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RFC - Is Breitbart.com a reliable source for its own film review?

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.

Is Breitbart.com a reliable source for its own film review? The relevant discussion can be found in the "Christian Toto" talk page section. To summarize, there is agreement to add a positive film review to the otherwise negative Critical response section, but there is disagreement on whether an attributed quote from a film review published by Breitbart.com should be excluded due to Verifiability sourcing policy. The dispute isn't about the proposed quote's content, but whether the source is allowable here.VictorD7 (talk) 22:53, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

Survey

• Yes - Of course it's reliable for its own attributed opinion ("material about itself"). Even if Breitbart was a "questionable" source, which it's not, that wouldn't automatically prohibit us from covering its own, properly attributed opinion in a film review section explicitly created for covering such subjective opinions. Excluding it on QS grounds while the section currently includes quotes sourced by completely opinionated film blogs, including one (The A.V. Club) operated by the satirical site The Onion, and multiple quotes from Huffington Post bloggers, is especially preposterous. Furthermore, Christian Toto is a well established film reviewer who wrote for the Washington Times for years, is frequently quoted by Rotten Tomatoes, and has had this particular review cited and quoted at face value in newspaper coverage. He's also a member of the Broadcast Film Critics Association, which runs an annual televised awards show, and other professional organizations. He's currently employed as an editor/columnist/film reviewer at the news/opinion site Breitbart.com, and there's no question that his words published there are truly his own. Breitbart is a news/opinion site currently ranked #48 among global news sites by Alexa.VictorD7 (talk) 22:53, 8 September 2014 (UTC)
  • even accepting your contortion that the review of the movie somehow "material about itself" , SPS can only be used about themselves IN ARTICLES ABOUT themselves. so if you think the review is reflective of brietbart.com, then the place would be breitbart.com .-- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 00:44, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

• Toto's piece isn't a "SPS" (self published source), and no, even if it was, policy states they are "usually", not "only", "limited to articles about themselves or their activities". Here, given Toto's credentials, the self published exception for experts would apply anyway.VictorD7 (talk) 01:31, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

• what is the benefit taking the loophole rather than following the recommended process?-- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 03:01, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

• Whatever. We need a pretty compelling reason to employ a contemptible source like Breitbart, with its well-documented history of character assassination and contempt for truth and accuracy, and none has been offered beyond the repeated justification that we merely can. Even if we can employ a source, one must offer an affirmative reason to employ it and develop consensus for that reason. In this case, there are dozens upon dozens of film critics, many of them "frequently quoted by Rotten Tomatoes", all of them likely members of one Critics Association or another, but there is only one that VictorD7 has been arguing for weeks to include in the article, while offering no compelling reason we should single that critic out above the others who are not currently included. Gamaliel (talk) 23:27, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

• The reason for inclusion would be that Toto is the most prominent professional film critic to positively review the film (Gamaliel was one of those who agreed to add a positive quote, btw, before finding an excuse to delete a proposed quote from a different positive reviewer named Offer, before Toto was proposed, on the grounds that Offer's site supposedly didn't look professional enough), but the issue here is whether Toto's review in Breitbart must be excluded on sourcing policy grounds. Many people find The Onion and Huffington Post "contemptible" for character assassination and disregard for truth and accuracy, but that doesn't mean they should automatically be excluded on QS grounds from merely having their writers' quoted, attributed opinions covered in a section dedicated to covering such opinions. For the record, there's no "character assassination" in the Toto quote, though there's plenty of it in the Huffington Post blogger quotes currently included in the section.VictorD7 (talk) 23:41, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

• Are we going to rehash the Offer bullshit now? I said from the beginning I was willing to include Offer if someone presented evidence that he was a notable film critic, but you spent days arguing about it without presenting a shred of it, and probably would still be arguing about it today if I hadn't walked away from the discussion. Where is your evidence that Toto is the right-wing Roger Ebert? Again you attempt to draw a false equivalence between a gutter site like Breitbart and the Huffington Post, which for all its flaws, is still a somewhat respected member of the mainstream press corps. And who are these people who find The Onion "contemptible for character assassination"? We should pelt them with rocks and run them out of town back to Shelbyville. Gamaliel (talk) 23:49, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

• So much for your frivolous ad hominem claim that there's "only one" I've argued for weeks to include. As for the rest, readers can decide for themselves, though I'll reiterate that the question here is only whether Breitbart.com should be excluded as a source on Verifiability policy grounds, which is the argument currently being used to keep it off the page, not whether you personally like or agree with the site and/or Toto.VictorD7 (talk) 00:02, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

• Pointing out the obvious evidence on this page is hardly a "frivolous ad hominem claim", but then satire of The Onion isn't "character assassination" either. Despite your attempts to distract the issue with a non sequitur about my opinion, it's been pointed out many, many, many times during discussions related to this article that it is the general reputation of Breitbart that we have been pointing out, and it is this reputation that is what is a key policy issue. WP:RS: "published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy". Breitbart has a reputation for the opposite, and lamely attempting to draw a false equivalence with your own low opinion of the generally respected Huffington Post, which, while hardly the New York Times, has a reputation for fact-checking and general accuracy, is a member of the White House Press Corps, etc., doesn't change that fact. With Breitbart's general unreliability and unsuitability on Misplaced Pages having been well established amongst everyone except you, you have to provide us a compelling reason to include Breitbart as a source which both overrides that unsuitability and explains why we can't simply use one of the many other movie reviewers who are also widely published, who are also members of professional critics organizations, who are also frequently quoted by Rotten Tomatoes, and who do not work for a shit sewer disguised as a professional news organization. Gamaliel (talk) 02:52, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

• I disagree with virtually everything you say, the notion that The Onion or rogerebert.com have a "reputation for fact checking" is laughable, and your personal opinion doesn't constitute evidence, but here I'll only point out that RS is always based on context, with evaluations on a case by case basis, and this is a high profile subjective film review in a section where such opinions are called for. Again, the question isn't whether you like the site, but whether the argument that sourcing policy automatically prohibits its use is valid. Perhaps your flippant "whatever" reply indicates that you know it isn't. VictorD7 (talk) 16:38, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

