Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard

Welcome — ask about reliability of sources in context!

Before posting, check the archives and list of perennial sources for prior discussions. Context is important: supply the source, the article it is used in, and the claim it supports. Additional notes: RFCs for deprecation, blacklisting, or other classification should not be opened unless the source is widely used and has been repeatedly discussed. Consensus is assessed based on the weight of policy-based arguments. While the consensus of several editors can generally be relied upon, answers are not policy. This page is not a forum for general discussions unrelated to the reliability of sources. Start a new discussion

bworldonline.com

• Source*[1]

• Content:

  Yet, despite the turbulent landscape, BusinessWorld, the Philippines’ oldest business newspaper founded on July 27, 1987 by the late respected journalist Raul L. Locsin, has further cemented its position as the most trusted source of news, analysis, and insights by the country’s business community.The newspaper has mostly achieved this by holding true to its purpose of serving its readers with reliable, accurate coverage of the news and issues relevant to the Philippine business landscape. - Miguel Belmonte President and chieft executive officer of BusinessWorld

Business World has been viewed as a #1 source for business and news, the credibility and reliability of the source is very well talked through the Internet.

@Moonlight Entm: I am unsure on what's the issue for this discussion? Per the RSN guideline, Please focus your attention on the reliability of a source. This is not the place to discuss other issues, such as editor conduct. Please see dispute resolution for issues other than reliability. If you would like an assessment on Business World, that's all right, but I am unsure on what this line meant Business World has been viewed as a #1 source for business and news, the credibility and reliability of the source is very well talked through the Internet? Many thanks!

Note: Pinging the creator of this discussion per this diff. VickKiang (talk) 21:49, 7 July 2022 (UTC)

Leaked Paul Mason - Amil Khan correspondence

There are ongoing discussions on the talk pages of Paul Mason and The Grayzone about whether to mention a recent leak of documents. The leaked documents involve Mason, Amil Khan from the intelligence group Valent Projects and Andy Pryce from the Counter Disinformation and Media Development Unit at the UK Foreign Office discussing ways to deplatform Grayzone. There has been some reluctance to include this on both pages based on the sources being put forward. The sources are as follows:

- The Hill's Rising discussed the leaks in an 11 minute segment. The discussion is hosted by Briahna Joy Gray and Robby Soave. Their guest is Katie Halper.

- Private Eye magazine published a non-satirical article on the leak in Issue 1575, 17 - 30 June 2022 under the title "Grayzone Layer".

- The WSWS covered the story.

- In Defence of Marxism also covered the story.

Regarding these sources, The Hill is a green tick source and the three participants in the discussion are well-known journalists and/or commentators. Wikipedia contains over 300 references to articles on the website In Defence of Marxism, although there appears to have been no prior discussion about its reliability. Wikipedia contains 140 links to articles in Private Eye but the only discussion about reliability was in 2011. The Private Eye piece seems to be from the print edition. The World Socialist Web Site is listed at the Perennial Sources noticeboard.

What do editors think about the strength of these sources in regards to mentioning the leak at Paul Mason and Grayzone? Burrobert (talk) 13:33, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

Private Eye might be ok, but the other 3 are definitely not reliable. The Rising segment is covered under WP:RSOPINION as an opinion piece (how other cable talk shows are handled); the WSWS and IDOM sources are obviously unreliable as they clearly take a side and thus must be treated as opinion pieces, and that is not even taking into consideration whether or not the outlets are reliable or not (which they aren't). Curbon7 (talk) 13:45, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

• There are quite a few journalists beyond these who have talked about the leak in informal contexts, but it looks like most respectable media doesn't want to give "newspaper of record" treatment to a story that only exists because of hacking that may have the backing of the Russian state. It is not true that we can't use a source that takes sides: generally we recognise a class of sources that are partisan but are conscientious in getting their facts right. I'd put Declassified UK in this camp, who were mentioned in the leak. — Charles Stewart (talk) 15:29, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

Belated postscript - I had meant to conclude the above by saying I don't think we currently have the sourcing to treat this story, but my feeling is that in time we will see sufficient coverage in RSes. — Charles Stewart (talk) 06:56, 28 June 2022 (UTC)

I'll basically repeat what I said at Talk:The Grayzone#Masongate: the leaked Paul Mason - Amil Khan correspondence. These aren't reliable sources for facts. As Curbon7 alluded to, Rising is an opinion talk show and doesn't have the same level of factual reliability as The Hill. @Mhawk10 was kind enough to send me a copy of the Private Eye article and...I'm not exactly sure how it gives credibility to the story. Most of article is criticizing Blumenthal and Kit Klarenberg. Since we're allegedly dealing with leaked documents from a living person, we would need some extremely high-quality sources confirming the authenticity of the leaks. WP:BLPGOSSIP comes into play here. Dr. Swag Lord (talk) 20:27, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

Rising 's Wiki page describes it as "an American daily news and opinion web series". It describes itself as "the premier source for policy and political news " and a "daily news show ". The format is similar to that of Democracy Now!. In the linked episode, the hosts Briahna Joy Gray and Robby Soave spend the first 1.5 minutes detailing the content of the Grayzone story including:

- that Mason created a "Putin-influence map", and "tried to get the Grayzone deplatformed"

- "The emails show [Mason] allegedly plotting with Andy Pryce of the UK Foreign Office Counter-disinformation and Media Unit”.

- "Mason also called for suspending UK libel law to smear targets".

- Soave mentions the removal by YouTube of a video posted by Blumenthal in which he and Aaron Mate discussed the leaked emails.

This part of the show is a factual recounting of the content of the Grayzone ’s story. The hosts then call in Katie Halper to discuss the revelations in more detail. This part of the show does contain some factual content such as Halper’s description of Amil Khan as "the founder of Valent Projects which is funded by USAID and its goal is to investigate disinformation". It also contains some opinion such as Halper’s statement that Khan and Mason decided to avoid confronting Grayzone on substance and instead "resort to these smear tactics".

The article in Private Eye does provided sufficient coverage of the leaked documents. For example it states:

- Last week Paul Mason announced that someone had tried to hack his encrypted email account. ... [O]n 8 June the spoils of the hack surfaced on The Grayzone.

- From "anonymously leaked emails and documents" [The Grayzone] learned that Mason wanted a "relentless deplatforming" of the Grayzone and "a kind of permanent rebuttal operation" to discredit it.

As mentioned by Charles, biased sources are still usable and there are many listed at the Perennial Sources noticeboard. Some examples are The Daily Beast (which is used six times in The Grayzone ’s Wikipage) and green tick sources such as The Intercept, Jacobin, Mother Jones, The New Republic, Reason and SPLC.

The point about Declasiffied UK is a good one. Its investigations are detailed and meticulous so it may take longer for it to publish.

My intention is to use the sources for a basic and brief statement of facts, not opinion. An example of the intended text is:

The Grayzone was given access to documents and emails hacked from Paul Mason. The leaked documents involve Mason, Amil Khan from the intelligence group Valent Projects and Andy Pryce from the UK Foreign Office's Counter Disinformation and Media Development Unit allegedly discussing ways to deplatform Grayzone.

Burrobert (talk) 12:04, 28 June 2022 (UTC)

Those aren't basic facts. Too many BLP issues and we should not be saying this in WP:WIKIVOICE to begin with. Dr. Swag Lord (talk) 20:22, 28 June 2022 (UTC)

Probably not a discussion for this page. The exact wording can be discussed on Paul Mason and Grayzone 's talk page. All four sources state that Grayzone had access to documents and emails leaked from Paul Mason. All four sources state that the discussion between Mason, Amil Khan and Andy Pryce was about deplatforming Grayzone (among other things). The word allegedly has been used in the suggested text but this could be changed to "according to ... " if editors prefer. However, best to transfer that part of the discussion to the talk pages of the two articles. Concerns about BLP issues can be discussed at the BLP noticeboard. Burrobert (talk) 13:20, 29 June 2022 (UTC)

• The article in Grayzone has been reprinted in the Monthly Review, which is definitely RS . I would say there is no BLP problem whatsoever reporting the story in the article, though not in wikivoice, especially as Mason does not deny it. --Boynamedsue (talk) 05:29, 30 June 2022 (UTC)

  The Monthly Review reprinting the Grayzone, which is a deprecated source, does not make it "RS." Dr. Swag Lord (talk) 05:54, 30 June 2022 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I don't follow the logic of that statement. Are you saying that the Monthly Review isn't a reliable source? Or that anything that has been published in a deprecated source can never become reliable, even if reprinted by a reliable source?--Boynamedsue (talk) 06:39, 30 June 2022 (UTC)

The latter (although I am not totally sure of the general reliability of Monthly Review for factual claims). How does reprinting a deprecated source suddenly make that source reliable? Did the other source, in this case Monthly Review, fact-check the claims made in the deprecated source? Obviously not. Dr. Swag Lord (talk) 06:44, 30 June 2022 (UTC)

The monthly review has been discussed here before and the consensus was that it was reliable. If a reliable publication reprints something from a non-reliable publication, then they are putting it through their own editorial processes which we deem to be acceptable. There is no basis in our processes for saying that everything published in a deprecated publication must be untrue. Once it is taken up by a trusted source, we can use it. Of course, there are the same considerations we use for every other article, in this case it is solved by attribution. The factual basis of this story is not disputed by anyone, not even Mason. It is just a question of WP:DUE at this point. Boynamedsue (talk) 08:47, 30 June 2022 (UTC)

Can you link to a recent discussion finding MR reliable? I can only see a very old discussion of the journal, not a discussion of the website which very different. BobFromBrockley (talk) 14:52, 3 July 2022 (UTC)

There is a difference between a reliable source analyzing and examining an article found in another source and a source simply hosting another source's article. In this case, Monthly Review is simply republishing/hosting an article straight from the Grayzone. They are not endorsing the reliability of the article. There is even a disclaimer at the bottom stating: Monthly Review does not necessarily adhere to all of the views conveyed in articles republished at MR Online. Our goal is to share a variety of left perspectives that we think our readers will find interesting or useful. —Eds. Dr. Swag Lord (talk) 09:19, 30 June 2022 (UTC)

If a reliable source publishes views, it confers those views with notability. By republishing the article, they take equal legal responsibility for any factual inaccuracy, and that disclaimer does not disavow responsibility for factual inaccuracy. Now, nobody is arguing for language stating that Mason did the things he is accused of, though there is near unanimity that he did, and he doesn't even deny it himself, but an attributed statement detailing his activities is warranted. Boynamedsue (talk) 12:03, 30 June 2022 (UTC)

No. Such a website would most likely be protected by Section 230. Per Bollinger et. al.,: Section 230(c)(1) is a barrier to liability for hosting, republishing, and disseminating content furnished by third parties. Specifically, it provides: "No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider."[2]. Please also read WP:SYNDICATED: A syndication company may offer the same story in multiple formats...Whatever the length or format, they usually contain the same claims and are written or edited by the same person or team. Syndicated news pieces may be independent of the subject matter, but they are not independent of one another. When considering notability or due weight within an article, all of the related articles by the same publishing syndicate, no matter how widely they were sold, are treated as the same single source. All claims of reliability and due weight, in this case, rests with The Grayzone--not Monthly Review. Dr. Swag Lord (talk) 21:26, 30 June 2022 (UTC)

Well, I'm not a lawyer, so perhaps they don't have legal liability under US law. However, they have chosen to repeat it, without any disclaimer regarding facts, which means they lend it their own credibility. WP:SYNDICATED is not relevant here, I am not claiming that two sources exist. It is one source, but its credibility is higher because it has been reprinted by a better publication. I consider the Grayzone article to be reliable due to its publication in Monthly Review, I do not think there are two sources, one reliable and one not.--Boynamedsue (talk) 06:37, 1 July 2022 (UTC)

...but its credibility is higher because it has been reprinted by a better publication. I consider the Grayzone article to be reliable due to its publication in Monthly Review. Sorry, this opinion is not backed up by any known policy or guideline. The WP:GRAYZONE consensus still applies which found that the site publishes false or fabricated information. Dr. Swag Lord (talk) 07:42, 1 July 2022 (UTC)

Well, I don't see your view that once something has been published in a non-reliable source, it can never become reliable as being valid or in any way logical. You are arguing that the first place something is published defines its status forever, and that is plainly not correct.Boynamedsue (talk) 08:32, 1 July 2022 (UTC)

So if InfoWars decided to pay CNN to republish one of its articles in full, does that make the InfoWars article a reliable source now? Dr. Swag Lord (talk) 17:27, 1 July 2022 (UTC)

If a news source accepts paid content without distinguishing it from its own content it is not reliable, so no. However, if CNN looked at an infowars article and decided it was worthy of publishing due to its value and importance as a piece of news, then, theoretically, yes. Your argument would state that if a blog piece was picked up by the New York Times and put on its front page, then it would not be a reliable source or notable. That is not the way it works here. --Boynamedsue (talk) 07:00, 2 July 2022 (UTC)

I think there may be some confusion here. If, say, a New York Times journalist wrote an original story saying: "Grayzone reported X about Paul Mason. We, at the New York Times, are able to confirm the accuracy of that account," then Grayzone's story would be verified and we are able to include it in WP, citing the New York Times. But if for some reason the New York Times simply decided to republish the Grayzone article with a disclaimer "The New York Times does not necessarily adhere to all of the views conveyed in articles republished at NYTIMES.com" then the reliability rests with the original publisher. This is fairly routine. Just check some entries on WP:RSP, e.g., WP:WND: WorldNetDaily's syndicated content should be evaluated by the reliability of its original publisher. Also see: Web syndication. Dr. Swag Lord (talk) 20:40, 2 July 2022 (UTC)

What you write here is a little straw-clutchy. Nothing on WP:RSP or WP:WND seems applicable to this case, and the specific case of WorldNetDaily is not applicable beyond that individual publication. It is the opposite of the situation we are discussing, where a the reprinter is MORE reliable than the initial publisher. I don't think there is much to be said here, I think republishing by a better source can render a source reliable, you don't.--Boynamedsue (talk) 21:21, 2 July 2022 (UTC)

Where was there a consensus attained that Monthly Review is WP:GREL? I've looked through the archives and I can't find a discussion that clearly agrees with that. Meanwhile there are multiple WP:GREL sources that have pointed out its promotion of Xinjiang denialism through the republication of Qiao Collective trash. Why would we trust that stories republished by them are reliable? — Ⓜ️hawk10 (talk) 23:48, 1 July 2022 (UTC)

Hi, there is a consensus in this discussion, the OP initially double its reliability, many voices state it is reliable, the OP then changes their mind.--Boynamedsue (talk) 07:06, 2 July 2022 (UTC)

That thread is from 14 years ago and I don't think the participants reached a clear consensus about the reliability of Monthly Review. They were mostly arguing if "extremist" sources are permissible or not. Also, about half of those participants are indefed. Dr. Swag Lord (talk) 20:08, 2 July 2022 (UTC)

To echo Dr.Swag Lord, Ph.d, an informal noticeboard discussion that took place over fourteen years ago on the publication's reliability does not constitute present consensus. The WP:RS guideline has changed a bit during that time and a source's reliability for facts can be different now than it was a decade ago (see WP:NEWSWEEK and WP:ROLLINGSTONEPOLITICS). Especially since Monthly Review has had substantial and more recent problems with its reputation for fact-checking and accuracy in media it republishes, the 2008 discussion does not establish current consensus that the publication is WP:GREL. — Ⓜ️hawk10 (talk) 20:17, 2 July 2022 (UTC)

 Note: This has been previously discussed at Talk:The Grayzone#Masongate: the leaked Paul Mason - Amil Khan correspondence. — Ⓜ️hawk10 (talk) 18:43, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

Also that discussion (and presumably all references to this thread about reliability) refer to the monthly publication (hence the name), while the particular article in question is from MROnline (About MR), which has open submissions and unknown review standards (Do they fact-check? They simply say "Our goal is to share a variety of left perspectives that we think our readers will find interesting or useful."). The one thing that's for certain is that Blumenthal himself submitted/adapted the Grayzone article for MROnline.

And the notion that the green check mark suddenly grants an aura of quality to all the crap that a publication associates with is nonsense, notably if they do not make their editorial practices known. Standards vary, as does scrutiny – there is some gray area in say NYT commentary/guest submissions where they have been known to fail to fact-check despite claiming they do – which is why at minimum in-line attribution is necessary, to the original source. SamuelRiv (talk) 20:56, 2 July 2022 (UTC)

I would suggest MR provides notability for attributing a view, I don't see any evidence of unreliability, except that it published one opinion article that specialists in a field strongly disagreed with. I personally consider it reliable, and so did the users the last time it was discussed. One contested article is not enough to render a source unreliable. The Times is considered reliable despite regularly being castigated by regulators for publishing false information. Boynamedsue (talk) 21:21, 2 July 2022 (UTC)

I don't think any of this pertains to WP:N. If you're saying that their online blog is reliable, even though it more or less provides the same disclaimer that an op-ed section would have, I don't really know what say except that op-eds and guest blog posts are rarely reliable for statements of fact owing to a lack of fact-checking in that area. That MRO published it as a guest blog post doesn't allow us to do anything except to make our weighting decision based on the reliability of The Grayzone itself, which is truly subpar. — Ⓜ️hawk10 (talk) 22:01, 2 July 2022 (UTC)

• Not reliable for BLP information and absolutely not in Wikivoice None of the sources given seem to be what would be considered reliable sources for inclusion of details in Wikivoice. If due weight considerations and discussions determine that the sources are important enough to include, then they should be included with attribution due to them being opinion pieces. But I would find due weight hard to support in this regard without higher quality sources covering the subject, particularly for the BLP article. Silverseren^C 06:12, 30 June 2022 (UTC)

Thanks everyone for participating. I'll summarise the discussion by saying that the sources mentioned are strong enough to support mentioning the leaked emails and the Grayzone 's view on their significance. Most editors agree that Wikivoice should not be used based on these sources, so any opinions should be attributed appropriately. In a few days I'll start RfC's on the pages for Paul Mason and the Grayzone. Burrobert (talk) 12:17, 3 July 2022 (UTC)

I disagree with that summary. The consensus is clear that these are very weak sources at best and certainly to weak for contentious BLP material. My own view is that the Rising talk show cannot be used as a source for facts or in determining due weight for opinion; an MRonline report of a piece in a deprecated blog is straightforwardly unreliable; that WSWS is not reliable and certainly not for this sort of content; and that In Defence of Marxism might be reliable for facts to do with Trotskyist sectarians or Leninist theory but not for content relating to the topics involved here. Therefore Private Eye is the only potentially usable source, which doesn’t leave much to say, particularly about Mason. BobFromBrockley (talk) 15:02, 3 July 2022 (UTC)

I'll leave it up to the participants in the RfC's then. They can make up their own minds about this discussion. The reliability will of course depend on the nature of the proposed text. All sources support including the uncontroversial points that

- Mason's email account was hacked.

