagged and the statement that has been removed from the page? Burrobert (talk) 13:20, 10 September 2021 (UTC)

If its uncontroversial then there is no problem to find other WP:RS especially in WP:BLP we shouldn't use sources with questionable reliability and the WP:ONUS for them was not met --Shrike (talk) 17:34, 10 September 2021 (UTC)
  • "If its uncontroversial then there is no problem to find other WP:RS": that was not the question I asked. I asked whether the two sources are reliable for the specific statements. Whether the same information can be found elsewhere is not relevant. If another source disputed the information then that would make a difference but that has not occurred here. Are the two sources reliable for the specific statements?
  • "the WP:ONUS for them was not met": again that is not the question asked.
Burrobert (talk) 00:18, 11 September 2021 (UTC)
I think that CounterPunch, although it does have some very good content, has a lot of really poor content, including conspiracy theories. It shares writers with deprecated and generally unreliable sources such as GlobalResearch and Unz Review. And a lot of what it publishes is opinion rather than factual, and would rarely be due. Therefore we should both exercise extreme caution and take it on a case by case basis. In this particular case, as I suggest on the article talk page, it's hard to see why the author - a retired conservationist active in the Peace and Freedom Party, whose name and affiliation are currently red links - should be seen as authoritative. I also observed that the cited article appears to have been re-posted unchanged from Dissident Voice, which I don't think has any editorial oversight. A recent discussion of DV here reached a consensus that it is generally unreliable. The article really reads like a press release from Saab's defence campaign, concluding with a link to a petition in support of him.
I'm less familiar with Al Bawaba, but their reporting on Alex Saab seems a little off to me. As NoonIcarus notes on the talk page, their reporting in the cited article[1] seems pretty partisan. It is also almost entirely made up of quotes from the defense team, suggesting it a lot of it is copied from a press release or similar. It seems Al Bawaba has quite a large number of articles on Saab,[2] which are all basically long verbatim quotes from the defense team. The latest, "Defense Team Responds, Alex Saab, is a Victim of a Failing Judicial System in Cape Verde",[3] makes not attempt at neutral reporting. I suspect this is a case of churnalism, with the co-ordinated PR campaign using an online magazine's desire for content to seed biased opinion in the newsphere. I don't know if this is a common MO for al Bawaba, but I think it needs to be treated with extreme caution. BobFromBrockley (talk) 16:25, 14 September 2021 (UTC)
Firstly CounterPunch:
  • “really poor content, including conspiracy theories“ : some examples would be useful. It is such a vague statement that it is meaningless.
  • “It shares writers with deprecated and generally unreliable sources such as GlobalResearch and Unz Review”. I hope this guilt by association argument holds no weight with editors.
  • “whose name and affiliation are currently red links”: funny, because you added the red links. Generally that means you think they deserve their own articles.
  • Dissident Voice: the article was published by CounterPunch which is responsible for content on its site. CounterPunch has editorial oversight.
  • “The article really reads like a press release … “. The statement that is sourced to the article is a simple and uncontroversial factual statement: “On 24 August, according to CounterPunch, the US asked that the period allowed for its response be extended to 7 October”.
Al Bawaba:
  • “the cited article[120] seems pretty partisan”. The statements that are sourced to the article are simple and uncontroversial factual statements: “In August 2021, Saab's defence team asked that the site of his detention be moved from the island of Sal to Praia. It said Saab's health had deteriorated and that he needed access to specialist medical care for his cancer. On 1 September 2021, the Barlavento Court of Appeal granted Saab's request”. and “Saab's defence team asked the Cape Verde courts to refuse Saab's extradition on the grounds that there were legal irregularities associated with his arrest. By September 2021, the request had reached the Cape Verde Constitutional Court”.
  • the second statement sourced to Al Bawaba is verified by the next sentence in the article which reads: "On 8 September 2021 the Constitutional Tribunal of Cape Verde rejected Saab's defence appeal ... ".
Burrobert (talk) 02:05, 15 September 2021 (UTC)
@Burrobert:I've never heard of Al Bawbaa, so I won't comment on it without looking in a bit, but I do think that Counterpunch, although it does have some very good content, has a lot of really poor content, including conspiracy theories seems to be accurate. A list of some conspiracy and fringe theories published by the magazine are below:
  • The site has a history of publishing 9/11 conspiracy theories. A 2019 piece claimed that WTC-7 was not hit by a plane like the rest of the complex but was bombed! The bombing let to WTC-7 being destroyed from a fire that burned for 7 hours — until the building collapsed at 5:20 p.m.. A 2021 piece (here is the correct link) endorses the conspiracy theory that the CIA deliberately planted explosives in WTC 1, WTC 2, and WTC 7 in order to ensure their collapse, citing a report by Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth. Another article seems to endorse the belief that "Zionists" were responsible for 9/11, stating that In the Western World, Corporatism has become ‘subject’ to Zionism and in consequence Capitalist Democracy has been usurped by the power of a concentrated accumulation of resources – and this- no mere product of ‘happenstance’ – but rather part of a systemic scheme whereby the rich are to get richer and the poor to get poorer? \ When 2.3 Trillion Dollars can ‘go missing’ from an Economy and disappear down a ‘memory hole’ as part of a historical revisionism aka denial; when the very day after the gone missing is ‘announced’ and the Rabbi Dov Zakheim as Comptroller is not held to account because it ‘happens’ there is an attack on the Twin Towers (also WTC 7) and the Pentagon which becomes the focus of attention and a casus belli for war then something is seriously wrong – and psycho political abuse is in operation? Let us also not forget the ‘weapons grade anthrax’ – such the ‘memory hole’?. This isn't the only piece that reiterates the antisemitic canard to attempt to tie Jews to 9/11.
  • On the note of the piece holding "Zionists" responsible for 9/11, there's even more antisemitic conspiracy at this publication! This 2014 piece states that It is forbidden by the censors who channel acceptable opinion to draw parallels with the Nazis’ modus operandi. But if the shoe fits … \ There is Israel’s Mengelian experimentation on caged Gazans, apart from saturation bombing, with nerve gas, depleted uranium, white phosphorous and flechette shells. More, the model of the Reichstag fire false flag has been readily replicated, not least in the 1954 Lavon Affair and, most spectacularly, in 9/11 (whence the five dancing Israelis at Liberty Park?). Practice makes perfect with false flags. Add extra-judicial murders made to order. (For those unfamiliar with "dancing Israelis", see this ADL piece.)
  • A 2017 piece in the magazine also appears to deny the Holodomor, calling it fiction.
  • A 2018 piece appears to deny the existence of the Xinjiang internment camps, calling it a bald and barefaced accusation... made with nary a shred of supporting evidence. The piece also denies widespread abuses against Uyghurs in the region, stating that The deluge of fake news from Western corporate media since the beginning of this year seeks to demonize the Chinese government, painting it as a gross violator of human rights, when the truth is the exact opposite. Another 2018 piece described the internment of over 1 million Muslims as wild allegations. Another piece seems to recommend The Qiao Collective's Chinese state media-filled resource compilation on the topic, as well as deprecated source The Grayzone.
If the source were pseudonymous, I'd be inclined to put it in the same bucket as Zerohedge: it contains some good stuff but also conspiracy theories, and should be deprecated. However, since it's possible to attribute items to an author, I'd say that publications by the magazine are generally unreliable and not due unless referenced by a reliable secondary source. I'd be extremely hesitant to use the source in a [[WP:|BLP]]], even if it were given attribution, and I think that the source would be best avoided altogether in that context. — Mikehawk10 (talk) 05:27, 15 September 2021 (UTC) (See the RfC below for my current thoughts, which changed based off of vaccine conspiracies and an apparent jarring lack of editorial control.)
Re Burrobert on CounterPunch: Conspiracy theory content: who is Israel Shamir, Counterpunch's resident intelligence correspondent? Alternately known as Jöran Jermas and Adam Ermash, Shamir is a fringe writer who has devoted his professional life to exposing the supposed criminality of "Jewish power," a paranoid anti-Semite who curates a website full of links to Holocaust denial and neo-Nazi sites, defenses of blood libel myths, and references to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Ali Abunimah, Hussein Ibish, and Nigel Parry have warned their fellow Palestinian activists to avoid contact with Shamir--Reason.com 2010; Counterpunch [allowed] one of its most popular contributors, Paul Craig Roberts, to air his [9/11] Truther arguments on their website --Stephen M. E. Marmura International Journal of Communication, 2014; “It’s one that you run into time and time again,” [9/11 and now Covid truther Mark Crispin Miller] said on an October 11 episode of CounterPunch Radio. “To the point that I now believe that anyone who uses that phrase [conspiracy theory] in a pejorative sense is a witting or unwitting CIA asset.”--Observer.com, 2017; Alison Weir, Israel Shamir and Gilad Atzmon] are three crypto-antisemites who have been openly circulated in the progressive world, appearing in supposedly leftist publications like CounterPunch in particular... CounterPunch...has published antisemitic writers for many years--Spencer Sunshine, Journal of Social Justice, 2019; CounterPunch keeps citing Global Research well into 2020--Emmee Bevensee, Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right , 2020 (Sunshine lists several examples here; The left-wing magazine CounterPunch has published a significant number of articles condemning Beijing’s repression of Uyghurs in Xinjiang. However, it has also occasionally featured pieces that deny any such thing is taking place.--CodaStory, 2020. See also Jovan Byford here. This may be a small proportion of what CounterPunch publishes, and it has certainly improved since the 2000s, but it means we need to exercise extreme caution. Guilt by association: This isn't guilt by association; it's about assessing reliability on a case by case basis. An article in this publication by an author who also writes for reliable sources might be worth using; an article by an author mainly known for publishing in GlobalResearch, ZeroHedge, Unz, Infowars etc is worth avoiding. Red links: I added links on the assumption that organisations/people we consider noteworthy are likely to be notable in their own right and therefore should have articles. If they're not notable, we need to be certain they are due, so I think red links are an important part of building Wikipedia. If you think they're notable, maybe start the article. Editorial oversight: Sure, CP has editorial oversight over what it publishes, but when it is syndicating articles from sloppier sources, such as Dissident Voice, we need to exercise extra care. Uncontroversial content: I'm not saying we definitely don't want to use this, but I flagged it with "better source" because if it is indeed uncontroversial we should be able to find a better source not drive traffic to a press release from partisans in the story. BobFromBrockley (talk) 10:57, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

Starting at the top:

  • "A 2019 piece claimed that “WTC-7 was not hit by a plane like the rest of the complex but was bombed! The bombing let to WTC-7 being destroyed from a fire that burned for 7 hours — until the building collapsed at 5:20 p.m.”." I am far from being conversant with US 9/11 history (more familiar with the original 9/11 involving the CIA-engineered coup against Allende). I believe the official story is that WTC-7 was not hit by a plane like the rest of the complex but was substantially damaged by debris when the nearby North Tower of the World Trade Center collapsed. The debris ignited fires on multiple lower floors of the building, which continued to burn uncontrolled throughout the afternoon. The difference between the two versions seems to be the word “bombed” which the writer does not explain so it is hard to comment any further.
  • “A 2021 piece endorses the conspiracy theory that the CIA deliberately planted explosives in WTC 1, WTC 2, and WTC 7 in order to ensure their collapse, citing a report by Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth” I can’t see the reference to the Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth. However, the final line in the story is: Note: Yes, this is satire.

Burrobert (talk) 06:42, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

RfC: CounterPunch

First close attempt challenged on my talk page and so withdrawn. Can somebody else uninvolved take a look? Thanks.— Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 00:06, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

There is consensus in favor of deprecating CounterPunch as a source. This RfC has gone on for nearly a month, and is a pretty good example of the original meaning of the WP:SNOW clause. Namely, I am making a polite request that we not waste any more editor time/effort here. Most, if not all, respondents concur that the site is unreliable, more akin to a blogging platform than a news site. It is agreed by all respondents that they do, however, assert some editorial discretion in who blogs there. An argument was made (and persuasive to the vast majority of respondents) that the direction of those editorial decisions is the issue. Multiple examples were provided of misleading, fringe, or downright false statements published on the site. Many users agreed that the site itself leans towards favoring fringe viewpoints, and publishes such viewpoints preferentially, not indiscriminately. This was the original purpose of the WP:DEPRECATED tag, first awarded to The Daily Mail in 2017. Indeed, many many respondents directly compared CounterPunch to The Daily Mail unfavorably. If most uses of the source would be detrimental to the project, and only very few uses could ever be justified (e.g. WP:ABOUTSELF), then deprecation is the appropriate course of action. We have consensus that this is the situation here. (non-admin closure) — Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 17:43, 9 October 2021 (UTC)}}

Uninvolved editor here. Shibbolethink's wording sums up the RFC accurately, so I'll reproduce it here: There is consensus in favor of deprecating CounterPunch as a source. This RfC has gone on for nearly a month, and is a pretty good example of the original meaning of the WP:SNOW clause. Namely, I am making a polite request that we not waste any more editor time/effort here. Most, if not all, respondents concur that the site is unreliable, more akin to a blogging platform than a news site. It is agreed by all respondents that they do, however, assert some editorial discretion in who blogs there. An argument was made (and persuasive to the vast majority of respondents) that the direction of those editorial decisions is the issue. Multiple examples were provided of misleading, fringe, or downright false statements published on the site. Many users agreed that the site itself leans towards favoring fringe viewpoints, and publishes such viewpoints preferentially, not indiscriminately. This was the original purpose of the WP:DEPRECATED tag, first awarded to The Daily Mail in 2017. Indeed, many many respondents directly compared CounterPunch to The Daily Mail unfavorably. If most uses of the source would be detrimental to the project, and only very few uses could ever be justified (e.g. WP:ABOUTSELF), then deprecation is the appropriate course of action. We have consensus that this is the situation here. - David Gerard (talk) 01:24, 10 October 2021 (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.

Which of the following best describes the reliability of CounterPunch?