• You don't seem to get the point, or perhaps you do and are furiously dodging it by repeatedly bringing up false equivalences. The point has never been whether or not I like the site, as much as you need to pretend that is my point, the point is the odious reputation of the site makes it unusable for our purposes, even for opinions. And even if we carved out an exception for film reviews (And why should we? What's next? Film reviews from Rush Limbaugh and Daily Kos?) you've given us no reason to employ this film review above the many others available beyond the fact that you simply want to use it. Gamaliel (talk) 17:07, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

• Considering your defense of MMfA, I find your view of Breitbart difficult to square. You don't like the site, that much is clear, unfortunately that is not a valid argument. Arzel (talk) 01:07, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

• Nor is it the argument that I'm actually making. You people are ridiculous. Walk away from the strawman. Gamaliel (talk) 01:23, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

• No, your dislike for the site is blinding your judgment. Breitbart may have an "odious reputation" among leftist spinmeisters, but it's very popular among millions of other people, making the opinions of its feature professional film reviewer noteworthy, especially on an explicitly political documentary where we're otherwise only quoting from liberals less prominent than Toto. VictorD7 (talk) 17:20, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

• It has an odious reputation amongst everyone not in the wingnut bubble, and a reputation for the opposite is required for us to employ it in Misplaced Pages. As has been pointed out many times, popularity is not the only metric, otherwise we could include film reviews from Rush Limbaugh and Daily Kos. Gamaliel (talk) 17:26, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

• I don't know if Limbaugh or the Daily Kos regularly publish reviews by professional critics, but I don't see why either of those sources would be any worse than The Onion operated site or the other sources the section currently uses. If simply having political bias is somehow a disqualifier (it isn't), then the currently quoted Peter Sobczynski of the blog rogerebert.com (the real Roger Ebert is dead, btw, making your earlier reference to him interesting), a self avowed "left-wing liberal" and (in my opinion) a sophomoric tripe peddler who fails to support any of his ignorant assertions, would certainly be out. I suppose we'll have to agree to disagree on who's living in the "wingnut bubble".VictorD7 (talk) 17:44, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

• You have consistently and perhaps purposefully missed the point. There is a difference between a media organization having a political orientation and a media organization having a reputation amongst its peers as an open sewer. The former has the reputation for accuracy, fact-checking, and accountability required by Misplaced Pages policies, the latter does not. Gamaliel (talk) 17:50, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

• I suppose we'll also have to agree to disagree on whether The Onion has a "reputation for accuracy, fact-checking, and accountability", on whether that's relevant when we're discussing properly attributed subjective opinions, on which sources are an "open sewer", and on which of us is consistently missing the point.VictorD7 (talk) 18:00, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

• You keep bringing up The Onion like you've made a prima facie case that it is unreliable. Why, because it's funny? This is the AV Club we are specifically talking about, which in fact does have that reputation that you somehow insist it lacks. You talk about it like it is a zine stapled together in someone's basement, but it a serious media publication about pop culture whose writers have published respected and widely reviewed books and whose founding editor is now an editor for NPR. Gamaliel (talk) 18:08, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

• So you see The Onion's film blog as a "serious media publication" and a solid source for facts, but not Breitbart.com. Got it. Like I said, we'll have to agree to disagree. Of course we aren't discussing facts here, but properly attributed, subjective opinions. Breitbart's credibility is only relevant here in serving as a reliable source for Toto's words. VictorD7 (talk) 18:18, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

• No Breitbart is RS for nothing whatsoever insofar as WP is concerned. SPECIFICO talk 02:59, 9 September 2014 (UTC)
• Yes Opinions cited as opinion are not a problem. The claim that "Breitbart is RS for nothing" is odious here, and where the issue is a film review of all thins, it is worse than odious. Film reviews are, indeed, opinions and citable as long as there is a reasonably notable source publishing it. Cheers. Collect (talk) 14:22, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

So, how can it be "worse than odious" to exclude a source which is not "a reasonably notable source publishing it"? SPECIFICO talk 14:28, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

Breitbart is a reasonably notable source. It is used by the New York Times and other major RS sources, and is widely cited. That you find it not to be reasonably notable is interesting -- in such a case I urgently suggest you place it at AfD as nt notable. Cheers. Collect (talk) 19:48, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

• Sure, why not? This would not be my go-to source for news and other facts. But to cite a review, why not? The political orientation of the source is publicly available (not that that really matters), and we would attribute it as its opinion anyway. --Precision123 (talk) 16:43, 9 September 2014 (UTC)
• Reliable: This is a pretty straightforward application of WP:RSOPINION and WP:ATTRIBUTEPOV. The source may be used for its opinion with attribution. The proposed edit did not suggest that we were endorsing any of Toto or Breitbart's views. The fact that Toto is on Rotten Tomatoes is evidence that his views are notable. And the fact that Breitbart has a conservative bias only reinforces the argument that the source should be included, as it represents a certain space in the sphere of movie criticism, one that is especially important when covering a conservative political documentary. Now, Gamaliel says we shouldn't single this critic out above the others who are not currently included. That may or may not be true but it's a WP:BALANCE issue, not a verifiability issue, and is beyond the scope of this discussion. --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 19:43, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

Shameless plug: Now that I've contributed to this discussion, please consider contributing to this one. Related subject matter. --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 19:47, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

• In this case yes I agree with with Dr. Fleischman in this instance. For any other subject- Brietbart.com is in no way a reliable source. Elmmapleoakpine (talk) 22:39, 9 September 2014 (UTC)
• No Any editor could write a review and post it on facebook and it would be a reliable source for what they said. The real issue is whether is notability. Have any news media mentioned it? Since Christian Toto is not a prominent film critic, it would be hard to justify its inclusion. You might find a source however that says something like, "the film was widely panned by critics, although a number of right-wing bloggers praised it." TFD (talk) 00:39, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

The person is a member of the "DC Film Critics Association" , giving reviews on WTOP, WBAL (Hearst radio), writing for the Washington Times, and commentary for the "Dennis Miller Show". Seems to be a professional film critic and not a random "right wing blogger" as most of the films are not actually political. He even got mentioned by William Safire. Colorado Parent. Film Slate Magazine. Etc. So -- not a "random right wing blogger" but apparently an actual film critic who belongs to professional associations of film critics. Cheers. Collect (talk) 01:12, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

Critics organizations are plentiful and do not confer any particular notability. See the talk archives, we've discussed that issue extensively. Gamaliel (talk) 01:23, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