- the contents surfaced on the Grayzone

- the contents included a discussion about deplatforming the Grayzone which involved Mason, Amil Khan and Andy Pryce (we could discuss whether this point should be attributed to the Grayzone).

Some points from the Grayzone articles have not yet been well covered by other sources. Some of this is probably due to the threat of legal action. For example Emma Briant's role in the discussion has not been well covered so it would be best not to mention her in any proposed text. Mason's idea of astroturfing black and Asian voices to push back on black and brown critics of the Ukraine proxy war may have been mentioned in Rising but probably should also be left out. I can't find a link to the BBC's assault on Stop The War Coalition in which Mason apparently appears. We may be able to include that item once the programme is published and generates coverage. In short, any proposal should be limited to the three uncontroversial items above. Burrobert (talk) 17:38, 3 July 2022 (UTC)

"I'll summarise the discussion by saying that the sources mentioned are strong enough to support mentioning the leaked emails and the Grayzone 's view on their significance". Come on, that's a poor summary of the consensus. If you count Bob now, 6 editors in this thread agree the sources are extremely weak. Only one editor, besides the OP, agrees the sources are good enough. We are dealing with a BLP here. We need explicit consensus and robust sourcing. I'm not sure how many times I need to say this but the hacked contents of a living person's email will never be an "uncontroversial" point (even if we have super strong sources). Dr. Swag Lord (talk) 21:02, 3 July 2022 (UTC)

I am not aware of any BLP policy related to leaked or hacked documents. There are many well-known examples of such documents being subject to reporting and then finding their way into Wikipedia articles. It would be worth raising the issue at the BLP Noticeboard. Burrobert (talk) 14:26, 4 July 2022 (UTC)

Such private, personal matters would be covered by WP:BLPPRIVACY. I'm not saying it's forbidden for such instances finding their way into WP articles. It's just that the quality of sources would need to be pretty high and proper WP:WEIGHT and neutrality would need to be maintained. Dr. Swag Lord (talk) 01:12, 5 July 2022 (UTC)

I'm personally somewhat hesitant to apply WP:BLPPRIVACY here if it is the case that RS report in a similar manner to the way that The Grayzone did. We're not really talking about personal information here and the risk of identity theft from any of the allegedly hacked materials seems to be low. I also don't see any policy-based difference for excluding coverage based solely on the fact that materials were hacked by a hostile agent and then leaked to a blog; I don't see a clear policy-based reason to differentiate this between an insider having downloaded his emails without his permission and then handed them over to that same blog. The biggest issue (in my view) here is that no generally reliable news sources seem to have touched this story in any way that can be seen as giving it credibility. If this were actually an event with lasting significance, surely something reliable would have picked it up by now. I don't buy the arguments about legal concerns being able to explain the lack of reporting here; the United States dominates anglophone media and there are no legal means of a court exercising prior restraint on a newspaper's reporting on a foreign government's alleged contact with a left-leaning figure. The only other legal concern I can think of would be libel, but that would be evidence against including this on Wikipedia. — Ⓜ️hawk10 (talk) 04:21, 6 July 2022 (UTC)

References

Trans Safety Network

Source: [3]

Articles: Stella O'Malley and Genspect

Content: Trans Safety Network described SEGM as "an anti-trans psychiatric and sociological think tank" and fringe group. They reported that most of SEGM's funding came in donations greater than 10,000 dollars. In addition, they reported that seven of SEGM's eleven clinical advisors are also members of the Genspect team. Namely, O'Malley, Julia Mason, Avi Ring, Sasha Ayad, Roberto D'Angelo, Marcus Evans and Lisa Marchiano.

For context, Trans Safety Network is a registered non-profit Community Interest Company which reports on anti-trans groups. They are often quoted and referred to in accepted sources as an expert source, and we cite them in other locations on Wikipedia. Does this count as a reliable source/acceptable reference? — Preceding unsigned comment added by TheTranarchist (talk • contribs) 14:45, 28 June 2022 (UTC)

The website itself appears to entirely contain self-published blogposts, so citing the website for facts about living people seems like a bad idea policy-wise. I'm not particularly familiar with whether Mallory Moore is a WP:SMESME for this sort of stuff; the extent to which the source is reliable for facts (that are not about living people) hinges on that. That being said, if the only basis for claiming that the individual is an SME is that they once wrote for TruthOut, I'm skeptical given that the website has been OK with and doubled down on per se libelous complete fabrications in the past even after being proven wrong. What's your rationale for considering Moore an SME? — Ⓜ️hawk10 (talk) 16:30, 28 June 2022 (UTC)

Agree. BTW Incredible strikeout, thank you for your service. GordonGlottal (talk) 19:25, 5 July 2022 (UTC)

They are notable enough to be treated by other reliable sources as worthy of comment, and are a registered non-profit devoted to this issue. Mallory has been cited for her statements as a researcher by various other reputable news orgs. The claims present are all backed with sources in the article and easily verifiable. Namely, that is how TSN described SEGM, most of the donations are > $10,000, and those members are on the board of both teams. TheTranarchist ⚧ Ⓐ (talk) 17:07, 28 June 2022 (UTC)

Source X is always reliable for the claim "Source X says Y", where Y is a direct quote. But WP:SPS says to Never use self-published sources as third-party sources about living people, even if the author is an expert, well-known professional researcher, or writer. The group does not appear to be a well-established news outlet nor does the report appear to be WP:SCHOLARSHIP. If I were to make an investigative report on a subject about which I am an expert and post it on my own blog, I don't think anybody would reasonably be able to cite it on Wikipedia for contentious facts about living people even if my analysis is wholly correct. And, that a source is a "registered non-profit" that news organizations find worthy of comment does not make their website reliable within its area of focus; by that logic, the website of Moms for Liberty would satisfy the qualifications to be a reliable source for public education in the United States. While there are some nonprofits that are WP:GREL, this doesn't exactly have the longstanding reputation for fact-checking and accuracy coupled with strong editorial review processes that something like Amnesty International or Pew Research Center does.

On top of that, the text of the report doesn't quite support the sentence as-written; the only way to conclude that most of SEGM's funding came in donations greater than 10,000 dollars would be to conclude that the GoFundMe accounted for over two-thirds of the group's funding at the time the report was written. The report itself doesn't allege this, but instead says that they can't find tax return data on the group despite efforts to search online. So, in that sense, no the source is not reliable for the claim that They reported that most of SEGM's funding came in donations greater than 10,000 dollars. The bigger question is whether or not the source is WP:DUE for the remainder of the content. If there aren't any established NEWSORGs or scholarly works that have provided weight to the particular parts of this report, then the answer is that it's almost certainly WP:UNDUE. — Ⓜ️hawk10 (talk) 17:57, 28 June 2022 (UTC)

Did you mean Subject-matter expert when you linked to WP:SME?? SVTCobra 17:12, 28 June 2022 (UTC)

I did; thank you for pointing this out. I've struck the erroneous link and inserted one to the article. — Ⓜ️hawk10 (talk) 17:29, 28 June 2022 (UTC)

Yes I would say that Trans Safety Network are reliable. Articles published by TSN have been cited in scholarly research as authoritative; [4], [5], [6], as well as in reliable media; [7], [8], [9].

Mallory herself has been quoted in media sources as a researcher; [10], [11], [12], [13], [14] as well as in scholarly research; [15], [16], and by at least one legal scholar [17]. As such I believe she qualifies as a subject matter expert. Sideswipe9th (talk) 18:44, 28 June 2022 (UTC)

Maybe related Draft:Trans Safety Network (edit | [[Talk:Draft:Trans Safety Network|talk]] | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views). --SVTCobra 19:06, 28 June 2022 (UTC)

I agree with Mhawk10. WP:BLPSPS is very clear and we have to be cautious with BLPs. Sometimes well-known blogs and other SPSes are cited in the occasional academic paper, and lots of blogs and tweets get linked in media sources - especially ones with a clear political POV on a matter. Crossroads ^-talk- 06:51, 29 June 2022 (UTC)

• Mallory counts as a subject-matter expert per what Sideswipe9th said, and Trans Safety Network has at least some use by others; they're reasonably citable with attribution for the opinions in the first part of the paragraph. But we cannot cite a SME directly for WP:BLP-sensitive stuff, and should generally use the highest-quality sources for that regardless. Based on that, is fine for the first three sentences (which do not name any individuals) but I'd skip the final sentence with the names, which isn't really necessary anyway. --Aquillion (talk) 20:12, 29 June 2022 (UTC)
• I'd say that anyone commenting on politically sensitive trans issues should be attributed in-line, expert or not. It's still an extremely young movement with a pretty vigorous and sometimes messy debate even in academia. Now what's known specifically about Moore that would make her articles an RS? She's a relatively local journalist, so she knows the editorial process, but that says nothing of whether the blog in question has any such process or standard. She's also not an academic, and most of the reason academics can be considered reasonably reliable as self-published sources is that they face significant consequences if they are academically deceptive or negligent even in something like a personal blog. Of course the other test is if the work itself is verifiable -- if all sources are meticulously cited -- and she does a pretty decent job of that in her SEGM article. The warnings above about BLP are correct, but this seems like a reasonable article to use when discussing an organization, with attribution. And use common sense with hot issues to avoid nonsense: if you use it for a fact, double-check their source link for the fact, and remember to cite "source, as quoted by blog." SamuelRiv (talk) 05:49, 2 July 2022 (UTC)

Comment Google news searches certainly produce results for site:transsafety.network. To what extent can the normal rules such as of WP:RSOPINION be brought to apply? GregKaye 09:37, 5 July 2022 (UTC)

The ordinary rules of RSOPINION ([s]ome sources may be considered reliable for statements as to their author's opinion, but not for statements asserted as fact already apply here. In general, a piece in which X author wrote Q opinion is a reliable primary source for the fact that X author wrote Q opinion, even if it's a self-published blog (see: WP:ABOUTSELF). Problems can occur when that opinion involves contentious claims about other living people and is self-published (WP:BLPSPS), when the opinion advocates fringe theories (WP:PSCI), or when basically no other sources talk about that particular opinion (WP:WEIGHT/WP:BALASP).

On a separate note, the fact that google news indexes a website is not a good measure of that website's reliability. Google news also produces results for site:infowars.com, and InfoWars is quite a bad source. Looking through the WP:DEPREC publications, it also indexes basically all of them: RT, The Grayzone, Veterans Today, Global Times, ANNA-news, Baidu Baike, CGTN, CrunchBase, The Daily Caller, The Daily Mail, The Daily Star, The Epoch Times, Frontpage Magazine, The Gateway Pundit, HispanTV, Jihad Watch, Last FM, LifeSiteNews, MintPress News, National Enquirer, New Eastern Outlook, NewsBlaze, Newsmax, Notable Names Database, Occupy Democrats, One America News, Press TV, Rate Your Music, Republic TV, Sputnik News, The Sun, Taki's Magazine, TeleSur, The Unz Review, VDARE, Voltaire Network, WorldNetDaily, Zerohedge, Breitbart, and Lenta. In fact, aside from self-published peerage websites, the only deprecated publications that don't appear to be indexed by Google News were BestGore, NewsBreak, News of the World. — Ⓜ️hawk10 (talk) 19:17, 5 July 2022 (UTC)

References

Are any of these sources reliable?

While looking for a good source on the fact that about-to-be-Prime-Minister of Israel, Yair Lapid, is color blind (at that time I ended up using a Hebrew source, today I upgraded to an English-language one), I found a more interesting claim - that Bill Clinton is. Can any of the following sources be used for this? And can the same source also be used for the other listed people?

1. https://www.ranker.com/list/color-blind-celebrities/celebrity-lists
2. https://www.improveeyesighthq.com/famous-color-blind-people.html
3. https://healthresearchfunding.org/famous-people-color-blindness
4. https://embracebio.wixsite.com/education/single-post/2017/09/06/colour-blindness-awareness-day

Animal lover |666| 15:05, 30 June 2022 (UTC)

Ranker is a low quality content farm (e.g. the blurb for each entry is scraped from Wikipedia). Improveeyesighthq is a self-published blog (see their about page). There is no information about healthresearchfunding whatsoever, but the nature of their articles suggests that they are also a content farm. Anybody can create a personal page on wixsite and there is no information on who is behind the content on embracebio.wixsite.com. In summary: None of these sources can be used for anything, let alone BLPs. 87.115.237.229 (talk) 19:05, 30 June 2022 (UTC)

For Clinton and others, you could use: Sun-Sentinel & San Diego Union Tribune. WikiVirusC^(talk) 19:19, 30 June 2022 (UTC)

@WikiVirusC:Unfortunately, I was told on this noticeboard (the thread is at Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 378#Can a by-the-way quote from an article be used as a source on people who are not its subject) that any off-topic claim made by an article can't be used. This means that a proper source for such a claim must come either from a list of people with color blindness, an article about the person in question, or an article about a specific event/action/product/situation where this specific person's color blindness is relevant. Animal lover |666| 09:35, 1 July 2022 (UTC)

https://books.google.com/books?id=v0oL8xDJ0VEC&pg=PA43 Selfstudier (talk) 09:44, 1 July 2022 (UTC)

While I understand the basis of that, the guideline says should find sources that focus on it where possible. Either way the section from the book above should work. WikiVirusC^(talk) 10:44, 1 July 2022 (UTC)

I don't necessarily think this source is any better. It's also aggregating without citing a source. It seems likely to me that someone misinterpreted a joke about his poor fashion sense or his racial outlook at some point, because if he really was it'd be in an RS. GordonGlottal (talk) 18:39, 3 July 2022 (UTC)

This seems better (pg. 95) https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Encyclopedia_of_Genetic_Disorders_an.html?id=kXaMjwItP0oC GordonGlottal (talk) 18:46, 3 July 2022 (UTC)

Contemporary source with similar language: https://books.google.com/books?id=ZolYAAAAYAAJ Unfortunately I don't have access to the full book to see if they cite anything. GordonGlottal (talk) 19:12, 3 July 2022 (UTC)

Rosenthal and Phillips is on iArchive for rent, and they talk about the debate on p. 156, with a little bit more detail on the citation: According to Jim Lehrer of PBS, who was chosen as moderator of the debates because of his reputation for fairness and distaste for sensationalism, a system of three lights was used. Nothing is cited inline and there's no mention of Lehrer or a presidential debate in the bibliography from my search (remember, editors, that proper citations must include the citation within a citation, something like "primary, as cited in secondary"). But at that level of attribution (living people can be called right now at any time for confirmation) I think you use Rosenthal and Phillips, including the Lehrer attribution quote in the footnote, and maybe another editor will eventually be able to find the original citation one day. SamuelRiv (talk) 22:54, 5 July 2022 (UTC)

RfC: Business Insider news reporting

Insider won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Illustrated Reporting and Commentary for its reporting on the story of an woman's escape from an internment camp (see: Uyghur genocide); the story was filed under its news section. Currently, WP:RSP describes Insider — with the exception of its culture section, which is considered RS — as being unclear in terms of reliability (option 2).

Is Insider's news (section) coverage, at least since December 2021 (when the Pulitzer winning story published), considered generally reliable for factual reporting?

• Option 1: Generally reliable for factual reporting
• Option 2: Unclear or additional considerations apply
• Option 3: Generally unreliable for factual reporting
• Option 4: Publishes false or fabricated information, and should be deprecated

-- TheSandDoctor ^Talk 00:09, 2 July 2022 (UTC)

Survey (BI)

• Bad RfC and procedural close. WP:RFCNEUTRAL commands that the prompt should be neutrally worded, but this prompt expresses a specific call-to-action (Based on this Pulitzer development, I believe that we should reconsider its news coverage's classification). If you believe that the reporting should be reconsidered, then that should only appear in a comment or !vote, not in the RfC prompt. — Ⓜ️hawk10 (talk) 00:12, 2 July 2022 (UTC) (struck as moot 00:16, 2 July 2022 (UTC))

  @Mhawk10: Good catch. I didn't intend that. I have moved it to the discussion section. Does that address the concern? TheSandDoctor ^Talk 00:14, 2 July 2022 (UTC)

  @TheSandDoctor: Yes, that addresses my concern. As such, I've struck my !vote above as moot. — Ⓜ️hawk10 (talk) 00:16, 2 July 2022 (UTC)

  @Mhawk10: I am glad that I was able to address that and correct it soon enough. Thank you for raising that and for striking now that it is resolved. TheSandDoctor ^Talk 00:17, 2 July 2022 (UTC)

• Option 2: Additional considerations apply. That Pulitzer-winning piece is an excellent piece and drives home a woman's story about the abuses she endured in such a direct and powerful way that can only be conveyed in that illustrated medium. And by driving home the sheer scope of the inhumanity in that region through the one woman's lens there is little doubt that Insider deserves that prize. But there just far too many issues with Insider for me to consider it generally reliable for news over its entire lifetime.
  1. Reading through the previous RfC, almost nobody there considered Insider to be WP:GREL at that time. There may have been substantial improvements in the editorial control and fact-checking processes at BI in the intermittent two years (perhaps that culminated with the sort of detailed reporting necessary for a Pulitzer), but winning a Pulitzer in 2022 isn't good evidence that BI was reliable in 2013 (or really early in its history, when it was basically a collection of self-published blogs).
  2. The issues present at the time the source was evaluated in 2020 are still real issues that were present through much of the source's history (and may still be present today). Their editorial staffing decisions before acquisition by Axel Springer were... questionable. Prior to its acquisition by Axel Springer, the publication lacked editorial independence from advertisers, accepted (disclosed) quid-pro-quo payments from sources and article subjects, and repeatedly published false stories without doing basic fact-checking. And, while editorial staff kinda sorta purged themselves in 2016 shortly after they got acquired by Axel Springer, the mass exodus of staff didn't actually lead to swiftly improved editorial quality.
  3. I don't mind Axel Springer as an owner; it does publish Bild, but it also publishes Die Welt and Politico (although the acquisition of Politico is recent). Media companies often hold a variety of different publications, the quality of which can vary significantly (for example, News Corporation concurrently owned The Times of London, The Wall Street Journal, Fox News, News of the World, and The Sun). But the longstanding issues with the reliability of the website didn't go away overnight; in 2016 an analysis in Columbia Journalism Review called it the poster child for churnalism and that it often published clickbait that turned out to be false. The non-disparagement clauses in its contracts are... not great for journalistic accountability.

