Jump to content

Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 26

Add links
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Archive 20←Archive 24Archive 25Archive 26Archive 27Archive 28→Archive 30

SiteAdvisor official blog as reference on shock sites

Discussion comes from here.

I was wondering if the SiteAdvisor blog can be used as a reliable source for including Last Measure in the list of examples of shock sites, or at least about the shock site article in general. --Aeon17x (talk) 01:33, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

Find a newspaper, radio or television reference. The list is only supposed to contain major examples so we don't need to add sites that have only been mentioned in blogs. --TS 06:18, 4 January 2009 (UTC)
Well, the staff "blog" at a major Internet security firm is a reliable source. On the other hand, there's thousands of shock sites and we're not going to catalog every one of them that's flagged as such. The debated article at McAfee[1] describes it as "Perhaps the most ambitious shock site yet was produced in 2005" ( in a 2007 article ), so I think that confers notability. Squidfryerchef (talk) 15:38, 4 January 2009 (UTC)
I don't get it. If I worked for McAfee and sometimes updated a blog, how would this make me an expert on popular media phenomena? McAfee's focus is technology, not culture. It's like quoting a Samsung staff blog on aspects of cable TV program content. --TS 20:02, 4 January 2009 (UTC)
No, it's not a personal blog or even a staff member's blog, but a press release section for a popular web filtering product. This product may deem which sites you can visit at work or school, so I think their opinion is notable. In your TV analogy above, this would be equivalent to the blog of an organization that rates TV shows for violent content, not the blog of the TV manufacturer. Squidfryerchef (talk) 21:00, 4 January 2009 (UTC)
To avoid splitting the discussion I'll take this to the talk page. --TS 22:21, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

Three music blogs

There are three different country music-related blogs that I believe are all reliable, and have seen them cited several times on Wikipedia, but would like further input. Thy are The 9513, Country Universe, and Roughstock. I believe that all three are at least borderline reliable. The 9513 turns up in Google News searches, and while Roughstock doesn't, it's owned by Cheri Music Group, an evidently large collection of similar blog-like sites (some of which also show up in Google News). Country Universe is a different case though. Initially, it was at a wordpress.com domain, so I figured that made it automatically non-notable. Now that it's on its own domain, it seems to have some sort of backing from CMT and at least one writer who also works for Country Weekly, so I would say those connections make it reliable now. I think that all three sites are useful for such things as critical reception of singles and albums (which is usually what they're cited for anyway), especially since major music critics like Entertainment Weekly and Rolling Stone don't give much space for country acts. Many other editors and I have cited these three blogs without any problems, but I'd still like to gauge the opinion of others. Are these three sites reliable enough, at the least in the cases of singles and albums reviews? Ten Pound Hammer and his otters • (Broken clamshells • Otter chirps • HELP) 17:50, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

If the authors of these blogs are considered "recognized experts" (ie they have been reliably published in non-blog venues on the subject of country music or music in general) then the blogs should probably be considered reliable self-published sources (ie they would be reliable for statements as to the opinions of their expert authors). Blueboar (talk) 18:05, 4 January 2009 (UTC)
Looking around more, I found that one writer/editor for The 9513 has also written for American Songwriter, so he's probably a recognized expert just like the one Country Weekly writer I mentioned for the other site. Ten Pound Hammer and his otters • (Broken clamshells • Otter chirps • HELP) 18:19, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

academic sources at Jesus myth hypothesis

At Talk:Jesus_myth_hypothesis#Remsberg, again I bring up three academic sources which define the "Christ-myth theory": William R. Farmer, "A Fresh Approach to Q," in Christianity, Judaism and Other Greco-Roman Cults, eds. Jacob Neusner, Morton Smith (Brill, 1975); Alan H. Jones, Independence and Exegesis: The Study of Early Christianity in the Work of Alfred Loisy, Charles Guignebert, and Maurice Goguel (Mohr Siebeck, 1983); and William Horbury, "The New Testament," A Century of Theological and Religious Studies in Britain (Oxford 2003). In response, an editor characterizes them as "Christian writers", implying that their definitions are good for nothing.

So, I'd like to ask the editors of this board: are these works reliable sources? Should we use their definitions or Wikipedia editors' interpretations of primary sources? --Akhilleus (talk) 15:18, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

They certainly seem reliable. Whether they are reliable for a given statement really depends on how you are using them (ie what the statement is). But, being "Christian writers" is not a legitimate challenge to reliability in any case. Blueboar (talk) 15:50, 29 December 2008 (UTC)
I have to agree with Blueboar here. However Remsburg, Holding, Doherty, and Price all show how the term "Christ-myth" is used and defined varies with the author and even when it is used. International Standard Bible Encyclopedia by Geoffrey W. Bromiley (1982) defines it very broadly as does History and the Gospel C. H. Dodd Manchester University Press (1938) (who even goes as far as saying "They seized on the reports of an obscure Jewish Holy man bearing this name and arbitrarily attached the "Cult-myth" to him." pg 17 under the title "Christ-myth Theory"). So even a university press don't agree with the limited definition you trying to use.--BruceGrubb (talk) 04:11, 30 December 2008 (UTC)
Additionally as I said on the talk page "Christ-myth theory" and "Jesus-myth theory" are NOT interchangeable though they tend to be used that way and there in is the real problem with this article. Strictly speaking a literally reading of "Christ-myth theory" would say that you are arguing about Christ being a myth; it doesn't make any evaluation regarding the person of Jesus as a myth which the "Jesus-myth theory" does. Take for example Thomas L. Thompson's The Messiah Myth: The Near Eastern Roots of Jesus and David. Now no one can claim Thompson holds to the idea there was non-historical Jesus but that there are enough questions to wonder how much we have is accurate (if any of it). The removed Joseph Campbell quote ("It is clear that, whether accurate or not as to biographical detail, the moving legend of the Crucified and Risen Christ was fit to bring a new warmth, immediacy, and humanity, to the old motifs of the beloved Tammuz, Adonis, and Osiris cycles.") is not too different to what outer edge JMH are saying only they push it a little further and say Jesus was totally made up. The range is large and is is clear from the Van Voorst and Wells contradiction that just what "Jesus-myth theory" means tends to vary from scholar to scholar. Once you have shown that then you can cite quotes till cows come home but all the quotes show is that is that how that individual scholar defines "Jesus-myth theory".
Finally Farmer, Jones, and Horbury all define the "Christ-myth theory" as saying Jesus having NEVER existed which put their definition at odds with such Christ-myth theorists as Mead, Ellegard, Thompson, and now Wells who all hold that there was a historical person ranging from c200 BC to contemporary to the period the Gospel Jesus supposedly lived behind the Gospel Jesus. Akhilleus himself has considered the based on a previous historical person part of the "Christ-myth theory" and yet he chooses sources that throw this part of the definition out the windows as NEVER means NEVER. People who have gone for the historical Robin Hood have found him in times other than the classic Richard I-John Lackland (c1190) period but they say Robin Hood DID exist. Trying to use authors who say "Christ-myth theory" mean saying Jesus NEVER existed when you can cite four Christ-myth theorists who say Jesus DID EXIST but not as the Gospels describe him and you have previously supported this "soft" position IMHO indicates a desperate POV pushing agenda.--BruceGrubb (talk) 05:40, 31 December 2008 (UTC)
Brill and OUP are two of the best known academic publishers in the field, and any work they publish can be presumed to be reliable. I am not previously familiar with Mohr Siebeck, but examining WorldCat I see that they publish very notable authors, copublish with well-known presses, and have books well represented in the major libraries in the subject. However, almost any source on this field is likely to represent a view which is not universally shared. I would not be so bold as to claim there is anything like a universal consensus. A scholar, even of high repute, who says "my opponents view has been totally rejected in the literature" is not necessarily accurate--such is the nature of academic scholarship-- and human beings. And need I say that I doubt anyone has ever been interested in working on this subject who did not already have some decided views on the Christian religion, one way or another. I agree with BruceGrubb's cautions above. DGG (talk) 17:09, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

Various Road Sites

(moved from Wikipedia talk:Reliable sources) We at WikiProject U.S. Roads have run into a small problem determining how reliable a few sites are. Ahead I have written an explanation of all 4 sites and what we believe of them. They are the following:

Alpsroads.net's NJ route log

Located here, this is a log of all highways that existed in New Jersey since 1927. The problem is, this is mainly written by a former Wikipedia editor and is also not citing any of his sources. What is the case here? (It should be noted that the log has been partially verified and/or updated with field evidence remaining in the state of New Jersey.)

NYCroads.com and such sites

Located here (NYC), here (Philadelphia), here (Washington DC), here (Boston), and here (Montreal), Steven Anderson has compiled pages about highways in the metro areas of different cities. He does cite his sources, but does not cite which fact goes to which source. Is it possible this is a reliable source? (It should be noted that errors have been found on these pages, but contrarily many facts are found here and nowhere else.)

Jimmy and Sharon Williams NJ routes

Located here, Jimmy and Sharon Williams have compiled information on the original 1920s routes in New Jersey before the 1927 renumbering of highways. They source laws and such, and use the evidence of existing remnants of the original routings (i.e., highway bridges). The problem is, one of their sources is a former Wikipedia user. Can we have some detail into the reliability of this one?

Pennsylvania Highways by Jeff Kitsko

Located here,this one is ultimately the biggest that should be a reliable source. Jeff Kitsko has used Pennsylvania Department of Highways and Pennsylvania Department of Transportation maps to source lots of his information. He also uses newspapers. His site is often used by cops, lawyers, newspapers and ultimately PennDOT and Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission. He has been in many news stories. This news story says a lot about the site.

Kurumi's Connecticut Roads

Located here, a person named Scott Oglesby or Kurumi has compiled information on all of Connecticut's highways. He sources all his information in the logs, but there are no access to the original sources. I do believe that this is a reliable source, but I want to check it out.

Can I have replies about each of these? It will help us in our article work. Thank you.Mitch32(Go Syracuse) 03:18, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

Probably not reliable, except where they reproduce primary sources (such as the 1920s New Jersey laws). --NE2 05:02, 26 December 2008 (UTC)
Probably reliable as expert SPS. Seems to me that if we're doubting sites like these for something as uncontroversial as state highways, we've veered well into "academic standards disease" Squidfryerchef (talk) 05:48, 30 December 2008 (UTC)
They're "experts" in the way that USRD members are - they have an interest in writing about the topic, and do personal research into it. --NE2 22:25, 30 December 2008 (UTC)
being a WP editor is less than fully conclusive proof that someone is not an authority. If a particular editor had in fact a bad (or good) reputation for accuracy here, and edited under his wn name so it can be shown, that might be relevant. We in fact advise eds. who want to insert their OR to get it published first. But in any case: I think the Kurumi reference is suitable, as for any other secondary source based on archival records. I am sure the Kitso one is, if you can show such use; authoritative use of the material is enough to validate web sites and blogs as sources. Williams would be usable, unless one of them is known unreliable. The ones that do not cite specific sources are another matter. DGG (talk) 17:01, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

How many errors does it take for a source to stop being reliable??

I guess books by Roland Perry count as being reliable, as it's from a proper printing press and so forth, per the traditional standards. But this author is very careless and makes a lot of errors, even though some people think he is an expert and gave him awards, but a lot of other cricket historians think he is poor. I counted 18 errors in one span of 32 pages in one book, which I document here in case by attacking this fellow and expressing my negative POV I might raise a few BLP eyebrows :| . So does Perry still count as a RS, or at least "an RS except when overruled by a better source". It's a pretty corny set of works, but I did use it because it was convenient. This book isn't dodgy because of propaganda or bias, just carelessness that causes maybe some non-trivial error percentage. Or at least, we should write down a list of errors in books so we don't propagate misinformation. YellowMonkey (bananabucket) 08:10, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

I think the crucial thing here is that other historians have said he is unreliable. This is unusual and is a reason to treat his work with caution. Itsmejudith (talk) 17:20, 31 December 2008 (UTC)
No source is absolutely "reliable" or absolutely "unreliable". We have to look at the specifics of the situation. Lots of sources are reliable when looked at in general terms, but end up being unreliable for something specific. When two or more reliable sources disagree with one another, you have to ask why? If it is possible that the disagreement is due to one of the sources making a simple error, then we can attempt to determine which source made the error (ie which is the most reliable source in terms of that specific fact). If we think can not determine who made the error, we should neutrally discuss what each source says, (essentially treating the disagreement as if it were a difference of opinion/POV per WP:NPOV). Blueboar (talk) 17:43, 31 December 2008 (UTC)
In this case, given that the source is full of errors and widely regarded as inaccurate, wouldn't everyone just avoid relying on it and citing it? If not, then you have to address specific cases as suggested above. Dicklyon (talk) 18:55, 31 December 2008 (UTC)
I think there are at least 2 types of problem here:
  • A source may be just plain unreliable, as Itsmejudith says Roland Perry's books on cricket history are. Just avoidng such sources does not help, as another editor may add material based on these works. A comment in the article's Talk page is an obvious short term approach, but has 2 limitations: archiving; and the possibility that the same source may be used in other articles. Longer term it may be a good idea for Wikiprojects to save analyses of particular sources' relaibility, so that they can be referred to in subsequent discussions.
  • A source may be reliable on some topics but not others, for example because of personal bias or because the source is a specialist in some topics, and in others simply retails received wisdom from the writer's formative years (may be out of date by now), or the opinions of friends or colleagues. I've seen this in both sporting and scientific subjects. I suggest the remedy is the same, comment in the article's Talk page and then save on a Wikiproject page. --Philcha (talk) 13:24, 1 January 2009 (UTC)
For a really well known source that has limitations, it may help to write an article on it, if the unreliability can itself be demonstrated from outside RSs. These are most likely to be in the form of reviews. There is perhaps the danger of giving publicity to such a source, but if its notable enough, NPOV is sufficient precaution. DGG (talk) 16:54, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

FOO FIGHTERS HIV/AIDS denialism

I have added the [unreliable source?] tag to sources in this section on the Foo Fighters Wikipedia article

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foo_Fighters#Campaigning_and_activism

The reason for this is outlined by my post on the talk page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Foo_Fighters#ACTIVISM_RELIABILITY_OF_SOURCE---FOOIES_HIV_DENIAL_IS_IT_A_LIE.3F


On the talk page I have stated:

"I find it hard to believe that the Foo Fighters have played with the members of Queen still active (Brian May and Roger Taylor) and that the basssist denies the link between HIV/AIDs

As you all probably know Freddie Mercury died of aids in 1991, why would Brian May and Roger Taylor choose to play with a band that basically says "No you are wrong your best friend and lead singer never had HIV, he should have got natural treatment for AIDS and he would still be alive today".

Can anyone establish the reliability of this source, which is the only source an unknown news source funded by donations:

http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2000/02/foo.html

It doesn't add up to me I have seen at least 5 videos where Foo Fighters play with Brian May and Roger Taylor, Dave Grohl inducted Queen into the rock and roll hall of fame and gave Freddie a dedication.

I am calling into question the reliability of this source. I will try to add the appropriate tag but if I am unable to do this i ask whover reads this to add a reliability tag to the Activism section"

I would like input on this. Perhaps if the reliability of this source cannot be verified this section should just be removed. I am a fan of both bands and I think this section reflects badly on the Foo Fighters and may be untrue thus it may constitute slander/libel.

Regards Michael

124.187.151.234 (talk) 09:23, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

The foo fighters website mentions their aids activism: http://www.foofighters.com/community_cause.html. Verbal chat 09:37, 5 January 2009 (UTC)
I'm not commenting on anything but this: motherjones is a reliable source. They're a magazine that's been around since the 1970s. Very reliable. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 11:58, 5 January 2009 (UTC)
  • Comment. Mother Jones is usually spot on but I notice that article is from 2000 so their views may have changed. Their website lists Alive & Well AIDS Alternatives which is arguably one of the most well-known AIDS-denialist organizations around, they are based in LA which would put them proximally close. Alive & Well's founder, Christine Maggiore, died recently and I'm sure there'll be a tussle to how her cause of death is reported. The Foo Fighters continued listing on their website would indicate a continued support of sorts. I would look for direct quotes from the band member(s) to clarify the position and qualify them with when and where the statement was made. -- Banjeboi 12:09, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

Whosdatedwho.com

whosdatedwho.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com

This website is being cited in some way on 30-40 articles. I think it lacks editorail oversight to be considered RS and may need to be listed for removal so that links are no longer added. -- Banjeboi 12:09, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

With a name like that, no wonder. Sceptre (talk) 13:25, 5 January 2009 (UTC)
Well, yes. But how do we get is listed for removal so it's not re-used? -- Banjeboi 00:35, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

Fringy sources to report what the fringy sources have stated?

There has been considerable discussion among a couple of editors and myself at Talk:Barack Obama citizenship conspiracy theories about the use of relaible sources. My question is if these sources [[[[http://worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=72656]] , [[2]] , [[3]] and the African International Press who links to a youtube video from their official site are reliable for being quoted directly about what they have said about Obama. What I mean to say is,: Are they reliable sources to state the sources themselves have stated what they have stated? If one is making an article about a fringy subject, is it useful to state what the fringe sources have said?Die4Dixie (talk) 08:09, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

Relying on unreliable sources definitely makes one question the reliability of a source. But, it's pretty much a no-brainer to check how reliable a sources is at quoting a primary source when you have access to the primary source itself. However, this seems to be a meta-debate about the youtube source. It is inappropriate to use a secondary source as a hearsay proxy for a primary source. In other words, if the goal is to use the secondary sources as a source for a primary source in order to get around WP:PSTS, I believe that this is not okay. Call it "source laundering", if you will. ScienceApologist (talk) 08:26, 3 January 2009 (UTC)
WorldNetDaily has come up on this board twice before: here and here. Israelinsider and Mountain Sage have not as far as I can tell. --Bobblehead (rants) 08:31, 3 January 2009 (UTC)
The question here is are they a reliable source to use to say what the source says. Are they reliable to use to quote themselves? Is WND reliable to quote WND and attribute that this is truly what WDN has said?Die4Dixie (talk) 08:35, 3 January 2009 (UTC)
(edit conflict)As one of the other participants in the discussion D4D links to, I believe the discussion hinges around whether or not WorldNetDaily, Israelinsider, and Mountain Sage can be used as sources for the various theories around Barack Obama's status as a natural-born citizen of the US. Not whether you can launder a source to make it respectable. --Bobblehead (rants) 08:39, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

Using these websites as sources for claims that there exists fringe theories is fine. Using these websites as reliable explicators of these fringe theories is probably not okay for a wide range of reasons. To take a less recentist example, let's imagine we were writing an article about the War of the Worlds radio broadcast while it was happening and there were a group of credulous sources who described the battle -- sourcing it to the Orson Wells radio drama. Well, then, writing the article we could mention that these sources existed and that they had in common this credulous coverage of the War of the Worlds. However, using these sources to discuss the actual facts of the matter would be problematic because they are credulous. At this point the question becomes one for WP:NPOVN, but to save you the trouble of waltzing over there, the answer is that extreme minority opinions can and should be marginalized per WP:WEIGHT. The editors are charged with coming up with wording that accurately reflects the existence of the crazy idea while not pandering to its intricate details when those details are not acknowledged by the preponderance of sources. ScienceApologist (talk) 08:49, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

Exactly. Is WDN a relaible source to say ," WDN states XYZ in regards to Obama's citizenship status". Bear in mind the title of the article " Barack Obama citizenship conspiracy theories ".Die4Dixie (talk) 08:42, 3 January 2009 (UTC)
True, but that statement likely doesn't belong in Wikipedia because what WND has to say about Obama's citizenship status is itself not reliable. Remember assert facts, not opinions. ScienceApologist (talk) 09:09, 3 January 2009 (UTC)
(ec)If source X says Y, then X is a reliable source for "X said Y". If X is not a reliable source, then maybe we shouldn't mention they said Y, although they are still an RS for "X said Y". If WND says Y, then they are the perfect source for that statement, but that doesn't mean that we should include that statement in an article. For something controversial, and dealing with an unreliables source, let some other reliable source report on it before including it. For example, I could create a blog, say Y, and the blog would be reliable for saying I said Y. That doesn't mean it can be used in an article, especially about a living person. I'm speaking in general, so if you include more details, there may be a reason to include it. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 08:48, 3 January 2009 (UTC)
It's reliable for that particular statement, but that statement doesn't belong in an article that's properly weighted. ANd WND is DEFINITELY NOT RELIABLE as a source in general. Try to stick to WP:ASF rather than quoting problematic sources. ScienceApologist (talk) 08:49, 3 January 2009 (UTC)
How can you have an article about fringe theories if you do not state what the fringy sources say? We are in perfect agreement that WND is not a reliable source for facts with a positive truth value. It seems like it, according to your wikilink, is a good source for exactly the statements that I made : WND states xyz. The problem in with looking for mainstream sources is that they have not reported on this, so to fully explore the subject, these wacko sources are used to ilustrate what the issue is. Remember what the title is and wikipedia is not trying to say these statements are true, just that they exist.Die4Dixie (talk) 08:57, 3 January 2009 (UTC)
The problem is that there are too many unreliable sources on everything for us to decide which ones we report on, and which ones we don't. We need a reliable source to say which ones are important enough to mention. It sounds like you "just know" that WND is such a source, but we can't rely on subjective assessments like that. We need something objective, like an RS. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 09:04, 3 January 2009 (UTC)
(e.c.)You only state what fringe theories have been reported to have said by the preponderance of independent, reliable sources that mention the fringe theory (that's in WP:FRINGE). The problem with credulous sources is that they start discussing stuff which hasn't received enough attention to be prominent enough for inclusion. However, acknowledging that wacko groups exist is a different matter. World Net Daily is a notable website and mentioning that they have extensive coverage of this particular issue is a reasonable thing to include in the encyclopedia in the interest of getting the reader to understand the context of the conspiracy theory. If no mainstream sources have reported on this, then it doesn't belong in Wikipedia. Fringe subjects are purposefully left unexplored until they receive enough notice that we can apply the standards of research and sourcing that we require in order to be able to discuss them neutrally. ScienceApologist (talk) 09:05, 3 January 2009 (UTC)
There are plenty of sources that rebut what WDN states, but they never state where the theories are coming from. I think the title and the rebuttals serve to clarify that they are fringe/ discredited.Die4Dixie (talk) 09:09, 3 January 2009 (UTC)
Take a gander at how Apollo moon landing hoax conspiracy theories handles that issue. ScienceApologist (talk) 09:11, 3 January 2009 (UTC)
I took a gander , and was overwhelmed by the weasel words "some claim" under "complete hoax" subsection and it got progessively worse.Die4Dixie (talk) 09:15, 3 January 2009 (UTC)
Try to look past the regrettable wording to the format. ScienceApologist (talk) 09:17, 3 January 2009 (UTC)
Ok :). I see that there are listed several theories and the sources for the theories are the books written by the people who put forward the theories. If WDN puts the theories forward in regards to Obama's "birth problems" etc., then can they be used in the same way that the sources were used in the linked to article? I think the format would be awesome for the article in question.Die4Dixie (talk) 09:21, 3 January 2009 (UTC)
The general idea is to have the article try to contextualize the fringe theories. What are the most common claims? What are the claims that are so obscure no one has noticed? Those are the questions that must be answered first. Once you have decided on what the most famous claims are, then try to write prose that asserts the facts that surround the claims. And Bob's your uncle. None of this wrangling about whether WND is a reliable source or not: if everyone agrees that a particular claim is one that has received enough notice to warrant inclusion, then using WND as a source (hopefully one of many) for said claim is as simple as popping it into the footnote. ScienceApologist (talk) 09:25, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

(redent)What SA said. Maybe this isn't a RS noticeboard question, but a question for whatever noticeboard handles undue weight. Anyone know which board that is? - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 08:53, 3 January 2009 (UTC)


Generally weight questions are handled either at WP:NPOVN or WP:FTN. ScienceApologist (talk) 08:55, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

I agree with SA's and PF's analysis above. I too have been involved in this discussion on the article talk page and here are my own 2 cents:

  • WND is a prominent (fringe) source and its role in the campaign should be noted. See last two paragraph of this section in the article to see how this is already done.
  • There are tons of rumors, allegations out there on thousands of non-RS websites, blogs, forums etc regarding Obama's birth/parentage/citizenship etc. We should not try to compile a compendium of all such fringey stuff on wikipedia, but instead write about those theories that have been noted by secondary mainstream sources, of which, thankfully, there are hundreds in this case. See the article references for a small selection.