— Mikehawk10 (talk) 03:12, 19 September 2021 (UTC)

Discussion: RfC: CounterPunch

  • Option 4: CounterPunch has a history of publishing false and fabricated information, including numerous conspiracy theories, and should be deprecated.
    1. As I noted in my comments above, the site's history of publishing 9/11 conspiracy theories is widespread. A 2019 piece claimed that WTC-7 was not hit by a plane like the rest of the complex but was bombed! The bombing let to WTC-7 being destroyed from a fire that burned for 7 hours — until the building collapsed at 5:20 p.m.. A 2021 piece endorses the conspiracy theory that the CIA deliberately planted explosives in WTC 1, WTC 2, and WTC 7 in order to ensure their collapse, citing a report by Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth. Another article seems to endorse the belief that "Zionists" were responsible for 9/11, stating that In the Western World, Corporatism has become ‘subject’ to Zionism and in consequence Capitalist Democracy has been usurped by the power of a concentrated accumulation of resources – and this- no mere product of ‘happenstance’ – but rather part of a systemic scheme whereby the rich are to get richer and the poor to get poorer? \ When 2.3 Trillion Dollars can ‘go missing’ from an Economy and disappear down a ‘memory hole’ as part of a historical revisionism aka denial; when the very day after the gone missing is ‘announced’ and the Rabbi Dov Zakheim as Comptroller is not held to account because it ‘happens’ there is an attack on the Twin Towers (also WTC 7) and the Pentagon which becomes the focus of attention and a casus belli for war then something is seriously wrong – and psycho political abuse is in operation? Let us also not forget the ‘weapons grade anthrax’ – such the ‘memory hole’?. This isn't the only piece that reiterates the antisemitic canard to attempt to tie Jews to 9/11.
    2. On the note of the piece holding "Zionists" responsible for 9/11, there's even more antisemitic conspiracy at this publication! This 2014 piece states that It is forbidden by the censors who channel acceptable opinion to draw parallels with the Nazis’ modus operandi. But if the shoe fits … \ There is Israel’s Mengelian experimentation on caged Gazans, apart from saturation bombing, with nerve gas, depleted uranium, white phosphorous and flechette shells. More, the model of the Reichstag fire false flag has been readily replicated, not least in the 1954 Lavon Affair and, most spectacularly, in 9/11 (whence the five dancing Israelis at Liberty Park?). Practice makes perfect with false flags. Add extra-judicial murders made to order. (For those unfamiliar with "dancing Israelis", see this ADL piece.)
    3. A 2017 piece in the magazine also appears to deny the Holodomor, calling it fiction.
    4. A 2018 piece appears to deny the existence of the Xinjiang internment camps, calling it a bald and barefaced accusation... made with nary a shred of supporting evidence. The piece also denies widespread abuses against Uyghurs in the region, stating that The deluge of fake news from Western corporate media since the beginning of this year seeks to demonize the Chinese government, painting it as a gross violator of human rights, when the truth is the exact opposite. Another 2018 piece described the internment of over 1 million Muslims as wild allegations. Another piece seems to recommend The Qiao Collective's Chinese state media-filled resource compilation on the topic, as well as content from deprecated source The Grayzone.
    5. And, to add on to the above, the website has a troubled history of supporting the bogus vaccine-autism conspiracy theory.
    6. Their editorial process is also rather suspect; the magazine has failed to vet the identity of freelance journalists to the extent that it has, in recent years, published literal propaganda made by the GRU without having a clue that the person they were giving a byline to did not exist. And, on top of that, the magazine didn't know that much of the language in those propaganda pieces had been plagiarized from other sources.
Taken together, I don't think consider CounterPunch as a source to be something we can use to verify facts, except possibly in an WP:ABOUTSELF fashion. (And, even with respect to ABOUTSELF, I'd use it with caution given its issues vetting who its contributors actually are.) This publication should be deprecated as a source for facts. — Mikehawk10 (talk) 03:12, 19 September 2021 (UTC)
Just looking at the vaccine articles. One is by Richard Gale, who is a hardcore anti-vaxx activist[4] who writes regularly for GlobalResearch[DOTca/author/richard-gale] and The Defender,[5] usually with Gary Null. Several are by Anne McElroy Dachel[6] of anti-vaxx/pro-Ivermectin/Hydroxychloroquine blog Age of Autism.[7]. I hadn't realised quite how bad they were on this. BobFromBrockley (talk) 13:38, 29 September 2021 (UTC)
  • Option 4. Per the investigation above, they have promoted numerous conspiracy theories, including antisemitic ones. Not reliable at all and should be deprecated; anything cited to it, if not covered elsewhere, isn't worth saying. Crossroads -talk- 03:41, 19 September 2021 (UTC)
  • Option 4 Huh, I knew this publication had a strong POV but I wasn't aware that they routinely spread conspiracy theories. One study describes them as a "an ostensibly left magazine that has given space to white nationalists and antisemites" [8]. Conspiracy theory expert Jovan Byford describes CounterPunch as an antisemitic and conspiracist magazine [9], and a Stanford researcher included CounterPunch on a list of prominent conspiracy sites [10]. Their contributors include numerous conspiracy theorists, including Israel Shamir, 9/11 truther Paul Craig Roberts [11], Wayne Madsen [12], Mark Crispin Miller [13] and others. Scholars Stephen Zunes and John Feffer documented how false claims made by CounterPunch and similar websites about the Albert Einstein Institution ended up on Wikipedia and Sourcewatch [14]. Other nonsense claims by CounterPunch can be found in the Algemeiner [15]. The 9/11 conspiracies, vaccine conspiracies, and Uyghur genocide denialism, as described by Mikehawk, is just icing on the cake at this point. Dr. Swag Lord (talk) 09:23, 19 September 2021 (UTC)
  • There are over 2,500 references to CounterPunch on Wikipedia. The instructions are that "Requests for comment for deprecation, or for blacklisting or classification as generally unreliable of sources that are widely used in articles, should be registered here using rfc|prop. As usual with RfCs, consensus is assessed based on the weight of policy-based argument". I suggest putting the RfC in its own section rather than as a appendage of a previous discussion. Burrobert (talk) 10:35, 19 September 2021 (UTC)
Seconding that request. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 23:46, 19 September 2021 (UTC)
I want to comment on the claim that "experts" are regularly published in this source. The fact that they printed in source that promulgate white supremacy and other conspiracy theories raise a big question about their expertise and WP:DUE inclusion on their opinion. If their opinion is really notable we can source to more reputable source if its not then its probably WP:UNDUE to include. --Shrike (talk) 13:31, 28 September 2021 (UTC)
  • Option 4: - Very good research above, demonstrating why it can't be used. Inf-in MD (talk) 11:19, 19 September 2021 (UTC)
  • Option 4. The above research is both informative and alarming. If there are 2500 references to this source on Wikipedia, we should create the consensus necessary to remove them. Generalrelative (talk) 14:53, 19 September 2021 (UTC)
  • Comment. I do not know the source, so I will not really submit a vote here (though so far the deprecation case is pretty clear); but I will ask the closer to look in the 10 discussions about CounterPunch and determine in particular:
    If the print version of CounterPunch is any better (see first discussion of CounterPunch);
    Whether deprecation is needed in certain subject areas only (such as 9/11, anti-Semitism, vaccines, China) or a blanket deprecation is needed, as previous discussions have yielded mixed results (and there have been quite a lot of them). That is, are not simply the opinions of folks publishing there, but also the quality of news reporting low. So far, the only case made on this field was about being a conduit for Russian propaganda, but I don't really believe that's per se sufficient reason for deprecation, because whether that's a pattern remains to be seen (forget about PropOrNot, which is by itself dubious), but that certainly speaks much for unreliability.
    How (if to any degree) previous discussions about CounterPunch are to be reconciled with the findings of the current RfC and what seems to be an imminent deprecation.
I specifically ask to double-check these because, unlike in the case of Rolling Stone, which I recently closed, a proposed solution is to deprecate it completely, regardless of content and time frame, which seems to be quite a change given that previous (including relatively recent) discussions gave a "yeah, better avoid it because of strong bias, but ultimately it's not the worst" rating. Ultimately the result of this RfC will greatly influence RSP position of the source. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 23:46, 19 September 2021 (UTC)
Very good points Szmenderowiecki. Re the dissonance with previous discussions, my sense is that previously nobody bothered to provide examples of unreliability but generally voted according to political position, plus vaccine disinformation has become weightier since the pandemic and the GRU creating a fake persona to publish at CounterPunch was revealed after most of the discussions. (Possibly ironically, as to my mind CP has actually improved since the GRU op used it.) To specify the subject areas where it should be avoided: anything to do with US foreign policy, the war on terror, Russian or Chinese geopolitical interests or domestic politics, the Syria war, anything to do with Israel/Jews/the Holocaust. Vaccines should go with out saying per WP:MEDRS but worth mentioning to flag that they have been especially egregious in this area. It BobFromBrockley (talk) 10:39, 21 September 2021 (UTC)
  • Option 4 due to a concerning lack of editorial oversight, as well as the detail explanation above. This is particularly important given the amount of times it is used in articles. --NoonIcarus (talk) 00:18, 20 September 2021 (UTC)
  • Note added to WP:UPSD as deprecated. Will update if the close ends up different, but it's snowing. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 01:13, 20 September 2021 (UTC)
  • Option 4 per Mikehawk10 and Dr. Swag Lord. I think the deprecation should be a blanket one, because many of the issues are egregious and spread across many topic areas. GretLomborg (talk) 21:57, 20 September 2021 (UTC)
  • Option 3+. Per Mikehawk10 and Dr. Swag Lord, the site has regularly published conspiracy theories and publishes several extremely fringe writers, including antisemitic ones, so it should be rated at least generally unreliable. I have reservations about blanket deprecation, because it does publish some notable writers who we might want to cite if due, so would prefer a case by case approach but with a presumption against use. BobFromBrockley (talk) 10:39, 21 September 2021 (UTC)
    @Bobfrombrockley: I don't think that we could meaningfully take a scalpel and carve particular islands of (un)reliability from the remainder of the publication. I've provided the various conspiracy theories that are being published; I think the scope of those conspiracies reflects the magazine's poor reliability for politics, generally. For me, a political newsletter being deprecation-worthy in the area of politics is fatal, especially for a publication that seems to describe its content as news articles. While we could interpret the deprecation-worthy areas to be very narrow with respect to those particular conspiracies listed above, I think that the publication of these conspiracy theories reflects so poorly over the entire editorial operation that CounterPunch shouldn't be used as a source for facts in articles. After all, how can we trust content from a source that publishes that "Zionists" are responsible for 9/11? Even if the absolute most that could be done would be to consider everything as WP:SPS given a clear lack of editorial oversight and fact-checking from the CounterPunch staff, the fact that their author vetting system has failed so badly (Alice Donovan did not actually exist, but was credited with articles that were literal Russian propaganda) makes me not feel fully confident to attribute the site's content to the particular person named as the article's author. — Mikehawk10 (talk) 03:27, 22 September 2021 (UTC)
  • Option 3+ or 4 it is. My very best wishes (talk) 00:59, 22 September 2021 (UTC)
  • Option 4, obvious fake news and conspiracies being pushed here. 11Fox11 (talk) 09:25, 22 September 2021 (UTC)
  • Option 2 obviously. Counterpunch is essentially a group blog, and it does not confer reliability by being published there. However, when an expert in their field writes something on Counterpunch it is usable for that experts view. For example here is an article by Dean Baker. Is anybody going to argue that Dean Baker cannot be cited? The specifics matter here, and the effort to deprecate a source for links that nobody would ever use (pray tell how many of the counterpunch links that are actually used on Wikipedia are in any way objectionable?) in order to remove the citations that nobody can object to on their own standing is a tad concerning. nableezy - 13:53, 22 September 2021 (UTC)
The impression that I get is that deprecation is for sources that "[publish] false or fabricated information" (either deliberately or negligently with little effort to get things right or make corrections), and it does not matter how much accurate information is mixed in with it. WP:DEPRECATED#Acceptable_uses_of_deprecated_sources says deprecated sources can still be used in WP:ABOUTSELF cases, and I think that would apply to the article authors speaking about themselves and their own views. Also if Dean Baker is actually an established subject-matter expert, I would expect he's published elsewhere and those sources can be cited for his views instead of a deprecated one. - GretLomborg (talk) 17:36, 22 September 2021 (UTC)
CounterPunch makes no claim to any editorial control, the only thing that matters for a site like that is the author. CounterPunch is not the source, it is a convenience link for the actual source, that being the author. For things like the Daily Mail, where the articles are written by staff members and controlled by editors, then the editorial process certainly is what should matter. CounterPunch is not that, it is essentially an op-ed repository. What matters with op-eds is the author. And of course Baker is published elsewhere, but this specific column may not be. If Baker published something on his personal blog it would be usable, so too would it be if he publishes on CounterPunch. nableezy - 20:23, 22 September 2021 (UTC)
You say that Counterpunch is essentially a group blog, and it does not confer reliability by being published there...CounterPunch makes no claim to any editorial control. If that's the case, then this source would automatically fail WP:RS and would be considered WP:QUESTIONABLE, even if experts occasionally write for CounterPunch. However, I'm not sure it can be considered a "group blog" or an "op-ed repository" when they have a CEO, a mailing address, an editorial team, print editions of their magazines, their own radio show, their own merchandise, and their own books [16]. Not to mention, CounterPunch is a registered 501(c)(3) non-profit organization whose stated mission is to help readers make informed and balanced assessments – vital for a healthy democratic society – on the public issues of the day. It does this by providing credible reporting and commentary in its magazine CounterPunch, on its website (www.counterpunch.org) and by publishing non-fiction books. [17]. I don't believe 9/11 conspiracies or genocide denial is vital for a "democratic society" and is certainly not "credible reporting." Dr. Swag Lord (talk) 21:33, 22 September 2021 (UTC)
Very much no, it would mean that determining the reliability of any particular piece would depend on the author. New York Times op-eds also are published in print. As far as the argmentum ad aburdum at the end there, who is citing 9/11 conspiracies or genocide denial? The things that are written by experts in the field they are writing in are usable sources even if self-published. CounterPunch should be treated as though it were a self-publishing outlet, where reliability is determined by the author. There are no staff writers there, every single piece is attributed to an outside contributor. That contributor determines the reliability. I dont actually understand why you think its tax status is relevant, but cool story? nableezy - 20:55, 24 September 2021 (UTC)
You keep insisting that CounterPunch "should" be treated as a self-publishing outlet. This conflates with the reality of the situation: CounterPunch is not a self-published source. It has editorial control (albeit, highly inept editorial control). You may also want to check out WP:SOURCES. The work, author, and publisher of the work can all affect reliability. A piece of work written by a respected expert who gets published by Cambridge University Press is probably going to be a reliable source. A piece of work written by a respected expert who gets published by a conspiracy site like CounterPunch is probably not going to be treated as a reliable source. Dr. Swag Lord (talk) 08:07, 25 September 2021 (UTC)
Consult it yourself, youll find that That is why self-published material such as books, patents, newsletters, personal websites, open wikis, personal or group blogs (as distinguished from newsblogs, above), content farms, Internet forum postings, and social media postings are largely not acceptable as sources. Self-published expert sources may be considered reliable when produced by an established subject-matter expert, whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable, independent publications. When an expert writes something, even on their own personal website, it is citable. When an expert writes something on CounterPunch it would still be appropriate to use as the work of an established expert. I dont think you actually know how wide, and silly, a brush your painting with here. Vijay Prashad (published by such university presses as OUP, University of California Press), Dean Baker (published by MIT, Cambridge, University of Chicago and on and on), Peter Mayo, Ralph Nader, Bernie Sanders are all currently featured on their front page. Any and all of these would be appropriate to cite for their own views, including their own views expressed on CounterPunch, and in all but the last two they are clearly established experts in their area of academic expertise. CounterPunch, the website, is very much a group blog. They do not make any claim to fact-checking, which means that the author's reputation is what should matter. nableezy - 19:45, 27 September 2021 (UTC)
Any and all of these would be appropriate to cite for their own views, including their own views expressed on CounterPunch. I fully agree with you. You do realize that depreciation would still allow us to use CounterPunch for WP:ABOUTSELF reasons? However, you may run into problems if you attempt to use CounterPunch outside of the expert's article. They do not make any claim to fact-checking. This is again incorrect. Part of their mission is to provide credible reporting. What do you think credible reporting means? It means trustworthy and factual accounts. In other words: fact-checking. Dr. Swag Lord (talk) 20:37, 27 September 2021 (UTC)
It would fail ABOUTSELF, they aren't writing about themselves. The article by Henry Giroux there rn for example is about Paulo Freire, a topic Giroux is an unquestionably solid source on, and that piece should be able to be cited. Even if it is hosted on CounterPunch. Again, I have no idea why you are talking about their 501c3 registration or their mission statement, they have an editor in that a person selects which pieces to host and which not, but no they do not do any fact checking of the hosted pieces. The website at least is very much a group blog. nableezy - 20:58, 27 September 2021 (UTC)
  • Option 4, I have little to add to the excellent editors above me, all of the arguments I would make have already been made and I just want to endorse them. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 19:34, 22 September 2021 (UTC)
  • Option 4 - Per all of the above. It is clearly not a reliable outlet. Grayfell (talk) 23:17, 22 September 2021 (UTC)
  • Option 4 Regularly publishes disinformation and should not be used on Wikipedia. Georgethedragonslayer (talk) 10:42, 23 September 2021 (UTC)
  • Option 4 - Persistent publication of disinfo. Neutralitytalk 16:33, 24 September 2021 (UTC)
  • Option 2: It is kind of amusing, seeing editors list the mistakes that CounterPunch has done over the years, and using that as a excuse to ban them all out. Does anyone remember how MSM (say, New York Times) all "knew" that Saddam had WMD? Or that Muammar Gaddafi, for sure! was going to massacre the people of Bengasi? All lies; and lies that cost the lives of hundred of thosands of innocent people (At the same time as it greatly increased the profit of Western weapon-manufactures, and Western oil companies). Shall we then ban, say the New York Times for their persistent false info, wrt to Iraq and Libya? I think not. Nor do I think CounterPunch should be banned, even if it has gotten the story wrong, at times, Huldra (talk) 23:54, 26 September 2021 (UTC)
    I think that framing articles that baselessly claim that the "Zionists" did 9/11 as mistakes doesn't quite do it justice—factual mistakes result in corrections or retractions at reputable newspapers. None of those are present in the CounterPunch articles linked above. The fact that the content is live on their website shows a near-total lack of editorial control, a willingness to publish conspiracies without regard for factual accuracy, and a demonstrated lack of correcting verifiably false information. — Mikehawk10 (talk) 06:26, 27 September 2021 (UTC)
    Lol, NYT still has up that baselessly claim that the Saddam pursued atomic weapons, eg by Judith Miller: link; archive. Sooooo: " The fact that the content is live on their website shows a near-total lack of editorial control, a willingness to publish conspiracies without regard for factual accuracy, and a demonstrated lack of correcting verifiably false information"? Shall we ban the NYT, now? cheers, (PWS: I really, really hate double standards) Huldra (talk) 23:07, 27 September 2021 (UTC)
Huldra I’m not seeing what you say is in that article in there... Where exactly does it say that? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 23:14, 27 September 2021 (UTC)
"More than a decade after Saddam Hussein agreed to give up weapons of mass destruction, Iraq has stepped up its quest for nuclear weapons and has embarked on a worldwide hunt for materials to make an atomic bomb", quting the Bush administration as if they were telling the truth,Huldra (talk) 20:54, 28 September 2021 (UTC)
The New York Times editorial board issued a full apology for their reporting on WMD and Saddam Hussein. [18] [19] Dr. Swag Lord (talk) 03:21, 28 September 2021 (UTC)
I have never seen NYT (or any other MSM) aplologise for the lies about Gaddafi, have you? Huldra (talk) 20:54, 28 September 2021 (UTC)
  • Option 4. Considering that now it's "no consensus" maybe start with Option 3 and defer to the editors' judgement. This days the accusations of promoting conspiracy theories get thrown at everyone but in this case it's hard not to agree with it. Alaexis¿question? 19:34, 27 September 2021 (UTC)
  • Comment. Good grief. Utterly bizarre.

