Talk:Occupy Democrats

Semi-protected edit request on 17 August 2021

{{subst:trim|1= Occupy Democrats' is a United States-based, left-wing media outlet built around a Facebook Group and corresponding website. Established in 2012 to counterbalance the Republican "Tea Party" online presence, it publishes memes and links to media stories relating to United States politics. Some critics have accused Occupy Democrats of spreading false information, hyperpartisan content,

FenrirKyramud (talk) 05:05, 17 August 2021 (UTC)

 Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. —Sirdog9002 (talk) 05:43, 17 August 2021 (UTC)

References

Need Review

This article is extremely biased. 2602:306:83B3:6D20:68AB:6831:B9BA:479A (talk) 06:58, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

Agree - this article stresses extreme criticism of the subject, mostly voiced by extreme elements of the political Right in America. 65.78.7.86 (talk) 13:47, 10 July 2024 (UTC)

Lots of misleading information in the wiki Arashitora (talk) 13:07, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

 Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. — Newslinger talk 12:20, 8 March 2022 (UTC)

Gun stance

They are not totally anti-gun. In February 2022 they approved and cheered Ukraine president handing out rifles to civilians Joaeko (talk) 15:54, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

References

The article currently doesn't mention guns, so it looks like this has been removed. — Newslinger talk 12:21, 8 March 2022 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 31 May 2022

Dear All,

I am the new Executive Editor of Occupy Democrats having started implementing journalistic controls in 2020 and taking over the news website in 2022. As our masthead indicates (there was not one in the past), the Rivero brothers are solely acting in the capacity of website publishers now, they don't control the newsroom in an editorial capacity (or even enter its chatroom). We properly handle the news, opinion, and analysis stories. That is why we earned a 100/100 rating from NewsGuard for our truthful portrayal of the news and our improved journalistic practices. Our journalism criteria and pledge to the public are here:

https://occupydemocrats.com/about-us/

But this is not just a short-term improvement over the poor stories written starting in 2017. The site received a poor rating from NewsGuard, an independent 3rd-party rating company that assigns real people to thoroughly review a site's content. They reviewed two years' worth of our content, questioned our sources, and sometimes pointed out articles that required correction. Anyone with a Microsoft Edge browser can see the NewsGuard rating for free, and the rating history.

https://www.newsguardtech.com/ratings/rating-process-criteria/

What changed? Our implementation of new criteria for handling news/opinion/analysis stories (older stories are labeled as legacy reports or "politics" but do not fall under the new system) and our multi-year track record of correcting inaccuracies when discovered, purging the website of anonymous author's accounts, and a complete break with old editors and old policies that lacked the essential disclosures the public needed to evaluate our work. On top of that, OccupyDemocrats.com retained an entirely new staff of four writers who are both reputable and contribute quality content to our website, including exclusive reports observing journalistic standards for confirming information before publication, and seeking comment when appropriate.

It is understood that past editorial management at the OccupyDemocrats.com website was opaque and did not adhere to any known standards, but that is we have worked tremendously to re-orient our news offering to be a high-value complement to the meme makers' opinion posts and other content on the Facebook page. The Facebook page team constantly strives for accuracy too, but as noted, gets more attention for its mistakes which it ALWAYS corrects when discovered - this is verifiable too - which is the journalistically appropriate way to handle erroneous content.

I write all of this in the hopes that someone will review the OccupyDemocrats.com website and the NewsGuard rating and update the heading of our Wikipedia appropriately. Wikipedia is considered a basic resource for millions of people, but our listing focuses on events that are often 5-7 years in the past and overlooks other things that would show both the website and the Facebook page to be extremely prolific and only occasionally erroneous. A team of people works hard to publish approximately 15,000 pieces of content onto Facebook annually, alongside the website's 2000-3000 stories. But fact checks draw the most attention, not the thousands of wholly accurate posts or the ones that are simply political opinions and not a matter of fact or not.

Thank you,

Grant grantstern@gmail.com — Preceding unsigned comment added by Grantstern (talk • contribs) 18:21, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for your note, Grantstern. How do you want it updated and what WP:RS can you provide that we should use to update it? Chetsford (talk) 02:22, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

Grantstern - I've found a few more updated sources and added two paragraphs to the end of the section "Evaluation by Media". Let me know if there's anything else. Chetsford (talk) 02:49, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

I would like for our website's NewsGuard rating and some of its contents to be used in covering our group. The ratings period for this rating stretches from 2020-early 2022, and they review a significant slice of our news website's offerings. We reformed our website in 2020 to divide news, news analysis and opinion stories, which made a major improvement overall in our editorial quality.

https://api.newsguardtech.com/label/occupydemocrats.com?cid=a4e81495-6f90-4b8c-b4c0-183b75d2df8e

(A copy can be provided upon request in PDF format)

Furthermore, please consider a wholesale review of our page to do three things.

1) OD has a news division that publishes the news website and an editorial opinion division that publishes everything else. All disclosed here:

https://occupydemocrats.com/about-us/

2) Sharing with readers that under new management, OD made significant news website editorial changes starting in 2020, resulting in our news website site publishing high-quality information and properly labeled opinion per NewsGuard which is the gold standard of 3rd party reviewers that conduct a whole of website review.