Abecedare (talk) 09:23, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

If this is the case and your opinion, then why did you say it was not a reliable source and send me over here chasing my tale. Now it tis a question not of reliability like you said, but rather what, when , where , why and how we will use this now reliable source.Die4Dixie (talk) 09:27, 3 January 2009 (UTC)
(ec) Perhaps you missed my post on the article talk page where I made the same point of being aware of both WP:V and WP:DUE. Abecedare (talk) 09:34, 3 January 2009 (UTC)
we can verify that WDN stated it. We only have to read the source. Or is this a discussion about what the meaning of "is" is? You sent me here to ask if it was a relaible source. The opinion seems that it is a reliable source to state what WDN has stated. Exactly what I was asking on the talkpage. Apparently you say it is used elsewhere in the article as a source. What we need to work out is if it meets the same requirements the other instance uses.Not a problem for here. I thank these kind folks. If you want to discuss RS issues, we can chat on my talk page, because we have our answer. If you now want to send me on a shopping spree to another forum, lead the way.Die4Dixie (talk) 09:42, 3 January 2009 (UTC)
I really wish people would get away from this "reliable/unreliable" false dichotomy as though sources must be granted noticeboard imprimatur. The fact is that everything is fair game depending on the context. Otherwise, how the hell would timecube survive? No, the real questions that should be handled by this board are "Is this a reliable source for this statement"? We can say yes or no. But the point here was that the statement you wanted to include had some issues of weightiness that are not exactly under the purview of this noticeboard. It felt like the statement was being crafted to be reliable (since it was asserting an opinion), but we prefer asserting facts rather than opinions. ScienceApologist (talk) 09:31, 3 January 2009 (UTC)
The only thing I wanted to assert was the fact that WDN had stated something, not an opinion as to if WDN stated the statement or not.Die4Dixie (talk) 09:36, 3 January 2009 (UTC)
Not everything that WND writes is worthy of inclusion in the article. We include (and have already included) fringe theories on WND that were reported by secondary sources. Abecedare (talk) 09:43, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

As a rule, if it hasn't hit the mainstream press as a secondary, don't go to primary. Actually I'm uncomfortable about the survival of timecube, but if there are secondary sources I suppose it's okay. --TS 09:38, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

"As a rule, if it hasn't hit the mainstream press as a secondary, don't go to primary." Exactly and succinctly stated! Abecedare (talk) 09:40, 3 January 2009 (UTC)
(ec)I haven't looked at these, and they may not warrant inclusion here, but in general you want to search for RSs that discuss what you want to write about. Here is a google news search for Obama and WND. Some of these may be reliable and show us how much weight (if any) to discuss the issue. Since this is controversial, we should discuss it before putting anything in an article. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 09:43, 3 January 2009 (UTC)
Nope, it's not that it needs to hit the mainstream press, it only has to be in any secondary source, which can include a wide variety of specialist publications. Squidfryerchef (talk) 16:54, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

Absolutely , and we prolly better take this back to the talkpage. I'll look again in AM (Late AM ;))Die4Dixie (talk) 09:51, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

WorldNetDaily is not a "fringe" source. It's simply a conservative news outlet. On a contentious issue or a BLP I'd only quote it as an attribution, i.e. "the conservative news outlet WorldNetDaily said xyz", so that people don't take it as gospel. Squidfryerchef (talk) 16:48, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

I'd also like to say there is no such thing as "source laundering". If a more reliable source quotes a less reliable source, then the less reliable source becomes a primary source and may be quoted in the article. Even if the New York Times quoted a story on Rense.com, then the best practice would be to use both stories. Squidfryerchef (talk) 16:52, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

WorldNetDaily has a reputation for carrying very odd stories written with an extreme political bias. It is not a very reliable source on anything and is more likely to make the news than report it (not a good attribute in journalism). It's better than a random blog. --TS 17:00, 3 January 2009 (UTC)
I'm aware that the bias tends to be right-wing if not far-right, and I'd treat it similarly to a political watchdog group. But I would not want to remove this from our toolbox, it would be useful as a source on topics such as the survivalist/Patriot movement, etc. Another thing I'd like to point out is we seem to be much more permissive to sources with a far-left bias; we should gather data from all sources. Squidfryerchef (talk) 17:07, 3 January 2009 (UTC)
That last sentence is a bit remarkable... On many, many articles I would argue that just the opposite is true. But reliable sources should be reliable sources because they are, not because you try to allow some through for some sort of affirmative action for perceived minority biases. DreamGuy (talk) 23:06, 3 January 2009 (UTC)
No, minority opinions shouldn't be given any more coverage in our articles than they get in the real world; WP:UNDUE is very clear on that. But we shouldn't be disqualifying sources that have an editorial board, have been publishing for years and years, simply because they have a political bias either way. The way I see it, if this is a rumor that's all over the net, WND is reliable enough to use to say that the rumor exists. Squidfryerchef (talk) 02:40, 4 January 2009 (UTC)
Their tactics as a publication tend to sensationalize rather than explicate. Using them as to source the fact that news services with a conservative political bias are interested in the story is appropriate. Using them as a source for what is or is not notable/prominent about the particular story is pretty problematic, in my estimation. ScienceApologist (talk) 06:25, 4 January 2009 (UTC)
I'm only interested in using WND as a source in saying that an alleged photo of the school registration was discussed on WND. The school registration and debate over whether he had to be a citizen to go to the school or whether he was formally adopted conferring citizenship has been discussed briefly in other sources. Squidfryerchef (talk) 15:45, 4 January 2009 (UTC)
If the most reliable source you can find that has discussed this alleged "debate" is WND then you might consider whether the debate is prominent enough to merit inclusion. Remember, there have to be reliable third-party sources before something gets discussed on Wikipedia. WND is not a reliable third-party source in this instance. ScienceApologist (talk) 13:13, 5 January 2009 (UTC)
Yes, that's an important issue when dealing with any source, not just alternative sources. There has to be a consensus that the issue is important enough to mention, over and beyond the RS issues. There won't be a consensus to use WND by itself, but if mainstream citations are added that talk about the school record and its role in the debate, we may be able to say that WND commented on a photo of the record. We now have an RS that says that WND is notable in challenging the legitimacy of Obama's taking office, which allows mentioning it as a primary source. Im trying to hash out on the talk page how to lay out all these cards without using any analysis from the WND site. Squidfryerchef (talk) 23:35, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
I should clarify that I consider the bias to be so gross in the case of WND as to harm the editorial judgement. For instance, they're still carrying Obama eligibility stories (two distinct stories in one day as recently as December 30) and slanting them in such a manner as to give the readership false hopes that these cases will amount to something in the courts. Their editorial judgement is seriously compromised. --TS 06:30, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

I've never bothered to look at WND, but it doesn't sound like the kind of source we should usually use for Wikipedia articles. The thing is, if we're going to have an article such as Barack_Obama_citizenship_conspiracy_theories, we need to detail what the wingnuts skeptics are actually saying. For this topic, WND looks more like a primary source, which sometimes disagrees with other primary sources pushing different versions of the eligibility "problem". I think we can use this, as long as the article makes it clear that all of these theories are held by an extreme minority of the American political community. But to treat WND as a credible commentator on the theories on the same level as a metropolitan newspaper would be a bad move. --Akhilleus (talk) 06:48, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

The Sun/Matt Smith

What is the reliability of this news article from The Sun? While it is The Sun, which has an infamous reputation among Doctor Who fans for inaccurate stories, this time it names its source of information and the information checks out to the other, reliable, sources used (such as the Northampton Chronicle and the Evening Standards). Sceptre (talk) 00:44, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

I don't think it's reliable at all; it's celebrity tittle-tattle. The Evening Standard is usually reliable, but it also reports this kind of gossipy celeb speculation, so don't fall into the trap of recentism and look out for really reliable reports. Itsmejudith (talk) 16:58, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

Jewish Telegraphic Agency

The Jewish Telegraphic Agency has been used as a source for most entries on the article List of rocket and mortar attacks in Israel in 2008. I'd reckon, that this source is not particularly unbiased on this issue. What do you think?--Raphael1 19:58, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

Like any agency it's likely to reflect the biases of its audience and staff, but it's a very reliable source. --TS 20:06, 4 January 2009 (UTC)
How do you come to the conclusion, that it is very reliable? --Raphael1 20:08, 4 January 2009 (UTC)
Evaluation of the content and comparison to other sources. --TS 20:36, 4 January 2009 (UTC)
I looked at the article. JTA is used as sole source on many of the recent reports (past two months). You could probably remedy this by going to Jerusalem Post and Haaretz, and adding corroborating references. --TS 20:43, 4 January 2009 (UTC)
It may or may not have a bias, but it's well within RS. Feel free to cross-check against other news sources. Also we might not want to rely too heavily on a single news source in the same article for copyright reasons. Squidfryerchef (talk) 20:52, 4 January 2009 (UTC)
You don't have choices outside of Israeli media - who else will care to document each strike? NVO (talk) 12:07, 5 January 2009 (UTC)
That's probably true. What do you think about removing any rocket attack, which cannot be backed by any other source (i.e. Jerusalem Post or Haaretz)? --Raphael1 15:00, 5 January 2009 (UTC)
actually, I think that's the sort of material they are most likely to be accurate on. DGG (talk) 16:51, 5 January 2009 (UTC)
Why is that?--Raphael1 14:00, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
I don't think it would be acceptable to remove reliably sourced information just because there is only a single source. If a reader distrusts JTA they can discount that item, but we have no reason to think that their correspondents would fabricate this information. --TS 13:27, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
Didn't you just write, that you consider JTA reliable, because you compared their information to other sources? Now if JTA publishes information you cannot find in any other source, why would you still consider that source reliable?--Raphael1 14:00, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
What do you think about removing any rocket attack which cannot be backed by any other source? You're kidding, right? It's an RS. Why would you doubt their report of an attack just because Haaretz didn't also mention it? We expect Haaretz to catalog every single rocket strike? If anything we should be looking through local papers from the area to flesh out more details. If you want to qualify the statement as "The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported", that's fine, but please don't remove sourced information. Squidfryerchef (talk) 14:39, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
No, I'm not kidding. Can you provide an argument for your claim, that it's an RS? Those articles don't even state an author, whereas WP:RS writes about mainstream news organizations and reliable authors. You might know, that this is a hot-button issue right now, so I'd wish that WP only publishes double-checked information. Do you know any local newspaper from the area, which could be used as additional source? --Raphael1 01:51, 7 January 2009 (UTC)
This looks like a no-brainer that it's an RS. It's a News agency, after all. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 03:26, 7 January 2009 (UTC)
Being a news agency shouldn't be enough. It only takes a couple hundreds of dollars to register a news agency. I could do so in a week. Would you trust everything I publish? Is it mainstream? Who is the author of that information? --Raphael1 20:35, 7 January 2009 (UTC)
Raphael, if you actually were registered as a News Agency, I probably would call you a reliable source. I certainly would need to see some indication to the contrary to conclude otherwise. In the case of the JTA, is there anything that indicates it isn't reliable? Has anyone claimed that these reports of rocket attacks didn't happen or were made up by the JTA? Blueboar (talk) 20:52, 7 January 2009 (UTC)
Yes, isn't it Israel's national news agency and therefore of similar status to other national news agencies, e.g. the Chinese Xinhua. It may be in some way biased, especially in time of war, but that does not make it unreliable in WP terms. I would place it just under the main international news agencies: AP, Reuters, AFP in terms of reliability. Itsmejudith (talk) 21:23, 7 January 2009 (UTC)
OK, so every news agency is considered reliable unless proven otherwise? And we don't even have to know the authors name? Why doesn't WP:RS say so? --Raphael1 21:37, 7 January 2009 (UTC)
(ec)They're a world-wide news service (says NYT) based in New York. The more I learn about them, the more obvious that they're an RS. Maybe you could start a service for a few hundred dollars, I don't know. It wouldn't be the same, though. They're 90 years old, with a substantial staff, and offices in a number of nations. And they're cited by tons of unquestionably reliable sources. We should be using more of their information, not less. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 21:39, 7 January 2009 (UTC)
So, I'm wrong and they aren't Israel's national news agency. However, I would need to see an argument why they would not be reliable as to facts. Of course they may still be selective in their reporting. See the reponses above by Tony Sidaway and Squidfryerchef. Itsmejudith (talk) 21:54, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

sfuk.tripod.com

Resolved

Any though about whether articles and interviews on sfuk.tripod.com can be regards as reliable? I'm mainly interested in the material on Lee Hasdell here, here, here and here. I'm thinking the fact that it's hosted on Tripod pretty much guarantees it's "unreliable" status, but perhaps the interviews can be used? Or does that work similarly to primary sources, especially since we don't know if sfuk does any fact checking? Thanks! --aktsu (t / c) 01:47, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

If you can demonstrate that this Tripod page is either the press release page of a notable organization or is self-published by an expert in this area of martial arts, you may be able to use at least some of it. But be careful with biographies as the policies are stricter. Squidfryerchef (talk) 14:42, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
I cannot, so I guess it's a no-go (as expcted really). Thanks. --aktsu (t / c) 10:12, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Living Hope Ministries

Could you please confirm if this DNA vs. The Book of Mormon/ web site meets the standards of a reliable source andn exterior link? The site seeks to criticize the Book of Mormon on the grounds of a lack of DNA support. It links to a video that can been seen free, but the site also seeks to sell their videos and asks for donations. It is currently being discussed here. I The site does not discuss the qualifications of the people speaking and there appears to be no peer review. It seems like when discussing scientific issues, DNA, a neutral, scientific source is meets the standard rather than a religious website of unknown scientific experitise. Thanks for your asisstance. Cheers. --StormRider 23:02, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

My review of the very scarce information found on the Living Hope Ministries web site is that it is a site without substance, primarily commercial, devoted to selling self-produced "documentaries" (comparable to self-published books or blogs), that it contains links to sites known to have a bias against the LDS Church, which would lead me to suspect the credibility and POV of any information it provides. My vote is a firm no. -- btphelps (talk) (contribs) 23:56, 7 January 2009 (UTC)
nope - remove on sight. --Cameron Scott (talk) 23:58, 7 January 2009 (UTC)
Thanks for the assistance. I think the matter is handled. Cheers. --StormRider 00:27, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

NNDB

Is NNDB a reliable source, for all articles or for BLPS? There are several articles linking to or citing NNDB as a source. I suspect this has been discussed many times and I would not be at all put off if someone could simply point me to those old discussions. Thanks! --ElKevbo (talk) 17:56, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

Yes, as the source lists biographical data of notable individuals, it is quite reliable as it lists their names, achievements and educational history. I must also take issue with use of the term "several", and would make the point that "many" articles cite to NNDB.Yachtsman1 (talk) 18:16, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
No. It was discussed in Archive 3 of this page. Websites must have a reputation for fact-checking to be reliable, and this doesn't seem to be the case for NNDB. No doubt many articles do cite it, that doesn't mean they are right to do so. Itsmejudith (talk) 18:34, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
They cite to it as an external source, Judith. Using it as a cite to make controversial claims against living people is one thing, but many of these articles, including Georgetown University and Dartmouth College link to it as an external source for reference purposes for lists of almuni, for instance. The issue is not as simple as placed forth here. In short, it depends on "how" it is sourced.--Yachtsman1 (talk) 18:51, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
I think we only disagree about terminology. NNDB is not reliable as to the facts of an individual's biography, although it may be permissible as a an extra citation or on a temporary basis for something non-controversial while a better source is sought. Its status as an external link is a different matter. I can't see any particular value in it as an EL in most cases though. Itsmejudith (talk) 19:38, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
Well, our own article on NNDB says that additions and corrections are vetted by staff members, so I don't have too much trouble with using it on occasion. But the main issue is that it's a tertiary source, like an almanac or another encyclopedia, and we don't want to be lazy and cite them for everything. Using it as an external link may be more appropriate. Squidfryerchef (talk) 22:46, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
That particular statement in the NNDB article is unsourced and I couldn't find any such statement on the website itself. --ElKevbo (talk) 05:07, 7 January 2009 (UTC)
Not only is it not unsourced, but even if there were a reliable source saying that it wouldn't change the fact that horribly unreliable information gets in there. If someone is vetting the content, those people aren't reliable sources either. (And as far as "Using it as an external link may be more appropriate." goes, when it's been discussed on the talk page for WP:EL it has been deemed inappropriate for use as a general link as well. DreamGuy (talk) 15:19, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

NNDB is not a reliable source by any stretch of the imagination. Worse than that, it was actively spammed to countless articles by people behind the site, as discussed on the WP:EL talk page several times in the past. The NNDB template only survived votes for deletion thanks to campaigning by those some people. As far as I am concerned, that one should be in our black hole list. DreamGuy (talk) 15:19, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Archive access

I am wanting to access a decision made sometime around mid Jan 2007 From what I can garner it is likely to be on Archive 6. However this has been blanked "as a Courtesy" is there someway i can access the item of interest to me? Jagra (talk) 23:49, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

The contents of the archive are still in the history. --ElKevbo (talk) 05:09, 7 January 2009 (UTC)
Resolved thank you Jagra (talk) 23:12, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Casey Kasem

In the article about Casey Kasem it says that he is from Detroit. I have never heard this before. I was always told that he was originaly from Flint MI, Not Detroit MI.

American Daily

Is American Daily ('About' page) a reliable source? It appears to be an aggregator of unsolicited, email-submitted, otherwise-unpublished, and avowedly partisan commentary. The article under consideration is this one, currently being employed as a source on both Todd Friel and The Way of the Master. HrafnTalkStalk 04:57, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

It's basically a political blog. Not reliable. --TS 09:15, 8 January 2009 (UTC)
Confirm that - if Friel has published anything there it would probably be an acceptable source of his opinion, but otherwise it should not be used. - Eldereft (cont.) 16:11, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Rap-Up.com

Resolved

I am planning to create a page for this magazine, but though it would be better to check if it's reliable enough to warrant a page. I'm pretty sure it can be considered a reliable source, mainly because it is published as a magazine. If you check the About Us segment on their website, it says: "Rap-Up has appeared on CNN, ABC News, BET, VH1, E!, The CW, EXTRA, and mtvU. The publication has been featured in newspapers and magazines including The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, New York Daily News, New York Post, USA WEEKEND, OK! , GRAMMY Magazine, Entrepreneur, Folio, Fast Company, The Daily News of Los Angeles, and more." The page also links to several pages where it has been used by reliable sources. Thoughts? Corn.u.co.pia / Disc.us.sion 03:15, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

when it comes to creating an article about a web magazine (or anything else), the issue isn't how reliable it is ... the issue is how notable it is (see WP:NOTE). To establish notability you need to be able to cite independant third party reliable sources that discuss Rap-Up.com.
Reliability comes in to play if you want to use Rap-Up.com as a source in other articles. Blueboar (talk) 04:03, 31 December 2008 (UTC)
I intend to use Rap-Up.com as a source in other articles, which is why I want to create an article for it. If it is reliable, then I will make one. If not, then I don't really care for the notable part. Why make an article for a page website that cannot be cited? So, I guess I'm looking for reliability and notability, although I'm sure it has the latter. I hope I better phrased my question. :S Corn.u.co.pia / Disc.us.sion 04:16, 31 December 2008 (UTC)
It's notable and reliable. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 19:49, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
Ah, thank you for the reply. I guess I will start working on the article. Corn.u.co.pia / Disc.us.sion 14:04, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

Huffington Post

There has been discussion on the William Timmons bio whether The Huffington Post (hereafter HP) is a reliable source for information related to a biography of a living person.

Wikipedia lists HP as “a liberal news website.” Referring to the site, Howard Kurtz wrote in the Washington Post, 9 July 2007 that it is a “pugnaciously liberal operation.”

Tim Graham of The Media Research Center in September 2007 called HP a “House of Horrors – A Compendium of Far-Left Flame-Throwing, Name-Calling, and Attack-Dogging.” Graham in support of his claim points out the bias of HP bloggers: “Impeach Bush,” “Cheney Is A Terrorist,” “Could I Kill Cheney with Osama’s Corpse,” “Bush’s Human Scum, Supported by Flag-Sucking half Wits,” “Forget His American Birth, Deport Alberto Gonzales,” “Ann Coulter and Overly Patriotic Americans Are Hateful Filth-Spewers,” “Adolph Hitler, Better Than Bush?” “Tony Snow Deserves Cancer, Thanks to His Daily Lying for Dictator Bush,” “Sadistic Alcoholic Bush,” “Republicans Are Psychotic, or Mentally Disabled,” “Believers in Dictator Christ Want dictator Popes or Presidents,” and other commentaries apparently acceptable to HP.

On 21 February 2008 complaints were made on Bill O’Reilly.com about HP entries the editors refused to delete. One among many examples was regarding Nancy Reagan’s fall and rush to the hospital. The blog stated that Nancy Reagan, “like her husband, she has lived far too long. Here’s hoping the hag suffers for several weeks, then croaks in the tub.” There are others with vulgar and abusive comments. (this references the comments made on the blog, not the blog itself. this is not relevant!)99.39.26.86 (talk) 05:13, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

Jessica Aldred in The Observer, 9 March 2008, identifies HP as the “flagship liberal blog.” On 21 May 2008 Hilary Rosen was named political director for HP. She announced support for Hillary Clinton and was the co-executive producer of the Democratic Presidential Forum.

HP is a political blog with “left-of-center audience with political commentary and analysis” wrote Sophia Banay in Portfolio.com on 5 June 2008. HP “began as a left-leaning political news outlet…” by Caroline McCarthy on CNet News, 19 June 2008.

