Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 16:25, 17 March 2014

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.

Sections older than 5 days archived by lowercase sigmabot III.

Additional notes:

• WP:RSN
• WP:RS/N
• WP:V/N

• 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.

Current large scale clean-up efforts

Large scale clean-ups/answersingenesis.com

Large scale clean-ups/evolutionnews.org

Large scale clean-ups/independentpoliticalreport.com

Large scale clean-ups/kavitakosh.org

FamilyTreeLegends.com

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Note

Moved from ANI board

This website, from the "leader in software and services for family history enthusiasts," was recently used as a source to insert alleged birth names, and date of births on a BLP. No other sources I found were reporting this information. I'm told this is covered by WP:BLPPRIMARY, and should not be used.

Hundreds of Misplaced Pages articles are using this cite as a reference or external link, (see here).

Should this cite by blocked from use on Misplaced Pages? Is there some value that is appropriate? Sportfan5000 (talk) 14:49, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

I believe this might be more appropriately discussed at the reliable sources noticeboard, especially as I'm uncertain how this matter requires administrator intervention. DonIago (talk) 15:11, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

I'm thinking the site needs to be blacklisted, which requires an administrator to do. BUt I may be missing that this has some validity. I haven't seen a case yet which didn't violate either WP:ELNO, or WP:BLPPRIMARY. And most of these links are on BLPs. Sportfan5000 (talk) 15:22, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

Take it to RSN and see if people want it added to the blacklist. That can be done if there is consensus there. I don't mess with the list myself as I'm always afraid of breaking the syntax, but I know how to add a request! Dougweller (talk) 15:49, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

It is a software company, and of essentially nil value for making any claims of fact. Collect (talk) 16:22, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

It looks like 661 Misplaced Pages articles include a link to familytreelegends. The software depends on user input, which can be good or it can be garbage: GIGO. The reference is not reliable or unreliable on its face. Binksternet (talk) 16:59, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

I know WP editors like to paint an entire website with a single brush, but that's not a very good practice. In the case of familytreelegends.com, whether it's a reliable source depends on which records from the site are being cited. The site has digitized books - reference, history, and geography books - that are the same as the books found on Google Books or archive.org. Those should be considered reliable sources. The remainder of the records on the site are indexes of primary sources. Although not primary sources themselves, the method of index creation often leaves a lot to be desired, so the indexes should not be considered reliable. Any family trees found on the site are user-contributed, so they fail WP:SPS (the site hosts, but does not publish the trees), and are not reliable. 71.139.152.78 (talk) 20:31, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

I'm trying to see if this is mostly being used to support BLP names and date of births, which sure seems likes it's misusing primary sources, or if there is valid uses that it is also accomplishing. If the site is using reliable sources, then those are the reliable sources we should be citing, not an aggregator of sorts. The majority of cases have been violating WP:BLPPRIMARY, and WP:EL. Can you show some examples where that is not the case and the software is being used within acceptable areas? Sportfan5000 (talk) 20:39, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

Three examples:

• Monroe, Wisconsin article, footnote 19 cites this source: Collections of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Volume 12, a reliable historical text. For comparison purposes, the volume is also online at the Wisconsin Historical Society website: , at archive.org: , and on Google Books: .
• Henry Hammel and Andrew H. Denker article, footnote 13 cites this source: Sixty Years in Southern California, 1853-1913 also available at archive.org: and Google Books: .
• San Timoteo Canyon article, footnote 3 cites this source: The Native Americans of Southern California, 1852, also available at Google Books: .

Take a look at the categories in the familytreelegends' records collection. Records found in the Birth, Marriage, Death, & Other; Military; and Land, Court, & Probate categories are indexes of primary records. Those in the Biography & History and Geography & Reference categories are digitized books, such as those shown above, and those found on archive.org and Google Books.

I'm not sure what you mean by "software". None of the familysearchlegends citations I looked at were to any software, only to the site's record collections. 71.139.152.78 (talk) 21:57, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

In the above examples, it would make sense to cite the original source rather than FamilyTreeLegends. When someone uses Google or Google Books they are not putting the search as the source, they put the original source. I have no issue with using this company if it leads to a source but i don't think the search vehicle itself should be cited. Sportfan5000 (talk) 00:35, 1 March 2014 (UTC)

You didn't bother to click on any of those footnote links, did you? None of them was using the search as the source. ALL of them linked to the actual source, either a digitized image or a transcription of the source. 71.139.152.78 (talk) 01:11, 1 March 2014 (UTC)

I di dactually, and I think it's misleading to the reader who sees FamilyTreeLegends as a source when they, much like Google books, is simply the conduit to the real source. The real source should be cited directed, possibly with a link to FTL's image capture. But the source should be honestly represented instead of appearing to be FTL. Sportfan5000 (talk) 07:11, 2 March 2014 (UTC)

• This is actually directing me to My Heritage.com. This site is exactly like Ancestry.com and is all user generated content. The site itself is not RS and I can see no logical reasoning to use the site as a source when the references used to document genealogy there would be like finding a reference here. We don't cite Misplaced Pages just because the source was found here.--Mark Miller (talk) 09:24, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

Should FamilyTreeLegends.com/My Heritage.com be blacklisted

• Support This looks like it is being misused on a large enough scale to be concerning.--Mark Miller (talk) 09:24, 3 March 2014 (UTC)
• Support. My comparison might not be accurate, but i see the site's positive uses to finding reliable sources, much like one can use Google Books. However not everything at either of these cites can or should be used as sources, and just like we don't use a Google Book search as an actual reference, neither should we use this cite. Instead directly attribute to the underlying source and reference that. Sportfan5000 (talk) 09:59, 3 March 2014 (UTC)
• Support Also rootsweb.ancestry.com, and see if there are any more. TFD (talk) 14:50, 3 March 2014 (UTC)
• Strongly oppose Most of those supporting the ban really do not understand what the website (or rootsweb or ancestry) are all about. This isn't a black and white issue. Some of the records on familytreelegends (and rootsweb and ancestry) are primary records that should not be used. I feel just as strongly about that as others. But some of the "records" are not actually records - they're historical texts. Please see my (71.139.152.78) comment above where I laid out 3 examples of historical texts hosted at familytreelegends that are without a doubt reliable sources. See hundreds more here. Do you really want to blacklist the CIA World Factbook? 71.139.149.178 (talk) 21:49, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

Further discussion

• In each of those cases though, FTL is a conduit pointing to sources. The original sources themselves should be cited, not FTL. Meanwhile FTL is being highly abusive of the BLP policies and sharing birth names and birth dates, as well as other personal information that may or may not be accurate, likely could be used for identity theft, and should not be used anyway per WP:BLPPRIMARY. I just haven't seen any case where we should cite FTL instead of the original source. Sportfan5000 (talk) 22:31, 3 March 2014 (UTC)
  • No, sorry IP, but primary sources can be used in a number of instances. You are simply incorrect about that. But thinking that using the My Heritage as a source for ANYTHING is even worse. And I actually understand these sites pretty well as I am a member of almost all of them and have a very extensive family tree. Birth records may be used to source DOB as long as they do not contain any personal information. Same as a death certificate or even the photo of a headstone may be used to source the date of a death. On the other hand, a lot of these supposed primary sources are in fact secondary in nature. Testimony from probate documents and sworn affidavits can also be used if they contain pertinent information. Even if there is no additional sourcing, an actual primary source is not simply excluded because it is primary. It still has pertinent information and using My heritage instead of the actual source...DOES NOT MAKE IT SECONDARY.--Mark Miller (talk) 06:20, 4 March 2014 (UTC)
    • The main issue here is the notability of the figure and whether they are a living person. Primary sources of someone from 100 years ago is a different animal. I used to be slightly envious of people with famous ancestors...now I am envious of people with good paper trails. Just remember that if you are using genealogy sites to find information of living persons....you must be very careful what you divulge. If you are using the site to find information of someone who dies 100 years ago...there is little chance of that.--Mark Miller (talk) 06:32, 4 March 2014 (UTC)
      • Last comment....I have to wonder how the majority of these articles are using these sites. The issue becomes when the site itself is used because there is nothing else. Gosh...I wish I could just use the content from My Heritage and Ancestry.com. Think of all the research I could save myself if I just say "screw it...this says I'm Kanekapolei's great, great, great grandson...so it must be true. No need to research further". Yeah...it simply doesn't work that way in the real world or Misplaced Pages.--Mark Miller (talk) 06:44, 4 March 2014 (UTC)
        • The article Richard Tylman is extensively sourced to Rootsweb. The problem is that we do not know if the records in that source relate to the subject of the article. A judgment was made that Richard Tylman, yeoman, who is mentioned in a license issued by the magistrates is the same person as the subject of the article, even though the subject of the article held the social rank of gentleman and had died 16 years earlier. TFD (talk) 18:37, 7 March 2014 (UTC)
• Comment. I've asked for an outside editor to close. Sportfan5000 (talk) 08:01, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

Verifiability and popular culture: Korean TV dramas

In the past couple of years I've watched nearly thirty examples of the kind of TV program the article "Korean drama" covers (K-dramas), and written about them for a book (and movie) log I keep. A few months ago I used all the sources I could find to compile a sort of history of K-dramas, realised it was too much for the log, and adapted it into a "History" section for the article "Korean drama", which is over a third of the article's total length. (Compare my work on a comparable section for "State income tax".)

Since I don't read Korean, I promptly posted to the "Korean popular culture" working group's talk page, noting the existence of the section and my disqualification, and inviting corrections. None have been forthcoming.

Last month I watched a drama that considerably disturbed me, in a way that I then found was reasonably common among anglophone viewers. I added a "Controversy" section to the article "Secret Garden (TV series)" about this, reading as follows:

"Some Western viewers object strongly to scenes in which Kim Joo-won's sexual assaults on Gil Ra-im are portrayed as romantic, and received by her as such. As usual in discussions of media portrayals of sexual assault, other viewers object to these objections; some offer explanations involving traditional Korean gender politics."

The section was promptly removed, ostensibly because its only support was blogs. I responded by creating a section in the talk page about it. (There I speculate that there may be more authoritative sources in Korean, but the specific one I hypothesise has not, in fact, said anything on the subject, at least to judge by web searches.) The blogs cited: Dramabeans recap of episode 13, December 2010 Outside Seoul blog, August 2013.

I have since read a fair amount of what Misplaced Pages's policies say about reliable sources. I conclude that although it's clearly insane to object to these blogs as self-published sources per se, given that what I'm trying to support is the existence of "objections", the rider about self-published sources as sources about themselves applies: since these objections concern a third party, they can't be cited. (So if I understand correctly, I could cite Dramabeans critiquing itself, but not, as marketers do, quote its reviews of actual dramas. Um. Dramabeans is more or less a blog, certainly a self-published work at least as regards the two main writers, and one of the main sites in English on K-dramas. It's one of the two blogs I cited, the other being a much more typical trivial blog, though one that happens to be well written and well thought out and so forth.) Near as I can tell, even the talk section is impermissible, not that I'm going to be the person to delete it.

It gets worse, though. It now appears that well over 50% of the content of the "History" section of "Korean drama" is also due for removal for lack of reliable sources. ("State income tax" is not comparably vulnerable.) Since the section consists of fifteen paragraphs, I'm not going to go over it in detail here, but such sources include:

1) Blog posts (including the main source cited for TV ratings records, cited as "Top 50 highest-rated TV dramas of all time").

2) Self-published works (including the most historically-inclined source for the years up to 1964, cited as "With S2", a set of five PDFs, for example "Radio Dayz").