In short, even though Business Insider was acquired by Axel Springer in 2015, and there very well may have been an improvement in its more recent quality of coverage, I really can't point to 2016 as the date where journalistic practices improved; I'm not really able to set a firm date where I can say that these chronic issues with Business Insider came to a halt. Feel free to propose one and make an argument for it, but I'm just not sure I can support a time-based split on reliability without a good reason. The only reason I'm WP:MREL here as opposed to WP:GUNREL is (1) a Pulitzer means something and (2) I expect it to be fine for ordinary sorts of business reporting. But I can't in good faith look past all of the publication's issues and say it's been WP:GREL since it started. — Ⓜ️hawk10 (talk) 01:14, 2 July 2022 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I don't think that being run by a convicted felon is per se disqualifying (the New Jersey Globe is run by David Wildstein but is well-regarded even by its competitors and by people who are not sympathetic to Wildstein). But that the guy was chosen to lead a business publication after being more or less legally barred from the securities industry by the SEC for alleged fraud, combined with the publication's lack of editorial independence from advertisers, is a bit of a red flag regarding pre-Axel Springer BI. — Ⓜ️hawk10 (talk) 01:27, 2 July 2022 (UTC)

@Mhawk10: The question was "Is Insider's news (section) coverage, at least since December 2021 (when the Pulitzer winning story published), considered generally reliable for factual reporting" (emphasis added). This is also about the section, not the the publication as a whole. This would seemingly address all of the points that you raised? The question wasn't really about whether it was reliable for all of its history, but the Pulitzer is a very good sign that its recent (news) coverage has probably vastly improved and is more reliable, no? Publications can change over time (see WP:ROLLINGSTONEPOLITICS). TheSandDoctor ^Talk 01:36, 2 July 2022 (UTC)

@TheSandDoctor: I need to read more carefully before writing. That being said, there is still recognition that Business Insider is nowhere near the same journalistic league as Politico, and the continued use of traffic quotas leads to stories being a bit more clickbaity than news-y. Pulitzer or not, I'm not really confident that BI has flushed this stuff out yet, and I don't think that one excellent piece is enough to make the whole operation WP:GREL in light of its longstanding problems that seem to still to have been recognized as recently as this year. — Ⓜ️hawk10 (talk) 02:11, 2 July 2022 (UTC)

@Mhawk10: The problem is that the term "clickbait" is extremely subjective and arguably can be found at the NYT or elsewhere easily. Have you run into serious clickbait or (verifiably) false stories in their news section coverage in recent history? The concerns I have seen in past RfCs don't involve this section, were corrected as you'd expect from a site with editorial control, or are often years old (publications can change over time, see WP:ROLLINGSTONEPOLITICS); we have also proven previously with other publications (and even Insider) that sections can be individually assessed.

As an interesting aside, I just realized and double-checked (CTRL + F searched through the winners of years) and Politico and Insider are now tied in Pulitzer wins at once a piece. TheSandDoctor ^Talk 03:35, 4 July 2022 (UTC)

I was just reviewing the last RfC and wanted to add that Pyrrho the Skipper addressed this well previously, as did Bilorv's supplement. "We should stay neutral regarding the issue of "clickbait", as it's subjective and not all that helpful in determining fact-checking standards. The New York Times publishes headlines that could be considered clickbait. And I see that coming up frequently as a bit of an emotional, knee-jerk reason to discredit this publication." and the supplement (by Bilorv) "I'd add to this that headlines are not reliable, the body of articles is what we're talking about, so if "clickbait" is just in the headline then it doesn't matter much (though it would be strange to encounter, say, a publication with exceptional fact checking in its articles but lies in its headlines)." (emphasis in original) TheSandDoctor ^Talk 03:46, 4 July 2022 (UTC)

If my only objection were that the headlines are inaccurate and sensationalist, (which BI statistically engages in quite often, I would agree that this is no issue in light of WP:HEADLINE. But the long-standing concern here is not merely that the headlines are at times akin to those published by content farms—it is the churnalism that this news organization’s editorial structure actively has encouraged both before and after acquisition by Axel Springer. That the reputation of the firm remained that way—even in January 2022—cannot be reduced to merely its decision to frequently use sensationalist headlines. It reflects something much more substantial about the quality of its article content, which is ultimately what we care about when evaluating this publication’s reliability for news. — Ⓜ️hawk10 (talk) 19:45, 4 July 2022 (UTC)

Clickbait reflects a practice of "dramatization" that seems contrary to reliability. Of course, it's only one criteria in the catalog that we use — which is why it has little importance for an outlet like the New York Times but can have a lot of weight for i-promise-this-is-reliable.net. JBchrch talk 17:21, 5 July 2022 (UTC)

• Option 2, as per excellent summary by MHawk10. BobFromBrockley (talk) 15:06, 3 July 2022 (UTC)
• Option 1 No numerical vote yet per withinNo point being a jerk, even though I was a jerk before it got all commercialized.: The previous RfC has a great list of BI's failings and questionable practices by Chetsford. However, a few issues with the list: one is the acknowledged difference between pre-2016 practices and now. Another is the bottom CJR review mentions BI only in a paragraph referencing the CNN article directly beneath it. Minor nitpicks on a list of serious shortcomings, sure. There is also an important mitigating factor in these shortcomings: that BI publishes on its stories corrections, retractions, and financial COIs (which is why CJR is making a point about ethics in the latter). I am generally skeptical of "bias/reliability check" sites for news outlets, for both methodology and first principles, but they generally give BI a high rating (The Factual's review details some of the objections raised). And of course headlines should always be disregarded in these analyses for too many reasons. I will likely not vote for any option until the wording on the rating system is changed, but BI should be considered generally acceptable, with each article subject to editor scrutiny (just almost any other source should be). SamuelRiv (talk) 16:24, 3 July 2022 (UTC)

  @SamuelRiv: Just to clarify, that was the second previous RfC. The actual "previous" one before this was this one where the culture section/coverage was found to be RS. What did you mean by "working on the rating system is changed"? We stop saying "generally reliable"? If so, that appears to be the standard question set asked and the two (reliable/acceptable) would appear rather interchangeable in meaning? Not trying to pick a fight or anything, just clarifying for others which the latest RfC was and wanting to (personally) better understand your comment. TheSandDoctor ^Talk 03:41, 4 July 2022 (UTC)

  Regarding the actual previous RfC then, I guess my understanding of journalism is far more limited than I imagined because I had no idea what was going on there. I don't remember the last time I've read a "culture" story and I didn't recognize who half the people in those linked articles were. Apparently the kids all want to watch "my tube" now? I don't see why they can't just watch their own. Regarding the color rating system, I posted a comment on RSP about contradictory criteria and seeming misuse of the term "opinion". And of course the green check mark is portrayed by some users as if the veracity of a source is now intrinsic with the fabric of the universe. So I'm not really comfortable with the system as it stands. "Option 1: Generally reliable for factual reporting" would accurately summarize my opinion of BI from what I've assessed here, however. SamuelRiv (talk) 04:28, 4 July 2022 (UTC)

• Option 2 - There is some good content on the site, but it still has a lot of attention-grabbing headlines on less well-researched stories or mixed reporting/pov content. There are many more reliable sources for widely covered news and analysis, so case-by-case scrutiny for Insider is not too much of a burden. SPECIFICO talk 16:36, 3 July 2022 (UTC)
• Options 2 or 3 - Best not to fully trust any news media. GoodDay (talk) 17:05, 3 July 2022 (UTC)

  I think this is where the phrase "generally reliable" comes in; all outlets make mistakes, what matters is whether they correct them and the frequency of issues. If I understand correctly, by the logic in your comment, we'd deem every RS source to not be RS and call everything unreliable. TheSandDoctor ^Talk 02:55, 4 July 2022 (UTC)

If it's corporate backed? You're darn right not to trust it. GoodDay (talk) 02:14, 6 July 2022 (UTC)

• Option 1 Insider would probably get similar treatment here to HuffPost, Politico, etc. if it wasn't "business" Insider. Most of the objections here are old and could also be leveled at all media companies at some point. Insider is allowed to improve their standards over the year just like BuzzFeed (News). And look, they just won a Pulitzer. Editors need to look past their unwarranted icky feelings about this site. Pyrrho the Skipper (talk) 16:39, 4 July 2022 (UTC)
• Option 2. Basically a tabloid. Clickbait, informal style, speculation, hype, and this kind of vibe where you're very much aware of the fact that you're not reading something on the level of the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal. Do headlines such as "We got an exclusive look at the 24-slide LP deck European climate fund Climentum Capital used to close the first batch of its $156 million fund" and "Toast's CEO talks how his company will dominate the $55 billion restaurant-tech space even as its stock is slammed post-IPO by market headwinds" make you trust this outlet unconditionally? Me neither. I am aware that this is a superficial argument that doesn't reach the strength of Mhawk10's analysis but sometimes... you know it when you see it. About that Pulitzer, I will just note that it's in the Illustrated Reporting and Commentary...For a distinguished portfolio of editorial cartoons or other illustrated work (still, animated, or both) characterized by political insight, editorial effectiveness, or public service value. I fully appreciate the level of talent and the amount of work needed to achieve something like that but I'm not sure that it's that relevant to assess reliability in the context of Wikipedia. JBchrch talk 17:15, 5 July 2022 (UTC)

  @JBchrch: I will just note that none of the referenced premium stories are from the news section, which is predominately free reading, and therefore not exactly relevant to the question being asked. Have you seen any particular problems with the news section? The question here isn't evaluating the whole publication; this is asking specifically about their news section coverage. The average headline and story content for the news section seems rather newsy. e.g. "A long-lost letter from Alexander Hamilton about the war with the British has been returned and is now on display in Boston", "Highland Park shooting suspect charged with 7 counts of first-degree murder with 'dozens more' to be pursued, state attorney says", "China refutes NASA chief's claim that the country is looking to take over the moon", "The Highland Park shooting suspect confessed to carrying out the massacre during police interview, prosecutors say" etc. Normal, routine news coverage you would expect of a publication. BuzzFeed and BuzzFeed News, for example, are treated differently and we've already previously established that different Insider sections can be assessed differently (Insider's culture section is considered RS). TheSandDoctor ^Talk 00:41, 7 July 2022 (UTC)

  Thanks for clarifying that point, which I had indeed missed. However, I'm not sure it makes a difference. The way I understand how insider.com works is that it publishes individual stories which it categorizes with various tags. So for instance How a 'Minions' meme craze among teens may have boosted the new movie's box office is a "Media" story which can be also found in the "News" section. So, contrary to Buzzfeed and Buzzfeed News, which are two different websites, Insider is one single website, which I think should be assessed as a whole. (Perhaps that makes me a dissenter to Insider Culture RfC.) This is confirmed by the fact that even if you are in the News section of the website, if you click on "Latest", it shows you the latest stores published in all the sections of the website, including I'm a professional baker who tried making Martha Stewart's signature yellow cake. Here are 2 ways I'd improve her recipe., an article in the Food section. JBchrch talk 17:51, 7 July 2022 (UTC)

  @JBchrch: WP:ROLLINGSTONEPOLITICS demonstrates that while Rolling Stone is a single website, its sections can be assessed independently as well; as such, this isn't an unprecedented question. "Latest" is indeed the feed of all latest articles in all sections by the looks of it, but that is also irrelevant to this RfC at hand as already described. I was also mostly referring to insider.com/news (that was the Q), but on both sites in the "news" section the headlines appear generally normal (hence "generally reliable" being our standard) and like your average news story/site. TheSandDoctor ^Talk 17:58, 9 July 2022 (UTC)

  WP:ROLLINGSTONEPOLITICS came about basically because the magazine has a history of publishing false and (court-proven) libelous stories with scant fact-checking in the area of politics/social issues and only that area. Its reputation for fact checking and accuracy is very different for its music coverage, where it is regarded as being very good. But I’m not seeing something parallel here; most of the criticism I am seeing for Insider is about its site-wide practices, not just criticism of practices related to a specific topic area or subdomain. — Ⓜ️hawk10 (talk) 19:27, 10 July 2022 (UTC)

Discussion (BI)

• Based on this Pulitzer development, I believe that we should reconsider its news coverage's classification. --TheSandDoctor ^Talk 00:13, 2 July 2022 (UTC)

Religious publishers

Are books published by religious publishing companies (see Category:Religious publishing companies and its subcategories) WP:RS for biblical scholarship? In the event of variation or conflict, how should religious-publisher sources be weighed as compared with non-religious academic publishers (see Category:Academic publishing companies and its subcategories)?

Prior RSN discussions in Jun 2010, Sep 2010, Nov 2010, Jan 2011, Jul 2011, Apr 2015, Nov 2018, and Feb 2021 were inconclusive (I'd sum them up in the words of the last comment in the most-recent discussion: "depends on the topic").

This is a broad question that would affect many articles, but here are some examples of articles and some of the religious publishers they cite (in addition to non-religious academic publishers):

• Bible#Development and history, in its discussion of "variants" (how much do various copies of the books of the Bible vary from one another, and do those variations matter), cites sources published by Baker Publishing Group and InterVarsity Press
• Biblical criticism#Textual criticism: Westminster John Knox Press
• Textual criticism#New Testament: Kregel Publications
• Textual criticism of the New Testament: Far Eastern Bible College
• Textual variants in the New Testament (which actually lists the textual variants themselves): Tyndale House Publishers (which was discussed in the Feb 2021 RSN thread linked above, and should not be confused with the Oxford University house of the same name, this is an American evangelical publisher)

Does it matter that a publisher is religious or not, for "stuff about the Bible" (for lack of a better way to phrase it)? If it does matter, how does it matter--how should editors treat such sources? Thanks in advance, Levivich^[block] 02:45, 2 July 2022 (UTC)

Way too broad. There are stellar sources within that category and its subcategory (Ave Maria Press is an imprint that University of Notre Dame Press at times will use for religious studies texts), and some non-reputable ones (BJU Press is historically affiliated with Bob Jones University and doesn't really publish the sort of stuff we should be citing). Merely because a press is religious does not disqualify it as a publisher; as such, the particular publisher should be examined for its general reputation within the field.

The thing that you will encounter a lot of these religious presses is that there will be academic-level books, but also some that are written for a lower level or more popular audience. Within Ave Maria Press, for example, there are undergraduate textbook-level books written by world-class Notre Dame faculty but there are also high school textbooks and popular press books. It's similar to MacMillan in this respect, where the publisher is reputable and undergraduate-targeted works published by them are generally tertiary pieces of scholarship, but their high school textbooks and popular press books shouldn't be treated as if they were academic sources. WP:SOURCEDEF provides guidance here inasmuch as the piece of work itself (i.e. things particular to the specific book) and the author of the work are going to affect reliability; examining a book's target audience (undergrad/grad students vs high schoolers or the general public) and its author's credentials (i.e. are they a rando or are they a well-respected professor in the field) is going to be necessary, as reliable nonfiction publishers might well treat books with different target audiences with different editorial review rigor. But that goes for all non-fiction publishers that publish both popular press books and academic works, not just religious ones. — Ⓜ️hawk10 (talk) 04:03, 2 July 2022 (UTC)

How do you tell the difference between a reputable religious publisher and an unreputable one? For example, the publishers I listed above, how would I determine if they are good/bad? Assume for the sake of this thread the author is bona fide and writing for an academic audience, and the book is well-footnoted, etc. The only "variable" is the publisher. Levivich^[block] 04:17, 2 July 2022 (UTC)

It's much in the same way that you'd determine a reputable secular publisher vs an unreputable secular publisher. Does the publisher have a reputation for a strong editorial review process and do they have strong editorial controls? Are they affiliated with a reputable academic or scholarly institution (such as the relationship between Ave Maria Press and the University of Notre Dame)? Do well-respected authors in the relevant field frequently choose to publish scholarly works with them? And do their scholarly publications tend to get cited in other scholarship as a source for facts?

If the answer to these is all of the above is "yes", then it's likely that you have a reputable publisher within the relevant field. If the answer to all of them is "no", then it's rather unlikely that you have a reputable publisher in that field. — Ⓜ️hawk10 (talk) 04:33, 2 July 2022 (UTC)

Thanks. So basically evaluate it like any other source, it doesn't matter if it's religious or not? Levivich^[block] 05:23, 2 July 2022 (UTC)

Correct. Merely having (or not having) a religious affiliation doesn't move the needle towards being more reliable or less reliable, ceteris paribus. — Ⓜ️hawk10 (talk) 05:43, 2 July 2022 (UTC)

Right, it's all about the area of discussion. Similar to reliable mainstream press being considered unreliable for medical topics. Some religious press may be reliable for religious topics but not secular, or the opposite. Bakkster Man (talk) 18:04, 7 July 2022 (UTC)

@Levivich: a good test for any of these publishers attached to Bible colleges or schools is to check their accreditation. Generally, if they're not accredited (such as Hyles-Anderson College), or accredited only through a Christian accreditation agency (such as Pensecola Christian College), I wouldn't consider them reliable, and I doubt others would, either.--Ineffablebookkeeper (talk) ({{ping}} me!) 13:16, 3 July 2022 (UTC)

Whether a source is reliable always depends on what you're writing in the article. You might need to write something like "Most scholars say X, but this group says Y", in which case someone from 'this group', published by a school that is part of 'this group' is a good source. I agree with Mhawk10: it's basically the same as any other subject: There is no such thing as a source that is "always reliable" or "never reliable"; you can only determine whether a source is reliable by comparing it to the material that the source is meant to support. There are multiple factors that you evaluate for any source, and it's not necessary for every source to be perfect on every score.

As usual, it helps to know something about the subject and what the high-quality sources say. It might be nice to have gold-plated scholarly sources for every word, but you don't really need perfect sources when the content is ordinary, expected, mainstream views. Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit is not really an improvement over Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit. Readers only click on the refs in 3 out of 1,000 page views. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:31, 4 July 2022 (UTC)

What are the merits of https://metanumbers.com/ as an external link source for mathematics number articles?