3) Put into context the number of false content ratings against our Facebook page content versus the totality of the information shared. We publish approximately 14,000 pieces of original content per year (video/image/memes) and only have a tiny number of those which draw a fact check. The number of negative fact checks between 2016 and today is FAR lower because we have implemented better editorial standards.

Thank you for your consideration. Grantstern (talk) 17:38, 22 December 2022 (UTC)

Thank you, Grantstern. Unfortunately, the source you cited [1] for the claim that Occupy Democrats "has a news division that publishes the news website and an editorial opinion division that publishes everything else" is from Occupy Democrats, which is not considered reliable by Wikipedia. (see here [2]) Wikipedia is built on reliable sources. Chetsford (talk) 02:58, 31 March 2023 (UTC)

@Chetsford: WP:RSP doesn't apply when the source is talking about itself. In this case the relevant policy is WP:PRIMARYSOURCE, and we can use such a source with attribution, as in "Occupy Democrats says that it has two divisions, a news division and an editorial division." ~Anachronist (talk) 19:10, 31 March 2023 (UTC)

Respectfully, I disagree with your conclusion in the strongest possible terms. Per WP:ABOUTSELF, a questionable source cannot be used as information about itself when it is "unduly self-serving" and there is "reasonable doubt as to its authenticity". A website presenting itself as a news source has a clear pecuniary interest in creating the image of editorial normalcy in its operations. Trying to jam in the clunky phrase "Occupy Democrats has two divisions, a news division and an editorial division" is extremely problematic, even with attribution. If this organizational point is WP:DUE, we should be able to attribute it to RS versus a clickbait site. Chetsford (talk) 20:34, 31 March 2023 (UTC)

Journalistic controls aren't self-serving, they serve the public. That is why Occupy changed editors, added journalistic controls and ended the "clickbait" form of reporting on our news websites. That is how OccupyDemocrats.com, which is run by an LLC, earned a 100/100 rating by NewsGuard which is a neutral 3rd party reviewer whose ratings are publicly accessible with subscriber's only reports that I'd be happy to share for anyone who wants more details. Now, the publishers only put their editorial opinions and political posts for their PAC only on the social media networks, while our news journalism team (two editors, two writers plus irregular contributors) publish separate work on our news websites and label stories properly as news, analysis or opinion. The titles are reasonably reflect the stories now. Disclosures are made, and so are corrections. You can review our site (as NewsGuard does) and see that none of the published work for the last 4 years is by the publishers, conversely, besides the links, none of the social media posts without links are by the news editor or writers. This Wikipedia article misses the last eight years of evolution which included making major changes to the way our news websites are structured.

Your fair consideration is much appreciated in this matter. Grantstern (talk) 20:19, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

The community has determined that NewsGuard is not a reliable source. Chetsford (talk) 02:21, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 14 October 2022

This article was edited by someone who was biased against the platform, they provided no evidence to support their claim that this platform is actually hyperpartisan, or publishes false information or clickbait. Please correct. 2601:602:CA00:A900:E4F8:9092:BF5F:7BC3 (talk) 18:46, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

 Not done: seems pretty thoroughly sourced Cannolis (talk) 18:58, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

This is clearly being edited by someone who is biased against the platform. Using the word "false" in the intro is judgemental. This is a global encyclopedia and such terms are against the MoS. Mark^Dask 01:08, 29 October 2022 (UTC)

Can you show me where exactly on that giant linked page it says that you can't call things "false"? False is not a judgemental word when sources say that an outlet publishes false information, just like the right-wing equivalent Breitbart. Judgement is calling things "boring" or "interesting", which is only opinion, while it's established by sources left and right that this website publishes fake information. The citations include two universities, the Atlantic and the Washington Post, far from biased conservative sites. I don't why being a "global" website means we have to whitewash something. Sounds like you have a case of WP:IDONTLIKEIT. Unknown Temptation (talk) 20:53, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 10 January 2023

In the "evaluation by media" section, none of the recent fact checks include that the erroneous posts were later corrected. The links to those posts are within the fact checks.

None of that section distinguishes that it is only about Facebook posts and not about the editorially independent news website.

Also, please see my reply to the edit request below.

Lastly, see the commentary below that this listing uses years-old articles to falsely portray Occupy Democrats as an organization whose mission is to spread misinformation when in fact, there are no false fact checks about our editorial news website, and 100% of Facebook posts with errors have been corrected. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Grantstern (talk • contribs) 00:40, 11 January 2023 (UTC)

I rearranged the comment sections in chronological order, so "the edit request below" is now "the edit request above". New comments go at the bottom of the page.

@Grantstern: If you have specific changes to propose, in the form "change X to Y" or "add X after Y" or "remove X", please propose them with citations to reliable sources, or specify exactly which sources already in this article apply to your proposal. ~Anachronist (talk) 04:42, 31 March 2023 (UTC)

Censorship

Occupy Democrats routinely censors by blocking Facebook commenters who post information contrary to their opinions or facts that disprove their contentions. 24.40.99.66 (talk) 23:41, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

Isn't that how Facebook works in general? Everyone is able to block dissenting views from their space. Twitter works that way too I think. What point are you trying to make here. What does this have to do with improving the article? ~Anachronist (talk) 00:01, 3 October 2024 (UTC)