    If the people voting here can’t recognize at sight the following professional experts in their varied respective fields, who choose Counterpunch as a venue for their reports or views, then they should look them all up and reconsider their votes. They are all reputable professionals most with academic work to their name and reliably published elsewhere. The suggestion is that these scholars, writers, analysts wittingly associate their work with a conspiracy-powered website. Jeezus effen kerrist. How powerful we wikipedians are compared to them. We can wipe them all off on the strength of a poisoned well RfC.

    The suggestion here that it should be dismissed as reliable because of a few diffs of individual articles (yeah, you occasionally over 27 years see bullshit there, as in most newspapers) would operationally mean that wikipedia rules as offlimits any use of material coming from its archives from figures as varied as Alexander Cockburn (an acknowledge master of the genre), Uri Avnery, es:Gary Leupp (brilliant on the orient) Melvin Goodman (incisive and with a deep professional grounding in American security doctrines) security, Ralph Nader, Andrew Levine, Winslow Wheeler (works from Capitol Hill- knows everything about congressional budgets),Naomi Klein, Brian Cloughley, Mark Weisbrot, Serge Halimi, Norman Pollack,Neve Gordon, Norman Finkelstein, Noam Chomsky, Michael Brenner, Sheldon Richman, Ramzy Baroud, Vijay Prashad, Robert Fisk, Gareth Porter, Mel Gurtov,Henry Giroux, Rodolfo Acuña, Ray McGovern, Deepak Tripathi, William Quigley, Michael Neumann, Michael Hudson, Tom Engelhardt, John Feffer, Jeremy Scahill, William Loren Katz, Andrew Bacevich, Edward Said, Tariq Ali, Bruce Jackson, Sam Bahour, Marjorie Cohn, Russ Feingold, Andre Vltchek, Lawrence Davidson, Lawrewce Wittner, Stephen Soldz, Lenni Brenner, Karl Grossman, Frank Spinney, Paul Krassner, Gabriel Kolko, Stan Goff, Diana Johnstone etc.etc. I’ve been reading it selectively (reading only authors of that calibre) for twenty years and it comes as a complete hallucination to me that I have been sucked into some conspiracy promoting website

    CounterPunch belongs to a long and noble form of journalism dedicated to muckraking, not conspiracy theories. That is the tradition to which Alexander Cockburn, Jeffrey St. Clair and Joshua Frank subscribe.

    Cherrypicking diffs and you can prove that the New York Times is notoriously erratic in its reportage of facts. It isn’t of course but it got the Iraq, Afghanmistan, war on terror etc consistently wrong when CounterPunch consistently provided expert analysis by critics which consistently undercut the ostensible accuracy of mainstream reportage. The same goes for reportage on the Middle East (No mainstream newspaper, as opposed to specialist Human Rights organs like Amnesty International, B'tselem, Human Rights Watch) which the Washington Post, NYTs et al., almost never cite) gives much coverage to the massive contradictions in US and Western policy there. Counterpunch does. Nishidani (talk) 22:34, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