I am curious to know whether https://metanumbers.com/ can be used as an external link for mathematics number articles? I use it fairly often on my own when looking for values such as total divisor count, aliquot sums, sums of divisors, arithmetic mean and geometric mean of n divisors, as well as euler totient values, for any given number up to 9223372036854775807 (that is the largest number stored/computed). Here is an example for the number 138: https://metanumbers.com/138. It also provides some extra base conversions (for bases 4, 5, 6, 10, 20 and 36, aside from the ones we provide on the info-box) for a given number, basic calculations (multiplications, divisions, exponentiation and nth roots), as well as basic geometric values (such as areas, surface areas, volumes, heights, diagonals, and circumferences) in elementary shapes like the circle, sphere, equilateral triangle, square, and cube. It also includes some cryptographic Hash functions for a number in question. I think it could be a nice addendum on some number page's external links, the only number that it provides that is not exact is the relative position of a number vis-a-vis its nearest prime number (even if the number inputted is prime). It has a very straightforward website layout that is well organized, and its color scheme is pleasant, in my opinion. It's a relatively new site, it went online in 2019. Thoughts? Radlrb (talk) 18:11, 3 July 2022 (UTC)

As a source, I would never use it. As an external link... not either. Anyone who needs to know properties of a given number may use a calculator or, if it's a complicated property, use the OEIS. If the property is basic enough, like primality, the guideline that we do not need to show rudimentary calculations applies. Although it's a nice website, MetaNumbers isn't in the spirit of how Wikipedia covers number articles; it's a bit too indiscriminate and is essentially just linking to a specialized calculator. Ovinus (talk) 01:55, 5 July 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for your input. My only issue is that there are many regular individuals who are not mathematicians that do not know what OEIS is, and might appreciate a simple tool like this website to find other properties we wouldn't list on our numbers page. Still, maybe in the future once the website is more clear about how they calculate their information, and who exactly is the developper of the website, then we'd maybe use a website like this as an external link. Radlrb (talk) 21:59, 5 July 2022 (UTC)

Almost everything on that site seems to be a pretty basic calculation, and every computer algebra program including the free SymPy can do it for the big numbers (but typically now they just pull from tables). OEIS doesn't always give long tables for everything (but they often link to them, though not always, grr), so calculation can be necessary, and verifiability for the largest numbers sometimes requires going beyond Numerical Recipes, which last time I used it was limited to int precision (32 bits at the time). For more complex stuff, or vandalism, or if people insist, the CRC would be the basic "source" for math tables I would use, though I'm not sure how much number theory it has (my copy is in a box right now as I've relied on computer algebra software and the internet for years far more than I should). I don't know – if an editor challenges you for a source for a basic calculation or table lookup then a stupid site like metanumbers is probably fine if it makes them happy. But since their site has no history like the CRC and is completely opaque about their methods – did they calculate it themselves, pull from free tables, Wolfram Alpha, etc. (any of which would be fine) – then I wouldn't cite it inline. SamuelRiv (talk) 03:34, 5 July 2022 (UTC)

Although I don't think it's a "stupid site," (you probably mean simple site I imagine :) ) since there are real people behind efforts to help others see properties in numbers, I think there are better options as external links. Just wondering what some editors think about this website. Indeed, it is a bit too obscure. Also, many curious people seeking properties of numbers might not know about better programs, or even OEIS to find basic information on numbers. Thank you for your input. Radlrb (talk) 22:02, 5 July 2022 (UTC)

Is Cryptome a reliable source for September 11 attacks advance-knowledge conspiracy theories?

How can we be sure the content is genuine? Doug Weller talk 11:39, 4 July 2022 (UTC)

Sorry, the specific link is this. Doug Weller talk 11:40, 4 July 2022 (UTC)

Cryptome does not look like a good source. Alex-h (talk) 13:44, 5 July 2022 (UTC)

Only checked the 4 part fox news but archive.org does retain copies (and video likely exists as well somwhere). So, while Cryptome is not a good source,it may lead to good sources. Though without further corroboration unnamed sources may be too little to meet WP:DUE. Slywriter (talk) 14:20, 5 July 2022 (UTC)

User:RickinBaltimore has reverted its use. Doug Weller talk 15:35, 5 July 2022 (UTC)

I would say that Cryptome would not be a valid source. It's a aggregator of sites, and in the cause of the article here, all of the sources listed were not reliable. RickinBaltimore (talk) 12:19, 6 July 2022 (UTC)

johnmenadue.com

The website is a public affairs site with independent contributors ran by former Australian diplomat John Menadue, but User:Horse Eye's Back said it's unreliable and removed all mentions of it. But I cannot find anything here that suggests it's actually unreliable. The source in question is [18] by journalist Marcus Rubenstein, formerly of Seven and SBS News. Any takes? 49.180.197.4 (talk) 17:11, 4 July 2022 (UTC)

Note that they describe themselves (possibly in a tongue in cheek fashion) as an "influential public policy journal"[19] not a "public affairs site" which often leads to them being cited as a journal... It's Menadue's personal fiefdom and they are open and honest about what they publish which is blog content not journalism or scholarship "We publish informed analysis and commentary on issues that matter to Australians, with a focus on politics, public policy, foreign policy and world affairs, defence and security, the economy, media, the arts and religion."[20] Horse Eye's Back (talk) 18:17, 4 July 2022 (UTC)

I think that most journalists aspire to being able to say "We publish informed analysis and commentary on issues that matter". That particular statement doesn't say that it's not a journalistic endeavor. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:17, 10 July 2022 (UTC)

The Guardian describes it as his blog, "Since 2013 he has published his blog ‘Pearls & Irritations’ at johnmenadue.com/blog."[21] Menadue himself refers to it as "my blog"[22] Horse Eye's Back (talk) 18:24, 4 July 2022 (UTC)

It is obviously a bit more than the average blog, but I did find that they accept user articles. I failed at finding information about editorial oversight or fact-checking. --SVTCobra 18:38, 4 July 2022 (UTC)

Editorial oversight and fact-checking appear to consist of Mr Menadue reviewing the submission, although it should be noted that the most prolific contributors (among the hundreds of single submission authors)[23] are Mr Menadue's friends so there may be more of an informal social group oversight dynamic for those. They do accept notes but its through their general contact us page and is deeply burried on the About Pearls and Irritations page "To alert us to a factual error or make a complaint, please use the contact us form." Horse Eye's Back (talk) 18:51, 4 July 2022 (UTC)

Their about page seems to indicate that (1) this started as a simple blog and (2) that they say that they edit user submissions for style, clarity and accuracy. I'm not really sure about the accuracy of that claim; another page tells a prospective contributor that we have very limited resources to edit your post. A particular article is literally a blogger referencing a "paper" that they've published on their own website with lots of language to try to promote their website's credibility. It's more of an advertisement than a news/analysis piece. And looking in a bit more, the author of that piece (Jaq James) appears to be quite sus (though Chinese state media consider her to be an academic researcher and a "Western Propaganda Analyst"). She's written four articles with them, all of which went up after The Australian reported on how her organization managed to mysteriously get information that had been stolen by Chinese government hackers. This is a bit of a red flag for me; we... don't exactly want to be citing this sort of thing as if it were somehow reliable.

The odd case of Jaq James aside, the articles generally read less like news reporting and more like an opinion and analysis than news reporting; I would hesitate to call it a WP:NEWSORG, and if it is one then (1) I'm skeptical of its reputation for fact-checking and accuracy and (2) it doesn't make a habit of labeling its opinion/analysis pieces as being distinct from news pieces. It's certainly not an academic journal. It appears to be something something like a CounterPunch, where there is minimal editorial oversight (if any) over submissions despite claiming to provide it, though the content issues I can identify for this website are less substantial than the issues with CounterPunch itself. I'm not really sure where we'd need to cite it, though I'm fine with WP:ABOUTSELF if it helps to build up a biography's section on someone's political positions or something of that sort. But I don't think that this can be read as anything other than pure WP:SPS. — Ⓜ️hawk10 (talk) 05:22, 5 July 2022 (UTC)

Appreciate your clarification Horse Eye. Can the site still be used for the opinions of some of its contributors, for instance [24] to state that that this is sole the personal views of former Australian diplomat Bruce Haigh? Also it's worth noting that Haigh has repeated his views on his personal website [25], and did not appear in the Chinese propaganda video at all. The other cited diplomats also made them independently of the video.--115.64.98.205 (talk) 00:32, 5 July 2022 (UTC)

I would think that WP:SELFPUB would apply for this blog. So, in other words, only use extremely cautiously, probably with in-text attribution and never as a source about living people. I would probably just try to find another source to support a statement unless it is an attributed opinion from a recognised expert in the field. Vladimir.copic (talk) 03:57, 5 July 2022 (UTC)

In that specific case I would think that Haigh's own blog would be the preferred source. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 17:32, 6 July 2022 (UTC)

WP:NEWSORG applies: analysis and commentary in any publication can only be considered reliable if written by an expert. In this case an expert would be someone who had published articles on the topic they were writing about in academic journals. But in that case weight would also apply, so it would only make sense to use this as a source for relatively obscure topics that receive little attention in reliable sources. TFD (talk) 00:14, 7 July 2022 (UTC)

Royal Central, deprecate?

I was just looking at Royal Central and I noticed that this page seems to directly copy from our Queen of Rhodesia article (and it doesn't even make sense in context with the cut and paste job). I was wondering, would something like this indicate that Royal Central is not a WP:RS that we can use? The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 19:53, 5 July 2022 (UTC)

This looks like a pretty clear-cut example of copying from Wikipedia. The website article's text:

In 1967, the Whaley Commission was set up by the Rhodesian government to review the constitution and come up with recommendations for alterations. After Her Majesty’s pardon was ignored, the government announced the country would no longer consider The Queen’s Official Birthday a public holiday. Instead, they would only fire a 21-gun salute on her actual birthday.

closely paraphrases the Wikipedia article's text:

The Whaley Commission had been set up by the Rhodesian government in 1967 to review the constitution and recommendations for alterations. After Queen Elizabeth II's pardon was ignored, the Rhodesian government announced that the Queen's Official Birthday would no longer be a public holiday and they would only fire a 21-gun salute on her actual birthday.

The website of course does not credit Wikipedia for this information, and the inclusion of language relating to the pardon (which is described in a different section of the Wikipedia article but not at all in the Royal Central piece) indicates that the website indeed borrowed from Wikipedia. Based off of this edit, you may be the copyright holder for the text that was closely paraphrased by that website without credit. If you believe that this constitutes a violation of your copyright, WP:SLVL may be of interest to you.

I'm unsure if this particular piece closely paraphrases other Wikipedia articles without providing credit, but I would not be surprised. It might be worth looking into that as well before asking for a retraction/re-licensing of the piece. — Ⓜ️hawk10 (talk) 20:19, 5 July 2022 (UTC)

And, without fail, a quick look through the lead of Rhodesia shows quite a bit of close paraphrasing, so close that Earwig lights up red. I'm interested if there are additional issues with other articles/authors on the website or if this is an incident that is isolated to one article/author. — Ⓜ️hawk10 (talk) 20:24, 5 July 2022 (UTC)

@The C of E: Milestones of a Monarch: The Rhodesia crisis (EARWIG 1, EARWIG 2) seemed to be enough to arouse suspicion in me to see if this was something that was a pattern with this journalist. I've done some more digging and it appears that the particular has repeatedly engaged in close paraphrasing from Wikipedia without attribution in her reporting on that website. I went through and checked articles written by the author against the version of the Wikipedia article that was live before the publication of her pieces. Below are a quick list of some other articles that closely paraphrase Wikipedia without attribution (with WP:EARWIG for convenience) and have been published in the past three months:

• William at 40: The early years of a future king (EARWIG)
• The ruler who has just been overtaken by The Queen (EARWIG)
• Milestones of a Monarch: The visit of Pope John Paul II (EARWIG)
• The murder of Lord Mountbatten (EARWIG)
• Why Michael Fagan didn’t face criminal charges when he broke into Buckingham Palace (EARWIG)
• The history of Royal Maundy Services (EARWIG)

This above list is in no way complete, since to create it I had to manually try and guess Wikipedia articles that the journalist may have copied from. I'm almost certain that I did not capture them all, since I'm not exactly an expert on the monarchy of the UK. But the fact that more might exist doesn't matter; there appears to be an ongoing editorial problem at this publication with respect to allowing close paraphrasing from Wikipedia to be published. And, as such, this publication may have a greater likelihood for citogenesis that a typical newspaper would. The publication is cited 301 times on Wikipedia, and that the author of the pieces identified above has been cited on Wikipedia for her reporting on the Royal family. I don't immediately have the time to go through 301 articles and check each for if citogenesis has occurred, but it seems like we should probably vet every single time the source has been used to see if we're currently being WP:CIRCULAR with this source. — Ⓜ️hawk10 (talk) 06:12, 6 July 2022 (UTC)

The article in question should not be used in Wikipedia because while journalism is a reliable source for what happened yesterday, the article is describing events that occurred decades ago. This article would probably come under analysis, which is not considered reliable wherever it is published because of the lack of the same fact-checking etc. one would expect for news stories. You would find lots of problems if you fact-checked all the articles on the Wall Street Journal editorial page or MSNBC's talk shows, but that does not make their news reporting unreliable. TFD (talk) 00:52, 7 July 2022 (UTC)

@The Four Deuces: Opinion pages of the WSJ or MSNBC talk shows aside, do the instances of apparent close paraphrasing and copying from Wikipedia not concern you with respect to the risk of citogenesis? — Ⓜ️hawk10 (talk) 01:25, 7 July 2022 (UTC)

Not really, because we would never use this or similar articles as sources, unless they were written by experts. I think what this shows though is why Wikipedia policy never considers analysis written by non-experts to be reliable. The recommendation in this discussion page is to deprecate, which would mean that articles by experts would be excluded. TFD (talk) 02:51, 7 July 2022 (UTC)

I understand why deprecating a publication for one author's plagiarism would be a bit of an overstep, but I do think that it might be an issue more broadly if the website were to (for example) not remove the articles after plagiarism is discovered. @The C of E: do you happen to have reached out to their editorial staff about this issue? — Ⓜ️hawk10 (talk) 04:37, 7 July 2022 (UTC)

@Mhawk10: I just did using the contact form on their website, but I didn't use their email for media requests. We'll see what happens. The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 08:07, 7 July 2022 (UTC)

Christianheadlines.com

Is christianheadlines.com a reliable source? Thoughts? It's widely used throughout our encyclopedia. Therapyisgood (talk) 21:28, 5 July 2022 (UTC)

• Is it? I only see it on 54 pages. That said, it looks like a personal website with no particular reputation for fact-checking and accuracy, so I'd say it doesn't pass WP:RS. --Aquillion (talk) 23:21, 5 July 2022 (UTC)
• It's not a personal website (it's part of a Christian media conglomerate), but it is a self-described blog. I don't really see evidence of strong editorial controls. It might be reliable for the viewpoints of the folks who write for it (in an WP:ABOUTSELF way), but it looks like this should be treated as a self-published source unless evidence of editorial review can be established. — Ⓜ️hawk10 (talk) 03:55, 6 July 2022 (UTC)

We Got This Covered revisited

It seems that We Got This Covered (WP:WEGOTTHISCOVERED) no longer accepts non-staff contributions. https://wegotthiscovered.com/write/ now redirects to their main page, and their About Us page lists several editors and staff. That's not to say it's now a perfectly reliable source, but the "lack of editorial oversight" and "contributions accepting from non-staff contributors" appear to no longer apply. DannyC55 (Talk) 21:39, 5 July 2022 (UTC)

Reliability of The Dicebreaker (News)

Note: I am pinging active editors who discussed in the previous RSN on Dicebreaker, and several participants from the discussion of sources in BTG Wikiproject. Many thanks!

@NeverTry4Me: @Jayron32: @Sam Walton: @Piotrus: Recently, I moved this article from draftspace to mainspace, after (I believed) that it had some improvements. Unfortunately, I haven't moved a draft to mainspace before, it was also submitted for AfC, so unfortunately it displayed as an error. Apologies for this mistake and possible inconvenience. Still, as per the AfC instructions, as The draft was moved to the Article space without being formally reviewed (i.e. a manual move), and I felt that it was all right at Remove the template because the article was moved into article space by a non-reviewer, but should be in article space (i.e. it is an acceptable page). Several other editors did some ref fixing, but another editor commented that it was "not ready for mainspace", and there was a dispute on whether refs are RS (see my user page's last discussion. Per the WikiProject, Dicebreaker is reliable, IGN is also reliable according to RSP. A previous discussion had consensus that it's generally reliable, but the other editor also made insightful points, including that the news article was sourced from primary sources from the publisher, and said that it was "a commercial source" and "advertisement".

IMO the article could remain at mainspace, with four reliable refs (1, 4, 5, 6), but could you please comment if the first source is reliable? Also, the sixth ref is a magazine that hasn't be discussed before, so does it count towards GNG. Therefore, should the article be kept, or should it be draftified instead (if the latter is so, apologies for my incorrect move)? Many thanks for your time and help, and thanks for NeverTry4Me for the time and insight on improving this article! VickKiang (talk) 03:46, 6 July 2022 (UTC)

Mostly not reliable: Most online media use subscription, disclosed advertisement, and AdSense or other ads for revenue. But dicebreaker.com, owned by Gamer Network Limited, neither have a subscription nor has any disclosed advertisement or any AdSense or other ads for revenue which raises the question, "How the staff are paid for their work?" To maintain a website/portal, and online media, the owner company or individual owner needs revenue generation to pay the staff as not staff works for free. So their contents are in doubt of "undisclosed promotional". _{- Signed by} NeverTry4Me ^Talk 04:07, 6 July 2022 (UTC)

I don't agree with this. Could you explain why you believe that companies without a subscription is mostly not reliable? The editorial policies are located and are clear IMO. There are loads of sites without subscription, so do you believe all of them are unreliable? I also think that you haven't read this disclosure before forming the conclusion:

Dicebreaker’s editorial and advertising are handled by separate teams. Dicebreaker’s website and video content will never be influenced or impacted by commercial considerations. Any sponsored content will be clearly labelled as such, and produced in a way that preserves the editorial integrity of the team and other Dicebreaker content. We sometimes link to retailers such as Amazon using affiliate links, from which we may receive some money. When present in content, these links will be expressed using impartial language. Affiliate links have no influence on editorial content or coverage. All content that appears on the Dicebreaker website and on the Dicebreaker YouTube channel is at the discretion of the Editor-in-Chief and strives to uphold the standards set out above. If you feel that any of our content has failed to uphold these standards, please contact the Editor-in-Chief. That they gain their income from links is a normal method in lots of websites, please read this. Many thanks! VickKiang (talk) 04:11, 6 July 2022 (UTC)

Generally reliable I agree with the previous discussion, it's generally reliable for reviews and news, and count towards GNG, but should, like all sources, not be the only one used. The source has a credible editorial team, the editor in chief worked in other reliable sources. I also strongly disagree with the previous comment that a company should be considered as "undisclosed promotional" without a subscription, it's at best a speculation, see my comments above. That said, it's a good, not the best, ref, and its Features and Opinions section are subjective (and maybe marginally reliable), but otherwise it's an RS IMO. VickKiang (talk) 03:45, 8 July 2022 (UTC)

Per the previous discussion I agree that Dicebreaker is generally reliable, given the clear editorial policies. Nowhere on Wikipedia:Reliable sources does it state that websites need to have a clear revenue stream to be considered reliable. Regardless, the website is clearly ad supported, so I'm not sure where NeverTry4Me is coming from. With my adblocker turned off I currently see a big advert for Sonic Origins on the front page, individual articles note that they contain affiliate links, and are broken up by further advertisements. Sam Walton (talk) 07:25, 6 July 2022 (UTC)

Thanks! I too agree with your view, I think the policies are fairly clear, and it's generally an RS. I think that NeverTry4Me had insightful ideas, but I don't personally agree with that point. VickKiang (talk) 07:33, 6 July 2022 (UTC)

I'd call it generally or situationally reliable. I do agree there may be biased towards positive reviews, and it is not unlikely they are paid for them, although I think they imply in half legalese they don't do shady things like this (have you seen https://www.dicebreaker.com/editorial-policy?). I'd therefore be a bit cautious when it comes to citing 'paise' from them, although even that is fine as long as it is clearly attributed. I'd be fine for using them in other contexts, _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 09:23, 6 July 2022 (UTC)

@Piotrus: IMO I agree with Piotrus's argument. Citing "praise" or positive reviews requires probably at least three positive reviews, and The Dicebreaker isn't the best source- it has Features[26] section which is middling at best, and its editor in chief is fairly qualified, and worked in Tabletop Magazine, but there are also contributor opinion pieces, which are subjective. They also focus much on best of lists, but it's good enough for its news to be reliable, reviews are all right with attribution, and I think it is generally reliable except for Opinion pieces (see here), which are marginally reliable. Thanks! VickKiang (talk) 09:53, 6 July 2022 (UTC)

Jonathan Lamont's review at MobileSyrup

Is the following source considered reliable for factual reporting in context?