Referring to HP, James Rainey wrote in L.A. times 27 August 2008, “The site has earned its niche as a vibrant aggregator for the political left.” The HP is a “top political blog” according to Peter Henderson, Reuters Blogs, 23 October 2008.

HP is a “liberal alternative to the Drudge Report” wrote Tim Arango, New York Times, 26 October 2008.

The 14 October 2008 HP article by Murray Waas “McCain Transition Chief Aided Saddam in Lobbying Effort” (Timmons was not McCain’s transition chief and did not aid Saddam) probably was not directed against Timmons except as a vehicle to embarrass John McCain in the closing days of the campaign. Timmons was not newsworthy in his own right, and the story starts and ends with comments about McCain. Indeed the article follows not long after the Democratic National Committee and the Obama campaign issued press releases and a television commercial trying to tie McCain to Timmons as “one of the lobbyists running the McCain campaign” although Timmons never was involved in the campaign. Dozens of Democratic bloggers took the cue from headquarters and saturated the Internet with the Timmons-McCain lobbyist charge. This Waas story fit in well with HP’s aggressive support of Obama, and it was a continuation of the political drumbeat against McCain. HP is not unlike tabloid sensationalism, lax in creditability, intended to produce a scandalous effect.

There can be no question but The Huffington Post is both political and liberal; therefore, it is not objective and has a special interest agenda to disseminate. The blog does not meet the standards of Wikipedia as a high quality reference with a neutral point of view that is not contentious, especially about a living person.

Any feedback would be appreciated (especially from an official WP admin).

Rtally3 (talk) 12:58, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

The HP is reliable only for opinions correctly placed with their authors. It does not do "fact checking" (vide the large number of rumors placed on it during the campaign which were not removed). Using it for "facts" is very iffy. Saying "Jane Smaith on the HP said that she felt "xxxx" is about as far as I would try going. If it provides a link to an RS, then go to the RS and not use HP. Collect (talk) 13:32, 31 December 2008 (UTC)
I'd have to agree with Collect. I wouldn't use HP as a RS for facts. If they break a story, I'd look to their sources if possible. While some of the columnists seem to have good journalistic standards of fact-checking, it seems impossible to separate them on a site like HP. Generally, I'd say HP is more an opinion generator than a RS. Are some of the things written about factually accurate? Yes. But consistently and reliably? Too difficult to judge. Pigman☿ 17:06, 31 December 2008 (UTC)
Agree, the HP should be considered reliable for statements as to the opinions of its contributors, but not reliable for blunt statements of fact. Blueboar (talk) 17:46, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks all for your input. I think of encyclopedia's as being a source of facts, not a place to find opinions or speculations, therefore suggest that HP is an unsuitable source based on the information above. Would you agree? Perhaps if there was some sort of article on a hypothesis, or benign subject matter, an opinion type of publication could be appropriate, but certainly not in it's application here -- extremely controversial opinions about the activities of a living person. Thanks in advance for your responses... Rtally3 (talk) 23:23, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

The perceived political slant of a source is irrelevant to its reliability. The operable standard is "a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy". As a relatively new venture, HP is still in the process of establishing its reputation. Murray Waas, on the other hand, does have a good reputation as an investigative journalist, so the proper way to cite this would be to attribute it to him. Dlabtot (talk) 23:51, 31 December 2008 (UTC)
HP in my opinion has succeeded fully in establishing its reputation. The reporting from its regular contributors is in my opinio as reliable and as well edited as any source with a political slant. Much more reliable than Fox, to say the least, and on a par with accepted national sources such as any of the "major" networks. Their opinion is of the same nature as opinion elsewhere and must be reported as opinion--their news accounts are as worthy of credit as any conventional newspaper. Like any news source, challenges tend to come from those who are not shown in a good light by the objective news that they publish. DGG (talk) 06:08, 1 January 2009 (UTC)
HP repeatedly pushed rumors during the presidential campaign. It appears to have no fact checkers of its own. Its stories are precisely as reliable as their source, and so citing the original source makes sense rather than hanging a cite on HP. Collect (talk) 14:02, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

I think it's worth pointing out that no major news sources picked up on this story (because it's really not put together with any cogent reason), and the very title of the article is grossly inaccurate -- John Lehman was named the transition lead, not Timmons. Murray Waas claims to know that Timmons was involved even though the FBI and United Nations couldn't find enough evidence to even ask for a deposition during the trial. I am bewildered how anyone could consider a publication making these kind of errors a reliable source for an encyclopedia. Rtally3 (talk) 19:29, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

  • This is a perennial topic on this board, and I'll reiterate my opinion. The huffington post is not a reliable source for facts as wikipedia defines it. The vast majority of the 'news' they traffic in comes from wire services (AP, Reuters or Bloomberg) and this 'news' is comingles with obvious opinion pieces from columnists or celebrities. when they include some op-ed from a notable figure or recognized expert on a subject, that opinion can be given its due weight with the source identified. I have yet to see any serious indicator that HP undertakes any real reportage or fact checking (contra TPM). Again, the point here is finding the reliability of content generated by HP--not just hosted. If we take away the wire reports, is the remainder fact checked and editorially controlled? For me, the answer is "no". Comparing it to FOX news (a partisan but reliable source) doesn't add light to the issue. I consider it less odious than fox news (only because HP owns up to being 'liberal'), but in terms of reliability it isn't in the same league. Regardless of what you may think of Fox News, they have news crews, editors, fact checkers and so forth (this is their NEWS as a source, not the majority of their content which is high volume opinion). Protonk (talk) 19:57, 1 January 2009 (UTC)
Yes, but it's worth noting that in this instance, we are talking about a story that actually was published by HP. Look at the byline - Murray Waas, HuffPost Reporting From DC, Additional reporting by Patrick B. Anderson. So this is content generated by HP. Dlabtot (talk) 20:13, 1 January 2009 (UTC)
Correct. I stand by my point that the organization itself hasn't developed a reputation for fact checking and shouldn't be considered a reliable source for facts. Protonk (talk) 20:20, 1 January 2009 (UTC)
The question is editorial control, and HP is not a blog, and does have editorial control from a centralized staff--in a manner than more chaotic organizations like Wikipedia might well envy. DGG (talk) 04:45, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

Those interested in the application of this article specifically might be interested in participating in the biography of living persons noticeboard posting as well -- [4] Rtally3 (talk) 20:41, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

The article in question was an edited piece in a reliable source. While HP does publish opinion and blog content, it also publishes fact-checked reporting like the article in question. Rtally3 is just forum-shopping this argument and ignoring the facts that have been presented in response to it. Murray Waas - the journalist who wrote the article - is well respected, and I have already shown Rtally3 the HP's editorial staff page, which puts to rest the claim that this is no better than a blog. csloat (talk) 05:07, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

The HP is, as a general rule, not any more reliable than the author of the individual article. Evaluate each article as per WP:SELFQUEST (Self-published and questionable sources). For claims about third-party BLPs, the standards are higher, and the HP should not be used except to say what they said about themselves. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 05:24, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
I would consider it a reliable source. They do have editorial oversight, so I don't really see a problem. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 05:26, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

Having an editorial staff does not change the fact that (again) the HP is both political and liberal; therefore, it is not objective and has a special interest agenda to disseminate. The article in question is in fact capricious, and claiming that the writer is "well respected" is highly subjective. For these reasons the HP is not a reliable source of facts, regardless of whether the article in question is a blog or not. Rtally3 (talk) 15:36, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

Being "political and liberal" does not make a source unreliable. Neither does being "political and conservative". Most modern news media display a political bias to some degree. That is in the nature of the beast. The question is whether the HP allows its bias to affect its reporting (as opposed to its editorializing), and does it do so enough to move the source into the "Questionable" category. I think it does. Blueboar (talk) 16:26, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

HP is not RS for any political biographical material -- see talk page for the article for a long list of errant articles on HP, and for clearly political articles by Waas in specific. If a person has written clearly political opinion pieces, I suggest that it raises doubts in using such articles in a BLP, which this is. HP also does not issue "corrections" toi articles in its archives that I can find. Collect (talk) 12:43, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

The fact that HP or Waas may have published articles that you disagree with does not make it unreliable. It's pretty clear that for investigative journalism pieces, HP is a reliable source by Wikipedia standards. Blog posts and opinion pieces are another thing entirely, of course, but the same is true of any similar reliable source like National Review, Salon, FOX News, the Nation, etc. Cheers, csloat (talk) 20:36, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

Southern Poverty Law Center

the organization is a watchdog group (mostly) and advocate against racial extremests (mostly). They publish a number of newsletters, and magazines and such. They are referenced in an article on Arthur Kemp where some allegations about his involvement with various white supremesist groups is in the article. If they are not a reliable source, I'd just as soon dump the whole section. --Rocksanddirt (talk) 00:56, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

That discussion doesn't quite get at the question. I dumped the section anyway, it's not helpful in describing the subject and his views. --Rocksanddirt (talk) 01:21, 9 January 2009 (UTC)
That conversation like this one is all about articles on 'hate groups' not individuals. With BLP articles even more care must be exercised and IMO you were right to remove that section. RMHED (talk) 01:32, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

So, the Southern Poverty Law Center is a fairly well-known anti-racist group and is well respected across a wide range of communities. Even those political groups who dislike them admit that they are influential. Their opinions about individuals certainly are worth of inclusion just as the opinions of the Anti-Defamation League, the NAACP, or Amnesty International, for example. I have no opinion on the legitimacy on said section, but I do not believe that this group should be deprecated as an unreliable source. Their accusations about any number of people are certainly noteworthy and should be included in articles about notable individuals. It is up to us to make sure their opinions are properly weighted, but zero weight seems wrong to me. ScienceApologist (talk) 07:01, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

I noticed that the subject of the article User:Arthur Kemp objects to even mere mention of SPLC in the article. I do not think it Wikipedia's place to accommodate such objections. The SPLC is a well-known group and, like it or not, their accusations lend notability to the subject of the article and we owe it to our readers to let them know what they said. We also owe it to our readers to attribute their accusations directly to them. Removing the source entirely will not make it go away. I have a feeling that this is going to get ugly quickly so I'm going to file a note on WP:BLPN#Arthur Kemp and I'd appreciate it if some admins would keep an eye on the situation. ScienceApologist (talk) 16:06, 10 January 2009 (UTC)


At this point, I would not say that the article approaches NPOV nor BLP standards. Collect (talk) 16:15, 10 January 2009 (UTC)
I don't think the article is very good at all. The sourcing is atrocious and the writing haphazard. Nevertheless, I do think the first paragraph is better than most of the rest of the article. Of course, I spent a great deal of time on it last night, so I'm biased. Anyway, I think that people should try to help there. ScienceApologist (talk) 16:18, 10 January 2009 (UTC)
Agree that the Southern Poverty Law Center is a reliable source on racist, separatist, nationalist, and virulently homophobic organizations in the US. They base their judgments on police reports and reliable intelligence. They have an educational branch widely used in schools called Teaching Tolerance. The designation of a BLP as a racist should always include "according to", just as one would expect the designation of a terrorist and the CIA or FBI.--Moni3 (talk) 16:17, 10 January 2009 (UTC)
Problem is that the material cited does not support claims of "fact" as it is clearly wordied in an editorial fashion. "It's unclear what Kemp's aims are — he refused repeated requests for an interview — but he is obviously helping to shore up the Alliance, which has largely collapsed since the death of founder William Pierce in 2002. He also may be trying to build stronger alliances between white supremacists in America and Europe, where he is a high-level cadre of the whites-only British National Party (BNP) and has important ties to other European white supremacist organizations." appears to be opinion at best (which should be cited as the writer's own opinion) or speculation at worst (and not properly utile in a BLP in any case). Collect (talk) 16:19, 10 January 2009 (UTC)
The SPLC generally does not shy away from full endorsement of what is published at their website. And currently, the accusation of a connection to National Alliance is attributed directly to them. ScienceApologist (talk) 16:21, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

If the SPLC's outrageously false allegations against me are to be included, then it is only fair that my rebuttal of them also be included.

In this regard, I can show how the SPLC article about me on their own web site has been repeatedly edited by that organisation as one after another of their lies fall apart. For example, they originally claimed that I live and work from a spare bedroom of the National Alliance chairman's house in Ohio (in fact I live in Britain); that I spoke at the 2006 Barnes Review conference in Washington DC (I did not), that I spoke at a NDP meeting in Germany (I never have) and a whole list of other gross, serious and libellous factual errors, far too long to list individually here.
As each of these gross lies were exposed, the SPLC edited them out of their original article. Fortunately I kept screen shots of all of the versions.
Now, anyone who actually thinks that they are still a 'reliable' resource on anything, except their own invented lies, needs their head read.
As I have said before, if the SPLC's lies are to be allowed in, I must be given an equal opportunity to refute them. Otherwise the whole Wikipedia system of 'neutrality' will fall down.

Arthur Kemp (talk) 16:28, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Right now, we aren't including any of the specific claims made by the SPLC that you are referring to. There are only two claims we are including: 1) the SPLC labels you a white supremicist and 2) the SPLC claims that you have provided some measure of support to the National Alliance. So, are you disputing either of those two opinions? If so, why can't I find a specific repudiation of those claims in the citations you provided earlier? ScienceApologist (talk) 16:31, 10 January 2009 (UTC)
Indeed, Arthur Kemp, you should not be editing your own article at all. Is there a reliable source that can say what you describe yourself as if not a white supremacist? Are you claiming they are calling you this and you are not involved in any organization tangential to white pride and such? Wikipedia relies solely on primary reliable sources, so what do they say about you? --Moni3 (talk) 16:36, 10 January 2009 (UTC)


(ec)I would state that COI rules on editing the article are strong, but that pages such as this are quite proper venues to air your concerns. If the article has been re-edited without making "corrections" notes, that, to me, is a red flag (pardon the use of the term). Reputable sources will admit errors, and this does not make a good impression on me for the RS-ness of the source. Next: "solely on primary sources" is incorrect, Moni3 Collect (talk) 16:39, 10 January 2009 (UTC)
An argument for a user talk page, perhaps. But the theory of which should be applied to all articles. Not sure what you're referencing as incorrect, but feel free to respond on my talk page instead of this thread to avoid derailing it. --Moni3 (talk) 16:52, 10 January 2009 (UTC)
Right now, the anonymous users who are continually reposting the SPLC's pack of lies about me are constantly quoting other parts of that article.
I dispute the label 'white supremacist' and 'some measure of support for the National Alliance.' The first is a totally subjective opinion (a crystal clear example of the 'POV' to which you yourself object so much) and the second is based on a pack of lies (some of which I have detailed above, there are plenty more) which the SPLC sucked out of their thumbs.

Now, as to a specific 'refutation of those claims in the citations I provided earlier' angle: There are none, because they refer to things that did not happen.

Let me explain it to you this way.

1. Let's say I create a web site in which I say that you are a child molester. (Now don’t get me wrong like that guy on who I used the 'Nazi’ example on earlier -- I am not saying you are a child molester, just for the sake of argument, let us say that there is a web article out there saying that you are.)

2. There is absolutely no other proof for that "child molester" allegation apart from that one article.

3. I then create a Wiki entry on you, quoting that article, saying you are a child molester, according to that one article.

4. You edit the entry, and deny the allegation.

5. I then undo your denial, and say that unless you give me a "citation" of where it says you are NOT a child molester, then the original allegation will remain on Wikipedia.

That scenario is EXACTLY what has been done here with me. The SPLC has manufactured a story, most of which is totally bogus (the could not, for example, even get my year of birth right, so much for their 'facts') and now because I, the subject of the story, deny their allegations, you want to knock my contribution down because there is no "citation" . . . it is ludicrous.
If my original edit had been left, the article would have contained the SPLC allegations, and my denial thereof. That I think, is fair.

Arthur Kemp (talk) 16:48, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

NPOV does not mean we eliminate all POVs, nor does it mean that we necessarily must determine what are the "pack of lies" and what is the truth. As to whether you are a white supremicist, there are other sites out there which call you such, at least by implication or association: [6], [7]. Or, if you prefer, slightly more reliable sources: [8], [9], [10]. And it looks to me like you still are not repudiating the connection between yourself and the National Alliance. I understand that you think a number of the specific claims made in the SPLC article are false, but we are clear that it is their opinion we are referencing and I'm not clear as to exactly why a rather muted discussion of this needs to be excised. Anyway, I'll let others opine for a bit. ScienceApologist (talk) 17:01, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Southern Poverty Law Center, Anti-Defamation League, Searchlight Magazine, Chip Berlet. Again and again problems with these unreliable sources and their claim about their political enemies. --Dezidor (talk) 16:59, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

By what metric do you claim they are unreliable? ScienceApologist (talk) 17:02, 10 January 2009 (UTC)
1. Factual mistakes and proofless claims. 2. COI. They simply write about people that they fight against. It´s like to base article about David Cameron on sources published by Labour Party. 3. Articles are often self-published by these organizations. --Dezidor (talk) 17:27, 10 January 2009 (UTC)
That metric doesn't quite work. The "factual mistakes" and "proofless claims" are simply your opinion of the sources. If you would like to impeach the sources you're going to have to make a better case than just proof by assertion. Their "conflict of interest" is not anything to shy away from. When using them to source their own opinions, attribution directly to these groups is not problematic. It doesn't matter if they write about people that they fight against: that's their prerogative and Wikipedia is not in the business of excluding sources based solely on a mission statement. Finally, the "self-published" argument is meaningful only if we think their opinions are wholly irrelevant and obscure in the matter. That's an editorial decision, but, as many people are pointing out here, their opinions are considered by a wide range of independent sources to be of interest to the subjects of this article. Excluding SPLC on the basis of this kind of innuendo is simply sour grapes and argumentative bluster: there is no real analysis or explanation. We aren't basing the entire article on SPLC sources, we're merely asking to include their opinions on the matter. To exclude the opinions of the Labour Party in an article about David Cameron is not NPOV, and excluding the opinions of the SPLC in an article about this subject is not either. ScienceApologist (talk) 19:27, 10 January 2009 (UTC)
It seems we can regard the Southern Poverty Law Center as an RS in this instance, and I agree with that view. Note that Kemp has been blocked for massive edit warring. Verbal chat 19:34, 10 January 2009 (UTC)
To exclude the opinions of the Labour Party in an article about David Cameron is not NPOV, but to write in first paragraph about him only his name and opinion of Labour Party is NPOV violation. Polical enemy is not good source for ideological characterization. SPLC is self-published website and using dubious sources like SPLC is BLP violation. I am not against opinions of ideological enemies in "criticism". --Dezidor (talk) 20:09, 10 January 2009 (UTC)
"Criticism sections" are things best left avoided. As it is, there is a big difference between this particular article and the article on David Cameron: namely that this article is about a marginal figure who derives his notability, in part, from the reactions he gets from critics who are more notable. The notice he generates is part of what makes him encyclopedic and we might want to put that directly up front. Of course, moving this particular criticism elsewhere in the article may be okay too, but the article is so short as it is, it's hard to really say exactly where the best place for it is. I'm glad you agree that it can be included, though. That's a step in the right direction. ScienceApologist (talk) 21:49, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

The first requirement of any article is NPOV, and at this point it does not appear this article meets that standard. Insisting that a person can not deny something himself is a strange interpretation of WP guidelines on NPOV. Collect (talk) 19:35, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

No one is saying that the person in question cannot "deny something himself". We are saying, however, that attributing a source to SPLC is not problematic. Moreover, the referred to citations are not precisely refuting the white supremacy or the association with the National Alliance per se. They do take to task a number of other claims that are not in our article, however. ScienceApologist (talk) 20:03, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Christian Science Monitor

At Talk:Pro-life feminism there is a discussion as to whether the Christian Science Monitor is RS or not. one says "It is a religious tract with everything to gain for its positions by reporting, as far as they know, the God's own truth about a nice lady who believes in the same wonderful thing as they do, without all that unpleasant and vulgar checking to see if is a lie." Is this true? Collect (talk) 13:30, 10 January 2009 (UTC)


As far as I am aware we consider the CSM a reliable source. It's (not as far as I am aware) some form of Christian rah-rah paper. --Cameron Scott (talk) 13:33, 10 January 2009 (UTC)
Agreed. The CSM is a newspaper with a good reputation for reliability and fact-checking. As always, however, there are caveats. The article under discussion at Talk:Pro-life feminism, is a an opinion piece [11]. Opinion pieces, even in reliable newspaper, are only reliable sources for the opinion of the author, not for statements of fact. See Wikipedia:Reliable_sources#News_organizations. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 13:54, 10 January 2009 (UTC)
ah - never seen that this was about an OP-ED - yes Stephen is right. I thought this was a general question about the paper itself. --Cameron Scott (talk) 13:58, 10 January 2009 (UTC)
No problem. The question was about the newspaper in general, not the article. And it's somewhat easy to miss. At first I thought that "Amid Palin" in the page title gave name of the author. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 14:15, 10 January 2009 (UTC)
The other cite questioned was by the person at issue herself, rejected as not a proper cite. I would think that using the CSM cite marked with the columnist's name would be proper then, as it appears directly on point?
I don't know what exactly you are proposing. As far as I can tell, there are three proposed sources. Bucks County Pro Life Coalition is not remotely a reliable source, and even if we assume that it correctly repeats Angelou's words (note: the article is obviously not written by Angelou), it contains nothing about abortion rights, only about one persons decision not to have an abortion. The New York Daily News is a reliable newspaper, and the article [12] seems to be a reasonable source. It explicitly claims Angelou supports abortion rights. The CSM article is an opinion piece. It is a good source for the opinion of Angela Kays-Burden only. From a RS perspective, you can use the NYDN and the CSM sources for the respective positions. From a WP:WEIGHT perspective, I would think that having just the CSM article is extremely misleading. And from an editorial taste point of view I think something like "Angelou supports abortion rights [1], although Angela Kays-Burden claims she is pro-life [2]" is an abomination that adds nothing of value to the article. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 15:12, 10 January 2009 (UTC)
I never said anything about the Bucks County cite which I regard as non-RS. I would say "Maya Angelou has written that she was glad that she did not have an abortion, though she does support abortion rights" as being quite balanced. I was just a tad bemused by the vociferous rejection of the CSM as a "religious tract" when, in point of fact, the Christian Science church has, as near as I can tell, absolutely no position on abortion. Collect (talk) 15:26, 10 January 2009 (UTC)
Well, the problem is that some "Christians" have tainted the name, so knee-jerk reactions are not uncommon. As for your sentence: From the three sources I saw, the only one that supports "Maya Angelou has written that she was glad that she did not have an abortion" is the completely unreliable one. So the sentence may be balanced, but it is not supported by reliable sources. But I think we now agree on the reliability of the sources, so further discussion should probably take place somewhere else. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 15:35, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Issues with astrology "reliable sources"

There seem to be some issues with the use of sources on the articles of the signs, particularly Scorpio (astrology) where an individual has recently decided on his own merits that some websites constitute reliable sources. Obviously, there have been no research that can validate any of the claims made there, but I believe stating the opinions of renown astrologers about the signs have a place on these articles.

