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Description of generically mentioned organizations

Are this book (p. 223) and this document (section 17) reliable sources for the statement that the document "warned bishops to be on guard against, and not to support, Catholic organizations not upholding the Church's doctrine on homosexuality, groups which the letter said were not really Catholic" (emphasis added)? The claim is made here (paragraph 2) and has been discussed here.

The text of the document related to the claim is:

"With this in mind, this Congregation wishes to ask the Bishops to be especially cautious of any programmes which may seek to pressure the Church to change her teaching, even while claiming not to do so. A careful examination of their public statements and the activities they promote reveals a studied ambiguity by which they attempt to mislead the pastors and the faithful. For example, they may present the teaching of the Magisterium, but only as if it were an optional source for the formation of one's conscience. Its specific authority is not recognized. Some of these groups will use the word "Catholic" to describe either the organization or its intended members, yet they do not defend and promote the teaching of the Magisterium; indeed, they even openly attack it. While their members may claim a desire to conform their lives to the teaching of Jesus, in fact they abandon the teaching of his Church. This contradictory action should not have the support of the Bishops in any way" (section 14 of the document).

There seems to be no basis for the claim that the organizations spoken of are exclusively Catholic. The document says that some, not all, present themselves as Catholic, and only implicitly suggests, not states, that their self-presentation is false. Esoglou (talk) 14:05, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I must post this again. After it had been archived, Roscelese has commented on the article's talk page: "No one agreed with you that the source was being misrepresented, in spite of your obviously deliberate failure to mention the secondary sources which discussed these Catholic organizations. If you can't get any support for your position even when you deliberately leave out the sources that disagree with it, how can you possibly claim it is the consensus position?" I left out no source that was cited in support of the statement that I questioned, so I fail to see on what grounds I am being chided for an "obviously deliberate" failure to mention some unspecified secondary sources. Esoglou (talk) 16:42, 1 August 2014 (UTC)
On the basis of: the text of the 1986 document quoted above; of this book, which says nothing of the religion of the organizations in question; and now, as additional sources, of this book, which again speaks only generically of "homosexual pressure groups" and of a number of sources that speak only of one particular group out of those affected, a particular group that itself claims to be Catholic, while the Catholic Church claims it is not Catholic, User:Roscelese has repeatedly reinserted her claim that the 1986 document "warned bishops to be on guard against, and not to support, Catholic organizations not upholding the Church's doctrine on homosexuality, groups which the letter said were not really Catholic" (emphasis added). Are any of these reliable sources for her claim that the document was speaking only of Catholic organizations?
Is it not more accurate to state that the document "warned bishops to be on guard against, and to avoid giving even the appearance of support for organizations not upholding the Church's doctrine on homosexuality, some of which called themselves Catholic", which is what User:Roscelese is repeatedly replacing with her claim that the document spoke specifically of Catholic organizations? Esoglou (talk) 09:38, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

Blame for persistence in spite of mortality

Is this document (section 9) a reliable source for the statement that the document "blamed these organizations ["Catholic organizations not upholding the Church's doctrine on homosexuality, groups which the letter said were not really Catholic"] for continuing to advocate for gay rights even when, it claimed, homosexuality threatened the lives of many people" (emphasis added)? The claim is made here (paragraph 2) and has been discussed here.

The advocating that, at the time of the AIDS epidemic, the document disapproved of was the advocating of "the practice of homosexuality", not the advocating for "gay rights" (whatever the document might conceivably have meant by this). It also did not say that "homosexuality", without distinction between homosexual orientation and homogenital activity, threatened the lives of many people. The relevant sentence is: "Even when the practice of homosexuality may seriously threaten the lives and well-being of a large number of people, its advocates remain undeterred and refuse to consider the magnitude of the risks involved." One may indeed ask what is "its" other than a reference to "the practice of homosexuality".

The context is: "There is an effort in some countries to manipulate the Church by gaining the often well-intentioned support of her pastors with a view to changing civil-statutes and laws. This is done in order to conform to these pressure groups' concept that homosexuality is at least a completely harmless, if not an entirely good, thing. Even when the practice of homosexuality may seriously threaten the lives and well-being of a large number of people, its advocates remain undeterred and refuse to consider the magnitude of the risks involved. The Church can never be so callous. It is true that her clear position cannot be revised by pressure from civil legislation or the trend of the moment. But she is really concerned about the many who are not represented by the pro-homosexual movement and about those who may have been tempted to believe its deceitful propaganda. She is also aware that the view that homosexual activity is equivalent to, or as acceptable as, the sexual expression of conjugal love has a direct impact on society's understanding of the nature and rights of the family and puts them in jeopardy" (section 9 of the document). Esoglou (talk) 14:06, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I must post this again. After it had been archived, Roscelese has simply restored the questioned text without making any comment even on the article's talk page to defend it. Esoglou (talk) 16:56, 1 August 2014 (UTC)
User:Roscelese is repeatedly renewing (today, and on 2 August, 1 August, 25 July, …) her claim that the 1986 document "blamed these organizations" – i.e., "Catholic organizations not upholding the Church's doctrine on homosexuality" – "for continuing to advocate for gay rights even when, it claimed, homosexuality threatened the lives of many people". The only basis she advances for her claim is the document itself, which in section 9 makes the statement quoted above, while the reference to what User:Roscelese interprets as "Catholic organizations not upholding the Church's doctrine on homosexuality" is in section 14. This is no more than an inadmissible personal synthesis by a Wikipedia editor. Is it not more accurate to state that "the letter blamed advocates of the practice of homosexuality for disregarding the threat it posed", which is what User:Roscelese is repeatedly replacing with her synthetic claim that the document blamed Catholic organizations for "advocating gay rights" at a time when homosexuality (even orientation, whatever of practice?) endangered lives? Esoglou (talk) 09:52, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

Alfonso Gomez-Rejon interview

This interview has extensive information about the career of Alfonso Gomez-Rejon who is an Emmy-nominated director for this year's 66th Primetime Emmy Awards. I can't seem to find that type of detail anywhere else. Is this a RS?--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 10:43, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

Using Press TV for reporting Hamas claims

Is it fine to use Press TV to report Hamas claims of Israeli soldiers killed? Article is 2014 Israel-Gaza conflict.

This has been repeatedly added and removed. Examples are here and here. --Kingsindian (talk) 11:29, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

I think any such claims from Press TV should be directly attributed to them, especially if their "facts" differ from other reliable sources. I base that solely on information gleaned from Press TV and previous RSN discussions. - MrX 12:39, 4 August 2014 (UTC)
As far as I know, the "fact" that Press TV is reporting, namely that "Hamas claims that 145 Israeli soldiers have been killed" is not disputed by anyone. The reason given for removing it seems to be just that Press TV is unreliable. Kingsindian (talk) 13:07, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

Omniglot online Encyclopedia

Does anyone know if this website[1] can be considered a reliable source? It's author, Simon Ager, lists no academic training or specialization.[2]
The Punic article, for example, has no sources or referencing,[3] yet gives a link to wikipedia! --Kansas Bear (talk) 20:54, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

Actually, he does mention studying languages at universities and gives a rather detailed account of his credentials: [4] As to whether he's qualified in linguistics, that's another question. He's also not the only contributor: [5] Maybe someone at a language WP:LANG could weigh in. Darkfrog24 (talk) 22:31, 2 August 2014 (UTC)
Thank you. I did not find that information, whilst digging around. --Kansas Bear (talk) 03:24, 3 August 2014 (UTC)
Absolutely not for anything to do with the history of writing, alphabets, languages, etc. Eg this use is inappropriate. There are real academics with recognised expertise in these subjects and we should only be using those. The large number of contributors makes me even more concerned as there is no one shown with the credentials to exercise editorial control. Dougweller (talk) 13:25, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

Self-published source at EmDrive

Disclosure: This issue was raised at BLPN because of a potential BLP issue.

I am requesting opinions on whether or not this self-published paper is a reliable source for the following passages at EmDrive:

Egan has also recommended that New Scientist publish Dr. Costella's refutation of Shawyer's theory paper.

(The second source for this passage also seems unreliable.)

Shawyer's article in the New Scientist was indeed almost immediately challenged[10] by Dr. John P. Costella, a theoretical physicist and electrical engineer who works for the Australian Department of Defence, whose Ph.D. is in relativistic electrodynamics, the field of physics that Shawyer relies on to support his theory. According to Costella, the angles of the force vectors are calculated incorrectly. You can use high school physics to find the correct angles and reach the conclusion that momentum is conserved and the drive can't work as postulated. He says that the rest of of the paper has theory that is correct, but which doesn't demonstrate anything about how the drive works.


A significant portion of this article is based on this one self-published paper. As far as I can tell, no other reliable sources have cited it. I would like others opinions and help bringing the article in line with our policies.- MrX 20:15, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

I just discovered that this self-published blog article, also byCostella, is being used to support this:

Contacted again in 2013 by Wired magazine about Shawyer's math being validated and his experiments successfully reproduced by the Chinese team at Northwestern Polytechnical University, Dr. Costella critiqued the claims and also suggested that the authors should send their paper to a peer reviewed journal like Physical Review, for a review of the computational methods and theory. Dr. Costella suggested to test a completely closed EmDrive in space.

Notably, Costella claims to have been asked by Wired magazine to provide a response to an article, but that it was "too long" for them to include. - MrX 23:34, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

I don't think we need a self-published paper to communicate to the general reader why scientists are skeptical about the proposal. Their opposition, including the fact that this author opposes it, is outlined in other sources that meet more of Wikipedia's requirements. This is a four or five paragraph section that is only sourced to this one pdf on his website, and is it even still available there? (A quibble: I'm a little concerned that the author describes the theoretical machine here as a "perpetual motion machine", which are a class of impossible theoretical machines that do not require fuel. This theory involves not having to use propellant, which is a completely different issue, although still an eye-popping claim.) However "true" the criticism may be, I don't see the source being quite reliable enough in this instance. Criticism must be included, and proportional to his prevalence amongst scientists, but not like this.__ E L A Q U E A T E 23:45, 3 August 2014 (UTC)
Thanks for sharing your views E L A Q U E A T E.- MrX 12:27, 4 August 2014 (UTC)
The claim, "This is the fundamental blunder that renders Shawyer's paper meaningless." is rather serious and needs to be cited by another source before it can be included in the article. Shawyer removing the diagram from his paper shows that he doesn't seem to think that he had made a fatal error. However, the fact that Costella has critiqued Shawyer's physics is cited in magazines and is worth including. Shii (tock) 19:16, 4 August 2014 (UTC)
If there is coverage of the criticism in reliable secondary sources, the material in the article should be drawn from those sources. Could you please show where the fact that Costella has critiqued Shawyer's physics is cited in magazines? __ E L A Q U E A T E 20:56, 4 August 2014 (UTC)
Sorry, just misreading the sources that were presented on the page. Shii (tock) 23:36, 4 August 2014 (UTC)
No problem, I think I was making the same mistake earlier. I'd still be happy to see material about him cited from an independent source. Right now it's a bit of a mess.__ E L A Q U E A T E 00:42, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
Costella's critique does get a mention in a couple of Wired articles. [6][7] --92.4.162.106 (talk) 20:26, 5 August 2014 (UTC)

Does "Native Advertising" affect the reliability of a source? Will it?

[8] states that "Native Advertising" is being used in some reliable sources.

“Last Week Tonight,” John Oliver’s acclaimed HBO show, is getting journo-wonky on us, airing an 11-minute hit piece last night on the scourge of native advertising among big-time media players. Oliver took viewers on a quick history lesson through the innovation of blurring the lines between editorial content and advertising content, and then came to this conclusion: “I like to think of news and advertising as the separation of guacamole and Twizzlers. Separately they’re good. But if you mix them together, somehow you make both of them really gross.”
Among those mixing such treats is the New York Times, whose executive vice president of advertising, Meredith Levien, defended native advertising at a conference: “Let me start by vigorously refuting the notion that native advertising has to erode consumer trust or compromise the wall that exists between editorial and advertising. Good native advertising is just not meant to be trickery. It’s meant to be publishers sharing storytelling tools with marketers.”

Where a reliable source engages in such journalistic practices, should Wikipedia continue to regard them as "reliable sources"? If I recall correctly, the concept of companies writing their own Wikipedia articles is not favoured - but if the company writes its own "reliably sourced" article, how can we prevent that back door into Wikipedia? Note that the NYT currently does separate the Dell ads with the wording "This page was produced by the Advertising Department of The New York Times in collaboration with Dell. The news and editorial staffs of The New York Times had no role in its preparation." But what about future ads on various sites which are not so clearly demarcated? [9] indicates the pixels are blurred already: It's a little hard to tell unless you zoom in, but the small words above the headline do not say "advertisement," or "paid post," or anything like that. They say: "Cancer News." (illustration on web page).


Bob Garfield of The Guardian [10] states:

If native advertising is so harmless, why does it rely on misleading readers?
It's hard to read the latest gimmick for infusing a dying industry with cash as anything other than journalism selling its soul
"And you, sir," says the prince of darkness. "I didn't catch your name."
"Faust," answers the holdout.
"And may I ask why you did not accept my bargain, Mr Faust?"
The odd fellow nods. "Sure," he says to the devil. "To tell you the truth, I don't see much of an upside."

Does "native advertising" affect how we must treat reliable sources in the future? If a newspaper gets millions of dollars for a paid advertorial, are their articles on the advertiser going to be conceivably tainted? Cheers. Collect (talk) 13:14, 5 August 2014 (UTC)

Next someone will be asking if the Colbert Report can be trusted to objectively convey the merits of Sierra Mist or Doritos. Does this really need discussion? LeadSongDog come howl! 18:22, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
I fear this issue is a tad more substantive than Colbert is as an actual future problem for Wikipedia.Collect (talk) 20:36, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
It's a problem. It's a big issue. I didn't see John Oliver’s thing but it's something that I've been concerned about generally.
There are two aspects to this problem, I think. One is articles placed by means other than the typical editorial process -- paid for, in other words. Most on-line publications do this I think. Sometimes they're clearly marked, but it seems to me that a lot of them aren't marked at all. It's hard to say because it's hard to know what's going on.
The other problem is the violence this does to the expected chinese wall between the editorial and business departments. In the old model, they didn't talk to each much and maybe didn't like each other much. That's passé now I think or getting there. "This page was produced by the Advertising Department of The New York Times in collaboration with Dell. The news and editorial staffs of The New York Times had no role in its preparation." Man, can you imagine that even ten years ago? Editorial would have to told the business boys to fuck off in no uncertain terms and be backed up down the line. I'm imagining what Punch Sulzerger would say that.
I don't blame them. The alternative is no New York Times at all. In the old days reputation and integrity of the paper was a prime business asset. It still is, but it has to take a back seat to simply surviving at all. Reputation and integrity aren't going to help you if you're out of business.
It's just different. But I mean even when you don't have sponsored content, what are you going to say when Business calls Editorial and says "Look, we have to make some changes in that story". Hell, you're already a whore. Why get picky now? And the paradigm isn't "We'll have a reputation for accuracy and integrity, and that'll attract enough readers that we can pay the bills, and so we'll be alright even if the occasional advertiser gets pissed off." It's more like "Everything's changed. We're losing readers every day. We're going to die if we don't bring in more ad revenue however we can." So I don't know how that scenario would play out at the Times but I'm concerned and I think rightfully so.
I'm looking at Slate right now... there's a section called "Promoted Stories"... not clear what that means... These are external links though. All of the links are to stories, but one of them is on the Boston Globe, one is on Monster, and one is on Lululemon. That's... different. I assume that money or some sort of consideration was involved in getting the Lululemon "story" on there as a "Promoted Story". What about the Boston Globe story? It's a straight news story ostensibly, but it starts off talking (nicely) a lot about a new hotel that's coming to town (appropriate for the subject). It's mixed in with Lululemon and Monster, by Slate... what's going on here? Who knows? All the major publications operate like this. At least these are external links, but I've seen Slate stories just looked pretty fishy to me.
There are some rules or laws about labeling content I think, but as a practical matter these rules are not going to be enforced except in extraordinary cases, I don't think. The United States Government is not going put the New York Times and other major news publications out of business because that would not be in the interest of the people of the United States. Prosecutorial discretion, not to mention prosecutorial resources (stuff like that is way down on the list) plus whatever rules or laws that we do have are vague and not very useful IIRC (I looked this up once but I don't remember the details). So forget that. It's entirely up to the publications.
Things are changing and changing fast. It's something to be aware of. It's important, I think. Herostratus (talk) 09:03, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

The New American (John Birch Society]) as a source

Is this John Birch Society publication a reliable source for these statements at National Security Agency:"Numerous conflicting stories have been put forward by the Obama administration in response to new revelations in the media", " Alexander later admitted that "content" is collected, but stated that it is simply stored and never analyzed or searched unless there is "a nexus to al-Qaida or other terrorist groups".""Obama has also claimed that there are legal checks in place to prevent inappropriate access of data and that there have been no examples of abuse;" See [11] for a search on its use. Some of course will be appropriate. Others probably not, eg at Internment of Japanese Americans and Church attendance. 17:59, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

In this specific case, the source article seems to be an opinion piece. Its use as a source would have to conform to our policies on appropriate weight and attribution. In other words, those statements should not stand in Wikipedia's voice if they are solely sourced to The New American. I can't comment on its use as a reliable source in general, but it does have an editor, so it's plausible that it would be a reliable source in some cases.- MrX 18:30, 4 August 2014 (UTC)
Of course the JBS is not a reliable source. If this isn't being reported by anyone else, then it is the claim of an advocacy group; if someone else reports it, we can source it from the "someone else". Mangoe (talk) 20:24, 4 August 2014 (UTC)
It is published - but should be cited as opinion. We use many "advocacy groups" as sources on Wikipedia, and the same advice applies to all of them. Collect (talk) 09:21, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
No. This is a group that says Eisenhower was a Communist agent, water fluoridation was part of a Communist plot and the U.S. is ruled by the New World Order. TFD (talk) 22:37, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
Agreed. We don't treat all advocacy groups equally. Dougweller (talk) 09:54, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

Blog author exception criteria--met or unmet?

A line from the first paragraph of this article [12] has been proposed as support for this statement [13] in the article about the Game of Thrones episode "Oathkeeper." (Game of Thrones is an HBO television adaptation of the Song of Ice and Fire books by George Martin. A Storm of Swords is the third book in this series.)

Wikipedia article: "Content from this episode is also found in A Storm of Swords chapters 61, 68, 71, and 72 (Sansa V, Sansa VI, Daenerys VI, Jaime IX)."

Source article: "Foram adaptados neste episódio os capítulos Dany VI (pág 583), Sansa V (pág. 624), Sansa VI (pág 694) e Jaime IX (pág 744) de ATdE."

("ATdE" stands for A Tormenta de Espadas/A Storm of Swords.)

All parties concur that this site should be considered a blog and/or fansite. The dispute involves whether the exception criteria have been met or not: One user states that this article is acceptable for the statement made per WP:USERG because the author is a named member of the site's staff rather than an anonymous contributor, and credentials are listed [14] (credentials in English: [15]). Other users state that her credentials are not sufficient per WP:BLOGS, stating that the author is not an established expert. The first user also cites WP:CONTEXTMATTERS conceding that the author would not be considered an expert for literary analysis but should be considered so for observable facts about the novel and episode. Please note that the author is a member of the staff of the website, not of the Game of Thrones TV show.

To other participants in this dispute: Suggest changes to this filing at talk:Oathkeeper. Darkfrog24 (talk) 12:43, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

An introduction to the Quran by Harry W. Dunning (1895)

Is this source reliable for this article? Specifically, I am interested in the content in this section.--Kazemita1 (talk) 15:17, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

There is no reason whatsoever why a 119-year-old source on a subject like this would need to be used. Find more recent scholarship - there is no shortage of it. AndyTheGrump (talk) 15:23, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
Looking at the source given, it doesn't support the material it is being cited for anyway - it says nothing about "a verse acknowledging the existence of three Meccan goddesses considered to be the daughters of Allah" - instead it says he "for a moment raised the idols of Mecca". And nor does it say anything about Gabriel. If the version in our article is correct, it doesn't come from the source cited. AndyTheGrump (talk) 15:43, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
We should never use 19th century sources for articles. TFD (talk) 01:18, 7 August 2014 (UTC)
Never is a bit much; many articles show that some older sources can be used responsibly (Thomas Jefferson Peter the Great etc.) Sometimes a foundational text or biography remains relevant with a good scholarly reputation for accuracy for a long time. The source being asked about here isn't one of those times, of course.__ E L A Q U E A T E 02:25, 7 August 2014 (UTC)
I should have said we should never use them as secondary sources. Sometimes modern writers will cite opinions of pioneering writers in the field, and once the source establishes its significance then we can quote it. We might for example mention Charles Beard's views on U.S. history, but we would not use his books as sources for facts about U.S. history, since subsequent scholarship has corrected many of the factual errors he made. And the same is true with Marx, Weber, Carlyle and Gibbon. TFD (talk) 04:59, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

Is Top Gear a reliable source?