• Option 1: Generally reliable for factual reporting
• Option 2: Unclear or additional considerations apply
• Option 3: Generally unreliable for factual reporting
• Option 4: Publishes false or fabricated information, and should be deprecated

Source

MobileSyrup (mobilesyrup.com  )

Article

GrapheneOS

Content

1. In 2022, Jonathan Lamont of MobileSyrup, in a review of GrapheneOS installed on a Pixel 3, after a week of use opined GrapheneOS demonstrated Android's reliance on Google. He called GrapheneOS install process "straightforward" and concluded to like GrapheneOS overall, but criticized the post-install as "often not a seamless experience like using an unmodified Pixel or an iPhone", attributing his experience to his "over-reliance on Google apps" and the absence of some "smart" features in GrapheneOS default keyboard and camera apps, in comparison to software from Google. In his initial impressions post a week prior, Lamont said after an easy install there were issues with permissions for Google's Messages app, and difficulty importing contacts; Lamont then concluded, "Anyone looking for a straightforward experience may want to avoid GrapheneOS or other privacy-oriented Android experiences since the privacy gains often come at the expense of convenience and ease of use."
2. GrapheneOS is an Android-based, open-source, privacy and security-focused mobile operating system for selected Google Pixel smartphones.

(Legal attribution: Statement from the GrapheneOS article, see its page history for attributions. CC BY-SA 3.0.)

84.250.14.116 (talk) 19:27, 6 July 2022 (UTC)

• Option 2: Per my review at Talk:GrapheneOS#Jonathan Lamont's review at MobileSyrup, Lamont's news reporting at MobileSyrup has been cited in at least one independent, generally reliable publication (Engadget) previously. Searching with DuckDuckGo web search engine, I found several other Engadget and VentureBeat articles citing MobileSyrup as a source. Additional considerations apply to factual reporting due to this source being WP:BIASED, but can be used for attributed opinions without a concern. MobileSyrup's other publications may contain promotional or sponsored "news", which editors should be wary of. The site has an editorial team, but no apparent editorial policy. 84.250.14.116 (talk) 19:27, 6 July 2022 (UTC)
• Option 3: Generally unreliable for factual reporting. MobileSyrup looks like another "advert infested click bait" group blog site. The particular articles being cited also rely heavily on copying information from the website of the posts' subject. In the author's own words, these are "posts". (The Times of India and Origo sources are also very weak sources at best). -- Yae4 (talk) 19:39, 6 July 2022 (UTC)
• Option 1 has a staff page here that shows editors with journalist experience and training. Even the best sources such as CNN are infested with clickbait adverts. Atlantic306 (talk) 21:52, 6 July 2022 (UTC)
• Option 2/3 Option 2 for reviews and news from editors, Option 3 for other content. It has a list of staff editors, so I want to say it's marginally reliable, but there's (strangely) no editorial policy. Though, editors usually have qualifications or appear in other RS, I don't see any for Lamont, but his news articles are... not terrible (see 1), most reviews aren't that bad. But others just feel like blatant ads, or poorly written blogs (1, 2, 3). The third ref feels to me like a blog without editorial control (Scrolling through Tik Tok lately, I’ve been seeing several videos of young men dressed in suits walking around movie theatres to watch Minions: The Rise of Gru.), and the article was published partly by scrolling Tik Tok and a much better Variety article? Other news articles are poor, compare theirs on Google Pixel 6a to several ones from TechRadar 1, 2, which is generally reliable, I think this site's quality seems poor. For a news article, it doesn't seem neutral and is positive (biased?), such as this line As far as phone colours go, I’d say it’s pretty unique and the Hazel 7 Pro is easily the best Pixel colour this year. The Features are equally unreliable (see this) and are probably skewed positively. Overall, I think Option 2 for reviews and editorial news are okay, Option 3 otherwise as the site is poor. VickKiang (talk) 04:03, 7 July 2022 (UTC)

References

Op-eds as sources for factual statements

There is a discussion at Talk:List_of_fallacies#"Kakfatrapping" about whether three op-eds can be treated as reliable sources. The venues of publication are The Daily Bell, the Financial Post, and the (South Africa) Daily Maverick. The relevance of the authors' qualifications is also under discussion. We could do with input from RS/N denizens, especially any who are familiar with those publications. Thanks in advance for any help, MartinPoulter (talk) 20:36, 6 July 2022 (UTC)

Are videos by "professional" YouTubers reliable sources?

I'm referring to someone who edited the reception section on the RWBY page, saying "the video is by a professional YouTuber who is well known and verified". Here is the video link for reference. As is my understanding, YouTube videos are not, generally, reliable sources. The summary on WP:RSPSOURCES says that most videos on YouTube are "anonymous, self-published, and unverifiable, and should not be used at all" but says that "content uploaded from a verified official account, such as that of a news organization, may be treated as originating from the uploader and therefore inheriting their level of reliability" and notes that "however, many YouTube videos from unofficial accounts are copyright violations and should not be linked from Wikipedia."

Personally, I would not consider Hbomberguy to be a "news organization" and would argue his reviews fall under what TheAmazingPeanuts said in 2020, that YouTube videos are "self-published website and self-published websites are not reliable sources per WP:SPS" and in line with what was said about Wikitubia YouTube videos earlier this year. But, I've also read some people on here saying that YouTube is the media and doesn't have an influence on reliability (or unreliability) of a source.

Anyway, I'd like to hear from you all before proceeding with editing that section. Historyday01 (talk) 00:32, 7 July 2022 (UTC)

That is a good question. Historyday01. YouTube is indeed the medium over which the video is transmitted, but does give me pause as a whole, save for the carve-outs you've already outlined. I guess there could be a philosophical argument to be had, though, that everything is self-published in some way...but YouTube has a lot of low quality content on it. I guess, depending on the subject and how the organization uploading etc falls into RS categories, it could be acceptable on a case-by-case basis? This is a tough one to answer. TheSandDoctor ^Talk 00:49, 7 July 2022 (UTC)

Striking as I just ended up quoting WP:SPS. That is probably the safest thing to fall back on. --TheSandDoctor ^Talk 00:51, 7 July 2022 (UTC)

That's my thinking too. What's annoying is that there ARE other criticisms of RWBY which are in more reliable sources. I mean, even this article (which is by an ANN reviewer) could be seen as more reliable, or even this CBR article, perhaps. Otherwise, when you do searches like "criticism of RWBY" or "problems with RWBY" a bunch of self-published stuff comes up, nothing that would be considered reliable on here, from what I've observed from a search tonight. Historyday01 (talk) 01:04, 7 July 2022 (UTC)

I don't agree with the revert, nor consider Hbomberguy reliable. He is high-profile, and per the WP page received awards, but that doesn't mean that the account should be considered as a reliable "news organisation" nor is there any editorial control for it to be "verified" on YouTube, which is a self-published source. I think another point is probably WP:DUE, Neutrality requires that mainspace articles and pages fairly represent all significant viewpoints that have been published by reliable sources, in proportion to the prominence of each viewpoint in the published, reliable sources; I agree with this edit, as the previous version Conversely, RWBY's reception has since been grown from generally positive to overwhelmingly negative based on two reviews (one probably not reliable), seems to me a POV by Historyday01. This (YouTube is indeed the medium over which the video is transmitted, but does give me pause as a whole, save for the carve-outs you've already outlined. I guess there could be a philosophical argument to be had, though, that everything is self-published in some way...but YouTube has a lot of low quality content on it) is an excellent point, but even if Hbomberguy has a website instead of a channel, would it be considered an RS? IMO probably not.

I have some concerns for the other refs. I find CBR's listicles poor and superficial, and IMO this one is no exception, but it's probably marginally reliable and IMO is better than the current provided ref. This is probably an piece], per Q-taku is a column by Rose where she discusses anime, manga and other parts of associated pop culture and its fandom, and her take on it all as a queer feminist viewer, though the author has expertise in ANN, but even opinion columns by journalists or experts in NY Times and The Guardian are considered by RSP to need additional considerations, so to me it's also maginally reliable. So IMO the rm of the Hbomberguy mention should be done, and potentially replace with these two refs, but as they are marginally reliable at best, I think that I agree with Historyday01's edits, and that "it received generally positive reviews but also critcism for..." would be okay for now. VickKiang (talk) 23:11, 7 July 2022 (UTC)

I agree with you there. Just like there isn't any editorial control for someone to be verified on Twitter, I wouldn't think there is any for YouTube either. Google says they verify channels which are "authentic" and "complete" but there is nothing about editorial control, from what I've provided.

It looks like ANN only has reviewed the manga, but not the web series, as no review is listed here. They have reviewed RWBY: Ice Queendom but that's a separate series. I'm not completely sure about those links I provided anyhow an you make good points about reliability, but I'll see if I can find something else. In the meantime, I'll remove that Hbomberguy entry. I also imagine that this discussion will be useful for anyone to refer to if someone tries to add a video from YouTube and claims that it is reliable because the YouTuber is a "professional", whatever that means. Historyday01 (talk) 23:33, 7 July 2022 (UTC)

Agreed overall. The video being used as a reference is a video essay, and thus at best an WP:RSOPINION, and only if it's considered WP:DUE for the topic. And as far as the (arguably non-NPOV) statement of Conversely, RWBY's reception has since been grown from generally positive to overwhelmingly negative. I think using YouTube video essays to make such a statement of fact is always going to be a major issue. You'll almost always be able to find a YouTube video essay that makes the point you want, and viewer count doesn't equate to reliability. If used, it needs to be DUE and attributed as opinion, at least in a case like this where it's "popular YouTuber's opinion is...". This isn't a self-published piece by a credentialed subject matter expert, which might make for a different case for use under WP:RS/SPS. Bakkster Man (talk) 13:35, 8 July 2022 (UTC)

I would say in general, no, these are not, but it is possible in isolated cases that a person gains enough of a reputation within the community (and if that community is based on commercially-generated content, with the creators of that content), then yes, they can be considered weak reliable sources but shouldn't used for "significant" claims, like anything political. But when that happens needs to be established by the editing community for that topic area. --Masem (t) 01:28, 8 July 2022 (UTC)

+1, an example being Anthony Fantano. JBchrch talk 13:13, 8 July 2022 (UTC)

If they are a professional in the fieled it is bieng used as a source for, yes (per wp:sps) if they are not, then no. Just being a "proffesional Youtuber" is not enough to establish expertise about anything. Slatersteven (talk) 13:38, 8 July 2022 (UTC)

Ross Shafer - university newsletter, own website

Done as much redaction as I could in a short time on this article. However, even what remains seems to heavily draw from a university newsletter as a source - not exactly RS and quite possibly biased and published without much fact-checking. The second major source is the subject's own webpage. Even now, the article remains highly self-promotional, so I additionally flagged it as an advert. I suspect if all dubious material were removed, the article text would shrink down to three paragraphs. I've checked only a sample of the bibliograpy - the books seem to exist, but the enthusiasm for them moderate. Executive summary: Much depends on what you make of the now-unavailable university newsletter. 2003:F7:1F0E:4100:98CD:167A:DD68:F0E4 (talk) 15:10, 7 July 2022 (UTC)

Denisova's declarations on child rape

The question is whether former Ukrainian ombudsperson Lyudmyla Denisova's interviews and statements about sexual crimes committed by Russian soldiers in Ukraine qualify as reliable source in the context of War crimes in the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Some background information is needed. Since March 2022 Denisova has released interviews and statements about rapes committed by Russian troops against infants, children, young women and men, elderly people. We already had a discussion on this at RS/N, following which we dropped the more gruesome, shocking details from the article on War crimes and we're now saying that Denisova reported multiple rapes of children, some very young. We are also reporting that according to her about 25 girls and women between the ages of 14 to 24 were locked in a basement and raped for almost a month in Bucha, and nine became pregnant (as reported, but not verified, by New York Times, BBC and other outlets). However, in the article Sexual violence in the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine her declarations are still published in detail, although we are not reporting her statement about a 6-month-old girl raped by a Russian solider with a teaspoon.

Since that first discussion at RS/N, 140 Ukrainian journalists and human rights activists have signed an open letter asking Denisova, among other things, to Publish only that information for which there is enough evidence, check the facts before publication (here the letter in Ukrainian [27], here an account in English [28]). On 31 May the Ukrainian Parliament removed her from office accusing her, among other things, of making "not verified", "unverifiable" or "unsubstantiated" declarations about child rape (these being the words used by Deutsche Welle, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post respectively). At the end of June, Ukrainska Pravda published a report on Denisova (in Ukrainian) which was summarised in English by Meduza (here). The report says that Denisova was circulating information gathered by her daughter, who was working for a psychological helpline service Denisova had set up; it says that Denisova's office never sent any information about the alleged crimes or the victims' contact information to law enforcement agencies; finally, it says that Denisova explained to the Ukrainian prosecutor office that she "told these horrific stories because she wants Ukraine to be victorious."

Based on this essay on interviews, I think that Denisova's statements qualify as a secondary source on war crimes in Ukraine; based on the information I've just shared, I believe that they don't qualify as reliable sources on conflict-related sexual violence in Ukraine. We had a couple of discussions on this in the talk page of War crimes in the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine: #Denisova's dismissal and #25 girls between the ages of 14 to 24 raped in Bucha, held captive in a basement, nine became pregnant and we didn't reach a consensus. I hope that a discussion at RS/N could help us move forwards. Gitz (talk) (contribs) 13:36, 8 July 2022 (UTC)

Having read that the Ukrainian parliament don't consider her reliable in her declarations, and that these statements may harm potential victims of sexual violence, it is fairly clear that she is not a reliable source for any factual statements. As both sides in the war consider her to be making statements which are at least partially false, I can't see how we can use her statements in anything other the article about her. She is in essence WP:FRINGE. Boynamedsue (talk) 12:55, 9 July 2022 (UTC)

trip-suggest.com

Given the about page shows this a single person's website who is using public sourcing, which I believe includes Wikipedia for a bonus of WP:CIRCULAR, this should not be used as a source on Wikipedia. Right?

A search shows 97 pages (can't get this to work as a wikilink, sorry) currently using the source.

If others agree and have AWB or other semi-automated tool to remove the link that would be appreciated, otherwise I will have to do one by one on mobile. Doable, but time consuming. Slywriter (talk) 15:36, 8 July 2022 (UTC)

Option 3 at best/Unreliable Easy, I agree entirely and would actually support deprecation perhaps, but sadly this isn't an RfC, but this is absolutely horrible ref. Probably copied and pasted from numerous (public) places, looking at the Afghanistan article (see its version and another one from Ohio State University). Looking at the article on Perth, it says, with poor grammar and "some clip posted online" (?), I don't think I've seen a worse travel site: While being here, you might want to check out Perth South . We discovered some clip posted online . Scroll down to see the most favourite one or select the video collection in the navigation. Are you curious about the possible sightsseing spots and facts in Perth ? We have collected some references on our attractions page.

Next, it covers a building that plagiarises WP and is circular sourcing, see the WP article: The Jubilee Building is part of the Western Australian Museum in Perth, Western Australia, Australia. Designed in the Victorian Byzantine style by George Temple-Poole and supervised by his 1895 successor John Harry Grainger, it was opened in 1899. The building was originally planned as a combined library, museum and art gallery to be sited in St Georges Terrace, Perth to commemorate Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee in 1887. Looking at the Russian article, the UNESCO sites are copied and pasted partially, the terms and conditions says that it's okay, provided with attribution, to share and adapt content, so it's probably not a copyvio (although nowhere could I see attributed refs or links), as such, the article is useless for WP (citing directly from UNESCO is far better). The about page then has the following: Trip-Suggest.com - built and operated by me as a single person - is a free website. It uses public and free data from various sources to provide people around the globe with a solid first impression of any placae on this world, no indication of editorial policies and has a typo! IMO, this website is unreliable and perhaps worthy of deprecation, it's an example of circular sourcing, questionable use of copyrights, and no evidence of fact-checking. VickKiang (talk) 04:00, 10 July 2022 (UTC)

Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Uanfala (talk · contribs) insists on restoring content sourced to Cambridge Scholars Publishing, because according to them, they aren't predatory and that removing bad sources is 'disruptive'.