  • Option 2 - The evidence presented against Counterpunch is enough to suggest that we can't rely on the publication's editors fact-checking the contributions. But, the evidence thus far suggests that a significant portion of the contributors, possibly even a majority, are experts in their field who are citeable regardless of the editorial staff. Randomly clicking on the current front page, the only articles not written by academics were ones written by a circuit judge and an activist. It's certainly not generally reliable, but if a significant portion of the source's content is written by experts in relevant fields then that sounds more like "Unclear or additional considerations apply" than anything else. signed, Rosguill talk 04:23, 28 September 2021 (UTC)
Re Nishidani and Rosguill: I agree CP publishes some significant authors whose opinion might occasionally be due, which is why I argued for option 3 not 4. But the list of "reputable professionals most with academic work to their name and reliably published elsewhere" given here doesn't inspire confidence. Gareth Porter, who says that Assad isn't responsible for chemical attacks in Syria; Ray McGovern, who compared 9/11 to the Reichstag fire and said the DNC hack was an inside job; Tariq Ali, who claimed the White Helmets are actually al-Qaeda[20]; Lenni Brenner, whose work is cited by Holocaust denialists and has been called an "antisemitic hoax";[21] Diana Johnstone, whose work denies the basic facts of the Yugoslav war and who used her Counterpunch column to say that there's no evidence that Marine Le Pen is antisemitic. A 2015 analysis done by one anti-Zionist activist showed that the content by significant leftist writers such as Pilger was dwarfed by the quantity of content by white supremacists and cranks, with Gilad Atzmon, Israel Shamir and Alison Weir getting a large number of columns, and Paul Craig Roberts and Franklin Lamb being among the most published authors.[22] BobFromBrockley (talk) 10:55, 28 September 2021 (UTC)
For its time, Lenni Brenner's work was pathfinding, a point of departure, not arrival. Anyone can play that game Bob. I see you cite Paul Bogdanor, 'An Antisemitic Hoax: Lenni Brenner on Zionist ‘Collaboration’ With the Nazis,' Fathom get at Lenni Brenner as another 'self-hating Jew' (by the way a large number of contributors to CounterPunch happen to be Jewish, and anti-Zionist, and are never forgiven for breaking ranks. I remember Bogdanor's reliability being questioned for one or two wikibios years back because of his perceived rhetoric of smearing and guilt by association, and consensually excluded. Suffice it to read his puerile attempt to take the measure of Noam Chomsky in the 2017 book. As for the rest, give me the name of a journalist with an impeccable record for making the correct call throughout their careers. Thomas Friedman? who fell, like several dozen other major names in the trade, Christopher Hitchens etc. hook line and sinker for the known fairy tale manufactured by the Bush administration to get a justification for invading Iraq? Every major journalist or scholar will have some skeleton in the closet. Not by that token must it be dragged out on every occasion to smear the general professionalism. Giorgio Bocca, one of Italy’s finest postwar journalists, when he was a 19 years old apprentice, raised almost completely within Fascism, paraphrased the Protocols of Zion to make a point about what he called Zionist imperialism back in 1939. He woke up to the bullshit he had been fed when war broke out, and joined the resistance. He became a star of postwar critical journalism, and happened to be in Israel in 1967 when the war broke out, writing for the mainstream Corriere della Sera. His articles noted that Israelis appeared untroubled by the implications of their occupation of the West Bank. This was unforgiveable and soon after, and for 2 decades he was hounded on numerous occasions by people waving photostats of his juvenile piece, suggesting he was a doctrinaire antisemite and not to be trusted in anything he wrote, merely because he made a negative murmur about Israel's problems. That was bullshit of course, and never affected the recognition broadly given him as a great investigative journalist. Examples of this tactic are becoming legion: especially now in the witchhunts for putative antisemites under every rug or nook and cranny. Dissent from an orthodoxy is not acceptable. And let me add, I find Gilad Atzmon well worth reading (and indeed listening to, esp. when he engages with Yaakov Shapiro, an ultra-orthodox rabbi who isn't hamstrung by fear of arguments). I find nothing scandalous in CP airing his views here and there. I don't share his views; I'm stimulated by the spectre of the straightjacket he thinks he was born in and his wild Houdini like philosophical struggle to wriggle out of those toils. He's dealing with a personal crisis of identity, and no one in the fold should feel menaced, since his use of 'Jew' is self-reflexive.) I'm not unnerved by prejudice. I am unnerved by attempts to police minority views out of sight. CounterPunch does not cater to conspiracies, or regularly run fake news as is being repeatedly asserted here. We should use it when the author is a respected expert in their field, and has useful information. That is not an endorsement of CP, but commonsense.Nishidani (talk) 16:04, 28 September 2021 (UTC)
Yeah, I honestly struggled with whether option 2, 3 or even 4 best fit my assessment of the situation; after all, even deprecated sources are technically OK for use if the article in question is a verifiable relevant expert. My concern is that I'm honestly unsure as to the balance of reputable vs crank on Counterpunch, and at such a juncture I think it would be foolish to push for anything other than an "unclear/no consensus" outcome. A lot of editors in this discussion (and other reliability discussions) clearly hold the perspective that any valid cause for doubt is reason for deprecation, which I think is a bit reckless. I would like to see more analyses like the Meldungen source you cite that actually attempt to answer what the balance of content is. signed, Rosguill talk 14:53, 28 September 2021 (UTC)
No, some of the outside contributors who have articles hosted on CP have cited WP as a source. The two I checked arent written by established experts and as such should not be cited. Please try to recognize that saying "CounterPunch" does something is essentially meaningless, given there are no staff writers and every piece is attributed to an outside contributor. That outside contributor cited WP, and that may well mean that column should not be cited. It does not mean that the work by actual experts (eg Henry Giroux writing about Paulo Freire are any less reliable. nableezy - 15:26, 28 September 2021 (UTC)
  • Option 2. The amount of unacknowledged borrowing from or accessing of, Wikipedia by (mainstream) journalists is highly notable: anyone who has worked to secure quality in several areas of the encyclopedia must be familiar with the experience of seeing, even in turns of phrase, recurrent unacknowledged reliance on our anonymous work. The frenetic know-all expectations of a 24/7 newscycle stresses the need both to be competitive in the market, and knowledgeable at speed by casting for data bases that provide one with a quick overview or research point of departure. We should be both proud of that, and, at the same time, demand of ourselves and the articles we assist in writing rigorous criteria to ensure that what is on a page is reliable. But that has a caveat.
Wiki is programmed for neutrality - but that does not translate out as restricting what we add to it to 'mainstream newspaper sources', since they too have their editorial biases. The New York Times or the Washington Post will not tell its readers most of the details about the Middle East conflict that any reader of the mainstream Israeli press can garner, for example. The latter leaves that to the lower circulation, highbrow New York Review of Books, which, in its articles, extends the scope and focus to the less comfortable details you get in the Israeli press, or academia or on any number of 'muckraking' counter-systemic publications like Mondoweiss and Counterpunch. It makes that partition in coverage apparently on a rather cynical analysis of what the respective readerships can tolerate. Our neutrality therefore cannot acquiesce in the rather simplistic idea that the 'mainstream' press tells it all (WP:Systemic bias). In discussing RS on controversial topics, one would make a grievous error to make Wikipedia merely a pipeline or mirror of mainstream papers, official policy papers or the output of positioned and prestigious national thinktanks -most of which are locked into a normative narrow national interest perspective. The key point is to look at the quality of the authorship, not the venue, though I think one must give pause while considering that the absurd caricature we have above in a short laundry list of offbeat articles over 27 years should not undercut our awareness that a venue established by a distinguished family of professional journalists- Alexander Cockburn, Andrew Cockburn and Patrick Cockburn who work or worked for numerous mainstream papers and monthlies cannot be dismissed out of hand as fringe, unreliable, or their counter mainstream reportage trashed as incompetent paranoia mongering. I for one only read perhaps 5% of what Mondoweiss or Counterpunch offers, on the basis of the professional qualifications of the authors hosted. A blanket dismissal of such websites, as is proposed here, would seriously damage the comprehensiveness of our coverage. I join Rosquill and Nableezy: if the 4 options we are given are the straightjacket in which we must 'vote', option two is the way to go. Nishidani (talk) 09:15, 28 September 2021 (UTC)
Nishidani Is it correct to say the Cockburn family rather than Alexander specifically founded it? If so, does it being a family enterprise make it more reliable? Especially when the father was famous for publishing fake news from the Spanish Civil War on Moscow's orders, as per our article on him? BobFromBrockley (talk) 11:07, 28 September 2021 (UTC)
By that link I meant to show that the Cockburns, apart from Claud (whose memoirs I read with some skepticism when they came out in one volume) have for 2 generations cut their teeth on journalism, and the three sons, now two, were/are acknowledged to be very professional and highly knowledgeable writers in that field. Yes, their father was a communist, and faked news. Unless you religiously believe that the sins of the fathers are visited on their sons (Deuteronomy 5:9, corrected however at Deut.24:16), your point is guilt by association. Cockburn opposed appeasement on the other hand which notable parts of the British establishment commended. There are two forms of reporterly deception which wikipolicy doesn't appear to grasp in their complicit forms:one is outright misrepresentation of the facts (we cope with that by our RS criteria). The other consists of knowingly excluding crucial information that has been ascertained and written up by experts, scholars, etc. Our 'mainstream' guidelines fail to come up with measures to cope with this. Everytime I click on any number of endless links to the The Algemeiner, Tablet, Jewish News, I read rubbish, a soothing spin for a comforting community-wide POV, thoroughly addicted to suppressing any fact that might render their simplistic narratives more nuanced. None of them can call on the range of expertise CounterPunch draws on. Yet no one complains. The difference is only that CounterPunch is 'leftist' (whatever that means) or counter-consensual. Several of the erase-as-deprecatable find nothing wrong with that kind of source. Neutrality demands that all significant points of view, per WP:Due, be heard. Erasure of a source like this is simply censoring a legitimate source of querying of a mainstream narrative, frequently by authoritative scholars, journalists and writers. Worse, it is a form of laziness. One should read, where possible, everything relevant, rather than restrict what can be read for use to a handful of centrist news organs, which we all know, share variously particular interests and POVs. It's the devil's advocate side of good reportage.Nishidani (talk) 13:30, 28 September 2021 (UTC)
Not really sure alternatively blaming the CIA and the Jews for 9/11 is the devil's advocate side of good reportage. I agree that sources that will buck mainstream Western narratives at times, like Reason, Al Jazeera, Kommersant, and The New Indian Express are good to use for providing balance. But, the difference lies in the how these sorts of established news organizations (a) fact-check before publication and (b) respond when they find factual errors in their reporting. If the organization engages in fact-checkign before printing information and responds by issuing corrections and retractions when their coverage is factually incorrect, those represent editorial control and help to build a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy. CounterPunch, however, does not appear to do this to any reasonable extent; I have no clue how the ol' "Jews-did-9/11" trope would slip through multiple times if CounterPunch actually was an entity with a habit of producing good reportage that we could confidently use to verify facts. — Mikehawk10 (talk) 06:07, 8 October 2021 (UTC)
  • Option 2 per excellent contributions from Nableezy and Nishidani and others. --NSH001 (talk) 09:46, 28 September 2021 (UTC)
  • Option 4. While editors have established that otherwise-reliable sources do write articles for it, Dr. Swag Lord makes an excellent point about WP:SOURCES; that the work, the creator, and the publisher all affect reliability. In this case, that means we have to take into account the fact that these sources choose to write a particular article for a publisher who regularly publishes false and fabricated information and not a more reliable publisher. Because of this, the only prudent course of action is to depreciate the publisher and through them the particular article in question, unless the particular article has also been published in reliable sources with an editorial process added later to correct ambiguity, see below. Summoned by the bot; unclear to which RfC, and so drew the short straw BilledMammal (talk) 12:01, 28 September 2021 (UTC)
  • Option 4, at mosta 3+++. This site is full of crap and conspiracy theories by nobodies. Sometimes more significant people post there when they can't publish what they want to say elsewhere. No editorial oversight to speak of. Free1Soul (talk) 16:14, 28 September 2021 (UTC)
  • Option 4 - "All significant viewpoints" - if the only place you can find a particular point of view is CounterPunch, that's probably a sign that the point of view is not WP:DUE. We can, should, and must demand better from our sources. We don't need to dig in the deepest cesspits of muck to include fringe nonsense. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 18:28, 28 September 2021 (UTC)
  • Option 2 per Nableezy, Nishidani, and Rosguill, and Option 3 per BobFromBrockley; in general anything but 1 and 4. We may mention that they have published authors with fringe views or who have promoted conspiracy, or that it should not be used for key facts or controversies, but that articles written by academic and subject-matters can be used if due, and caution to be careful. I do not understand how that means we have to take into account the fact that these sources [I assume they mean the author] choose to write a particular article for a publisher who regularly publishes false and fabricated information and not a more reliable publisher. Does that mean any academic or subject-expert is no longer reliable because they have written for CounterPunch? Either way, I err on the case of caution per Rosquill, and that it would be foolish to push for anything other than an "unclear/no consensus" outcome. I also concur that it would be helpful, rather than cite controversial CounterPunch's own articles (e.g. the Holodomor being 'fiction' refers to the etymological sense to emphasize that it was a genocide and deliberate, on which there is a dispute about among scholars; [t]here was a very serious famine in the USSR, including (but not limited to) the Ukrainian SSR, in 1932–33. But there has never been any evidence of a 'Holodomor' or 'deliberate famine' ...), to cite more analyses like the Meldungen source ... that actually attempt to answer what the balance of content is. Davide King (talk) 23:56, 28 September 2021 (UTC)
Thank you for pointing out that lack of clarity; I believe it is more clear now. BilledMammal (talk) 00:03, 3 October 2021 (UTC)
  • Option 4, full of conspiracy theories on 9/11 and vaccinations.Nyx86 (talk) 15:23, 29 September 2021 (UTC)
  • Option 4 - it’s a shame to see a once great publication come crashing down like this. I still remember at the outset of the wars after 9/11 (specifically the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq) when it used to publish exposes that nobody in the mainstream media dared to touch with a ten foot pole. Somewhere along the line things took a very wrong turn and now it’s just a cottage industry of conspiracy theories. The example of its position on vaccines is one I had no idea about till I read this comment section and one find especially disappointing and alarming. I can understand why it or anybody would see big pharma as the great satan but this can’t come at the cost of playing god with people’s lives. (Which in essence is what they are doing by telling people to not get vaccinated) Estnot (talk) 22:29, 29 September 2021 (UTC)
Comment. Do you really think you can get away with that kind of counterfactual rubbish? Counterfactual rubbish. Again, ‘votes’ which are based on a blatant form of dismissive caricature that ignore the factual record and the fact that editorially, CounterPunch doesn't dictate a line. It hosts numerous contrasting viewpoints and leaves it to its readers individually to judge. E.g. numerous recent endorsements of anti covid vaccination and control methods such as here, here, here, and here (deconstructing conspiracy theories of Covid and China, or here and here, to cite just this last month or so.Nishidani (talk) 14:47, 30 September 2021 (UTC)
was your comment to me? Estnot (talk) 23:27, 30 September 2021 (UTC)
Comment I am totally dismayed about the double-standard here; with MSM all sorts of wrong info is accepted for years, and nobody here wants to ban them. I have mentioned false information by The New York Times above, I can also mention the "info" by Luke Harding in The Guardian about a meeting between Paul Manafort and Assange; a meeting for which there is exactly zero evidence, and which other reportes now take as a joke. (The article/lie is still up, and the Guardian has never apologised). If we treated The Guardian as some here wants to treat CounterPunch, then The Guardian would no longer be a WP:RS. Huldra (talk) 22:29, 30 September 2021 (UTC)
was your comment to me? Estnot (talk) 23:27, 30 September 2021 (UTC)
MY comment was to all (who treat Counterpunch differently from The Guardian, or the NYT); not to a specific editor. And I could link to further absurdhoods from Harding in The Guardian about Assange/Trumph; just in the last month or two) Huldra (talk) 23:41, 30 September 2021 (UTC)
  • Option 2 - per Nishidani and Huldra. You can say most news sources or opinion tabloids as untrustworthy if you "cherry picked" articles. I don't see how this is any different from WP or NYT. Qiushufang (talk) 00:49, 1 October 2021 (UTC)
Comment - how convenient of you to show up here AFTER I have voted and while we are in the middle of two edit wars. Estnot (talk) 02:15, 1 October 2021 (UTC)
  • Option 4 I'm not sure why the integrity of NYT and other reliable sources is being questioned when they have a clear history of retracting and apologizing for errors. From what I've seen, CounterPunch is too busy pursuing scandals to establish actual, non-conspiracy support for their most fringe theories. Even if their conspiracy articles make up an arbitrary 1 in 100 of their pieces, the risks of recognizing CounterPunch as a quality source outweigh the benefits of including them as references. RFZYNSPY talk 21:04, 1 October 2021 (UTC)
  • Option 4 Per WP:Source, articles should rely on published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy. Counterpunch regularly blurs news with opinion and under the guise of muckracking had published unsubstantiated and misleading material regarding notable issues such as the Holocaust or vaccines. It can be used to substantiate the author's opinion but no further. Crystalfile (talk) 15:11, 2 October 2021 (UTC)
  • Option 4, fake news on 9/11 and vaccinations. It is worse than a random website, because we know this website publishes fake news. --Kathy262 (talk) 19:48, 2 October 2021 (UTC)
  • Option 4, as it has been well-established as a purveyor of disinformation. Amigao (talk) 20:32, 2 October 2021 (UTC)
  • Option 4 Counterpunch has minimal editorial oversight - no guidelines, fact-checking, corrections or retractions - and is awash with conspiratorial nonsense as MikeHawk10 above demonstrates. AllOtherNamesWereTaken (talk) 11:17, 4 October 2021 (UTC)
  • Option 4, minimal if any positive editorial oversight, they regularly publish conspiracies.--Droid I am (talk) 09:12, 6 October 2021 (UTC)
  • Comment The Media Bias/Fact Check find it "left bias" and "Mostly accurate": (link), while
Ad Fontes Media find CounterPunch has a reliability score of 29.04 (where "Scores above 24 are generally acceptable; scores above 32 are generally good"), while bias (to the left) is -20.33 (on a scale of -42 to + 42,) link, Huldra (talk) 20:39, 8 October 2021 (UTC)
I don't think that Media Bias/Fact Check and Ad fontes Media are really all that reliable, and neither does WP:RSP. — Mikehawk10 (talk) 02:11, 9 October 2021 (UTC)
AD Fontes also give a score of 30.61 to WP:Daily Mail which is higher then Counterpunch. So I think the conclusion is obvious --Shrike (talk) 10:47, 9 October 2021 (UTC)
  • Option 2. The number of "me too" !votes here is a real concern. Only a handful have provided any evidence. CounterPunch is a blog aggregator, not a newspaper. More like a publisher than a source in itself. If we banned publishers according to the most atrocious material they ever published, there would be very few left and even many esteemed university presses would bite the dust. Individual articles on CounterPunch are the responsibility of their authors and should be judged according to the expertise of the author. Some of the articles are appalling and absolutely must not be used as sources, while others are perfectly fine essays by mainstream experts. Zerotalk 01:52, 9 October 2021 (UTC)
    • How is a "blog aggregator" marginally reliable? Surely, if we're treating this as a self-published blogging platform, the above would lean it towards being no better than generally unreliable, just like Medium. And, given that there are actually people who pick which stories they originally publish—it's not as if I can put something up on the CounterPunch website just by making my own blog—I think that the (lack of) fact-checking by CounterPunch does actually put this in a worse category than Medium or BlogSpot.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Mikehawk10 (talk • contribs)
I didn't say CounterPunch is reliable, I said that articles are the responsibility of their authors. CounterPunch is not an open blog; they choose to allow or disallow articles. But they do not offer any type of fact-checking nor do they promise that articles are correct. Actually, op-eds in mainstream newspapers are not fact-checked either; that's a wiki-myth. Unless you think that CounterPunch maliciously alters the articles that are published there, only the expertise of the author is relevant to deciding reliability. Zerotalk 13:28, 9 October 2021 (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.

Pinkvilla, Meaww & Bollywood Life

Moved from Wikipedia talk:Reliable sources/Perennial sources § Pinkvilla, Meaww & Bollywood Life
 – Tayi Arajakate Talk 02:01, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

Are Indian entertainment sites like Pinkvilla, Meaww and Bollywood Life considered acceptable reliable sources? I've been seeing them used increasingly lately on various pages I monitor (to source film/tv show/ent news), but they read at times like Just Jared and TMZ. Though they do report on regular news also, PV+BL feature a lot of celebrity+entertainment gossip pieces and don't strike me as high quality sources. Meaww appears to be more reliable than the other two (it doesn't have any section titled Gossip/Celeb Gossip). -- Carlobunnie (talk) 23:51, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

Carlobunnie, you should move this to Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard if you want more responses. This talk page is mostly for discussing the perennial sources list and not source reliability itself. But anyways, you are right about Bollywood Life and Pinkvilla being gossip/clickbait sites, Pinkvilla is better with editorial control when compared to most other similar sites and has actual journalists working for them unlike the others but still not the best source. Don't know about Meaww, it doesn't appear to be an Indian site? Tayi Arajakate Talk 07:28, 2 October 2021 (UTC)
My apologies. I thought here was appropriate to ask, but I'll go there. Thank you for the reply. -- Carlobunnie (talk) 07:46, 2 October 2021 (UTC)
Notified: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Film, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Film/Indian cinema task force. Tayi Arajakate Talk 02:08, 3 October 2021 (UTC)
I'm familiar only with Meaww, but it is a terrible low quality internet tabloid that should be removed on sight. Hemiauchenia (talk) 02:10, 3 October 2021 (UTC)
Meaww is listed as generally unreliable for biographies of living people, see Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Perennial sources#MEAWW. When it comes to Pinkvilla and Bollywoodlife, I agree – they publish a lot of gossip/trivia that has nothing to do with actual information about a person or a film. The Indian cinema task force guidelines on sources lists both Pinkvilla and Bollywoodlife as sources that "should not be considered reliable sources". --bonadea contributions talk 13:08, 3 October 2021 (UTC)
Thanks for pointing out it has an entry on the page. Just saw it was added to the list since July. No clue how I missed that as I check here pretty often. To be specific, all three sites are being used to source episodic content for this ongoing South Korean web series, not BLP content. Though I wouldn't use them at all, ik certain lower-quality sources are sometimes allowed when it's regarding non-BLP/non-political content, hence my requesting further opinions before taking it up w the editor that's been adding them (and other unreliable sources like Republicworld) to the article. I'm assuming they're unaware the sites are considered unreliable or that they believe they're okay for non-controversial content. -- Carlobunnie (talk) 17:21, 3 October 2021 (UTC)
  • Note, I've removed the present MEAWW entry, there are two past discussions on it but with minimal comments; e.g, the second one has one query and a single line reply to it so I don't think it meets WP:RSPCRITERIA. It can probably be included back after this discussion is archived, if enough people discuss its reliability. Tayi Arajakate Talk 00:32, 4 October 2021 (UTC)
I hope more editors participate in the discussion so the entry can be re-added to the page. I spoke to the editor I mentioned above (who was using the 3 sites + Republic World) and they apparently believe that once a source has an article on WP that means it can be used. I can't even begin to imagine how many others might also mistakenly think the same way and be using unrel sources elsewhere on WP. -- Carlobunnie (talk) 00:54, 4 October 2021 (UTC)
That's a very strange arguement for them to make. Btw, one can still link to the discussions in the archives to show there is a consensus that Meaww is unreliable, the RSP list isn't supposed to be exhaustive. Tayi Arajakate Talk 02:25, 4 October 2021 (UTC)
  • Meaww is generally unreliable. I've removed it from several BLPs in the past due to gossip and reliability issues. Specifically, I suspect it's a WP:CIRC risk, since I've seen it used to support info that is unlikely to have come from anywhere other than Wikipedia (WP:DOB info comes to mind). No comment on the other two. Grayfell (talk) 05:16, 6 October 2021 (UTC)
  • I want to comment in agreement with Grayfell. Meaww always seems to come up in Google results for a lot of pop cultural topics. I have never gotten the sense that their articles were meant for anything besides clicks (happy to be shown that I'm wrong tho). For that reason, I don't think (at the very least) it can be used a measure of notability which is one of the key expectations for a reliable source imo. –MJL ‐Talk‐☖ 06:16, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

RfC: Polish sources


A dispute has been raging in June and July about reliability of some sources in the context of Jan Żaryn, a conservative Polish politician, which spilt into WP:NPPSG, hence the scope of the request. Details will be mentioned in the "Discussion" section on the dispute, so that the RfC question fits in here.