Bugatti Veyron has had a section removed with the argument of "removing top gear "factual" references, since it is a scripted entertainment show and not a news source" Whereas I maintain that in this context anyway, Top Gear can be considered reliable, given the involvement of Bugatti/VW themselves and the nature of the test.

Diff of removal: [16]

Whilst I have myself removed some of the more ludicrous claims regarding Top Gear, (James May discovers source of the Nile,[17]) this is not one of them. Chaheel Riens (talk) 10:15, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

Top Gear may be a "scripted entertainment show," but that means that the hosts' lines and jokes are planned out ahead of time, not that they faked the speed and stats of the cars they test. I would consider Top Gear reasonably reliable unless it is contradicted by a more serious source. The fact that the article text explicitly states that this came from the TV show Top Gear and describes the exact track used and other circumstances of the test makes it even more solid. Treat it the way you'd treat Mythbusters. Darkfrog24 (talk) 12:53, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
No, use in this context should not be considered reliable. This is using an entertainment show as a source for an incredibly extraordinary claim about itself. That has all kinds of problems. A self-serving claim like that can't be reliably sourced to the program itself. This would be a textbook violation of WP:ABOUTSELF that requires that the material is neither unduly self-serving nor an exceptional claim. It has nothing to do with whether we think the claim may be true, but how extraordinary a claim it is. If it's ever taken seriously, it will be reported in other reliable sources.__ E L A Q U E A T E 16:20, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
Ah, and then I clicked on the other diff. In the specific case of Bugatti, the show is a reliable source that it made claims about the car, but the sentence shouldn't use the word "verified". They're a source for their statements, not a source that they are as accurate as other independent lab tests. __ E L A Q U E A T E 16:45, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
Can you clarify which link is which in your conversation? I'm assuming that you mean "May discovers source of the Nile" is the "incredibly extraordinary claim", rather than the Bugattoi speed claim?
I state myself that the Nile claim is ridiculous, and that I've removed it (several times in fact) from May's page. I just highlighted that to show that I'm aware of some TG claims being non-reliable, but at the same time some - in context - are. Chaheel Riens (talk) 19:16, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
First I was (rather uselessly) referring to the Nile reference (before I saw it was a stale and previously settled issue), then the Bugatti claim; the fact that they did a Bugatti speed test isn't extraordinary. It's possibly a small point, but I'd say the verb "verified" is arguably close to editiorially-loaded language, as it makes it seem like we're asserting that both Bugatti and Top Gear have found "the truth" of the matter. It's probably more neutral to say that "Top Gear said they achieved the speed asserted by Bugatti" or something similar. "Verify" makes it sound like Wikipedia is vouching that Top Gear has found the objective truth, not reporting two claims. On a separate issue, the fact that the car manufacturers were involved with the test does not necessarily make the source more reliable, it possibly makes it slightly less independent. But I don't necessarily see a problem with using them here as long the claims are clearly attributed to them and not presented as confirmed objective reality.__ E L A Q U E A T E 21:50, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
Cheers. I just wanted clarification over which links you were referring to (even though it was fairly obvious,) in case this conversation is used in the above dispute. Chaheel Riens (talk) 06:39, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

2014 Israel–Gaza conflict

Is the following source RS for being used in 2014 Israel–Gaza conflict as a source showing the quietness of the region?

The Israeli State Security (Shabak) Mhhossein (talk) 12:23, 27 July 2014 (UTC)
It is not for Wikipedia to pass a judgment. "The Israeli State Security (Shabak) data show that" should be changed to "According to the Israeli State Security (Shabak) data," or the like. Esoglou (talk) 13:05, 27 July 2014 (UTC)
Not sure I agree with the first bit. It is for Wikipedia to pass a judgment. Sources that the community decide are unreliable in a specific context shouldn't be used and that's especially important in the WP:ARBPIA topic area where very poor source are plentiful, as are editors who will use them without hesitation. This isn't one of those sources though. I assume this case refers to the statement "The Israeli State Security (Shabak) data show that 2013 had been one of the quietest years since 2000, and that rocket attacks from Gaza continued to be at a background level until April 2014.(ref)Israeli Security Agency(/ref)" in which case I agree with Esoglou that it should say something like "According to the Israeli State Security (Shabak) data, 2013 was one of the quietest years since 2000 and rocket attacks from Gaza continued to be at a background level until April 2014." Sean.hoyland - talk 13:22, 27 July 2014 (UTC)
I agree. I should have written: "It is not necessary for Wikipedia to pass a judgment". In some cases it is, but not here. Esoglou (talk) 13:42, 27 July 2014 (UTC)
I guess it's possible that Mhhossein may not have expressed their concerns as clearly as is probably required in this case. I can't see the source cited right now so I don't know what the statement in the article is based on precisely, but I can imagine that the statement might need something along the lines of the bit in italics based on whatever the source says - "According to the Israeli State Security (Shabak) data, 2013 was one of the quietest years since 2000 in terms of <something, probably rocket attacks or perhaps numbers of people killed, not sure>, and that rocket attacks from Gaza continued to be at a background level until April 2014". Perhaps Mhhossein is objecting the notion of "quiet" given that about 40 people were killed in the conflict in 2013. Sean.hoyland - talk 18:47, 27 July 2014 (UTC)
I can see the cited source now but since it's a statement about the whole of 2013 and beyond, that URL can't be right. There's a 2013 Annual Summary which does "show that 2013 had been one of the quietest years since 2000" I guess but only if a Wikipedia editor makes that assessment. Shabak don't make any statements like that. I haven't looked at the 2014 data with respect to the "background level" statement but perhaps what is happening here is that an editor is doing some WP:OR or they have cited the primary source rather than the secondary. Or perhaps there is another Shabak page that supports these statements. If the Shabak data is to be used the statements in the article will have to be purely factual and/or stick closer to what Shabak says rather than use words like quietness and background level. Sean.hoyland - [[User
Rocket and mortar shells fired from Gaza Strip into Israel Prior to this conflict: Nov. 2012 - Jun. 2014

[1] talk:Sean.hoyland|talk]] 19:12, 27 July 2014 (UTC)

This is not original reseach, I do not see a reason to negate the information issued by the Israeli government in the Shabak site. [2]. Where else would you find how many rockets were shot into Israel? If you look at the numbers in the monthly reports, you will see that they match the graph.05:05, 30 July 2014 (UTC)gever_tov (talk) 05:21, 30 July 2014 (UTC)

Could you read WP:NOTADVOCATE and explicitly state that you are not here to advocate on behalf of Israel and that you will not make a single edit to advocate on behalf of Israel. Please confirm that you understand that you are not allowed to do that and you will not do that. Then you should carefully re-read the discussion above. There is nothing there about the graph. This is not about the graph. It's about statements that cite the shabak URL http://www.shabak.gov.il/English/EnTerrorData/Reports/Pages/default.aspx that are not directly supported by that web page. See WP:V. Cited sources have to support Wikipedia content. The graph itself is not WP:OR. A simple graph based on shabak data or any reliable source's data that does not involve any interpretation of the data by an editor is not original research. It's just a graph. An editor interpreting the graph or the source data and adding their analysis to the article is original research. Whether this graph should be included in the article is a different question that should be resolved on the article talk page. Sean.hoyland - talk 18:47, 30 July 2014 (UTC)
I will say something about the graph though.
  • 63 rockets were launched by Palestinians in 2013, fortunately resulting in no deaths.
  • 36 Palestinians were killed by the IDF and 2 Israelis were killed by Palestinians in 2013.
Something is wrong if editors can only see one of those pieces of information as important enough to highlight with a graph. Sean.hoyland - talk 19:11, 30 July 2014 (UTC)

The Shabak data indeed seems to be highly suspect, in that it shows some very puzzling internal inconsistencies. For each month of the year 2014 the PDF file (note, NOT the web page text) is inconsistent. Using June 2014 as an example: The June 2014 web page [18]states "The Gaza Strip – 36 attacks: 31 rocket launchings; 3 mortar shell launching; 1 small arms shooting; 1 IED. The PDF file is where the problems lie [19]. On page 2 the same data as on the web page are repeated, both as text and in the red/blue bar chart. The problem appears on p.4 on the blue/yellow bar chart. There it reflects 65 launchings, 62 of which were rockets, which is a figure double (fortuitous for this particular month) that of all the other information.

I can only conclude that Shabat's PDF files are internally inconsistent and should be avoided. Unless new information becomes available,I will only use the data on the web page and avoid the "yellow" data on the PDF file. Erictheenquirer (talk) 17:33, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

@Erictheenquirer: Perhaps the difference is due to "rocket launchings" and "rockets". There can be multiple rockets in a single launching. I remember seeing this somewhere in Shabak's figures. Kingsindian (talk) 17:40, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

@Kingsindian: Good thought. However I was aware of that issue and already checked it: The inconsistent data both clearly refer to the same thing - 'rocket launchings'. Erictheenquirer (talk) 14:15, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

  1. ^ "Israeli Shin Bet (Security Agency) - monthly report".
  2. ^ "Israeli Shin Bet (Security Agency) - monthly report".

Is PopDust a reliable source?

1.Source - PopDust 2.Aricle - 4x4 (song) 3.Content - I was thinking if the above source is enough for the song to be mentioned as a single here. There is also a source confirming a music video being directed. No matter how obvious it might be, there should be consensus. So please comment.--219.90.98.28 (talk) 11:26, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

No, PopDust is not a professional site. You'll have to use a different source. SNUGGUMS (talk · contribs) 13:42, 2 August 2014 (UTC)
@SNUGGUMS:May I ask, how did you conclude its not professional?--219.90.99.64 (talk) 05:10, 3 August 2014 (UTC)
I don't consider it a RS, it seems like a gossip site like PerezHilton.com LADY LOTUS • TALK 14:45, 4 August 2014 (UTC)
What specific text is being supported by these sources? The whole article?
Also, is my connection acting up or is PopDust's About Us page blank? Darkfrog24 (talk) 22:45, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
Blank for me, too! --Bddmagic (talk) 18:10, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

Paperblog

I know that many blogs from Reliable sources are considered reliable, but can someone who can read Italian give me the analysis behind it.paperblog.com? —Indian:BIO · [ ChitChat ] 06:58, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

What text is it being used to support? Reliability can be relative. Darkfrog24 (talk) 12:17, 8 August 2014 (UTC)
There is an archive of articles from Lifestyle Magazine and a music certification is being used to source from that archive. —Indian:BIO · [ ChitChat ] 13:37, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

IMDB as a source - query

List of pornographic actors who appeared in mainstream films appears to be almost entirely sourced to the Internet Movie Database (IMDb).

Is IMDb a WP:RS for a claim that a person is a "pornographic actor" in itself? Is it then also a reliable source for the same person appearing in "mainstream films"? Collect (talk) 19:01, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

Of course not. IMDB is edited by the genera public with no oversight . You already know this, I gather. Why are you asking if that's the case? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Two kinds of pork (talk • contribs) 9:18, 6 August 2014
The list survived at AfD - but, IMO, that does not mean the contents of that list are immune from being sourced to reliable soures. Collect (talk) 19:33, 6 August 2014 (UTC) )
And even if it were a reliable source (which by long-standing consensus, it clearly isn't), it isn't a reliable source for things it doesn't say. As I have already pointed out on the talk page twice, even a cursory scan of a few entries found examples where IMDb didn't state that the individual concerned was a pornographic actor... AndyTheGrump (talk) 19:37, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
Those IMDb refs have been removed, and shortly after you posted your concerns on the talk page, I added refs to correct this. As I said on the talk page, this article is several years old, so...adding new refs and rehabilitating the article takes some time, please assume good faith that editor's are working as hard as they can to help out here to bring this article into compliance.-- Isaidnoway (talk) 17:34, 7 August 2014 (UTC)
IMDB fails rs (in this case) because it has user generated content. There is no editorial oversight over biography sections, which presumably is where the info would be sourced. Also, we should not be using decades old newspaper articles as sources either. TFD (talk) 20:54, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
Actually IMDB is specifically mentioned in WP:USERG, the policy on sources with user-generated content. IMDB would be considered reliable if the page in question is 1. written by a named member of IMDB's staff rather than by a user, 2. that staff member's credentials are provided, and 3. those credentials are sufficient. So if the article just cites regular IMDB pages, then no, but if it cites an article written by IMDB staffer John/Jane Smith who holds a degree in film and culture from Suchandsuch University or whose article on human sexuality appeared in Impressive Journal, then yes. 22:39, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
Might you examine the cites in the article at issue? Thanks. Collect (talk) 22:48, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
I think it's fairly obvious that the IMDb is not a suitable reference for any claims made this article. Unless a reliable source explicitly identifies the person as a pornographic actor who has performed in mainstream films, the entry should be removed. Since the IMDb is not a reliable source, the page should basically be stubbed. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 04:32, 7 August 2014 (UTC)
  • Its not like this is the first discussion of whether IMDB is a reliable source. But as to the article at hand, a number of editors have been working to add additional sources in the past few days. All editors are invited to add references to a few of the entries; its fun to edit in places other than talk pages, you know. IMDB is no longer a primary reference, so Collect's assertion is not even correct.--Milowent • hasspoken 15:03, 7 August 2014 (UTC)
    • Right -- IMDb was only used as a ref a couple of hundred times in the list. Yeah. Collect (talk) 15:29, 7 August 2014 (UTC)
  • Out of 269 refs at the moment, I did not count the percentage. The ratio is going down pretty steadily. Those IMDB refs should have never been added in my opinion, but it was in reaction to other time-wasting drama on talk pages. I believe we have thousands of BLP articles that primarily rely on IMDB. There's only one way to fix them; find them and source them.--Milowent • hasspoken 15:46, 7 August 2014 (UTC)
  • They have all been removed as references for the actors, and there is an ongoing surge to source the remaining actors without a ref, there are still some references being used from IMDb for individual titles they appeared in (non-porn) though, is that acceptable? Isaidnoway (talk) 16:49, 7 August 2014 (UTC)
    • No, because actors are routinely added incorrectly to films on the IMDb. The IMDb is not a reliable source for anything unless the content is signed and validated. There are places on the IMDb that have been validated, and they are usually clearly marked. For example, if the writing credits say (WGA), that means that the Writers Guild of America have officially validated the entries as correct. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 18:32, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

IMDb was used as the source to connect the listed actors to their respective mainstream productions not to declare, affirm, assert, etc. that they porn actors. Before this whole mess started, their respective articles were used to state with sources that they are in fact porn actors.

With regard to IMDb, its owned by a for profit company (Amazon) that has no more desire to be sued than any other company for any reason. They have paid staff that add each individual production (movie, tv show, etc.) and that review cast & crew submissions. This is especially true since the 2011 lawsuit where an actress sued because the site accurately listed her age. She sued on the basis that she would not get work because casting directors would know her real age. If the site is being depended on in this way by the Entertainment industry, it would seem that there is a basic level of confidence we can have in its contents as others have already mentioned.

In response to Ninja's comment about errors, I challenge Ninja or anyone else to find a database as large and complex as IMDb that does not contain errors. I'm sure the U.S. Trademark and Patent databases have errors, but no one is contesting their accuracy. --Scalhotrod - Just your average banjo playing, drag racing, cowboy... (Talk) ☮ღ☺ 19:36, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

Perhaps there should be a reconsideration of whether IMdB is an unreliable source, which probably was decided in a discussion years ago? --Bob K31416 (talk) 21:01, 7 August 2014 (UTC)
If you can point to a substantially different reputation for fact-checking and accuracy; otherwise what's the point? It's still user-generated and there seems little to stop a person making an entry about themselves and then pointing to it as proof of notability or employment (as happens often). The argument that a company has some "motivation not to get sued" and that guarantees a commitment to accuracy is a complete fallacy. There are plenty of "for profit" companies that we think of as unusable, because the potential to get sued is not a strong motivator outside of theory. The overall liability is offloaded to the content creators with a promise to erase stuff if anyone complains. That one case where the actor sued IMDB? She lost the case. That doesn't make most of the material on the site user-generated with no visible fact-checking beyond a rubber-stamp to avoid obvious hoaxes.__ E L A Q U E A T E 21:37, 7 August 2014 (UTC)
  • Using IMDB as a source for whether or not a particular performer appeared in a mainstream film does not at all appear to be truly controversial on Wikipedia...despite whatever citations to essays, etc. say right now. As for using IMDB for biographical content or adult film-related content, that isn't appropriate at all, and there are obviously better sources available for those kind of citations. Guy1890 (talk) 23:03, 7 August 2014 (UTC)
    • It is controversial, because the IMDb is frequently wrong. I can almost guarantee you that the IMDb will not be reassessed. It is user-generated and has a strong reputation for unreliability. It is fairly reliable as far as large, user-generated databases go, but it's way too unreliable to be used as a reliable source as defined by Wikipedia. If you personally want to refer to it, that's fine. I do that, too. But don't cite it as a reliable source on Wikipedia unless the content has been reviewed (such as by the WGA, above). See WP:RS/IMDB for an explicit statement of the IMDb's reliability. Sources must explicitly state that the list entries are pornographic actors who have performed in mainstream films. Anything less would be synthesis, or, at the very least, undue. If no reliable source has taken the time to note that a pornographic actor has performed in mainstream films, then we don't consider it due weight to include them. This is all rather simple; you're not allowed to just come up with names out of thin air and then point to dubious databases. Look for citations at Entertainment Weekly, IGN.com, Variety, and The Hollywood Reporter. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 01:08, 8 August 2014 (UTC)
Ninja, I can appreciate you have clear opinions about IMDb, but what are they based on? Is this citable sources, personal experiences, or ?? My assertion that its fact checked by paid staff comes from this section of their FAQ plus my own personal expereince that includes getting my listing posted on the site. How about you? --Scalhotrod - Just your average banjo playing, drag racing, cowboy... (Talk) ☮ღ☺ 18:33, 8 August 2014 (UTC)
  • Just so we are clear, the subject article that was challenged has now removed all references to IMDb. I think Collect would attest to that as well - thanks. But I would also like to point out this article was several years old and had recently been rescued from an AfD, is under discussion at ani and blp and was undergoing a rehabilitation at the time. In our defense, the IMDb cites were added as a stopgap measure to keep the article from continually being blanked and to stabilize the article, so we could get it properly referenced. We did. Turns out that all actors listed were indeed adult film actors who had appeared in mainstream films. The IMDb cites have been removed. Thanks to everyone who helped in the rescue and rehabilitation of this article. Here is what it looked like at the start of the RfC discussion (5 days ago) after being blanked, [20] and here is what it looks like now, [21].
  • For the broader underlying specific issue here, I agree that IMDb should not be used as a source for adult film stars. Isaidnoway (talk) 05:52, 8 August 2014 (UTC)
  • WP:RS/IMDB summarises WP:WikiProject Film's current stance on IMDB. As a frequent editor on the film articles IMDB is the single most comprehensive resource out there. I doubt there is a regular Film editor that does not refer to it, but ultimately it doesn't meet our RS criteria. Reliability and accuracy are not a tautological relationship: reliable sources should in general be accurate, but accurate sources aren't necessarily reliable. In the case of IMDB we generally have a lazy attitude: if it is used as a source to say Daniel Craig played James Bond no-one is really going to waste their time challenging the use of IMDB and finding another source. However, I would be very wary of taking the same lackadaisical approach to porn. Betty Logan (talk) 13:28, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

Can we clarify when the Daily Mail can be used as a source?