3) A master's thesis.

4) Dissertations cited without regard to supervision, independent citation, etc. (Ironically, I do know of one citation to one of these, since the later and more useful dissertation, Jeon's, which is quite recent and is my single most important source, cites the earlier and less useful one.)

5) An enthusiast page for the history of a video recorder company.

6) One footnote tries to cite DramaWiki, the other main site in English about K-dramas, which as a wiki is also unacceptable, but Misplaced Pages blacklists it anyway, for reasons not made remotely clear when editing. (Not this time either.)

7) One footnote even amounts to "Citation needed".

In comparison, only a few of the footnotes cite a published article about early radio in Korea, a published article about K-dramas' exports in the past two decades, and some newspaper articles.

It's worth noting that while there isn't much published scholarship on K-dramas, there is some, and it's primarily, of course, in Korean, with bits and pieces in Japanese, Chinese, and Thai, at least. I've been waiting for months now for access to a recently published history of K-dramas, because I'm hoping it'll have formatted information I can use in related projects not on, or meant for, Misplaced Pages. So in other words, the information exists - the self-published up-to-1964 work is patently based on research the authors probably didn't do themselves - and exists in what Misplaced Pages would apparently consider reliable sources, but isn't available in English-language sources.

The Korean page linked to from "Korean drama" as the equivalent article ("대한민국의 텔레비전 드라마" or "%EB%8C%80%ED%95%9C%EB%AF%BC%EA%B5%AD%EC%9D%98_%ED%85%94%EB%A0%88%EB%B9%84%EC%A0%84_%EB%93%9C%EB%9D%BC%EB%A7%88") has an extensive history section, which Google Translate makes mincemeat out of, and which cites no sources at all. I obviously don't know much about Korean Misplaced Pages's policies, but what I've observed from the pages on individual dramas is that those are low on text (plot summary, reception, production notes) in general, so this section in the overview page is exceptional.

So OK, I have a big and a little concern here. The big concern is that two long documents of presumptive merit (well, I certainly think mine has some!) are vulnerable to deletion not because they can't be done well but because they *haven't* been done well *by Misplaced Pages's evidence standards* and nobody's stepping forward. The little concern is that an issue that taints not only a drama, but because of similar issues with other dramas and the praise the first drama received, the whole industry, apparently can't be addressed on Misplaced Pages. (Unless there's Korean feminist scholarship on the subject and I just don't know about it.)

Oh, and one other concern: When I do something that helps the promotion of K-drama, its flaws are ignored. When I do something that hurts the promotion of K-drama, its flaws justify its deletion. Um?

Joe Bernstein joe@sfbooks.com not a registered Wikipedian

Misplaced Pages has in the past plagiarised DramaWiki (see "Eyes of Dawn" ), and frankly should do more of that, since DramaWiki tends to be more reliable within its remit. For example, Misplaced Pages on "My Lovely Sam Soon" has the ratings agencies backwards; I know this because the Korean TV advertising agency, Kobaco (no longer a monopoly, but was one at this document's date), confirms DramaWiki's version; see http://www.kobaco.co.kr/information/adinfo/UploadFile/%281%29120_%BD%C3%C3%BB%B7%FC%C6%C4%B0%ED%B5%E9%B1%E2.pdf.

Sheesh. Much of my following verbiage is devoted to defending Dramabeans as a reliable source. And here I find that English Misplaced Pages plagiarises them too! So what's not acceptable in Secret Garden (TV series) turns out to be perfectly acceptable in Gourmet (TV series) - compare the character listing there with the one in the Dramabeans recap of episodes 1-4 - as long as no credit is given! The edit producing this was done by 69dressings nearly a year and a half after the Dramabeans recap, i.e. over four years ago.

Joe Bernstein joe@sfbooks.com

128.95.223.129 (talk) 23:56, 13 March 2014 (UTC)

Eyes of Dawn is one of the most important dramas in the history of K-drama. It is not an accident that it is (at least as far as I know) the earliest drama available on English-subtitled DVD. Its continued absence from Misplaced Pages after over six years, while Misplaced Pages covers literally hundreds of less important dramas, is shameful. I expect to watch it within a couple of months, and would be tempted to address that absence myself, except for this education I'm getting in verifiability.

128.95.223.129 (talk) 19:37, 10 March 2014 (UTC)

The problem is that we're trying to avoid the "My uncle Al" effect. (Which name I just made up.) It goes like this: "My uncle Al objects to some episodes of The Secret Garden due to such-and-such." Clearly we shouldn't put that in the article, right? Even though it's true, and verifiable, there's nothing showing that it's relevant - why should our readers care about what some editor's uncle Al thinks? So we should similarly avoid "Some bloggers object to that episode of The Secret Garden". I'm guessing we can find a few bloggers objecting to pretty much any given tv show in a reasonably internet-wired country. This one is sexist, that one instead threatens traditional values, this one is too violent, that one is instead too boring. Without reliable sources saying these specific objections matter, we're pretty much going by your - one anonymous editor's - opinion that they do. Now I'm not sure if I understand what you write there at the top - are you saying that you are a published author (by a professional publishing house, not just self-published) of a book on the subject of K-dramas? If so, then you're not just an anonymous editor, and we can take your opinion as such - put it up on your blog so we can cite it, and we might well write "Joe Bernstein, author of FooBar's Guide to KDrama, notes objections to some episodes of The Secret Garden due to such-and-such." --GRuban (talk) 21:44, 10 March 2014 (UTC)

Well, um, akcherly, one of the sources I was citing *has* published a book about K-dramas, but it seems to be more or less self-published (it's an e-book), so what does that show? (Dramabeans again: Why Do Dramas Do That? by the two lead writers, one of whom was the author of the page I was citing.)

Anyway, is the "My uncle Al" effect then the entire history of K-dramas? No, I'm not a published author on this subject, except, again, self-publication (a few posts on Usenet). As far as I know, nobody in Misplaced Pages has cited my articles in The Encyclopedia of Fantasy ed. John Clute and John Grant, let alone any of my journalism. But my question isn't limited to Secret Garden. Yes, I'm extremely pissed off about that, specifically in relation to Boys Over Flowers, for which you do cite material objections because they happen to come from the Seoul YWCA. But I'm more worried that any editor who happens to dislike me can justifiably remove a section of an article that I worked on for some time, not because anything in it is untrue (though bits of it may be, and almost certainly the emphases are distorted by the info I had access to), but because I, personally, happen to be unable to meet your evidential standards for *showing* that it's true. And I'm especially worried that the standard by which one thing I wrote was cut, while another, so far, survives, seems to be essentially biased.

(Off to Dramabeans to check whether the book really is self-pub, and what do you know? They have a set of twelve outside links on their front page, two of which are to DramaWiki, the site I already mentioned, and to Outside Seoul, the thoughtful but I thought obscure blog which was the other thing I cited re Secret Garden - and note that that particular drama is mentioned, in that cite, only in the comments, not in the main article, which is however a substantial article on sexual assault vis-a-vis K- and other Asian dramas.)

Oh, and yes, the Dramabeans book is self-published: http://jpdstudio.com/2013/01/dimension-four-logo-combines-tradition-and-edge/.

Joe Bernstein

66.212.71.207 (talk) 01:14, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

(error fixes)128.95.223.129 (talk) 01:52, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

Blogs and self-published sources are, basically, unrealiable. That isn't biased but is a long-standing policy. However, some of the sources you are talking about may not be blogs but online arts magazines. For a review of a Korean TV series we're looking for the same kind of sources as for a US TV series. Where are such series typically reviewed? What did those sources say? If you work from that direction, from the sources into Misplaced Pages, you should be fine. Problems typically arise when someone wants to include content and then goes looking for sources to justify that content. Itsmejudith (talk) 16:29, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

Belatedly I've noticed the instruction to link to outside web pages referenced. So I've inserted a bunch of links above and below. Sorry.

It isn't clear to me how to reliably tell the difference between a blog and an online arts magazine, although I'm quite confident Dramabeans is closer to a blog than it is to, say, Slate or Event Horizon.

Maybe I should, however, go into more detail about Dramabeans, because your question "Where are such series typically reviewed?" is getting to the core of my concerns. Dramabeans has a bunch of facets, but its raison d'etre is something called "recaps". A recap is essentially a summary of a drama episode, with still photos. As Dramabeans does them there's usually also one song per recap (these aren't permanently available, however, unlike the text and photos), and occasionally some actual video is quoted. I've seen recaps older than Dramabeans, and they tended to be really light on text. In contrast, Dramabeans provides lots of detail, and the main writers have similar, and pronounced, styles, some of their locutions having become popular. I've met people who, too busy to actually watch their dramas every episode, rely *primarily* on Dramabeans recaps to follow dramas that interest them. The two main writers, "javabeans" (hence the site name) and "girlfriday", appear to be two women, probably in their 30s, who grew up in America but speak fluent Korean, and grew up on K-dramas. They may live in or near Seattle, as do I, but I haven't to my knowledge met either. I know of no professional qualifications either has as a TV critic except her long experience of K-dramas, and her current ability to make a living from Dramabeans; nor do I know whether, in either case, that ability is supported by a better-paying spouse's job.

There are two basic places I know to look for English-language reviews of K-dramas. One is, um, lemme see ... the archives of Korean Quarterly, where a bunch of the earlier North American releases were reviewed. (Note that Secret Garden is recent.) I don't know much about this quarterly but assume it would pass English Misplaced Pages's muster. The other is Dramabeans, where each recap usually includes comments by the recapper at the end, and the final one usually includes an extensive evaluation of the drama as a whole by each recapper who worked on it. Nor is this Dramabeans-centricity limited to me: YA Entertainment, whose 80-odd releases may be an actual majority of *all* Region 1 DVD, English-subtitled K-drama releases, quoted Dramabeans more than any other source in its marketing. As it happens, Korean Quarterly reviews no drama later than 2006, while Dramabeans started in 2007, so their remits are sort of complementary.

Mind, as GRuban suggested, there's a *massive* blogosphere around K-dramas, specifically in English (there's yet more in Korean, and some in other languages). Pretty much every time I find that I need to do a lot of searches about a particular drama, I find at least one blog I hadn't previously seen, years old, devoted to K-dramas. So yes, there are lots of reviews out there beyond the two sources I just cited. Dramabeans is unique not from being a blog but from consistency and quality.

And that's pretty much my point. People who read Korean have not come forward to produce, for either Korean or English Misplaced Pages, accounts of K-dramas' history that are well-sourced by Misplaced Pages's standards, in the existing, mostly Korean, scholarship on the subject. Instead someone came forward for Korean Misplaced Pages to write an unsourced account, and I came forward for English Misplaced Pages to write one sourced, as it turns out, almost entirely in things English Misplaced Pages specifically rules out. (I've taken the section as it existed two or three days ago and rewritten it to exclude everything "unreliably" sourced. Should I just post the two versions here so you can see what I'm talking about? One is a genuine historical account, however distorted by the availability of evidence; the other is a slapdash collection of factoids.)