The question would be then, what opinions would be welcome on these articles? Please clarify this for us. --Nathanael Bar-Aur L. (talk) 23:51, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

The authors of a random astrology website aren't authorities on anything--not even the dubious field of astrology. Believe it or not there are scholastic sources in astrology (even people who describe themselves as "research astrologers!") and these people may be cited as sources according to their prominence in the field. --TS 09:17, 8 January 2009 (UTC)
Even though astrology is a fringe science, there is enough scholarly literature on the subject, which doesn't simply provide an in universe treatment of the field, e.g., John North's Horoscope and history, S. Jim Tester's A history of western astrology etc.
While books by Linda Goodman and other practitioners may be used (in moderation) to add properly attributed opinion to the articles, websites like Astrology online, Astrology.com, Elore.com etc are not worth the paper they are not written on. Abecedare (talk) 11:26, 8 January 2009 (UTC)
Thanks for the clarifications. What do I do with this guy then? He keeps adding them back. --Nathanael Bar-Aur L. (talk) 01:27, 9 January 2009 (UTC)
Best bet is is the 3R Rule Bihco (talk) 16:34, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Menachem Shelach

We are having dispute about number of WWII victims in ex Yugoslavia and there is small problem about reliable sources:

  • 1) First question is if we can use data writen by Menachem Shelach. He is respected holocaust scholar but shortly before death he will declare for Israel weekly Hotam that he "deathly hates the Croats". His statement for Hotam is not disputed but question is if after that statement his data can be used for articles related with Croats in WWII ?
  • 2) Second question is if we can use like source known denier of Srebrenica genocide Milan Bulajić [13] [14] and organization in which he is council member. Problem with Bulajić is in fact that he is saying that Serbs are not guilty of genocide for which we are having court decision, then we are having false testimonies [15] in his book and for end we are having his preaching about genocide od Serbs in WWII Croatia [16] and modern genocide of Serbs on Kosovo (Kosmet in article).
  • 3) last question is if work of Srboljub Zivanovic can be used like reliable source. He is speaking about 700,000 killed in Jasenovac extermination camp with 700 skeletons in every grave. In 7 graves which has been excavated by Zivanovic there have been: 1 - 197 skeletons, grave 2 48 skeletons, grave 3 - only 2 skeletons, grave 4 - 8 skeletons, grave 5 - no data, grave 6 - 26 skeletons, and grave 7 - 3 skeletons [17]--Rjecina (talk) 18:45, 8 January 2009 (UTC)
The article must be based on books and articles by historians, preferably in English. You say that Shelach is a respected holocaust scholar, and if that is true then his work should be a reliable source. Unless, that is, it has been disputed by other scholars after his statement in Hotam. The other people you mention - it depends on whether they are historians or not. Are they people who have written books published by scholarly presses, or articles in scholarly journals? If not, then they should be disregarded. Itsmejudith (talk) 19:16, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Patrick Madrid

Is a Catholic apologetic writer whose book we have been asked not to use on Roman Catholic Church. Several editors would like to be able to include his opinion on the official name of the Church but we have been reverted three times by an admin who we believe is abusing his power and influence. WP:NPOV allows POV's and our text cited his name and quoted what he said on the matter. This text was removed by that admin. This is the revert of that edit where you can see the info on the source and how we cited it. Thanks for your opinions [18] NancyHeise talk 07:42, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

I don't have an opinion on using Patrick Madrid as you have, but he does seem to be a notable opinion on catholic stuff.[19][20] It sounds like this may be contentious, so maybe you could find some other references expressing a similar opinion? - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 07:49, 10 January 2009 (UTC)
Yes, we already have three others. Madrid just said it in a more concise language and I wanted to use his quote. Right now we have a reference to a book by Kenneth Whitehead [21] that was used by Catholic media outlets such as EWTN and Our Sunday Visitor to explain to Catholic subscribers the name of the Church. The opposing side on this debate say this is not a good reference. EWTN is the largest Catholic media network in the world reaching 140 countries in several languages and is a member of an organization called SIGNIS that has Vatican oversight. It is also the media choice of Satellite XM radio for broadcasts of Catholic issues. We also have a reference to a protestant academic named McClintock and the Catholic Encyclopedia. NancyHeise talk 08:32, 10 January 2009 (UTC)
EWTN is probably a reliable source, but it's hard to be sure since their about us page doesn't talk about their editorial staff.[22] - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 20:29, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Validity of TopMudSites in relation to Threshold (online game)

There's a discussion at the talk page of the Threshold article about whether a link to the all-time rankings of MUDs is a reliable source for the article. I do not think that it is because the ranking system isn't explained clearly and appears to be based off of clicks to the websites (probably from the TMS site itself). I do not think that the amount of clicks from a website that acts like a linkfarm would make the source reliable, just as the number of views on a YouTube video do not make it notable. I would like further input about the link since I've been challenged on the Threshold page. Themfromspace (talk) 00:28, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Just to aid in the discussion, the clicks actually come from the originating mud's page which is registered with TMS by the admins of those muds ,and the vote is sent through to TMS. TMS counts the vote and tallies it. So, it doesn't actually act like a link farm, I think. At least two muds have been banned from TMS for abusing the voting system, so it is monitored and regulated by the owner. That would make it more reliable, I think than YouTube or a simple Google search. I hope that this helps. Kallimina (talk) 00:46, 11 January 2009 (UTC)
My problem with using TMS and in particular the all-time rankings link provided above is two-fold:
  1. The usefulness of the all-time rankings page has been previously questioned by the administrator of TopMudSites when posting the link in their forums. The administrator said, and I quote, "I never published this because there isn't a good way to resolve time difference, so the "total votes" without the context of "total time on the site" might not be too meaningful".
  2. TMS periodically zeroes the vote counters in order to keep the vote ratings relevant to the current time period, so current popularity is shown. I consider this akin to record charts. However, unlike record charts, there are no records kept of what a particular MUD's rank was at the end of a rankings period. This is my primary concern with the use of TMS in order to establish notability, as it clearly doesn't sit with WP:V.
Whether the voting system should be considered valid is a question for those more experienced with evaluating the particular reliability of a source. —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 00:55, 11 January 2009 (UTC)
I agree with Mendaliv that more specialized/experience determination is needed. In contrast to the Administrator's opinion, it has been used as an authoritative source for MUD rankings (I will add the stipulation here that I personally don't think it can be given a blanket "of all time of all MUDs" type connotation, as I don't know the coverage of non-English language MUDs listed, nor the specific coverage of MUDs, but could appropriately be used as "of MUDs listed on topmudsites.com"). Issue 113 [23] of Flagship Magazine (a print gaming magazine of 25+ years being published in the UK) uses it as an authoritative list when it covered MUDs (Page 9, right hand column, about halfway down for those that don't wish to read the whole thing). Ismarc (talk) 07:44, 11 January 2009 (UTC)
It seems RS to me because it is not self published, ie none of the MUDs on the list are determining the ranking, it is done by a third party. Additionally, there is some evidence that the owner has established criteria for inclusion on the ranking and eliminated bad faith MUDs. --Theblog (talk) 04:50, 12 January 2009 (UTC)
What I am concerned about is that the ranking appears to be determined by clicks, not any objective criteria. To say that X MUD is important because Y ppl clicked on it from Z site seems very subjective and easy to manipulate. Themfromspace (talk) 04:54, 12 January 2009 (UTC)
Additionally, the web blog awards, which have a similar methodology, are noted on Wikipedia, for example [24] and on other places. --Theblog (talk) 04:53, 12 January 2009 (UTC)
Self-published refers to the site, not its content. I don't see any evidence of an editorial staff, verifying numbers, etc. there is nothing there to indicate its a reliable source for anything more than some people clicked some buttons. We don't know who those people are and if it remotely means anything.--Crossmr (talk) 04:12, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Newsgroups and self-published blog entries

Several notes,

  • Per RS, inclusion of unreliable sources, such as what was attempted here, is not acceptable. While newsgroup postings have a post-date, the name and headers can be forged. Anyone with a terminal can post through a newsgroup service, or use a free service such as Google Groups, and use an identical name. The only verification comes from the headers and IP address, which can be forged or unverified. In addition, CITET states that newsgroups should not be used to verify existing sources (or stand alone).
  • Per SPS, using self-published sources, such as what was removed here, is not acceptable. Self-published sources, especially from unreliable sources such as blogs, are not acceptable. Generally, they are not permitted except for in instances where it is relevant to the author of the blog (e.g. an article about the author of the blog). That is not the case here.
  • As a note, since it has/was a problem, dead links should be removed or the passage rewritten, so that it no longer relies on the dead link, per DEADREF.

You don't delete an article that was poorly sourced, take it to DRV, have the article userified, then restored with the same crap and expect people to give an A+. seicer | talk | contribs 04:00, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

  • Comment Note the original topic of discussion was on topmudsites.com. This was started yesterday before the usenet group was linked to. I'm not sure if its policy to have each concern in one section or to split it into two. Themfromspace (talk) 04:10, 12 January 2009 (UTC)
You should split the two issues up as they are completely different. On the blog, blogs are allowed if published by experts in the field on the field they are experts in. For example all over the global warming related pages you will find blog posts from Real Climate, a self published blog by experts in climatology. I believe the threshold link in question also fits the bill as it is a blog post from an expert in the field of MUDs, since Richard Bartle basically invented MUDs and has stayed active in the field since then, I do believe he is considered an expert. --Theblog (talk) 04:38, 12 January 2009 (UTC)
It even spells it out in WP:SPS clearly: "Self-published work is acceptable to use in some circumstances, with limitations. For example, material may sometimes be cited which is self-published by an established expert on the topic of the article, whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable third-party publications."--Theblog (talk) 04:40, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

On the newsgroups, I believe the newsgroup references should be left out of the article unless they fit the bill for expert self published works above. Newsgroups are just another SPS. --Theblog (talk) 04:44, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

The newsgroup link ( you have to go way back in the history to see the debate over inclusion ) was only to a posting on rec.games.mud.announce,[25] on what the MUD was all about. It's a primary source, just like citing a corporation's official page in an article about the corporation. While you always have to be careful of forged posts, this isn't a high-risk situation like we're writing about some scandal, it's just announcing the existence of the MUD. It's pretty unlikely that twelve years ago somebody decided to forge a post so that they could win an argument on an online encyclopedia that might be created several years into the future. The only issue I have with the usage of that cite, for saying you must be 18 to play, that was from 1997, do we have a more recent source? The USENET link would make an excellent EL, BTW. Squidfryerchef (talk) 16:07, 12 January 2009 (UTC)
Its unlikely, but its impossible to verify it. Its very clearly a self-published source of unknown and impossible to verify origin. its the very thing covered by WP:V and WP:RS--Crossmr (talk) 03:55, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Expert publishing about topic to create reliable source?

While a new version of this article has been created, it has been put up for AFD. Those that support keeping it point to a "new" source provided by an expert in the field in his blog here. In any other situation, this would seem ok, but it is clear from the timing of the blog's posting in addition to the references to WP's deletion policy that the article was specifically written to create/ensure notability of the topic for purposes of the previous AFD. I feel that calling this source "reliable" (and thus using it in the first plalce) is very problematic because, first, it is not independent - in this case, of WP, not so much of the topic material - and even if the expert is not an editor of WP, seems to be a conflict of interest, and to some extent gaming the system. I'm sure that there are other editors and readers of WP that are experts in their own fields or have sufficient clout to be able to publish an article on a topic in what would normally be considered to be reliable, so we have to be careful with these people creating articles in order to achieve some goal on WP, whether to support the notability of a topic or a certain contentious fact. Of course, these people may also just happen by coincidence to write about a topic that is immediately needed by editors here to be able to use to support something, so the intent of the sourced author has to be considered here. Is this type of source an issue should we concerned with ? --MASEM 16:39, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

  • Just so. This is just another instance where Wikipedia's zealous deletionists have caused a commotion loud enough to be noticed outside of Wikipedia itself, as has happened more than once over the past year. It might count as lobbying in an external forum, but it's lobbying by a recognized expert in online games; and that kind of lobbying can't take away notability from something that is in fact worthy of note; and notability standards aren't the issue here either. It doesn't take away from the entry's status as being from an expert in the field that the actual article relates to. It just means that word of our deletion debate reached the expert, who weighed in on his blog. - Smerdis of Tlön (talk) 22:23, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Is a Discovery or History Channel documentary considered a reliable source?

67.184.14.87 (talk) 14:23, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

These are entertainment channels also featuring more fanciful fare about secret societies and all. If it's something noteworthy you should try to find mention in better sources. PetersV       TALK 14:54, 11 January 2009 (UTC)
For what sort of material? history.com has a huge amount of text with references (granted much from F&W Encyclopedia), and does do fact-checking on its articles. It is widely used in US classrooms, and does not have "fanciful fare" in any particular amount (the one on secret societies in NY history was, in fact, quite accurate). Ditto discovery channel networks -- the text articles are as reliable as F&W. Collect (talk) 15:27, 11 January 2009 (UTC)
The World War I article, actually. 67.184.14.87 (talk) 16:40, 11 January 2009 (UTC)
If the material is opinion or OR, then no. If the material is statement of fact, then cite the program's source, not the program. Wikiant (talk) 15:35, 11 January 2009 (UTC)
Please don't let's mistake the often ridiculous nonsense shown on Discovery for reliable sourcing. Choosing to cite Discovery Channel material is the sign of somebody who cannot be bothered to find a proper source. --TS 15:39, 11 January 2009 (UTC)
Eh. IIRC, the discovery channel had the best single source retrospective on the Chernobyl disaster. Protonk (talk) 16:20, 11 January 2009 (UTC)
That's a pretty ambitious statement. In whose judgement was it the best single source perspective? --TS 16:23, 11 January 2009 (UTC)
Lol. Mine. :) Protonk (talk) 16:28, 11 January 2009 (UTC)
To be more clear, I can't be relied on as a source since I don't remember whether it was the history channel or discovery channel, but I do remember the narrative being clearer and less opaque than national geographic's round up or the US government's unclassified report. I'm sure book length discussions of the topic are 'better' as it were. But were I to be a total amateur, I would prefer watching the 2 hr special. Protonk (talk) 16:31, 11 January 2009 (UTC)
History and Discovery are reliable sources as we define them. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 20:22, 11 January 2009 (UTC)
Per my prior comment -- I find their text fine for sure as RS. Trying to use any video as a source can be a problem unfortunately. And they are used in schools a great deal. Collect (talk) 20:27, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

WP:reliable_reference says that newspapers can be considered reliable, but with caveats. It is not clear to me that a television program would rise to the same level of reliability as a newspaper. Nonetheless, the highest level of reliability (according to WP policy) is published academic papers. Since the program in question is about World War I, I am certain that you can find the support you seek in a history journal. Wikiant (talk) 20:37, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

  • True, but if we are given the choice between a wikipedia article with a fact sourced from the discovery channel and no fact at all (or a CN tag), I would prefer the discovery channel source. Especially because academic journals are neither scrutable nor accessible for most editors. Protonk (talk) 23:20, 11 January 2009 (UTC)
  • We should treat them as interim stop-gaps: can be used, but really should be replaced by a more reliable source asap. Sceptre (talk) 23:26, 11 January 2009 (UTC)
  • I wholeheartedly object to blanket assumptions that television programs are unreliable or less reliable than newspaper articles. That may be true in general but it's far from an absolute and must be judged in a much more nuanced manner (such as what is, in general, happening in this section with specific questions about the channel that aired the program, the topic, etc.). --ElKevbo (talk) 16:20, 12 January 2009 (UTC)
A lot of this has to be determined by the individual program we are citing... just as with books, not all History Channel documentaries are the same. Some are very good history (or science in the case of the Science channel), some are filled with pseudohistorical crap. IE... there is more to reliability than venue of publication. Blueboar (talk) 00:11, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

The Paranormal Database (website)

On the article Lewis, about the Hebridean island, I've found several references to supposed paranormal events that are drawn from a website that called itself "The Paranormal Database".

The website's rubric says:

The Paranormal Database is a serious ongoing project to quantitatively document as many locations with paranormal / cryptozoological interest as possible, region by region, in England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland. Sixty-five areas are currently covered, now totaling over 8500 entries, with frequent additions and current stories continuously updated.

Fair enough as far as it goes, but the individual entries aren't much use. For instance here is one entry in its entirety:

Humped Creature[26]
Location: Achmore, Isle of Lewis - Loch Urabhal
Type: Cryptozoology
Date / Time: 27 July 1961
Further Comments: While fishing, two teachers watched a small headed creature with a single hump swim past their boat at a distance of around thirty-five metres.

And that's it. No information about the teachers' identities, whether they were locals or tourists, and nothing about the weather conditions, visibility or time of day. Moreover the islands are well known for seals, and when in the water a seal looks exactly like "a small headed creature with a single hump."

This looks to me to be about as useful as a chocolate wristwatch.

Any reason why I shouldn't toss entries referenced solely to that website? --TS 16:06, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

See if you can find references for those statements through Google Books. Most likely this database site was chosen because it was handy. Squidfryerchef (talk) 16:32, 12 January 2009 (UTC)
Good suggestion. A search for, for instance, Searrach Uisge throws up nothing clearly independent of Wikipedia except that database. Nothing in Google Scholar and nothing in Google Books. For all I know it was just added to Wikipedia one day as a joke and then found its way into this "database". --TS 16:42, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

I don't see why, the database should be considered reliable at all. From their FAQ (emphasis added):

Where does your information come from?
The information published comes from many sources, including journals, books, magazines, and first and second hand accounts. Please see further reading for a list of sources which have not been sent to us direct.

and they even have Help Add to The Paranormal Database! form for people who have "experienced a paranormal event and want to share it with others, or know of a place near to you that supernaturally charged" (I am tempted :) ). I couldn't find anything regrading who scrutinizes these submissions and what editorial control is exercised; nor could I locate any book or newspaper or academic article citing this database. I think we should treat it simply as a SPS, not usable outside an article about itself. Abecedare (talk) 16:59, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Although I didn't mention that data entry page, it was one factor that rang alarm bells for me. A Self-published source (SPS)--yes, that is what it is. There is no reason to suppose that its information is checked for reliability, and we have no way of determining the source of any given entry. --TS 17:10, 12 January 2009 (UTC)
Quite a few articles seem to use it, see [27]. dougweller (talk) 18:38, 12 January 2009 (UTC)
Working through them now. Most of them seem to be of the "vicarage is said to be haunted" type. --TS 20:08, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Interviews at Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

  • 1) Can this interview with writer Christopher Hampton be used to source the statement that he is no longer working on the screenplay for Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell? I could not find this information anywhere else, so I am hesitant to let it remain in the article, particularly since the site on which the interview is hosted seems amateurish.
  • 2) Can this interview with Susanna Clarke, the author of Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, published on her website, be used source information about the author's favorite books and influences on her writing? This seems like press material released by the publisher to me, so I was thinking perhaps we should not use it.

Thanks for the input. Awadewit (talk) 03:30, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

It seems like they're OK. Maybe filmhobit isn't reliable for their articles, but it seems like a legitamate interview, and they do have an editorial staff. The other may be a press release, but I don't see why it would be unreliable for the author's opinions. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 03:58, 13 January 2009 (UTC)
I was under the impression that press releases would not necessarily be written by the author - they are part of "marketing", therefore, as they are trying to "sell" the author, they are not attempting to depict her accurately. Awadewit (talk) 04:05, 13 January 2009 (UTC)
They're not independant, that's for sure. Maybe it wouldn't be good for something controversial, although I think it's reliable for her opinions. It probably depends on what's being sourced. I wouldn't use a press release to say "greatest novel ever", but if it's somthing like "Alan Moore is one of her favorite authors" that seems fine to me. Maybe someone else will have an opinion. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 04:13, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Source verification - Online scans of old newspaper articles

Is a scan of an old newspaper article (pre-WWII) acceptable as verification of source? I won't list the specific article in this instance, because it is irrelevant to the larger question. The age of the article precludes an on-line source from the newspaper itself, but I have found a scanned JPEG of the article on line. If the article is acceptable (it in noncontroversial, and relevant to a biography I am working up) then my next question would be, do I cite the newspaper and link to the page with the scan as verification? Or just cite the article as if I hold the original newspaper in my hands? I suppose it is possible for someone to forge a scan of an old article, and that might be a concern in a controversial topic, but this is a mundane biography. Thanks72.11.124.226 (talk) 22:36, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

(Edited to add...) The online source of the scan is a family-oriented site memorializing the bio subject. It might not be a reliable source for other information not because of any reason to doubt, but because of the normal verifiability issues regarding such sites. So, the issue is compounded. Although the article scan on face value speaks for it's own legitimacy, the url where it is parked has no specific source credibility.72.11.124.226 (talk) 22:40, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

(Edited again...) OK.... since there are multiple issues, I am re-thinking not listing the source of the scanned article here. There are larger issues involved, but too many specific to this case to pretend a specific example is irrelevant. The bio in question is on Alfred Morang, artist and writer. Links to the scanned newspaper article(s) in question are found in an online family-generated bio of another person (thumbs of articles with links to scans are on the left side of the page, midway down). The articles are either by Mr. Morang, or list him or his wife in activities that might be relevant to his bio. 72.11.124.226 (talk) 22:49, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

It's your discretion whether to cite it as dead-tree format or to mention the self-published cite; the WP:SAYWHEREYOUGOTIT guideline encourages the latter. It's also possible to do the dead-tree newspaper cite and say "via" and do a cite web to the website. If it's not needed as a footnote in the text, consider moving the link, citation and all, to the "external links" section where policy is more tolerant on self-published websites. Squidfryerchef (talk) 23:07, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
Excellent information, Squidfryerchef. A million thanks. 72.11.124.226 (talk) 23:18, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
In this case it might not be a problem, but we set ourselves up to be hoaxed by resourceful hoaxers if we cite something we find scanned or at someone's family history or special interest site as if we had read it on microfilm at a library. I could photoshop up an old newspaper clipping saying anything whatsoever, and make it look legit in a scan. If it were from a small town paper which is not online, to refute it you would have to find a library which has the paper in its rare documents collection. Well, there are often missing issues even in such a collection. I have seen genealogical "researchers" who have misstated what old documents say too many times to trust all true believers who want to prove some fact. Their scan of it is of the same credibility as if they had typed up a transcription of it. The upshot of this is that the citation to the old newspaper should include information as to where you found it and when you retrieved it. Edison (talk) 17:39, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Masters Theses

I reverted a reference to one and it was restored with an edit summary saying that such theses were RS as they are academically vetted by peer review - [28]. Now my own experience of marking Masters theses tells me that this is nonsense and you should never use one as a reliable source, the fact that it was passed by the marker(s) isn't enough and it can't be compared to say a PhD. I haven't reverted again yet because I thought it would be best to bring it here and avoid an edit war. Thanks. dougweller (talk) 06:46, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