I see it continually be used, badly, as a source. My own opinion is that it should be used for nothing but sports (but hey, I know nothing about sports so maybe they get that wrong also). It would be useful to be able to point to a discussion about it when trying to tell editors they shouldn't use it. Dougweller (talk) 09:24, 5 August 2014 (UTC)

Actually like all RS issues, the context must be given here to make any sort of decision.
It is not great for contentious claims about celebrities (nor are most sources, to tell the truth).
Its headlines are often rather more sensational than the body of their articles, but the problems with headlines in general are well-known to journalists.
Its actual text of news articles (and not "just sports"), that is avoiding headlines and celebrities, is not bad at all and trying to "rule t out" as a source is, IMHO, errant. I tend to view all feature articles on celebrities as being dubious no matter who prints it - even the NYT has been caught with bad stories on major issues which were written more as features than as straight news. Collect (talk) 09:42, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
We do make blanket statements on some sources, regardless of content. The issue isn't headlines but content. Dougweller (talk) 11:14, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
Prior discussions here have not ruled the DM out as a reliable source. If you are proposing a "blanket ban", I fear you will not get such a consensus. What you will get is agreement that all contentious claims about celebrities are suspect, and not just from the DM. Cheers. Collect (talk) 11:42, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
Has the NYT actually been caught fabricating stories though? The problem with the DM is more than just sensationalist headlines, or poor journalism, or even agenda pushing a'la The Guardian, it actually publishes fake stories. It's one thing to get conned by a rogue journalist, but when the paper is complicit in instances of fabrication I don't think a blanket ban is an unreasonable measure. Mistakes and biased reporting doesn't make a source inherently unreliable, but fake stories cross the line IMO. Betty Logan (talk) 11:50, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
Yes. Jayson Blair. [22] and multiple times since. But we have found a number of instances of coverage that was not as rigorous as it should have been. In some cases, information that was controversial then, and seems questionable now, was insufficiently qualified or allowed to stand unchallenged.. [23] The New York Times is under attack from electronic-car maker Tesla, whose chairman and CEO on Wednesday posted a full-page, data-filled refutation of claims made by Times reporter John Broder that its Model S failed spectacularly during a test drive. See also [24] and recent Public Editor comments about incorrect headlines at the NYT. FWIW [25] notes some of the corrections from the NYT: An earlier version of this article misstated the length of time E.B. White wrote for The New Yorker as five centuries., etc. [26] New York Times Issues Correction On Article About Corrections which seems pretty dispositive here. The NYT could not even get the current date correct. Cheers. Collect (talk) 12:39, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
Just to note that I wasn't thinking of celebrities but ordinary world and local news. My feeling is that if the only source is the Daily News it shouldn't be used, and if there are other sources they should be used. Dougweller (talk) 12:50, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
Those are emphatically not examples of the NYT being complicit in story fabrication. Those are examples of a rogue journalist and poor fact reporting, which is not the same. The only one that touches on actual fabrication is the Tesla story, and that is an accusation by the Tesla CEO enraged by a review, not a finding. I don't see anything there remotely touching the kind of story fabrication we have seen with the Daily Mail. Betty Logan (talk) 13:00, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
Actually, the NYT had lots of warnings about Blair. The Tesla review claim had legs (metaphor intended) [27] Did he use good judgment along the way? Not especially. In particular, decisions he made at a crucial juncture – when he recharged the Model S in Norwich, Conn., a stop forced by the unexpected loss of charge overnight – were certainly instrumental in this saga’s high-drama ending. etc. shows that the Public Editor was unconvinced by the NYT reviewer, and upset that Musk used actual data from the car to refute the review In addition, Mr. Broder left himself open to valid criticism by taking what seem to be casual and imprecise notes along the journey, unaware that his every move was being monitored. A little red notebook in the front seat is no match for digitally recorded driving logs, which Mr. Musk has used, in the most damaging (and sometimes quite misleading) ways possible, as he defended his vehicle’s reputation.. Yes -- having actual data does tend to mitigate a review <g>. And the data did not agree with the reviewer's claims. Cheers. Collect (talk) 13:14, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
Except the person analyzing the review does not conclude that the review was faked: "Unlike Mr. Musk, I don’t claim that Mr. Broder ‘faked’ the story". She raises some valid criticisms of the review, so it was most likely a poorly executed test drive and sloppy review. At worst, what if he did fake it? That's a case of a "rogue" journalist and there is no evidence of impropriety by the NY Times. This is quite different to the case of the Daily Mail who knowingly published a fake story of Amanda Knox's conviction because they were so sure she was going down. Clearly the DM knew it was a fake story because the jury had not yet delivered its verdict. With the Clooney story, after being caught out the Mail changed its source for the story: at worst they knowingly lied about the original source, at best they were duped but then lied to cover-up their mistake. Those are two clear-cut examples of the paper itself knowingly publishing lies, as opposed to unwittingly publishing lies or getting facts wrong. Betty Logan (talk) 13:32, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
I hate the Daily Mail as a source, but I once used them because the only journalist on the ground, during an important military confrontation in rural Afghanistan, was reporting for them. They had photos and quotes from people involved. A good example, in my view, of why it's bad to declare that a source can't be used in any instance. -Darouet (talk) 13:43, 5 August 2014 (UTC)

Something to remember... the fact that a source is deemed reliable does not mean that we are in any way required to mention what it says. When constructing an article, it is best to read lots and lots of sources that cover the topic... This will give you an idea of which sources represent the accepted norm, and which sources stand out as being outliers. You can then apply DUEWEIGHT. If the DM (or NYT, or any other normally reliable media source) is the only source to mention that X occured, then X is probably not (yet) worth noting in an article ... and if other sources do report on X, and the DM deviates from the norm in its reporting ... you can often just ignore it as being an outlier (or alternativly, if you do think the DM's reporting on X is worth mentioning, don't present what it says as accepted fact. Attribute it.) Blueboar (talk) 13:40, 5 August 2014 (UTC)

The Daily Mail has a habit of inventing complete bollocks. [28] If it is the only source for something, it shouldn't be trusted. If it isn't the only source, it needn't be used. AndyTheGrump (talk) 14:09, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
"News organizations" says "News reporting from less-established outlets is generally considered less reliable for statements of fact." "Balancing aspects" says, "An article should not give undue weight to any aspects of the subject but should strive to treat each aspect with a weight appropriate to the weight of that aspect in the body of reliable sources on the subject." To me that says we should normally (1) use the best sources available (which is not the DM) and (2) only include information that has been widely reported (which means not just in the DM). Maybe we should strengthen those policies, but I do not think it would be helpful to single out the DM. The same editors would just turn to a similar publication. TFD (talk) 16:30, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
If the DM masthead said that 5 August 2014 was a Tuesday, I'd check for supporting sources. So, what's the point of using it at all? LeadSongDog come howl! 18:16, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
Note the example above where the NYT did, indeed, use the "wrong date." As did The Times [29]. Congrats. Collect (talk) 20:34, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
So the Daily Mail and the New York Times are comparably reliable because both print a non-zero number of errors? I don't find that, nor the "but Jayson Blair!!!11!" line of argument, particularly compelling. The Daily Mail is a tabloid with a very poor record of fact-checking and accuracy. Its medical and scientific coverage is recognized as particularly inaccurate and sensationalistic. Like any poor-quality tabloid source, it should be used rarely, if at all, in creating a serious, reputable reference work. Anyone who wants to use the Mail as a source should be prepared to justify doing so as an exception to our general guidance to use high-quality sources.

That said, there's no point in singling out the Mail or categorically forbidding it, since it's no worse than many other tabloids (except insofar as it has some particularly tenacious and misguided defenders). Besides, the Mail is useful as a litmus test of editors' understanding of proper sourcing; see rule #21. MastCell Talk 05:10, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

Please deal with what I write and not what you wish to infer from what I write. A claim was made about the NYT which I refuted by examples. That is how refutation of claims works. The NYT is not known for "celebrity feature" material, which is the are where the DM has had problems - most especially in the use of poorly stated claims in headlines, as a matter of fact. That you refer to me, presumably as a "tenacious and misguided defender" I accept as simply a snarky mode of personal attack, but quite ill-suited for collegial discourse on Wikipedia. This noticeboard is not suited for attempts at blacklisting a reliable source, as it is intended to ask specific questions about use of a source making a specific claim, as my initial response makes abundantly clear. Meanwhile, kindly avoid such snark as calling other editors here "tenacious and misguided" as I fear such wording may lead others down the path of incivility. Cheers. Collect (talk) 07:02, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

Any editor with concerns about a specific use of the Daily Mail is encouraged to post that concern here, where there will inevitably be considerable support (and only a small minority of bizarre contrarian nonsense) for deleting any material that relies solely on such a dodgy source. Nomoskedasticity (talk) 09:11, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

Agreed. And I really like User:MastCell's comment about its use being a litmus test. And yes, I can see the point of not singling it out. So far as I'm concerned, this can be closed. Dougweller (talk) 09:39, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
I've always wondered why there is so much about the Daily Mail on Wikipedia i.e. how it should never be used. I don't think it's particularly different from the other British middle-ranking tabloids - they're all unreliable, although, they're better than the bottom of the tabloid pile (The Sun and the Star). But I would bunch the Mail, the Mirror and so on together (rather than singling out the Mail in particular) and say all should be avoided. But I'm just curious: why are Wikipedia editors so concerned with the Mail when we, in Britain, have so many other equally unreliable newspapers.... DeCausa (talk) 14:31, 7 August 2014 (UTC)
Ah, just saw that MastCell made pretty much the same point. DeCausa (talk) 14:34, 7 August 2014 (UTC)
  • The Sun is much less cited because of its paywall, so most editors can't easily access the content. The Daily Mail's dedication to its online presence and putting up pieces covering scandals outside the UK outstrips the other uk tabloids.--Milowent • hasspoken 14:58, 7 August 2014 (UTC)
Aside from the "celebrity stuff" , the main areas of contention have been that the DM headlines often appear to be on the side of "AGW skeptics", or on the side of "the right wing" broadly construed. While they have certainly used "tabloidified headlines" and have decidedly been viewed as "right of centre" by Guardian partisans <g>, their facts in articles and quotes in interviews have generally been accurate, and been corrected rapidly where a dispute is found. Their editorial columns, like all newspaper columns no matter the newspaper, are generally citable as opinion rather than as fact. If we were to disallow all newspapers which leak opinion into articles, then we would have a very small group to choose from, indeed. I suspect that if one were to ask for "false facts" within articles, one would find the record of all British papers is all too similar. Cheers. Collect (talk) 14:48, 7 August 2014 (UTC)
I think very few people share your belief that the Daily Mail's facts and quotes are reliably accurate, or that it rapidly corrects errors. Likewise, your belief that the Mail is no worse than other British media is both idiosyncratic and, apparently, incorrect: the Mail commits more than twice as many serious breaches of the Editors' Code of Practice as any other British publication, and 5 to 10 times more breaches than other reputable British media outlets [30]. Finally, you are the only one who has mentioned climate change or partisan politics here, and I don't see the relevance of doing so (except insofar as you're echoing the Mail's standard defense when its journalistic practices are criticized, which is to blame liberals). MastCell Talk 01:39, 8 August 2014 (UTC)
One problem is that the count of unresolved complaints is lower now for the DM than for the Guardian according to the Complaints Commission. In fact, the last report from that commission showed zero cases where corrections were not made by the DM, and one where they Guardian had refused to make corrections. Of a total of 47 corrected infractions from 2001 - 2013, the Daily Mail had corrected all. Of the Guardian's 10 infractions, they were reprimanded for one. The DM infractions were almost all for claims in headlines, the Guardian was for an entire article. One article is "double counted" and several were "celebrity gossip". [31] shows the complaints. The Guardian, moreover, got Royal official handling press charter won damages over SAS claim Adjudicated Upheld 25-Oct-13. The article now states: This article was amended on 31 May 2013 to remove a number of inaccuracies regarding Sir Christopher Geidt in the article, which overstated his role as the Queen's private secretary in relation to the royal charter for the press. We have also clarified aspects of his legal action against John Pilger and Central Television. We apologise for the errors. The PCC found This was a particularly concerning case, however: the inaccuracies were central to the reporting; they appeared across all three items; and they directly contributed to the newspaper's criticisms of the nature of the complainant's role and his personal suitability to fill it. The Commission upheld the complaint. During those three years, no complaint was thus upheld against the Daily Mail/ Mail Online. [32] And not "celebrity gossip" at all. Now you aver I am the only person to mention celebrity news, science and political issues as being the concerns brought before RS/N ...
tend to judge a newspaper by its content, rather than its size. As for whether the Daily Mail is RS, I'd say on any issue concerning politics, it is far from neutral, and generally it has a reputation for making crap up, so I'd never trust it as the sole source for anything of significance, Given the Daily Mail's long-standing right-wing political stance, I'd hardly take it as RS for unattributed assertions about the politics of UAF. What do other newspapers say?, it is a reliable source for certain facts about news stories, but non for scientific reporting or for matters of opinions related to politics. , If we started dismissing them based on "political bias", we'd disqualify them all[33]
If you think that the Daily Mail is a good source for medical reporting, then I am utterly speechless. MastCell Talk 19:59, 3 January 2014 (UTC), most of the lies listed on the website seem calculated to stoke xenophobia, irrational fears of government euthanasia, resentment against the poor and disabled, disdain for renewable energy, and religious hatred. I'm sure they also published a lot of false celebrity gossip, though. MastCell Talk 20:09, 3 January 2014 (UTC) etc. showing precisely who specifically brought up politics and science on the RS/N noticeboard [34]nd it was not I.
[35] as archived discussions make clear. And no, it isn't just about its political stance - it has a deserved reputation for concocting 'science' stories for example out of thin air, Its medical and scientific coverage is justly notorious for its sensationalism and inaccuracy, Your comments about climate change have no relevance to the reliability of the Daily Mail (the ostensible subject of this thread, remember?). They look more like standard-issue flamebait, and thus best ignored. Do you have anything substantive to say? MastCell Talk 20:13, 2 April 2014 (UTC) , etc.
In short, the claim that "I" am the one who mentioned climate change and politics on the RS/N noticeboard re: the Daily Mail is absurd, and it is quite clear from a few of the quotes from this noticeboard precisely the vitriol directed at the newspaper here, and which editors have specifically raised those claims in the past. One may note with wryness the editors involved if one wishes. CCheers. Collect (talk) 13:03, 8 August 2014 (UTC)
All the evidence shows is that the DM is not as good a source as the broadsheets, not that it is unreliable. And while they provide too much coverage to global warming skeptics, they do not say anything in those articles that is inaccurate. The lack of a paywall probably explains why editors would use the DM. But there is no evidence that the "facts" in these stories differ from those in other news media. It would make it more difficult to update articles about current events if we could not use the DM and there is no evidence presented that its use has lead to the inclusion of inaccuracies in articles. TFD (talk) 15:16, 8 August 2014 (UTC)
It can be difficult to ferret out the fact in a Mail story. The latest Mail on Sunday front page headline was NHS TO FUND SPERM BANKS FOR LESBIANS - image here, website version (possibly updated or modified) here. If you (well, not you TFD specifically, just whoever's reading) run a search for that headline then you'll find some quite detailed rebuttals, but if you fancy the exercise, you might like to look through the article first with an eye for what you'd have accepted or even inserted in a wikipedia article as reliably sourced. NebY (talk) 17:43, 8 August 2014 (UTC)
Headlines from any newspaper are used to attract readers and are generally written by headline writers and not by the writer of the actual story. I personally suggest that we not allow the headline be used to source a claim. If the claim is sourced with an article, we can use the article. If the claim is not supported by the clear text of an article, then the headline is worthless as a source. Thus there is, except in cases where the headline is, per se, the topic of the claim ("Dewey Defeats Truman" for example). This has been true for a great many years, and is true of essentially all newspapers. The text of the DM article appears factual and certainly RS for claims sourced to what the article actually states. Collect (talk) 18:37, 8 August 2014 (UTC)
  • As a tabloid with a poor record for fact-checking and many successful lawsuits against it, the Mail must never be used on anything close to a BLP. It should be ok for things like sports results, but there are better sources for those, so why bother? MastCell and Andy the Grump have spoken truth as well. --John (talk) 18:48, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

Use of AVN (profile pages) being used as a RS in porn related articles/lists

As you may or may not know, this article - List of pornographic actors who appeared in mainstream films - has recently generated some discussions across various boards on Wikipedia. The article was recently nominated at a AfD with the result being Keep. At the closure of that discussion, a few volunteers started working on the article to provide references to help bring the article into compliance with WP policies and guidelines. An editor has now questioned the reliability of one particular source which is being relied upon in the article content. The source being questioned is Adult Video News, hereafter referred to as AVN. The specific objection to it being used is in relation to the porn actors "Profile Pages" being used as a reliable source. Please Note: Some of the links being provided as evidence may not be suitable for work. Here are some relevant links about this source.

So the question is, can Profile Pages from AVN be used as a reliable source in porn related articles and/or lists.

If anyone else knows of any relevant discussions that took place in relation to profile pages from AVN being used as a reliable source for porn related article and/or lists - please provide a link. Thanks. Isaidnoway (talk) 22:27, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

Discussion:

I'm sorry, but you cannot ask for blanket, absolute declarations of a source's reliability. Reliability always depends on context. This question can only be answered in a case by case basis. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 23:22, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

I'm not looking for a blanket, absolute declaration - as far as I know, there is no RS immune from being challenged. I'm looking for opinions such as yours: "case by case basis" - or other opinions of editor's who may possibly think - "no, absolutely never under any circumstance". Thanks. Isaidnoway (talk) 23:45, 9 August 2014 (UTC)
Please consult the instructions at the top of this page. We need the following:
  1. Source. The book or web page being used as the source.
  2. Article. The Wikipedia article in which the source is being used.
  3. Content. The exact statement in the article that the source supports.
A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 23:55, 9 August 2014 (UTC)
  1. Source. Tawny Roberts profile page (clearly listed above)
  2. Article. List of pornographic actors who appeared in mainstream films (clearly listed above)
  3. Content. As the list clearly implies: A pornographic actor who appeared in a mainstream film.
Isaidnoway (talk) 00:12, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
According to this, "A reliable source for adult industry news and movie reviews. However, their porn star profiles are often copied from other sites and cannot be treated as reliable." Since the source in question is appears to be written by Vivid ("Biography Courtesy of Vivid"), I would treat it a self-published source and reliable in this particular context. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 11:58, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

Comment - Given that AVN is one of the more long standing (30+ years) and well known sources of information on the Adult industry, its by no means alone. There is also XBIZ.com which mirrors quite a bit of AVN's content plus porn is becoming so "mainstream" it pops up in press like Forbes, NY magazine, LA Times, and others regularly. Their advertising (and possible COI issues) notwithstanding, I can't imagine what they have to gain in having inaccurate or non-widespread information on their website or publication. I receive the print version and I'm hardpressed to see any clear favoritism towards advertisers. As its been said, its a problem in the mainstream world as well. Furthermore, any lack of coverage seems to have been addressed. For example by other award programs such as the Urban X Awards which is minority focused or the Fanny Awards which are fan voted. These potential "competitors" seem to receive ample coverage by AVN dispelling the impression that its purpose is exclusively self serving. --Scalhotrod - Just your average banjo playing, drag racing, cowboy... (Talk) ☮ღ☺ 23:42, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