I think ruling out blogs, wikis, theses, enthusiast pages, etc. makes it unreasonably difficult to deal with this particular element of global pop culture, one which has been reasonably successful internationally, and one whose creators interact copiously with self-appointed, self-published fans at home. (Several Korean entertainment *awards*, *which English Misplaced Pages documents*, are *voted* at major fan sites such as Daum and Soompi. Soompi is multilingual; I haven't used English Soompi much, since it's mostly below even my evidential standards, but it is where I can get lists of nominees for some earlier awards, and it's where Dramabeans, at least, got started.) I know there are tons of Misplaced Pages pages dealing with Western pop culture, heavily sourced to periodicals whose evidential value I think clearly lower than, say, Dramabeans, but y'all seem to disagree. There are tons of pages (in *English* Misplaced Pages) dealing with East Asian pop culture, heavily sourced to periodicals most of y'all can't even read to evaluate, though some of those are reasonably respectable sources. I now understand why those pages aren't, by and large, sourced to places like Dramabeans and DramaWiki, but I suspect that lack impoverishes English Misplaced Pages to some extent.

Separately, I stand by my claim that there's a bias in the relative survival of the two sections I wrote. One came down in days, and happens to document a disreputable aspect of K-dramas. The other has lasted for months (it's *still* up, even after this), has gotten various kinds of attention from several registered Wikipedians, and isn't nearly so negative. Both are, by English Misplaced Pages's standards, inadequately sourced. Why the difference? Maybe because I insulted someone's favourite drama; that's obviously bias. Maybe because I objected to a drama; but if praise can stand while objections can't, that's obviously bias. ("Praise?", you ask. Um, documenting awards, for example, is praise; I haven't heard about any Korean equivalent to the Razzies. I don't know, but wouldn't be surprised if authoritative sources in general shied away from criticism, partly for the same reasons many do in the West, but also partly out of East Asian traditions of courtesy; this would, if true, introduce a systemic bias.) Maybe because people who pay attention to specific dramas' pages have a lot of experience dealing with blog-sourced edits, while people who pay attention to Korean drama don't; but hey, here I am at sourcing central, pointing out my own work's deficiencies, so why is it still there?

I don't want it to come down. I didn't want "Controversy" in Secret Garden (TV series) to come down, although "my uncle Al" is something of an argument. I don't expect to change Misplaced Pages's standards of evidence. So I don't see a good solution here, but will keep talking until it's clear that there isn't one.

Joe Bernstein joe@sfbooks.com

128.95.223.129 (talk) 03:45, 13 March 2014 (UTC)

An idea: Why not ask around the Korean Misplaced Pages to find people who speak English who can find Korean sources? I know Misplaced Pages:RX can be used to find journal articles and news articles, but maybe those on the Korean Misplaced Pages can do the same with Korean academic databases. WhisperToMe (talk) 13:36, 13 March 2014 (UTC)

Um, I did, right after writing the section in the first place, as already noted in the second paragraph of this section. OK, I didn't ask *in Korean Misplaced Pages*, but NB Korean Misplaced Pages has its own "History" section in its own "Korean drama" article, and that has no references at all; it's not obvious to me that Korean Misplaced Pages contains people who'd care about writing in English so as to meet English Misplaced Pages's standards of evidence. Anyway, the reason I'm not a registered Wikipedian is precisely that I don't want to put in the time to, among other things, learn how to "ask around" on Misplaced Pages; these past weeks have taken rather more Misplaced Pages-internal time than I've ever wanted to spend.

So I'm skeptical about this as a solution in general, but if someone else wants to try, wonderful. I've already failed with it.

Joe Bernstein joe@sfbooks.com

128.95.223.129 (talk) 16:22, 13 March 2014 (UTC)

Joe, I would recommend asking on the main talk page of the Korea WikiProject on the English Misplaced Pages. Anyway, the Korean Misplaced Pages is located at http://ko.wikipedia.org. The Korean Misplaced Pages has an "embassy" that lists some members who also speak English: ko:위키백과:대사관 - Even though the article on the Korean Misplaced Pages lacks references, I'm confident somebody there will know where to find reliable sources in Korean. Some people who are on the Korean Misplaced Pages also write for the English Misplaced Pages and they are aware of the sourcing here. If anything, your questions may result in the Korean article getting sources. WhisperToMe (talk) 23:31, 13 March 2014 (UTC)

OK, against my better judgement, I've gone and done that, both places. (The K-drama I'm currently watching is boring enough so far to make me welcome such distractions.) I've also included pointers to this page. We'll see if anything results. Meanwhile, since I'm posting here at the bottom, I'll note that the current K-drama in question, at English Misplaced Pages, plagiarises Dramabeans, the very site whose reliability I've been defending. (And for whom I'm not a sock puppet: they *like* the episodes that're boring me!) Evidence way up above, just below the note on plagiarism from DramaWiki. The editor who originally perpetrated this plagiarism has been banned, so I'm not blaming anyone here now, or even the editor who killed "Controversy" in Secret Garden; but she's edited the plagiarised article, so she's not entirely innocent, either. Dramabeans is good enough to steal from but not good enough to draw from honourably? An emperor here is looking increasingly nude.

Joe Bernstein joe@sfbooks.com

128.95.223.129 (talk) 02:46, 14 March 2014 (UTC)

The only person who seems to have been active in the past year at the ko embassy talk page knows French but not English, so I posted in both languages there. Then I wondered, what if French Misplaced Pages has a sourced discussion of K-dramas' history? So I went and looked. Well, it doesn't, but of 13 footnotes in Drama_coréen, 7 reference Dramabeans, explicitly as a "blog". I also checked both the French and the Korean equivalents to Misplaced Pages:Identifying reliable sources. Both exist; both call for references; the Korean one explicitly bans blogs, the French one only discourages them. (It also has a detailed guide as to what to do if there are issues with references, but none of the situations discussed is closely similar to that in Korean drama.)

I'm beginning to wonder about dispute resolution processes, though I'm not sure whether complaining about plagiarism in Gourmet (TV series) or contesting the edit to Secret Garden (TV series) is what I might want to do.

Joe Bernstein joe@sfbooks.com

128.208.76.117 (talk) 16:53, 14 March 2014 (UTC)

128.95.223.129 (talk) 17:31, 14 March 2014 (UTC) (fixing a link)

That's a good idea, trying the French Misplaced Pages. In the meantime, you can try posting in English here ko:위키백과:사랑방 (일반) (the page is in Korean but people respond to English messages). If that doesn't work, I know of some other Korean users who may help you. Try contacting:

• ko:사용자:Neoalpha
• ko:사용자:ChongDae
• ko:사용자토론:Ykhwong
• ko:사용자토론:Tsuchiya Hikaru

WhisperToMe (talk) 01:47, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

Plagiarism of Ostensibly Unreliable Sources: Eight Examples

I think you're mistaking my motivations here. I'm not saying "Oh, I see, English Misplaced Pages is a monolith with consistent standards of evidence, and I'm desperate to get my content to fit those standards". I'm saying "Huh. I'm coming to English Misplaced Pages with the fruits of a community who work together, and English Misplaced Pages scorns that community and doesn't want its fruits. Except by stealing them, which it frequently does. Can this be changed, or defended, or is English Misplaced Pages just irredeemably evil?"

Now, your obvious reply is that I'm reifying English Misplaced Pages. As the evidence below shows, relatively little plagiarism has been done by Wikipedians in good standing. But the thing is, it has been let stand by Wikipedians in good standing, including the one who zapped my citation of Dramabeans. So either Wikipedians who edit Korean drama articles don't know enough about anglophone resources re K-drama to know that DramaWiki keeps on its front page an explicit request to Wikipedians to kill plagiarisms, or they don't care. And anyway, you're reifying me into a good Wikipedian, so it's only fair that I reify Misplaced Pages into a bad organisation, or find out why it isn't.

I've watched all or part of thirty K-dramas, of which twenty-four have English Misplaced Pages articles. Six of these plagiarise DramaWiki today, one having replaced its plagiarism of Dramabeans with a plagiarism of DramaWiki, a different one also plagiarising Dramabeans today. As it happens, I'm not invested enough in DramaWiki to want to learn how to zap all the plagiarisms, especially since that would put the onus on me to write new synopses of these dramas I've watched, and my preferred style for such is more like DramaWiki's than Misplaced Pages's. My point here isn't about plagiarism, although I certainly think it needs dealing with, but about the dynamics I see as resulting from Misplaced Pages's stance on verifiability. Just to start with: I found no plagiarisms going the other way. I was sure there'd be at least one in my sample, but no. DramaWiki, which requires registration of participants (I haven't even been able to notify them of this post, as I have Dramabeans), has not to my knowledge copied Misplaced Pages.

Let me start with the typical English Misplaced Pages K-drama article. (English Misplaced Pages now has over 500 of these, per List of South Korean dramas, of which only thirteen concern dramas dated there before 2000. I certainly haven't consulted all of them, but am speaking of those I have.) After the intro there's generally a synopsis or plot summary, often detailed and comprehensively spoiling said plot. Then there's usually either a succinct cast list or a detailed list of characters; the latter often goes with a less substantial synopsis. There are usually, but not always, episode ratings; there may be a soundtrack listing; there may be text about the drama's reception; there may be other stuff. There may or may not be references. (Speaking of which, the latest Wikipedian to edit Korean drama has inserted a wholly unreferenced section about blogs and streaming sites, linking to several of the latter but none of the former, and has inserted a false alert that the entire article, not just my section or his, "does not cite any references". Response to my postings at last, and unsurprisingly, but excessively, hard line.)

We have two plagiarised sites at issue here, which happen to be the two I consider the most useful sites in my ongoing research on the Korean dramas I watch. DramaWiki, the main site plagiarised in my sample, has articles on over 1200 K-dramas (as well as lots of Japanese dramas and dramas in Chinese), including pretty much every K-drama since 2000 and a fair sample of the 1990s; I don't know whether they have any from the 1980s or before yet. DramaWiki articles start with a short info section, comparable to the combination of intro and info box in Misplaced Pages articles; then comes a synopsis, generally written short and with attention to avoiding spoilers; then there are usually episode ratings for newer dramas, or more limited ratings info for older ones, there may be a soundtrack listing, and there may be other info. Most of the material at a DramaWiki page is factual and difficult to prove plagiarism of, though I have little doubt, given what I've already found, that DramaWiki is the real source for much of this sort of thing at English Misplaced Pages. I've generally ignored the synopses, because all the dramas I've watched to date are on DVDs, and come with their own teaser synopses; but in fact, the main way people in anglophone countries now experience K-dramas is online streaming, so synopses of this sort are urgently needed, and deserve the care DramaWiki often bestows on them. They are also the easiest things to catch Wikipedians plagiarising. DramaWiki is a sub-site of D-Addicts, whose other main facets are a set of fora, and bittorrent offerings of K-dramas. I assume the latter is illegal, but legal streaming sites advertise on both D-Addicts proper and DramaWiki. Misplaced Pages blacklists links to DramaWiki - so in other words, the only way Misplaced Pages encourages people to cite DramaWiki is by stealing! - and I don't know whether this is because D-Addicts' bittorrent offering is against the law or because of some specific misbehaviour. DramaWiki's info pages do not link to pages offering downloads, at D-Addicts or elsewhere, unlike the inferior pages at hancinema.net which English Misplaced Pages often links to. Anyway, to get to DramaWiki's page on each drama listed below, go to wiki dot d-addicts dot com slash the title indicated, with the usual substitutions such as _ for space.

I've already described Dramabeans recaps, but I left something out: Sometimes the recap of episode one begins with a set of character sketches. Now, I've actually found an example of Misplaced Pages plagiarising Dramabeans for a synopsis, but it's an uphill battle; the other example of plagiarism I've found instead uses the character sketches. To get to these go to Dramabeans, follow the link to "Recaps", find the title indicated, and go to the recap for its episode one. Dramabeans doesn't hyperventilate about Misplaced Pages plagiarism as DramaWiki does - well, it has far less reason to - but does have a copyright notice on each page.