It's rubbish. Masters and doctors theses aren't peer reviewed in the sense used by reputable peer-reviewed journals, and aren't reliable sources for anything except the opinion of the author. --TS 09:13, 8 January 2009 (UTC)
For Masters I agree. PhD theses, on the other hand, are usually reviewed by a panel of experts. How the panel is selected and how thorough it is depends on the university or college/department. But for many of the more reputable universities, I would accept a PhD thesis as a RS - especially, of course, if the author also publishes some parts of it in the peer-reviewed literature (in which case WP:SPS/Experts applies). --Stephan Schulz (talk) 09:21, 8 January 2009 (UTC)
PhD dissertations and many Masters theses are, indeed, "peer reviewed". PhD dissertations are the result of original research by the candidate and presented to committee members for review, comment, and revision. These committee members are specialists in the field. Scholars accept PhD dissertations as reliable sources all the time and you can look at most scholarly works and find dissertations listed in the bibliographies. Look at Numic languages as an example. Notice in the Notes how many PhD dissertations are represented. This is not at all unusual. In many fields, PhD dissertations are one of the major sources of research information. No one gets a PhD unless their dissertation is a worthy entry into the body of knowledge of that subject. They are not just "personal opinion".
Depending on the topic, Masters theses may still be the only source of reliable information. It's important to consider the amount of research that went into a Masters thesis. For example, many Masters theses done in the Linguistics department at the University of Texas at Arlington are the only sources available (in any language) that describe grammatical features of some languages and are based on fieldwork on that language by the student. A Masters thesis that I supervised a couple of years ago for a student at the University of Vienna is the only source available for a sociolinguistic survey of the Deseret alphabet and usage in territorial Utah. For that matter, an undergraduate Honors thesis I supervised at Utah State about 10 years ago is still the only source for a reliable discussion of Chinese borrowings in Western Hmong. It just depends, but it is important not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. If a person has a choice between a published journal article and an MA thesis, then the journal should be used by all means. If there is a choice between a PhD dissertation and an MA thesis, the dissertation wins. However, it should be remembered that Noam Chomsky's MA thesis was the first brick in his rebuilding of the science of linguistics. All theses are not created equal, but just because some should not be used does not mean that others are unworthy--I've seen peer-reviewed journal articles and published scholarly books that are pure garbage as well. I would take a Masters thesis over the vast majority of websites any day of the week. (Taivo (talk) 10:50, 8 January 2009 (UTC))
Master's thesis should not be referenced unless they are historically significant, or there are massive extenuating circumstances. For PhD thesis it less clear cut and they should be looked at individually. Journal publications based on the theses trump both. Verbal chat 11:33, 8 January 2009 (UTC)
Wrong. Except in unusual cases (unaccredited institutions, extremely bad programs, etc.), theses and dissertations are indeed peer reviewed and vetted. In fact, doctoral dissertations in particular receive much, much more attention than most journal articles as they are intensely reviewed and vetted many times at different stages of development whereas a journal article may only be reviewed once or twice and only at the very end of its life. I'm pretty familiar with this as a regular reviewer for one of the top journals in my field.
In most cases, then, reliability is the wrong metric. Abecedare below is on the right track in that notability is a much better metric. Questions such as "Is this view mainstream and accepted in the community?" and "Did this research have any impact?" are probably more useful and applicable in most situations than "Is this reliable?" --ElKevbo (talk) 12:02, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

(after ec) I agree with, (1) TS on the general rule of thumb that Master's (and even PhD thesis) should be deprecated as sources, and with (2) Taivo that there are a few exceptions, depending on the field of study and the particular thesis, such as Kraft's master's thesis. A factor to consider to see if a Master's thesis is acceptable is to check if it has been cited by other scholars (self-references should be discounted IMO). If a master's thesis is the only source that can be found on a topic, we should reexamine if wikipedia should even be covering that niche. Abecedare (talk) 11:39, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Re "you can look at most scholarly works and find dissertations listed in the bibliographies" ((Taivo, 10:50, 8 January 2009), they may be OK if if they are cited with approval in reputable journals / books:
  • "With approval" is vital - e.g. the articles of John Ruben & colleagues are cited and then ignored in many journal articles on dinosaur respiration and metabolism (see Physiology of dinosaurs for refs).
  • If the "approving" journal articles / books cover the ground well enough, they should be used instead.
However occasionally a thesis is really significant, e.g. Emanuel Lasker's PhD thesis in maths (in addition to Kraft's master's thesis mentioned by Abecedare 11:39, 8 January 2009).
"Except in unusual cases (unaccredited institutions, extremely bad programs, etc.), theses and dissertations are indeed peer reviewed and vetted." A master's dissertation is always marked - but peer reviewed? no. A master's thesis can be utter tosh, full of errors and still pass - all it means is that the student hit the marking criteria, it says nothing about the accuracy of the material contained within or the notability of the subject or the writer. If we allow Master's projects, we might as well allow undergrad dissertations, there is no functional difference. (Prof.) --Cameron Scott (talk) 12:37, 8 January 2009 (UTC)
I would be amenable to a stance stating that Master's and undergraduate theses should be used as references with extreme caution and only in unusual circumstances where the thesis is particularly notable and reliable. I would not be amenable to such a statement about doctoral dissertations. --ElKevbo (talk) 12:46, 8 January 2009 (UTC)
Question as to verifiability... I definitely think my BA thesis should not be considered "reliably published", even though I was required to submit a bound copy to the archives of my college's library. I don't know what the process is for higher degrees... Is the typical MA or PhD thesis "reliably Published" and verifiable? How? Blueboar (talk) 14:20, 8 January 2009 (UTC)
PhD theses must be reliably published at least in Germany, either by submitting a certain number of printed books to the university library (which will archive some and distribute) or, more frequently, via an specialized publisher who will guarantee a certain print run and keep the book available for a certain time (see e.g. [29]). In recent times, another alternative at my alma mater has been to provide a PDF that the university library will host on the web (as e.g. here). A PhD thesis is supposed to contribute to the body of science. It cannot do so if it is not available. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 14:37, 8 January 2009 (UTC)
Perhaps unintentionally, Stephan Schulz has re-focussed attention on the point that academic institutions are not all equal. His point was about availability of PhD theses, but institutions also vary in the reliability of their content and of their quality control processes, including the awarding of degrees. So for "academic" subjects I prefer to stick with reputable journals and with books by authors who have published in reputable journals. -Philcha (talk) 14:45, 8 January 2009 (UTC)
PhD dissertations must be printed and placed in the university library. I have never heard of an exception. As such they are readily available to anyone in the world through interlibrary loan. Nearly all U.S. (and many foreign) universities also make PDF copies of the dissertations available through ProQuest Digital Dissertations (that may not be the exact name) so that through your university internet connection you can view and/or download the entire dissertation. Some universities also make many Masters theses available through this route as well (for example, the previously mentioned outstanding Linguistics MA theses produced at the University of Texas at Arlington). There are also websites where Australian, Canadian, French, and Dutch PhD dissertations can also be viewed and/or downloaded on-line. So availability and verifiability are not an issue with these documents. The caution about Masters theses is well-founded--most are not worth noting and make only a very minor contribution to the world's knowledge--but I would oppose a blanket prohibition since some are either 1) outstanding or 2) the only source of information (such as for several previously undocumented languages). PhD dissertations, however, as others have mentioned, are strongly vetted and "peer reviewed"--as another has noted, in some cases more carefully than some scholarly journals. I have published a number of articles in peer-reviewed journals and have peer-reviewed a number of articles written by others. I have also written a dissertation and served on dissertation committees. I know the process very intimately from all sides. PhD dissertations are sometimes more reliable than journal articles because they are longer and cover a wider range of topics. Journal articles are good for specific details. If we must prepare a hierarchy of authority, then it should be 1) Peer-reviewed book, 2) PhD dissertation, 3) Peer-reviewed journal article (2 and 3 are about equal), 4) published book without peer review, 5) Masters thesis, 6) web site. (Taivo (talk) 15:31, 8 January 2009 (UTC))
L (3rd try to avoid edit conflict! was going to say I agree with Scott Cameron(and I do, a Masters thesis can be utter rubbish, I've marked some and seen some on the web pushing all sorts of odd ideas, and read a couple of American ones that I would never have guessed weren't undergraduate if I didn't know something about the authors). Pilcha makes the best point though, institutions vary wildly both within a country (compare Yale and some small religious/whatever PhD degree granting college), and between countries. I see no way that we could say that a Masters thesis is a reliable source because it is a Masters thesis. There will be some outliers that are outstanding exceptions, but even with those we should be relying (for academic subjects) on the sources Philcha mentions. Even if it the only source of information, why should that make it an exception? I think I'd be almost more dubious in that situation so far as using it in a Wikipedia article. An academic using it in a book or article they are writing and knowing the author, that's a different kettle of fish. dougweller (talk) 15:38, 8 January 2009 (UTC)
I also note some variability in the use of the terms "thesis" and "dissertation". Some of this depends on which side of the Atlantic you live on. In my usage "thesis" only refers to the summary opus produced by a Master's student. "Dissertation" only refers to the summary work produced by a Doctoral student. Undergraduate students in the U.S. are not typically required to produce a summary work, but if they did, it would be a "thesis", not a "dissertation"--the latter term refers only to doctoral work in my part of the U.S. (Taivo (talk) 15:40, 8 January 2009 (UTC))
In the UK, A PhD student produces a Thesis, Master's and undergraduate students produce dissertations. --Cameron Scott (talk) 17:24, 8 January 2009 (UTC)
Just like those Brits to be backwards ;) Cheers. (Taivo (talk) 21:11, 8 January 2009 (UTC))
I agree with Taivo's hierarchy of reliability above. Edison (talk) 17:47, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Consensus?

Is there a consensus that, in general, Masters theses should be avoided if there is any other source, but that on some occasions they can be used with great care when they are recognized within the field as reliable sources (either by being quoted in reliable published sources or by being from a department or school that is recognized within the field as yielding quality theses)? A Masters thesis used in this manner should follow the standards of accessibility. The use of a Masters thesis should also be justified on the Talk page of the article in question. (Taivo (talk) 17:13, 8 January 2009 (UTC))

Sounds good to me except that I would add that the faculty member(s) that advised or otherwise signed off on the thesis can and should also be considered in addition to or in place of the department or school as a potential indicator of quality and reliability. --ElKevbo (talk) 17:44, 8 January 2009 (UTC)
I'd need serious convincing about the usage in an article - so yes, some explaining needs to be done on the talk page before they are used in articles. --Cameron Scott (talk) 17:52, 8 January 2009 (UTC)
Taivo is still reverting any removal of the thesis in question from the article Linguistics and the Book of Mormon‎ and saying that the issue will be resolved on the article's talk page (another editor besides me removed it, but he's replaced it again). I am not happy with an article talk page being used for a decision like this. The reference is Melvin Deloy Pack, "Possible Lexical Hebraisms in the Book of Mormon (Words of Mormon--Moroni)," Master's Thesis, Brigham Young Univ. 1973. Pack seems to have gone on elsewhere to get a PhD on "The Administrative Structure of the Palace at Mari", an unrelated subject. Other than a cite in the Journal of Book of Mormon Studies [30] I can find no other citations for either this thesis or his PhD. I don't see it as a reliable source for this claim: "Hebrew idioms that are frequently found in the Book of Mormon are the repetitive use of the words yea, and, behold and the phrase it came to pass" or "The Book of Mormon contains many examples of the "cognate accusative" construct" or even "The Hebrew Old Testament has 1114 occurrences of the word "hâyâh" (meaning "now it happened"[76]). The translators of the King James Version ignored most instances of this word or simply put "and." - which if true could surely be sourced elsewhere. The first two claims certainly need a better source. dougweller (talk) 18:59, 8 January 2009 (UTC)
I've asked Doug to move this very good justification for removal to the Talk page of the article in question, where it rightfully belongs. (Taivo (talk) 20:42, 8 January 2009 (UTC))
In my view, the entire article in question (Linguistics and the Book of Mormon) is a huge POV fork full of nothing but pseudo-science pushing the Book of Mormon. The message that the article is trying to convey is that the Book of Mormon is genuine scripture of ancient physical origin, which of course is a belief only shared among Mormons. The WP:RS bar for an article like this should be very high, particularly since Mormon PhD's disagree with non-Mormon ones in a very polar way. It is worth pointing out that the consensus of the non-Mormon general scientific community is that virtually all of these "linguistic" claims are nonsense to begin with (refer to a form letter published by the Smithsonian Institution and sent in reply to such inquiries about the Book of Mormon). So in short, in my view, a masters thesis is a horrible source overall, but even more so in an article like this. Reswobslc (talk) 20:33, 8 January 2009 (UTC)
I agree, but there are enough LDS editors here who want such an article that it cannot readily be deleted. Working with highly sensitive articles like this are not easy in the best of circumstances and in an open editing situation like Wikipedia, they are especially delicate. The Smithsonian has even recognized this and even though they have not (and should not) repudiate the famous "letter", they no longer distribute it out of sensitivity to the LDS community. (Taivo (talk) 20:40, 8 January 2009 (UTC))


Please see a past discussion of this on archive 20 where the discussion went a little long. An earlier one where it is just me and here again in archive 14 where i don't think I played a part. Protonk (talk) 19:22, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Now that there is a clear consensus on how to use Masters theses, we can move the discussion to the article's talk page where it is absolutely appropriate. That's what Talk pages are for. (Taivo (talk) 20:26, 8 January 2009 (UTC))
I see a consensus emerging, but I am not sure that a "clear consensus" exists on this as of yet. There were still some unaddressed questions. My take on the issue is this... if there is a clear consensus after detailed discussion on a specific article's talk page that a specific Master's Thesis reliably supports a specific statement in that specific article, go ahead and cite the Master's Thesis... but in general a Master's Thesis should not be considered reliable." But then again, this is true for just about any type of source that is considered unreliable. IE there are always exceptions to every rule, and no source is always unreliable. Blueboar (talk) 20:57, 8 January 2009 (UTC)
Exactly. (Taivo (talk) 21:09, 8 January 2009 (UTC))
Whoa now. there is no part of WP:RS that says "XYZ is not an RS, except if you really need to cite it". I believe that some considerations and flexibility can exist, but demonstrated 'need' in an article isn't among them. Protonk (talk) 21:13, 8 January 2009 (UTC)
This isn't what I meant... I am saying "XYZ is normally not RS, but under specific circumstances it is RS." Nothing about "need". Blueboar (talk) 14:00, 9 January 2009 (UTC)
Here is a hypothetical example where you are incorrect, Protonk. (It's hypothetical, but if you really want, I'll find two or three actual examples.) Language X has never been described before in print. Student Y from the U of Texas at Arlington, working for the Summer Institute of Linguistics, has travelled to Island Z to study the language long-term for S.I.L. He spends six months on the island and writes a preliminary grammar for his MA thesis at UT-Arlington supervised by both S.I.L. and UT-Arlington faculty. In this case, the MA thesis is the sole source for what we know about the grammar of X language. X language is a valid subject for an article in Wikipedia since it is one of the world's languages and there is a minimum amount of information that has been published in Ethnologue and elsewhere. There may even be a wordlist from the 19th century floating around. UT-Arlington's SIL students are widely considered within the field to be competent field linguists. The MA theses in Linguistics from UT-Arlington are available through Proquest's Digital Dissertation service on-line in pdf format. In this case, the MA thesis written by Y is an acceptable and reliable source for a description of X language in Wikipedia's article on that language. (Taivo (talk) 21:31, 8 January 2009 (UTC))
How does that make me incorrect? If there is only one source for something, and that source hasn't gone through a publication process that we find reliable, then we don't have content on that something. We can make the separate argument that ABC school makes excellent masters students in particular fields, but I find that uncompelling. There is no shortage of journals and publishers. Should someone make a really compelling thesis on a subject, it will either be A: published or B: allowed as WP:SPS if and when the author is published in the field. Protonk (talk) 21:34, 8 January 2009 (UTC)
You are incorrect in your 100% negative assessment of MA theses or their usefulness as reliable sources for Wikipedia purposes. I have given a clear example of a useful MA thesis. (Taivo (talk) 21:57, 8 January 2009 (UTC))
Agreed. One can easily imagine situations in which a Master's thesis could be used as a reliable source. However, can we all agree that those situations are unusual and require explicit justification? --ElKevbo (talk) 23:12, 8 January 2009 (UTC)
You are conflating two concepts (usefulness and reliability) which are distinct. I'm sure there are dozens of dozens of masters theses and dissertations (dependent on the program style) that would be useful for wikipedia to be able to cite. But unless we have some sort of mechanism for treating those sources as reliable, that usefulness is not important. There is not deadline, so it is a matter of waiting for sources to be published traditionally or for their authors to be recognized as experts (literally all that this requires is those authors being published and cited in peer reviewed publications), we can wait. If we are asserting that they will never be recognized experts or their research on the subject will never be published, then we should question why we are focusing so much coverage on the subject. I linked (see archive 20) a pretty nuanced discussion of the subject up there, noting that prior consensus on the board was much more cautious than claimed consensus today. I don't think it is fair to me to decry my assessment as 100% negative. Likewise it isn't accurate to say that my position is inflexible on the subject: you can provide some reasons as to why a masters thesis could be considered reliable. It could be cited in later works. It could be covered in wider press. It could be accepted for publication (or have a version of it accepted for publication). But I can't agree to including a source simply because it is the only one or because we accept on faith that the candidate selection and vetting process of a certain degree granting institution meets our expectations of what a reliable source is. Protonk (talk) 23:34, 8 January 2009 (UTC)
You act like publication is some magic bean that grants reliable status to something. I can point you to any number of books, published by reputable publishing houses, that are crap and are widely recognized as crap. Let me give you one example. The Northern Paiute language has three sources for descriptions of its grammar: one published source, one unpublished set of course handouts, and one doctoral dissertation. Of the three, the doctoral dissertation is the most complete and accurate description of the language, the unpublished set of course handouts is the best description of one of the most divergent dialects, and the published source is, well, not up to snuff. It's not exactly garbage, but it's a McDonald's hamburger compared to the steaks that the other two sources represent. You are claiming, Protonk, that Wikipedia should require the use of a substandard source when much better sources are available. My copy of the published Northern Paiute grammar is filled with handwritten corrections. Publication does not guarantee quality or reliability. There are also any number of reasons why a particular quality Masters thesis or PhD dissertation is not published that have nothing to do with its quality. The view that publication is automatic is faulty. (Taivo (talk) 00:42, 9 January 2009 (UTC))
I'm not claiming that. That's ABSURD. There is no reason to misrepresent my position. I'm claiming that we have no functional view into the innards of a dissertation process at every university in the english speaking world. As such, we cannot claim that the process those dissertations undergo is reliable in our special meaning of the word. We do, however, have a general understanding of how the journalistic process works at a major newspaper or how the publication process works at a major publisher. So we can say that a publisher like Wiley has a history of fact checking, a content selection process and doesn't disclaim responsibility for content. We can say that a news organization like the New York Times does the same. When there is a publication process or news organization that doesn't do these things, we cease to think of it as a reliable source. Publication is not some magic wand waved over bad content that makes it good content. It is (especially in the venue that an academic dissertation would be published) usually the selection process that we are interested it. We don't want to be the first "publisher" (per se) of information in a dissertation. To equate my statement of that core principle of wikipedia with some cavalier, sweeping gesture about publication being the key to reliability is flawed. In some sense, though, publication is a principal step to being considered "reliable" for wikipedia. Due to the nature of editing here (amateur and anonymous or pseudonymous), we can't leave the judging of a specific source to wikipedians alone. It is not a good practice or policy for us to say "this is a good source because I think it is right" or "this is a bad source because I think it is wrong". We aren't supposed to disconnect our brains, but we are supposed to judge sourcing based on the guidelines established and one of the ways we do that is examine the publication process.
I'm also well aware that there are multiple reasons why a perfectly good dissertation would be rejected (or not even submitted) for publication. Scope, novelty, topic area, depth of coverage all come to mind as possible positive qualities a thesis or dissertation would have that might cause it to be less apt for publication. A 500 page ethnography of a Polish glassblower's enclave in Milwaukee in the 1870s may be a great dissertation but not find publication in journals looking for 25 page articles on novel subjects. I'm fine with using a case by case approach taking into account the university, the author, the subject, the claims and using masters theses minimally. I'm not fine with some blanket statement saying that if no other source exists on a subject we should use masters theses. That's not ok. Protonk (talk) 04:17, 9 January 2009 (UTC)
Actually, the way you've worded this response is in line with the position that I have been taking--case by case analysis of the merits for particular MA theses rather than a blanket rejection. I probably still value PhD dissertations in general more highly, but this section is concerning MA theses. (Taivo (talk) 04:44, 9 January 2009 (UTC))
Would it be accurate to say that a master's thesis falls into a gray area between "secondary source" and "primary source"? ( You could also argue selfpub, but that usually implies a personal website or vanity press, and one could counter-argue that when an advanced degree is granted, the author is considered an expert and the selfpub is usable ). Squidfryerchef (talk) 05:17, 9 January 2009 (UTC)
Remember that we don't consider the granting of an advanced degree sufficient (or sometimes necessary) for expertise in a field as WP:SPS treats it. The author needs to be published in the field on the subject, preferably in academic press. As for your question about PSTS, I'm reluctant to specify. Most dissertation/theses are written like secondary sources. Interpretation of primary information is done at that point. there are some which are heavy on primary sources, but most will draw inferences and summarize. Protonk (talk) 05:25, 9 January 2009 (UTC)
I think with a thesis, the tone may be secondary source but citing one on WP would take on some of the caveats of citing a primary source. For instance, I don't think we could establish notability with only thesis citations. But remember, qualifying as an RS is only a minimum standard. There still has to be consensus to add it to the article. Squidfryerchef (talk) 04:49, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Case by Case basis

Seems to me that the only consensus is there is no consensus, and the decision on whether to use a master's thesis as a source must be done on a case-by-case basis. One case where it would be very appropriate to use a masters thesis would be if we were writing about cutting-edge research from the university. Also they would be useful in adding fine points to articles whose core notability is already established by other sources, adding academic perspectives to pop-culture topics, or connecting other cited sources that would cause a WP:SYNTH debate if we asserted the connection ourselves. On the other hand, a thesis may not be the best source for an extraordinary or unusual claim, the sole citation demonstrating notability in an article, or for issues where everybody has an opinion and thousands of sources are available. I would think in this case the academic thesis is desirable, because this is an academic research topic, it is backed up by other citations, and the section of the article cites opposing opinions as well. Also the footnote implies the master's thesis is also published in the book Book of Mormon Reference Companion; if that's so, the source is strengthened and the footnote should say "also published in", and include an ISBN cite for the book. Squidfryerchef (talk) 03:55, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

The notion that the Book of Mormon is genuine ancient scripture written by prophets most certainly qualifies as an "extraordinary" or "unusual" claim, since nobody believes this but Mormons. The article in question is already outrageously balanced in favor of promoting the Book of Mormon. Why should we condone this kind of sloppy sourcing for an already dubious claim? Reswobslc (talk) 08:52, 9 January 2009 (UTC)
The Book of Mormon being Scripture is a core tenet of the religion. Your reasoning is way off. Squidfryerchef (talk) 04:26, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Whoa, whoa, whoa We are trying to use this unpublished thesis to support some claim that the book of mormon is ancient scripture and not made up by Joseph Smith? WP:REDFLAG. No chance. Not in this case. Protonk (talk) 09:06, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