  • Comment - I think that Wikipedia Pornography Project site referenced above is pretty explicit about this apparent issue when it states that AVN's "porn star profiles are often copied from other sites and cannot be treated as reliable." I've seen these kind of profile pages used as External Links in articles, but it's rare that I've seen them used alone as a reliable inline citation. I'd instead use the information displayed on the subject in question's profile page as a jumping off point for some web searches about the subject in question here. Again, despite what has been cited again & again in an above thread, IMDB has apparently been used many, many times on Wikipedia as a reliable source for mainstream film work. Could there be better sources available for some of this type of content? Sure. Guy1890 (talk) 01:06, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
Please see my comment of 14:50, 10 August 2014 below, which compares the AVN profile of Tawny Roberts [36] with the Vivid profile [37], which are different. Regarding the sentence of most interest about the movie Shade, as I discussed below, AVN updated it. --Bob K31416 (talk) 17:39, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
Also, please see my comment of 14:23, 10 August 2014 below which shows that the NY Times used AVN as a source.
And regarding the part of the Wikipedia Pornography Project page that is the sentence about AVN profiles not being reliable, please note that it was put in without discussion. I commented on this in more detail in my message of 21:56, 9 August 2014 in the section Tawny Roberts on the list article's talk page [38] . --Bob K31416 (talk) 17:54, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
  • Comment Re: I can't imagine what they have to gain in having inaccurate or non-widespread information on their website or publication. The concern expressed at the talk page of the subject article was that the content from the "profile pages" could be generated by a "user" of the site, thereby making it unreliable. I would think that even the profile pages would be under some sort of editorial control as they are required by law to be in compliance with 18 U.S.C. 2257 (Record-Keeping Requirements) at all times. If a user were to add an underage performer to the profile page, they could be in a world of trouble. I would think it to be in their best interest to not invite legal trouble, and therefore scrutinize, or at the very least, review the info on the porn actors profile pages. Isaidnoway (talk) 01:22, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
  • From WP:RS: "Articles should be based on reliable, third-party, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy." Does AVN have "a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy"? And if so, where is the evidence for this? Is it cited by e.g. mainstream media sources? AndyTheGrump (talk) 02:37, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
From the NY Times,
"Last year, there were 711 million rentals of hard-core sex films, according to Adult Video News, an industry magazine that is to pornographic films what the trade publication Billboard is to records. It even has its own film awards — modeled after the Oscars." - Timothy Egan (2000-10-23). "Wall Street Meets Pornography". New York Times.
--Bob K31416 (talk) 14:23, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
  • As Guy1890 accurately points out, the pornography Wikiproject warns that AVN profile pages are often not the magazine's own journalism, but are copied from other sites. The specific profile page at issue states that "Biography Courtesy of Vivid". It's the subject's promo bio, not a reliable, independent source. Why is anyone contesting this point? The Big Bad Wolfowitz (aka Hullaballoo) (talk) 03:58, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
    Except the context for the use of this source is "Is the person so cited an actual pornographic actor" If Vivid (or whoever is the original source of the content at AVN for a given entry) says they are working for them as a pornographic actor, is not a company's own official website describing their current and former employees a reliable source for those people's employment status? Certainly, we wouldn't use a promotional biography for many purposes, but to establish that the person in question is doing the job the promotional bio is promoting seems well within the realm of a proper use for such source. --Jayron32 04:06, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
    No, that's not the issue. The issue is whether Wikipedia should say Roberts appeared in the feature film Shade even though she is not credited as appearing in the film. You would think that to be an easy question, but application of standard, reasonable principles of sourcing and verification go out the window when porn is involved. The Big Bad Wolfowitz (aka Hullaballoo) (talk) 15:55, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
    Unless there's a reason to doubt the claim that she appeared in the movie (and there doesn't seem to be), I would think that this source is acceptable. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 16:05, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
    Of course there's reason to doubt the claim. She's not credited as appearing in the film, the main underlying source for the claim appears to be a user post to IMDB, and the circulating screenshot(s) from the film that supposedly depict her turn out to be a different actress. If Shade were one of Vivid's own porn releases, this could be a reliable source -- but it's not, it's mainstream theatrical release. The Big Bad Wolfowitz (aka Hullaballoo) (talk) 20:00, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
    Well, except the whole reason for this discussion is that the controversial part isn't the "...who appeared in mainstream films" part. It's the "pornographic actors" part. The problem, according to Squeakbox et. al. who have been on this campaign, is that actors listed in this list must be cited directly on the list for being pornographic actors. I have no problem with that, but links to a pornography company listing an actor as a contract employee should be sufficient to establish that yes, the cited actor is a pornographic actor. The "...who appeared in mainstream films" issue seems to be a minor issue as far as the group in charge of all of these multitude of discussions. Of course, reliable sources should be cited, but there seems to be little contention around people who aren't having sex on screen for being claimed to not be having sex on screen. The converse is not necessarily true. -Jayron32 20:13, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
    The Big Bad Wolfowitz, Regarding your comment, "the main underlying source for the claim appears to be a user post to IMDB" — Does that mean that you think that the underlying source for the statement in the AVN profile that Roberts "had a role in the feature film, 'Shade' " is a user post to IMdB? If so, could you show how you concluded that? --Bob K31416 (talk) 22:09, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
There is a distinction between an appearance and being credited in a film. Uncredited simply means that when the credits roll at the end of the film, their name does not appear, but it certainly in no way means that they didn't actually "appear" in the movie, even if it is just a minor role or cameo appearance. BTW, even though she is not listed in the credits (cast), she (and Tabitha Stevens) are thanked by the producers in the "The Producers Wish to Thank" credits. Isaidnoway (talk) 22:37, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
AVN apparently edited their version of Tawny Roberts' profile. Here's a link to the AVN profile [39] and here's a link to the Vivid profile [40] for comparison. Note particularly that in the sentence of most interest, which is the one about Roberts' appearance in the movie Shade, AVN has the updated phrase "had a role in the feature film, 'Shade' ", whereas Vivid has an older version of the phrase, i.e. "has a role in the upcoming feature film, 'Shade,' ". --Bob K31416 (talk) 14:50, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

Game shows

This is the second time I have been questioned on my use of game shows as reliable sources; first The Chase, now The 21st Question. I say they are reliable as they are published by major networks, are usually set by professional question-setters (e.g. Olav Bjortomt, David J. Bodycombe) and, if wrong, are corrected by newspapers.--Launchballer 18:13, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

You may think they're reliable but game shows (in general and individually) do not have a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy. I'm sure a lot of the material could be viewed as arguably accurate, but that doesn't make it a source we can rely on. I don't think any other source can be shown to rely on game shows for factual information. (Anything more specific requires diffs of the proposed article material for context, of course.)__ E L A Q U E A T E 18:25, 8 August 2014 (UTC)
A game show that takes itself seriously will have a staff of researchers to find trivial questions and their answers. They are, in turn, looking for sources to confirm their facts. We should be citing those sources directly, not through what the game show provides, even if that means actually figuring out what sources they used.--MASEM (t) 18:28, 8 August 2014 (UTC)
Ah here's the issue. Yes, sourcing Hitler's birthplace on the Adolf Hitler page from a British television game show is grossly inappropriate and bizarre for a number of reasons, setting aside any issues about the unreliability of game shows in general. This completely ignores the spirit of WP:RS by using the most trivial of possible sources when that information is available from countless better sources.__ E L A Q U E A T E 18:37, 8 August 2014 (UTC)
Game shows are not reliable sources. IIRC, "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire" actually was wrong on the relative sizes of the Great Lakes etc., and even Jeopardy has been known invite back contestants where the "right" answer was wrong. They are great fun to watch (especially when you know an answer the contestants flub) but as a source they aren't. Collect (talk) 00:05, 9 August 2014 (UTC)
I agree with Elaqueate that a game show is a "grossly inappropriate and bizarre" source for citing Hitler's place of birth. Clearly, there are dozens or hundreds of outstanding biographies of Hitler that could be used, and I assume that over a dozen years of work on this Wikipedia biography would have identified the very best among them. Collect is correct that game shows make mistakes but so do all sources. Reliable sources correct their errors, and perhaps some game shows do as well. What a game show lacks that is provided by a full length biography written by a respected historian and published by a university press or rock solid commercial publisher is context. Not just the name of the birthplace but a description of it, and the social context of the time and place where the person (Hitler in this case) was born and raised. In a biography of this importance, the birthplace is more than a game show "factoid". Cullen328 Let's discuss it 00:58, 9 August 2014 (UTC)
Okay, and for future reference, the first time - when I used the Chase - is that equally unacceptable?--Launchballer 10:03, 9 August 2014 (UTC)
Note: The Chase (another British game show) was used by Launchballer in this edit [41] to Elvis Presley. Paul B (talk) 19:48, 9 August 2014 (UTC)
Yes, I would say to avoid using game shows as sources in the future. A Quest For Knowledge (talk)
Though I was the one who reverted Lunchballer's edit on Adolf Hitler, I disagree with Elaqueate and others that game shows "do not have a reputation for fact checking and accuracy". They certainly do. They absolutely depend on accuracy. Of course I am only talking about game shows made by reputable channels. And of course there have been the odd cases of error, but that's true of all sources, even the most reliable. But the consequences of simple errors of fact for game show formats are far more disastrous than those for academics writing a book (they could be sued, and certainly lose audiences and revenue). The problem is not the fact checking or accuracy, it's the fact that using such source make Wikipedia look trivial, silly and intellectually worthless. The problem is that it brings the project into disrepute, not the accuracy. Paul B (talk) 20:57, 9 August 2014 (UTC)
The problem is that the game show should not be the sole source of the fact of the question, even if the question/answer is correct (ETA: unless we're talking about something like Family Feud where the game show has created the question and the resulting data about the survey, but that's really not the type of show we're talking about here). Game shows are, effectively, tertiary sources, and should be using primary and secondary sources to arrive at their questions. Meaning we should be able to find those primary and secondary sources instead of relying on the filter that the game show applies. Hence why they are not good reliable sources. --MASEM (t) 21:01, 9 August 2014 (UTC)
We should generally be using secondary sources, not primary ones, but neither primary, nor tertiary sources are unacceptable. I doubt anyone would complain about a general encyclopedia, for example, being used to source something controversial. I don't believe that's the real problem. Paul B (talk) 21:11, 9 August 2014 (UTC)
Because when we start at an encyclopedia (instead of their original facts), we're got the long-standing reliability of the encyclopedia to work from. Good encyclopedia will cite contentious claims just like we do. We can most likely trace their fact checking without too much difficulty. That's simply not the case on the game show. Yes, they have done research, and mistakes are likely honest mistakes, but to trace what they did is hard to do save for a limited number of shows (I remember some game show that sourced the World Almanac, for example). So while a tertiary source, it is not a highly reliable tertiary source for the lack of verifiability. --MASEM (t) 21:17, 9 August 2014 (UTC)
I would argue that regardless of how well we believe the fact checking of game shows are I would believe that they would rarely if ever be the best quality sources. Also, if we ever got a case that the only sources that we can find for a factoidnis a game show, I would highly question how important a fact it is.--67.68.22.129 (talk) 02:47, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

io9's Observation Deck

I am rechecking for a bit more clarification: While io9 is indeed a reliable source of information, does its subset forum area, called Observation Deck also qualify as a reliable source? I note that this has come up before in (Archive 172 and commented upon by admin Shii, and Archive 174, entitled "Self-published blogs run by Gawker Media".
I think that there remains some confusion about io9 (which seems fairly legit-y) and Observation Deck, which seems to be a user-created forum. - Jack Sebastian (talk) 19:28, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

Jack and I and a few others are involved in a dispute in which this article from i09 was used as a source for which events happen in which chapters of the novel A Storm of Swords. Wikipedia article text in question: [42]. Source article in question: [43]. Hit CTRL-F "Jaime IX" and "Sansa VI," etc. and you will see the exact lines used.
It's pretty clear that this source is not a forum, though if you scroll down too quickly you'll miss the article and end up in the comments section, which does look like a forum. (No one has proposed using the comments as sources.) The content has an author, is structured in paragraphs and is non-interactive, so it's an article. The question is whether it's a sufficiently reliable article. Your perspectives on this matter are desired by all involved parties. Darkfrog24 (talk) 19:07, 1 August 2014 (UTC)
Anyone taking a quick look at the "About" section of io9 could see its staff roster. Scrolling down, it lists all the writers for the articles. Past that, it lists the moderators for Observation Deck. Sounds like a forum to me. - Jack Sebastian (talk) 01:03, 2 August 2014 (UTC)
The word "moderator" is also used for someone who monitors comments sections. The i09 source listed above certainly has one of those. EDIT: I just checked, and they're actually called "Comment Moderators" [44]. No forum moderators, unspecified moderators or any other non-comment moderators are listed. It looks like they moderate comments. Darkfrog24 (talk) 03:05, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
Their email to me says that O.D. is a fan posting forum. A user posted a review. Not a staff member. Still a forum. - Jack Sebastian (talk) 00:35, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
Did you specifically ask about the article that was proposed as source material or did you just ask whether Observation Deck had a forum in it? The article in question is non-interactive, has a named author and is organized in paragraphs. There's a difference between actually being a forum for Wikipedia sourcing purposes and having someone refer to something as a forum. This is a forum. This is an article with attached comments section. Darkfrog24 (talk) 02:51, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

http://www.bulldogbreeds.com/

Is http://www.bulldogbreeds.com/ WP:RS? (RE: List of police dog breeds https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_police_dog_breeds&oldid=620765298&diff=prev) I've reason to be skeptical about the claim and have an eye toward future claims cited to this source. Chrisrus (talk) 14:38, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

It looks like just some website, and anyone can create a website. Barring evidence to the contrary, I'd say it doesn't meet Wikipedia's definition of a reliable source. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 16:11, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
Thanks. If you would, or any other reader of these words would, please address that edit, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_police_dog_breeds&oldid=620765298&diff=pre. I'd address it myself but because of the context it'd be better if I didn't and someone else did instead, thank you very much for your kind attention to this matter. Chrisrus (talk) 20:02, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

Is Ynetnews Reliable here?

Ynetnews have reported a claim that Sami Abu Zuhri was attacked by Palestinians, a news which is backed only by Israel-sided sources. I could not find this news in other sources. Can it be counted as reliable here? Mhhossein (talk) 07:07, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

Ynet meets WP:NEWSORG.Its reliable for reporting what Veto Gate website said.Btw did you checked VETO web site itself[45]?--Shrike (talk)/WP:RX 08:15, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
I found the original article [46].--Shrike (talk)/WP:RX 08:15, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
@Shrike: I'm not sure about the reliability of Veto Gate. How can Ynetnew's reprint from Veto Gate be used? Mhhossein (talk) 10:32, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
Ynetnews is a reliable source and its claim that Veto Gate claimed an attack occurred is accurate, which has just been demonstrated. However, this is really an issue of "weight". If no other media pick up the story then it should not be used. The Ynetnews article would be available on the wire service. If major news media such as CNN and the New York Times pick it up, then it is worth noting, otherwise it isn't. TFD (talk) 01:20, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
If any reliable source makes the claim without attributing it to another source, it's fine. I'd wait and see as TFD suggests.Two kinds of pork (talk) 02:12, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
I think WP:UNDUE is not an issue of this board.--Shrike (talk)/WP:RX 12:07, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
There's no claim from reliable sources. @Shrike: So, what's WP:UNDUE if it is not? Mhhossein (talk) 13:33, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
This board for determining if source is reliable.It is.What ever if not the source is undue the talk page should be used .But I will notice many sourced information based on Maan and AlJaazera and its not reported by CNN so according to this logic we should remove this too.--Shrike (talk)/WP:RX 15:29, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
Why are you discussing POV when you just said the board is for RS only? Incidentally, there is a designated notice board for POV, WP:NPOVN - it does not have to be only discussed on the article's talk page. TFD (talk) 16:41, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
Point taken though you discussed yourself undue issue though it doesn't belong to this board anyhow thanks anyway for your input as uninvolved editor.--Shrike (talk)/WP:RX 18:39, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
@user:Shrike @user:TFD Yeah you're right. The reliability should be discussed here not other things ! Mhhossein (talk) 18:49, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

Ynet is reliable, but as mentioned above, the source they are quoting is somewhat dubious, with strong hostility to Hamas. That should be considered whether to include in the article or not. Those issues should probably be raised on the article talk page, and not here. Kingsindian (talk) 15:27, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

The Guardian

Should The Guardian be considered a reliable source? They generally regarded as a poor quality source, but they are cited frequently throughout Wikipedia. This recent article [47] about Wikipedia being edited from the United States Congress is a perfect example of their misrepresentation of the facts. In it they claim that there was an edit that accused the Cuban Government of faking the Moon landings, where in actuality the edit [48] stated that the conspiracy theories about the Moon landing were promoted by the Cuban Government (almost the exact opposite of what The Guardian claimed). The Guardian also claimed that there was an edit that accused Donald Rumsfeld of being an alien wizard, where in actuality the edit [49] stated that he was an alien lizard. 143.231.249.138 (talk) 18:50, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

The Guardian is not 'generally regarded as a poor quality source' - it is a highly-respected newspaper. AndyTheGrump (talk) 18:57, 4 August 2014 (UTC)
Seconded. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 19:00, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

Why was this discussion closed without even responding to the legitimate points raised? Responding to these blatant errors in reporting with the statement "it is a highly-respected newspaper" is just dodging the issue at hand. 143.231.249.138 (talk) 20:59, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

I have unarchived the discussion. This is a legitimate question. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 22:03, 4 August 2014 (UTC)
Given that your IP geolocates to the U.S. House of Representatives, [50] it is difficult to see your question as anything but an attempt to discredit a source that reported dishonest behaviour from that location. And so what if the Guardian made a couple of trivial errors? The substantive facts - that IPs from your location were trolling Wikipedia - is demonstrably true. AndyTheGrump (talk) 21:07, 4 August 2014 (UTC)
This is the same IP address that made headlines by getting blocked for ten days. How this particular staffer hasn't gotten reprimanded yet I don't know. Gamaliel (talk) 21:58, 4 August 2014 (UTC)
143.231.249.138: Yes, The Guardian is generally considered a reliable source. If the Guardian did indeed make a factual error, you are free to select another reliable source that provides better coverage. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 22:03, 4 August 2014 (UTC)
I had hoped that this was a joke, but apparently it is not. The "alien wizard" in the body of the article is clearly a typo, at the top of the article, it says "alien lizard". About the Cuba thing, the language in the article is a bit careless, but I suppose the article just means that the Moon landing was claimed to be fake by Cuba, not that Cuba faked the Moon landing (since nobody claims Cuba landed on the Moon, the question of faking it doesn't arise). Anyway, I got a good laugh out of it at least. Kingsindian (talk) 22:32, 4 August 2014 (UTC)
@Gamaliel, Is it that hard to believe that the staffers exposing conspiracy theories from this IP address are operating under the direct instruction of their congressman? 143.231.249.138 (talk) 13:18, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
Could you identify which Congressman ordered the addition of these edits? Thanks. Gamaliel (talk) 14:38, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
If they wish to be identified then a formal press release will be issued. 143.231.249.138 (talk) 15:48, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
A reminder to the commenters here; please follow the Wikipedia:No personal attacks policy and respond to the specific claims stated rather than who made them. It should also be noted that the IP address that made this original post is shared by multiple people, and that the edits mentioned in The Guardian article came from two distinct IP addresses.
Back to the issue of the reliability of the source being discussed, The Guardian has had some serious issues in its reporting; not just with regard to the sloppy reporting mentioned by the original poster, but also with regard to its systematic bias in its Middle East coverage. As recently as 2012, their official policy was to refer to Tel Aviv as the capital of Israel, which is a blatant fallacy. [51] It has also been repeatedly shown that this newspaper has a clear agenda in attempting to smear Israel. [52] [53] --PiMaster3 talk 22:52, 4 August 2014 (UTC)
User 143, Guardian is considered an unreliable source by whom? Do you have any proof? Are there any articles in other newspapers or press releases from professional organizations criticizing it? Are there any expert opinions that you can cite for us? Can you give us something more than your belief that the Guardian made a few specific mistakes?
UserPiMaster3, does the Guardian's anti-Israel bias exceed, say, the liberal bias of the New York Times? As for Tel Aviv, the link you posted states that the U.K. Press Complaints Commission found in favor of the newspaper, saying that calling Tel Aviv Israel's capital did not violate accuracy requirements. In addition, the U.N. maintains that Jerusalem is not Israel's capital,[54] and most other countries place their embassies in Tel Aviv. So whether the Guardian was right or wrong about the "capital" status of Tel Aviv vs. Jerusalem, it is not maintaining a fringe position. Even if it's made up, they're not the ones making it up. Darkfrog24 (talk) 01:29, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
That says more about the reliability of the UK Press Complaints Commission than it does about The Guardian. If a newspaper doesn't recognize London as the capital of the UK, does that mean it would be accurate to call Manchester the capital? As far as its bias is concerned, the fact that they publish editorials by the leader of an organization recognized by the British government to be a terrorist organization [55] should be considered a sign that their bias goes beyond that of The New York Times (which has many bias issues of its own, although at least the quality of their reporting is generally good). --PiMaster3 talk 02:57, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
@PiMaster3: Not sure how this went towards anti-Israel bias. The initial complaint made no mention of it. But anyway. Anyone can be allowed an op-ed. The aim is to have a diversity of opinion. Here is an op-ed from a Hamas spokesperson in the Washington Post. I guess now the Post is unreliable too? Kingsindian (talk) 03:17, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
  • The Guardian is a "use with caution" source in my book. It is very biased in its international and political reporting and I have often noticed erroneous facts and figures, often skewed to reflect their bias. For example, I once read an article by Polly Toynbee and she stated that manufacturing was killed off by Thatcher's policies, although statistics issued by ONS clearly shows that manufacturing was higher in terms of GDP at the end of Thatcher's tenure than at the start. Personally I would steer clear of using them for anything political, but at the end of the day they are not in the same league as the Daily Mail who have form for fabricating stories i.e. the Amanda Knox trial, the George Clooney incident. On the subject of the Daily Mail it still amazes me that a newspaper that has form for repeatedly fabricating stories is still regarded as an acceptable source on here. There are plenty of sources available to us so we can afford to be a bit more selective. Betty Logan (talk) 01:58, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
Both disHonest Reporting & CIFWatch are pro-israel hasbarista outfits that regard anything other than Arutz sheva as dangerously leftist. CIFwatch's raison d'etre is to monitor the commentisfree (CIF) articles at The Guardian and cry foul at any perceived slights against israel. You'll have to do better than these two swivel-eyed sources if you want to prove the Guardian is an unreliable source. I disagree entirely with BettyLogans analysis, it won a Pulitzer this year for its coverage of the Snowdon affair, a highly political hot potato topic 188.220.9.169 (talk) 02:18, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
"Should X be considered a reliable source?" can't really be answered yes or no for any value of X. Nothing is 100% reliable. Two things about the Guardian are 1) they are large, and 2) it wouldn't make sense for them, from a business perspective, to not much care if they get their facts right generally. So they have the means and incentive to have some kind of fact-checking operation (the Daily Mail has the means but not real incentive -- their core audience doesn't demand rigorous fact checking, I guess). The Guardian's a somewhat left-wing paper and that's a red flag. Papers with an ideology have a natural human tendency to cherry-pick. It's not necessarily even deliberate but just how the staff naturally sees things. They're a lot more mainstream than they were in my day, though, so I wouldn't worry about that too much. It's something to be aware of. They're a daily and dailies have less time to check facts than weeklies. They're not an AAA-level source. Beyond that, whether they are at the same level as the generally-considered-pretty-good New York Times, I don't know the answer and I don't know who does. Herostratus (talk) 02:54, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
This seems like a reasonable summary of the situation. In general I avoid when the same material is available elsewhere just because some people can raise a fuss. a13ean (talk) 03:04, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
Herostratus, most papers have some sort of political position. In the UK, the Times and the Telegraph are right of center - can I call them "somewhat right wing"? Dougweller (talk) 09:22, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
Agree, of course all newspapers have political perspectives, and The Guardian is on the left side of major papers in Britain. They are usually a great resource and have had some unbelievable reporting projects over the last few years, including, most notably, breaking Edward Snowden's material on the NSA, GCHQ, etc. Their greater degree of independence from the perspective of Downing Street would tend to make them a more, not less reliable journalistic resource. In this particular case, it's ironic that a few Capitol Hill IPs are trying to use The Guardian's exposure of absurd propaganda campaigns to "discredit" them as a source. -Darouet (talk) 13:31, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
At least the Daily Mail's article [56] about this event was accurate. However, I don't consider the Daily Fail to be a particularly reliable source either, but The Guardian isn't any better. There are plenty of examples of the of them doing the same thing at http://www.guardianlies.com/. 143.231.249.138 (talk) 13:34, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
Random websites promoting conspiracy theories prove nothing. AndyTheGrump (talk) 14:07, 5 August 2014 (UTC)