Toto spears to be a member of at least five professional organizations, which places him a tad ahead of the "right wing blogger" meme. And got mentioned by William Safire in The New York Times, which is something I doubt has happened to you <g>. He is on RottenTomatoes list of "Tomatometer critics", and is credited with 665 reviews on that site. The reviews appear unrelated to whether the movie is political or not. Collect (talk) 01:40, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

I am a member of five professional organizations in my field. Can my blog be quoted on Misplaced Pages now? Gamaliel (talk) 01:46, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

Articles for which you have been paid and which are published by reliable sources absolutely can be used. No prolem at all. The material at hand is not from the person's "blog" however, so that part of your comment is not actually germane here. Collect (talk) 12:55, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

You seem to be saying that my professional memberships do not confer upon my writings any notability and they can't be used here unless they are published by an RS. That is exactly what I have been saying about Toto and Offer from the beginning. Gamaliel (talk) 14:25, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

No, Collect was not saying that, and this is getting petty and IDHT-ish. Let's move on please. --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 16:19, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

There are 100s of members of these associations and no reason to choose this one except for a misguided desire to balance the overwhelmingly negative reviews with one good review, creating a false parity. TFD (talk) 01:50, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

I believe you implied he was merely a "right wing blogger" and the fact is that a person earning his living in a profession, and a member of multiple professional organizations, is generally regarded as being a person in that profession. Clearly you think these organizations have zero requirements for membership, but that is hardly a valid reason for discounting multiple such professional organization memberships, and, apparently, some awards for work as a professional in such a field. Collect (talk) 12:55, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

I notice that your link saying he is a member of the Washington D.C. Area Film Critics Association does not mention he works at Breitbart, nor do any of the other sources that mention his professional membership. He is not on the current list of members provided by the DC Association. At Breitbart his role is film news not film criticism. So it might be accurate to call him a former film critic not writing for a right-wing blog. TFD (talk) 16:56, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

1. Breitbart is a news organization not just a "right wing blog" and 2. what do you think "film news" encompasses? Has it occurred to you that a person working on "film news" would write film reviews? No? 3. Other groups include Broadcast Film Critics Association, etc. 4. You seem to elide the fact that RottenTomatoes counts him as a "Tomatometer" critic with 655 reviews. For some odd reason, I consider 655 film reviews to be a significant oeuvre. Collect (talk) 17:09, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

TFD, you asked if any other media had mentioned it. Does the fact that the New Orleans Times Picayune cited and quoted from the very Toto review in question cause you to reconsider your answer? I'll add that Toto is a very prominent critic, especially given his work for the Washington Times over the years and his current role at Breitbart, which is one of the highest trafficked online news sites. I'll also add that the question here is whether the sourcing argument currently being used to automatically exclude Breitbart is valid, not whether a positive quote like Toto's should be included (that's already been decided in the affirmative), though the newspaper coverage can be relevant for showing that news sources consider Breitbart to be a reliable source for Toto's views. Even your current comments indicate that your answer should probably be changed to "yes".VictorD7 (talk) 17:05, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

That source is good because it summarizes what critics and others are saying, which helps us establish weight. But in this case we would be using the Times Picayune as a source not Breitbart. TFD (talk) 17:38, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

RS guidelines state otherwise: "To ensure accuracy, the text of quoted material is best taken from (and cited to) the original source being quoted." Only if that's impossible for some reason (it's unavailable), is using a reliable secondary source quoting from the original suggested. Again, this RFC isn't about weight, but the specific question as to whether Breitbart is a reliable source for the review it published. If it's good enough for Rotten Tomatoes and the New Orleans Times Picayune, it should certainly be good enough for us. The section already uses the various blogs where the original reviews it quotes are located as its sources. VictorD7 (talk) 17:53, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

Sorry, I replied too quickly. The Times Picayune does not mention Toto's review, it just provides a link. It summarizes them as ""America" wasn't widely screened for critics, but the first handful of reviews are trickling in, and they're not particularly glowing." The guideline you quoted says, "Articles should be based on reliable, third-party, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy." Normally that would mean using the secondary source as a summary of what the primary source said. Obviously if it directly quoted the source we should add that too. TFD (talk) 18:16, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

It does so mention the review. It even quotes from it, along with providing quotes from several other prominent critics, and links directly to the "full review" on Breitbart. We aren't discussing general article building here, but this film review section, which (as is always the case in Misplaced Pages movie article critical reception sections) quotes attributed opinions from pro film critics sourced by their full reviews. Summarizing would be a different segment and process. You still seem to be hung up on the weight argument, which is off topic for this RFC, as if we're building the section from scratch. At issue here is the specific question as to whether Breitbart is a reliable source for its own author's words. Unless you have some argument to make otherwise, you should change your answer to "yes". VictorD7 (talk) 18:29, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

• Yes Dislike of the site for their conservative views is not a valid argument for dismissing the site. Considering well known liberal sites like MMfA are regularly used, it is hard to argue that Breitbart can not. Arzel (talk) 01:02, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

• Strawman. No one is making that argument. MMFA is not regularly used, and even if it was, that fact is completely irrelevant. WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS. Gamaliel (talk) 01:23, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

• Considering your argument against, it is perfectly relevant. Arzel (talk) 16:09, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

• Comment: FWIW, if we're going to have an extended discussion about Toto's qualifications, it may be worth considering the criteria Rotten Tomatoes uses for "Tomatometer" eligibility, since as previously noted he's a Tomatometer critic. Relevant exerpts:

"Online critics must have published no less than 100 reviews across two calendar years at a single, Tomatometer-approved publication, and all reviews should have an average length of at least 300 words to be considered for individual approval."

"Online publications must achieve and maintain a minimum 500,000 unique monthly visitors according to comScore, Inc or Nielsen Net Ratings and reviews must have an average length of at least 300 words. Publications must also show a consistent standard of professionalism, writing quality, and editorial integrity across all reviews and articles. Lastly, site design and layout should also reflect a reasonable level of quality and must have a domain name specific to the property."