Introductions complete, here's my evidence, in considerable detail:

1. Mary Stayed Out All Night plagiarises DramaWiki on Mary Stayed Out All Night, whose DVD title is Marry Me, Mary! This is the third drama I watched (I'm going mostly in that order) and one of my favourites, although pretty much everyone at Dramabeans considers it absolutely terrible.

The synopsis contributed to DramaWiki by Hanjae on 23 Nov 2010 reads:

Wi Mae Ri is the cheerful, pragmatic daughter of a failed businessman who had grown used to being constantly on the move to escape from debtors. She becomes fast friends with the free-spirited indie singer Kang Moo Kyul when she nearly ran him over in a car. Meanwhile, her father Wi Dae Han is saved from his debtors by his old friend, Jung Suk, who had just returned from considerable success in the Japanese entertainment industry. Jung Suk, who had harboured a secret love for Mae Ri's mother, sets up a deal with Dae Han to have Mae Ri marry his son, Jung In. In her desperate to escape this predicament, Mae Ri begs Moo Kyul to pose as her husband, and finds herself in even more trouble than before when her father proposes a 100-day period in which she has to divide her time equally between Moo Kyul and Jung In, after which she has to decide who to marry.

Since Misplaced Pages has such a hostile attitude to DramaWiki, I figured y'all might not trust its use of wiki software, so I checked each page in question at archive.org, whose 31 Dec 2010 copy shows this synopsis.

On 9 Dec 2011, Sunuraju, who appears to be a Wikipedian in good standing, created the Misplaced Pages page. The synopsis included in that first version:

Wi Mae Ri is the cheerful, pragmatic daughter of a failed businessman who had grown used to being constantly on the move to escape from debtors. She becomes fast friends with the free-spirited indie singer Kang Moo Kyul when she nearly ran him over in a car. Meanwhile, her father Wi Dae Han is saved from his debtors by his old friend, Jung Suk, who had just returned from considerable success in the Japanese entertainment industry. Jung Suk, who had harboured a secret love for Mae Ri's mother, sets up a deal with Dae Han to have Mae Ri marry his son, Jung In. In her desperate to escape this predicament, Mae Ri begs Moo Kyul to pose as her husband, and finds herself in even more trouble than before when her father proposes a 100-day period in which she has to divide her time equally between Moo Kyul and Jung In, after which she has to decide who to marry.

Misplaced Pages's synopsis now reads:

Wi Mae-ri (Moon Geun-young) is the cheerful, pragmatic daughter of a failed businessman who had grown used to being constantly on the move to escape from debtors. She becomes fast friends with the free-spirited indie singer Kang Mu-gyul (Jang Keun-suk) when she nearly ran him over in a car. Meanwhile, her father Wi Dae-han (Park Sang-myun) is saved from his debtors by his old friend, Jung-suk (Park Joon-gyu), who had just returned from considerable success in the Japanese entertainment industry. Jung-suk, who had harbored a secret love for Mae-ri's mother, sets up a deal with Dae-han to have Mae-ri marry his son, Jung-in (Kim Jae-wook). In her desperation to escape this predicament, Mae-ri begs Mu-gyul to pose as her husband, and finds herself in even more trouble than before when her father proposes a 100-day period in which she has to divide her time equally between Mu-gyul and Jung-in, after which she has to decide who to marry.

2. Prosecutor Princess plagiarises DramaWiki on Prosecutor Princess, whose DVD title is the same. This is the twelfth drama I watched, and girlfriday of Dramabeans liked it more than I did.

The synopsis contributed to DramaWiki by Hanjae on 17 Feb 2010 reads:

Ma Hye Ri is a woman with an excellent memory and ability to focus, which allowed her to pass the bar exam with ease. Despite her talents, she is more interested in being fashionable and dislikes hard work, so she is far from being an ideal prosecutor and has doubts about her suitability for her job. Through her conflicts with senior colleages and struggles with difficult cases, however, Hye Ri gradually matures into a brilliant prosecutor with a sense of duty and justice.

Archive.org's 9 Mar 2010 copy shows this synopsis.

On 1 May 2010, XChampagne created the Misplaced Pages page. The synopsis included in that first version:

Ma Hye Ri is a woman with an excellent memory and ability to focus, which allowed her to pass the bar exam with ease. Despite her talents, she is more interested in being fashionable and dislikes hard work, so she is far from being an ideal prosecutor and has doubts about her suitability for her job. Through her conflicts with senior colleages and struggles with difficult cases, however, Hye Ri gradually matures into a brilliant prosecutor with a sense of duty and justice.

This is the first example I found (though note Eyes of Dawn) of an actual attempt to stop the plagiarism: Decltype, a Wikipedian in good standing, almost instantly got into an edit war with XChampagne, explicitly because of the copyright violation, and won it after two rounds; there's no further record of XChampagne, whose activity seems to have been confined to this article. However, Darkpiggy put this synopsis back on 22 May 2010. Darkpiggy's activity was confined to two days, and concerned this article and the article about its titular lead, Kim So-yeon.

Misplaced Pages's synopsis now reads:

Ma Hye Ri is a woman with an excellent memory and ability to focus, which allowed her to pass the bar exam with ease. Despite her talents, she is more interested in being fashionable and dislikes hard work so she is far from being an ideal prosecutor and has doubts about her suitability for her job. Through her conflicts with senior colleagues and struggles with difficult cases; however, Hye Ri gradually matures into a brilliant prosecutor with a sense of duty and justice.

3. Becoming a Billionaire incompletely plagiarises DramaWiki on The Birth of the Rich, whose DVD title is Becoming a Billionaire. This is the fourteenth drama I watched, and I moderately liked it; Dramabeans skipped it.

The synopsis whose first sentence Hanjae revised, and whose other sentences Hanjae contributed, on 28 Mar 2010 reads:

The drama follows the story of a man, Choi Suk Bong, who believes that he is actually the son of a rich father and heir to a chaebol group. He meets Lee Shin Mi, who is actually a chaebol heir but acts nothing like one, with her scrimping and frugal ways. Although they get off to a rocky start, with her help, he struggles towards his goal of attaining wealth.

Archive.org's 29 Mar 2010 copy shows this synopsis.

The synopsis created by an anonymous Misplaced Pages editor on 10 Jul 2013 reads:

Choi Seok-bong believes he is the son of a billionaire, from a one-night stand with his mother. The problem is, his father doesn't know the existence of his son, nor does Seok-bong know who his father is. While working as a bellboy at a luxury hotel, Seok-bong practices at the qualities he thinks a billionaire's heir would have; all these efforts are for the day he meets his birth father. But one day, Seok-bong is diagnosed with testicular cancer, which only has a 50 percent survival rate. Seok-bong doesn't have enough money for treatments, and finds it absolutely ridiculous that a billionaire's heir would die because he has no money. Finding his biological father may be Seok-bong's only hope. So he approaches Lee Shin-mi, the heiress of Ohsung Group and a notorious penny-pincher. Although they get off to a rocky start, with Shin-mi's help, Seok-bong struggles towards his goal of attaining wealth.

Note the final sentence. The footnotes point to the same article in two places, which does not include any of this text, and which I'm pretty sure doesn't actually back up much of it either, although I haven't read with care to establish that.

Misplaced Pages's synopsis now reads:

Choi Seok-bong believes he is the son of a billionaire, from a one-night stand with his mother. The problem is, his father doesn't know the existence of his son, nor does Seok-bong know who his father is. While working as a bellboy at a luxury hotel, Seok-bong practices at the qualities he thinks a billionaire's heir would have; all these efforts are for the day he meets his birth father. But one day, Seok-bong is diagnosed with breast cancer, which only has a 50 percent survival rate. Seok-bong doesn't have enough money for treatments, and finds it absolutely ridiculous that a billionaire's heir would die because he has no money. Finding his biological father may be Seok-bong's only hope. So he approaches Lee Shin-mi, the heiress of Ohsung Group and a notorious penny-pincher. Although they get off to a rocky start, with Shin-mi's help, Seok-bong struggles towards his goal of attaining wealth.

(In case anyone cares: The testicular cancer / breast cancer dispute is endemic in discussions of this drama. All we know for sure is that he's unwilling to identify the cancer site; he frequently denies that it's breast cancer, but could be lying.)

4. Secret Garden (TV series) plagiarises DramaWiki on Secret Garden, whose DVD title is the same. This is the twenty-ninth drama I watched; although both main writers for Dramabeans castigated the sexual assault scenes as harshly as I could wish, they ended up giving the show favourable ratings over all, despite seeing its flaws clearly; I hated enough aspects of the show (not just the sexual assaults) that saying I hated the show over all is fair. This is the other case in which I've found an attempt to stop the plagiarism.

Hanjae heavily revised the DramaWiki synopsis 23 Nov 2010:

The drama tells the story of Kim Joo Won (Hyun Bin), an arrogant and eccentric CEO who maintains the image of seeming perfection, and Gil Ra Im (Ha Ji Won), a poor and humble stuntwoman whose beauty and body are the object of envy amongst top actresses. Their accidental meeting, when Joo Won mistakes Ra Im for actress Park Chae Rin, marks the beginning of a tense, bickering relationship, through which Joo Won tries to hide a growing attraction to Ra Im that both confuses and disturbs him. To complicate matters further, a strange sequence of events results in them swapping bodies.

Bumblelion1018 created the Misplaced Pages page 3 Dec 2010, too fast for archive.org to capture an intervening copy, with the following synopsis:

The drama tells the story of Kim Joo Won (Hyun Bin), an arrogant and eccentric CEO who maintains the image of seeming perfection, and Gil Ra Im (Ha Ji Won), a poor and humble stuntwoman whose beauty and body are the object of envy amongst top actresses. Their accidental meeting, when Joo Won mistakes Ra Im for actress Park Chae Rin, marks the beginning of a tense, bickering relationship, through which Joo Won tries to hide a growing attraction to Ra Im that both confuses and disturbs him. To complicate matters further, a strange sequence of events results in them swapping bodies.

Bumblelion1018 created a page for another K-drama the next month, and then seems to have vanished. On 1 March 2011, administrator VernoWhitney zapped this synopsis as a copyright violation. An anonymous user added it back on 5 May 2011, and it's stayed ever since.

Misplaced Pages's synopsis now reads:

This drama chronicles the love story of Gil Ra-im (Ha Ji-won) and Kim Joo-won (Hyun Bin). Gil Ra-im is a poor but proud stuntwoman who has supported herself since her father's death. Her dream is to be a stuntwoman for an international film. Joo-won is an arrogant and eccentric CEO who maintains the image of seeming perfection. Their accidental meeting, when Joo-won mistakes Ra-im for actress Park Chae-rin, marks the beginning of a tense, bickering relationship, through which Joo-won tries to hide his growing attraction to Ra-im that both confuses and disturbs him. To complicate matters further, a strange sequence of events results in them swapping bodies. However, even after they swap their bodies back, feelings continue to grow for both of them.

5. Gourmet (TV series) plagiarises DramaWiki on Gourmet and, as posted before, DramaWiki's recap of episodes one through four of Gourmet. The DVD title is The Grand Chef. This is the thirtieth drama I'm watching, which I'm finally beginning to enjoy, and which javabeans at Dramabeans thought well of.

The Dramabeans recaps for this series appeared shortly after airdates, beginning 6 Jul 2008 with a post by javabeans including the following character sketches:

Our hero: LEE SUNG-CHAN (Kim Rae-won), 28-ish years old. He was raised as the son of Oonamjeong’s current executive chef, Chef Oh, alongside adopted big bro BONG-JOO (Kwon Oh-joong). Sung-chan and Bong-joo have a good relationship and act as true brothers even though Bong-joo was already fourteen when his father brought Sung-chan home and announced he was going to be a part of their family.