Well, apparently a lot of editors think the Guardian is a great source if they're themselves leftists, and an unreliable one if they are right-wing. [/exaggeration] But to be honest I don't see a problem. Since we avoid weasel words, the article should read that the Guardian writes that or ...in the Guardian so every reader can use his own judgment if the issue in question is of a nature that could be affected by the newspaper's left-wing views. I firmly believe in trusting readers to use their own source criticism. --Pudeo' 19:07, 5 August 2014 (UTC)

The Guardian is one of the most reliable newspapers in the UK. Betty Logan says it is not reliable because "once read an article by Polly Toynbee and she stated that manufacturing was killed off by Thatcher's policies." In fact Toynbee is a columnist and opinion pieces, even if published in venerable sources, are not considered rs for facts. Nor should newspapers be used as sources for what happened 25 years ago. The role of news media is to report events as they happen. TFD (talk) 20:31, 5 August 2014 (UTC)

Please allow me to clear up a potential misconception. While Wikipedia articles are required to be NPOV, reliable sources are not required to be unbiased. As a classic example, the Washington Post tends to have a liberal bias whereas the Washington Times tends to have a conservative bias. They are both considered, generally speaking, to be reliable sources. See WP:BIASED for more. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 23:54, 5 August 2014 (UTC)

It's news to me that Washington Post is liberal. They're pretty much dead center I thought. I guess if your definition of liberal is "does not preface global climate change with alleged" then they're liberal. The New Republic and the Nation actually are liberal publications, and I think that that Guardian used to be like that or even further to the left -- but I'm showing my age I guess, and that was many decades ago. I'd be surprised if the Washington Times had a fact-checking operation as good as the Post (they're smaller for one thing and have struggled financially), but it's hard to know these things. I wish the Columbia Journalism Review or somebody would give us some insight into this in an organized way. This would be a signal public service. Herostratus (talk) 07:44, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
The Columbia Journalism Review has written fairly often on the Washington Times, albeit mostly in the way in which people keep craning their necks to stare at awful car wrecks. For instance, CJR described the Times under Wesley Pruden's leadership as "a forum for the racialist hard right, including white nationalists, neo-Confederates, and anti-immigrant scare mongers" ([57]), described political partisanship as a driving consideration in the Times' news coverage, and mentioned that the paper was "reduced to a flimsy string of wire copy" following massive layoffs ([58]). While they haven't compared it directly to the Washington Post, I think it's clear that this is a false equivalence. MastCell Talk 01:48, 8 August 2014 (UTC)
Of course the sources are referring mostly to the opinion sections. To answer the original question:

Reliable. The Guardian is left wing, and we should be always careful of introducing their bias into our articles. We should attribute them when necessary, and/or look for additional sources making the same claim.Two kinds of pork (talk) 02:54, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

The Guardian is centre-left, it isn't left-wing. The Morning Star is left-wing. The only similarity between the Washington Times and the Washington Post is that they are both in DC. I'd never use the Washington Times. The Post has a much better reputation. Dougweller (talk) 08:13, 8 August 2014 (UTC)
It is actually liberal rather than left-wing. In fact its four lead writers were founding members of the SDP which merged into the Liberal Democrats. The intention had been to unite Liberals, traditional conservatives and right-wing Labour members into a new party avoiding the "extremes" of Left and Right. TFD (talk) 17:34, 12 August 2014 (UTC) TFD (talk) 17:34, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

Diamond Star Light Beacon

Is this a reliable source? It looks like a homegrown website to me, but another editor wants to use it as a source for substantial text at Necedah Shrine, claiming that it's "affiliated with" the Necedah Shrine because it has a link to the shrine. 32.218.34.133 (talk) 12:41, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

WP:SPS Wikipedia:Fringe theories. Both self-published and generally unreliable and should be considered a non-usable primary source for incredibly fringe beliefs. This shouldn't be used for anything unless in a very rare exception there's some better secondary independent reliable source that refers to the opinions of these specific people (for instance, if an academic journal that is studying bizarre beliefs mentioned this specific page, it might be arguably okay to source an example of their opinions). I don't think there's an argument for ever using it in any way otherwise. Most of this is deep fringe, the article about the fringy idea must be sourced to serious sources. Clearly not reliable for any claims about reality.__ E L A Q U E A T E 12:13, 13 August 2014 (UTC)
If someone wants to improve that article, they need to find better reliable sources to describe what's going on, from sources independent of the conflict (not a Catholic bishop, not a shrine maintainer who believes aliens are part of the apocalypse). If there are further issues, it could probably be listed at WP:FT/N.__ E L A Q U E A T E 12:35, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

Metropolitan News-Enterprise

Is the Metropolitan News-Enterprise, a daily newspaper[59] in Los Angeles, a sufficiently reliable source to verify the claim that "Judgepedia is an online wiki-style encyclopedia covering the American legal system" ? Here's a diff [60] and the newspaper source [61]. Schematica (talk) 15:51, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

Is there any indication that the "Metropolitan News-Enterprise" has any reputation at all? I can't find any reliably sourced mentions to it that aren't self-generated. It's used quite a bit as a reference on Wikipedia, but I can't see any discussion of it in better secondary sources. Do you have any?__ E L A Q U E A T E 16:23, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
I found this article from the Ulster Medical Society which apparently cites this source.[62] The domain names are different (metnews.com versus mnc.net) but they both appears to be owned by the same company.[63][64] A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 16:36, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
(edit conflict)I've never heard of this source before, but they appear to be news organization. Typically, we consider newspapers to be reliable sources, generally speaking. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 16:26, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
There are quite a few mentions of this newspaper in the Los Angeles Times, including this article [65], which says "...the Metropolitan News-Enterprise, a local daily legal newspaper." Given that it's a legal newspaper, it seems particularly well-suited to verify a fact for a judicial website, Judgepedia. Schematica (talk) 16:40, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
Thanks for the link. There are actually a number of references to them in the LA Times.[66] On this basis, I would say that it's reliable. (Although they have to have on the ugliest websites I've seen in a while.) A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 16:47, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
I was the editor who disputed the reliability of the MetNews source. (I would have appreciated notice of the opening of this discussion.) I agree with Elaqueate, I could find no indicia of this being a reputable news outlet. A Quest For Knowledge, there's no question that MetNews is in fact a newspaper. The real question, however, is whether it's a newspaper with a reputation for accuracy. Per WP:NEWSORG, we only presume reliability of news sources if the outlet is well-established. Otherwise there must be evidence of a reputation for accuracy. And if you look closely at the LA Times link you provided, these are stories about MetNews being in the news itself. There's nothing bearing on the quality of its reporting (beyond the fact that MetNews was one sued for defamation for circulating a joke memo and had called a judge a "despotic twit"). --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 19:29, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
As a professional (retired) in the field and locale, I can say it is RS. (In any event, RS should be evaluated via WP:CONTEXTMATTERS.) – S. Rich (talk) 19:36, 11 August 2014 (UTC) Also, the publisher has several other newspapers in California. See mnc.net papers. Not the Los Angeles Times in terms of circulation or name recognition, but reliability is not in doubt. (Does a big circulation automatically entail reliability?) In the legal community its' reliability is unquestioned. 03:41, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
It's been around for 113 years. I'd say that's pretty well established. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 20:03, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

Age has nothing to do with reliability; sometimes old mastheads get bought or repurposed by companies with different abilities (I hear Newsweek went through something like that). 113 years is also a long time to have developed more of a reputation too. But I think this source is generally legitimate and the LA Times helps show that more that they do themselves on first glance. That's why I asked. It is generally similar to Courthouse News Service, another quiet workhorse that looks underdeveloped at first glance. It's a specialty news service, so I'd expect them to be good for news within their field.__ E L A Q U E A T E 22:03, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

CNS is a MUCH better established outlet. It has a much larger circulation, it is frequently cited by other established news outlets, and it an established editorial staff (see its masthead). I can't find evidence of the same for MetNews. --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 23:16, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
  • About as reliable as they come The publisher/editor Roger M. Grace has the bona fides of being an experienced newsman, and furthermore this source is an excellent one to use in this context because the content is related to the legal profession, of which this source is obviously a domain expert.Two kinds of pork (talk) 22:17, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
That article looks sufficient to support the specific statement in question. If the claim were questionable, that might be another matter, but what seems to be going on is that MNE is being used as a corroborating source for readily observable facts. Anyone can look at Judgepedia and see that it's wiki-style and covers the American legal system, but citing Judgepedia alone as source for that raises the question of OR. MNE is clearly a secondary source, which solves the problem. Darkfrog24 (talk) 01:56, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

Reliable for establishing notability?

Schematica presented this as a question of whether the source is reliable to support a specific statement, but the broader question being raised is whether it's sufficiently notable to establish notability. S. Rich rightly pointed out that reliability depends on context. So you're invited to opine on this broader context (and participate in the AFD). --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 23:29, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

I will also point out that different issues are involved. First, is the paper RS? Next, is the particular story or article to be used WP:NOTEWORTHY in terms of the WP article topic? Last, assuming that the first two questions are answered "yes", does the WP topic as a whole meet Notability standards? – S. Rich (talk) 03:46, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
How much note is Wikipedia taking? When we talk notability, we're usually talking about article retention or deletion. That's not what's on the table in this case. The paper is proposed as a source for the statement that Judgepedia is a wiki-style website and that it covers the American legal system. While this source might not be enough to, say, establish that Judgepedia's format and subject matter are noteworthy enough for a whole article (and it might well be; that's another question), it does seem like enough to establish that they're noteworthy enough for a single sentence within a more general article whose existence has already been justified. I see, the article on Judgepedia is also up for deletion. Yes, I'd treat MCE differently depending on whether it was being used to justify a single line of text or a whole article. Darkfrog24 (talk) 01:56, 13 August 2014 (UTC)
I opened up this thread, and to clarify, the question I posed here at this noticeboard is simply "is this source reliable enough to prove that Judgpedia is a wiki-based website covering courts & judges." It seems the consensus here is that the source is reliable enough for that use. However, there is a separate question as to Judgepedia's overall notability, hence the AFD. I'd suggest any discussion about this source's usefulness for showing Judgepedia's notability be had at the AFD page. Schematica (talk) 04:51, 13 August 2014 (UTC)
Quite right. Here's the the link to the Judgepedia AFD. --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 20:56, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

Transadvocate use in BLP, etc.

The Transadvocate's site "about" page makes it clear it's an advocacy blog with a number of contributors. In Radical feminism it is used:

  • Here the definition of "TERF" with RS noting that TERF often is considered a slur by feminists who are named in the article and others. (Added later to clarify per request: At this point the specific use is The term is considered a slur by some who are labeled TERF,(New Yorker ref) such as Cathy Brennan and Elizabeth Hungerford.(Transadvocate ref) (LATER NOTE: I separated "Useis" into "use is" per Wikipedia:Talk_page_guidelines#Own_comments which reads If anyone has already replied to or quoted the original comment, consider whether the edit could affect the interpretation of the replies or integrity of the quotes. I don't think this edit did so; also can't even find something called WP:refactor.]
  • As a ref for a cross post from another advocacy site [67] to ref the sentence "TERFs are often accused of transphobia."
  • [Added later since examples requested: it's also used in Michigan Womyn's Music Festival here to name "trans festival goer named Nancy Burkholder".

It seems this is one of those Wikipedia:RS#Questionable_and_self-published_sources from advocacy sites that are ok for something about the site, personal statements from notable authors, etc. but not for defining or using a term that some consider a slur against individuals, per Wikipedia:Biographies_of_living_persons#Reliable_sources. Carolmooredc (Talkie-Talkie) 03:08, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

I share your concerns regarding this source, Carolmooredc, and I speak as someone who first met a transgendered person in 1969 in New York's East Village, and responded with kindness and compassion. I have no hostility or negative feelings about such people. This source strikes me as highly opinionated and polemical (which is fine for its specific purposes) but not a reliable source for defining a term applied to a biography of a living person. Cullen328 Let's discuss it 03:41, 7 August 2014 (UTC)
Carolmooredc, what BLP article did you mention that this would be used on? Context matters. Tutelary (talk) 03:14, 8 August 2014 (UTC)
The about page also makes it clear it has a managing editor. It is a civil rights advocacy news outlet for sure and can be polemic. But I think it passes must as a basic RS. Attribution might be wise if discussing specific individuals. EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 03:41, 8 August 2014 (UTC)
This is not about a specific BLP. There is no BLP that is using this source to back up the word TERF, nor does any BLP contain the word TERF. I don't know why BLP was even mentioned unless it's to warn people about the unlikely possibility it might be used someday? Completely not an specific BLP issue at the moment.__ E L A Q U E A T E 03:50, 8 August 2014 (UTC)
I added specific uses above, in two articles naming three individuals. Also, BLP does not apply only to biographies but to any mention of living individuals. Finally, the about page] makes it clear that they are "gonzo-style" journalists, writing with biases blaring, not ones we can use as "reliable sources" except about themselves:
Cristan Williams is the TransAdvocate’s managing editor.
The TransAdvocate is news and commentary from a boots-on-the-ground trans advocate perspective. We tend to support gonzo-style journalism because we report on issues affecting the quality of life for members of our community.
We don’t pretend that compromising on equality is a reasonable option and in that regard, we own that bias. We’re willing to do what it takes to expose hate — especially when hate is being peddled as reason or faith. We here at the TrasnAdvocate generally won’t pull our punches and we are all too happy to drag the truth – kicking and screaming – into the light of day.
Change "TransAdvocate" to Fox News or "Huffington Post"; how reliable a source would they be considered on any issue, not to mention commentary on 3rd party individuals? Carolmooredc (Talkie-Talkie) 07:05, 8 August 2014 (UTC)
Broadly, reliable. SPECIFICO talk 14:25, 8 August 2014 (UTC)
I think we might need some neutral parties here to opine. Carolmooredc (Talkie-Talkie) 15:46, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

It meets WP:RS per the guidelines at WP:NEWSBLOG. The comparison to Huffpo is apt. At worst, it fits WP:BIASED, which is still acceptable in some contexts: "reliable sources are not required to be neutral, unbiased, or objective. Sometimes non-neutral sources are the best possible sources for supporting information about the different viewpoints held on a subject...While a source may be biased, it may be reliable in the specific context." I'd say if it is used in an actual articles somewhere, it is simply subject to the same guidelines as any other source. Montanabw(talk) 18:17, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

RE: WP:NEWSBLOG This isn't an established news magazine with a blog. It's a knock-down-drag-out-fight advocacy site and it admits it proudly. NOT RS for BLP. Carolmooredc (Talkie-Talkie) 14:37, 9 August 2014 (UTC)
What BLP do you speak of? You keep saying it, but you're not elaborating on what exactly there is one. It's reliable, and saying 'For BLP' is trying to influence the discussion in the way that you want it. Now, what BLP are you talking about? Tutelary (talk) 14:41, 9 August 2014 (UTC)
We can use some groups with an identifiable bias to discuss BLPs in certain contexts if the community finds them reliable for the information. If PEN International talks about a particular writer, we don't ban any and all citations to PEN International because it mentions a BLP. or ban it from all mentions of BLPs. I don't see how it's a problem that a magazine focussed on trans-related news would mention a specific trans person. That's not an identified BLP issue. __ E L A Q U E A T E 17:22, 9 August 2014 (UTC)
This appears to be, at the least, a situationally-acceptable reliable source. Plenty of reliable sources have notable biases; we accept The National Review and American Spectator just as we do The Nation and Mother Jones. The use of a single inflammatory term does not render the source useless. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 18:23, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

A reliable source is one which has a reputation for accuracy and fact-checking. I looked but I don't see any evidence of this source having earned such a reputation. It should be noted that anyone can create a blog and claim to be an expert in a certain field. For that reason, self-published media, such as a group blog (which this appears to be) are largely not acceptable as sources. See WP:SPS for more. (Note that I did not examine the BLP issues raised by the OP since it appears to fail as a reliable source for non-BLP content.) A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 18:56, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

Well, group blogs can be reliable sources for their own opinions, if their opinions are notable. The source is used to establish the term TERF, and any alleged applications of the term are sourced to external reliable sources such as The New Yorker. I do not see a problem with the usage here, which merely reflects the fact that a certain group holds a certain opinion. Whether that opinion is notable is another matter, but based on the external sources commenting upon it, there is at least a prima facie case that it is. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 21:19, 9 August 2014 (UTC)
Yes, self-published sources can be reliable about their own opinion usually in articles about themselves or their activities. But this isn't article about transadvocate.com or its activities. The New Yorker is considered a reliable source, so there's really no need to cite a non-reliable source. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 21:49, 9 August 2014 (UTC)
This is an article about their activities - to wit, discussion of radical feminism. As long as the opinion is properly cited, I don't see any problem with it. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 23:20, 9 August 2014 (UTC)
An article about transadvocate.com or its activities would be called transadvocate.com or transadvocate.com's activism. The article is question is neither of these. Just because a non-reliable source discusses a topic doesn't mean that it belongs in an encyclopedic article about that topic. We have a policy about self-published sources. Please, feminism has been the subject of serious scholarly research. There is absolutely no need to be citing random blogs. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 23:34, 9 August 2014 (UTC)
@A Quest For Knowledge: this isn't some wordpress page. That an article is not written yet does not mean it's not notable or not RS. Such arguments are fallacious. EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 04:38, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
You misunderstand me. What I am trying to explain to you is that reliability heavily depends on context. A source can be reliable in some situations but non-reliable in other situations. For example, Sports Illustrated might be a fine source on the Olympics but a terrible source on quantum physics. In this particular case, a self-published source may be reliable for its own statements in articles about that source. But since the context isn't an article about transadvocate.com, it is not reliable. Period. It doesn't matter whether transadvocate.com or transadvocate.com's activism hasn't been written yet. My point is that those are examples of articles where it may be acceptable to use a self-published source. If you are unfamiliar with Wikipedia's policy on self-published sources, please take the time and read WP:SPS. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 11:47, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