--Dr. Fleischman (talk) 16:30, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

MMfA does not have a film criticism section. The World Socialist Web Site (a Tomatometer approved publication) however does, but I don't see left-wingers clamoring to add them to articles to balance the corporate media. TFD (talk) 17:05, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

WSWS didn't review America, so this is pretty irrelevant. Aside from the fact that it has nothing to do with reliability (the subject of this discussion). Everyone understands your view, move on please. --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 17:31, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

You just said that being Tomatometer approved means that we can add critics' views and I pointed out that weight determines we should not provide undue weight to small minority views. WSWS did not review this film nor did most critics and for the same reason. It was best ignored. I doubt any of the editors who want glowing reviews added to the article have actually seen the movie. TFD (talk) 18:51, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

Amazingly enough, you seem to have read something I did not find in his post. I suppose it means either my eyesight is atrocious or ... What DrFleischman appears to have said is that RottenTomatoes has fairly stringent criteria for calling a person a Tomatometer critic, and that those criteria include professionalism and writing quality, and a substantial output of substantive film reviews. Collect (talk) 20:07, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

And while Rotten Tomatoes picked up Toto's column at the Washington Times, they do not mention his writing at Breitbart. His blurb at Rotten Tomatoes does not say he works for Breitbart and the writing is not mentioned at the Rotten Tomatoes page for the film. Notice that they list 2 "fresh reviews" - Toto is not one of them. So either his writing at Breitbart falls below their standards, or Toto has not asked them to include his new column. Or probably he does not want to follow the guidelines set for film reviewers in his new column.

It seems like cherry-picking to blunt the verdict of the critics that it was not a good film.

TFD (talk) 21:14, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

Or, most likely, his review was posted on a site they did not pick up -- they show only 24 critic reviews you might note. Andy Webster of the NYT reviewed the film, and I suspect is considered a professional in the field. Your interesting argument is that he is not an acceptable critic as a result. RT does not list every review from every member of the Tomatometer list, and does not claim to do so. "Evidence of absence" is a logical fallacy. RT selects reviews for each movie. Toto was used by RT in May, 2014 for a review quote. 665 quotes total on RT. Andy Webster has 228 quotes total on RT. The "WSWS" is not at the RT site as being a publication on their list. Nor is the page given as "proof" that it is on any "approved list" anything more than "page not found". It does list some reviews from it total list - ending in2013, and almost all before 2012. So much for that claim. Nor do any of its reviewers appear in any way on the RT site - and absolutely not on its list of critics vetted for the Tomatometer. Debunked as an argument from square one. "Joanne Laurier" agreed with the Tomatometer zero per cent of the time in her 15 reviews (as opposed to 665). "Prairie Miller" is a legit film critic - who did not do any WSWS reviews since ever. In short the WSWS claim is non-existent. Cheers. Collect (talk) 22:20, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

Rotten Tomatoes has a list of critics and where they write, including Toto in the Washington Times and several other media columns and Joanne Laurier and Prairie Miller in WSWS. As you can see that pick up every single column and use them to determine their score, which is basically the percentage of "fresh" reviews out of the total of all reviews in the columns they monitor. They do not include "reviews" that Toto writes in Breitbart. Obviously they allow both right-wing sources like the Washington Times and left-wing sources like WSWS. Are you arguing that because Toto was a recognized reviewer that his writings for Breitbart should be considered of the same quality, even though no organization recognizes them? TFD (talk) 22:54, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

Then how the hell do they miss the New York Times? Sheesh -- "Prairie Miller" has ZERO reviews from WSWS as the publisher on RT (I checked her reviews published on WSWS :) ). Zero. Laurier has 15. And you think you can say that is precisely the the same as a person with 665 reviews on RT? Really? Really??? And please stop the straw man of saying Breitbart publishing a film review by a professional film critic is merely a "right wing blogger"! LOL - this is past risible. Cheers. Collect (talk) 23:14, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

I do not think Andy Webster did review the film. The link you provided was to his review of D'Souza's 2016: Obama's America and it was included in the Tomatometer. See his page August 13, 2012. And however many reviews Toto had included on RT, the fact is that he has not been used to calculate the RT score since May 9, 2014, while Miller was last used August 22, 2014. Prairie Miller's reviews have been included in the RT calculation 1597 times; Joanne Laurier, 15 times; Christian Toto 665 times. So for whatever reason, RT has decided to ignore his recent postings. TFD (talk) 00:58, 11 September 2014 (UTC)

Big Hollywood is a part of Breitbart.com, is listed on Toto's bio, and Rotten Tomatoes has used it hundreds of times for reviews by Toto and another Breitbart critic named John Hanlon. Clicking on the "Big Hollywood" quotes RT lists takes you directly to Breitbart. That RT has "only" used Toto as recently as a couple of months ago is meaningless. Not every noteworthy critic's review is cited by RT for each movie, as Collect quickly proved to you. What's relevant regarding RT is that the site has cited Toto several hundred times over the years (including direct links to his Breitbart reviews in recent years), along with another Breitbart critic to boot, and will likely continue to do so. That's beside the fact that this particular Toto review has been cited in other media, as I gave you extra spoonfeeding on earlier. You're spinning your wheels. VictorD7 (talk) 17:20, 11 September 2014 (UTC)

RT in fact does use every noteworthy critic's review for each movie. That is the point of the website. It tells us what percentage of critics like or dislike a movie. Collect proved nothing. He said that Andy Webster's review of the film was not used. The reason it was not used was that he did not review the film - few critics did. Had he reviewed the film, he would have been included. For whatever reason, they have decided to drop Big Hollywood reviews. While that does not mean that Big Hollywood reviews are not significant, it does mean that RT cannot be used as evidence of their significance. TFD (talk)

At least you've reversed your earlier claim and now concede that Big Hollywood (Breitbart.com) is mentioned and cited on RT. You've provided absolutely no evidence that Toto has been dropped as a critic, or that approved critics have every review they publish quoted. In fact he's still listed as a "Tomatometer Approved" critic. RT has a small editor team choose what they deem to be a representative sample of critical opinion for each movie. Here are just some of the film reviews Toto wrote in the weeks before your May 9 cut off date that weren't featured on RT either: May 5, May 5, May 1, March 28. A critic might publish dozens of reviews a year but only have a few of those quoted by RT. And you're still dodging the subject of this RFC, which is simply whether or not Breitbart (aka Big Hollywood) is an RS source for Toto's words. Again, unless you have some argument to counter all we've posted proving it is, your answer should be "yes". VictorD7 (talk) 19:56, 11 September 2014 (UTC)

Why do you care so much what his answer is? Accept the disagreement and move on. Gamaliel (talk) 20:04, 11 September 2014 (UTC)