Please evaluate the following resources in the following manner:

Thank you. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 19:22, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

Survey: Polityka

Webpage: [45]

I'm posting it again as a separate remark since my previous note has been removed by Mellow Boris[46] Mellow Boris (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic and is a new account. - GizzyCatBella🍁 09:45, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

I registered on 21 May 2020, more than a year ago.Mellow Boris (talk) 09:47, 5 September 2021 (UTC)
You made 64 edits in total, scattered within 7 days throughout the year (not including entries you made today). The bulk was regarding the area under discussion. - GizzyCatBella🍁 10:06, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

Survey: OKO.press

Webpage: [47]

  • Option 1/2. They feature a fact-checker, although users should be cautious about using "according to OKO.press fact-checker" statements, because at least one was found to be essentially an opinion piece (but it should not be excluded altogether - users should use their best judgment to determine whether the whole piece is actually about fact-checking, and only after determining that they should). On the other hand, for assertions of fact and for their investigations, I see no reasons for unreliability. Moreover, their coverage has been extensively used in scholarly works for citing factual coverage: [48], [49], [50], [51], [52], [53], [54], [55], [56], [57] etc. That said, it is partisan and disproportionately uses heavily loaded labels (such as fascist or homophobic, which should generally be avoided per MOS:RACIST) and the same caveat as with Polityka applies here. In neither the case of Polityka, nor oko.press, should this caveat be an automatic reason/excuse for suppression of information, even in light of discretionary sanctions, including BLPs. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 19:22, 4 September 2021 (UTC)
  • Option 3 - it would be more appropriate to say that they "have appropriated the language of fact checking". Their "fact checks" don't actually check any facts but offer opinions of a subjective nature and then they call it "fact checking". Like, anyone can CLAIM to be a "fact checker", but such a claim does't automatically make you Snopes or Politifact. In fact, by now, there's lots of hyper-partisan outlets (mostly on the right, but as in this case, sometimes on the left) who dress up their partisanship or even outright spreading of misinformation as "fact checking". Also, as Szmender notes, the overall tone of Oko's pieces is overwhelmingly hyperbolic and hysterical (a simple disagreement is presented as a "vicious attack" etc) and that's not even getting to the issue of cherry picking and selective use of context. Volunteer Marek 19:48, 4 September 2021 (UTC)
  • Option 1/2. IMHO they are trying to be a Polish Bellingcat, but they are much more active, not as well respected internationally, and partisan. I do actually agree with their editorial line more often than not, but they are "new". Not seeing any red flags outside that, but they do have a very obvious bias and don't pretend it to hide it. Just like there are obvious pro-government media in Poland these days, there are obvious opposition media and they are smack right there. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 01:49, 5 September 2021 (UTC)
  • Option 1. Superb reputation. Won Index of Censorship award in 2020 [58]. International media uses them, quotes them: [59][60][[61][62].Mellow Boris (talk) 07:41, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

I'm posting it again as a separate remark since my previous note has been removed by Mellow Boris[63] Mellow Boris (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic and is a new account. - GizzyCatBella🍁 09:45, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

I registered on 21 May 2020, more than a year ago.Mellow Boris (talk) 09:47, 5 September 2021 (UTC)
You made 64 edits in total, scattered within 7 days throughout the year (not including entries you made today). The bulk was regarding the area under discussion. - GizzyCatBella🍁 10:06, 5 September 2021 (UTC)
And as others have already pointed out, being quoted somewhere does not establish reliability. Volunteer Marek 03:30, 11 September 2021 (UTC)
It’s nothing like Washington Post. Volunteer Marek 07:14, 6 October 2021 (UTC)
What in the world does that completely unrelated deletion discussion have to do with this source? Volunteer Marek 07:16, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

Survey: naTemat

Webpage: [66]

I'm posting it again as a separate remark since my previous note has been removed by Mellow Boris[68] Mellow Boris (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic and is a new account. - GizzyCatBella🍁 09:45, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

I registered on 21 May 2020, more than a year ago.Mellow Boris (talk) 09:48, 5 September 2021 (UTC)
You made 64 edits in total, scattered within 7 days throughout the year (not including entries you made today). The bulk was regarding the area under discussion. - GizzyCatBella🍁 10:06, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

Survey: gazeta.pl

Webpage: [69]

I'm posting it again as a separate remark since my previous note has been removed by Mellow Boris[70] Mellow Boris (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic and is a new account. - GizzyCatBella🍁 09:45, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

I registered on 21 May 2020, more than a year ago.Mellow Boris (talk) 09:48, 5 September 2021 (UTC)
You made 64 edits in total, scattered within 7 days throughout the year (not including entries you made today). The bulk was regarding the area under discussion. - GizzyCatBella🍁 10:06, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

Survey: Telewizja Polska (Wiadomości on TVP1, TVP Info, etc.)

Webpage: [72]. Note. We are NOT discussing pundits or talk shows.

Option 2/leaning 1, not syndicated from PAP, pre-2015. TVP has had quite a lot of influence from whoever ruled, and indeed the news were skewed towards whoever ruled Poland, [79], [80], but it was a far smaller extent than today. A sample from protest coverage has actually shown TVP in quite a positive light [81], but it's more of a sample rather than a general assessment.
Option 1 for non-controversial non-political coverage. Sports, culture, and news reports in which the government, or the party, has not got interest, or some really trivial facts, like opening of a motorway, are not something shouldn't be able to source to them; though often this info is syndicated from PAP. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 19:22, 4 September 2021 (UTC)
  • It's complicated, which is to say, I mostly agree with Szmenderowiecki. In fact I'd even consider Option 4 for modern "political or otherwise controversial content". It's propaganda-level - "all hail the current political party and its glorious leaders", extremely biased and simplistic. It is of course important to note that their older articles, as well as the ones on non-controversial issues, are still ok-ish. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 01:55, 5 September 2021 (UTC)
  • Option 3 to 4. Filled with anti-LGBT, anti-immigrant, anti-EU, and other far-right bullshit from the Polish government. It was better under previous government, but that just shows that they are independent editorially from the government.Mellow Boris (talk) 07:43, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

I'm posting it again as a separate remark since my previous note has been removed by Mellow Boris[82] Mellow Boris (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic and is a new account. - GizzyCatBella🍁 09:45, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

I registered on 21 May 2020, more than a year ago.Mellow Boris (talk) 09:48, 5 September 2021 (UTC)
You made 64 edits in total, scattered within 7 days throughout the year (not including entries you made today). The bulk was regarding the area under discussion. - GizzyCatBella🍁 10:06, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

Survey: Polskie Radio

Webpage: [85]

  • Same assessment as TVP. There is virtually no difference between the two. The news on the webpage have virtually the same structure and the controlling body (National Media Council, RMN) is the same, i.e. the government. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 19:22, 4 September 2021 (UTC)
  • More or less. There are differences between programs, Polskie Radio Program III used to be very respected in culture, but recently it got mangled by the new management and like all state media, suffers from lack of quality when it comes to anything political/controversial. Again, we need to be careful not to discard it in other areas, however, it was historically reliable, and it still is on non-controversial topics.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 01:58, 5 September 2021 (UTC)
  • Option 3 to 4. Like TVP. Filled with anti-LGBT, anti-immigrant, anti-EU, and other far-right bullshit from the Polish government. It was better under previous government, but that just shows that they are independent editorially from the government.Mellow Boris (talk) 07:44, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

I'm posting it again as a separate remark since my previous note has been removed by Mellow Boris[86] Mellow Boris (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic and is a new account. - GizzyCatBella🍁 09:45, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

I registered on 21 May 2020, more than a year ago.Mellow Boris (talk) 09:48, 5 September 2021 (UTC)
You made 64 edits in total, scattered within 7 days throughout the year (not including entries you made today). The bulk was regarding the area under discussion. - GizzyCatBella🍁 10:06, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

Survey: TV Republika

Webpage: [87].

  • Option 2 for non-syndicated content; option 3 for pundits A lot of what they publish is in fact syndicated from PAP, which should not be taken into account because it does not belong to TV Republika. Their own news reporting seems OK, though materials on history should not be used, unless an expert in the field actually writes/speaks to them. Materials previously published in the three sources below should not be used, either. Pundits are unreliable. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 19:22, 4 September 2021 (UTC)
  • Option 3 to 4. Like TVP. Filled with anti-LGBT, anti-immigrant, anti-EU, and other far-right bullshit from the Polish government. It was better under previous government, but that just shows that they are independent editorially from the government. Separating PAP from non-PAP here would be cumbersome.Mellow Boris (talk) 07:46, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

I'm posting it again as a separate remark since my previous note has been removed by Mellow Boris[88] Mellow Boris (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic and is a new account. - GizzyCatBella🍁 09:45, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

I registered on 21 May 2020, more than a year ago.Mellow Boris (talk) 09:49, 5 September 2021 (UTC)
You made 64 edits in total, scattered within 7 days throughout the year (not including entries you made today). The bulk was regarding the area under discussion. - GizzyCatBella🍁 10:06, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

Survey: Do Rzeczy

Webpage: [89]

  • Option 3/4. While some might argue that I am being excessively harsh towards conservative sources, the case here is essentially Washington Times or Washington Examiner, but they have a notoriously fringe position on COVID; rejecting scientific consensus altogether and spreading COVID misinformation as can be seen on prominently displayed editorials by Warzecha, Lisicki, etc., [90], [91], [92], [93] and in news coverage such as here: [94], [95]. The same goes for lockdowns and other COVID-related issues. No, mass media need not conform to WP:MEDRS standards but at least they should not spread misinformation. And yes, [96] they promote anti-immigrant discourse by essentially fear-mongering; and for them, climate science has more to do with hoaxes and religion than science. WP:ABOUTSELF statements are attributable to the website, but otherwise it merits at least the red label. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 19:22, 4 September 2021 (UTC)
To clarify my criteria: WSJ and The Australian also host quite a lot of climate deniers, lockdown and vaccine sceptics, and so on. The reason why they are considered reliable and Do Rzeczy (or Gazeta Polska, which in fact employs quite a lot of journalists from Do Rzeczy) is not is that the former strictly divide their opinion section from the normal reporting (which is good for WSJ and quite good for The Australian) while the latter do not. In fact, the only suggestion that it is an opinion piece is the URL of form dorzeczy.pl/opinie/* instead of dorzeczy.pl/* - they don't make it otherwise visible, and yes, not every opinion piece is under "Opinie" subsection. They quite often regurgiate debunked theories about COVID (PCR Ct (cycle threshold) number being apparently too high, vaccines overrated, I think I've even seen some mask disinfo too), or, in case of normal reporting, reporting on Geert Vanden Bossche in the first link ([97], [98], [99], [100] - quite a crank, as you can see), and, in the second link, using LifeSiteNews, which itself is deprecated. And that's not isolated to COVID, I've seen this trend for lockdowns and scientific topics in general. The same, to a slightly lesser extent (though not COVID, fortunately), concerns Gazeta Polska. At times it's better not to make any reporting than to make bad-faith reporting, as is the case here.
Even for normal news, meh. This article about the abolition of Latin in the Catholic Church is sourced from partly a blog and partly LifeSiteNews. I mean, there are certainly better outlets than that to find coverage on the same topic. For me, if you insist on right-of-center publications, it can be either Wprost (same owner, but better quality) or Rzeczpospolita, which is more centrist than right-of-center now, but still.
We don't strive for diversity of opinions at the expense of reliability.
As for superhistoria.pl, it was not impacted by the change made by VM, so I don't take it into consideration (though yes, I know it's affiliated). This might, in fact, merit a separate discussion or even RfC - history supplements to Polish newspapers, i.a. because of heightened requirements for antisemitism in Poland topics. I stick to dorzeczy.pl only. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 12:22, 5 September 2021 (UTC)
  • I concur that their coverage on controversial or political issues is highly biased, but I am not sure they need to be totally depreciated. Articles like [101] or [102] - the first two I checked - seem fine. I'd say the source can be used on non-controversial issues, and on issues related to politics and medical topics, has to be attributed. Well, for medical, it probably should confirm to MEDRS which it doesn't, so there's that. If we really want to depreciate it from some areas, I'd like to see examples of specific controversial sentences referenced to it? In the end, the conservatives need to have their POV represented too (as long as it is clearly attributed). --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 02:10, 5 September 2021 (UTC)
    WP:ABOUTSELF statements can be sourced to virtually any outlet. It's an exception than a rule not to do that. Other than that, I see no legitimate uses of the source. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 10:26, 10 September 2021 (UTC)
  • Option 3 to 4. This is a source that criticizes the Polish government for not being sufficiently anti-LGBT, anti-immigrant, and anti-EU.Mellow Boris (talk) 07:47, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

I'm posting it again as a separate remark since my previous note has been removed by Mellow Boris[103] Mellow Boris (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic and is a new account. - GizzyCatBella🍁 09:45, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

I registered on 21 May 2020, more than a year ago.Mellow Boris (talk) 09:49, 5 September 2021 (UTC)
You made 64 edits in total, scattered within 7 days throughout the year (not including entries you made today). The bulk was regarding the area under discussion. - GizzyCatBella🍁 10:06, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

Survey: niezalezna.pl

Webpage: [104]

Sorry, I've mistaken it with Najwyższy Czas!, which is quite awful. Mea culpa. Regarding niezalezna.pl, the first article you mention, the one about Dowbór-Muśnicki, is syndicated from dzieje.pl (a historical news arm of PAP), the second article is syndicated from PAP (to which they seem to have appended a clickbaity title), so in fact, we may need to evaluate syndicated content from Polish Press Agency in general for the purposes of this request for comment. It makes a big difference in this case if the reporting is syndicated. As for their own content, [107] they syndicate some content from TVP Info, which is not a good sign (in fairness, they are at least honest about it, as you can check it at the bottom of the page). They've also head some fear-mongering about immigrants reported as plain news, and use pretty much the same tactics as TVP Info does, such as exemplified here: [108], [109] (the first link also seems to be a house ad for Albicla (Parler for Poland), but I don't mind it too much, in fact). Fortunately, any more questionable articles that appear sometimes on climate change or science, vaccines and so on (and which are inadequately disclosed as such on Gazeta Polska or Do Rzeczy, are conveniently placed under "opinion" section. However, the methods of their own reporting (not syndicated content) are not what I believe to be compatible with either option 1 or 2, and often mimic the ones that TVP uses, which I have rated accordingly.
Articles for culture or history are almost entirely syndicated from PAP. Filarybiznesu.pl (niezalezna.pl's economic section) doesn't seem bad but will need attribution in most cases. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 13:20, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

I'm posting it again as a separate remark since my previous note has been removed by Mellow Boris[110] Mellow Boris (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic and is a new account. - GizzyCatBella🍁 09:45, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

I registered on 21 May 2020, more than a year ago.Mellow Boris (talk) 09:49, 5 September 2021 (UTC)
You made 64 edits in total, scattered within 7 days throughout the year (not including entries you made today). The bulk was regarding the area under discussion. - GizzyCatBella🍁 10:06, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

Survey: Gazeta Polska

Webpage: [111]

  • Option 3/4. In fact, it's the same as Do Rzeczy, minus the coronascepticism and plus the xenophobic/Germanophobic front pages and content ([112], [113], [114], [115], [116]). And yes, they like conspiracy theories about Smolensk air disaster (the other two outlets do not mention it that prominently but try to say there's some middle ground between MAK's report and the assassination theory), and [117] they aren't at good terms with climate science. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 19:22, 4 September 2021 (UTC)
Note. I'm commenting on post-2005 Gazeta Polska. It did have a different editor-in-chief prior to 2005 - I have not read their coverage before that, so I can't comment on it.

I'm posting it again as a separate remark since my previous note has been removed by Mellow Boris[118] Mellow Boris (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic and is a new account. - GizzyCatBella🍁 09:45, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

I registered on 21 May 2020, more than a year ago.Mellow Boris (talk) 09:49, 5 September 2021 (UTC)
You made 64 edits in total, scattered within 7 days throughout the year (not including entries you made today). The bulk was regarding the area under discussion. - GizzyCatBella🍁 10:06, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

Discussion

OP note

As has been said, the discussion in the article on Jan Żaryn has become a mess. Not delving into intricacies of that waste of resources and time that could have gone to the International Bureau of Weights and Measures for display (Jan Żaryn), some details that you might find useful.

OKO.press has been objected to by three editors, Volunteer Marek (VM), Lembit Staan and GizzyCatBella, on the grounds that it was too partisan and was otherwise unreliable for BLP purposes. Ultimately, one of the fact checks they have produced ([119]) has been found to be unusable as a fact-check, but the reasons for exclusion were different (unreliability, non-notability of the sentence discussed, possible differences in understanding of the words). Other articles have not been universally accepted as either prefectly usable or absolutely unusable. In a similar fashion, objections have been made to include the other three sources from the first four, though no particular determination has been made.