Carolmooredc: So, correct me if I'm wrong. The only sentence in the article you list which is sourced to the TransAdovocate (current revision, perhaps this was different earlier), is "Trans-exclusionary radical feminism (TERF) is a neologism describing a subset of radical feminism which espouses the exclusion of transwomen from feminism and women-only spaces.[38][39][unreliable source?][40] TERFs are often accused of transphobia.[41][42][unreliable source?]" Correct me if I'm wrong. Refs 39 and 42 are the involved references. I'm not seeing a specific living person mentioned, I'm seeing an opinionated source being used as a reference largely for what has actually been said by (some) people of that opinion. Could someone point me at the actual issue here? Seriously, even if it's "I don't like it", could you be more specific about what it is you don't like? --j⚛e deckertalk 20:47, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

Ah, I can see in view of the discussion on the talk page there why wanting a bit more in the way of consensus might be required, I had not recalled when I wrote the above that the topic was under discretionary sanctions. --j⚛e deckertalk 20:54, 9 August 2014 (UTC)
My three bullet points clearly explain the objectionable uses. The sanctions can be applied to individuals who clearly argue against clear policy - in this case Wikipedia:Verifiability#Self-published_sources (which includes link to Wikipedia:Biographies_of_living_persons#Avoid_self-published_sources). And remember the first sentence of WP:BLP policy is: Editors must take particular care when adding information about living persons to any Wikipedia page. i.e., not just actual biographies but any mention of living persons. Carolmooredc (Talkie-Talkie) 15:53, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
They do now, thank you. Please note that the text of the article did not, at the time I checked it, read the way you've stated it here, which was part of the source of my confusion. I don't have any trouble seeing why the text as you've shown it is a concern. As I read the article right now, in the first example, the TransAdvocate link has been replaced. --j⚛e deckertalk 16:23, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
Another editor reverted the problem on pure BLP grounds. I think one more revert by those arguing vs policies will be the final straw. I'm repeating material above on the talk page hoping they read it this time. Carolmooredc (Talkie-Talkie) 16:53, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
Indeed, which may be more a behavioral issue than an RSN one given the discretionary sanctions. To answer your original question, then, I think the source is generally reliable but has an inherent POV, which becomes signficant when making assertions about specific living people. The analogy to The National Review and American Spectator is stretched (the latter are bigger, largely), but qualitatively sound. Sorry for the frustrating back and forth, but reliability is not (unfortunately) a binary thing, and as is clear even from our quotations above, the article, or at least the first one, was "in motion" during the discussion. Cheers, --j⚛e deckertalk 17:03, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
How do you figure that this is a reliable source? As best I can tell, it doesn't have a reputation for accuracy and fact-checking. It appears to be a self-published group blog. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 02:21, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
Not reliable. It is really little more than a collection of bloggers from whom their blogs are already not reliable sources. Collapsing them into an aggregate site does not suddenly make them reliable. Arzel (talk) 02:32, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
Not really, as it was touched upon above on this page it makes it clear that it has a managing editor which means editorial control and would confer reliability. It also stays that they use gonzo-style journalism, which is another sign of reliability. Tutelary (talk) 02:50, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
Editorial control is good, but it does not automatically mean that a source is reliable. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 03:05, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
Yes, but it refutes Arzel's point. EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 03:13, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
No, it does not. Furthermore, the managing editor is simply one of the bloggers. Arzel (talk) 04:51, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
What evidence do you have that the managing editor is just a blogger and not an editor? EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 15:27, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
I looked at the lists of bloggers and saw quite quickly that the managing editor is one of the bloggers. I then read some of that bloggers blog posts and they made references to other blogger in a way that was clearly not from a managing editors perspective. It appears they just picked one of the bloggers to be the managing editor. Arzel (talk) 21:21, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
I respectfully disagree with Joe Decker and lean towards AQFK view that this source is questionable at best, due to a seemingly non-existent editorial policy coupled with reporters who are equally unknown variables. This is a murky source at best and it's use -- even for opinion -- should be carefully considered on a case by case basis.Two kinds of pork (talk) 06:10, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
"Seemingly" means your personal interpretation. What evidence do you have that there is no editorial policy? EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 15:27, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
When I or anyone can learn to prove a negative, I'll get you that "evidence". However the burden is on you to prove that this source is reliable. I could start a blog and call myself an editor, but that doesn't magically turn me into a RS, and neither does it for TA. One way you could prove TA is reliable is if you could find out more about the editor and contributors backgrounds, specifically their backgrounds as relates to them being a reliable source. Do they have a degree related to journalism? Have they worked or contributed to a known RS before? From a quick glance at the "about" page, I see nothing that indicates anything of the kind to be true.Two kinds of pork (talk) 15:56, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
Two kinds of pork - No one asked you to prove anything, only provide evidence. It's is quite possible to provide evidence of a negative. I'll look into those questions when I have the time. EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 16:08, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
I apologize, but I was speaking in my logic 101 voice. You ask me to prove TA is not a RS by providing evidence. Being not able to produce such evidence, it appears you intend to declare TA is RS because if I can't prove it is NOT a RS, the opposite (it is a RS) must be true. This is a classic logical fallacy.Two kinds of pork (talk) 16:20, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
Condescension aside, I am well aware of logical fallacies. If you re-read what I wrote, I asked you for evidence, not proof. Nowhere have I used the word proof or any of its verb forms. It is quite possible to find evidence of a negative. EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 16:31, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
You are mistaken about how RS are determined. We don't treat sources as reliable by default and then have to provide "evidence" to the contrary that they are not. The burden is on those wishing to use a source to show that they are reliable as described at WP:RS.Two kinds of pork (talk) 20:29, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
I understand how RS works. And I said I'll look for it later. But we have provided preliminary evidence of editorial oversight which you dismissed based on personal opinion instead of providing any logical reason or supporting evidence. Your logical fallacy diversion aside, we are not starting for scratch. We've offered some evidence to support RS. If you wish to refute it, you need more than WP:IDLI. EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 23:36, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
Where did I say I don't like it? Until it was mentioned here, I never heard of it before. I only chimed in because Ms. Moore requested input from neutral editors. Now the only "evidence" proffered that TA is a RS is that someone on a website self identifies as an "editor". Clearly I, and pretty much everyone else except yourself who have looked at their editing policies (or lack therof) have a problem with that. As I said before, you can't just call yourself an editor and expect that to pass muster. No sir. We expect reliable sources to have demonstrated editorial oversight. Cristan Williams, the "editor" in question, while experienced in trans causes appears to have ZERO experience with publishing of any kind. No experience means no reasonable expectation of editorial oversight. Furthermore William's bio lists TA as a "social justice site", which is further cause for concern about using TA. I'm not sure what to do when there is no consensus at RSN for a particular source, but I'd imagine BRD would require the information used in the source to be removed until consensus forms that it is a RS, or an acknowledged RS is found. And finally, I don't need to dispute anything. I'm not the one attempting to use this source. You can't unilaterally declare it reliable, as that is a "community decision". At best there is no consensus. If you continue to declare this reliable, I'll ask for an RfC and we can bring in more editors and have an admin officially close the conversation. I'm fairly confident from what I've seen so far here, that an admin will use the arguments supported by the official guideline established at WP:RS which says our sources must be reputable with their reporting.Two kinds of pork (talk) 00:17, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

What is the issue here now? My original complaint was the use of Transadvocate for referencing material related to living persons. It seems editors have come to realize that is a problem through comments here. Otherwise, Transadvocate would follow the usual policy on Wikipedia:SPS#Self-published_sources and thus can be used as a source about itself and its own opinions as long as it is made clear it is the source and not presented as objective fact from a higher quality source and as long as it is not used in WP:Undue fashion. Carolmooredc (Talkie-Talkie) 12:48, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

I'm fine with treating it as a SPS. Looking into the editors, there's no journalistic experience from what I can tell. EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 01:13, 13 August 2014 (UTC)
@Carolmooredc: The issue is that it's being misused even as an WP:SPS. An SPS may only be used in articles about or related to the SPS. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 21:20, 13 August 2014 (UTC)
I confess my eyes may have been glazing over a bit from this point "Carolmooredc: So, correct me if I'm wrong....etc." where the non-BLP issues were raised. (This inappropriate series of responses to a simple NPOV announcement of this posting sucked up a lot of my brain energy.)
Anyway, I think there's a little bit of leeway on their opinions if not related to BLP. I agree Transadvocate should not be used as an unidentified and allegedly fully RS source as it has been, as in a list of references for an assertion. And it should only be used in the context of "So and SO at Transadvocate opined such and such" and then only if it really adds something to the content, etc. In other words, its use probably would be minimal. I just was concerned right now with getting rid of BLP uses and when have a chance was going to deal with other issues. Hopefully it will not necessitate another visit here at that time. Carolmooredc (Talkie-Talkie) 21:37, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

Carole, let's take that a step further. TA should not be used as a SPS unless A) when the subject at hand is the TA, as AQFK proposes and B) attributed opinion, but only when a RS makes note of this opinion. The TA is a blog and their opinions have no more weight than yours or mine. Their opinion becomes usable on Wikipedia when a RS decides to publish that opinion. I think pork chops are best with cinnamon applesauce. I can't go add that to the pork chop article until the NYT says something like "Wikipedia genius TKOP says when dousing your chops with applesauce, go with the cinnamon". I'll post the link here when that gets published.Two kinds of pork (talk) 22:21, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

I'm not usually opposed to the strictest interpretation. So how about if when I get around to cleaning up the section and I have problems I ask you two to join in? Or change it yourself now and I'll support you. Just busy with something else that's taking forever and trying not to lose my focus too much. Carolmooredc (Talkie-Talkie) 00:04, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

Using jpeg files as inline citations

Is it acceptable to use a jpeg file to cite information in an article?

In both Mia Farrow and Japanese School in Bucharest, jpeg files are being used as sources for inline citations.

In "Mia Farrow", the jpeg cited is titled "Mia Farrow and the United Buddy Bears" and was added with this edit .

In "Japanese School in Bucharest", the jpeg cited is titled "HPtitle.jp and was added with this edit

I tried looking at both WP:RS and WP:Inline citation for information regarding this kind of thing, but couldn't find any mention at all. Thanks in advance. - Marchjuly (talk) 02:50, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

No, using photos is usually a form of WP:OR. There's too many way to misinterpret, falsify, modify images, so they fail WP:V. Images shouldn't be used as citations ever.__ E L A Q U E A T E 06:29, 8 August 2014 (UTC)
Thank you Elaqueate. Could it possibly be argued that WP:OI also extends to citations? I don't doubt what you've written, and I totally agree; I'm just trying to play devil's advocate. Is there anything specific which says "images must not be used to cite information"? I just want something unequivocable to cite as a reason for removing these particular citations or any similar ones I come across in the future. - Marchjuly (talk) 06:55, 8 August 2014 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Verifiability#Original_research is clear that Sources must support the material clearly and directly: drawing inferences from multiple sources to advance a novel position is prohibited by the NOR policy. Any interpretation of what's in an image is at best indirect support. A raw image of Mia Farrow and a bear has to be interpreted to be described (is it Germany or is it Austria, a fake bear or a real one), and any textual description of a photo is novel work. This means it violates WP:SYN by mixing an editpr's interpretation with a primary source document (the picture). Citations must be to reliable sources, and reliable sources must have material that directly and verifiably supports a claim. A photo does not directly verify any truth about what it contains (it's a picture of a woman that looks like Mia Farrow, but she's not wearing a name tag and there's no way for a reader to use it to verify the statement in the article.) A picture, by definition, only "looks like" its contents. A picture from a television show could "look like" aliens attacking, but it wouldn't verify that the picture was "serious" or not. No matter how mundane the photo, it could be a lookalike, a re-enactment, a hoax, (the unreliability of "the truth" of all pictures is why we need to rely on an RS to tell us what are in pictures, even when it might seem obvious to most people) A citation that does not directly support the claim can be removed and photos do not directly support claims without interpretation.

WP:OI is for uploaded pictures, it does not apply to links to offsite pictures. Using a picture in the article requires certain citations on the image's file page which is how we can use it in an article. Basically, our in-article pictures have an explicit citation to an author and origin in order to be available in an article. An offsite picture does not communicate that info (that's just another reason not to use it. If an offsite photo had an author listed, it would still be unusable for the earlier stated reasons.).

I think you can safely remove any citation that is a simple link to an image file. If anyone protests, I'm sure you can bring it to this noticeboard. If the textual content in the WP article seems plausible and generally BLP-compliant, you could consider just leaving the article text in and asking editors to find a new and actual RS to support the claim. __ E L A Q U E A T E 08:37, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

I would put an image like this one under WP:PRIMARY. It could be used to say that Mia Farrow was standing next to a Buddy Bear at a given date and time, but text in question contains details that the image does not. We should be as careful of pictures being faked as of text sources being faked (it's easier to fake a text source, after all). I would be confident saying that that is a picture of Mia Farrow rather than a Farrow lookalike even though she's not wearing a nametag. I'd concur with Elaqueate that you should remove the link to the photo but not the text itself for now. Darkfrog24 (talk) 12:24, 8 August 2014 (UTC) The second image is an image of text. Treat it like a text source. Darkfrog24 (talk) 12:27, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

A free-floating, unattributable picture of text is not a usable text source and is not a reliable source. This is clearly not a reliable source for anything ever. There is nothing being reliably shown in that picture. (And I believe that happens to be a photo of Mia Farrow too, but that's not reliable or verifiable to reader from a photo alone. An image alone can't be used to say she "was standing next to a Buddy Bear at a given date and time". Photos don't directly support when they were taken or who the people are in them or if they accurately represent what they seem to.) Reliable doesn't mean an editor interprets the contents of an image as being probably correct; it means we can point to where it came from and verify that someone reliable can verify the contents.__ E L A Q U E A T E 16:59, 8 August 2014 (UTC)
The poster asked whether the fact that it's an image file rather than a text file was a good reason to discount it. I'm saying no. I don't read Japanese, so I don't know whether the text is unattributable or not. When I say "Treat it like a text source," I mean treat it like a text source that contains the exact same words. If it were a .jpeg of a legible page from a book with the title visible, I wouldn't discount it. If it were a physical or electronic newspaper or book page that only had two lines on it (and those two lines did not contain any attribution, etc., despite being in a physical book) then I would discount it.
As for "date and time," I've been assuming that the file was timestamped, but yes, photos do support who the people in them were. Looking at a picture of Mia Farrow and observing that it is Mia Farrow requires no specialist knowledge of any kind; anyone who can see can verify that it is her. It's harder to fake an image than to fake typed text.
If you want to continue this academic discussion, I'm game, but we're in agreement that this image is not a suitable source for the specific text in question. Darkfrog24 (talk) 18:45, 8 August 2014 (UTC)
No problem, but I would still discount it on verifiability grounds. There's no indication from the picture itself that this was ever in actual use, where it was, anything about it other than there is a picture of words that only means something if you accept that the article text accurately describes what the image is. That's the opposite of verifiability! If an editor says that proves there was a school or that it was called something, this picture doesn't verify that. A picture of a book page is only useful based on knowing the reliability of the actual existence of the book, not a particular visual reproduction of it. We aren't citing to the picture of a text, but to the text.

Pictures don't verify who's in them, that's why any reliable source needs captions. Pictures don't prove what's in them. Looking at a picture of Mia Farrow and observing that it is Mia Farrow requires no specialist knowledge of any kind; anyone who can see can verify that it is her. This is just not true. There is only one actor named Mia Farrow with her career, but there are many people who could look like her. Beyond the fact that images are easily manipulated (I think it is easier to have a modified picture that people don't question than it is to convince someone that a piece of written text comes from a reliable source), pictures need to be interpreted. (How did you know it was Mia Farrow? You bring that knowledge from some other text or verbal source told you "a person who looks like this is named Mia Farrow". That information is not in the image, and that's why it's OR. If I showed you a picture of a man, and said "This proves that Bud Tarkowsky was in Paris last summer", it would not be verifiably true from an image alone. If the New Yorker says "This is a picture of Bud Tarkowsky" then we have a reliable source vouching for the contents of the picture. Without that sourced text, there's no way pictures can be used as verifying devices.__ E L A Q U E A T E 22:18, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

First of all thanks to both Elaqueate and Darkfrog24 for the replies. Your responses were most helpful. The reason why I made my original post was that I wanted to know if there was something somewhere that specifically says "never use a jpeg to cite material in an article because a jpeg is simply an image, an images are always considered to be unreliable, no exceptions". Personally, I agree totally about the Mia Farrow picture. Although I think that person is really her, I have no idea what that picture means other than that she is standing next to some "bear". So, in my opinion, the picture seems to have no real value as a source because it kind of forces an editor's interpretation upon readers: an interpretation which is neither very verifiable nor reliable. Anyway, my intent was never to remove any of the text; I was just going to replace the citation with a {{citation needed}}.

The second jpeg was the one I was more unsure about. I can read the Japanese. It is from a banner on the school's official website and is simply the school's name (in Japanese). It says exactly what it's claimed to say, which is probably why the editor who added it wanted to use it. However, as I stated in Talk:Japanese School in Bucharest#Do these sources really satisfy WP:RS?, I am not sure if even this is acceptable simply because it is a jpeg. There are other reasons as well, but the jpeg one was my primary concern. - Marchjuly (talk) 22:26, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

Using a link to a jpeg is not good for that purpose. As an abstract and unlikely example, if an editor wanted to cite what Wikipedia called itself, it would cite the webpage here or here or, as a best practice it would cite a secondary reliable source that described Wikipedia. It wouldn't link to a random jpg of the logo like this. The website is a type of published material, the jpeg or image alone is not in any published context in which a reader could judge its reliability.__ E L A Q U E A T E 00:10, 9 August 2014 (UTC)
Thanks you again Elaqueate for another reply. I wasn't sure, but your Wikipedia example makes helps clear things up. As I posted on the article's talk page, the jpeg seems to be being used to cite something that has already been cited by two other sources, so it seemed unnecessarily repetitive. I just was curious if it being a jpeg also made it unreliable. - Marchjuly (talk) 01:50, 9 August 2014 (UTC)
As far as "there are many women who could look like Mia Farrow, so we can't use the source" I'd have to disagree. There's a certain amount of uncertainty in any source. We have to trust that Wikieditors are reading sources correctly. We have to trust that there are no meaning-altering misprints. We have to trust that they haven't been faked or misattributed. Sure, there are photos with lots of shadows and photos that only show part of someone's face, but this isn't one of them. It's clearly her. Otherwise, how am I to trust that the letters "b-e-a-r" are really letters and not just shapes that happen to look like letters? If your logic holds true, then I am comparing the letter B in the source to the letter B from my school days. It's not interpretation to say that spells "bear."
If the banner only says the school's name, then no it doesn't support the text in question any more than the name itself does.
No, Marchjuly, to my knowledge there's no specific rule against sources that happen to be .jpegs, but your plan to remove the tags to these sounds good. Darkfrog24 (talk) 05:08, 9 August 2014 (UTC)
Thank you Darkfrog24. Regarding the "Mia Farrow" jpeg, I had originally intended only to replace the jpeg with a "citation needed" template and leave the text as is. However, after examining the other source that was used to cite the information shown in the diff I gave above, I found that not only wasn't the correct name of the source being used, but also that source didn't cite what it was claiming to cite at all. As a result, I ended up removing all the information added in that edit. I think this was the appropriate thing to do and gave my reasons at Talk:Mia Farrow#Berlin 2006, but please correct me if I am wrong.
Regarding the "Japanese School in Bucharest", I have removed the jpeg in question for essentially the reasons you gave above. I felt there was no need to add a "citation needed" template because the Japanese name of the school could be sufficiently verified from the other sources cited. Thanks again for the input. - Marchjuly (talk) 07:13, 9 August 2014 (UTC)
"This is not a pipe", nor is it the title page of the first volume of the Encyclopaedia Britannic.