Because I want an honest, clear survey. VictorD7 (talk) 20:16, 11 September 2014 (UTC)

• Acceptable per WP:ATTRIBUTEPOV. Furthermore, Brietbart.com meets WP:IRS, just as much as HuffPo does. Just because an editor may or may not agree with a political leaning of a RS (for instance both NYT and WSJ have noticable political bias in their non-opinion news articles), that does not make them any less of a reliable source. Regardless, this is about whether a verified opinion can be attributed to brietbart.com, to which the answer IMHO is yes.--RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 18:12, 13 September 2014 (UTC)

• Unless you can demonstrate Brietbart's "reputation for fact-checking and accuracy" as required by that policy, the comparisons to Huffington Post or the New York Times are fallacious. Gamaliel (talk) 19:04, 13 September 2014 (UTC)

• Not Acceptable Breitbart.com is a questionable source on multiple accounts as identified by WP:QS policy. It has an apparent conflict of interest with it's relationship with it's parent affiliate and competitors, is heavily reliant on opinion pieces for content and is referred to as an opinion website on WP, is seen as extremist by other news organizations, and publishes content based on rumor. Only one of these would be sufficient in labeling something as a questionable source, but Breitbart fits all of them. None of the pages mentioned by other editors overrides WP:RS which specifically states "Questionable sources should only be used as sources of material on themselves, especially in articles about themselves" This review is not being placed on an article about breitbart.com or the author, nor is it being used on a topic about breitbart.com or the author. Therefore, by WP:QS policy, it should not be used...period. Quoting and attributing material to the author doesn't allow editors to bypass the policies in WP:RS. All other articles/essays regarding attribution are for sources that are already deemed reliable, they do not apply to sources that are not reliable, like questionable sources or napkin scribblings.Scoobydunk (talk) 11:07, 14 September 2014 (UTC)
• comment Is Breitbart.com a "reliable source with a reputation for fact checking, accuracy and editorial oversight"? oh fergawdsakes, NO. Is it "reliable" in the sense that there is any question that their posted review by Toto is actually a review by Toto? I have not seen anything to question the legitimacy of that aspect of "reliability". The question then falls to 1) Is Toto an acknowledged and previously published "expert on the subject" so that his views could be considered under the WP:SPS and Misplaced Pages:Manual_of_Style/Film#Critical_response and 2) if his expertise is established, does including his opinion appropriately reflect the mainstream views of the subject or is it a fringe minority view? Skipping to 2) if Toto were among a significant portion of reviewers that hold similar views, there would be examples of other reviewers with similar reviews - those have not been provided and so there does not seem to be a basis for inclusion. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 15:39, 14 September 2014 (UTC)

• Thank you for acknowledging that Breitbart is a reliable source for Toto's review. As for the rest, it's not vital to this RFC but I'll point out that there have been other positive reviewers (e.g. , , ), though Toto is the most prominent (at least as a critic; Klavan is a notable author, screenplay writer, and occasional reviewer). Regarding weight I'll note that we aren't discussing only having a positive quote, or even having one negative and one positive quote, but merely adding one positive quote to a section that already includes several negative ones. The positive side should be represented with at least one quote, and past discussion on this page reached a bipartisan consensus supporting the addition of such a quote. VictorD7 (talk) 23:12, 15 September 2014 (UTC)

• the blaze is another wing of brietbart's media empire Glenn Beck and of no better reputation than breitbart.com. the other two are bloggers and so no, you have not established that Toto is representative of a significant mainstream viewpoint. all that we have is that the thing posted on brietbart is very likely Toto's work.-- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 01:27, 16 September 2014 (UTC)

• Actually one of those "bloggers" (Offer) is counted and quoted in the Rotten Tomatoes aggregation, while the other, Andrew Klavan, is a notable novelist/screenwriter (blogs aren't prohibited in cases like this), and as far as I know The Blaze has nothing to do with Breitbart (both have better reputations as news sources than The Onion or rogerebert.com, which both currently appear in the section), but I was just refuting your claim that no positive reviews existed. The weight question has already been decided. The relevant question here is whether Breitbart is RS in this case, and fortunately your answer seems to be yes. VictorD7 (talk) 16:52, 16 September 2014 (UTC)

sorry, blaze is Glenn Beck's. but that is, if anything, worse than breitbart!-- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 23:55, 16 September 2014 (UTC)

Opinions vary.VictorD7 (talk) 00:06, 17 September 2014 (UTC)

Yes, but no opinions of any consequence see beck/blaze as anything other than a hot steaming pile. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 09:50, 11 October 2014 (UTC)

Fortunately the above exchange just established your level of expertise on the topic.VictorD7 (talk) 04:47, 12 October 2014 (UTC)

WP:REDFLAG the extraordinary claim that Beck has any credibility would require extraordinary sources. Got any evidence that anyone considers Beck reliable? -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 20:24, 12 October 2014 (UTC)

I would ask "reliable for what?" (he's certainly reliable for his own opinion), or ask if you feel Ted Turner or Pinch Sulzberger are "reliable", or point out that Beck didn't write the review in question, or ask why you're continuing to post about this when you just proved above that you know virtually nothing about The Blaze (which employs a large staff that includes some impressive people), claiming it was part of "breitbart's media empire" until you googled it and saw Beck's name after my reply correcting your error, but this is getting really off topic. This section has enough spammed up clutter as it is. VictorD7 (talk) 18:53, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

Roger Ebert was the most respected movie critic in the world. TFD (talk) 06:56, 12 October 2014 (UTC)

That was nice and random.VictorD7 (talk) 18:15, 12 October 2014 (UTC)

* Yes. Acceptable. While Breitbart may not be RS for objective facts, a film review is - by its nature - not objective, but subjective. Everything is RS for opinion statements. BlueSalix (talk) 01:59, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

That is not true. For starters, napkin scriblings, questionable twitter accounts, and questionable sources in general are not automatically reliable for subjective opinions. It is often impossible to verify if the author actually wrote it or if the piece was tampered/altered by the questionable publisher. This is precisely why WP:QS doesn't have an expert exception, while WP:selfpublish does. Furthermore, that doesn't mean that the source merits inclusion in the article and just because it's a subjective opinion, doesn't mean that it overrides policies established in WP:RS, specifically in the form of WP:QS. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Scoobydunk (talk • contribs) 16:59, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