As for the other six resources, on 18 June at around 1:40 AM GMT, VM decided to delete, in three consecutive edits, seven sources from WP:NPPSG#Poland (a pre-RSP listing watch list), on the basis that the !voting in the previous discussions was unduly influenced. According to the edit summaries, VM said that accounts that have not been extended confirmed violated the discretionary sanctions enforced for Eastern Europe topics and antisemitism in Poland when submitting their opinion on the resources [500/30 restriction applies only to the anti-Semitism articles, not E Europe articles in general, though in particular cases, admins might institute these restrictions - my note], alleging that the voting was manipulated by sockpuppets and asserting that most of the voters who voted contrary to VM have been either WP:SPA or otherwise inexperienced users. Rosguill reverted the deletion, but changed the rating, believing that the claims were substantiated. The change went as follows:

OKO.press: rough consensus for RS -> no consensus; TVP, Polish Radio, TV Republika, Do Rzeczy, niezalezna.pl, Gazeta Polska: unreliable -> no consensus

Bob the snob was indeed blocked for sockpuppetry, and Mellow Boris was tagged throughout as a probable SPA, but otherwise no other editor has been found to be guilty of any wrongdoing as far as I'm aware. Engagement in the discussions has been minimal, so in fact, there can't be any consensus (or "no consensus") labels put on discussions with 2-3 editors, as they are not representative. The only one that solicited more attention was about Gazeta Wyborcza and OKO.press, and even there the summary was rather incorrectly changed, in my opinion.

I invite users to evaluate resources once again, and hope more opinions could be solicited based on that.

Pinging all users who were participating in the discussions on RSN that were affected by VM's edits on NPPSG and Jan Żaryn discussing reliability of any of the given resources. (except for SarahSV, my condolences): @Abcmaxx, Darwinek, MyMoloboaccount, Mellow Boris, Volunteer Marek, GizzyCatBella, François Robere, Mhorg, CPCEnjoyer, Lembit Staan, Piotrus, Buidhe, GPinkerton, Astral Leap, V.A. Obadiah, and Rosguill: Szmenderowiecki (talk) 19:22, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

You list four possible options but your agreement with my assessment of Polityka suggests one of the options should explicitly address BLP issues. Like "generally reliable but use with caution when it comes to BLP, particularly opinion pieces from the source" or something. Volunteer Marek 19:40, 4 September 2021 (UTC)
I essentially said: copy the assessment from The Nation. It has the caveat for BLPs and I believe it to be an appropriate safeguard. As I have mentioned, the caveat should not, in my opinion, mean that the source is unusable for BLPs, but we should handle it with more care. It's more of Option 1/2 for BLPs. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 19:50, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

Discussion proper

Rosguill reverted the deletion, but changed the rating, believing that the claims were substantiated.: minor correction. I believe that VM's complaints in themselves are enough dissent, in the absence of a wide consensus for reliability, to merit listing as "no consensus". I have not recently evaluated VM's objections and have no opinion about whether the arguments are sound. signed, Rosguill talk 21:44, 4 September 2021 (UTC)
@Szmenderowiecki Since you are discussing 500/30 and sockpuppetry, I have to say that you are display an amazing level of competency on intricate wiki rules and politics, given that you started editing just few months ago, effectively since April, meaning that you've been here for less than half a year. Would you mind sharing a secret on how one can go from registering an account to understanding past ArbCom cases, policies like RS, reviewing DYKs and so on in just few months? Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 02:59, 5 September 2021 (UTC)
Four months is plenty of time to learn the ropes on how Wikipedia works. This comment is essentially casting aspersions that Szmenderowiecki is a sock without evidence. If you think that Szmenderowiecki is a sock of Icewhiz or whoever then you should present evidence at SPI, and not casting bad-faith aspersions here. Hemiauchenia (talk) 03:15, 5 September 2021 (UTC)
Hemiauchenia - Where do you see the word "Icewhiz" in the above question not addressed to you? - GizzyCatBella🍁 16:15, 6 September 2021 (UTC)
GizzyCatBella, do you not want people not involved in your content dispute to participate here? The above question is an aspersion and anyone can point this out. In the same vein, your spamming of "new account with few edit" notes in every section above, with regards to Mellow Boris is an aspersion as well considering they were pinged here. Tayi Arajakate Talk 19:14, 6 September 2021 (UTC)
Look Tayi Arajakate, you are obviously not in the loop, so please be cautious with your judgments. I'm simply disappointed when people ask legitimate questions and others say "you can't make that accusation, file SPI" and then you file an SPI, but that stays open for months. --> [120] - GizzyCatBella🍁 20:18, 6 September 2021 (UTC)
User Mellow Boris, who is in that SPI investigation, has no evidence of sockpuppetry presented against him yet on the SPI page, and the last edit in that investigation was done by you on 19 August, and btw you filed the request on 27 July. I mean, you were discussing the potential socks for 20 days and now the discussion is dead for almost the same time. Were I a checkuser, I'd have declined the request to check users (those not mentioned in the evidence presented) in the first place for want of evidence of apparent sockpuppetry.
I don't know the case, and you were the one who filed it, so I wish you good luck to prove it and get rid of the offenders (if any), as of course less socks => more fairness & less disruption. It's surely in the interest of the community, but it's also in your particular interest as a filer to get the case done. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 13:58, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

@Szmenderowiecki - Regarding some of the editors you pinged:

  • The new account Mellow Boris reactivated his account after one month of inactivity[121] to come here with their view[122].
  • New account V.A. Obadiah hasn't been active since April 27, 2021,[123].
  • Newish account CPCenjoyer hasn't been active since June 29/2021.[124]

I'm speculating Mellow Boris just randomly, luckily, logged in to Wikipedia after being dormant for one month and found your message but how are the last two suppose to hear about your ping? - GizzyCatBella🍁 09:16, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

I got the ping message and commented with a reasoned rationale. This innuendo is unseemly.Mellow Boris (talk) 09:36, 5 September 2021 (UTC)
You made 64 edits in total, scattered within 7 days throughout the year (not including entries you made today). The bulk was regarding the area under discussion. - GizzyCatBella🍁 10:06, 5 September 2021 (UTC)
I pinged all accounts that were not blocked (or under current sanctions), which did not have a notice of WikiBreak/death/whatever excluding their possibility to edit and that participated in the discussion. If they had been inactive, they wouldn't have received a notification in the first place. If you believe the users you mentioned to be violating any policy or being WP:NOTHERE, please go ahead with an ANI/SPI complaint, and their !vote will be struck if such determination is made.
@Boris Mellow: Please do not remove the SPA tags, this makes you no good. Whether these are sound will be determined by the closer. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 11:23, 5 September 2021 (UTC)
@Szmenderowiecki - Inacurate - you also pinged accounts that are now blocked - GPinkerton - [125] - GizzyCatBella🍁 11:32, 5 September 2021 (UTC)
OK, my bad, but they won't receive the notification anyway. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 11:33, 5 September 2021 (UTC)
But all this means that we're back to the situation where "consensus" is constructed on the basis of input from multiple accounts that are either brand new or pretty much brand new and who don't even qualify to edit the articles under the 500/30 sanction. Volunteer Marek 21:33, 5 September 2021 (UTC)
@Volunteer Marek Indeed. Is there a way to bring this entire thread to the ArbCom's attention? They did discuss whether to extend 500/30 to related discussions a while ago, didn't they? Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 06:47, 6 September 2021 (UTC)
Well, let's begin with the fact that if you have evidence of sockpuppetry, long-term abuse or off-wiki coordination, we can always change the outcome because these votes will eventually be deemed invalid, and probably before this RfC closes. But first let's have the evidence of brand-new account/IP abuse. Not all under-500/30 accounts should be automatically suspect, just as no person who looks like a Mexican and who recently received an American passport should be automatically under increased scrutiny for voter fraud.
Secondly, as far as I am aware, there is no 500/30 limit for RfCs or for RSN discussions, unless the topic can be reasonably construed to involve a topic being under such restrictions. This is not the case here. What you seem to propose here (correct me if I'm wrong) is to give more weight to established editors (like you) and attach less weight to whoever is not an ECA, but that's really an WP:EQUAL violation. Tagging possible SPA accounts is appropriate but disregarding anyone who hasn't done X edits and been here for Y days if there is no policy or ruling mandating that is not.
However, if ArbCom has the possibility and wants to intervene here, the relevant policies are changed (or if ArbCom says the intervention is exceptional and a good reasoning is presented), why not? That said, I think this remedy should be used only in extreme cases, and so far I'm only seeing one "suspect" user vote that you propose to disregard. ArbCom should in any case generally exercise restraint. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 14:17, 7 September 2021 (UTC)
we can always change the outcome because these votes will eventually be deemed invalid - unfortunately that's not how this works. RSN and Wikipedia in general is littered with heaps of RfCs and discussions where the outcome was swayed or even determined by banned users with sock puppet accounts and no one ever went back and "changed it". Your example of "Mexican with American passport" is not only fallacious but also quite offensive along several dimensions - I suggest you strike it. Volunteer Marek 07:30, 27 September 2021 (UTC)
RSN and Wikipedia in general is littered with heaps of RfCs and discussions where the outcome was swayed or even determined by banned users with sock puppet accounts and no one ever went back and "changed it" Pretty easy. If the outcomes of the previous RfCs/RSN discussions are not changed after findings of abuse/sockpuppetry, what it means is that either a) we don't adequately weed out sockpuppets (but it's like with criminals - crime will always happen, and socks will always come here), b) we don't dissuade them well enough not to try to unduly influence discussions (it is hardly possible to convince sockpuppets to change their mind) or c) the community doesn't have adequately established reviews of the discussions influenced by socks/meatpuppets (which is the feasible solution). The fact these do not happen, if anything, is not a drawback of RfCs/discussions, which are meant to attract as many diverse voices as possible, but rather a reflection of the lack of (appropriately enforced) safeguards in Wikipedia. You can write Wikipedia history and establish an appropriate task force to determine the scope of what you say is a massive campaign (or several small-scale campaigns) attempting to derail Wikipedia's deliberation process.
The comment about Mexicans was made to demonstrate that such behaviour towards non-EC accounts might often be considered offensive in the eyes of new users, just like ethnic/racial profiling by the police/govt authorities is and should not happen. As such, I don't find it necessary to strike that comment. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 09:02, 1 October 2021 (UTC)
Szmenderowiecki I very briefly dipped my toe into this dispute some months ago, and (wisely IMO) decided to get the hell out. Unfortunately, it seems the same people are arguing the same points they were last time I checked in. Perhaps it might be wise to list this as a proper RfC to get more fresh eyes on this, instead of rehashing the same debate that has been going on for months. BSMRD (talk) 05:27, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

I do not want to repeat myself but essentially I would raise the point of funding for these outlets. Now state media is never truly independent, and TVP/PR has never been free from government pressure, that goes from governments of PZPR, SLD, PO and now PiS. The level of partizanship has increased drastically last few years though, not seen since the 1980s. Now the right-wing and far right in Poland are very media savvy; Do Rzeczy, Sieci, TV Republika, Gazeta Polska and a host of others are funded by either PiS backed institutes or other pro-gorvenment figures and organisations and are nothing more than cheerleaders. That's why they have a much higher output than sales because if they were to compete merely on economic terms they would be long gone, especially with the sheer amount of defamation losses in courts. They are designed to be inflammatory and controversial and it doesn't matter what they publish because they're never held to account and even if they are, it's financial collateral. Before anyone accuses me of political bias there are plenty of independent right wing publications such as Rzeczpospolita newspaper and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna and there's also the Catholic Tygodnik Powszechny; furthermore TVN has had some spectacular failures regarding neutrality and I would be careful with naTemat.pl, as it could be just Tomasz Lis' way of muscling in to vent his personal opinions and grudges. Abcmaxx (talk) 10:41, 7 September 2021 (UTC)


Comment: It seems to me that lists of "reliable" and "unreliable" sources should not be regarded as automatically relieving Wikipedians of an obligation to think critically and to collate information found in one source with information appearing in other sources. I have found excellent articles, by first-rate historians, in popular periodicals – and, conversely, articles of dubious value in otherwise well-regarded journals. Nihil novi (talk) 02:00, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

This is a general caveat for the whole RSP list, not only for Polish sources (see WP:RSPUSE, para 2). That people often tend not to read the fine print is not RSP's, nor this RfC's, problem. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 07:06, 8 September 2021 (UTC)
Indeed. Another side of the coin is that depreciated/lower quality sources can spread guilty by association. "This person published in bad source X so their academic articles are unreliable too". Again, not a problem with RSP... Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 07:19, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

Bad RFC

  • Bad RFC on all - This is a complete disaster. People who (in the main? in part?) do not understand Polish are assessing pretty much the entire Polish print/TV media landscape for general liability, seemingly based on "this is right wing", "this said good things about PiS". What is the actual content dispute you are asking people to arbitrate here? And why is the relative status of these source important? FOARP (talk) 15:45, 14 September 2021 (UTC)

We really can't discuss such a huge swath of sources in this way,.Slatersteven (talk) 15:49, 14 September 2021 (UTC)