"Images shouldn't be used as citations ever." (User:Elaqueate). This reminds me of "The Treachery of Images" everything we see on the internet is an image. If we go down that path we end up with Alice in the looking glass. -- PBS (talk) 11:01, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

We cite "Encyclopaedia Britannica", a published work that someone can find and compare to whatever claim we're using it for, We don't cite "File:EB1911 - Volume 01.djvu", an image file used to reference the published work.

Any idea that a caption-less image verifies that it contains Mia Farrow is silly. In this case you're told ahead of time that it's Mia Farrow, and you're the one personally providing the verification that it's Mia Farrow. When you say "It's clearly her", that means it's clear to you. If you're the one verifying it, then the image is not a good source for verification. The letters "b-e-a-r" are recognizable because all people who are taught to read are taught to recognize their shapes. That's why Wikipedia uses text and it's written for people who recognize letters. All people who are taught to read are not taught what Mia Farrow looks like (or given a magical ability to recognize any person in any photo on sight). And we also don't trust text just because it's text. That's the whole point of "Reliable Sources". Words have to come from a source we believe to be reliable. We don't ask people to believe them because of their shape, which is what you're asking people to do if you insist a photo could be used to verify its own contents.

If you're saying an image file is verifiable because you can verify who the people are, then it's not the photo doing the work, it's Darkfrog24. If I see a photo with people I don't recognize, should I ask you to be the verifying source? This isn't about whether pictures are believable if you already have information to know they're probably true. A photo needs a reliable source to vouch for it, with either caption or description; Since an image needs a reliable source, it can't be a reliable source on its own as a contextless image. Images that have been put into context by reliable sources are useful for illustrating articles, not being used as a reliable source themselves.__ E L A Q U E A T E 13:42, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

This so much. It's not the fact it is information in an image that is a problem, but the step of comprehension of what the image means that can be original research. Reading text off an image (eg a scan of an old page) requires no comprehension, but interpreting that text might - for example, maybe someone presents a scan of the inside page of an old book "A Christmas Carol" by "A. Smith" (not Dickens). We can obviously read that, but we can't make the leap of logic that "A Christmas Carol was written by A. Smith". Similarly with the photo contents. A woman standing next to a bear, yes, but the specific woman and the relevance, no. --MASEM (t) 14:04, 9 August 2014 (UTC)
And this doesn't mean Wikipedia can't use some unusual things as sources, it just means they need some kind of textual context. We can cite material to the inscriptions on monuments and gravestones! But in those extreme cases, we are citing the physical object, not a photo, and any photo we might use to reference the physical inscription would still need to be vouched for by a reliable source (it would be text-captioned in a book, or in a news story, or a similar context in a clearly reliable source). We need some text outside of the photo that confirms the photo is accurate. The photo doesn't confirm its own authenticity and meaning. We should never have a citation that's just to an uncaptioned image file somewhere.__ E L A Q U E A T E 14:19, 9 August 2014 (UTC)
Fun example. Problem illustrated by the edit below the photo. Photos can be "clear" but they're not somehow inherently verified without captions from RS.__ E L A Q U E A T E 14:42, 9 August 2014 (UTC)
Your use of the word "magic" suggests a good rule of thumb. It's fair to identify a person from a photo if it requires no magic to do so, if that person's appearance is public knowledge. That's the case for Mia Farrow, Tom Cruise, George Washington, etc. but not for someone like Shakespeare or Cleopatra because the historical record is officially out on what they actually looked like and on which images are really of them. As for textual context, I'd say that to say where Mia Farrow was, we'd have to either see some very distinctive landmark in the background (Eiffel Tower, she's in Paris. Cinderella's Castle, she's at Disney World) or for her to be standing near a sign that indicates her location.
I'd consider that photo a good source for content like, "The Department of the Interior has issued a sign saying not to feed hallucinogens to alligators." I'm not clear on what's problematic about it? Is there reasonable cause to think it was faked?
The whole point of being able to say "This page of this book published by this company" is so other Wikipedians can go and look at the source for themselves if they see fit to do so. That's also why we encourage people to post links to the sources they used. In the case of a .jpeg, if the .jpeg itself is supplied, then the necessary information has still been provided. Darkfrog24 (talk) 21:18, 9 August 2014 (UTC)
This is goofy. This is completely circular pseudo-"verification": How do you know it's a picture of Mia Farrow? Because you personally recognize her, How do you know it's really Mia Farrow? Well the article says so. How do you know the article text is correct? Well we have a picture of Mia Farrow. This is a picture used as a citation for verification. It's useless for that purpose. Who's verifying what? Now I think it's probably a legitimate picture, but I don't think it should be used to verify anything on Wikipedia. All it supports {by itself without a caption from a reliable source) is that a woman who looks close enough to Mia Farrow to convince a random Wikipedia editor, once had her picture taken. That's not a reliable source for verifying article content.

Let's illustrate this a bit: Saying it's a famous face is useless, do you think everyone knows who this is? Celebrities don't even always look like their most iconic selves in photos. Here's a young Michael Douglas in Madrid. Speaking of Europe, did you hear about the water shortage in Paris? Here's a picture. But this makes it look like people are still going there. And I can tell this fellow is famous, because he looks famous. So does this guy. This guy doesn't look famous at all.

But the fact that you could look at the "hallucinogens to alligators" sign, ignore my advice to read the text, and say I'd consider that photo a good source for content proves my point beyond anything more we can say here. Pictures by themselves can not verify themselves. I don't want to be too harsh but "I know an authentic picture when I see it" is not a verifiability standard and "If I recognize somebody then I'm right" is not verification either. "I see a landmark I recognize, so this picture must have been taken in that city" doesn't work either. Pictures without textual guarantees of their content from a reliable source are not usable by themselves. Most simply, these are photos on the internet and they aren't reliable sources all by themselves, even when you recognize a celebrity.[68]__ E L A Q U E A T E 00:41, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

That's like saying, "How do you know the source said this? It's because you personally read the words." Mia Farrow's appearance is public knowledge. Any non-expert could identify her. Yes, there are photos that are ambiguous, but this isn't one of them. This picture would be a sufficient source for a statement like, "Mia Farrow has been within four feet of a Buddy Bear on at least one occasion" (I am here assuming that the markings on the bear identify it as a Buddy Bear and that the Buddy Bears' appearances are also public knowledge). I'm not sure where your "circular" is coming from. The observer does not need the Wikipedia article to tell that this is Farrow.
It doesn't matter that not everyone knows what Mia Farrow looks like. The threshold is that she be recognizable by a non-specialist. And yes, celebrities don't always look like their most iconic selves, but Farrow does in that picture. No shadows or poor angles render her ambiguous.
I did not ignore your advice to read the text. The text read, "I want to know what the story behind this picture is." I don't see what that has to do with the picture being problematic. I also read the text on the sign. Is that the text you were talking about? Again, I don't see how that makes this image problematic.
Who said "I know an authentic picture when I see it"? I said that the issue of sources being faked is not unique to images, that text sources can be faked as well.
Yes, landmarks can be used to identify locations. Why shouldn't they be? Again, there's a point at which these things become subjective: There's a difference between seeing a house that I personally recognize from having visited Paris and seeing the Eiffel Tower. The Eiffel Tower's appearance is public knowledge, and random house #244's appearance is not. The appearance of the Eiffel indicates for Wikipedia's purposes that the picture was taken in Paris and random house #244's does not. Darkfrog24 (talk) 04:43, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
The threshold for an RS citation is not "recognizable content" or "content a Wikipedia editor believes is true", it's that it's clearly backed by a source we generally consider reliable. We don't use text unless it's backed up by an RS, even if a Wikipedia editor decides for themselves it's "true". That's the whole point of this noticeboard. If we found a pdf with no credited author (let's say we found it on blogger.com) that contained a recognizable and plausible account of an historical event, we wouldn't say that account was verified by the random pdf or usable as an RS only because a Wikipedia editor said the details of the account sounded good to them.

This photo's contents are being described and vouched for by you and....who? blogger.com? the anonymous person who labelled it "mia farrow.jpg"? You're confusing your personal recognition of its "truth" for verification by an RS. That's not how citations work. If I saw a picture of Queen Elizabeth riding a bear (taken by an anonymous person and found on a public hosting site) I wouldn't source the sentence "Queen Elizabeth once rode a bear" to it, simply because the appearance of Queen Elizabeth is "public knowledge". It doesn't matter if you think a photo truly contains Mia Farrow, the picture alone does not verify itself, and Wikipedia editors are not sufficient by themselves to verify material they provide either. That's basic reliable sourcing.

We live in a world with greenscreen, photoshop, staged events, and people who look similar to other people. The appearance of a Parisian landmark does not verify the picture was truly taken in Paris.[69][70] The appearance of a recognisable celebrity does not prove a photo is verifiably accurate.[71] Yes, text sources can be faked too, but we don't judge the reliability of text solely on how it happens to sound to us. We also can't judge pictures solely based on how they look to us. A picture can't be used as a citation for the purposes of verification only because a lot of Wikipedia editors might believe that the person is a recognisable celebrity even if no RS makes that claim directly. That's sourcing only to editors, otherwise known as OR. __ E L A Q U E A T E 15:13, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
The photo's contents do not need to be described because they are visible. I don't need someone to describe a text source to me; I read it. Also, no one said anything about "content a Wikipedia editor believes is true" or "solely on how it happens to sound."
We live in a world with greenscreen and Photoshop, yes, but we also live in a world with typewriters and keyboards. If you believe that Wikieditors should automatically assume that .jpegs have been faked, then why don't you believe that they should assume that text sources have been faked? Is there some threshold or rule of thumb that you would apply to both? Darkfrog24 (talk) 01:32, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

1. Is there some threshold or rule of thumb that you would apply to both? WP:RS, WP:OR apply to both. 2. The photo's contents do not need to be described because they are visible. We don't call something reliable because we can read it. "Visible"≠"Verifiable from a reliable source", "Editor saying they recognise something in the picture even though no reliable source also says it." = "OR". This photo doesn't prove a fish got loose on the highway after Hurricane Irene all by itself, it needs text from a reliable source to come to any conclusions we could cite article material to. This photo is not a reliable claim for anything by itself, without a source or descriptive text. 3. no one said anything about "content a Wikipedia editor believes is true" If the photo has no text description or caption, then we only have what the editor believes is true about the photo. 4. If you believe that Wikieditors should automatically assume that .jpegs have been faked... Nonsense and unfair, nobody believes that. The RS policy is clear that since text can sometimes be questionable, editors should make sure it is reliably sourced and that it directly supports any article claims without OR. That's not the same as saying all text or photos should automatically be assumed fake. But RS means that text and photos aren't automatically assumed to be true either. Photos that have no apparent authorship, captions, descriptions, or explanations, can not be described only by a random Wikipedia editor without there being some unverifiable original research. __ E L A Q U E A T E 04:28, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

Sorry if I misunderstand the issue, but....   A link directly to a jpeg containing text is not a reliable source because it doesn't establish the reliability of its publication process. On the other hand, a jpeg containing text that appears displayed on a web page is just as reliable as the other text on the web page. Lots of websites use images to display text in fancy fonts or colors, that doesn't make the text unreliable. But the citation should point at the web page, not directly at the image, and an argument for reliability should be based on the nature of the web page. Zerotalk 03:55, 14 August 2014 (UTC)
That sounds right to me. And for non-text-containing images, this picture we were using as an example can not be used as the only citation for anything like "Mia Farrow stood next to a bear" by itself because, without a caption or web text, we don't know if the photo is meant as a joke, or if the woman is actually Mia Farrow or just a tourist who really happens to look like her, or if any part of it has been modified. There's no way to establish the reliability of the picture with just the picture alone.__ E L A Q U E A T E 04:39, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

Opinion sources in page about a political metaphor?

For the page Third rail of politics, is the opinion of Helen Thomas a reliable source, when given in-text attribution, as an example of the use of this political metaphor? (Update: Better source found; issue restated below. Mhults7791 (talk) 06:46, 14 August 2014 (UTC))

The statement the source is supporting is here.

And the source is a transcript from a CNN interview.

Other sources is dispute, supporting similar statements, are a New York Times article and a New American editorial.

I have made my case, and Plot Spoiler has replied, on the talk page. Mhults7791 (talk) 04:29, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

I'm uncomfortable with Thomas' usage, because it is clearly self-serving and sour commentary. If other non-involved opinions came to that conclusion, I'd be more inclined to accept that.Two kinds of pork (talk) 03:33, 14 August 2014 (UTC)
I agree that the statement would be more reliable coming from someone else. How about this source? Mhults7791 (talk) 04:29, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

This Huffington Post editorial, from a pro-Israel source, may be the best of them all. Mhults7791 (talk) 04:29, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

Issue restated: Is the opinion of M.J. Rosenberg, in the editorial above, a reliable source as an example of the use of the political metaphor "third rail of politics" by a political expert? Mhults7791 (talk) 06:46, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

No, MJ Rosenberg is an extreme partisan and not a political expert. He essentially got fired from Media Matters for his over the top harangues against Israel. Plot Spoiler (talk) 14:23, 14 August 2014 (UTC)
Given that it's from CNN, I'd say it's a reliable source for, "Helen Thomas referred to Israel as a third rail." The question is whether Thomas's opinion is important. The part of the article in which this text appears does not assert that Israel or any of its other entries are third rails but only that the third-rail metaphor has been applied to them. In that light, I'd say this statement is sufficiently supported by these three sources. However, because the NYT source is the strongest and least biased, I'd phrase it as, "some journalists, including New York Times writer Paul Vitello, have applied this metaphor to Israel." Darkfrog24 (talk) 14:43, 14 August 2014 (UTC)
I would agree that the source is reliable for the fact that Thomas said it... This does not, however, address the question of DUE WEIGHT (whether the article should or should not mention that she said it). That is an issue related to our WP:NPOV policy, not this one. Blueboar (talk) 15:02, 14 August 2014 (UTC)
I agree with Blueboar that the CNN source and Huffington post sources are reliable for the material. That is separate from whether the source carries enough weight for it to qualify, which is not a matter for this board. Kingsindian (talk) 15:20, 14 August 2014 (UTC)
So if we can't work out some kind of compromise like discussing differing points of view, we should go to the WP:NPOV/N? Mhults7791 (talk) 20:26, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

Southern Illinoisan

Is this column [72] in the Southern Illinoisan a reliable source to prove the claim that "Ballotpedia covers school board elections"? The article where this source has come into question is the Lucy Burns Institute. Obviously it's an op-ed, but the claim that it verifies seems unexceptional and uncontroversial. Schematica (talk) 03:58, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

This discussion is premature, as it hasn't been discussed on the relevant talk page (Talk:Lucy Burns Institute) yet. Please see WP:DR#Discuss with the other party. Nevertheless if this is going to be resolved here, my feeling is that this opinion source is either unreliable or an inapporpriate source per WP:PROMOTION. It's written in the first person, it's in the "Faith and Values" section of the paper, there's no evidence any editor went to Judgepedia to confirm what the author wrote, it's explicitly promoting the subject ("It’s a great resource, and I hope you will visit it soon."). If the statement it's being used for is so uncontroversial then there should be other more reliable and less promotional sources out there saying the same thing. --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 04:59, 14 August 2014 (UTC)
This link makes it clear that Ballotpedia does cover school board elections, and I do not see any reason that it would be in violation of WP:ABOUTSELF. If I could verify it in 30 seconds, I imagine that it would not be difficult for a syndicated columnist to do so either. Location (talk) 05:43, 14 August 2014 (UTC)
Sorry, I agree with everything you wrote but I'm missing your point. I agree that the content itself is verifiable, and I would have no problem with an ABOUTSELF citation to Ballotpedia. What I don't like is the use of the Southern Illinoisan opinion piece which has a promotional feel. Do you think it should be cited or not? --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 05:57, 14 August 2014 (UTC)
Ok, I replaced it with a WP:ABOUTSELF link to Ballotpedia. I didn't anticipate you'd be amenable to that, based on your previous reversions [73] [74] of edits that attempt to use something published by an organization as a source. I figured the reason to use the Southern Illinoisan column would be to establish that the school board coverage has been covered elsewhere; otherwise the article could just become a laundry list of what the organization says it does, rather than an article noting only the activities which have garnered external notice. Schematica (talk) 19:17, 14 August 2014 (UTC)
Dr. Fleischman, I think either source is acceptable. The expression of an opinion in an op-ed does rule-out the accuracy of other information provided in it. If you, Schematica, and other involved editor prefer the SPS, then go with that one. Location (talk) 19:58, 14 August 2014 (UTC)
I do not see any reason to bend the rules. Most of the facts in most editorials are true and non-controversial, but they are not reliable because there is no fact-checking. The other problem is that facts that only appear in columns are not significant. Their homepage for example says they cover " local, state, and federal level." That seems to cover school board elections and there is no need to list all the types of officials Americans elect - prosecutors, judges. dogcatchers, comptrollers, etc. TFD (talk) 00:18, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

Judgepedia

Judgepedia is currently under discussion at:

Is Judgepedia a reliable source? From what I have seen of the site I would judge [sic] that it is not. However I think that information from the site can be used in the form of WP:SAYWHEREYOUREADIT if that information is supported direly by a reliable sources (one that meets WP:SOURCE) which for one reason or another has content that is not accessible to a Wikipedia editor (which means the Wikipedia editor can not cite the reliable source directly). -- PBS (talk) 12:43, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