Sung-chan had something of a misguided youth, causing no end of trouble until he picked up cooking at a relatively late age. Thus he lacks the classical training of his older brother (who studied assiduously to follow in his father’s footsteps since the age of fifteen) but he has a raw talent that his father recognizes. Although he’s still lacking in discipline, he’s creative and passionate about cooking, and jumps into challenges wholeheartedly. In the first episode, he is promoted from sous chef to full chef (albeit a junior one) after he impresses his father with one of his innovations. Sung-chan’s promotion marks a meteoric rise, career-wise, which impresses most of his fellow chefs except for some who are jealous of his success. With his good-natured personality, Sung-chan is well-liked by most.

Chef Oh, the aging executive chef of Oonamjeong, is a descendant of the line of former imperial chefs — he’s the grandson of the man pictured, the last imperial chef. The chef is photographed with the last emperor, upon whom he’d made a strong impression with his devotion and sincerity upon the eve of the empire’s takeover by Japanese rule in 1910.

I’m not sure if the imperial chef was a position that was exclusively hereditary, but it’s clear that it’s at least mostly hereditary, because everyone expects Oonamjeong’s next executive chef to be Bong-joo. He’s currently the well-respected head chef in the kitchen (while Chef Oh is the top guy, he doesn’t do the everyday cooking).

Bong-joo also has a romantic vibe going with JOO-HEE (Kim So-yeon), the kind, poised secretary to his father. She’s de facto manager of Oonamjeong and always comes through in a crisis with nary a hair out of place. She’s like executive assistant, manager, and PR representative all in one. Their romance, however, is more implied than overt; they both know they like each other, but they aren’t dating. And yet both Bong-joo and Joo-hee’s father seem to expect them to end up married.

Perhaps the stalled momentum of their romance can be attributed to the fact that (in addition to Bong-joo not taking the initiative) Joo-hee may have feelings for Sung-chan. It’s unclear in the first four episodes what her feelings are, exactly, because while she does care for Bong-joo, she also cares for Sung-chan. Most of the time it’s like an older sister looking out for her errant younger brother, but sometimes there’s a moment, a little something in the way she looks at him. For his part, Sung-chan likes her back, but I interpret that as a schoolboy crush mixed with genuine respect. Sung-chan’s feelings for Joo-hee aren’t serious (as I see it), but hers for him may become a problem. Not that she’d do anything nefarious — she’s too good-hearted and professional for that — but they may cause issues in her relationship with Bong-joo.

Enter JIN-SOO (Nam Sang-mi, adorable as ever). She’s a foodie with ambitions of being a food critic, and has come to Seoul to take the reporters’ exam at a major newspaper. To do well, she feels she must eat at Oonamjeong first, and through a series of mishaps, both misses her exam and clashes with Sung-chan. She determines to stay in Seoul and take a later exam for another newspaper, and in the interim manages to score a job working as a server (in training) at the restarant.

Rounding out the cast, we also have MIN-WOO (Won Ki-joon), a senior chef ranked just below Bong-joo who looks down on Sung-chan in a mix of jealousy and derision. Min-woo is the guy you really hate to see in power — he’s skilled, but his personal shortcomings make him a nightmare to be around. He’s not a completely one-sided villain (he has genuine respect for Bong-joo), but he feels threatened because although Sung-chan may have skills, he hasn’t earned his dues and worked his way up properly. He feels that Chef Oh’s favoritism of Sung-chan — even over his own son — is unfair.

Archive.org's 10 Sep 2008 copy shows this material. I imagine you now see why Misplaced Pages relatively rarely plagiarises Dramabeans; I'm pretty sure it isn't for lack of desire, just for lack of convenient brevity.

DramaWiki tracked this drama starting long before it aired, and had a placeholder synopsis for much of that time. On 6 Oct 2008 Leimomi considerably revised and expanded the existing synopsis into:

Talented chefs Bong Joo and Sung Chan were raised like brothers after Sung Chan was orphaned and taken in by Bong Joo's family. Bong Joo's family owns a famous traditional Korean restaurant and claims descent from the last royal chef of the Joseon Dynasty. Bong Joo assumes that as the eldest, he will be the one to take over his family's restaurant and marry Joo Hee when his grandfather makes a surprising announcement about a special cooking contest! Sung Chan is seen as a threat by some because of his youth, talent, creativity and non-conforming ways. Feeling sorry for him, Joo Hee tries to help him. Discovering the truth about their great-grandfather causes a crisis for Bong Joo, but he later becomes even more determined to be a success while Sung Chan decides to leave. Sung Chan becomes a food peddler, specializing in the freshest and best ingredients in traditional Korean cuisine. Will he ever become a chef again? Will they ever become united as "brothers"?

Archive.org's 17 Jan 2009 copy shows this synopsis.

JKSarang, blocked as a sock puppet of InkHeart, created the Misplaced Pages page 16 Oct 2009 with this synopsis:

Talented chefs Bong Joo and Sung Chan were raised like brothers after Sung Chan was orphaned and taken in by Bong Joo's family. Bong Joo’s family owns a famous traditional Korean restaurant and claims descent from the last royal chef of the Joseon Dynasty. Bong Joo assumes that as the eldest, he will be the one to take over his family’s restaurant and marry Joo Hee when his father makes a surprising announcement about a special cooking contest! Sung Chan is seen as a threat by some because of his youth, talent, creativity and non-conforming ways. Feeling sorry for him, Joo Hee tries to help him. Discovering the truth about their great-grandfather causes a crisis for Bong Joo, but he later becomes even more determined to be a success while Sung Chan decides to leave. Sung Chan becomes a food peddler, specializing in the freshest and best ingredients in traditional Korean cuisine. Will he ever become a chef again? Will they ever become united as "brothers"?

69dressings, blocked as a sock puppet of InkHeart, added the following character sketches 21 Nov 2009:

Lee Sung Chan (Kim Rae Won) was raised as the son of Oonamjeong’s current executive chef, Chef Oh, alongside adopted big bro BONG-JOO (Kwon Oh-joong). Sung-chan and Bong-joo have a good relationship and act as true brothers even though Bong-joo was already fourteen when his father brought Sung-chan home and announced he was going to be a part of their family. Sung-chan had something of a misguided youth, causing no end of trouble until he picked up cooking at a relatively late age. Thus he lacks the classical training of his older brother (who studied assiduously to follow in his father’s footsteps since the age of fifteen) but he has a raw talent that his father recognizes. Although he’s still lacking in discipline, he’s creative and passionate about cooking, and jumps into challenges wholeheartedly. In the first episode, he is promoted from sous chef to full chef (albeit a junior one) after he impresses his father with one of his innovations. Sung-chan’s promotion marks a meteoric rise, career-wise, which impresses most of his fellow chefs except for some who are jealous of his success. With his good-natured personality, Sung-chan is well-liked by most.

Kim Jin Soo (Nam Sang Mi) is a foodie with ambitions of being a food critic, and has come to Seoul to take the reporters’ exam at a major newspaper. To do well, she feels she must eat at Oonamjeong first, and through a series of mishaps, both misses her exam and clashes with Sung-chan. She determines to stay in Seoul and take a later exam for another newspaper, and in the interim manages to score a job working as a server (in training) at the restaurant.

Yoon Joo Hee (Kim So Yun) is the kind, poised secretary to his father. She’s the factory manager of Oonamjeong and always comes through in a crisis with nary a hair out of place. She’s like executive assistant, manager, and PR representative all in one. Their romance, however, is more implied than overt; they both know they like each other, but they aren’t dating. And yet both Bong-joo and Joo-hee’s father seem to expect them to end up married.

Min Woo (Won Ki Joon) is a senior chef ranked just below Bong-joo who looks down on Sung-chan in a mix of jealousy and derision. Min-woo is the guy you really hate to see in power — he’s skilled, but his personal shortcomings make him a nightmare to be around. He’s not a completely one-sided villain (he has genuine respect for Bong-joo), but he feels threatened because although Sung-chan may have skills, he hasn’t earned his dues and worked his way up properly. He feels that Chef Oh’s favoritism of Sung-chan — even over his own son — is unfair.

Chef Oh (Choi Bool Am) is the aging executive chef of Oonamjeong, is a descendant of the line of former imperial chefs — he’s the grandson of the man pictured, the last imperial chef. The chef is photographed with the last emperor, upon whom he’d made a strong impression with his devotion and sincerity upon the eve of the empire’s takeover by Japanese rule in 1910.

Misplaced Pages's synopsis now reads:

Talented chefs Bong-joo and Sung-chan were raised like brothers after Sung-chan was orphaned and taken in by Bong-joo's family. Bong-joo’s family owns the famous traditional Korean restaurant Oonamjeong and claims they were descended from the last royal chef of the Joseon Dynasty. Bong-joo assumes that as the eldest, he will be the one to take over his family’s restaurant and marry Joo-hee when his father makes a surprising announcement about a special cooking contest.

Sung-chan is seen as a threat by some because of his youth, talent, creativity and non-conforming ways. Feeling sorry for him, Joo-hee tries to help him. Discovering the truth about their great-grandfather causes a crisis for Bong-joo, but he later becomes even more determined to be a success while Sung-chan decides to leave. Sung-chan becomes a food peddler, specializing in the freshest and best ingredients in traditional Korean cuisine. Will he ever become a chef again? Will they ever become united as "brothers"?

Misplaced Pages's character list now reads:

Kim Rae-won as Lee Sung-chan

He was raised as the son of Oonamjeong's current executive chef, Chef Oh. Sung-chan and Bong-joo have a good relationship and act as true brothers even though Bong-joo was already fourteen when his father brought Sung-chan home and announced he was going to be a part of their family. Sung-chan had something of a misguided youth, causing no end of trouble until he picked up cooking at a relatively late age. Thus he lacks the classical training of his older brother, but he has a raw talent that his father recognizes. Although he’s still lacking in discipline, he’s creative and passionate about cooking, and jumps into challenges wholeheartedly. In the first episode, he is promoted from sous chef to full chef (albeit a junior one) after he impresses his father with one of his innovations. Sung-chan’s promotion marks a meteoric rise, career-wise, which impresses most of his fellow chefs except for some who are jealous of his success. With his good-natured personality, Sung-chan is well liked by most.

Kwon Oh-joong as Oh Bong-joo

Sung-chan's adoptive older brother. He studied Korean cuisine assiduously to follow in his father’s footsteps since the age of fifteen.

Nam Sang-mi as Kim Jin-soo

She is a foodie with ambitions of becoming a food critic, and has come to Seoul to take the reporters’ exam at a major newspaper. To do well, she feels she must eat at Oonamjeong first, and through a series of mishaps, both misses her exam and clashes with Sung-chan. She's determined to stay in Seoul and take a later exam for another newspaper, and in the interim manages to score a job working as a server (in training) at the restaurant.

Kim So-yeon as Yoon Joo-hee

The kind, poised secretary to Chef Oh. She’s the factory manager of Oonamjeong and always comes through in a crisis with nary a hair out of place. She’s like executive assistant, manager, and PR representative all in one. Her romance with Bong-joo, however, is more implied than overt; they both know they like each other, but they aren’t dating. And yet both Bong-joo and Joo-hee’s father seem to expect them to end up married.