And even if we could, we shouldn't absent any 'clear' indication of what the actual dispute is supposed to be about. We are told this has arisen out of an article about a Polish politician but clearly this is related to a particular aspect of that person - and what is it? And why are general RFCs on all these media sources needed to arbitrate it when apparently the actual thing being discussed is not general, but specific? FOARP (talk) 07:41, 15 September 2021 (UTC)
Funny thing is, the article on that politician doesn't even use any of most of these sources!!!!. It's just a false excuse. Volunteer Marek 07:32, 27 September 2021 (UTC)
I believe you can adjudicate a general case coming out of a specific content dispute (which indeed took place, I just attempted to wrap it up so that you don't need to waste time reading through tons of text), or at the very least that's been quite a practice for some time. It may be wrong, but it is commonplace and seems to have become a new standard. You are certainly a person who's been here for longer - I have no benefit of remembering the olden days when the grass was greener and RfCs were topic-specific, so I can't even judge if the way the disputes were previously adjudicated were the ideal (or at least a better) way to establish quality of sources. RSP and NPPSG are apparently conducive to this type of general-grade RfCs based on specific cases of disputes.
The rationale is given in my note, which is the first post in the discussion. You can believe it not to be good enough, but I tried my best to explain why such admittedly big RfC is needed. In fact, archives 328 and 329 of RSN contain an even broader scope of Polish sources (based on which the NPPSG Polish list was initially established), the only difference being that the opener (Abcmaxx) did not call it an RfC. Additionally, the closer should reasonably exclude or diminish the weight of !votes whose rationale is only the wrong political stance when determining the close because of WP:BIASED. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 11:42, 16 September 2021 (UTC)
This is such a bad RFC that I don’t even have a desire to comment. Do you desire a few editors, various brand-new suddenly appearing here, to establish the reliability of the nearly entire Polish media industry? Just like that, in one shot? Really Szmederowiecki? I’ll add more later if I find energy for it, but in my opinion, such an approach should be rejected. (Please also refer to critical comments above) - - GizzyCatBella🍁 06:14, 27 September 2021 (UTC)
How many times do I have to tell everyone that new users do not necessarily create worthless opinions? Please present evidence of wrongdoing, as for now the cries about improper influence, absent evidence, look more like fearmongering than legitimate concerns. Don't attribute something to malice what can be explained by coincidence. That's for one thing.
Second thing, the fact that all the sources here are in Polish is irrelevant to the possibility to start an RfC on them. It's true not everyone understands Polish, but it's also true that a discussion may be started on RSN to discuss all of them should a good reason be there, and there was it. (I'd suggest not to make such sweeping changes to any internal reliability trackers without prior discussion next time to avoid such situations). As for the "nearly entire Polish industry", I haven't even touched a half of it and kept the RfC to the minimum. Among the more known examples not mentioned here are (in no particular order) Rzeczpospolita, Dziennik Gazeta Prawna, Bankier, Puls Biznesu, Polsat News, TVN24, Newsweek Polska, Tygodnik Angora, historical supplements to Polish newspapers, regional newspapers owned by Orlen, w:pl:Warszawska Gazeta, Tygodnik Powszechny, Gość Niedzielny, Fakt, Super Express, Wirtualna Polska, Onet, w:pl:Klub Jagielloński, Krytyka Polityczna, hell, even Gazeta Wyborcza... Do I have to mention more titles not being discussed here to prove that we are not (re)establishing reliability of the nearly entire Polish media industry? What we are touching here is: two state-owned outlets and four right-wing outlets favoured and sponsored by the govt, often cross-employing journalists (the ones that VM decided to change the rating for for whatever reason); two left-leaning or left-wing (or at least anti-PiS) outlets that were disputed while editing on Żaryn, one outlet that got deleted for being a non-RS even while mentioning two historians' opinions (gazeta.pl) and naTemat.pl, whose reliability was also disputed.
The only thing that you may be right about is that such a discussion should have normally taken place on Polish Wikipedia as a place where more Polish speakers can actually have more insight into the sources, but then Polish Wikipedia doesn't have its own RSP.
Finally, while you say I’ll add more later if I find energy for it, I suspect you won't find the energy because you haven't yet found it for the investigation into Mellow Boris you started back in July (it's October now) has been dead for a while even though you were specifically asked and encouraged here to present evidence on SPI more than three weeks ago (you haven't commented there since). Of course, all work here is WP:VOLUNTARY so it's your full right to ignore my advice, or not comment further, just next time don't complain about sockpuppetry if you don't find the energy to present evidence of it happening. You can of course tag whomever you believe to be an single-purpose account. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 09:54, 1 October 2021 (UTC)
  • Bad RfC. Assessing the reliability of sources tends to be difficult and it is normal to consider questions such as the quality of their editorial oversight, the frequency of errors that they make, and the response that they make to these errors. Unfortunately, as much as we try to avoid it, this can require a degree of WP:OR and as such this means that editors need to be able to spend more time reviewing these requests than others, and a large influx of sources to be assessed degrades our ability to do so as editors time is finite.
This issue, which already speaks to the problems with this RfC, is exacerbated by the nature of the sources in question. Specifically, the fact that they are Polish language sources, a fact that greatly complicates the ability of our editors, who typically do not read Polish, to assess them. This means that an already time consuming process is further extended.
As such, I believe this RfC would be better held over many months, such that the workload is spread out and editors can commit the proper amount of time to reviewing each source. Further, while there are some circumstances that holding an RfC without having a specific reference under dispute is suitable, I don't believe this is one of them, and would ask that if future RfC's are held, an example of a problematic reference is provided with them. Summoned by the bot; unclear to which RfC, and so drew the short straw BilledMammal (talk) 11:46, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

min.news

Source: 8.36 meters, 22-year-old Asian long jump genius won the championship and set the world's sixth highest victory over Huang Changzhou this year

Article:Japan Championships in Athletics

The min.news website has been added into blacklist, as it's a content farm website. As for the above article, the reference link's display time can't match the content in the article. By the way, there's no editor/reportes etc on the page. Kethyga (talk) 07:02, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

Renegade Tribune

I have seen this edit on my watchlist (the IP added it five times and was blocked for edit-warring). Is there a good reason why we do not have a edit filter disallowing use of this source on Wikipedia?--Ymblanter (talk) 16:31, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

What an utterly disgusting source, I would second this request. This is pure holocaust denial. I'm not really going to go into the details, but it not only denies the existence of the vast majority of holocaust deaths, but also insults the dead. This filter should be put in place ASAP. Boynamedsue (talk) 21:21, 10 October 2021 (UTC)
Ymblanter: You are asking for WP:EDITFILTER with setting = disallow for any article or talk-page edit that contains renegadetribune.com, no further filtering, no alternatives? Peter Gulutzan (talk) 14:08, 11 October 2021 (UTC)
Yes, I think so - with the exception of their Wikipedia page.--Ymblanter (talk) 14:43, 11 October 2021 (UTC)
Alas, I asked too late. It's already been added to Spam-blacklist. I think that makes this request pointless. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 14:57, 11 October 2021 (UTC)
Indeed, looks like we can close it. Thanks everybody.--Ymblanter (talk) 15:01, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

fee.org Foundation for Economic Education

I found the "Foundation for Economic Education" used in a reference added in this edit (and this earlier edit) at Sturmabteilung by 2A02:C7F:EA5C:2300:5CB2:23A2:9BB1:ADDC (talk · contribs) about the Nazis-are-left-not-right issue. (IP's view is that "Nazis were Far-Left Authoritarian socialists"). They linked this article from fee.org in support. I hadn't heard of fee.org before, but browsing a bit and checking their About us, they appear to be a foundation espousing free-market conservatism, perhaps somewhat like Heritage Foundation, with various educational pursuits and publications, and the FEE website is sort of their Medium, maybe. At first glance, I see no a priori reason to think they are not generally as reliable source as Heritage or Cato is, but I'm not clear what their publication requirements are, and whether the linked article should be considered SPS, personal opinion, or backed by peer review. If anyone has thoughts either about FEE generally, or how to handle this particular article, I'd appreciate hearing it. As far as the particular edit at Sturmabteilung, I've reverted here, as it looks like a RGW-POV edit, especially given their edit summary. My initial view is that the article could be used as a reference for the author's opinion, but not for widely covered issues with settled opinion in peer-reviewed publications. Thoughts on all this? Mathglot (talk) 06:21, 9 October 2021 (UTC)

  • FEE is a crank - sorry, "heterodox" - economics group blog trying to project itself as a serious think tank. I can't think of any circumstance in which FEE would be a good and useful source of definitions of anything else. I think even stuff written in FEE would need to be noted in RSes to be worth mentioning, same as a random blog post. FEE is not a useful source for what Wikipedia does - David Gerard (talk) 09:36, 9 October 2021 (UTC)
  • I would say it shouldn't be used. Think tanks are not automatically considered reliable sources by default; they're like rando websites in that regard - they reflect the views of the people who created them and nothing else. There needs to be a specific reason to think that they have a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy and that they have editorial controls; I'm not seeing either of those things here. --Aquillion (talk) 03:32, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

Flirty Fishing references

Several of the references on this article seemed to be cached versions of a third party wiki that contains individual page PDFs of unknown origin. It seems to be that being unable to verify the origin of those PDFs they completely fail the guidelines.--222.109.91.138 (talk) 02:59, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

Hi, could you link to the sources you feel might be dodgy?Boynamedsue (talk) 15:39, 24 September 2021 (UTC)
Any of the sources that come from Xfamily. It's just a wiki holding random PDFs of unknown origin. At the time of writing this citations 1, 3, 5, 6, 7, 9, and 10. The only thing that has a valid citation in that whole article is that the term "Flirty fishing" was notable enough to make it into a single news article once in the 90s.--222.109.91.138 (talk) 01:00, 25 September 2021 (UTC)
Yup, that article is an abomination. The topic may possibly be notable, but any legitimate article on the subject needs much better sourcing than this. AndyTheGrump (talk) 01:18, 25 September 2021 (UTC)
I see that following my comment above, the IP 222.109.91.138 removed the citations to xfamily.org from the article -entirely appropriately, in my opinion, quite obviously. This edit was reverted by User:Thorwald, with a claim that "We have already debated this ad nauseam". I can find no evidence of any such discussion, and have accordingly restored the IP's edit. There are multiple issues with citing xfamily.org, most of which should surely be readily apparent to anyone even remotely familiar with Wikipedia policy. The provenance of the images is unverifiable, and we have no way of knowing if they are what they are claimed to be. We have no way of knowing if they have been tampered with. They may have been uploaded in breach of copyright. And even if they are genuine, and hosted legitimately, the use to which they are being put is WP:OR. Likewise I see no reason whatsoever to see the xfamily.org wiki, or other self-published documents to be even remotely WP:RS for anything.
I now see that xfamily.org material is also being cited in The Family International, where clearly the same issues arise. That article too needs scrutiny. AndyTheGrump (talk) 01:06, 30 September 2021 (UTC)
The David Berg article, which is closely related, also cites this website. Stephen A. Kent in an academic who has studied this group relatively extensively, so that might be a good starting point for anyone looking for more reliable replacement sources. Grayfell (talk) 02:50, 30 September 2021 (UTC)
If there are other sources available, that is clearly a good thing. The issue here though isn't sources that aren't currently being cited, but sources that are. Accordingly, I'd like to learn whether other people share my opinion (and apparently that of the IP above) that the xfamiliy.org website isn't even remotely suitable as a source for any article relating to The Family International. It would seem a simple enough question, given Wikipedia RS policy, but nevertheless it would seem to need answering, given User:Thorwald's (as yet unverified) claim that the matter has 'already been debated'. A claim used to justify citing unverifiable primary-source material for blatant WP:OR, along with content from a Wiki that has copied material from Wikipedia and other self-published material. I don't think it is too much to ask to suggest that rather than going off at a tangent, this noticeboard needs to actually addresses the concerns raised here by the IP. Isn't that what this notice board is supposed to be for? AndyTheGrump (talk) 09:48, 30 September 2021 (UTC)
I had a quick look at the wiki and the pdfs seem to be copies of The Family's literature from the period and suitably presented as such. I don't see this as any different to say a contemporary road test of a car of that period that has been scanned and published on another site. We accept these as a reliable source in the same way as we accept material archived on the internet archive, archive.today etc. Taking a broader view, the text in wikis is not generally regarded as WP:RS, but that doesn't extend to external sources presented by the wiki. That said, these scans are WP:PRIMARY so the article needs secondary sources to be added. --John B123 (talk) 15:19, 30 September 2021 (UTC)
See Wikipedia:Copyrights#Linking to copyrighted works: "if you know or reasonably suspect that an external Web site is carrying a work in violation of the creator's copyright, do not link to that copy of the work... Knowingly and intentionally directing others to a site that violates copyright has been considered a form of contributory infringement in the United States... Linking to a page that illegally distributes someone else's work sheds a bad light on Wikipedia and its editors." That seems clear and unambiguous. The xfamily.org website is not an 'archive'. It is a website run by critics/former members of The Family. It clearly doesn't hold the copyright to the documents.
And then there is the way the documents are used, which doesn't remotely comply with WP:RS and WP:OR requirements: "Articles should be based on reliable, independent, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy. This means that we publish only the analysis, views, and opinions of reliable authors, and not those of Wikipedians who have read and interpreted primary source material for themselves". We aren't citing a 'road test of a car', we are citing material specifically selected by contributors to an unreliable source with a strong POV regarding the subject matter. We can't even be certain that the material is genuine and hasn't been altered. And where we aren't citing these questionably-uploaded documents, we are citing the Wiki itself: several of the citations are to xfamily.org Wiki pages, not uploaded documents. None of this material is compliant with Wikipedia policies. None of it can be used, per fundamental Wikipedia policies. AndyTheGrump (talk) 18:44, 30 September 2021 (UTC)
US copyright law isn't as black and white as you seem to think. I doubt the wiki owns the copyright of the scans, but that doesn't automatically prevent them from using it. The law promotes freedom of expression by permitting the unlicensed use of copyright-protected works in certain circumstances[126], and including specifically for purposes such as criticism (Section 107). A website run by critics/former members of The Family using The Family's literature would seem to fall under 'fair use' per s107.
As I said above, the article desperately needs secondary sources, but the scans of what The Family was actually promoting at the time provides a valuable asset to increase the depth of the article. --John B123 (talk) 20:38, 30 September 2021 (UTC)
Even if what you say regarding copyright law is correct Wikipedia isn't linking xfamily.org's 'fair-use' criticism of the primary source material, it is linking the material itself, to cite as a 'source' for a Wikipedia contributor's own interpretation. And that doesn't seem to me to be compliant with Wikipedia policy: see the last sentence of WP:LINKVIO. AndyTheGrump (talk) 22:34, 30 September 2021 (UTC)
It doesn't matter what the PDFS 'seem' like. We can't verify what they are. As far as we can tell, they're random PDFs and images hosted on some random 3rd party wiki. We have absolutely no way of verifying if those PDFs are legitimate copies or if they've been altered in anyway. That wiki has no reliable editorial oversight that we can reference.--222.109.91.138 (talk) 00:43, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

These are obscure primary sources, and usually should be avoided for that reason alone. We don't need to presume that xfamily.org is fraudulent, and I don't see any compelling reason to go that far. Are they making extraordinary claims, based on how reliable, independent sources discuss this group? As an archive of obscure primary sources, the website may, plausibly, claim to be hosting these for fair use (similar to xenu.net and Scientology). For us to cite these sources, however, we would need a specific reason, and that reason would have to be based on a reliable, WP:IS. Specific primary sources could be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. Earlier I mentioned Stephen A. Kent as an example of what that kind of source would look like, although I really didn't make that clear enough. Grayfell (talk) 01:11, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