It's another Wiki, it isn't reliable for any claims except about itself (although I'm sure people might use it for general research). I don't think it's a good idea to indirectly source material to places that no general reader or editor can ever be expected to verify. That fails WP:V. The ultimate source for the information may be considered good somehow, but shouldn't be used if it is filtered through a non-reliable source. WP:SAYWHEREYOUREADIT is clearly not for sources that are inaccessible to a Wikipedia editor. Don't cite a source unless you've seen it for yourself. If an editor hasn't directly seen a source that is cited in Judgepedia, then they shouldn't pretend they've read it.__ E L A Q U E A T E 13:00, 13 August 2014 (UTC)
For instance, Google Books is considered a reliable source for accurate depictions of a physical book, if we read a book there it fits WP:SAYWHEREYOUREADIT. Judgepedia is a wiki, so it is not reliable as to whether a particular Judgepedia editor is accurately quoting passages from any particular book, so an editor can not verifiably say they've "read" an equivalent of the original.__ E L A Q U E A T E 13:10, 13 August 2014 (UTC)
(edit conflict)I agree with E L A Q U E A T E. Judgepedia is a great resource, but an unreliable source according to our standards (except for non-self-serving claims about itself). - MrX 13:12, 13 August 2014 (UTC)
My initial reaction is to agree... we normally don't consider open wikis to be reliable. That said, I note that there are other sources that cite Judgepedia... so... before we can reach a consensus on whether Judgepedia is reliable/unreliable, we should probably take a few minutes to examine these other sources, and see if we would deem them reliable or not. After all... when one source has been cited by other (reliable) sources, then that says something about the reputation of the source that has been cited ... and reputation does relate to reliability.
(And, as a corollary issue... if we deem Judgepedia to be unreliable, does that say something about the reliability of the sources that cite it?) Blueboar (talk) 13:13, 13 August 2014 (UTC)
There are plenty of instances of generally reliably sources citing Wikipedia in occasional stories. That doesn't increase Wikipedia's chances of being considered a reliable source. It's still a wiki. Deeming a particular wiki unreliable as a source for our own use is not any kind of comment on the reliability of other sources that might cite that wiki. A source like the NY Times uses all kinds of disreputable and Wikipedia-unreliable people as sources; an RS's reliability with us isn't dependent on the reliability of its individual sources. Simply, I don't think it makes any difference if other sources cite Judgepedia. And if a source is citing Judgepedia beyond a passing quote, we should probably treat it like a source that looked like it relied too heavily on Wikipedia.__ E L A Q U E A T E 13:36, 13 August 2014 (UTC)
Another technical point, I don't see anything that would prevent a random person from adding material to Judgepedia in the morning, then citing that material in Wikipedia in the afternoon. I don't see how it could ever be considered a reliable source for WP:V purposes, no matter what its reputation.__ E L A Q U E A T E 13:49, 13 August 2014 (UTC)
It seems to fall under WP:USERG. If Judgepedia has an article that's specifically marked as having been written by a sufficiently credentialed member of its staff, then yes, but for most of it no.
Whether Judgepedia is notable enough for there to be an article about it on Wikipedia is another matter. Darkfrog24 (talk) 14:28, 13 August 2014 (UTC)
I agree with Elaquate and Darkfrog. This seems like a straightforward application of WP:USERG and WP:SPS. I don't see anything in WP:SAYWHEREYOUREADIT that changes the equation. --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 16:25, 13 August 2014 (UTC)
I think that several editors need to explain why they think WP:SAYWHEREYOUREADIT exists. It certainly is not for citing Google books as in "Google Books is considered a reliable source for accurate depictions of a physical book" in that case editors usually simply link to the Google Book page or the Google Book title page. Similarly the DNB pages on Wikisource are link in the same way that the copyright pages on the ONDB source are linked. In neither case is WP:SAYWHEREYOUREADIT used.
One can make a case for saying that it is only to allow someone to cite a reliable sources from a reliable source, but in which case usually simply citing the the first reliable source would be/is sufficient. In my experiences the major usage for WP:SAYWHEREYOUREADIT is to cite a reliable source that are cited in less than reliable sources. In the long run hopefully someone will check the reliable source that the less than reliable source cites (and then the unreliable sources can be deleted), but in the short term while not ideal it does help develop the article and without it a large amount of text would either have to be removed or it would have to remain uncited.
A classic example of this sort of site which is widely used on Wikipedia is Darrly Lundy's http://wwww.thepeerage.com. Searching Wikipedia for thepeerage.com throws up 7,786 pages. The very first one returned by that search is Ancestry charts of Diana Spencer and Catherine Middleton. It consists 63 citations of which 60 are to Lundy's site and many more citations are needed. In the past I have run AWB over somewhere between 1000-2000 pages that contain thepeerage.com and appended [unreliable source]" to them (wherever this text was copied from was a page over which I had run AWB). It seems to me much more constructive to use WP:SAYWHEREYOUREADIT for these Lundy citations as he usually cite reliable sources such as modern versions of Burke's Peerage, than to leave them with [unreliable source] and indeed I think it is then best way forward because WP:PRESERVE means that one is faced with several options none of which are better than citing Lundy citing a reliable source. Time is against you unless you want to spend a very long time in a library checking his sources or finding alternatives (and using WP:SAYWHEREYOUREADIT can be used while you do that!). Deleting citations containing his website leaves the text on Wikipedia with no citations, or deleting the text supported by his citations as well as the citation, is going to be strongly resisted by a lot of editors and is nor in my opinion a better option to WP:SAYWHEREYOUREADIT as the next interim step. The other option is of course just to ignore the mess and go on to another page :-) -- PBS (talk) 20:48, 13 August 2014 (UTC)
If I may take the liberty of paraphrasing PBS, I believe what he/she's saying is, "WP:SAYWHEREYOUREADIT is about how to cite reliable sources. It doesn't turn unreliable sources into reliable ones." --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 21:01, 13 August 2014 (UTC)
If you're using "source B" to say that you've "read" the material found in "source A", then source B still has to be considered a reliable reflection of source A. If source B is unreliable for some significant reason, then you can't say you've "read" a verifiable copy of the original material. For instance, WP:SAYWHEREYOUREADIT does not mean that an editor can go to a dodgy "historical quotes" site, find a user-submitted quote from War & Peace that says, "Pillows are fluffy and nice" and then add that material to Wikipedia as if they sourced it from the actual book.

There are two workable scenarios: 1. The middle source is considered to be a reliable source for the "quoting" of the original. or 2. the editor has seen the original material. If you haven't seen the original source, or you only saw it in an unreliable source, then that material shouldn't go into Wikipedia. WP:PRESERVE means existing material with poor sourcing should be tagged, re-sourced, or omitted. It should not besourced to an unreliable or unusable source as a stop-gap, because an untagged citation implies to readers and other editors that citation is problem free.__ E L A Q U E A T E 21:26, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

@Elaqueate I don't think that WP:SAYWHEREYOUREADIT can be justified for inline citations that support quotations. As to your bold comment I disagree, and the conversations over the {{Rayment}} template shows the consensus was that it is OK to extract information from Raymont's website (besides most of it had already been extracted), because the information was usually correct, but that the template should have flags added to warn readers that it was an unreliable sources in Wikipedia terms. Besides that horse has bolted. Most of this usage is not to support quotations, it is more to do with facts like those laid out in Ancestry charts of Diana Spencer and Catherine Middleton. Are you saying that gutting such an article is preferable to adding WP:SAYWHEREYOUREADIT to Lundy's reliable sources? There are tens of thousands of less than reliable sources in use. 19,146 Wikipedia articles link to a site called http://genealogics.org/index.php The first page returned in a search is Franca Sozzani 13 out of 22 citations are to genealogics.org (it appears to cite published genealogies). 1,132 pages link to genealogy.euweb.cz The first page returned is List of princes of Austria-Hungary 21 out of 28 citations (and another page or which I ran AWB), in this case I don't think Miroslav Marek cites any sources. You see the problem is lots of people like to create ancestry trees and articles about nobility the content of which is mainly about who married whom (dynastic pedigree was and probably is still important and if often helps to explain otherwise odd political behaviour, both at the local as well as the national level -- so it can't be dismissed as totally trivial), and it is easy to do if you use this sort of site. Deleting them is impractical at a Wikipedia political level (apart from anything else if one try it one will be accused of being anti-feminist as in prior centuries European female aristocracy are only notable by who they married and as baby machines, so deleting information in Wikipedia articles from these sites affects articles on females more than males).
Another point is that it is not uncommon for an editor to use Lundy citation and just drop Lundy. This can usually be spotted because of the style Lundu uses for some of his commonly cited books is unusual by Wikipedia citation standards and also the mix of citations he uses for a biography article is like a signature if you are familiar with his site. WP:SAYWHEREYOUREADIT is a useful way to fix that problem and to encourage editors not to do it (as it gives them a relatively easy alternative to gaming the system). Lundy is not the only well sourced website from which people extract information and citations without crediting the site. Often this ends up as a copyright issue, but not always. -- PBS (talk) 22:54, 13 August 2014 (UTC)
You keep using WP:SAYWHEREYOUREADIT as shorthand for citing to "less than reliable" sources. It does not suggest doing that at all. It's not encouraging poor sourcing. It's not a loophole where WP:RS does not apply. It only advises sourcing to reliable sources when you know the original material somehow. If people are pointing to that guideline when they don't know the original material, they're just trying to insert material from an unreliable source. It's not the actual policy.

And if people are inserting material from unreliable sources, then it's simple. Those pages have unreliable material poorly sourced. There's no point calling it reliable when it's not, just to have content. If there's a large subject (like amateur genealogy) where editors are flatly ignoring WP:V, then that is probably not a generally reliable neighborhood of Wikipedia. This article seems like a indiscriminate collection of information; I understand why people would want obsessively detailed lists sourced from unreliable sources, but that doesn't mean the source for it is magically reliable. There are hordes of people that would like Wikipedia to be an alphabetical list of every high school band ever, but we work to avoid that too. This is actually giving readers pseudo-history whether it's cited to the unreliable source or not cited at all. WP:RS and WP:V are about working to bring the material to a better standard than if people ignored the quality of sourcing. Ancestral bloodlines are a bit of a fiction even in the best sources, as they don't usually have much success tracking the results of undocumented adulteries, secret adoptions, and people just claiming famous relatives with no evidence. If we have them, they should at least be sourced to reliable historians and reliable genealogists and limited to reliable sources. Otherwise we have articles that are essentially fan fiction.

Take your first example, the peerage.com: well, it's nice to say he uses Burke's Peerage, but a lot of the entries are sourced to blogs, emails,[75] and if you look here you'll see that the peerage.com even uses Wikipedia as a source for factual information. A lot of it seems like people tracing their bloodline to royalty, as sourced by the people themselves. The compiler admits to throwing the raw contents of books not considered generally reliable into the mix. He makes no claims of strong verifiability or reliability. You seem to be saying we should call this source reliable enough to cite, just out of the convenience of leaving the material in Wikipedia, instead of tagging, re-sourcing, or omitting, all three of which avoid Wikipedia presenting dubious material as historically sound. Leaving in poorly sourced material without tags is quicker and less work, but that's not building a better project. I don't see how having piles of badly-sourced Count Gustavs helps a reader who's interested in royalty when the information is ultimately unverifiable.__ E L A Q U E A T E 23:56, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

Looking at Lundy's source page tell you nothing about the frequency of the type of citations he uses. BTW I picked the article Ancestry charts of Diana Spencer and Catherine Middleton not because it is a typical example of people citing Lundy but because it was the first one returned by the search. @Elaqueate you wrote "You keep using WP:SAYWHEREYOUREADIT as shorthand for citing to 'less than reliable' sources". No I do not (see Dr. Fleischman paraphrasing above). Elaqueate you wrote "You seem to be saying we should call this source reliable enough to cite, just out of the convenience of leaving the material in Wikipedia, instead of tagging, re-sourcing, or omitting, all three of which avoid Wikipedia presenting dubious material as historically sound". Yet that is not what I am saying, and and the proof in Ancestry charts of Diana Spencer and Catherine Middleton where the unreliable tags were added by me as a first step to cleaning up the page! To continue with that example, I do not see why anyone would be justified in adding WP:SAYWHEREYOUREADIT to a Lundy citation that itself cites an unreliable source such as an email. But take the example of the footnote that is currently no 20 that supports "Sir Henry Belasyse, 1st Baronet (1555–1624)", that his mother was Margaret Fairfax, that he married Ursula Fairfax that their son was Thomas Belasyse, 1st Viscount Fauconberg. At the moment the citation carries the unreliable tag to Lundy's entry on Sir Henry Belasyse. However if you look at that entry Lundy cites "George Edward Cokayne, editor, The Complete Baronetage ... 1983 ... page 43." for all that information. So I think as an interim step before a reliable sources is read by a Wikipedia editor to confirm the entry, changing the citation to "Cokayne 1983, p. 43 cited by Lundy 2012, p. 1958 §19571" -- with long citations to the sources in the references section, (and where Lundy site can be tagged as unreliable) -- is an improvement over the current citation no 20. The point of using WP:SAYWHEREYOUREADIT is precisely because it helps in the process of determining "when the information is ultimately [verifiable or] unverifiable". -- PBS (talk) 13:23, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

As long as you agree that changing "cited to unreliable source" to "cited to x source as quoted in an unreliable source" does not make it a more reliable citation. You're free to do that to help identify existing poorly sourced content with a view to repair it, but it's bad practice for new content. Otherwise a source we've identified as being generally unusable could be cited wholesale and that's a headache. People could add masses of factoids from IMDB with "as quoted in IMDB" if we accepted generally unreliable sites as bridging middle-sources.__ E L A Q U E A T E 13:57, 14 August 2014 (UTC)
"You're free to do that" !! . I do not agree with the statement you make in your first sentence of your last post. To bring it back to Judgepedia. The only reason why text can not be copied directly from Judgepedia into a Wikipedia article is to do with licensing. Prior to middle 2009 it could be--as can text from an other compatible copyleft source. Such text is of course covered by Wikipedia policies, but fundamentally it is no different from copying text from another Wikipedia article. So I do not see a problem summarising a fact from the Judgepeia site, if that fact is backed up with a reliable source. If the sources is accessible to the editor who extracts information from Jugepedia then there is no need to mention Jugepedia, but if the citation to a reliable sources is inaccessible to the Wikipedia editor then providing the editor considers it likely that the fact is supported by the reliable source, I have no problem with the editor using WP:SAYWHEREYOUREADIT. This of course is an editorial judgement [sic] and it is down to a local consensus to decide whether or not the fact is likely to be supported in the reliable source. -- PBS (talk) 00:28, 15 August 2014 (UTC)
I definitely disagree with this. WP:RS pretty clearly indicates that you can't cite open wikis. WP:SAYWHEREYOUREADIT doesn't change that fact in any way. It's part of WP:CS, which clearly states it's about "how to place and format citations," not identifying reliable sources. If this is at all unclear then perhaps the discussion should be continued at Wikipedia talk:Citing sources. --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 05:45, 15 August 2014 (UTC)
I presume you are referring to "WP:USERG". WP:RS is a guideline and it is contradicted by other guidelines. There is a split in the Wikipedia editor community whether it is acceptable to copy text from a copyleft source or a PD source for which there is no copyright impediment. Let us use Citizendium as an example. Last time I checked it is legal to import text into a Wikipedia article from Citizendium, just as it is from another article in Wikipedia providing the licence requirements are met. I am in the Wikipedia party that thinks it OK to legally copy text into Wikiepdia (subject to the usual content policies as is any new text). However I agree that while it is acceptable to do this, it is not acceptable to cite Wikiepdia or Citizendium as a source (in the case of Citizendium there is also the danger of WP:CIRCULAR). This means that if a fact is taken from Citizendium and that fact has a citation that a Wikiepdia editor considers to be a reliable source that verifies the fact, but is not accessible to that editor, then it seems to me reasonable to use WP:SAYWHEREYOUREADIT. When a section of an article is copied from English Wikipedia or translated from a foreign language Wikiepdia I have never seen any one insist that Wikipedia editors of the English Wikipedia should use WP:SAYWHEREYOUREADIT instead they copy the text citations and all. The text then gets edited in the usual way and the citations (or lack of them) are challenged in the same way as original text added to a Wikiepda article. If you are arguing that one can not use WP:SAYWHEREYOUREADIT for a citation to a fact (or a sentence copied from Citizendium) then I think you have a circle to square, unless you are against the current practices of importing text into Wikiepdia articles from Wikpeidia or other compatibly licensed Wikis.
I would also put it to you that at a practical level, such a restriction on WP:SAYWHEREYOUREADIT would just encourage plagiarism (adding facts to a Wikiepdia article with a reliable source both gleaned from a third party unreliable source -- without noting that the reliable sources has not been verified as supporting the content) making it more difficult for editors to know which reliable sources need verifying that they support the content in an article).
-- PBS (talk) 12:25, 15 August 2014 (UTC)
You seem concerned with WP:SAYWHEREYOUREADIT to the point of distraction. That guideline is about how to cite reliable sources, but it still requires reliable sources. WP:SAYWHEREYOUREADIT is absolutely clear that it doesn't advise your "if you haven't seen the original but think it's probably in there based on an unreliable source" advice. You're quoting a guideline that says the opposite of what you say we should do. You are reading it as if it encourages adding citations like "authoritative text as quoted in a piece of paper written with crayon I found in the forest". It simply doesn't. All sources have to be considered reliable, the quoter and the quoted. The quoter has to at the very least be reliable that it quotes accurately; that's not true of open wikis. It's pretty clear from everybody's contribution but yours that Judgepedia is not considered a reliable source for anything except the rare bit of WP:ABOUTSELF. Copyright issues have nothing to do with why Judgepedia is not considered reliable here. Copyright availability is not the same thing as "considered a reliable source for claims". Open wikis are generally considered unreliable according to WP:V which is not "just a guideline". __ E L A Q U E A T E 13:27, 15 August 2014 (UTC)
I think using the word quote does not help bring clarity as quotes in this context has specific meaning ie text inside quotation marks or block quote templates. perhaps you would be so kind as to rephrase "All sources have to be considered reliable, the quoter and the quoted" because this conversation is nothing to do with quotes. -- PBS (talk) 14:01, 15 August 2014 (UTC)
How about this, don't cite a source unless it is reliable. Don't encourage citations to unreliable sources. If you're citing a source because you want to say what it says in another source, it has to be either 1. you have seen the original source yourself or 2. the second reliable source is considered reliable for repeating what the original source said. Judgepedia is neither the original nor is it considered citation-reliable for the material we find in it. It's an open wiki and considered not generally reliable as a source for Wikipedia article material, even as a source for material (possibly) found in better sources. There seems little to stop a person from inserting "Authoritative text says this" into Judgepedia in the morning, and then inserting "Authoritative text says this, as found in Judgepedia" into Wikipedia in the afternoon. If editors find something in Judgepedia interesting, they should only add it to Wikipedia if they have also seen it in some way in an actual reliable source. Judgepedia is not a reliable source for a citation of "Such-and-such a book said this".__ E L A Q U E A T E 14:34, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

Is liveleak a reliable source?

This link says the ISIS leader is a mossad agent. can this source be used in ISIS article? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Srahmadi (talk • contribs) 21:32, 15 August 2014

This source also says, "The best known examples of Jews running 'Moslem' terror organisations are Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri," and that is flatly contradicted by many known reliable sources. LiveLeak might be good for some claims, but the idea that an ISIS leader is really an Israeli-trained operative would have to be supported by a source with a better reputation for factual accuracy than sources that say otherwise. If NYTimes says that this guy is not a Jewish secret agent, then you need something even more reliable if you want the article to say that he is. Or if there are enough sources to establish that this is a well-known fringe theory, you can add a section saying that it's a fringe theory, kind of like how we have an article about the flat Earth society but Wikipedia's astronomy and Earth science articles don't assert that the Earth is flat. Darkfrog24 (talk) 21:33, 15 August 2014 (UTC)
Liveleak is a video sharing service - it isn't a 'source' at all in the sense that the news media are. It isn't a reliable source for anything. AndyTheGrump (talk) 05:06, 16 August 2014 (UTC)

Is veteranstoday a reliable source?

This link says the ISIS leader is a mossad agent. can this source be used in ISIS article? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Srahmadi (talk • contribs) 8:39, 15 August 2014

I'm going to go with no. First, the idea that an ISIS leader is really a Moussad-trained agent who's part of this big Zionist conspiracy is an extraordinary claim, to the point where I find myself reminding myself what "extraordinary" really means. Second, this article is full of inconsistencies and dodging. Example: "This information was attributed to Edward Snowden and published by newspapers and other Web sites." What news site worth its salt wouldn't set a solid foundation for its own work by naming the specific newspapers and web sites? It's a vagueness that suggests deceit to me. Darkfrog24 (talk) 21:28, 15 August 2014 (UTC)
@Darkfrog24:@Srahmadi: What's your criteria for calling this claim "extraordinary?" Moussad Can't do this? (really can't?) or it doesn't want to do this (who knows except some of the its members?) So we can't decide based on how weird the fact seems to us. The point is that we should see whether the source deserves to have such a claim or not. However you are right about the vagueness and there should be more reliable sources claiming such a fact, then it can be concluded. Mhhossein (talk) 04:35, 16 August 2014 (UTC)
veteranstoday.com is not even remotely a reliable source for anything but its own batshit-crazy opinions. Take a look at their "Top 50 read articles this week" - featuring such gems as "Satanist Scofield Bible Erasing Christ from Christianity", "The Zionist/Neo-Bolshevik Holocaust Has Already Begun", "Top Ten Reasons: Sandy Hook was an Elaborate Hoax", "MH17: Another Israeli Cover Up?" etc, etc. Complete garbage. [76] AndyTheGrump (talk) 04:50, 16 August 2014 (UTC)
@Mhhossein:No, that's a legitimate question. One good criterion for calling a claim extraordinary is if it contradicts multiple reliable established sources. The NYTimes and Guardian and other newspapers of established reputation say that ISIL is a primarily Muslim operation. Asserting that one of its leaders is a Moussad-trained secret agent contradicts this, so the claim is extraordinary.
Sure, Moussad is probably capable of training someone and sneaking that person into a terrorist organization, and there might be some convoluted motive out there that would give them a reason to, but it's a lot more likely that things are as they seem.
I agree that we shouldn't decide based on how weird a fact seems to us. We should decide based on the evidence, and right now far more of the available evidence says that this guy is not a Moussad agent than that he is. Take the moon landings as an example: NASA was capable of faking the moon landings, and Cold War propaganda gave them a motive, but we have reams of other evidence showing that the moon landings were real, from photographs and eyewitness accounts from the astronauts to all the side products of the Apollo program like beta cloth, which would have been very hard to come up with as part of a hoax. Darkfrog24 (talk) 15:48, 16 August 2014 (UTC)
I can add that Ben Wizner, an attorney for Snowden has called this a hoax. Needless to say, the source being discussed here is sensationalist and looks quite unreliable. Kingsindian (talk) 16:19, 16 August 2014 (UTC)
As far as I can see the source doesn't meet WP:NEWSORG--Shrike (talk)/WP:RX 16:44, 16 August 2014 (UTC)
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