Of course none of that pertains to this situation, where there's no doubt Toto wrote what Breitbart ascribes to him, and BlueSalix is essentially correct in observing that the standards for simply covering properly attributed subjective opinions are quite different from those involved in reporting facts in Misplaced Pages's voice. Also, your interpretation of QS policy is hotly disputed and, if consistently applied here, would force the removal of every film critic quote currently in this article.VictorD7 (talk) 18:41, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

• Acceptable / Reliable Breitbart is not an anonymous blog, but it's also not the Washington Post. It has enough of a real-world presence to establish its authenticity for the purposes of reliably publishing opinion statements of its own writers, which is the only question being asked. It may not be a reliable secondary source for reporting the opinion statements of others, or even factual observations. DocumentError (talk) 22:37, 9 October 2014 (UTC)

It's still a questionable source my multiple standards of WP:QS and therefore can only be reliably used on an article/topic about itself. If an author writes an opinion piece on Global Warming that gets published by Breitbart.com, it doesn't merit inclusion of that author's opinion in an WP article about Global Warming. Other articles/subjects aren't treated differently regardless if the piece is suppose to be objective or subjective. The fact is questionable sources have very restricted reliable usage and a Breitbart.com article would only have appropriate use on an article about Breitbart.com itself or it's editors.Scoobydunk (talk) 02:01, 10 October 2014 (UTC)

There's not two categories of sources: RS and non-RS. From a RS perspective, the only question that should matter in this discussion is Do we believe Breitbart accurately published statements written by Toto? Sources like Breitbart and ThinkProgress can't be used to report objective facts but they can be used to report statements attributed to people whom general knowledge tell us are their own writers. This is one level above a source like freakzilla-123.blogspot.com which can't even be used to report statements attributed to their own writers, but one level below the Washington Post whose reports can be used to note objective facts. This doesn't meet a legal standard for proof that Toto wrote this, in which we should need an affidavit sworn and attested by a notary public, but the standards on WP are less than the standards required to convict someone in a court. DocumentError (talk) 03:56, 10 October 2014 (UTC)

There aren't two categories of sources, there are varying degrees of sources and so we have policies to determine when those sources can and can't be used. If a source falls into the category of being a "questionable source" then we have specific guidelines on when it's appropriate to use that source. WP:QS is the policy that limits questionable sources like breitbart.com from being used on anything but articles/topics about breitbart or the author itself. WP:QS doesn't make any determination or specification about "objective" versus "subjective" opinions/facts, it applies evenly to all content from a questionable source. Furthermore, being a questionable source is not just a matter of a source being unverifiable. WP:QS also pertains to sources that have an apparent conflict of interest, repeatedly attacks competitors, seen as extremist, etc. So it's not a matter of verifiability, but of conduct as well. WP:Questionable also specifically includes sources that are largely derived from "personal opinions" and limits where those sources can be reliably used. So a breitbart.com article from Toto is still an opinion from a questionable source, and therefore can only be used on articles/topics about itself as explained by WP:QS and WP:Aboutself. Again, being an opinion doesn't allow it to bypass WP policies and these policies specifically address opinions from questionable sources.Scoobydunk (talk) 14:52, 10 October 2014 (UTC)

For the record, I'll again point out that Scoobydunk's interpretation of QS policy and his assessment of Breitbart are disputed and fringe (including the bizarre "conflict of interest" claim). Even Scoobydunk doesn't apply his professed policy interpretation to the other sources in this article. VictorD7 (talk) 09:33, 11 October 2014 (UTC)

Scoobydunk with all due respect, your response was just way too long to digest. I'll just say this - this looks like an absolutely terrible film so I can understand it is necessary to proceed carefully in attaching any reviewer's name to a positive review for this beast as it would instantly discredit the reviewer. Still, I believe a standard of caution and prudence has been met. DocumentError (talk) 10:36, 12 October 2014 (UTC)

My response is but mere fraction of the length of WP policies regarding the appropriate use of sources. So I'd take this opportunity to familiarize yourself with my response which will save you the trouble having to "digest" pages upon pages of policies surrounding reliability and verifiability.Scoobydunk (talk) 09:19, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

Closing

It seems clear to me there's a consensus that Breitbart is RS in this context, based on 8 explicit "yes"/"acceptable"/"reliable" votes to 3 explicit "no"/"unacceptable" votes and the argument weights, but I'll post a request to have an uninvolved party close. VictorD7 (talk) 23:17, 8 October 2014 (UTC)

VictorD7 , I saw your request for closure at the request for closure noticeboard and came here to initiate the close. By my count, after a one-month discussion in which all points and counter-points have been answered by each side, 8 editors either ambiguously or unambiguously support inclusion, 4 either ambiguously or unambiguously oppose inclusion. I believe that is close, but not quite, a consensus, so don't feel I can initiate the closure. That said, I will make a !vote of my own to help steer toward consensus. This may, or may not, push it over the edge. DocumentError (talk) 22:30, 9 October 2014 (UTC)'

Voting does not equal consensus. The arguments, policies, and evidence must be evaluated and addressed in full to reach a consensus. Merely asserting that WP:QS doesn't apply to opinion pieces doesn't make it true.Scoobydunk (talk) 02:04, 10 October 2014 (UTC)

You're correct, voting does not equal consensus. That's why I didn't close it. But consensus is also not judged by the opinion of the closer. Consensus is determined by an evaluation of the sum of opinions expressed juxtaposed against the relative acceptability the participants have expressed in the topic. At this time I do believe there is a consensus, but since I've now opined in the discussion, can't close it. DocumentError (talk) 03:50, 10 October 2014 (UTC)

additional comments

Imho the survey above misses the point. Movie reviews are primarily included not for factual reporting but to describe "reputable"/"established"/"influential"/"relevant" opinions on a movie. So the question that need to be answered here is not whether a breitbart article is reliable but whether it is relevant from a movie review/criticism point of view. For example the opinions of (regular) of critics of large mainstream newspapers, mainstrean news, moview review shows on TV, film journals and film scholars would be considered relevant.--Kmhkmh (talk) 22:52, 30 October 2014 (UTC)

I agree. Certainly the review is a reliable source for what the reviewer said. That does not mean we should present this writer's opinions in articles about the hundreds of articles that he has reviewed. The real issue is weight. TFD (talk) 00:33, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