I contend that CSP is a vanity press by every meaningful definition of the term. Anyone can publish with them, at no charge, and they do not meaningfully review the submissions. See also previous discussions on CSP and CSP sources

• Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_236#Linguist's_history
• Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_286#Vanity press (where CSP is mentionned)
• Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_209#Cambridge_Scholars
• Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_221#Sources_regarding_Tsamiko_and_Osman_Taka_dances._Do_they_meet_Wikipedia_criteria_for_reliability_?
• Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_359#Citogenesis incident
• Wikipedia:Fringe_theories/Noticeboard/Archive_69#Da_Vinci_Globe

So I would like consensus on whether or not the community considers Cambridge Scholars Publishing to be a reliable publisher. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 18:11, 8 July 2022 (UTC)

Discussion (Cambridge Scholars Publishing)

• I'm pretty sure it's well established by consensus here and reliable sources that it is in fact predatory. PRAXIDICAE🌈 18:12, 8 July 2022 (UTC)
• Very obviously unreliable That's not to say we can't ever cite them, but short of a review praising certain works, we shouldn't be citing them. Especially when other sources are already present supporting the material in question. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 18:14, 8 July 2022 (UTC)
• unequivocally useless and unreliable per this discussion and the dozens of others. PRAXIDICAE🌈 18:15, 8 July 2022 (UTC)
• I wish Headbomb had started this discussion before using AWB to remove several hundred references and then proceeding to edit-war with several people who have reverted him. Now, CSP are not a predatory publisher, that's not their model (as anyone would immediately notice if they bothered to read anything written about them). Are they a publisher of reliable sources on par with established academic presses like CUP or OUP? Of course they're not. But that doesn't necessarily mean that everything there is rubbish. We should approach them the same way we approach similar publishers, like Lincom: generally discourage their use without prohibiting it, never use them for anything contentious, and for non-contentious statements, evaluate on a case-by-case basis. But blanket removal is disruptive, especially when the articles citing them will often instead use less reliable sources, like newspapers, academia.edu drafts, or actual vanity presses. – Uanfala (talk) 19:34, 8 July 2022 (UTC)

"Are they a publisher of reliable sources? Of course they're not." That pretty much says it all, doesn't it?

And there is no disruption, I've removed and reviewed about 300 citations to CSP, which is obviously a predatory/vanity publisher (which loads of prior discussions all agreeing in the same direction). In all cases, the material was supported by other citations, and CSP is not needed and can be summarily removed. We should not be citing unreliable sources, and your restoration of them, knowing full well they are unreliable, is textbook WP:POINTY behaviour. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:46, 8 July 2022 (UTC)

I don't think it's been pointy to revert two bold semi-automated edits that were justified by the plainly wrong assertion that CSP was predatory. And to repeat and clarify what I wrote on the Kashmiri language talk page, you're proceeding from an incorrect presumption about how references normally relate to article text. If an article paragraph has two refs at its end, this doesn't necessarily mean that either one of those two refs would be enough to support the entirety of that paragraph. More often than not, parts of the text would be supported by one ref, and parts of it by the other. – Uanfala (talk) 19:55, 8 July 2022 (UTC)

I agree with the sentiments expressed above, particularly as no consensus has been reached here about the publisher. That is the sort of action that should occur after this discussion, not before or during it. As such, I reported it to ANI at WP:ANI#Problematic mass removal of sources by Headbomb.4meter4 (talk) 02:57, 9 July 2022 (UTC)

• Comment from an outside perspective, I think both sides have a point here. It seems consensus shows that this publisher is unreliable, but, as Uanfala has pointed out, the citations should be reviewed on a case-by-case basis rather than removed en mass by automation. If a particular source was written by a subject matter expert (which seems to occur occasionally at this publisher), it could still be used. If sources are removed, the relevant content should be examined and new sources found (if possible) or the content should be removed. Simply removing hundreds of sources and leaving someone else to clean up the mess is one way to do things, but in my opinion not the most responsible way. Toadspike (talk) 20:24, 8 July 2022 (UTC)

  There is already a reliable citation for the entirety of this content. That's why it was removed. There remains over 3000 citations to this garbage publisher across Wikipedia. This was not a blanket removal, but a targeted one. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 20:44, 8 July 2022 (UTC)

  What was the criteria for your targeting of these cases? Ford MF (talk) 21:25, 8 July 2022 (UTC)

  a) It's CSP, which is prima facie unreliable b) Other sources support the content, which makes removal warranted without replacing it with a {{cn}} tag or similar. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 21:48, 8 July 2022 (UTC)

  You said "this was not a blanket removal but a targeted one" which I took to mean you had employed some discretion. What does "targeted" in this sentence refer to? Ford MF (talk) 23:33, 8 July 2022 (UTC)

  Got it, since you're doing your due diligence you can continue as you were. I apologize for not looking into this too thoroughly yesterday. Toadspike (talk) 07:47, 9 July 2022 (UTC)

  It seems consensus shows that this publisher is unreliable fwiw ... I really don't think it does? Where is this consensus demonstrated? Ford MF (talk) 23:34, 8 July 2022 (UTC)

• Comment. I would like consensus on whether or not the community considers I don't have a real horse in this race, but -- as mentioned above -- this seems like a question one should ask before using AWB to mass remove hundreds of citations attributed to this press. Initiating what is essentially a policy decision on your own and then retroactively seeking support for it when people push back does not to me feel like an excessively good faith action. As for what to do with CSP, it seems like WP:CONTEXTMATTERS in this case. I became aware of this issue when I saw Headbomb remove a citation from Apaturia (Greek mythology). In context, the reference there was one of three works (one published by a more reputable academic publisher, Palgrave) citing a particular statement, all of which generally in reference to a primary source (Pausanias). The work in this context was a corroborating citation, in a work published by an ancient history Ph.D., and its removal in this instance does not truly cause harm, but also seems an overly aggressive exercise of policy where no policy actually exists. If this had been the only citation in the article, for whatever reason, I think this specific article would be poorer without it. If we want to have a blanket reliability policy against all works published by CSP, that seems extreme to me given the circumstances, but I think is also a reasonable decision for the community to make. I don't think it's reasonable to unilaterally implement a de facto policy that CSP references are banned unless some editor wants to make their case (see OP's talk page) to the single editor who decided this ought to be policy. Ford MF (talk) 20:30, 8 July 2022 (UTC)

  If you read the above linked discussions, there is clear consensus that it's unreliable and given the fact that it is established fact that it is predatory, policy dictates that it is in fact unreliable. PRAXIDICAE🌈 20:47, 8 July 2022 (UTC)

  iiuc this discussion is the measurement of consensus for WP:RSDEPRECATED, so I'm not sure how you can say this has already been decided. Ford MF (talk) 21:25, 8 July 2022 (UTC)

  Because it has been discussed endlessly here as linked above and the outcome is always the same. There is no point in having these discussions if we're going to rehash them every time someone wants to whine about it's non-use. PRAXIDICAE🌈 21:31, 8 July 2022 (UTC)

  If it had already been decided, I would expect this to be present on WP:DEPRECATED, and it is not. Ford MF (talk) 22:53, 8 July 2022 (UTC)

  ...many sources which are deprecated don't appear there but it doesn't change the fact that for example, Fandom can't be used to source anything that isn't about Fandom isn't on there - but it is never allowed because it is defacto unreliable. This isn't rocket science. PRAXIDICAE🌈 22:58, 8 July 2022 (UTC)

  If there is no canonical source of truth for a policy I would submit that no policy in fact exists. If you're asking me to believe a final decision has been made about a thing, show me that evidence. This isn't rocket science. Looking at the conversations above, most of them contain only fairly glancing reference to the publisher we're discussing here, and the only direct one is six years old. And since the it seems like some relevant things have changed (addition of credited editorial boards, publishers rating in Norwegian Scientific Index upgraded). As I said elsewhere, I don't have any particular stake in this publisher's fate within the Wikipedia project, however I don't think I've seen a single genuine argument advanced here as to why exactly this particular journal ought to be wholesale denylisted from the project. Just a lot of people repeating "vanity press / bad editorial" like a mantra, without any explanation for how these standards are judged. Ford MF (talk) 23:09, 8 July 2022 (UTC)

  You are just being repetitive and missing the point. We have standards that are based in policy surrounding reliability and that does not require an RFC every time a subject is brought up. Of course, you're welcome to make the argument that everything is reliable unless proven otherwise, but you'd be wrong and quickly reverted anywhere you would add such sources. PRAXIDICAE🌈 23:11, 8 July 2022 (UTC)

  Which standards are you referring to that CSP violates? Ford MF (talk) 23:36, 8 July 2022 (UTC)

• Unreliable, should be prohibited "Are they a publisher of reliable sources? Of course they're not." Chris Troutman (talk) 21:10, 8 July 2022 (UTC)
• Vanispamcruft. Unreliable predatory publisher. Kudos to Headbomb for taking on the unpleasant task of removing references to that predatory garbage. --Randykitty (talk) 21:25, 8 July 2022 (UTC)
• Unreliable- predatory junk publisher that calls itself Cambridge Scholars so that people will think it's affiliated with Cambridge University. Deceit and trickery, and I would expect very little of anything "published" by them. Reyk _YO! 21:50, 8 July 2022 (UTC)

  I won't disagree that the term "Cambridge" today carries an immediate air of prestige. But there's a lot of places named Cambridge (many founded by people who never cared about the university -- what would the Greeks think?), and any startup company will try to appropriate local prestige. Regardless, from its reported history, they seem to have at least some justification for the name, so there's no reason to call it "deceit". SamuelRiv (talk) 17:40, 10 July 2022 (UTC)

• Comment. Probably worth pointing out that CSP books are found in a lot of good academic libraries. Harvard Library, for example, has almost 1,900 titles [29] (most of these are print books, not e-books), while the library of Cambridge University itself – hardly to be accused of falling for trickery and not recognising its own publisher – has over 5,000 [30] (a third of which are physical copies). Of course, being available in academic libraries doesn't guarantee reliability, but the numbers above indicate we're not seeing merely the examples of sporadic flotsam and jetsam that big libraries like to keep. Those arguing that the publisher is obviously unreliable, or that it is spamvanwhatever, should really provide evidence for those assertions. – Uanfala (talk) 22:22, 8 July 2022 (UTC)

  If you want to make a case for the reliability for this or that book published by them, go ahead. But the default position for a vanity publisher with poor editorial oversight should be against inclusion. Reyk _YO! 22:27, 8 July 2022 (UTC)

  As someone new to the discourse on this particular publisher, I see a lot of assertions that they *are* "a vanity publisher with poor editorial oversight", and relatively little to back that up, other than a seeming implicit conviction that this is self-evident. Ford MF (talk) 22:55, 8 July 2022 (UTC)

  So...a publisher that solicits non-qualified "academics" for publication and then charges them for publication is what, exactly? Also please feel free to identify their editorial board. PRAXIDICAE🌈 23:05, 8 July 2022 (UTC)

  https://cambridgescholars[.]com/pages/meet-our-editorial-advisors. Ford MF (talk) 23:10, 8 July 2022 (UTC)

  Also, where is the source for your assertion that its portfolio consists of unqualified writers? And why is academics in quotation marks? Ford MF (talk) 23:11, 8 July 2022 (UTC)

  Have you read any of the sources linked in the article about CSP? It's pretty adequately covered there. PRAXIDICAE🌈 23:12, 8 July 2022 (UTC)

  Praxidicae, if there is any source about the claim that CSP charge authors for publication, then please provide it. I don't see that in any of the sources I've checked. – Uanfala (talk) 23:26, 8 July 2022 (UTC)

  I have! As far as I can tell there are only two references in the entire article that support the "predatory" label. One is the beallslist.net reference, and the other is the guy who runs Flaky Academic Journals dot blogspot dot com. The Flaky Academic Journals guy ... I mean, okay. Some guy with a blogspot made one post about this five years ago, but more recent posts from bloggers of seeming equal standing seem to represent an opinion contrary to this. The beallslist thing is interesting to me! But 1) it looks like the list itself is not without detractors, and CSP was anonymously added to it as an addendum after the original list was abandoned by Jeffrey Beall, *and* even if Jeffrey Beall did think CSP sucked, there is no evidence he thought those titles should not be carried as part of a reputable academic collection. And in fact, as demonstrated above, very reputable and notable academic librarians *do* believe that a non-trivial number of CSP publications belong in their collection. Ford MF (talk) 23:30, 8 July 2022 (UTC)

  Again, if you want to make a case for the reliability of some individual book, go ahead. It is, however, not possible to say, "It's in CSP therefore it is reliable". The default position should be that it is questionable at best. Reyk _YO! 23:47, 8 July 2022 (UTC)

  Can you explain why this is the default position? So far I do not see you making any argument or listing any criteria for this assessment. You've made a claim that the press is "predatory" and "vanity", and implicitly that that means citations from these works should be unilaterally deleted from the project, and imho the onus is not on others to mount a counter-argument to this when the claimant(s) have not in fact mounted any argument at all, only simply repeated the original claims as if they were already established as true. Ford MF (talk) 23:50, 8 July 2022 (UTC)

  Because CSP is a vanity press and utter garbage. See all previous discussions, Beall's list, flaky journals, etc. And on Wikipedia, when we encounter a garbage source, the default is to exclude it, unless it can be shown to not be garbage. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 23:58, 8 July 2022 (UTC)

  I agree. If someone reads through all those previous discussions and still comes to the conclusion that CSP is reliable then nothing will ever convince them otherwise. Fortunately, WP:CONSENSUS is policy. Reyk _YO! 00:06, 9 July 2022 (UTC)

  Making decisions by consensus is policy. Asserting that your position is the consensus one without some independent demonstration of this is not a policy as far as I'm aware. The closer [ie the decider of consensus] is not to be a judge of the issue, but rather of the argument. WP:DISCARD There are by my count three people on this thread advancing the position "CSP is a predatory vanity press" (with the implication that citations for works from this press should by default be disallowed) but I do not see one single argument made in support of that position, only insistence that the position is prima facie true, or insistence that the position has already reached consensus in this or that other place, like the princess continually being in another castle. And there are two editors who seem to disagree with this position and/or believe that he burden of proof is on the people making the claim, and that has not been satisfied. This does not look like consensus to me. Other folks may feel otherwise. Ford MF (talk) 00:17, 9 July 2022 (UTC)

  It's clear that you're determined that CSP should be treated as a priori reliable, the same way that Cambridge University Press, or Springer, or Addison-Wesley are respected academic publishers. My position is that the deliberately misleading name raises questions about their academic integrity, that actual academics in a good position to judge have verifiably described them as sketchy, that there are numerous documented instances of poor quality control, and that they are not up-front with authors about how little quality control they do. All these concerns have been brought up in the previous discussions linked to by Headbomb. Why are you so eager to dismiss them? The current status quo here on Wikipedia is that CSP is not super trustworthy, IMO correctly, and if you think they are suddenly legit then you need to make that case. Reyk _YO! 00:42, 9 July 2022 (UTC)

  • My position is that the deliberately misleading name ... I disagree that the publisher's name is admissible as evidence of the publisher's quality one way or the other. The website claims the company was founded, in Cambridge, by lecturers from Cambridge U -- literally, Cambridge Scholars -- and I haven't seen anyone disprove or even question this, just a lot of people assuming, as you seem to be doing here, that the name has nefarious intent.
  • actual academics in a good position to judge have verifiably described them as sketchy There seem to be other academics, in equivalently good position, who do not agree with this assessment.
  • Numerous documented instances of poor quality control Definitely agree it looks like they've published a couple of crappy books over the years.
  • They are not up-front with authors about how little quality control they do. I do not see the source of this claim in the discussions above?
  • The current status quo here on Wikipedia is that CSP is not super trustworthy again, there is a repeated insistence that this consensus already exists and has been decided previously, when I do not feel like any of the referenced conversations demonstrate this at all.

  Ford MF (talk) 01:03, 9 July 2022 (UTC)

  I also feel like you are proposing an entirely false binary here in which there exist no scholarly presses between Lulu[.]com and Springer Verlag, and every press must be one or the other. I am not trying to argue that this press deserves a position among Springer, AW, CUP, etc etc. As a former academic-book-biz guy in a past life, I think it's safe to say they'd be pretty far down on my list when it came time to place orders. I *do* however disagree that the correct response in the project to an obviously not A-list publisher is for citations to be default deleted on sight. Ford MF (talk) 01:12, 9 July 2022 (UTC)

  There exists presses in between. CSP is, however, on the Lulu side of things, not on the CUP/Springer side of things. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 03:10, 9 July 2022 (UTC)

  I take your response to mean you are applying no independent criteria of your own or the project's, and are using those of Beall's list and the flaky journals guy as proxies here. That's reasonable! You can't do direct due diligence on everything personally. But I think I have clearly described why neither of these sources seem like open and shut cases to me (reasonable people seem to disagree about Beall's list, CSP wasn't even on it until anonymous inclusion fairly recently, the Flaky blog guy article is pretty old), especially when measured against the countervailing opinions here (other, more positive blogs; reputable academic libraries holding sizeable amounts of CSP in circulation; reputable review organizations like Norwegian Scientific Index changing their rating of the press). So you keep repeating "vanity press" and "garbage" without making reference to any criteria the could be reviewed or falsified, and, well, I don't think it's surprising that other people might not find this a persuasive argument? (Or an argument at all?) Ford MF (talk) 00:07, 9 July 2022 (UTC)

  Have you read any of the previous discussions? Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 00:30, 9 July 2022 (UTC)

  Do you have any arguments to make other than to tell me that in some vague and nonspecific place, someone else makes an argument to justify your claims? Ford MF (talk) 00:41, 9 July 2022 (UTC)

  The discussions are linked above. There is nothing vague or unspecific about them. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 03:12, 9 July 2022 (UTC)

• Publishers are one component of evaluating a reliable source. Look at the author, editors, etc. What kind of claim is being made? Is it controversial? Generally opposed to any mass removal based just on publisher without an evaluation of the actual source in context, and generally opposed to proposals to consider a book publisher unreliable without a systematic evaluation of the kind/quality of content they publish. A predatory publisher (and there is a wide spectrum of "predatory") is a red flag, but isn't itself completely disqualifying. Some predatory publishers are the equivalent of just being self-published (and not less than self-published), but there are many flavors/degrees. Meh. Default to standard editing practices like BRD and ONUS. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 00:40, 9 July 2022 (UTC)
  • No, with real predatory publishers, and real vanity publishers, whatever "real" is here, it should be the other way around: discredited until a particular article/book by a particular scholar can be deemed acceptable. So, I'll accept this Mellen book on Beowulf for a variety of reasons that I could explain. But in general, a publisher that produces this should not be taken seriously--until proven otherwise. Drmies (talk) 02:16, 9 July 2022 (UTC)
    • Sure, when challenged, the onus is always on those who want to include a source to argue that it's reliable for that particular use (and otherwise justify inclusion), but we need a clear consensus about unreliability to remove just based on the publisher -- unreliability, not just predatory. The latter just means it's on a spectrum between WP:SPS and rigorous review/oversight, with the "real" ones at or near the former, but that whatever "real" is here is a toughy, and it seems too often the spectrum is collapsed to a binary. These conversations often look like we're talking about publishers known for false/misleading information, not ones that simply tend towards the WP:SPS side of the spectrum. CSP may be well on that SPS side, but that doesn't mean it's "discredited"; it means it's self-published. Self-published sources aren't discredited; based on the author, for example, there are plenty of times when we use them. They're just not sufficiently reliable for most purposes. Maybe we're getting into semantics with that distinction, though. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 03:22, 9 July 2022 (UTC)
• I looked at all the linked discussions, and I have some thoughts about CSP (none of them are very good), but I fail to see that any of the discussions came to a clear consensus that CSP is an unreliable vanity press. And without that, we're kind of putting the cart before the horse. First we need clarity here. Thanks, Drmies (talk) 00:55, 9 July 2022 (UTC)

  CSP is a vanity press. Their model is to have authors write whatever they want, conduct no review, offer no little-to-no editing services, and then charges universities and random suckers for those books. They've repeatedly published fringe nonsense, (example, example), or straight up copies of Wikipedia content example). They are listed by the two main freely available sources on predatory nonsense, Beall's list (now maintained by someone who isn't Beall), and Flaky Journals. Their books are widely condemned in review, which specifically call out the practices of CSP (e.g. "the absence of an editorial board has clearly failed to guide the author in the preparation of his publication". Library Guides specifically call out CSP as a publisher to avoid [31]. Or entire book chapters, from ISBN 9783838211992. If CSP isn't a vanity press and a garbage tier publisher, no one is. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 03:25, 9 July 2022 (UTC)

  The Flaky Journals blog [32], though critical of CSP, does not characterise them as predatory. Your last link (the bit form the Scopus diaries) is also worth reading: it's explicit that vanity or predatory publishers are a lower tier than CSP, and it characterises CSP's drawback in not conferring a great deal of academic prestige.