In this era of Photoshop, purported scans of published content do not meet our standards of reliable sources, regardless of the intentions of the hosts. --Orange Mike | Talk 01:22, 3 October 2021 (UTC)
Many of the scans are from The Family's publications Family News and True Komix, which are also archived elsewhere, for example The 7 F's of FFing --John B123 (talk) 11:59, 3 October 2021 (UTC)
Material uploaded to Scribd has exactly the same issues. Probably more so, given how often material is uploaded there with flagrant disregard for copyright. AndyTheGrump (talk) 12:05, 3 October 2021 (UTC)
It actually addresses your earlier comment we have no way of knowing if they are what they are claimed to be --John B123 (talk) 13:20, 3 October 2021 (UTC)
Nope. They could both be derived from the same source - i.e. the Scribed version copied from xfamily.com, or both copied from a doctored source elsewhere. Neither is WP:RS. Neither should be cited. And note that even if they are genuine, the use they are being put to in the Flirty Fishing article is WP:OR. It is astonishingly naive to take statements from Children of God sources as factual. If properly sourced (i.e. directly from WP:RS), such documents might possibly be of use as secondary citations to back up RS material directly stating that '...the Children of God claimed...' or '...believed...' something, but that is all they could possibly be used for. Absolutely nothing sourced solely to xfamily.com belongs in the article at all. It isn't RS for anything, and can't be cited, per policy. AndyTheGrump (talk) 13:36, 3 October 2021 (UTC)
It is astonishingly naive to take statements from Children of God sources as factual How is what they were promoting at the time 'straight from the horses mouth' not factual? such documents might possibly be of use as secondary citations which is what I posted in my first comment on this thread. To clarify, the article needs referencing from reliable secondary sources, but these scans can still add depth to the article in, as you put it, '...the Children of God claimed...' as additional sources. --John B123 (talk) 14:16, 3 October 2021 (UTC)
You might be willing to take at face value claims made by the Children of God, in material apparently intended to encourage their female supporters to engage in 'flirty fishing', that such supporters had already successfully 'fished' 110,640 souls. I certainly wouldn't. Even the least controversial religious organisation might perhaps be expected to sometimes exaggerate its success in order to encourage it supporters further efforts, and if there is a good reason why the Children of God could be trusted not to do the same, I can't think of one. And more to the point, WP:RS doesn't oblige me to, since such unverifiable promotional claims cannot be cited as factual. Not that it really matters, since as yet we don't have a valid WP:RS source for them making the claims at all. AndyTheGrump (talk) 15:02, 3 October 2021 (UTC)
This is like trying to knit fog. Either you are saying be of use as secondary citations or can't be cited. As for 'successfully 'fished' 110,640 souls', this is claim they have made. However dubious that may it's still a fact that they claimed this. --John B123 (talk) 15:58, 3 October 2021 (UTC)
Nothing sourced to xfamily.com can be cited at all. It is a self-published Wiki. It isn't even remotely WP:RS. Just how difficult is that to understand? AndyTheGrump (talk) 16:15, 3 October 2021 (UTC)
Extremely difficult when you make contradictory statements. I'm getting fed up of your aggressive attitude and sarcastic comments both here and elsewhere. Please see WP:TALK. --John B123 (talk) 17:05, 3 October 2021 (UTC)
Yeah, well I'm getting fed up with your endless attempts to sidetrack this discussion on the reliability of the xfamily.com wiki as a source, and actually address the substantive issue. So a simple question: do you contend that said wiki is a reliable source, under policy? A simple yes or no answer will do. AndyTheGrump (talk) 17:30, 3 October 2021 (UTC)
How is responding to points raised by you and others during this discussion side-tracking it? There isn't a simple yes or no answer to your question. To reiterate my earlier comments: the wiki itself isn't a RS but the scans there are useful additional sources for what The Family were advocating or claiming at the time. --John B123 (talk) 17:56, 3 October 2021 (UTC)
Unless you had the actual publications in hand or the content of them was being reported by a reliable source that had the opportunity to verify the primary sources as being real, you have no way of knowing whether or not those are real scans of the publication, or whether or not they're being presented in an honest and objective manner. We have no idea if those scans have been altered and we also don't know if they're being presented in full context. many of the sources I saw were links to single pages out of a publication and not even the whole publication. These are no better than a blog, a forum post, or even a facebook forward. If you have other sources that can cite that material that pass WP:RS feel free to provide them, but nothing you've stated here does anything to make xfamily pass the requirements to be reliable.--222.109.91.138 (talk) 15:35, 3 October 2021 (UTC)
  • One problem I am seeing is a misidentification of what the actual source material is. Xfamily is not the source, it is the host site on which copies of the source material can be found. The actual source materials are the original primary documents. Those are what should be cited. This is like citing “YouTube” instead of the specific video hosted on YouTube.
Now, primary documents are of very limited use here on WP. We have all sorts of restrictions on not just whether they can be used, but how they are used. A key one is: when they are hosted on-line, we need to be confident that the host site is presenting a “true and accurate” copy that has not been tampered with. A user generated Wiki like XFamily does not give us that confidence. So, even if the original documents are usable, we should not be linking to the copies found on XFamily. Blueboar (talk) 18:00, 3 October 2021 (UTC)
Thank you, that seems clear enough. I'll note that the Flirty Fishing article is (or was - it is currently being edited to deal with some of the issues at least) also citing the xfamily.com wiki directly as a source in a couple of places. Clearly that is unacceptable too, and as far as I can tell, nobody here has suggested otherwise, so such citations will have to go too. AndyTheGrump (talk) 18:20, 3 October 2021 (UTC)
6 or 7 it looks like. There are also numerous references used on this article The Family International and I expect any other article related to this topic.--222.109.91.138 (talk) 10:53, 4 October 2021 (UTC)
Yup. Clearly where xfamily.com is being cited elsewhere it needs fixing too, though at least those other articles aren't built almost entirely around this single wiki source like the Flirty Fishing one was. AndyTheGrump (talk) 12:20, 4 October 2021 (UTC)
I don't suppose there are any tools that would tell us which wikipedia pages link to a specific site are there?--222.109.91.138 (talk) 00:44, 5 October 2021 (UTC)
Special:LinkSearch does that, but it's not as intuitive as it could be. The tool lists 218 links for http://*.xfamily.org, and 9 links for https://*.xfamily.org. Template:linksummary is also useful, especially for cross-wiki issues:
xfamily.org: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com
Grayfell (talk) 22:56, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

Is Gait 1906 a reliable source for this particular claim

Gait, 1906, p:44 makes a particular statement: On the other hand, Colonel Dalton considered them (Koches) to be Dravidian, and Mr. Risley, while admitting an intermixture with Mongoloid stock, holds that Dravidian characteristics predominate. This divergence of views seems to have arisen from the confusion caused by the use of the term Rajbansi, which originally referred to an entirely distinct community of Dravidian affinities, but was afterwards adopted by the Koches west of the Manas river, who, when they attorned to Hinduism, appropriated the caste name of the most numerous Hinduized community in their neighbourhood..

Is this a reliable source for any of the claims made in these sentences?

Disclaimer
I have taken a position on this in a talk page discussion. My concern is that Gait is a colonial officer, who wrote beyond his ken. In particular, here he is using Risley's discredited racial definition of Dravidian (which, as the Wikipedia link adduces, is today defined as a linguistic group). I think Wikipedia should not be using and propagating these racial definitions and furthermore, we should not use them when used by others WP:POISON.

Chaipau (talk) 12:21, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

Without knowing any of the background, your analysis is certainly convincing and I will be astonished if the counter-argument can match it. I doubt it even meets the threshold for WP: FRINGE. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 13:07, 5 October 2021 (UTC)
there must be very few instances where using a source dating from 1906 is appropriate, and this certainly isn't one of them. Not even remotely. An earlier WP:RS/N discussion [127] on Raj ethnography (already linked in the Talk:Rajbongshi_people discussion) explains in detail why, and there is no need to repeat it all here. Ancient, discredited 'racial' theories, based on poor scholarship by non-specialists, simply don't belong in articles at all. AndyTheGrump (talk) 03:46, 6 October 2021 (UTC)
WP:RAJ is a good guide to such topics. Hemiauchenia (talk) 03:56, 6 October 2021 (UTC)
Thank you for both of your comments. I was aware of this discussion, but the WP:RAJ link is much more comprehensive! Chaipau (talk) 16:48, 6 October 2021 (UTC)
Views on the races have changed so radically since 1906, that nothing from that time could be considered reliable. TFD (talk) 11:54, 13 October 2021 (UTC)
Gait 1906 would not reliable for either history or ethnography and is at best a primary source. As already pointed out WP:RAJ exists and note that Gait is mentioned in WP:RAJ § Writings of British Raj administrators, although the essay focuses on caste sources, much of the issues mentioned (and the related discussions) apply to Raj era sources in general, which are usually discouraged by WikiProject India contributors outside exceptional circumstances. Tayi Arajakate Talk 17:34, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

Is "Mail+" the Daily Mail?

See Special:Diff/1049745811 and https://www.mailplus.co.uk – is this just a repackaging of the same ol' WP:DAILYMAIL or something completely different? AleatoryPonderings (???) (!!!) 16:32, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

The same old - "Mail+ is a premium digital platform from Daily Mail and The Mail on Sunday"... DoubleCross (‡) 16:36, 13 October 2021 (UTC)
It would seem yes.Slatersteven (talk) 16:39, 13 October 2021 (UTC)
Guess that URL prefix should be added to the edit filter then? Didn't trigger any tags that I saw. AleatoryPonderings (???) (!!!) 16:40, 13 October 2021 (UTC)
I would say yes, same shit just with a premium tag.Slatersteven (talk) 16:49, 13 October 2021 (UTC)
Seem to be branding themselves as "The new way to experience The Daily Mail": 1 2. --Chillabit (talk) 17:04, 13 October 2021 (UTC)
Added to WP:RSP, WP:DEPS and good ol' filter 869 - David Gerard (talk) 18:50, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

Question

The site www.quansuvn.net is, save for a couple other sources, the only source largely supporting Draft:Weapons of the First Indochina War. The site appears to be a message board/forum-type venue, but it's (I believe) Vietnamese, so I'm posting here to seek assistance in confirming its suitability as a reliable source. Thanks - wolf 18:40, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

Sadly, I think you are correct to question it. It does seem to be a message board/forum, which would not be considered reliable. Blueboar (talk) 19:37, 12 October 2021 (UTC)
That draft reminds me of this user and other poorly-sourced claims on Weapons of the Vietnam War. I haven't been able to find any substantiatable link between them but the poor sourcing and throwing every weapon conceivable into the list seem similar. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 19:08, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

Is the Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship a reliable source?

Epachamo (talk) 07:23, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

  • It's reliable for what the Mormons believe regarding these sorts of things, which is probably important these sorts of articles. However, it is definitely fringe with respect to its archaeology and anthropology, but they don't immediately seem to be the areas that seem to be relevant here. That being said, declaring a piece a "substantive rebuttal" would require a third-party source, which obviously was not provided. I would not use the source to support facts generally, though it would be a perfectly reliable resource to describe what Mormons believe. Being that the author of that piece was the Associate Dean of Religion at BYU and is a fairly prominent Mormon scholar, it is probably WP:DUE in some capacity per WP:RNPOV, even if his views are not widely held among non-Mormons. This particular intellectual dispute is largely within the realm of intertextual literary analysis, and I do not see the potential for pushing pseudoscience being an issue with respect to this particular dispute in literary biblical criticism. — Mikehawk10 (talk) 13:40, 1 October 2021 (UTC)
  • This falls within what I would call in-house history, its going to be reliable within the Latter-day historical tradition but I would not expect it to be reliable within the secular historical tradition. This distinction exists for pretty much every religious group that has an organized scholarly tradition (which is to say most of them), so its important that we get this sort of thing right. In general I would say that both in-house and secular traditions are WP:DUE but what I think we should avoid is pitting them against each other (e.g. "substantive rebuttal") unless a third party source frames the discourse as such. We also have to be careful to avoid a false balance, we have to remember that from a reliability perspective secular scholarship is always preferable to in-house scholarship. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 18:09, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

RfC -- Yahoo! News

Is Yahoo! News in-house reporting, not its aggregator content, RS for current news? SPECIFICO talk 23:48, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

Yes

No

Neutral

  • It depends. Yes for any neutral statement of uncontroversial fact (e.g., "X was born on XYZ date"). Questionable on controversial or contested or non-neutral statements; if used on Wikipedia these statements should be either attributed to Yahoo! News or backed up by citations to more reliable sources. Softlavender (talk) 07:14, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

Discussion (Yahoo News)

SPECIFICO, can you explain why WP:RSN needs to make a general determination as to the reliability of this source? Where has it been discussed before? AndyTheGrump (talk) 00:00, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

I think there's general confusion as to the reliability of content on Yahoo! News. Most of it is republication of RS media, but its in-house reporting is another matter. This was prompted by a discussion at the Assange article where some editors appear to accept the site's reporting as solid mainstream RS and others do not. SPECIFICO talk 00:23, 4 October 2021 (UTC)
So Yahoo! News has been discussed in relation to other content, beyond the Assange article? If so, it might help to provide links so we can get a sense of what the issues are, and whether there was any particular consensus. AndyTheGrump (talk) 00:43, 4 October 2021 (UTC)
I think it is the wrong question. Yahoo News is probably rs. The issue is what if any weight should be provided to investigative journalism. I would say that WP:REDFLAG applies. It doesn't matter where the report was originally published but the degree of attention it received in the body of reliable sources. TFD (talk) 00:46, 4 October 2021 (UTC)
Yahoo News original content has been obviously a NEWSORG in past discussion. We need more than ongoing arguments on a single article - David Gerard (talk) 06:43, 4 October 2021 (UTC)
Yes, but Yahoo's fortunes continue to decline. The question is whether that quick OK is still valid. SPECIFICO talk 07:06, 4 October 2021 (UTC)
I'm asking you to make an actual claim here. What in particular can you raise as evidence of concern with Yahoo! News' original content, that would maybe convince someone who thought Yahoo! News was a normal NEWSORG for its original content? - David Gerard (talk) 13:18, 5 October 2021 (UTC)
It is related to the RFC mentioned above.Slatersteven (talk) 12:55, 4 October 2021 (UTC)
It's a general issue related to any article that uses it as a source. Yahoo has been bought and sold multiple times recently, in so-far failed attempts to restore its former prominence. There was the noteworthy hire of Katie Couric for Yahoo News, that did not last long. On the site, I see no mention of editorial policy or anything other than the names of two journeyman professionals in editorial roles. SPECIFICO talk 13:50, 4 October 2021 (UTC)
Yahoo News was discussed not that long ago here: Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_332#Yahoo!_News_article_for_PragerU. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 13:58, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

Having come back to regular Wikipedia editing after a break of some years, I've noticed what seems to be a change in the way WP:RSN is being used - in particular, there seem to be more general 'is X a reliable source' questions, sometimes framed as an RfC, than used to be the case. I'm less than convinced that this pattern of trying to sort sources (particularly journalistic ones) according to a simple binary reliable/non-reliable classification is necessarily a good thing. And nor does it seem to me to be in accord with what WP:RS has to say. While there are clearly some types of sources which should simply never be used, per policy, a more nuanced approach (particularly in regard to news media) is generally advisable, and generally the proper question to be asked is 'is X a reliable source for Y'. Context matters, and it really isn't appropriate, in my opinion, for a limited number of contributors at WP:RSN to be making absolutist determinations on 'reliability' without evidence that there is a general issue with a specific source. Such determinations may on occasion be necessary, if the same source comes up time and time again, but this should be the last stage of the process, not the first. AndyTheGrump (talk) 14:39, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

As I(and others) already noted in a previous discussion on that noticeboard (COVID-19 lab leakage), and at WP:V talk page, the problem with "reliability" is that per our policy it is a composite term, which means any binary answer is intrinsically incomplete, and it is a source of incessant conflicts and manipulations.
First, the WP:RSN is linked primarily to the guidelines, not a policy. These guidelines are broader than WP:V, and they partially cover other policies (NPOV and NORN). Therefore, the answer "reliable" means actually "acceptable per V, NPOV, and NOR". Thus, some users answer (about some source) "Unreliable for this statement, because it is a primary source" (which is clearly a NORN argument), or "Unreliable, because it is fringe" (which is NPOV argument).
Second, the policy (WP:V) explains that the three aspects of reliability are the work, the author, the publisher. The policy does not explain that properly, so I interpret it as follows.
The work. Is the work relevant to the topic? Does it have a professional structure? For example, if the source tells about, e.g. virology, it is relevant to the article about COVID-19. If its structure fit a criteria of a scientific publication, that makes is especially relevant.
The author. Is the author an expert in the field? Thus, if the source is authored by a virologist, bioinformatic scientist, biochemist or molecular biologist, that adds credibility to that source.
The publisher. This aspect is explained in the policy in details. The publishers that pay a special attention to "a professional structure in place for checking or analyzing facts, legal issues, evidence, and arguments" are the most trustworthy. To that, I would add that stability is an important criterion (for many references in Wikipedia are dead links).
In summary, relevance, author's expertise, and reputability are the three components of what we call "reliability". Clearly, these three components are totally independent, so in many cases it would be fundamentally incorrect to expect a single "Yes".--Paul Siebert (talk) 15:13, 4 October 2021 (UTC)
  • Comment: The way the wind seems to be blowing in this survey so far, it would seem to me that a more specific survey/poll/RFC should be applied to a specific case and specific statement/content and specific Yahoo! News article regarding specific Wikipedia content cited to said news article. If, that is, such a case arises and is in dispute. Softlavender (talk) 03:28, 6 October 2021 (UTC)
  • Comment: Having been away from Wikipedia for a number of years, like AndyTheGrump, I've also noticed what seems to be a more voter orientated style in building consensus. Perhaps this is due to the five years of Trump our American colleagues had to endure, but I would hope we can return to the more organic procedures. I agree with Paul Siebert's analysis above, and I also agree with Softlavender's point about discussing specific content, as from what I remember, WP:CONTEXTMATTERS more than anything else. LondonIP (talk) 22:29, 10 October 2021 (UTC)
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