Won Ki-joon as Min-woo

A senior chef ranked just below Bong-joo who looks down on Sung-chan in a mix of jealousy and derision. Min-woo is the guy you really hate to see in power — he’s skilled, but his personal shortcomings make him a nightmare to be around. He’s not a completely one-sided villain (he has genuine respect for Bong-joo), but he feels threatened because although Sung-chan may have skills, he hasn’t earned his dues and worked his way up properly. He feels that Chef Oh’s favoritism of Sung-chan — even over his own son — is unfair.

Choi Bool-am as Oh Sook-soo

The aging executive chef of Oonamjeong, he is a descendant of the line of former imperial chefs, and grandson of the last imperial chef. The last imperial chef made a strong impression on the last emperor with his devotion and sincerity upon the eve of the empire’s takeover by Japanese rule in 1910.

6. Will It Snow For Christmas? used to plagiarise Dramabeans on Will It Snow For Christmas?, until it started plagiarising DramaWiki on Will it Snow at Christmas%3F instead. This is the nineteenth drama I watched, and while javabeans at Dramabeans thought better of it than I did, I thought it on balance good.

The synopsis contributed to DramaWiki by C51236 7 Dec 2009 reads:

Cha Kang Jin is the son of barmaid, Cha Chun Hee. His life is difficult as he gets into fights and has to watch other people push his mother around yet he can't do anything to stop it. He meets Han Ji Wan when they were teens but they weren't able to continue their relationship as Ji Wan ran away after her older brother's death. He meets Ji Wan 8 years later when he's attending her engagement ceremony to Park Tae Joon. However, he is heartbroken as Ji Wan pretends to not remember him at all.

Even if archive.org had the necessary granularity, they were thrown off by the question mark in the title until 2011, so they don't verify this.

The synopsis contributed by an anonymous Misplaced Pages editor on 26 Dec 2009 reads:

Cha Kang Jin is the son of barmaid, Cha Chun Hee. His life is difficult as he gets into fights and has to watch other people push his mother around yet he can't do anything to stop it. He meets Han Ji Wan when they were teens but they weren't able to continue their relationship as Ji Wan ran away after her older brother's death. He meets Ji Wan 8 years later when he's attending her engagement ceremony to Park Tae Joon. However, he is heartbroken as Ji Wan pretends to not remember him at all.

Misplaced Pages's synopsis now reads:

Cha Kang-jin is the son of barmaid, Cha Chun-hee. His life is difficult as he gets into fights and has to watch other people push his mother around yet he can't do anything to stop it. He meets Han Ji-wan when they were teens but they weren't able to continue their relationship as Ji-wan ran away after her older brother's death. He meets Ji-wan 8 years later when he attends her engagement ceremony to Park Tae-joon. However, he is heartbroken as Ji-wan pretends to not remember him at all.

Neither reference supplies this wording, though at least they aren't identical this time.

Now, neither Misplaced Pages nor DramaWiki *started* with this synopsis. I don't have an exact quote available of the DramaWiki one, but both sites started out with very similar synopses. The first edit to the article at each site involved a separate line, reading "credit to dramabeans". At DramaWiki, the first edit added that line. At Misplaced Pages, the first edit took that line away. In other words, DramaWiki plagiarised Dramabeans for a little while, and then corrected it; Misplaced Pages quoted Dramabeans for a little while, and then turned it into plagiarism.

My position is becoming clear. I find the K-drama world remarkably casual about intellectual property. It's true that a major illegal streaming site, dramacrazy, was recently shut down, and another may be in trouble too. But there are plenty of entire dramas on YouTube, some even with English subtitles; soundtracks are more often there than not; Dramabeans is clearly encouraged to use images galore; *video stores* in the US get licenses to produce what amount to legal bootleg copies of currently airing dramas; the list goes on. If javabeans, girlfriday, or the DramaWikians want to get up in arms about this plagiarism, I won't object, but I'm not personally all that interested in leading the charge. What takes my breath away is the CONTEMPT shown by years' worth of plagiarism of these two sites, while simultaneously pretending that Misplaced Pages is on a pedestal that would be contaminated if it dealt honourably with them: links to Dramabeans are speedily removed (a search the other day found only two in English Misplaced Pages - though dozens in European Wikipedias), links to DramaWiki barred from getgo.

I understand that no individual I'm addressing here now is in a position to change that, and to the extent that anyone not specifically interested in K-dramas is still reading, they're not even a tiny bit responsible for it. Except that Misplaced Pages's standards of evidence, which y'all have clearly bought into or you wouldn't be here, more or less ineluctably lead to precisely this sort of situation.

A long time ago I ran the first English-language website on author John Crowley. He found the site interesting and worth his attention. I'm surprised to hear Misplaced Pages wouldn't have. Around the same time, I got involved in the workings of the Big 8 (Usenet). I was one of the first members of what became the Big 8 Management Board, and am cited along with Jim Riley because the two of us (locked into lots of arguments) did most of the research underlying the historical discussion of the Big-8 Usenet hierarchies. I already knew I couldn't cite my own work here; I now know why the pathetic and unreferenced "History" section in "Big 8 (Usenet)" doesn't cite it either. (But hey, at least it doesn't plagiarise it. I should count my blessings.)

In other words, Misplaced Pages is hostile to pretty much every community I've ever participated in, except the academic and journalistic communities. (The only reason I might have some credibility now on Usenet's history is that I lost the arguments, and the community, so the Big 8 now has the sort of active management Misplaced Pages can believe in.) And near as I can tell, this hostility is directly rooted in the way verifiability is handled.

Which is why I'm posting this here, instead of looking for a forum on copyright violations instead. This is evidence of the hostility I'm talking about, not because a bunch of individuals, some of whom Misplaced Pages actually has sanctioned, perpetrated plagiarism, but because Misplaced Pages's ivory tower kept the plagiarism undiscovered for years.

Joe Bernstein joe@sfbooks.com

128.95.223.196 (talk) 02:27, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

Joe, the copyright problem reporting board is here: Misplaced Pages:Copyright problems. There's no hostility on my part in asking you to contact people on the Korean Misplaced Pages to get better sourcing. I am teaching you a way of improving the Wikipedias, by contacting people to get them to give you info. To get people to stop copypasting from Dramawikis, you add sourced content that satisfies their desire for information, so they have no need to copy-paste from elsewhere.

Your post was way too long. The vast majority of people don't have the time or inclination to read a post that long. If you want to post more detailed analysis you can make a collapsible section that can be opened or closed (I can find the code if you need me to)

I went ahead and notified a Wikipedian who is experienced with dealing with copyvio stuff, so she'll take a look

WhisperToMe (talk) 15:10, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

Um. I apologise to the extent that you think I accused you, personally, of hostility to me, personally; I think it's quite obvious that you're trying hard to be helpful to me, albeit to a version of me that, well, doesn't exist. In particular, how do you write a "sourced" synopsis? To the extent that it isn't a plagiarism, it's original research, pretty much by definition. See, this is an example of what I *was* talking about: verifiability, as defined by Misplaced Pages, operates as an *engine* of hostility, in this case by making pretty much any synopsis vulnerable to deletion.

I'm in the process of evaluating everything I do with Misplaced Pages. When Usenet stopped taking up so much of my time, I figured Misplaced Pages might absorb it. What I'm finding is that much about Misplaced Pages - signally, but not only, the issues I'm having with verifiability - is not to my taste. Since I routinely write long, I'm interested a priori in that collapsible code, but the odds of my using it here seem to be dropping.

Thanks for your attention and help.

Joe Bernstein joe@sfbooks.com

128.95.223.229 (talk) 15:37, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

"In particular, how do you write a "sourced" synopsis? To the extent that it isn't a plagiarism, it's original research, pretty much by definition.". No it isn't. You don't need independent sources to write plot synopses where the work itself can be consulted as a source. See Misplaced Pages:Manual of Style/Writing about fiction. Paul B (talk) 16:01, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

Argh. I wanted to see if anyone had done what I was supposed to, overnight - gone and zapped the plagiarisms - and found I'd made an egregious mistake. My apologies to Sunuraju in particular, whose 9 Dec 2011 edit did exist but was certainly not the creation either of the article or of the plagiarism.

Corrected version of case 1 above, Mary Stayed Out All Night. Hanjae did write the synopsis as indicated. On 30 Nov 2010 someone at Blogspot copied it. On 31 Dec 2010 archive.org captured the DramaWiki page as indicated.

On 2 Feb 2011, Fiercejacci created the Misplaced Pages page, which appears to be that Wikipedian's whole history. The synopsis:

Wi Mae Ri (Moon Geun Young) is a cheerful, pragmatic daughter of an failed businessman who had grown used to being constantly on the move to escape debtors. She becomes fast friends with the free-spirited indie singer Kang Moo Kyul (Jang Geun Suk) when she nearly ran him over with a car. Meanwhile, her father Wi Dae Han (Park Sang Myun) is saved from his debtors by his old friend, Jung Suk (Park Joon Gyu), who had just returned from considerable success in the japanese entertainment industry. Jung Suk, who had harboured a secret love for Mae Ri's dead mother, sets a deal with Dae Han to have Mae Ri marry his son, Jung In (Kim Jae Wook). In her desperate to escape this predicament, Mae Ri begs Moo Kyul to pose as her husband, and finds herself in even more trouble than before when her father proposes a 100-days period in which she has to divide her time equally between Moo Kyl and Jung In, after which he as to decide who to marry.

Within minutes, Acather96 removed this as a copyright violation not of DramaWiki but of the Blogspot plagiariser. Ultimately VernoWhitney won the resulting edit war the same day. On 15 Mar 2011, Iamtheman03, whose Misplaced Pages history covers about two months interested primarily in things Filipino, contributed a new synopsis, and actually a half-decent one. That synopsis then evolved until 13 Aug 2011, when an anonymous editor "changed the Synopsis and Description to the correct Synopsis and Description" (!), in the process messing up the whole article. That's the source of the renewed plagiarism.

Again, I apologise. Obviously this also means my count of, and similar comments about, previous anti-plagiarism activity, were also wrong. I know of no other errors, and find no results, so far.

Joe Bernstein joe@sfbooks.com

128.95.223.229 (talk) 15:24, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

Self-published source reliable?

At http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=2_ZstVBZSfIC&lpg=PA1&pg=PA72#v=onepage&q&f=true Soldiers, Saints, and Scallywags, David Gore, 2009, chapter A Mild Deception, pp 72-79, gives details to the discredit of my great-great-great grandfather, who appears to have invented aristocratic connections for his family and purchased both unrelated portraits (of people with the same surname) and space in books of the time to substantiate the connections. The author seems to have done his homework in this and other historical matters, and the book is recommended by the Guild of one-name studies (of perhaps rather humble academic status, certainly not a certified peer-reviewed publication) at http://www.one-name.org/profiles/mayne.html. It has also been reprinted by the Wiltshire Family History Society, see http://issuu.com/wiltshirefhs/docs/65_-_april_1997.

I am considering using some of this information to point out the deception. Is this source reliable for this purpose? Richard Keatinge (talk) 12:18, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

Marginal, but conceivably COULD be used - how, and is it uncontroversial?--Anonymous209.6 (talk) 01:46, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

Silverlight

Regarding the source http://www.parliamentlive.tv/Main/Player.aspx?meetingId=14995&player=silverlight&wfs=true which was used in the following edits: First TransPennine Express, Chiltern Railways, British Rail Class 170. My browser (Firefox 27) shows the message "Silverlight does not appear to be correctly installed on this computer." Since this would fail WP:ELNO#EL8 if used as an external link, is it admissible as a ref source? --Redrose64 (talk) 15:13, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

You are confusing the real source being cited, which is primary source testimony from a parliamentary meeting, with what is apparently just a convenience link to that meeting. (The citation details should be cleaned up to better reflect what the actual source is. Incidentally, it looks like the date provided in the Misplaced Pages articles text contains a typo. The convenience link goes to a recording of what is labeled as a 12 March meeting on the parliamentlive.tv website).