  Their books are widely condemned in review? Well, I've had a look. Here's quotes from the reviews I checked (all except 4 (3 were excluded because of genre (popular science, memoirs), and 1 because it was as dry overview without a quotable conclusion):

  1. Di Rocco, Concezio (2019-11-01). "R. Shane Tubbs, J. Iwanaga, M. Loukas, R. J. Oskouian (Eds): Clinical anatomy of the ligaments of the craniocervical junction". Child's Nervous System. 35 (11): 2241–2241. doi:10.1007/s00381-019-04261-6. ISSN 1433-0350. "the book is a precious contribution to the understanding of all aspects of the craniocervical junction which should not only be part of the armamentarium of the neurosurgeon involved in clinical practice but also of the students and neurosurgeons in training"
  2. Carey, Peter (2021). "Manual of Bone Marrow Examination by Anwarul Islam (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2020; ISBN 978-1-5275-5890-8)". British Journal of Haematology. 193 (5): 1016–1016. doi:10.1111/bjh.17400. ISSN 1365-2141. "an excellent teaching resource for every haematology department"
  3. Kapparis, Konstantinos (2019). "Isaeus' On the Estate of Pyrrhus (Oration 3). Edited by Rosalia Hatzilambrou. (Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2018. Pp. 283. $119.95.)". Historian. 81 (4): 727–729. doi:10.1111/hisn.13286. ISSN 1540-6563. "an outstanding accomplishment containing reliable, informative, and thorough accounts of textual, linguistic, and stylistic matters, as well as the legal issues, the background, the protagonists, and the build-up of the case"
  4. Farrell Moran, Seán (2016). "The Impact of World War One on Limerick. By Tadhg Moloney. (Newcastle upon Tyne, England: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013. Pp. xii, 209. $75.99.)". Historian. 78 (1): 166–167. doi:10.1111/hisn.12142. ISSN 1540-6563. "Although the author has done much homework, his thesis, as suggestive as it is, remains underdeveloped"
  5. Spicher, Michael (2019). "AAGAARD-MOGENSEN, LARS and JAN FORSEY, eds. On Taste: Aesthetic Exchanges. Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2019, 150 pp., 4 b&w illus., £58.99 cloth". The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism. 77 (3): 349–351. doi:10.1111/jaac.12655. ISSN 1540-6245. "Overall, [the book] offers insightful discussions about taste to help bring it back onto the fore. I would recommend anyone interested in aesthetics to read this collection as an entry point into recent thought about taste"
  6. McClain, Aleksandra (2016). "From West to East: Current Approaches to Medieval Archaeology by Scott D. Stull, ed. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014. 275 pp". American Anthropologist. 118 (2): 457–458. doi:10.1111/aman.12571. ISSN 1548-1433. "Several papers, including the editor's own, offer strong, original scholarship [...] but a few are disappointingly underdeveloped in comparison", "while problems with individual papers mar the consistent academic quality of the volume, I nevertheless commend Stull on having the ambition to plan the conference and produce this book"
  7. Liu, Yi; Afzaal, Muhammad (2022). "100 Years of conference interpreting: A legacy. Edited by Kilian G. Seeber, Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Newcastle upon Tyne, 2021, Price: £64.99, 242 pp. ISBN: 1-5275-6719-2". International Journal of Applied Linguistics. 32 (2): 349–352. doi:10.1111/ijal.12406. ISSN 1473-4192. "this volume provides a novel and convincing reference in the field of conference interpreting, and is therefore a valuable read for interpreting students, trainers, researchers and other stakeholders"
  8. Wallis, Patrick (2021). "Andrea Caracausi, Matthew Davies, and Luca Mocarelli, eds., Between regulation and freedom: work and manufactures in European cities 14th–18th centuries (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2018. Pp. xiii+146. ISBN 1-5275-0638-X Hbk. £58.99)". The Economic History Review. 74 (1): 299–300. doi:10.1111/ehr.13059. ISSN 1468-0289. "the volume collectively makes a valuable contribution to our appreciation of the complexity and heterogeneity of economic regulation"

  Of these 8 reviews, 6 are entirely positive, and 2 offer criticisms. – Uanfala (talk) 13:36, 9 July 2022 (UTC)

• Oppose a blanket removal, but recommend a "use with caution" guideline per WP:MREL. Some of the authors published by CSP are respectable academics in their fields with other publications from reliable publishers written by them. As such, WP:SPS's guideline seems like a good fit here. "Self-published expert sources may be considered reliable when produced by an established subject-matter expert, whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable, independent publications." Further, some of the books have been reviewed in reliable secondary sources. So, I think each source needs to be scrutinized individually for reliability with particular attention given to the book's author and their background. Removing content on mass without taking the time to examine each source and its author is not the responsible way to handle this issue, and seems WP:POINTY.4meter4 (talk) 02:46, 9 July 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose blanket removal, recommend "use with caution". Various publication level rankings (Norwegian, Finnish) list the venue as an acceptable quality scientific publication venue, albeit with an imperfect history. This alone gives me much pause about a blanket ban. Above descriptions about the publishers being predatory also seems confusing, given that the venue does not appear to charge Article Publishing Charges based on their FAQ. As per the above descriptions re: the Beall's List entry (anonymous, added after Beall's involvement), I'm not terribly convinced by that argument either. Given further that WP:SPS allows for the use of pretty much anything from an established subject matter expert, a blanket removal seems unwarranted. That said, the spotty history clearly warrants a case-by-case review of any sources used. -Ljleppan (talk) 04:17, 9 July 2022 (UTC)
• Comment In addition to what I wrote above, I'll note that this RFC fails WP:RFCNEUTRAL rather spectacularly. Ljleppan (talk) 04:20, 9 July 2022 (UTC)

• Cambridge Scholars Press is not someone I'd consider an acceptable academic publisher - so what that means is that I would try to avoid citing anything published by them, as I have no confidence that their peer review process has been sufficiently robust to detect material which has errors, is not accurate or which is fraudulent in nature (as evidenced by some of the material they have published, including material plagiarised from Wikipedia). I would also not use the company as a publishing house for my own work, because I cannot trust what other works may appear alongside our own, and obviously if I consider it to be problematic, people would question anything I publish there.
  Books published by CSP primarily, from what I can see, are typically submitted via the CSP route for two reasons, firstly they're submitted there to satisfy funding requirements (as is the case with books and articles published via Wiley, Elsevier and others, of course) but they have a strong reputation in academic circles as a publisher of last resort - if you can't get a book into a more prestigious publishing house or journal series, then CSP will take it and it'll technically tick off a deliverable so you don't lose funding or have someone chasing you to return part of a grant. Secondly, almost all of us are vain and want to publish - for many fields, that involves doing an experiment or undertaking a project, generating data, processing that data and generating results, which are then discussed. That's the broad outline for a journal article. There are many fields where research doesn't work like that and a book is the logical outcome, particularly where your research is one contiguous body of work during a PhD or for a number of years post-doctorate, unfortunately for a number of people with such contiguous projects, their work will generally be of interest to a small number of people and publishing via an accepted academic publisher (Wiley or others) will not be possible (that isn't a comment on the value or importance of the work, just a reflection on what the large publishing houses will accept because it makes them money). I say this as it explains the peer review issues - if you can't get a conventional publisher interested in your book because of audience limitation issues, it's going to be very difficult to find reviewers who are capable of a proper peer review of your material, which risks absolute drivel making it onto the market. It's also worth noting, the presence of CSP material in university libraries is no indicator of their reliability - most university libraries will purchase material at the behest of students - I drop a request into our library every year or so for a new book either I would like to read, or which I think will benefit our students. I note a comment about CSP and the University of Cambridge Library - it's worth a reminder that the University of Cambridge Library is a deposit library and can receive at no cost any books published in the UK that it wishes - it does not necessarily mean the University of Cambridge Library or students from Cambridge have asked for/purchased CSP books.
  I'd therefore have to agree with the "use with caution" suggestion - there will be a number of authors with CSP who have been forced to publish there by circumstance, and there will be little wrong with their work, but similarly, there's a lot of authors who will make use of CSP's tendency to accept anything with no real oversight, which would obviously preclude its use going unchecked. Nick (talk) 09:11, 9 July 2022 (UTC)
• Never use. Reliable sources have a reputation for fact checking, accuracy, etc.; this publisher has a reputation as shite. No source from it can give confidence that WP:V is being satisfied. Anything worthy of inclusion will be covered in decent sources; use then instead. If not, the material will not be the kind of “accepted knowledge” Wikipedia must reflect. Alexbrn (talk) 09:48, 9 July 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose blanket removal, support replacing with better sources. I looked at a few random articles with references to CSP and I didn't see any problems requiring a purge. Tagging with {{bettersourceneeded}} would be a good idea. Alaexis_¿question? 11:35, 9 July 2022 (UTC)

Drive by tagging while keeping the sources in never works, it will just stay there forever, just ask @David Gerard:. Hemiauchenia (talk) 12:42, 9 July 2022 (UTC)

In my opinion it's not a positive example. Alaexis_¿question? 17:13, 9 July 2022 (UTC)

• Never use If there are clearly reliable sources supporting the text you are trying to source, use that. If there aren't any other than a CSP source you shouldn't be adding the text. One book from a dubious publisher isn't enough.
• Comment. I did what several folks insisted on and read the previous discussions. None of them established a consensus that CSP is unreliable; most of them weren't even really about CSP. Let's put a pin in that claim--CSP may be unreliable, but this is the first discussion where that question is squarely presented and proceeding as though that's already the case is not accurate. Mackensen (talk) 15:31, 9 July 2022 (UTC)
• CSP can be a reliable source as demonstrated by reviews from the academic community, eg:

  "In sum, From West to East provides a compact, but very readable overview of approaches to medieval archaeology practised in North America." Kerr, Sarah (January 2016). "From West to East. Current Approaches to Medieval Archaeology". Medieval Archaeology. 60 (1): 185–185. doi:10.1080/00766097.2016.1147856.

  "the volume is a worthwhile read and valuable resource that paves the way to refine the studies on this, without doubt, an exceedingly promising multidisciplinary topic." Basik, Sergei (19 October 2020). "Naming, identity and tourism: edited by Luisa Caiazzo, Richard Coates and Maoz Azaryahu, Newcastle upon Tyne, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2020, 233 pp., ₤ 61.99 (hardcover), ISBN 978-1-5275-4286-0". Scandinavian Journal of Hospitality and Tourism. 20 (5): 540–542. doi:10.1080/15022250.2020.1853603.

  "Overall, this is an interesting take on a fairly well-covered topic. It brings to light some hitherto neglected sources and provides some useful insights" Doney, Jonathan (4 March 2022). "For God and country: Butler's 1944 Education Act, by Elizabeth 'Libi' Sundermann: Elizabeth 'Libi' Sundermann, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015, xii + 151 pp., £41.99 (hardback), ISBN 978-1-44-388383-2". History of Education. 51 (2): 304–306. doi:10.1080/0046760X.2020.1825834.,

  "the book serves as a door opener to the ceramic traditions of Europe and opens up further reading due to interesting articles as well as rich reference lists" Eigeland, Lotte; Solheim, Steinar (10 September 2010). "Dragos Gheorghiu (ed.): Early Farmers, Late Foragers, and Ceramic Traditions: On the Beginning of Pottery in the Near East and Europe". Norwegian Archaeological Review. 43 (1): 86–89. doi:10.1080/00293651003798846.

Richard Nevell (talk) 16:24, 9 July 2022 (UTC)

Yes, it can be reliable. Much like vixra or the Daily Mail can be reliable. However, when we don't have these positives reviews, CSP books are not reliable. That's no different than any other vanity presses out there. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 16:48, 9 July 2022 (UTC)

Do we have a reliable source that describes CSP as a vanity press? Richard Nevell (talk) 17:02, 9 July 2022 (UTC)

See book chapters, from ISBN 9783838211992. They don't explicitly list CSP as a vanity press, but press much say you should only publish with them if you're comfortable publishing in a vanity press. Alternatively, this library guide, which goes further and labels them predatory. Again, the model of CSP is to publish pretty much anything they can with little regards to what it is they publish. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:39, 9 July 2022 (UTC)

Headbomb, the chapter you've linked has two things to say about CSP: 1) that publishing there isn't going to earn you the respect of fellow academics, and 2) that vanity presses have lower academic prestige than the likes of CSP. I really don't know how that text made you conclude that CSP are described there as a vanity press, when in fact the opposite is the case. The library guide you link only quotes an email sent by CSP as an example of a "predatory conference letter" without giving further commentary. That's a bit odd to begin with (the email is clearly soliciting book proposals, not advertising conferences), but the characterisation as predatory is incorrect. Yes, CSP have been criticised for their unselective solicitation emails (a practice in common with actual predatory publishers), but they themselves are not predatory (because they don't charge authors), that much I thought had already been established in this discussion. – Uanfala (talk) 00:42, 10 July 2022 (UTC)

Predatory encompasses a spectrum of terrible practices. Spamming emails is one of them, because they're preying on the young and foolish to submit their work for free, so Cambridge can exploit these people and make money off their back. They're a print-on-demand vanity press. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 00:49, 10 July 2022 (UTC)

In that case I would recommend not pushing beyond the bounds of what reliable sources say. On the subject of whether CSP is predatory this article in Science as Culture is an interesting read. My own view is that the situation is not as black and white as you are presenting it. Richard Nevell (talk) 20:12, 9 July 2022 (UTC)

It's a damning picture of CSP. High-volume with little-to no review output to maximize profits, spamming campaigns (but it's nice, personalized spam!), specifically reaching out to people who wouldn't be able to publish fringe viewpoints anywhere else. These all the characteristics of a well-organized vanity press. It's only better than Lambert because CSP is better organized and better at PR. Note that the article specifically is less concerned "... judging the quality of the monographs Lambert and CSP were publishing than in their negotiation of existing credibility economies, with the elite university presses at their apex". Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 00:58, 11 July 2022 (UTC)

In one instance an academic listed on a CSP editorial board replied to insist that she did not know she was listed as an editor. Whoops. XOR'easter (talk) 01:18, 11 July 2022 (UTC)

In my experience they're not even that careful with their personalised spam. I once received an unsolicited email from them in which they got both my first name and employer wrong, quite the howler as my email address at the time was [email protected], asking me to contribute something quite outside my area. They're sloppy, period. I have tried over the years to defend this encyclopedia from those who want to turn it into viXra with a side of TVTropes, but I think I'm done. I have other things I want to be doing and it no longer seems worth the effort, especially seeing a few editors who really ought to know better defending this manipulative garbage. If that's how it's going to be then I'm outta here. Reyk _YO! 01:55, 11 July 2022 (UTC)

• Question: why not treat as self-published? I've occasionally come over this publisher when following citations and bibliographies in high-quality sources, and my impression is that highly competent scholars do sometimes publish there. For example, this is mainly authored by top scholars, this is also good quality, and this contains contributions by absolute top scholars like G. E. R. Lloyd, as well as lesser stars like Helen King or Mario Vegetti who are still scholars of the highest rank. This is not like a news source where authors are anonymous: apart from the publisher, there is also the scholar and their academic reputation to take into account. It's also probably not a coincidence that I just named three edited volumes: these by definition have editorial oversight. Use with caution, certainly, but outright banning seems like a bad idea. ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 20:38, 9 July 2022 (UTC)

  No one is proposing outright banning. Like with any other vanity press, when a CSP book is accompanied by a positive review, it can be used as a reliable SPS source. Absent of those, CSP books are inadequate as sources. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 21:45, 9 July 2022 (UTC)

  Yes, a positive review would be a very good indication that a SPS or equivalent is reliable. But why require it? In my experience, the status of the scholar in their field is a far more important indicator for reliability than the reputation of the publisher. On the other hand, not every high-quality volume gets reviewed. For example, of the three books I mentioned above, I found (very) positive reviews for the first two ([33] for [34] and [35] for [36]), but for the third one –arguably the one with the best scholars– I did not find a review. Should we treat a book chapter by someone like G. E. R. Lloyd (please have a look at where he usually publishes) as unreliable because it has a bad publisher and there happens to be no review? I at least think we shouldn't. ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 00:05, 10 July 2022 (UTC)

  Because vanity presses are crap and are by definition not reliable (which is different than being guaranted to be wrong). It's the same if a 'good' scholar publishes in predatory journal. They've dodged the reviewing process, and they don't get a free pass. See WP:VANPRED#Use in the real world vs use on Wikipedia. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 00:13, 10 July 2022 (UTC)

  I find it by no means credible that the three volumes I cited above were dodging peer-review. As edited volumes, they also enjoyed at least some form of editorial oversight. This is simply not vanity publishing: all of the scholars involved could easily have published elsewhere, and have in fact done so often (again, see here). The positive reviews also indicate that. This all rather shows that CSP cannot be treated as predatory without a case-by-case evaluation. Speaking of evaluation, the essay you're citing is using self-published primary sources to prove a point that editors can't evaluate any self-published sources without engaging in original research... But here on this noticeboard we are going to evaluate (secondary) sources, and as many have pointed out above, the publisher is only one factor in the equation. As someone also said above, we should avoid putting the cart before the horse. Let's first see whether CPS is a vanity press, shall we? ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 01:42, 10 July 2022 (UTC)