Toto's credentials as a well established professional critic are outlined in the above discussion, so his view is "relevant" by any reasonable, honest measure. Since the argument used to oppose his review's inclusion was a sourcing policy one, the above RFC establishing a consensus rejecting that argument was very much on point. VictorD7 (talk) 03:19, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

There were 24 reviews posted to Rotten Tomatoes (22 rotten, 2 fresh). Of these 9 were "top critics" and all rated it as rotten. Christian Toto, who is not considered a top critic wrote a review that was not posted. AFAIK there could be dozens of other reviewers who wrote about this film. Why do you think we should include Toto's review? WP:WEIGHT says "Neutrality requires that each article or other page in the mainspace fairly represents all significant viewpoints that have been published by reliable sources, in proportion to the prominence of each viewpoint in the published, reliable sources." Just saying that the film had an 8% fresh rating gives sufficient weight to the tiny minority of people who bothered to review the film and actually said they liked it. TFD (talk) 03:56, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

I agree. The mentioned/cited critics should be representative for reviews overall and the most important in doubt. Toto is neither hence there is no requirement to mention him. At best there is a weak argument to include him as notable differing opinion, but imho that is rather weak argument and up to editorial discretion (allowing to use or not to use him).--Kmhkmh (talk) 15:41, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

Regarding Kmhkmh's initial post, consensus has determined that Breitbart and Toto are RS in this context. Period. Despite TFD's confused opening agreement above, his "weight comment" has almost nothing to do with the post it replied to. As a professional critic Toto is part of the weight we're supposed to assess. The weight issue wouldn't focus on Breitbart or Toto per se, but on whether this particular opinion is widely held enough to merit coverage. The weight issue has already been decided. There is a talk page consensus that a positive review quote is warranted. Indeed for a long time the section only had one quote, a negative one. The addition of several other negative quotes were allowed as part of the compromise consensus supporting the inclusion of a positive one, but the positive end of the consensus had yet to be fulfilled until now. Toto is the most prominent reviewer to positively review the film, which is why his review belongs in the article. The claims in TFD's latest post have mostly already been dealt with in discussions on this page. I'll add that film article guidelines explicitly state there is a consensus against using "Top Critics" scores. While basic RT or MC aggregations are allowed (and included at the beginning of the section), we aren't bound by them. As was explained to TFD already, RT doesn't count every significant review for every movie. That the site does see Toto as significant is demonstrated by the fact that they have cited over 600 of his reviews. Most of the other critics quoted in the section aren't "top critics" either, and have been quoted fewer times than Toto. This particular review was quoted in other media outlets, however (e.g. one of the positive reviews quoted by the New Orleans Times Picayune). Such citations aren't necessary given Breitbart and Toto's general prominence, but they underscore the basis for us covering his view.

Since this is a conservative documentary and the reactions have broken down along party lines, including a conservative reviewer is even more vital than usual to attain the "reasonable balance" called for by guidelines, and there's no good reason to censor out the conservative perspective here.VictorD7 (talk) 19:15, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

When you say "consensus has determined that Breitbart and Toto are RS in this context", you are correct. However, this consensus is not a mandate that this particular source must be used despite all other concerns and objections to inclusion. The sentence you cite about "reasonable balance" is followed by one which states "This may not always be possible or desirable (e.g. films that have been almost universally acclaimed or panned)". This is precisely the scenario we have here since this is a film that has been almost universally panned. Gamaliel (talk) 19:43, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

Except it clearly is possible here, since multiple positive reviews have been produced, this one being the most prominent, and you're conveniently ignoring the unusual political dynamic involved with this film and the reaction to it that makes covering the other side even more vital than usual. I'll add that the historically rare A+ CinemaScore grade shows that the vast majority of people to watch the film thought it was great (and I don't know of any other political documentaries to receive such a score, conservative or liberal), so there would be something wrong with devoting a bloated paragraph stuffed only with negative quotes from the couple of dozen or so people who didn't like it while only giving the positive reaction a sentence. VictorD7 (talk) 19:52, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

The fact that the most prominent is Toto's is not bolstering your position that it represents a portion of the viewpoints that should be presented. In fact, quite the opposite. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 20:59, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

Actually Toto is extremely prominent, as the facts laid out all over this page show.VictorD7 (talk) 18:40, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

Neutrality does not mean giving equal weight to opposing views but giving weight according to how it is given in rs, such as RT. That would mean in this case that if we were to include 1 fresh review, we should include 9 rotten ones. TFD (talk) 21:03, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

We were never giving "equal weight" to opposing ideas, as the skew was always very heavily in favor of negative quotes (all from leftists), so your comment is a non sequitur, but some coverage of the other side was necessary for the "reasonable balance" mandated by guidelines. And no, contrary to a recent edit summary (which was also incorrect for confusing sourcing concerns with non critics not belonging in the critic section), there's no policy or guideline mandating that quotes precisely have any ratio, much less binding us to whatever an RT aggregation says (RT and MT have different numbers anyway). The point is to not give the impression of false equivalence among pro critics, and there was never any danger of that. Citing the aggregation itself avoids the false equivalence even if were to use one negative and one positive quote. The point is moot for now, since some leftist editors here would rather delete all the quotes than include a single positive one. Regardless, this discussion was worthwhile, if for no other reason than it produced a community consensus that Breitbart is RS in at least situations like this. Editors should feel free to cite its pro critic reviews where appropriate in other articles (and have probably already been doing so). VictorD7 (talk) 18:40, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

You've produced zero evidence that the film critics or their publications were all "leftists", nor have you demonstrated that the editor who removed the entire section with his or her second ever edit to this article a "leftist editor". These baseless charges are only evidence of a battleground mentality. The only overtly political critic and publication that you advocated for inclusion was a conservative one, so per NPOV those views should be presented alongside those of overtly liberal critics and publications, otherwise the article violates NPOV. Gamaliel (talk) 22:55, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