The discussion of this particular reference was properly moved to the Talk page of the article in question once it became clear what the overall consensus about Masters theses was. The reference was deleted by consensus of the editors participating in the discussion there. Briefly, 1) there was already another reference for the point, 2) word-for-word publication of the thesis in a single partisan anthology did not really "count" as publication in a refereed volume in our opinion. (Taivo (talk) 11:07, 9 January 2009 (UTC))
Squidfryerchef is wrong in saying there is no consensus, and the rest of his edit makes it clear I think that there is general consensus that in general a Masters thesis is not a reliable source. Just as there are exceptions for blogs, there might be exceptions for a Masters thesis. I'm not sure I'm happy about his examples though, and I find no evidence for it the specific one in question being published elsewhere. dougweller (talk) 16:52, 9 January 2009 (UTC)
There may have been a consensus between the involved editors that the reference wasn't necessary for the article. But there is no consensus on master's thesis in general. I agree they are in a gray area but as opposed to blogs, I don't believe they need any exception to justify citing them. Squidfryerchef (talk) 04:42, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Hot fucking damn - is that what this is about? no fucking chance! --Cameron Scott (talk) 16:18, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

Please read the article The disputed source[31] was used, alongside another source, to cite Hebrew idioms that are frequently found in the Book of Mormon are the repetitive use of the words "yea", "and", "behold" and the phrase "it came to pass". That's all. Saying that some phrasing in the book was similar to Hebrew. Squidfryerchef (talk) 03:47, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

To what end? I mean, if we just want to say it seems similar, that doesn't seem important enough to note. IF we want to suggest that it sounds similar because the language was connected somehow (as in, was the language of the lost tribe of Israel), we better have a rock-solid source. If we want to add the claim that it seems familiar and leave interpretation up to the author, we shouldn't--that is relatively irresponsible given the likely conclusions being drawn. Protonk (talk) 17:28, 10 January 2009 (UTC)
There was a section in the article on Hebrew influence in the Book of Mormon with multiple sources arguing both sides; doesn't seem too out of place in an article called Linguistics and the Book of Mormon. I made the point because some editors seemed to think the thesis was the sole source (!) linking the book to Scripture. Squidfryerchef (talk) 18:47, 10 January 2009 (UTC)
The MA thesis was not the only source for the contention that it was being used to support, so the consensus here is that MA theses should not be used to prove points when there is a published source. The topic at hand, Linguistics and the Book of Mormon is only here to be polite to LDS editors. There is simply no valid linguistic evidence produced by non-LDS linguists to support the linguistic claims presented in that article. The entire topic is POV. (Taivo (talk) 20:41, 10 January 2009 (UTC))
No, the topic falls under religion. Unless you're also arguing that the article on Transubstantiation is only here to make Catholic editors happy, because there's no chemical proof that wine can turn into the blood of Christ. Squidfryerchef (talk) 17:05, 11 January 2009 (UTC)
Actually, this article is not about religion. It is about the attempts by LDS scholars to prove the scientific/historical accuracy of the BOM text. It is not about an article of faith, it is about linguistic arguments to verify the BOM account of itself. As such, it is not a matter of faith at all, but a matter that is subject to scientific verification. It has nothing in common with the issue of Transubstantiation. Now, the LDS belief in Eternal Progression has everything in common with Transubstantiation since these are scientifically unverifiable matters of belief. An article on Linguistics and the Book of Mormon is not at all related because it is an attempt to use linguistic argumentation to prove the veracity of the BOM. It is more akin to Creation Science than to Transubstantiation--that is, using "scientific" methods and argumentation to substantiate a matter of faith. (Taivo (talk) 17:40, 11 January 2009 (UTC))
The obvious thing to do is to merge the article back into Book of Mormon as a short paragraph entitled Language. It would contain the statement that the language Book of Mormon has some similarities to Hebrew writing, referenced to whichever Mormon writer is best known for making the point, followed by a critical statement, referenced to someone else. If there is no critical statement to rebut the Mormon claim, then we'll have to think about the wording. That is, if it is notable that Mormon scholars are pursuing this line of argumentation. Itsmejudith (talk) 19:27, 11 January 2009 (UTC)
Linguistics... is a nontrivial article with ninety citations; there's a lot more to it than the one particular cite under debate, which seems to be resolved. POV or not, there's more than enough secondary soruces to justify notability of the topic. Squidfryerchef (talk) 20:06, 11 January 2009 (UTC)
Linguistics... was originally a plagiarism of an essay that has been endlessly photocopied and passed around in LDS meetings for years as "faith promoting" material. The vast majority of it, if not all of it, should be removed from Wikipedia. Every single section that alleges that the BOM is "like Hebrew" or is of ancient origin, ought to be summarily deleted, because this is merely parroting of the argument, rather than a statement of fact. Wikipedia is not a place to make arguments and the case for the BOM, it is a place to share established facts. "The BOM was published in 1830" is a fact - "The BOM contains evidence of ancient origin" is not. An article with ninety citations from LDS leaders saying the BOM is legit, is just as POV as an article called The Jew Problem based on ninety citations from Adolf Hitler and Schutzstaffel leaders. Linguistics and the Book of Mormon is not here as a "courtesy" to LDS editors, it is merely here because there are more LDS editors than non-LDS ones to defend it. It is still garbage that should be deleted. Reswobslc (talk) 17:15, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Reliability of blended fiction/non-fiction book

I have a book called Screening Party by Dennis Hensley. The premise is that each chapter is a running commentary from Hensley and several of his friends as they watch one or more films (Jaws, Flashdance, several Bond films, etc.). Several of the chapters were originally published in magazines like British Premiere and Instinct. Now, the characters are composites of various people who attended the parties but each chapter does contain facts about the production or reception of the films. I have read some of the chapters from their original publication and while the fictional components (the framing devices or some of the non-factual comments) are altered anything presented as fact about the films has not been and I know from other sources that the information is correct. So the question is whether this book can be considered reliable for the factual information only. Ideally I would prefer not to use it but some of the sourcing that the book draws from (30 year old magazine articles and whatnot) I'm unlikely ever to have access to. Otto4711 (talk) 00:50, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

I would say Screening Party falls solidly into the fiction category... even though parts of it may depict real events. I would not use it as a source. Blueboar (talk) 03:08, 11 January 2009 (UTC)
Just because a fiction book contains non-fictional elements, does not mean it is a reliable source for anything. The reliability doesn't rub off onto the fiction--rather the reverse! You may be able to access the original material at a national library (which is probably what the author did). --TS 15:22, 11 January 2009 (UTC)
Agreed. For the same reason, I would not use a James Michener novel as a reliable source. But if you have other sources, if they are more standard reliable ones why not use them? Baccyak4H (Yak!) 18:16, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

truthinlabeling.org

Recently, an addition was made to sucralose using truthinlabeling.org as a reference. It seems like the webpage for an advocacy group, so I marked it with {{rs}}. But I'm not sure how to evaluate the website. The website is also used as a reference at dextrin and is found as an external link at Olney's lesions. Could someone with more experience evaluating these kinds of sources please take a look and help decide whether the link meets criteria at WP:RS? Thank you. Deli nk (talk) 12:51, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Probably not, but it is mentioned in a number of books.[32] I would look at how those books are using it. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 16:50, 13 January 2009 (UTC)
Edit conflict - it's not a particularly suitable link for this purpose, since it does not directly address the issue of "may cause an MSG-reaction", it only claims "may contain MSG". Nor would that part of this source be a very good basis for anything, since it's not saying "does contain MSG". TruthInLabelling.org might be a good source for some purposes, but it would be best to avoid it for anything "surprising" or commercially important. PRtalk 16:54, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Blogspot interview

Can I use this interview of author R.A. Salvatore and ascribe the words to him? - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 16:40, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

  • grr. This is where I don't like the 'no blogs' bit of RS/V. On the one hand, we have no reason to believe that this is actually an interview--someone could have just made up a list of questions and answers and put a picture of the guy up there. On the other hand, that presumption is somewhat ludicrous. It's a finalist for the weblog awards (though not going to win its category) and probably will be a "bloggie" nominee and it isn't liable to fabricate an interview for giggles. I don't know. I'm on the fence. Protonk (talk) 16:59, 13 January 2009 (UTC)
Alas -- the rules seem clear, and if you bend them for this, then the floodgates will likely be forced open. Collect (talk) 17:01, 13 January 2009 (UTC)
I'm not convinced that bending the rules on a case by case basis results in a flood of crappy blog content. I could be convinced that interviews with subjects on semi-reliable sources could be treated as though the subject were speaking herself. That doesn't seem like too much of a stretch. I would prefer an archive.org link to the site or some other version that doesn't fall to bit-rot. Protonk (talk) 17:04, 13 January 2009 (UTC)
An archive does exist.[33] - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 00:13, 14 January 2009 (UTC)
The policy is not totally clear. Wikipedia:Verifiability#Self-published sources says "material may sometimes be cited which is self-published by an established expert on the topic of the article, whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable third-party publications." An author is obviously an expert on their own books. But then, he wasn't really the publisher. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 00:17, 14 January 2009 (UTC)
There's never been a hard-and-fast rule, there's no need to invoke IAR, and there's no need to worry about floodgates opening. You can sometimes use a blog if you can show that it's either quoted often by the media (arguing it's an expert SPS), or if the blog and its opinions are notable in and of its own right ( more difficult, but helps if the blog is notable enough to have its own article on WP, and is in a related field to the article topic ). Squidfryerchef (talk) 01:25, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Journal of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome as a Reliable Source

Note that the Journal of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome has been discussed on the RSN previously - Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 22#Haworth Press - WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:simple/complex 17:40, 10 January 2009 (UTC) There is a group on the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome who appear to be taking the attitude that only BMJ and Lancet are reliable sources. The Journal of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome was published by Hawthorne press for a number of years (1995-onwards) and appears to be the only peer-reviewed journal dealing with this illness. The articles were available on http://www.ingentaconnect.com/. Authors that have published [articles] there include all of the main researchers. including:

  1. Simon Wessely
  2. Dedra Buchwald
  3. etc, I cannot recall one major researcher that has not published in this journal.

CFS is a heavily political issues, even the CDC was caught by auditors misappropriating funds that the US Congress designated for CFS research [GAO_REPORT]. Bizarrely, this same group deems this to be 'research' (implying it was mine!). The US GAO wrote "Further, CDC's redirection of funds has resulted in reductions in CFS resources that have impeded the agency's CFS research." and later " We found that the processes and timing for distributing funds within CDC impeded CFS research and may reflect inadequate control on the part of the agency."

We need a determination if this journal is a reliable source -- there has been dozens of edits deleted on the grounds that the source is not reliable. This journal is one that they have explicitly cited and thus I seek clarification here.

Sorry people about this, it is a total mis-representation of few minor edits by an internet patient advocate for herbal cures etc. They discussed this journal before, it is not on PubMed, the major website for medical sources. Not all stuff on PubMed is reliable for medical articles, this journal is not even there. Pls look at WP:MEDRS, Wikipedia needs its medical articles based from high quality journals, secondery sources in them by top experts. JCFS is not medrs and this activists other points are not relavent for the notice-board. RetroS1mone talk 05:37, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
Oh also the journal does not get published any more, and it was discussed here [34]. Activists keep bringing it up bc lots of its articles and editors are against mainstream medical ideas about CFS, the CFS article says about these different opinions but it should not emphasize it in undue way. Thanks! RetroS1mone talk 05:48, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
imho, Lassesen has misrepresented the GAO report. Dlabtot (talk) 05:56, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
I don't think Lassesen misrepresented it, I think it's jut irrelevant to whether or not the JCFS should be considered a reliable source. Frankly, I don't think anybody who's been participating in the debates on the CFS page is particularly unbiased here any more (myself included). There's a fairly clear pro-psychological group and a fairly clear anti-psychological group. A few seem to be more in the middle, but are perceived as being on one side or the other anyway. Clearly, however, RetroS1mone is not one of the more neutral parties in this debate. Her characterization of Lassessen as an "internet patient advocate" and "activist" is telling. He and many others simply have a different viewpoint from hers. In fact, there seems to be a team of about two or three people that are blocking all edits to the CFS article that don't agree with their viewpoints...even those that are cited in the various confirmed reliable sources.
As to the debate about whether or not the JCFS is a reliable source, I'm not in a position to speculate. But the fact that so many well-known and respected CFS researchers have contributed to it makes me think that we can't just toss it out the window and pretend it doesn't exist. --Rob (talk) 11:09, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
I did not say it does not exist, no one said that, it is not a good medrs, there is better sources. I am for Wikipedia policy not internal fights about CFS, I do not care about psychology or any thing like that. RetroS1mone talk 12:57, 6 January 2009 (UTC)


The J of CFS was also the chosen publisher for the Canadian Guidelines by a whole raft of CFS experts. Suddenly are these guidelines not RS because the Journal is no longer published? Or can these significant guidelines no longer be referenced in Wiki? If you check the CFS Article you will still find the J of CFS as a reference for these Guidelines, Hypocracy or a Solomon decision? Bear in mind that the Canadian guidelines exclude psychological symptoms more than others and you may understand the agenda of those editors clearly on the pro-side who in minority overturned a consensus on the acceptability of J of CFS on the talk page less than a year old. And as an side there have been deletions of more than a few minor edits by an internet patient advocate for herbal cures etc, including reviews of RCT trials. This type of characterization of other editors is not indicative of an NPOV position.
I am inclined to think that the decision made here in Jan. 2007 on the RS status of 'lesser' mainstream journals in particular regarding CFS papers should still apply; that is if the Author(s) are well known in the field and published in other jounals then J of CFS papers by them are RS. Jagra (talk) 00:40, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

There are also weasel words in the lead... "Chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) is the most common name[1] given to a poorly understood, variably debilitating disorder or disorders of uncertain causation." If a condition is of "uncertain causation," it is by definition not greatly understood, correct? Seems to me the term "poorly understood" is redundant to say the least, and could be viewed a weasel wording.72.11.124.226 (talk) 01:36, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

The quote came from the existing opening sentence of the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome entry and is definitely not my choice of wording. Lassesen (talk) 14:38, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

The Center for Disease Control and the US Department of Health appears to have an opinion on this journal. They CITE IT -- and many of the authors of articles in it are on the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Advisory Committee established by the US Public Health Act. The people who are arguing did not appear to check one very important national authority, the authority that established what Chronic Fatigue Syndrome is. THE ULTIMATE EXPERTS.

  1. Studies of causes] cites 2 artilces
  2. Surveillance] cites 1 artilces
  3. Clinical] cites 1 artilces

To challenge their decision strongly implies that you are making yourself an expert.

Lassesen (talk) 14:38, 7 January 2009 (UTC)
JCFS was reviewed once in the past and should form part of the analysis. I would also be wary of WP:PARENT issues - asking the question until you get the answer you want isn't a good way to write an encylopedia. It was never pubmed indexed and as the previous analysis stated:
I would continue to assert that it may be useful for minority opinions, justifying non-controversial information or "first publications" of relevant ideas, but since it is not published anymore it will be increasingly irrelevant as it ages. Useful or accepted ideas will be picked up, researched and revisted in more reliable journals that continue to be published. The ideas not cited and discussed should not be used on the wikipedia page. This is a journal of strong minority opinions that should be used with great care if used at all, and those uses should not be given undue weight. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:simple/complex 17:40, 10 January 2009 (UTC)
IT seems the previous Noticeboard querry was about Haworth press not J of CFS. It also seems the last editor has selectively quoted his own addition to the last querry and conveiniently left out the other response "Looking at it's About Us page, it seems to be a reliable publishing house."--- Blueboar (talk) 13:38, 28 October 2008 (UTC)" Given that none of the current editors querring this matter were involved previously the comment above "asking the question until you get the answer you want isn't a good way to write an encylopedia." is innapropriate and demonstrate a bias. I suggest this matter be reviewed by editors not invested in outcomes. Furthermore the information showing it has been used to publish by Canadian authorities and is currently cited by the CDC, as such the statement "I would hesitate to use this title as the sole support for any particular assertion." would not seem appropriate. Jagra (talk) 00:03, 14 January 2009 (UTC).
I fully agree with WLU in this matter. It should be used with care, if at all, and given appropriate weight. 88.172.132.94 (talk) 08:37, 14 January 2009 (UTC)
I am inclined to think that the decision made here in Jan. 2007 on the RS status of 'lesser' mainstream journals in particular regarding CFS papers should still apply; that is if the Author(s) are known in the field and published in other jounals then J of CFS papers by them are RS. Jagra (talk) 00:34, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Black Sun (occult symbol)

Black Sun (occult symbol) seems to have quite a lot of references to videos on Google - 8 I believe, as well as the German wiki. Can someone please take a look at it to see if any action needs to be taken? I think we have a new editor editing in good faith who is pretty active and doesn't yet understand our policies and guidelines. Thanks. dougweller (talk) 17:17, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

You're right, many of those footnotes do not qualify as reliable. If the Youtube videos were by notable authors, that could be OK, but they don't seem to specify their authors at all. And the Wikipedia sources are not usable as footnotes in general. But it's not clear that they were added by a new editor - at least one of the recent editors on that topic has a long edit history (I haven't checked the diffs to see who actually added those sources). --Jack-A-Roe (talk) 08:22, 14 January 2009 (UTC)
User:dab has edited the page in the past; perhaps he'll have a minute to check it out. Itsmejudith (talk) 10:52, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Rolling Stone, NME, Popmatters and Metal-Observer

Resolved

A user seems to be contesting the validity of the following as sources for the band Mudvayne's genre: Rolling Stone magazine, NME magazine, Popmatters and The Metal Observer. Rolling Stone and NME I can't understand the reasoning behind, as both are published music magazines. Popmatters and Metal Observer are both acceptable sites to list in the "professional reviews" section, they fit the criteria as sources with an editorial and writing staff, and so while they might not be the absolute best sources, I see no reason why they couldn't be used to support these other sources. Prophaniti (talk) 18:12, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

Not sure about the Metal-Observer (it doesn't like my browser), the other's are definitely reliable sources. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 19:13, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

Can anyone else contribute? Prophaniti (talk) 10:02, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

  • The problem was not the sources, but that you are attempting to force your POV. Metal Observer is a fansite. Popmatters isn't a reliable source for band genres. The other sources are biased. Stop trying to claim any genre as a dominating musical style. You have been repeatedly warned about this, but you refuse to listen to reason. If you continue to strongarm your POV on every article you edit, you will be banned. (Ibaranoff24 (talk) 23:48, 13 January 2009 (UTC))

If Rolling Stone and NME aren't reliable sources for the Music scene, then I doubt we'll find any sources capable of rising to Ibarinoff24's standards. I can't speak to the last two, but the first two are absolutely reasonable as sources for a lot of pop culture topics. RS is further a good candidate for a RS for almost any subject; their reporters have won accolades time and again for deeper journalistic endeavors. Also, do not threaten bannings, you are not the community, and if this thread were the entire case, you'd be wrong about who would be banned. ThuranX (talk) 04:25, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

  • The problem is the way the sources are being used, to define genres as if there were an overall consensus that the band is considered nu metal when, in fact, there is absolutely no consensus on the band's style at all. Prophaniti is only attempting to force his own POV because he believes that he owns the articles he edits when, in fact, he does not. (Ibaranoff24 (talk) 01:08, 15 January 2009 (UTC))
I looked a bit at the Mudvayne article, which is where this controversy comes from, and I can't make heads or tales of what you guys are doing. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 04:24, 14 January 2009 (UTC)
I understand. The entire incident all boils down to the genre nu metal being included, and whether these said sources are reliable. First User:Ibaranoff24 said they were not reliable sources, then that they were biased, and so forth. Some other random edits are in the diffs as a result of everyone simply "undoing" others edits. Landon1980 (talk) 04:38, 14 January 2009 (UTC)
Well, it's not an RS issue. Rolling Stone is most definitely citable. What we have here is an issue of undue weight. We have these edit conflicts all the time in music genre articles, especially in the infobox or the intro paragraph, where everybody wants to list their favorite genre, and different sources list different genres. Perhaps this should be brought to a heavy metal Wikiproject for an opinion on what is the most widely used genre name that's appropriate. PS. Didn't we have a similar question about metal genres here on RSN a couple months back? Squidfryerchef (talk) 05:35, 14 January 2009 (UTC)
Yes, I believe a similar issue was brought up a while back. Musical genres are somewhat of a "nightmare" on wikipedia, they probably do more harm than good to be honest. A general rule of thumb is before genres can be cited you need two or three reliable sources, if not (you have just one, or two questionable sources) you run into undue weight issues. If I'm not mistaken Nu metal is one of the (if not the) most well cited genre on this particular article. I believe the issue was brought here because of the above user repeatedly saying none of these sources were reliable. Landon1980 (talk) 05:43, 14 January 2009 (UTC)
Indeed, but the thing that makes this so daft is we're not even trying to change the opening line, or the infobox, or even add in a genre that isn't already there. It's literally just adding extra sources, and Ibaranoff removing them. I came here to verify that they are indeed RS. PM and MO aren't as good as RS and NME, certainly, but they're not being used as the foundation for a genre alone, they're simply supporting what's already there, and as they're acceptable under the "professional reviews" section I don't see a problem using them in this capacity.
And Landon's quite right about the undue weight issue: if you're just got a single isolated journalist using a term for a band, and no one else supporting it, then it's not worth including in the infobox and would be better suited to a styles section in the main body of the article. In this case though, nothing's actually being changed: just more sources being added. Prophaniti (talk) 09:41, 14 January 2009 (UTC)
Prophaniti, you've been repeatedly warned. Leave the genres as is. Stop attempting to force your own POV. You do not own the article. (Ibaranoff24 (talk) 01:08, 15 January 2009 (UTC))
Ibaranoff24, this is not the place for you to continue to harass Prophaniti, this noticeboard is strictly for the reliability of sources. Your threats are becoming increasingly old. Landon1980 (talk) 02:06, 15 January 2009 (UTC)
I am not "harassing" anyone. I am only trying to abide to the rules of Wikipedia, something that the both of you have ignored. Did you happen to notice that the edits you undid also removed formatting fixes and removal of entirely unsourced statements that were tagged as such? (Ibaranoff24 (talk) 03:12, 15 January 2009 (UTC))
You guys are going to have to talk it out, and come to some compromise or understanding. Or at least, this page isn't going to solve your problems. I recommend that each puts forward (on the band article's talk page) some way they are willing to compromise. Mabye you can find some common ground. It sounds like you all know your metal; work it out. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 04:36, 15 January 2009 (UTC)
Indeed, but then I didn't come here to continue the debate and try to resolve it: I came here simply to settle the matter of the sources. Prophaniti (talk) 09:51, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