As for whether the MP actually did say what the editor who has added this content claims the MP said, I cannot say because the linked page is for what appears to be a 2-hour-long meeting, and I have neither the time nor patience to listen to the whole thing to see whether the MP said what has been claimed. Dezastru (talk) 19:03, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

I already fixed the dates, three days ago. My question is: do I remove those refs and replace with {{cn}}, or leave them alone? --Redrose64 (talk) 19:30, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

Sorry, let me amend my previous post. I was under the impression that there is a written transcript somewhere of the remarks that were made during the proceedings and that the video recording is provided as a second form of documentation. If that were the case, then the transcript of the meeting could be cited without a link. But if there is no transcript or other written documentation of the content of the remarks, then the link to the video becomes the only source for this primary information. (And it isn't a convenience link, as I erroneously wrote, since the site is published by the Parliament, not by a secondary provider.)

The page you are questioning IS a reliable source (although a primary source) for the statements being discussed. That a particular plugin or web viewer is necessary to view the content does not detract from that (WP:SOURCEACCESS), although it would be optimal if no special plugin or viewer were required.

The date I referred to is 12/04/2014: "MP Stephen Hammond revealed on 12/04/2014 that ...." That date has not yet occurred.

Hammond's remarks are about @10:55 in the video. I think he said until March 2016, not until May 2016.

This site (secondary source), which looks like it is probably reliable, reports on the meeting. Dezastru (talk) 21:40, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

I do realise that you are referring to dates like 12/04/2014 - that is exactly why I said "I already fixed the dates, three days ago" - see this example where I altered "12/04/2014" to "12 March 2014". --Redrose64 (talk) 22:08, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

Dr. Robert G. Brown and The Pandeist Theorem in Pandeism

At the suggestion of my dear friend User:TippyGoomba I seek a determination on the usability of a self-published work by Dr. Robert G. Brown, professor of physics at Duke University, proposed to be used on the Pandeism page. Dr. Brown's CV spells out a history of something more than two dozen publications in peer-reviewed journals in the field of physics, and numerous magazine columns and articles predominately addressed to aspects of information theory. He has, as well, an undergraduate degree in philosophy, though this may be minimally relevant. Pandeism is, naturally, generally a philosophical topic, but Dr. Brown wrote and posted on his university website this article, A Theorem Concerning God, the centerpiece of which is what Dr. Brown calls "The Pandeist Theorem." He therein sets forth a proposition that of all extant theological models, Pandeism is the one best supported by physics, and he goes on to comment as to how Pandeism compares to other theological models (or specific religions) in light of principles of physics. In addressing this issue User:TippyGoomba quotes from WP:UGC, specifically (emphasis theirs):

Self-published material may sometimes be acceptable when its author is an established expert whose work in the relevant field has been published by reliable third-party publications. Self-published information should never be used as a source about a living person, even if the author is a well-known professional researcher or writer; see WP:BLP#Reliable sources.

Here we are not speaking of the use of self-published information as a source about a living person, so only the first line relates to this issue. Specifically, User:TippyGoomba disputes that it at all matters that Dr. Brown is reasonably well-published in the field of physics, when Pandeism is a theological model. I have pointed out that physicists do, as it happens, comment on the viability of theological models in light of scientific knowledge, and TippyGoomba propsed bringing the discussion here. And so I propose it to be proper to reference to a self-published work inasmuch as Dr. Brown therein discusses this theological model within the context of his area of abundantly demonstrable expertise in physics. DeistCosmos (talk) 19:58, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

Since Brown has not published in reliable (e.g. peer-reviewed academic) publications in the field of philosophy/theology, he isn't a reliable source in his own right as it relates to this the Pandeism article. Based on the foregoing, it's also IMO dubious whether he's an "established expert" in the field of philosophy/theology to begin with. --Dailycare (talk) 20:24, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

But is he not a reliable source as to physics? Or as to a point of physics which happens to have ramifications for theological claims? By comparison we don't so far as I have heard exclude, for example, geologists from commenting that creationist claims are unsupported simply because the geologists are not themselves theologians. DeistCosmos (talk) 20:49, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

I would say this Dr. Brown, who is an established expert in physics, has some education also in philosophy, and wrote the linked essay about relations between physics and theology, in particular pandeism, could be considered an expert of this sub-field (border field) of links between physics and philosophy/theology. As a consequence, I believe he could be cited inside a possible paragraph of the article pertaining to connections between pandeism and science, or similar. Viceversa I agree he cannot be considered an expert about pandeism tout court --LNCSRG (talk) 20:55, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

(ec) Geologists tend to limit themselves to the geological (not theological) bits of creationist arguments. When someone like Dawkins goes after theology instead of science, what results is not reliable. John Polkinghorne is one example of how someone can become a recognized expert in both fields (and at their intersection). That's an extreme example, but I just don't see any particular theological or interdisciplinary expertise demonstrated on Brown's CV, so I would not consider Brown's self-published work in this area to be reliable. Lesser Cartographies (talk) 21:09, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

SteveGTennis and Coretennis

I'm currently working on the ITF Men's Circuit article with a hope to one day be able to take an article to WP:FLC, I need sources from a third party and I am wondering whether Coretennis and SteveGTennis would be considered reliable websites for use. Any help is appreciated. Aureez (Talk) 16:46, 13 March 2014 (UTC)

Core Tennis looks pretty legitimate. Steve G Tennis looks a bit bloggish, as it gets its info from other sources. --Precision123 (talk) 20:35, 13 March 2014 (UTC)

Cyberbaiting

In Archive 112 there's a discussion on whether or not Cyberbaiting deserves an article or should be part of Cyberbullying. Neither has happened. Sources mentioned way back in the 2012 discussion were . I come to it by means of this article: . It looks like it peaked in usage around then, based on a quick look at Google Books, but it would be nice to have a formalized decision. Thmazing (talk) 07:10, 14 March 2014 (UTC)

Are Facebook and Twitter a RS for an alternate name?

I had reverted this edit but the IP has reinstated the text and sources so I'm asking for outside input: Are these Twitter and Facebook pages a reliable source for adding the text after the subject's name? ie. Joy Williams (or simply Joy) -- — Keithbob • Talk • 17:54, 14 March 2014 (UTC)

Possibly in other cases, but not in this case. First, the actual alternative version of the name shown on Facebook and Twitter is "JOY" not "Joy". Second, is there any other source, such as an interview, that says she is also known as or prefers to be called JOY? Since she is primarily notable as a vocal artist, has she made any recordings that list the name "JOY" rather than "Joy Williams", or has she had any performances in which she was advertised as "JOY" rather than "Joy Williams"?

(It seems she would like to join the one-name artists club, like Madonna or Adele, but the name doesn't seem to have caught on quite yet. And the name Joy isn't unique enough among artists - unlike, say, Adele - for everyone to immediately recognize who it is that is meant by the name.) Dezastru (talk) 23:05, 16 March 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, I agree with your analysis. Any other views?-- — Keithbob • Talk • 16:04, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

Desmogblog on funding for CFACT

On the CFACT page, there have been multiple attempts to add Desmogblog as a source speaking to CFACT's funding in the years 2006 and prior. I recently removed the latest one, but Gaba_p (a user with reviewer & rollback rights) reverted my change and told me to open a section here if I disagreed. So, specifically, Desmogblog is being used to support this paragraph, , which makes claims regarding funding from Exxon and the Scaife Foundations. I believe Desmogblog should not qualify as a reliable source for the purposes of CFACT because, 1) it's a group blog (cf. WP:BLOGS) that is not part of a larger news organization (WP:NEWSBLOG, which are allowed), and all it does is provide links to other sources, 2) the link it provides to support it's claim about the Scaife funding is dead, indicating poor editorial oversight and fact-checking (cf. WP:QUESTIONABLE), and 3) it is strongly ideologically opposed to CFACT and the source it provides for it's claim about Exxon funding is Exxonsecrets, a propaganda arm of Greenpeace and a source other editors had previously agreed on the CFACT talk page should not be used in this context (cf. WP:BIASED). I understand that bias in itself does not always warrant removal of the source, but in this case and context I believe it does. Especially since the funding in question is very old (2006 and earlier) and the amounts of funding are trivial in light of CFACT's $3 million per year budget, making it misleading to include Exxon & Scaife as major donors considering how little information there is in the funding section.

Since I have much less history/experience on Misplaced Pages than Gaba, I am deferring to him and not reverting his change, but I think this case is pretty clear. Can we get the opinion of an outside editor? Thanks! Turnout8 (talk) 19:12, 14 March 2014 (UTC)

• Desmog is just a PR blog and advocacy group, certainly not RS for any contentious statemens of fact. Darkness Shines (talk) 19:28, 14 March 2014 (UTC)

• Thanks for opening this section Turnout8 and sorry for not commenting on the TP of the article, I completely forgot about it. I disagree with Darkness Shines in both issues: I believe DeSmoBlog qualifies as a WP:RS given its notability and I don't see this fact as being "contentiuos" at all, it's simply a sentence mentioning two of those entities who have provided funding for the organization.

PS: regarding the statement "Exxonsecrets (...) a source other editors had previously agreed on the CFACT talk page should not be used in this context", I fail to see where this was discussed and/or agreed upon. All I see is a single comment about this but nothing more. Regards. Gaba 20:11, 14 March 2014 (UTC)

• Obviously not a reliable source for a conntentious statement about an organisation for the reasons given by Turnout8 and Darkness Shines above. Jonathan A Jones (talk) 08:52, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

Is it time for a general reevaluation of our position on Russian and Crimean media?

In the past few weeks during the Crimean crisis, many sources have reported a systematic crackdown and enforced bias on Russian and Crimean media. For example, though even in 2005 they were unpopular with Reporters Without Borders, the popular network RT (TV network) and associated web content have gone from being seen as more or less just another network in archive 39 to biased like other news channels only more so in recent discussion. But in the past week or so, there has been unprecedented criticism of the network and allegations that it is nothing more than Russian propaganda period, though as that source points out, there are some holdouts like Larry King who disagree. For their part RT has some content about censorship in Ukraine - admittedly, it is not so simple to be sure sometimes how much of the bias is on the "Western" end and how much on theirs.

Anyway, though the world may discover it is unable to pass sanctions against Russia no matter how much of the Ukraine they take, I'm wondering if it may be time for us to pass one of our own - to formally demote the status of RT and other Russian publications to that of a press release or other primary source, with all the concomitant policy restrictions for BLPs and other uses. This would be on the basis that, if they are really being told what to do by some government official in the shadows, they are no better than his own self-published statement. I'm not confident enough of my judgment here to say we should do that - only that, as someone who has used them without much discrimination in past editing, I'm starting to worry that I've been wrong to do so. Is there any way to develop some confidence about this question? Wnt (talk) 01:02, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

Son of the Bronx

Source

Son of the Bronx

Article

Numerous articles involving cable television series

Content

Nielsen ratings figures

The site's sole publisher is Douglas Pucci, who started the site in 2011 using the Blogger service. It specializes in compiling detailed listings of Nielsen ratings data for various major cable channels. Its data has been published by multiple third-party sources, including TV by the Numbers and The Futon Critic, who also publish data provided by Nielsen directly to them; the latter two sites are also used extensively in television research.