• Oppose blanket removal. I don't see CSB as being in anyway different from self-published sources, which may be considered reliable when produced by an established expert on the subject matter, whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable, independent publications. The discussion has proven that CSB occasionally publishes works that qualify as reliable sources either because written by well-reputed academics or because accepted as valuable scientific contributions by the academic community; there's no reason for removing them for the sole reason that they were published by CSB. Gitz (talk) (contribs) 21:48, 9 July 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose blanket removal - I'm not convinced that this publisher is as some have claimed in blanket statements relative to predatory, unreliable, etc. It would be wonderful if all publishers had experts in every field of academia comprising their editorial boards, and while we strive for RS, it's rather ironic that WP itself is considered an unreliable source - in part, because of perceived systemic biases. CSB states on their about page: We are proud of our reputation for author satisfaction. The publishing process should be a rewarding experience. There is no cost to our authors/editors to publish. We offer complimentary copies, a substantial author discount, and a generous royalty scheme. Atsme 💬 📧 15:45, 10 July 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose blanket removal The sources given above seem to be quite clear in showing that CSP does publish valuable academic books (even if it's despite themselves, rather than because of themselves). And the repeated attempts above to claim them as a vanity publisher and then, when that statement is refuted by actual sources directly saying they're not as bad as that, the original people making the vanity claim then not responding or addressing those sources makes said original claimants look like they're purposefully trying to avoid engaging with the subject and are on the verge of lying. Clearly, this is not a vanity publisher, it is not a predatory publisher, it's open publishing blatantly just makes it fall under self-published sources and any books from it should be treated as such around the importance of the author. Silverseren^C 17:08, 10 July 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose removal to echo User:Alaexis above. I agree that {{better source needed}} should be added instead of removal with |reason= "Cambridge Scholars is considered unreliable per WP:RSN" or something similar. To address the counterarguments: regardless of whether the page editors address the tag in a timely manner or not, it's there for the reader to see if they are verifying content. Even though it appears that Headbomb is only removing Cambridge Scholars material in multi-sourced contexts, that is still problematic if the remaining material is not checked that it is still verified in the remaining source, and there is no tag like {{please verify that I didn't remove something important because I'm too busy to do it myself}} Sorry to editorialize but that does reflect my interpretation sometimes.) I don't get the edit-warring either -- One thing this page teaches is that the reliability of sources needs to be interpreted in context, so if the editors who have been maintaining a page for months disagree with your agnostic source removal, maybe they have a reason, and picking a fight over an article you haven't read maybe isn't the most constructive use of everyone's time. Of course that is an entirely separate issue from whether Cambridge Scholars should have different considerations as far as reliability, but apparently we're trying to have both conversations at once here. SamuelRiv (talk) 18:13, 10 July 2022 (UTC)
• Treat as self-published. Which in most cases should mean removal as unreliable, but we can use it if we can determine that the author is an established subject-matter expert. Why an established subject-matter expert would be using such a publisher, rather than just directly self-publishing if self-publishing is what they want, is another question, but not one we need to answer here. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:45, 10 July 2022 (UTC)
• Treat as self-published and go ahead with blanket removal, restoring on a case-by-case basis when an argument can be made to do so. {{better source needed}} tags hang around and don't get resolved until somebody pushes. XOR'easter (talk) 00:25, 11 July 2022 (UTC)

  Other relevant past discussions: a failed Featured Article nomination where CSP was called a quite dodgy publisher that is just this side of self-publishing; a deletion debate where the closer wrote that they ave an extremely poor reputation for fact checking and editorial oversight and are on some versions of Beall's List so this source is marginal at best. In this discussion, which also ended in a delete, the possibility was raised that they've made some sort of bulk e-book deal for academic libraries which ends up boosting their WorldCat holdings numbers. XOR'easter (talk) 01:09, 11 July 2022 (UTC)

Reliability of FANDOM News Stories

FANDOM's news stories are distinct from its fan wikis, which are written by anonymous contributors. These stories are attributed to actual FANDOM employees who go under their real names, and are hosted on the fandom.com site unlike fandom.com subdomains, which host wikis. Are these articles reliable? VORTEX³⁴²⁷ (Talk!) 07:32, 9 July 2022 (UTC)

Salon.com let misinformation stand for over a year

See CNN's fact-check on the matter: Fact check: Liberal website changes headline that falsely said DeSantis signed a bill that forces students to register their political views:

The liberal website Salon has changed a headline that had falsely said a bill signed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis forces Florida's students and professors to register their political views with the state... Salon published the headline in June 2021. Its revision on Wednesday, more than a year later, came after the article went viral... Salon executive editor Andrew O'Hehir said in a Thursday email that while another Salon editor had defended the initial headline back in 2021, the publication recently took another look and concluded that the headline "conveyed a misleading impression of what the Florida law actually said, and did not live up to our editorial standards."

Note that there is no new information that has come out about this matter, they changed their article only because their misinformation happened to go viral recently. Not even 2 days after the original article came out, PolitiFact put out a fact check debunking the claim: New Florida law doesn't require university students, faculty and staff to register political views. Despite their article being debunked by fact checkers almost as soon as it was published, they decided to let it stand completely untouched for more than a year, altering it only when enough outrage was drummed up about it the next year. Is a "no consensus" RSP entry really appropriate for a publication whose editors appear to find it acceptable to publish information that is known to be verifiably false? Endwise (talk) 08:08, 9 July 2022 (UTC)

Was the problem only with the headline (which are not considered a reliable source per WP:HEADLINES)? If you suggest to downgrade it to unreliable, I think more evidence of misinformation is needed. Alaexis_¿question? 08:33, 9 July 2022 (UTC)

Yeah, headlines are headlines. We wouldn't have downgraded the status of the Boston Globe for Mush from the Wimp. XOR'easter (talk) 00:32, 11 July 2022 (UTC)

jagatgururampalji.org

Source: any article from jagatgururampalji.org

I was asked to discuss this before asking the site to be added to blocklist.

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

Majority of links from this site are written in a way to attract readers to Rampal's religious works. The articles usually follow a pattern. The users change or add a reference from this site (such as father's day or world tobacco day), the article on the site gives a brief information about that but somehow ends up directing readers to religious practice. For example, an article for Autism day gives a brief definition of the word but ends up claiming that it can be cured with 'this' religious practice. JamesJohn82 (talk · contribs) was blocked because he was spamming this site.

I haven't found a single article that can be characterised as a good refernece. All of them end up promoting their saint at the end of the article.

Some examples:

https://news.jagatgururampalji.org/rabindranath-tagore-jayanti/#True_Spiritual_Knowledge_Is_the_Biggest_Literature

In text: With the birth anniversary of one of the renowned litterateurs Rabindranath Tagore, let us make ourselves aware about the biggest literature of True Spiritual Knowledge or Tatvgyan.... and then talking about their saint.

https://news.jagatgururampalji.org/26-11-mumbai-terrorist-attack/

In text: It is grave ignorance to fight on any issue in the world. Everything is imperishable. Human birth will be fruitful if a person performs the True Devotion of the Absolute Supreme God Kabir Saheb and ensures its place in the Eternal Abode..... and then talking about their saint.

https://news.jagatgururampalji.org/rajiv-gandhi-assassination-death/

In text: The pious soul tried to do his level best for humanity, but he did not find an enlightened saint who could have guided him for the right human life’s purpose. There are many unfortunate pious souls without achieving the right spiritual guide..... and then talking about their saint.

These are just three articles. Every single article on this site links the topic with the saint's teachings. The last one is claiming that Rajiv Gandhi had no one to guide him to his life's purpose. In my opinion, it is offensive to use an article about his death to make this claim. Kenm v2 (talk) 09:36, 9 July 2022 (UTC)

MM News

Opinions sought on https://mmnews.tv, a Pakistani news website. Can't find an editorial policy on their website, just a statement at the left side of the footer reading "MM News is a subsidiary of the MM Group of Companies. It was established in 2019 with the aim of providing people of Pakistan access to unbiased information." The only MM Group of Companies I can find online for Pakistan is https://mmgoc.com.pk, which deals in agriculture and shipping. Some of the stories appear to be copied from other Pakistani news websites. The "shows" links at the right link to their YouTube channel, which has 71k subscribers. Is MM News a reliable source? Storchy (talk) 17:00, 9 July 2022 (UTC)

They don't get a lot of secondary coverage from my personal google results. Their top youtube vids are lighthearted animal news. At least one photo of theirs was appropriated later for a hoax. A July 2 story on Imran Khan (hot-button political stuff) is completely old-school journalism: Five Ws, the whole article is alternating grafs of direct-indirect quotes – India Today certainly doesn't do that from what I've seen (not trying to fling dirt, just saying it's not some subcontinent 'thing'). They have a "Fake News Alert" section of their site (which actually appears to select from other sections rather than being an exclusive section) – I'm not up on Pakistan's goings-on so I have no idea what some of these briefs are about, but some are straightforward – "APML rubbishes news about Musharraf’s death" looks like a clickbait headline, but it's another relatively old-school article about the APML reporting the Musharraf was dead, then saying they got it wrong and screwing up more facts, then eventually getting it right. All easily verifiable stuff without any theorizing.

Their "Investigations" section is where things get interesting. In a story alleging embezzlement the sources are pretty nonspecific (as often with a news outlet investigation) Even though the subhead/lead uses the phrase "embezzled in the name of ghost employees" the article body is again completely factual with no embellishment. That said, in the first body graf you have to take it at their word that their financial assessment is correctly presented – they don't specify if they researched them themselves through say financial documents or if it comes from the reports and interviews which are well-attributed in the following grafs. It's just one of things that could have been a copy editor's switch of graf order that left attribution hanging, or relatively uncontroversial or easily-verifiable details that would be better supported later, or an actual reporting error.

I don't want to be biased by how utterly refreshing it is to see old-school reporting. That said, their old-school articles do "make mistakes" in minor presentation from how I've been taught, but it could just be style (one indirect quote seemed to be hanging precariously loose though).

Having no company or editorial transparency from where I can access means I can't evaluate it on those merits. It is also a quite new outlet (est. 2019) so a lot of what they are has had no chance to be "established" yet. That more than anything makes anything from the "Investigations" section, as professional as it seems, require in-line attribution to the outlet. Otherwise I'm very impressed with how much they seem to commit to their stated "aim of providing people of Pakistan access to unbiased information", especially in Pakistan with a press freedom rank of 157 (down in 2022) and generally little competition in terms of good outlets. So given a place with few good RS to choose from, I'd say consider it locally reliable in terms of the news section and require direct attribution for investigations, until new evidence emerges. SamuelRiv (talk) 16:57, 10 July 2022 (UTC)

RfC: Cuepoint Medium publication reliability

There has been some disagreement over whether the Medium music publication Cuepoint, which is edited by Jonathan Shecter, directly owned by (the platform) Medium itself, and routinely featured a column by longtime music journalist Robert Christgau, is considered a reliable source. This was most recently raised at Wikipedia:Featured and good topic candidates/1989 (Taylor Swift album)/addition1. This publication does not have an entry at WP:RSMUSIC nor RSP. The publication appears to have gone dormant in 2016 but is routinely used in Taylor Swift related articles.

Is Cuepoint a reliable source for music industry coverage?

• Option 1: Generally reliable for factual reporting
• Option 2: Unclear or additional considerations apply
• Option 3: Generally unreliable for factual reporting
• Option 4: Publishes false or fabricated information, and should be deprecated

TheSandDoctor ^Talk 17:29, 9 July 2022 (UTC)

Survey (Cuepoint)

• Optoin 2. Reasoning below. MarioSoulTruthFan (talk) 18:31, 9 July 2022 (UTC)

Discussion (Cuepoint)

• I believe Cuepoint can be used sparsely. Robert Christgau is a very regarded music journalist, so basically, anything he says goes. So if they have an article written by someone that has a journalism degree and/or has written for other publications it will be fine to use. However, if none of these conditions are met the article is better not used, as Medium is deemed as an unreliable source and Cupoint belongs to it. However, some pieces are written by musicians, such as Mark Ronson, which seem fine, at first glance, to use as he discusses his personal experience with George Michael, but it shouldn't be used to give a certain song(s) a review. It should be used like Sound on Sound is used and other magazines alike. MarioSoulTruthFan (talk) 18:30, 9 July 2022 (UTC)

  @MarioSoulTruthFan: Thank you for your explanation. Just to clarify, "Medium is deemed as an unreliable source" because it can be used to publish your own blog (etc). The difference here though is that this publication on medium had reputable editorial control and appears to fall outside of the WP:MEDIUM RSP entry's coverage area. It is "self-published" in the same (philosophical) way that The New York Times or Rolling Stone are -- it simply isn't the same thing as the Medium entry's coverage. TheSandDoctor ^Talk 18:41, 9 July 2022 (UTC)

  I forgot to add this in but it is a key point that just dawned on me. An analogy here is how WordPress is considered unreliable but sites running WordPress can be (i.e. Variety, Global News, and Time). WordPress -- or Medium in this case -- is just the platform. TheSandDoctor ^Talk 18:59, 9 July 2022 (UTC)

  I see. But is also deemed as unreliable as it is a mirror source, so it copies from other sources and publishes those articles as if they were their originals. Nevertheless, the other conditions are still the same. MarioSoulTruthFan (talk) 19:20, 9 July 2022 (UTC)

  @MarioSoulTruthFan: I am confused. What is considered a mirror source? Where did you see that/get that from? I don’t see that listed at the RSP entries for either WordPress or Medium? TheSandDoctor (mobile) (talk) 21:19, 9 July 2022 (UTC)

  I'm saying it is a mirror website, it copies articles from other websites. MarioSoulTruthFan (talk) 21:25, 9 July 2022 (UTC)

Chartmasters.org

There is a consensus that chartmasters.org is not considered a reliable source for record sales, hence it should be avoided. However, I've recently noted that there are multiple reliable sources like Wall Street Journal 1,2 Newyorker 3, Vulture 4, and Soundsblog (a supplement to Italian newspaper blogo) 5 citing the founder of chartmasters.org Guillaume Vieira as a primary source for these articles’ sales estimates. Some of these articles claim Guillaume Vieira is the greatest chart expert in the world as well. What should we do on these occasions? Should we eliminate all the articles citing the founder of chartmasters.org on the ground of the previous consensus, or is it time to review our previous consensus on chartmasters? TheWikiholic (talk) 13:43, 10 July 2022 (UTC)

Attorney statements published in WP:RS

I was referred here by the help desk. I'm currently involved in an article about a current event where an attorney for the deceased is making assertions about the details of the event. These assertions are being published in WP:RS. Some contributors are insisting that the attorneys assertions be included as long as they are not in the Wikipedia voice and attributed to the attorney, while others are contending that because the attorney didn't witness the event or have access to any new information their assertions cannot be verified and should not be included. I'm aware of WP:RS and WP:VNT I'm wondering if there are other relevant policies in this area since I expect this is something that comes up frequently. WP:NEWSOPED comes to mind but in this case the third party is not a news source.

I'm not asking for anyone to get involved in the specific content dispute (to which I am intentionally not referring) just looking for guidance on other relevant policies in this area.

Thanks for your time and consideration. --LaserLegs (talk) 16:19, 10 July 2022 (UTC)

The problem is wp:blp means we have to be careful with accusations. So without knowing the details it's hard to say. But wp:v is rather clear, just because something can be verified does not mean it has to be included. Now you are correct, if an RS quotes someone it is an RS for that quote (as long as it is attributed). But issues related to RS status (such as wp:undue may affect its ability to be used.

So this is not really an RS question. Slatersteven (talk) 16:27, 10 July 2022 (UTC)

Thanks Slatersteven. Without submitting an RFC on the subject, is there a more appropriate place to ask? --LaserLegs (talk) 16:57, 10 July 2022 (UTC)

You might try over an the Undue talk page, or WP:NPOVN, but in truth an RFC might be better. Slatersteven (talk) 16:59, 10 July 2022 (UTC)

How do we reduce the use of unreliable sources on Wikipedia?

If you have a very big watchlist, then you're bound to see from time to time editors running AWB tasks to remove hundreds, or sometimes thousands, of citations to one or another source that has been deemed predatory or "vanity". For reasons that I imagine should be obvious to most watchers of this page, this practice has been disruptive.

Still, we need a way to keep the use of poor sourcing at low levels in the long term and avoid situations where one or two editors end up feeling like they're alone in the battle. Instead of reactively removing existing references, we could proactively try to discourage their use at the point of initial addition. Yes, that's what the blacklist does, but it doesn't work for the vast grey area of sources that are often subpar though not bad enough to be simply banned. It also occasionally encourages deceit (I've seen people leaving out the url of a predatory publisher so that they can pass the edit filter, resulting in a citation to what looks like an acceptable physical journal).

There's another way. You've noticed how these days you get a popup warning whenever you try to insert a link to a disambiguation page? Can't we have a similar warning system for sources? The popup can say "You seem to have just inserted a citation to a publication in X. X is presumed to be a predatory publisher, so should almost never be used". Or something like "X is not as reliable as it seems as it doesn't feature peer review". Or any number of similar warnings depending on the publication in question. That's obviously not going to be a silver bullet, but it should be able to make a difference. Right? – Uanfala (talk) 21:17, 10 July 2022 (UTC)

What you've just basically described is the WP:DEPRECATION system. Hemiauchenia (talk) 21:31, 10 July 2022 (UTC)

Editors are supposed to use the best sources available and summarize what they say. Unfortunately, there are tendentious editors who decide what an article should say, then search for sources to support it. It doesn't matter what rules there are, so long as some editors want to write articles in violation of weight and rs, we will see all kinds of obscure sources used. TFD (talk) 21:53, 10 July 2022 (UTC)

When I clean citations I get that exact warning at least for book publishers. Typically I tag with {{bcn}} in such cases, or something else if it's an endnote ref, because in those kinds of articles it's often difficult to tell which material is attributed to which source. As you see in the discussion above, though, sometimes there's disagreement about what level of play is "predatory" or "vanity" depending on who's asking and who's in the know, and depending on your field and region of inquiry standards can be quite depressingly low. Never mind the Sokal affair when there's a replication crisis. And of course many of the same people advocating blanket removals will cite preprints without blinking an eye. I know Arxiv/General is considered verboten but it takes minimal affiliation to not be put there. And if a pretty graphic gets posted on a prof's CC-BY blog -- who needs peer review? Point of that smalltext rant is there's a lot of obsession here about whether something can be considered reliable on its face, and the reality seems to not work this way. I see more of a problem with articles misrepresenting or misusing or not in-line citing sources than I see articles having low-quality sources (albeit that can sometimes be the root cause of the former). Of course to address that kind of thing some of the most pious RS crusaders might have to turn off their bots a moment and read an article. SamuelRiv (talk) 00:24, 11 July 2022 (UTC)