(redent) Well, I think what you can take back is that two of the sources are crazy reliable. Popmatters is also reliable, and we need some more info on the other one to really decide. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 10:01, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Metal Observer is cited quite often; I'd like to finally figure out if it is in fact reliable or not so to know how to deal with it in the future. I don't have a lot of experience on this particular noticeboard, what else is needed before a determination can be made? Landon1980 (talk) 11:16, 15 January 2009 (UTC)
Yeah, I'd like to know for certain too. If popmatters is, then I'd imagine Metal Observer is too: both are valid as review sites because they have an editorial and writing staff, they don't just take user submissions. Of course, they're not going to be as good as Rolling Stone or NME: those are published. But there are different levels of reliability, and just because something isn't a perfect source I wouldn't say that rules it out all-together. If they have a staff body and meet the criteria for the reviews section then there must be a level of reliability at least. Well, that's my take on it anyway. I'd certainly like for it to be accepted, because while we have plenty of general music sources, there aren't many dedicated heavy metal reliable sources. This isn't to say I'm looking for bias, simply that it would be nice to have a source covering that particular angle. Prophaniti (talk) 12:02, 15 January 2009 (UTC)
I've seen absolutely nothing proving that the Metal Observer is a reliable source of information. Just because the website is supposedly "staff-edited" (even though the content looks and feels user-submitted) doesn't mean that the website is notable or that it is a reliable source of information. There has been absolutely zero coverage on the website. All of the citations on the site's article come from the site itself. (Ibaranoff24 (talk) 14:27, 15 January 2009 (UTC))

This is really simple - if Rolling stone and NME say that band X makes "naked eurotrash pornpop" then that will go into the article as a genre - we are after verification not truth. As everyone has said for pop culture matters, if those aren't reliable sources, then we don't have reliable sources. --Cameron Scott (talk) 14:31, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Indeed so, but specifically these edits don't even actually involve the addition or removal of a genre: it's literally myself adding sources to a genre already sourced, just further material to back up a potentially controversial tag, and Ibaranoff removing them all. Prophaniti (talk) 14:48, 15 January 2009 (UTC)
Prophaniti, you know fully well that is not true. You tried to force your opinion upon the article by placing a genre term as if it were a dominating term, even though there is absolutely no consensus on the band's genre, and the current revision is more neutral in presenting all of the attributed genre terms without favoring any of them. Do you not understand that you were edit-warring? (Ibaranoff24 (talk) 14:59, 15 January 2009 (UTC))
Ibaranoff, take this elsewhere. This is not the place to carry out a dispute, or to continue your mass disruption of accusing everyone else of the exact thing you are doing. Landon1980 (talk) 15:25, 15 January 2009 (UTC)
Read that back to yourself. Now you know what you have been doing. I do not appreciate the unwarranted attacks you have been making towards me here, or on any other page entirely unrelated to this issue, such as the deletion page for The Metal Observer. (Ibaranoff24 (talk) 15:36, 15 January 2009 (UTC))
I'll second Landon's request: please Ibaranoff, if you want to continue the dispute, you can do it on the Mudvayne talk page or our own. This is for discussion of the sources only, and your messages are purely serving to derail it. You have made your position on the sources perfectly clear, and now it would be nice to see what other editors have to contribute. Prophaniti (talk) 16:07, 15 January 2009 (UTC)
Prophaniti, you are the issue, because you act as if you own the articles, and whenever other editors point this out, you act as if they are at fault when they are not. (Ibaranoff24 (talk) 16:14, 15 January 2009 (UTC))

This is not the place for continuing this discussion, Ibaranoff, as I have told you once already. So once again: please refrain from doing so. Let's keep discussion here purely to the sources. Would anyone else care to contribute? Rolling Stone and NME seem to have been confirmed as reliable sources. Popmatters has also had some support as one. What about Metal Observer? As I say, if popmatters counts, it would seem to make sense, and if a site is deemed good enough to use under the "professional reviews" section (which MO is) then it must surely have some level of reliability as a source? Prophaniti (talk) 18:06, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Questioning a reliable source at Tite Kubo

In the Tite Kubo article, there is a statement which states "His next serial, Bleach, about a high school student who becomes a shinigami and fights evil spirits, began running in the same magazine in 2001. The original story concept was submitted to Weekly Shōnen Jump shortly after the cancellation of Zombie Powder, but was rejected. Akira Toriyama, the creator of Dragon Ball, saw the story and wrote a letter of encouragement to Kubo. Bleach was accepted for publication a short time later, in 2001, and was initially intended to be a shorter series, with a maximum serialization length of five years." This statement is sourced to an article published in the LA Times by Charles Solomon on August 28, 2008 in which he interviews Kubo.[35]. Some editors to the article have repeatedly removed the statement and there is a length argument occurring on the talk page questioning the validity of the statement and accusing Solomon of having filled in his article with content taken from fansites and Wikipedia itself. However, none of the editors who feel the statement is inaccurate can provide a single reliable source showing that that statement is false, and the statement was never recanted by Solomon despite one editor purportedly emailing him to ask about it. Those of us feeling the statement should remain feels the editors views are WP:OR and slanderous, without any actual proof to show that Solomon didn't confirm the statement with Kubo before publishing. Those wanting it removed argue its not accurate because it isn't a direct quote and providing "evidence" that it was taken from fansites (i.e. links to those sites), and that because it is a biography of a living person, it should be removed unless it can be corroborated even though it is not a negative statement about either person. Additional views and guidance is badly needed here as there is heavy edit warring also occurring because of this issue. Discussion can be found here Talk:Tite Kubo#Solomon article a mix of good material and spurious material. -- Collectonian (talk · contribs) 07:32, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

LA Times sounds reliable to me. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 07:37, 14 January 2009 (UTC)
Yes, no one is questioning that. The question is the provenance of one paragraph of Solomon's article. The information in it is bunk, plain and simple, taken from unreliable sources. A look at the Tite Kubo talk page will walk you through the evolution of this spurious information. Just because it has now appeared in an LA Times article doesn't mean it should suddenly be accepted, when it can be clearly traced back to the original fraudulent source. There are no sources for this information in Japanese, for example. An American fan made it up years ago and Wikipedia should not perpetuate it. —pfahlstrom (talk) 07:42, 14 January 2009 (UTC)
Specifically, my original Talk page posting from 2006[36] lays out why this information cannot be trusted, and that less obviously false permutations of the information should not be accepted at face value. The source is poisoned; anything clearly descending from that source is equally poisoned. If Title Kubo had brought it up in the interview that would be another question, but he did not—and to use Collectonian's logic, don't you think something as momentous as Akira Toriyama personally affecting his career would have been mentioned by him when he was talking about how the series got started? All this bad information is coming from one place and has been feeding off itself for years as one fan site copies information from another. Solomon's phrasing clearly follows the originals (and this is not the only phrasing Solomon borrowed in his article) and does not add anything new except the LA Times name. —pfahlstrom (talk) 07:52, 14 January 2009 (UTC)
By the same argument, how do you know the information that has apparently been around for years (at least 4 from your fan site links), is false? If it is false, it certainly is a notable long standing rumor, and yet in four years, not a single source (or even those fansites themselves) have even questioned this? How do you know that one source wasn't an earlier interview with Kubo or some other reliable Japanese source? -- Collectonian (talk · contribs) 07:59, 14 January 2009 (UTC)
All that shows is why fansites are considered unreliable sources. They repeat any stories that sound good and don't care about verifiability. How do I know it's false? The timeline with Yu Yu Hakusho, Zombie Powder, and Tite's graduation from high school simply do not match up with easily verifiable facts such as publication dates of Yu Yu Hakusho and Zombie Powder and Kubo's date of birth. This false information was accompanied by the Toriyama claim. That is the source which should be completely discounted, not Solomon's article. —pfahlstrom (talk) 08:05, 14 January 2009 (UTC)
This is in line with WP:REDFLAG. The article used puts forth an original suggestion that does not seem supported by any other reliable source, either in the US or in Japan. Since this is dubious, I'd suggest that it be removed until further reliable sources can back up the claim by Solomon. Kyaa the Catlord (talk) 07:50, 14 January 2009 (UTC)
Then the entire source should not be used. Picking and choosing which parts editors want to believe smacks of WP:OR and WP:NPOV. Either the entire article needs to be supported by other sources, or none of it does. Since Kyaa has already removed it, I have removed the rest of the sources usage. -- Collectonian (talk · contribs) 07:53, 14 January 2009 (UTC)
A minor error in the article does not invalidate the entire source; no one has suggested that it does. Nor does suggesting Solomon received incorrect information from sources he had no reason to doubt count as libel, as someone farther down this thread suggested. But pfahlstrom and I both work/have worked in the manga industry; we do have a background to make informed judgment calls. I lived in Japan for a number of years, and speak Japanese fluently; I have not seen any sources for this information in Japanese, reliable or not. I know enough about the manga industry and Shonen Jump in particular to know that the bit about the series being intended to run for a short time is laughable (nearly all series are intended to run as long as they are popular). And we are able to trace the history of this particular information to information removed from Wikipedia as a potential hoax, but only after it had spread to many fan sites. Taken collectively, all of this amounts to a reasonable doubt. It proves nothing, and we do not claim it does. But it is more than enough grounds to request additional sources, particularly Japanese ones. Doceirias (talk) 03:14, 15 January 2009 (UTC)
1. e-mail the author, and 2. Check Japanese sources. WhisperToMe (talk) 07:53, 14 January 2009 (UTC)
pfahlstrom stated in the longer discussion that he emailed the Times and received no reply. He also has since stated that he has emailed them again and is waiting for a response. -- Collectonian (talk · contribs) 07:56, 14 January 2009 (UTC)
(ec)It's an RS unless contradicted by other RSs. WP:NPOV doesn't work without that. The arguments against it appear to be OR. Just because fan site got it right, and it hasn't been reported on elsewhere, doesn't invalidate it. Also, if the writer gets some of their information from fan sites, that's OK. They're part of an editorial process and they can gather information however they want. They decide what is "true" and what is important, which we can't do. Not saying he really got the info from fan sites, but we can't summarize fan sites because we don't have an editorial process. Way different. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 08:02, 14 January 2009 (UTC)
Agreed. No one has a say in deciding what is defamatory without actual proof. That's part of what the core of Wikipedia is all about. Lord Sesshomaru (talk • edits) 17:56, 14 January 2009 (UTC)
Two points here; the material is not defamatory, merely apocryphal. I also highly doubt the core of Wikipedia involves refusing to provide corroborative sources when one source has been challenged. As it stands, we can't prove the information is false, and you can't prove the information is true. I see no reason not to err on the side of caution and remove the potential hoax until evidence for either side surfaces. Doceirias (talk) 04:54, 15 January 2009 (UTC)
That won't work. We require a reliable source, not two. Two is nice, but fights about articles a lot more controversial than anime, like various disputed genocide's, don't need a some teeny finding here that effects everything they do. They'd remove every sentence they disagree with that has only one source in a heartbeat. If you want to require two sources for disputed info, you'll have to start a huge policy discussion. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 05:42, 15 January 2009 (UTC)
In this case the information is traceable right back to Wikipedia, so citing the LA Times article for this paragraph amounts to a circular reference. I give more details on the Tite Kubo talk page. —pfahlstrom (talk) 06:25, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

(redent) I didn't see conclusive evidence of that. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 06:38, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

PFahlstrom has provided a more detailed explanation of the history here on the Tite Kubo talk page. I encourage everyone involved to read it and comment; it might help clarify the situation. Doceirias (talk) 06:48, 15 January 2009 (UTC)
In any case, an Assistant Readers' Rep from the LA Times got back to me today to let me know it's being looked into. I don't know how rapidly it might happen, but some progress is being made. —pfahlstrom (talk) 21:42, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

British National Party Fascism sources

The following are claimed to be reliable sources to support including the ideology of fascism for the British national party. This is disputed as the sources are claimed to be fringe and out of date, while others claim they still represent the party today. In the 13 years since the earliest source was published, significant changes have occurred to the party leadership and general functioning. --Lucy-marie (talk) 11:29, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Renton, D Fascism theory & practice (London, 1999)

Thurlow, R Fascism in Modern Britain (Basingstoke, 2000)

Copsey, N "Contemporary Fascism in the Local Arena: the British National Party and Rights for Whites" for Whites" in Cronin, M (ed) The Failure of British Fascism (Basingstoke, 1996)</ref>

Copsey, N. Changing course or changing clothes? Reflections on the ideological evolution of the British National Party 1999-2006, Patterns of Prejudice, v. 41, Issue 1, February 2007 , pages 61 - 82

All these are reliable academic sources from leading researchers in the field. Of course work can become out of date, in which case newer scholarship should be cited as well or instead. These texts are still all completely reliable for statements about the situation up to the late 1990s. Copsey 2007 is reliable for the situation since then. As always, if there is work by other scholars that contradicts a finding, then both views should be presented. Itsmejudith (talk) 11:48, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

On the talk page more recent sources have been requested and these have not been forthcoming. Statements to the effect prove they are not fascist, have been given. This is ridiculous as proving a negative is nigh impossible. More up to date sources have been requested but have not been provided. -Lucy-marie (talk) 12:00, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

One of your sources is from 2007. How much more up to date do you want? Alun (talk) 12:18, 15 January 2009 (UTC)
The 2007 source requires a subscription fee of £16.00 to be able to read it.--Lucy-marie (talk) 12:23, 15 January 2009 (UTC)
(edit conflict) These sources are fine. If there is a WP:RS that disputes this (RS does not include the BNP) then take that to the talk page and perhaps both should be mentioned, with appropriate weighting. The sources, and common sense, support calling the BNP fascist. Verbal chat 12:27, 15 January 2009 (UTC)
Please view the talk page and view what happens when this issue is raised there.--Lucy-marie (talk) 12:43, 15 January 2009 (UTC)
The subscription is irrelevant unless you can show that it has been misrepresented. If there are academic sources that state they are not fascist then they can be included. It is impossible to "prove" that they are or are not. We can only describe academic opinion. We should not say in Wikipedia's voice that they are fascist, only that they are - or have been - regarded as such by scholars and others. Paul B (talk) 12:27, 15 January 2009 (UTC)
So? There is no requirement that sources be free to access. Your complaint was that the sources are out of date and don't reflect the "modern" BNP. But at least one of the sources is only a couple of years old. The fact that it's not free is a different question to it's date of publication, surely. Alun (talk) 12:31, 15 January 2009 (UTC)
Ok. Three of the sources are out of date and one is unreadable unless I want to be ripped-off. Can some of you contributing look on the article to see where these sources are being used and also view the talk page. This may or may not have a bearing on the use of these sources. Is it agreed that the first three sources need updating?--Lucy-marie (talk) 12:39, 15 January 2009 (UTC)
Who says they are "out of date"? What you need to do is go and find a reliable source that says that these sources don't reflect the modern party. Then you can add that information to the article. As Verbal points out, the BNP itself does not represent a reliable source in this case. We as editors cannot say that a source is out of date just because we might believe it is. But we can go and find sources that do say this, and add this point of view to the article. I hope I'm being clear here. Cheers. Alun (talk) 12:47, 15 January 2009 (UTC)
£16 is not unreasonable for an academic document but if you ask at your local library you should be able to get it on interlibrary loan for nearer to £6. That's if you're in the UK. The source is still verifiable for users in other English-speaking countries who should be able to get hold of it through an academic library. Itsmejudith (talk) 13:26, 15 January 2009 (UTC)
Though the full text of the 2007 article is not freely available, the abstract is. It states the authors' conclusion as: "renewal under Griffin constitutes a recalibration of fascism rather than a fundamental break in ideological continuity." [37]. Paul B (talk) 14:11, 15 January 2009 (UTC)
Since I *do* have academic access to the article - I'll read it and verify the content. Please hold. --Cameron Scott (talk) 15:19, 15 January 2009 (UTC)
Broadly the paper talks about attempts to rebrand the party, that this is just a branding exercise and does not represent any real change to their view. and concludes with "Griffin's ideological revamp underpins the party's normalization in the eyes of the thousands of Britons who vote for it, making it even more difficult to pin the 'fascist' or 'Nazi' label on the well-groomed bespoke suits of Britain's latest generation of neo-fascist extremists." --Cameron Scott (talk) 15:22, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

"The BNP was not the first British fascist party to stand in elections." --Cameron Scott (talk) 15:29, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Forgive me if I misinterpret the issue but my understanding of Wikipedia policy is that if you want to say "The British National Party does not consider themselves to be fascist" you do not need a third-party reliable source to say that. A cite from BNP would sufficient. IOW, the party themselves is considered reliable as long as you're saying what they claim to believe. Sort of like an editorial or op-ed isn't reliable as far as statements of fact, but is reliable to represent the author's viewpoint. If I am wrong on this, please let me know. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 17:09, 15 January 2009 (UTC)
The relevant policy is WP:V#Using_self-published_and_questionable_sources_as_sources_on_themselves. It comes with a number of caveats, including "it is not unduly self-serving". --Stephan Schulz (talk) 00:31, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

ourcampaigns.com

There are currently over 300 articles linking to a website called Our Campaigns. It is perhaps a useful tool for research, as is Wikipedia, but as like Wikipedia it's user contributed it's completely unsuitable as a reliable source.

As an example, I discovered it as the main source for the [United States presidential election, 1996#Notable endorsements|notable endorsements in the 1996 US presidential election]. A cursory glance over the page shows that this is not a serious source for this kind of information, at the time of writing citing endorsements by "Ellen Page is cute as a bug" and "Romney 2012".

This has been briefly raised before in a peer review of John McCain, in which it was apparently dismissed, but no longer appears in the said article. I suggest a systematic review and probable removal from all articles using it as a source. Bigbluefish (talk) 19:29, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Crime magazine

In searching for sources for a major overhaul of Harpe brothers, I ran across Crime Magazine. I can't really find an "About Us" or anything like that. The site has been the recipient of a few awards, though I'm not sure how much prestige any of them hold. I am particularly interested in this article, which is written by a lady named Doris Lane. Her author page on the site mentions some places she has been published, although none of them jump out as major publications. I don't want to waste a bunch of time expanding from and citing this article, only to have it come back and bite me in the butt on a GA or FA nom later on.

So, reliable or not? What say you? Acdixon (talk • contribs • count) 00:29, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

You might want to email the site or the author for more info. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 01:13, 16 January 2009 (UTC)
It's not clearly reliable without more info. I doubt it would be accepted at FAC. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 01:15, 16 January 2009 (UTC)
What type of information could the site author provide that would show the site to be reliable? Acdixon (talk • contribs • count) 02:01, 16 January 2009 (UTC)
What kind of editorial control and fact checking that they do. If they just post the authors articles without looking at them, that's not an RS unless the author is an expert (doubtful here). With an old subject like that, the author is probably doing some sort of research. If she's telling an editor which books she got the info from, and they double check, that would be great. You also might email her and ask her which books she used (if any). If they don't do fact checking, but they do use books as sources, you might consdier using those same books. I notice a lot of books talk about them. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 02:17, 16 January 2009 (UTC)
Oh, there are definitely lots of books about the Harpes, and I'm consulting as many as I can find. By the time I'm done, the facts in the article in question may already be cited to some other source. However, if I do try to pursue this a little further, would the editor's email saying what kind of editorial control they exercise be sufficient to prove it a reliable source? If so, where would I post the email's contents? Acdixon (talk • contribs • count) 02:21, 16 January 2009 (UTC)
Well m:OTRS is the fancy, correct way to do it. I've never worked with it myself, so I don't know what it entails. I think they just email wikimedia, and then it gets a ticket number is then "official". If you just get a personal response, people may Assume Good Faith and accept it too. Not totally sure. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 02:30, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Audited financial report

Is an audited financial report by an independent auditor, posted on the internet home page of the audited non-profit organization RS for information concerning their finances? I believe it is illegal to alter such reports after audit, and would certainly cost such an organization is text-exempt status with the IRS if such alteration was discovered. Mervyn Emrys (talk) 04:09, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Sounds reliable, but let's have a link. Any info should also probably be phrased "according to ..." and not as fact. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 04:15, 16 January 2009 (UTC)
Southern Poverty Law Center, Financial Information. http://www.splcenter.org/donate/financialinfo/financial.jsp [accessed 1-14-09]
Yeah, that's fine IMHO. Just give background on where the info comes from in the article itself. For uncontroversial info, you might even be able to state it as a fact. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 04:54, 16 January 2009 (UTC)
Thank you. Mervyn Emrys (talk) 05:10, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Michael Jackson's "Stranger in Moscow" and Sega's "Sonic the Hedgehog 3" ending credits theme

I was told to come here to seek some further advice. I've started a Talk on Talk:Stranger_in_Moscow (take a look) and would like to know if and to what extent the source here http://www.musicpowers.com/cirocco.html can be cited. Of particular interest is this statement: "Cirocco’s projects include collaborating with “The King of Pop”, Michael Jackson, for the Sega Video Game “Sonic The Hedgehog”". The site it's self claims to be "Absolutely the best music industry book of professional advice, business information, help & resources for unsigned Artists, Producers, DJs, Songwriters, Engineers, Indie Labels & Managers in Hip-Hop, Urban, Rap, and R&B/Pop Music". Any help is appreciated. PabloGS (talk) 09:47, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

It's probably not reliable. It's some guys website for selling his books. It's not enough to say the songs are the same. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 20:53, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

The Ideas Bank

An section titled Clothing begets violence in the article on Christian Naturism cites an article on GlobalIdeasBank.org. This site appears to be a forum for self-publishing, akin to a blog. Their About page describes what they do:

"Hundreds of ideas are submitted each month by people from all over the world, and over 160,000 visitors have voted on the site with a rating, which allows the best ideas to rise to the top democratically."

Its mission and objectives includes this statement:

"These ideas we term social inventions: non-technological, non-product, non-gadget ideas for social change."