Below is a list of some of the site's attributions:

Its data seems to be consistent with other cable rating reports, and all of its entries cite Nielsen Media Research. Per WP:UGC, I believe this meets the criteria of an author who "is an established expert on the subject matter whose work in the relevant field has been published by reliable third-party publications." Some editors from WP:TV are turned off from using it because of the fact that it is hosted on Blogger, though, and would like another opinion from here. Whisternefet (t · c · l) 04:51, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

I too am interested in a community-wide solution to this conundrum. Television articles need reliable sources for ratings. Sources like Son of the Bronx and TVBytheNumbers, and Futon Critic provide this information, although some do it in more consistent ways than others. Son of the Bronx seems fairly consistent and I'm not aware of specific problems related to their accuracy as it relates to ratings. Contrarily, I've seen inconsistencies between reliable sources TVGuide.com and Zap2It for episode airdates (I believe CatDog and Scaredy Squirrel are two series with conflicting airdate information), yet there is no consequence for that. Much of what goes on in the world of TV article editing involves cobbling together information from disparate sources. Some sites, like TVBytheNumbers don't report ALL of the ratings for ALL of the US TV networks. They occasionally leave out days, (Sunday, I believe isn't always on their radar), and ratings for other networks, like Nickelodeon, are often submitted via the comments section in blog posts by users who seem to have some sort of authority on the matter. So my point is that there is not one central reliable source for ratings that we all have access to. Son of the Bronx is at least one more resource to tap. Otherwise, we might as well prohibit the inclusion of ratings information except for those few notable series and episodes that happen to make Variety and The Hollywood Reporter and such, since all these other new media sources have their flaws. Cyphoidbomb (talk) 06:21, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

This site fails WP:SPS. It is not reliable for sourcing viewership numbers. If all of its content is derived from Nielsen, then Nielsen should be cited directly – or, much better, a secondary source that cites Nielsen, or some other ratings provider, in the context of discussing the show itself should be cited for Misplaced Pages. (See, for example, .) In addition, a number of the Misplaced Pages articles listed above that cite Son of the Bronx are themselves of dubious notability, judging from the way the articles currently appear. For example, does The Amazing World of Gumball (season 2) really meet Misplaced Pages notability guidelines? And if it does, is the number of viewers listed for each episode really that important for how Misplaced Pages covers the show? Take out all of the citations of Son of the Bronx from that article and what is left for the article's sources? Same with AwesomenessTV. See WP:NOTSTATSBOOK and WP:NOTTVGUIDE. Dezastru (talk) 17:07, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

Pucci's site is indeed self-published, but it clearly meets WP:UGC's exception based on its third party publications, who have cited him for data they are unable to obtain from their Nielsen datasheets. Ratings data provides encyclopedic content beyond the scope of a normal TV guide, so I fail to see how listing such data is indiscriminate; regardless of its source, the way ratings data is presented in a table is identical. As for Gumball, it's generally practiced that episode lists are split into seasons based on lengthiness rather than notability, and the same can be said for many other list articles. Whisternefet (t · c · l) 18:15, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

Maybe I am missing it, but I don't see how the site meets the WP:UGC exception. Please directly quote here the part of WP:UGC that you feel allows for use of Son of the Bronx for ratings data. Dezastru (talk) 18:24, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

"Self-published material may sometimes be acceptable when its author is an established expert whose work in the relevant field has been published by reliable third-party publications." I provided a list of some of these publications above. Whisternefet (t · c · l) 18:34, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

"An established expert whose work in the relevant field" means something like an historian, a law professor, a scientist, a political analyst, who has published books or peer-reviewed articles in the field and is considered an expert in the way that a scholar who is a university professor is considered an expert in his or her field of study. It does not mean someone from whom others have borrowed third-party data, as in the cases you listed above. Dezastru (talk) 19:16, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

Now I'm confused. I have no idea where you got "historian," etc. from WP:UGC. Based on the guideline alone, the site meets the criteria for exception. "Relevant field": collecting ratings data from Nielsen; third-party publications establishing expertise: see the list. WP:SPS states virtually the same thing, so the same logic applies. Whisternefet (t · c · l) 19:42, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

MuslimHeritage.com and FSTC removal

Hello I hope this is the right place. I propose a site-wide removal and ban of MuslimHeritage.com and the organisations articles behind it - "Foundation for Science Technology and Civilisation" / "Foundation for Science, Technology and Civilisation (FSTC)" sources as unreliable, as it is still being used on many pages. It has previously been established it misrepresents sources and is unreliable by Wikipedian's and even outside historians:

• Misplaced Pages:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_18#History_of_Science
• Misplaced Pages:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_107#Salim_Al-Hassani_and_muslimheritage.com
• Talk:Timeline_of_telescopes,_observatories,_and_observing_technology#Unreliable_source_-_Muslimheritage.com_material
• Talk:Science_in_the_medieval_Islamic_world#Misuse_of_sources
• User:Spacepotato/Examples of source inaccuracy (muslimheritage.com)
• User:Syncategoremata/Unreliable_sources#MuslimHeritage.com
• User:Spacepotato/Examples_of_source_problems#muslimheritage.com_.28.3D_FSTC_Ltd..29
• Their 1001 Inventions publication has been debunked as extremely unreliable and misleading by a historian. Same with their exhibition.

The organisation looks and sounds reliable so keeps being used, which is why it's such a problem.--Diamondbuster (talk) 09:03, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

I looked through most of those pages and here is what I think:

• You can't refute a reliable source with your own OR. That's just replacing one potential problem with another, definitive problem.
• Some claims might be inaccurate and they deserve to be discussed at their own talkpages. If we remove all sources b/c they had a couple of inaccuracies, nothing would remain here b/c everything, inevitably, has a problem.
• Just because a source says another source is inaccurate does not really make it so.

In conclusion, because we lack any evidence the site is massively misrepresenting history, I think it is best to bring up problems at the respective talkpages.

Cheers, Λuα 15:36, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

I do not see any arguments for why it is not rs. If the authors sometimes express opinions that differ from the mainstream, that is an issue of weight, not rs. If there are sometimes errors of fact, there are in even the best rs. If there are better sources for some articles, then by all means use them. Personally, I can see few cases where a popular website, which is a tertiary source, should be used as a source, but if you want to block its use, then you need to change the policy that allows it. TFD (talk) 17:38, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

I've never heard of FSTC so I won't comment on that but what was wrong with the Edicions Universitat Barcelona source you removed by the way ? Sean.hoyland - talk 18:19, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

Certainly being published by FTSC adds no evidence of being a reliable source, since FTSC is an apologetics outfit, and has no reputation for fact-checking. If challenged material is being sourced to something published by them, and there is nothing else which gives evidence of it being reliable, then remove the material. We've had problems with boosterism on such topics before. The work of Jagged 85 is still being cleaned up to this day, see Misplaced Pages:Requests_for_comment/Jagged_85. If you do need advice, maybe talk to User:Merlinme, as he or she may be able to help you. --Atethnekos (Discussion, Contributions) 05:47, 16 March 2014 (UTC)

Anthony Flood self-published article on Murray Rothbard

Users Steeletrap and SPECIFICO keep arguing that this self-published piece, filled with undocumented opinions, by an author who only is notable for a few articles published in a metaphysics journal is a more reliable source than information from books published by reliable publishers; they even have removed such info. Anyone want to try to disabuse them of that notion?

• Anthony Flood, "Murray Newton Rothbard: Notes toward a Biography which he admits here was his researched but unwritten book.
• vs: Raimondo, Justin (2000). An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard. Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books. ISBN 1-61592-239-3. OCLC 43541222 and Casey, Gerard (2010). Meadowcroft, John, ed. Murray Rothbard. Major Conservative and Libertarian Thinkers 15. London: Continuum. ISBN 978-1-4411-4209-2.
  

Thanks. Carolmooredc (Talkie-Talkie) 04:32, 16 March 2014 (UTC)

• Comment – This RSN is unneeded. There has been no defense/justification put forth to keep the Flood material in the article. The only reason it has not been removed is because the page is under protection. (Specifico & Steeletrap have not argued that it should be retained.) – S. Rich (talk) 05:00, 16 March 2014 (UTC)

When people put back material that has been removed twice, and come up with personal accusations that avoid the issue as at Talk:Murray_Rothbard#Anthony_Flood_not_RS.2FRemoval_of_Casey_info, than what other choice is there? Plus if I want to ask the Admin who protected the article to insert the properly sourced material, it would help to have an opinion here. Carolmooredc (Talkie-Talkie) 05:35, 16 March 2014 (UTC)

I requested an edit request on the page and the Admin declined to implement it. And once he did, I closed the edit request. We do not need other editors or another Admin to take a look at the edit request. (Also, coming to this noticeboard can be seen as forum shopping.) In any event you will not see editors coming here to defend the Flood material. So, the best course of action is to let them post justification for Flood on the article talk page (which they will not do), and then remove Flood when the page protection expires. Keep in mind that I have characterized the Flood material as RS-crap. It will go, but we do not need more drama here to complicate the discussion. – S. Rich (talk) 05:46, 16 March 2014 (UTC)

Admins can be wrong, can't they? Of course, if you had asked to add the properly sourced info at the same time that you asked to remove the poorly sourced info, the outcome might have been different. It didn't occur to me that the Admin was a forum, however, so if other editors agree it's forum shopping to bring it here, then I guess we can close it - til 3 weeks have passed, if ArbCom still can't decide what to do. Carolmooredc (Talkie-Talkie) 14:58, 16 March 2014 (UTC)

lawyersupdate.co.in

• lawyersupdate.co.in

Seems to be a website for a print magazine, being linked in multiple articles, for example in Mary Bell. Examples . Any thoughts? Яehevkor ✉ 19:35, 16 March 2014 (UTC)

Syrian Observatory for Human Rights being used as an RS for Syrian Kurdish–Islamist conflict (2013-present)

The SOHR's Facebook page is being used to back factual statements of deaths, etc at Syrian Kurdish–Islamist conflict (2013-present). When I tried to change this last year I was reverted with an edit summary saying that SOHR was a reliable source.. I left it at that but another issue reminded me of this today, so I'm bringing it here again. We've had earlier discussions at and , neither of which seem to suggest we can simply use it as a reliable source. This article comes under WP:SCWGS per Misplaced Pages:ARBPIA#Syrian_civil_war_articles () and ultimately community consensus from August 2013 although it hasn't yet been tagged as such, something which I will do next. Thanks. Dougweller (talk) 20:02, 16 March 2014 (UTC)

Disallow. Not a valid source. --Asterion 20:10, 16 March 2014 (UTC)

Ive attempted to clean up the non-neutral, non-reviewed source but Ive been reverted. Werieth (talk) 20:59, 16 March 2014 (UTC)

Someone thinks SOHR is a reliable source? What? Where? I'll help with the clean-up if need be.

Cheers, Λuα 14:55, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

Wetpaint

Is wetpaint.com a reliable source? It looks like it probably is, but I'm not very familiar with the site and don't see anything about it in the noticeboard archives. According to its Misplaced Pages page, it started out as a wiki farm, but moved to providing professional content later on. I'm not exactly sure what's meant by "professional content" though. --Jpcase (talk) 20:14, 16 March 2014 (UTC)

Not look into this too deeply but I would be tempted to say no. It looks more like some sort of aggregator / link farm. --Asterion 20:31, 16 March 2014 (UTC)

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