So it appears to me that anyone can post anything. I do not think it qualifies as a reliable source. What do you think? -- btphelps (talk) (contribs) 19:13, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

If what you say is true, it's not reliable. Some parts might be reliable if the author can be determined, and they're a published expert elsewhere. Probably not in this case, though. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 21:00, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Album Liner Notes

I just happened to be reading the article on Phil Collin's album, Dance into the Light where it states:

"In the liner notes Collins states that he does not use a drum machine on this album; this was in response to many fan complaints that Both Sides was mostly backed by a drum machine.[citation needed]"

I have a copy of that album. Is it acceptable for me to insert a citation to the album? I realize that third-party sources are better, but is it acceptable to use the liner notes if I'm not aware of another cite? Just to clarify, I'm not the author of the article or the line in question, I just happened to be browsing Wikipedia, stumbled across the article and wondered if this would be an acceptable way to resolve the citation needed issue. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 21:24, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Yes, the liner notes are a primary source. But do the liner notes also back up "in response to fan complaints"? That clause will need a different cite. Squidfryerchef (talk) 00:05, 16 January 2009 (UTC)
It's perfectly legitimate as a source for what Collins says. Paul B (talk) 00:19, 16 January 2009 (UTC)
The question is whether the liner notes say something like "There is no drum machine used on this album" or like "Due to complaints about the drum machine used on Both Sides, there is no drum machine used on this album". --Metropolitan90 (talk) 18:20, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

www.filmreference.com

This may have been asked before, but would www.filmreference.com be considered a reliable source? I've seen many actor articles cite that website as a source for the actor's birth name, birth date, etc. -- Luke4545 (talk) 23:34, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

It doesn't look good. I can't find an about page. They're owned by the same people as city-data.com, so if you can find out their editorial practices, it might help. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 23:57, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

Dorje Shugden

As in the history of Dorje Shugden can be seen user Truthbody has continuously removed without discussion 3rd party academic sources which are reviewed and acknowledged among academic scholars, and about which quotes were given on the talk page and discussion had been made previously. Truthbody used instead blog pages which have no authors, are anonymous and contradict 3rd party sources - they are rather fringe pov. These sources include pages like:

I am interested to hear what do you think about these three sources and if they are acceptable for WP. Thanks --Kt66 (talk) 21:40, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Avoid these web sites, I think. Google returns quite a few sites claiming to be the "official" voice, and it would be very difficult to decide which, if any, has any standing outside its own contributors.
If you have 3rd party academic sources, make sure they are fairly recent as books by "outsider" academics can themselves contain misunderstandings - for example Margaret Mead's Coming of Age in Samoa is still controversial. You should be prepared to cite works that express differing views - this is actually pretty common in the types of science article I edit, I know from my student experiences that it's common in philosophy, and I'd expect it to be common in history (it certainly is in chess history) - and I notice that there's a historical / theological controversy around Dorje Shugden. --Philcha (talk) 22:14, 16 January 2009 (UTC)
Thanks. The article presents different opinions, also the 3rd party sources list them, and put them into historical and cultural/social perspectives. The sources I use are
  • Nebesky-Wojkowitz, R. d. (1998). Oracles and demons of Tibet: The cult and iconography of the Tibetan protective deities. Gravenhage: Mouton, 1956.
  • Mumford, Stan (1989). Himalayan Dialogue : Tibetan Lamas and Gurung Shamans in Nepal, University of Wisconsin Press.
  • Kay, D.N. (1997). The New Kadampa Tradition and the Continuity of Tibetan Buddhism in Transition (1997) by David Kay, Journal of Contemporary Religion 12:3 (October 1997), 277-293.
  • Kay, D. N. (2004). Tibetan and Zen Buddhism in Britain: Transplantation, development and adaptation. RoutledgeCurzon critical studies in Buddhism. London: RoutledgeCurzon. ISBN 0-415-29765-6.
All of them are highly accepted and Kay 2004 has a review by Prof. Inken Prohl, and his 97 research is recommended by CESNUR and in Prof. Clarke's Encyclopedia of New Religious Movements. So they are all mainstream researches. --Kt66 (talk) 22:24, 16 January 2009 (UTC)
These are all reliable. Material sourced to any of these should not be deleted without discussion. The status of the alternative sources (websites) is a separate question. In principle, the website of practitioners of a minor religious tradition could well be reliable for what those practitioners believe. It isn't an either/or as some of the talk page discussion assumes. Perhaps the academic sources are reliable and the websites are too. I've posted on the article talk page and on WikiProject Tibet.Itsmejudith (talk) 11:43, 17 January 2009 (UTC)
I agree that "In principle, the website of practitioners of a minor religious tradition could well be reliable for what those practitioners believe." The big question is whether one can establish the reliability and representativeness of each of these web sites. --Philcha (talk) 12:25, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

www.JoyofSatan.org

Please tell me why the Organization "The Joy of Satan" [established, and Registered] is not a verifiable\Reliable source of Information?

The Joy of Satan is a non-for profit organization in the state of Oklahoma, it was established by High Priestess Maxine Dietrich. the organiztion is still fully functional with the Largest Satanic E-Group community. I see no reason for it to be unreliable.

Vovim Baghie - Samurai Of Malphas (talk) 02:22, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

Still Nothing?

Vovim Baghie - Samurai Of Malphas (talk) 02:58, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

  • First of all, you can't expect that all questions here are going to be answered within 36 minutes. Some questions here never get proper answers. Secondly, it appears that you are trying to use this organization as the sole reference for Malphas, who is described as a certain demon. However, no evidence has been provided that "The Joy of Satan" speaks for all Satanists even if they are the largest Satanic group online, which itself has not yet been proven. They could be the largest Satanic group and still not represent a majority of Satanists. Third, it would violate neutral point of view to write an article about a demon based solely on a Satanist perspective. If you begin the article by writing "Malphas is a Mighty President of Hell; He is a Night Demon and Rules over 40 Legions of Hell" [38], then that would ignore the fact that there are other religious concepts of Hell in which Malphas might be portrayed differently, yet other religious concepts of Hell in which Malphas would not figure, as well as the fact that there are many atheists, nonreligious people, and some religious believers who do not believe in the existence of Hell at all. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 09:57, 18 January 2009 (UTC)


Fair eneough, then may i at least put my description of Malphas on his article page under the Heading "Malphas According to the Joy of Satan"?

Vovim Baghie - Samurai Of Malphas (talk) 14:50, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

The Metal Observer

The previous discussion has mostly cleared up now, and it's become very cluttered with off-topic messages. So I thought a fresh section discussing this last one would be for the best.

I for one would like to try to form a definite yes or no answer of the issue of Metal Observer as a source. It meets the criteria for being used in the "reviews" section of albums (having an editorial and writing staff rather than accepting user submissions), but it's not actually published. So how would this stand up? I can see the potential problem there, but at the same time while it isn't an ideal source surely it being used as a "professional review" site must mean something? I'd have thought that this would give it a degree of reliability. That it shouldn't weigh as much as magazines like Rolling Stone, but should still be citable with regards to band genres, perhaps in support of other sources.

But that's just my take. What do others think? Is qualifying as a useable "review site" enough of a level of reliability? Prophaniti (talk) 11:09, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

It seems to have everything one would ask of a reliable source for statements about heavy metal music. It is published, on the web, even if not on paper. It has editors and writers, named, I hope? Should be OK if you also give weight to what other sources say. Itsmejudith (talk) 16:49, 18 January 2009 (UTC)
For me, as long as it is only reviews you are asking about - as long as it is an opinion and cited as such almost any source is fine. Soundvisions1 (talk) 17:32, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

Aye, that's (both of the above replies) along the lines I'm thinking. It wouldn't have as much weight as other, more notable publications by any means. But I wouldn't see a problem in using it to support statements (which was the original reason I brought it up here, as it was being used to support 4 other sources on a band genre), or give an indication as to overall source consensus, bearing in mind the appropriate weighting. Essentially, when we cite a genre for a band, we are giving the opinions of professional reviewers and music critics, so the issue is what qualifies that. We don't use Encyclopedia Metallum because it takes user submissions, so there's no indication of being "qualified". But Metal Observer does have a staff body, and staff are required to review releases frequently and to a certain standard for the site. This would suggest a degree of reliability. Prophaniti (talk) 20:18, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

Is ArbCom a reliable source?

This was recently added in the Web brigades article:

"The Wikipedia's Arbitration Committee in late 2008 has unanimously found it to be a fact that some Wikipedia editors claim to be involved with security organs of the Russian state.[1] At the same time, the Committee did not find convincing evidence to verify their claims, but found them "disruptive and potentially intimidating to other editors".[1]"

Is an ArbCom ruling a reliable source which can be used in this way? Offliner (talk) 01:33, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

I think we would need a reliable source saying someone besides wikipedia cares about this rather than a reliable source that the committee feels a certain way. Protonk (talk) 01:35, 13 January 2009 (UTC)
Reliable sources are described as: credible published materials with a reliable publication process; their authors are generally regarded as trustworthy or authoritative in relation to the subject at hand. ArbCom pretty obviously does not meet any part of this criteria. Dlabtot (talk) 01:55, 13 January 2009 (UTC)
I beg to differ, to be elected to the ArbCom requires a degree of trustworthiness, their findings are enforceable which implies their findings are authoritative, and the subject at hand is user conduct within Wikipedia which is certainly within their competance. Martintg (talk) 03:09, 13 January 2009 (UTC)
I was just about to raise the same issue. I think that Wikipedia can be a reliable source about itself in some cases, and ArbCom is as reliable as it gets. If the article clearly attributes the claim to ArbCom, then it seems fine.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 02:07, 13 January 2009 (UTC)
I myself have come across the userboxes claiming people work for said security organs. There's no problem regarding verifiability of the facts of the claims mentioned; as stated, the first part of the sentence is a simple statement of fact and is reliable. The subsequent finding, stated as such, is properly attributed and similarly should not pose any issue. PetersV       TALK 02:18, 13 January 2009 (UTC)
  • In regard to ArbCom findings within scope of ArbCom's area of competence, then yes, their findings can be considered as a reliable source for issues concerning Wikipedia. Martintg (talk) 03:05, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Is Arbcom a reliable source ? No! Not even close. Note that a reliable source should have, "a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy", and this reputation should be in the real world, not the in universe of wikipedia. Has any ArbCom decision about a real world person or organization, ever been cited in a newspaper/book/journal article about that person, organization (i.e., an article not focused primarily on wikipedia) ? Of course we can trivially verify that arbcom said what it said, by looking at the appropriate wikipedia page. We can also trivially verify that a wikipedia user/account said what they said by looking at their contribution history. That tautology does not mean that either of those sources can be considered reliable sources suitable to be used in writing wikipedia articles. Abecedare (talk) 04:16, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Precisely. Dlabtot (talk) 04:51, 13 January 2009 (UTC)
The Arbitration Committee and its role within Wikipedia is described in this news article, for example. ΔιγουρενΕμπρος! 07:56, 13 January 2009 (UTC)
It is a bit of a straw man to suggest that the ArbCom makes decisions about real world people or organization outside of Wikipedia. However Wikipedia itself is a real world organization, it seems incredible that the ArbCom (composed of a dozen or so of our most experienced Wikipedians) cannot be relied upon as a source of information regarding user behavior within Wikipedia in an article that may be related to Wikipedia. Martintg (talk) 05:36, 13 January 2009 (UTC)
Although your comment follows Abecedare's, you haven't actually in any way responded to what s/he said. Dlabtot (talk) 06:44, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

If it said "The ArbCom unanimously endorsed/opined the statement XYZ" then it's fine, rather than "found" as the AC aren't accredited researchers etc or investigators like a Royal Commission or scientifically peer reviewed publication. Aside from that I can't see how this is notable, I mean, any random vandal can make 20 edits and claim something, then we could cite their Wikipedia user page and whatnot. But not notable. YellowMonkey (bananabucket) 04:22, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Please note that this has been mentioned on the article page that WP is not a reliable source and as per SELFPUB, and still these editors (Digwuren, Piotrus and Martintg) continued to be disruptive, tendentious and pointish in their editing. There is a long history of contention on this article as to the inclusion of information into the article, and as one can see from the history it sparked edit warring and "battle" conditions on the article once again, with false claims of consensus (Martingtg) and ignoring of policy by all 3 editors. The inclusion of this information into the article, in my opinion, is well co-ordinated continued harrassment of editors by this clique; by linking to the Arbcom they have given readers of the article an opportunity to go and read all the paranoid accusations that User:Biophys has made against MANY editors. I have noted on the talk page of the article at Talk:Web_brigades#Digwuren.27s_edits that all one would have to do is admit to being a member of these teams that Arbcom stated don't exist, and it blows the reliability of Arbcom as a source out of the water. I "hypothetically" admitted to being such a member; as this "admission" is also on WP, can that too be used as a reliable source? Of course not, and the same goes to Arbcom. It should also be mentioned that User:Biophys has picked up on this "admission" as going against the Arbcom motions (the fact it is hypothetical is completely lost on him), and in the breathe I have demonstrated he continues to insinuate that people are members of these teams. Even more disturbing, User:Piotrus is an admin; he should know these policies like the back of his hand, and after his recent Arbcom, one would think he would know better. User:Digwuren is only recently back after a one year ban for treating WP as a battlefield, obviously he has not learnt his lesson. And Martintg and Biophys have been around long enough to know better too. There has been a complete disregard for policies on the part of these editors, and these tendentious and disruptive edits bring WP into disrepute. If Arbcom won't do anything about this now, as they are now aware, I will be taking this up upon my return in a week. --Russavia Dialogue 07:18, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

The Arbitration Committee is an elected body within the context of Wikipedia, which is notable (it is an article!), tasked with analysing participants' behaviour, as Martintg said. Their opinions with regard to this subject matter are at least as notable as, say, the opinion of the parliament of Republic of Nauru in matters of fact of Nauru.

Non-reliability of Wikipedia is not an inherent attribute of everything on Wikipedia; it's an attribute of Wikipedia's encyclopædic content. However, the Wikipedia's organisation produces a lot of independent content -- for example, by assigning the Arbitration Committee to write it --, and notability of this content is not subject to the same concerns of imperfectness or bias as the mainspace content is. Of course, quoting User:Joe Schmoe in a random discussion might not pass the bar. But that's not because the discussion happened on Wikipedia; it's because poor Joe is not notable. Arbitration Committee, however, is not Joe Schmoe. ΔιγουρενΕμπρος! 07:52, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Conflation of WP:RS and WP:NOTABILITY is not really helpful. The parliament of Nauru is not a reliable source, as it does not meet any of the applicable criteria. Dlabtot (talk) 16:11, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Applicability of WP:SELFPUB

Some people have expressed concern that the rulings of the Arbitration Committee, being published by the Arbitration Committee itself, the WP:SELFPUB might prohibit using such rulings as sources. This is, however, not the case here. The verifiability policy makes very clear exceptions for situations where notable entities give out data about themselves -- such as describing their own opinions --, and these exceptions clearly override the more general stance of viewing self-publications with suspicion, if not outright hostility. ΔιγουρενΕμπρος! 09:17, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Which leads to the question of whether Wikipedia's Arbitration Committee is a "notable" entity. In this context, I would definitely say Arbcom isn't a notable entity. (with all do respect to Arbcom). Blueboar (talk) 16:35, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

The controlling issue

Wikipedia:Self-references to avoid is the important issue, along with WP:UNDUE. As I said above, we need to be sure that someone outside of wikipedia cares about this before we start editing articles with just this information. Otherwise I could fill up reams of article space on the inclusion/deletion debate (Note that Deletionism and inclusionism in Wikipedia is heavily footnoted to third party sources and mercifully short, unlike the debates on the subject in wikipedia). Determining the actual verifiability of Arbcom's statement is secondary to this. Protonk (talk) 16:16, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

This is rediculous... the statement in question is challengable on so many different grounds, that I can not believe we are even seriously discussing it. I don't know if WP:SNOWBALL can be applied to an individual sentence... but this is a clear instance where a similar principle should be applied. Blueboar (talk) 16:43, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

This is simple, the AC is not a reliable source as of January 2009

English Wikipedia is notable, the Wikipedia Arbitration Committee is not, and the AC is not an authority on anything but itself (it has limited powers strictly related to behavior on one Wikipedia website and nothing else. It's not a reliable source for articles here because no one outside the English Wikipedia considers it an authority on anything. It's only recognized authority outside of this website is a very narrowly defined technical ability to tell Stewards on http://meta.wikimedia.org to change a user's permission and access levels on this one website. As soon as the reputable news media or reputable scholarly sources start quoting the Wikipedia Arbitration Committee outside of any Wikimedia pages, making that a valid blue link, then it's a valid source for a limited subset of articles here. Not until. rootology (C)(T) 16:48, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

What's also necessary is that the Wikipedia arbitration committee earn a reputation as a reliable source. DurovaCharge! 19:03, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

This issue, Wikipedia, ArbCom and RS

I've dealt with both Digwuren and Russavia in the past and I am aware of the background of most of the discussed issues here. Now since ArbCom is being discussed whether it is a RS or not I must say that if the article discusses the subject and its relationship with Wikipedia then you can use a third-party reliable source for the purpose. ArbCom is not a RS in itself for the many reasons outlined above by some users. That being said, this article is interesting though it doesn't explicitly refer to "Web brigades" or if Wikipedia is directly dealing with the so-called brigades. However, it refers to the atmosphere at Wikipedia among other social websites. It is up to you to see if it is helpful or not. -- FayssalF - Wiki me up® 19:06, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

The reliability of Wikipedia as source of nonpartisan information is always a question especially with regard to controversial issues. However, Wikipedia belongs to a category of Internet forums also, and as such, should be brought in for illustration purposes, because it is an "open format" relying on input from users hidden from scrutiny, and moderated by admins empowered with the ability to block them. The article Web brigades not only speaks of Internet forums, but it is almost entirely devoted to them. As of now, while protected from editing, the article says nothing about the controversy surrounding the biggest online forum that ever was. So much for impartiality... --Poeticbent talk 19:23, 13 January 2009 (UTC)
This is a relevant example which can be somehow paralleled with this case. You may note that even if the ArbCom dealt with that case there's no direct sourcing to ArbCom's ruling. Instead, there are third-parties reliable sources being used. -- FayssalF - Wiki me up® 19:40, 13 January 2009 (UTC)
Agree with YellowMonkey. Attribution to ArbCom is fine if the text was about WP business, but the information must be notable to be included. Other than that, I object to personal accusations made by Russavia above. He made the following statement: (see at the bottom of the diff). I remained that such statements are regarded as unhelpful in a relevant ArbCom ruling [39] [40]. This is all that had happened.Biophys (talk) 20:03, 13 January 2009 (UTC)
It can be deemed unhelpful but my belief is that he didn't mean it. Eventhough I fail to see any relationship between the reliability of ArbCom as a source and his assertion I believe he was just making a point... that it is hard to prove or disprove an affiliation of someone to a particular group. His point remains valid unless it is consistently repeated --at that time we'd be obliged to believe in it. I hope all of you stick to the issue on hand and avoid focusing on each other. -- FayssalF - Wiki me up® 20:25, 13 January 2009 (UTC)
If he weren't making a point, but we in fact had to believe he was stating the truth about himself being an agent, then we'd have to treat his participation like any other COI editor. It would then be best for him to not edit the article, but only to use the talk page to ensure that inaccuracies are corrected. An amazingly good example is being demonstrated by a corporate representative at Talk:Airborne (dietary supplement), where they don't touch the article, but make their concerns known on the talk page. Such editors should be careful not to give any impression of attempts to whitewash the article, but to ensure that proper coverage of all aspects is done in an NPOV manner. In the present situation, Russavia seems to just be making a valid point. Only if Wikipedia or an ArbCom decision are cited in reliable third-party sources can we use it as a source in an article. OTOH it's a perfectly good source on talk pages when discussing editorial matters. ArbCom decisions are primarily only reliable sources for policy making and dispute resolution here. -- Fyslee (talk) 14:46, 14 January 2009 (UTC)
This also brings up another aspect of why an ArbCom decision in such a matter must have one type of outcome. Since ArbCom must not make content decisions, it must back up the current article POV (that it's a conspiracy theory). If it were to decide that an editor actually was an agent, that would be so radical a decision as to change the whole article POV and title. It would to be in possession of outside V & RS that makes such proof convincing, and the editors of the article would already have been using them, and should have made the change of POV and title themselves.
Another way the ArbCom could handle the situation would be to declare that one or more editors were editing in a manner consistent with how an agent would edit, IOW in a disruptive and whitewashing manner. They could then treat the editor as a hostile COI editor, or even ban the editor. -- Fyslee (talk) 15:24, 14 January 2009 (UTC)
I don't believe it is a job of ArbCom at this stage. It is the job of admins through AE and ANI. -- FayssalF - Wiki me up® 15:43, 14 January 2009 (UTC)
Agreed. But let's stay closer to WP:RS and the original text inserted to Web brigades with a reference to ArbCom. I looked through a few real sources and found only Comrade J. Here it is. He tells that yes, there are indeed SVR agents who operate at open-source educational web sites (although he did not tell "wikipedia"), and he personally dispatched such agents when he worked in New York. Such agents would fit the following profile according to him: (1) they do not operate from Russia but from other countries, (2) they place well written texts prepared by others; (3) these texts are mostly accurate but include a "kernel of disinformation"; (4) the text are designed to promote good image of Russia or to slander the US which is still considered "main adversary". Yes, let's indeed use external sources.Biophys (talk) 14:42, 15 January 2009 (UTC)
Taking into account that Tretyakov defected in 2000, there is no way he could have ordered (or have knowledge of) a disinformation campaign in Wikipedia. So obviously this source cannot be used to support the original piece of text inserted to Web brigades which we are discussing. Offliner (talk) 15:01, 15 January 2009 (UTC)
Whether there are or are not "agents" working to put disinformation in Wikipedia is irrelevant to this discussion... the discussion is whether a) ArbCom is a reliable source (no), and b) whether ArbCom is notable enough to discuss in this context (also no). Blueboar (talk) 15:05, 15 January 2009 (UTC)
I fully agree. Offliner (talk) 15:11, 15 January 2009 (UTC)
This entire discussion was initiated by User:Offliner because of that edit.Biophys (talk) 15:57, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

the offending section seems to have been removed... so this may be resolved. Blueboar (talk) 16:54, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Using data from ArbCom is original research

I've looked this over, and there's no way around this being an issue of original research. An encyclopedia should not publish information that can only be cited to the encyclopedia. ( Could you imagine if these RS/N debates were used as sources in articles about the newspapers? ) The only way the issue could be mentioned would be if an outside news source did an article about it citing the ArbCom decision, -then- it would become a primary source and the caveats about self-published and self-reference would come into play. Otherwise, what happens outside mainspace, stays outside mainspace. Squidfryerchef (talk) 01:46, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

All commercial encyclopedias write about themselves of course; but, they also reimburse their contributors, and do a lot of things we don’t do. It would be fair to assume that Wikipedia can serve as target of coordinated editing in propaganda wars. The phenomenon, which is discussed in the article Internet brigades, does not concern encyclopedias produced in controlled environment. It is unique to all “open formats” and it is severe in most cases.
There’s a number of Wikipedia policy guidelines devoted to dealing with this problem, although results might differ from one ArbCom ruling to another. It is possible nonetheless to acknowledge in mainspace the existence of coordinated editing in Wikipedia by quoting relevant policies designed against it, without raising the question of ArbCom’s reliability as source of public information. Examples of politically inspired conflicts are available under lamest edit wars for example.
Most our guidelines were created specifically to address the already existing phenomena. In the same manner, the article "Internet brigades" can feature a section devoted to policies meant to prevent coordinated editing in our portal, policies used by the ArbCom, with specific case examples. --Poeticbent talk 05:47, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia is a reliable (although primary) source about itself. It is not recommended but in the exceptional circumstances we can use reliable primary sources. On the other hand I fail to see how putting more or less stupid banners on user pages is in any way notable. Wikipedia is not a a compilation of its own history. We only consider Wikipedia events notable if they are included in multiple sources independent from Wikipedia. E.g. we do not include the stroy of pedophilia banner war in the pedophilia article, etc. There is no justification for inclusion of primary source in this case Alex Bakharev (talk) 00:31, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

  1. ^ a b Wikipedia Arbitration Committee, final decision in re Eastern European disputes (formerly known as Piotrus 2) 22 December 2008 23:59: Involvement by security organs
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_26&oldid=1136075116"