Actually I was referring to you, since you were the one who suggested the other editor "delete the entire quote soup" rather than just your laughably POV, childish, tit for tat attempted edit. You also falsely accused the other editor of making a "POV edit" in deleting your partisan bloggers who weren't film critics from the film critic section (Hint - remember that Toto is a pro film critic). Contrary to your false claim here, I actually quoted and sourced Peter S. calling himself an "avowed left-wing liberal", and have pointed out how every negative review I've read (and certainly every one posted here) attacks D'Souza's politics, often in insipid and sophomoric ways. None of them actually refute anything he says, and many misharacterize what the film says, either because they're outright lying or they totally missed his point (that also applies to that young Salon.com girl and other partisan bloggers you and scooby quoted; e.g. I didn't notice the film mentioning D'Souza's "affair", despite one of the snarky HuffPo bloggers' claims). Hopefully you aren't going to deny being a leftist editor. Don't get me wrong, that would be pretty funny, but it's probably an unnecessary rabbit hole for us to get started down at this point, especially if the article stabilizes somewhat around its current form, the tags can be removed, and people can move on. VictorD7 (talk) 23:25, 2 November 2014 (UTC)

The openness of the hostility in your response is a refreshing change from your farcical insistence that you have been engaging in "patient, reasoned argumentation". Gamaliel (talk) 00:42, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

Nope, that's exactly what I've done. Since your posting here has brimmed with hostility since you arrived, however, your hilarious hypocrisy is noted. VictorD7 (talk) 20:10, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

For added hilarity and accuracy, I imagined you saying this stamping your feet. Gamaliel (talk) 04:16, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

Sounds like projection. VictorD7 (talk) 16:56, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

Your anger is largely because other editors are enforcing policy. For example, you are demanding the ability to WP:SYN info together to create an argument about a reviewer being a "liberal". That is WP:OR rather you like it or not. Casprings (talk) 02:15, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

I'm not angry, I just described what happened. In fact I was happy because I thought maybe we had finally found a workable long term compromise solution here - eliminating all quotes. And no, Casprings, SYN and OR don't apply to evaluations done on Talk Pages. We're supposed to assess sources. You're the one still confused about policy. On that note, since you were the one who initiated much of this by claiming that Breitbart is not RS, linking to a couple of past discussions on other pages with only a few participants that established no consensus (and if anything leaned toward contradicting you), and starting multiple inconclusive noticeboard discussions, you might be interested to note that the heavily participated in RFC above establishes that Breitbart is RS for at least its own attributed opinion, particularly in regard to its pro film critics' reviews in movie articles. Being an honest, neutral editor, I'm sure you'll remember to cite and link back to this community consensus if the issue comes up again elsewhere. VictorD7 (talk) 20:10, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic critics

For all this heated discussion about the relative importance Rotten Tomatoes does or does not place on Christian Toto, note that Toto's review of America does not appear on Rotten Tomatoes. Here are the critics whose reviews of America actually do appear on RT and on Metacritic. If you are to argue that RT's metrics make Toto important, then you also have to justify why you want to include Toto instead of all these other critics, some of whom have similar or better metrics. Gamaliel (talk) 17:52, 11 September 2014 (UTC)

Gabe Toro The Playlist

Joe McGovern Entertainment Weekly Top Critic

James Rocchi TheWrap Top Critic

Kam Williams Baret News

Renee Schonfeld Common Sense Media

Teddy Durgin Screen It!

Matt Prigge Metro

Louis Black Austin Chronicle

Christopher Campbell Nonfics

Dan Lybarger Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

Sean Means Salt Lake Tribune

Rafer Guzman Newsday Top Critic

David Ehrlich AV Club Top Critic

Alan Scherstuhl Village Voice Top Critic

Martin Tsai Los Angeles Times Top Critic

Bill Goodykoontz Arizona Republic Top Critic

Jonathan W. Hickman Daily Film Fix

Peter Sobczynski RogerEbert.com

Duane Dudek Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Roger Moore McClatchy-Tribune News Service

Mark Jenkins Washington Post Top Critic

Rob Humanick Slant Magazine

Avi Offer NYC Movie Guru

Joe Leydon Variety Top Critic IconTop Critic

---

Variety Joe Leydon

Arizona Republic Bill Goodykoontz

Movieline Christopher Campbell

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

The New York Times Andy Webster

McClatchy-Tribune News Service Roger Moore

Washington Post Michael O'Sullivan

Time Richard Corliss

Boxoffice Magazine Phil Contrino

The Hollywood Reporter Stephen Farber

Boston Globe Mark Feeney

Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir

Village Voice Alan Scherstuhl

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

Since you've already rejected Offer's review (listed above), adding in a later section that you "don't believe the inclusion of Offer's review in RT confers on it any particular notability or significance", you're really the wrong person to start this section. RT is only being cited regarding Toto as a small part of the mountain of evidence establishing his credentials as a noteworthy critic, and more importantly establishing that multiple media outlets see Breitbart is an RS for Toto's words. RT doesn't cite every noteworthy review for every film, so its absence for this particular movie proves nothing, but Toto's review for this film has been cited in other media (as posted above). Your Offer section started by saying, "I don't oppose including a positive review from a movie reviewer, but it should be an established one. Is Avi Offer an established critic?" You went on to conclude he isn't based on your opinion that his website looked amateurish. Well, Toto undeniably is an established critic who has worked for multiple major media outlets with national reach. Of course the RFC above isn't about weight, but simply whether Breitbart (or the Big Hollywood subsection of Breitbart) is an RS in this context, and on that score your comment on Offer is appropriate here: "Obviously he doesn't need to be a reliable source, since this is just an opinion we're talking about." - Gamaliel Obviously indeed. VictorD7 (talk) 19:05, 11 September 2014 (UTC)

As I've said before, I don't believe RT's metrics should override Misplaced Pages's. But if editors are going to discuss RT's metrics in depth, then they should also consider the fact that Toto's review was not included in RT while all these others were. Toto may be an established critic, and certainly appears to be more established than Offer. If Toto's review, or for that matter Offer's review, appeared in a reputable, mainstream publication I would have no objection to inclusion. Gamaliel (talk) 19:31, 11 September 2014 (UTC)

The argument was that Toto's review was notable because his reviews were carried in RT. But RT no longer carries them, so the argument fails. TFD (talk) 19:45, 11 September 2014 (UTC)

False on multiple levels. RT does still "carry" Toto's reviews (certainly no proof otherwise has been presented), and still lists him as a "Tomatometer Approved" critic. Regardless, the argument is that Breitbart is an RS for its own attributed opinions, which your earlier quote on Offer I provided above shows you don't dispute. Also, your new RT based argument against Toto contradicts your earlier argument against RT's relevance when you were trying to justify excluding Offer, whose review of this film RT does cite. And Toto's review of this film is cited (not published, but cited and quoted) by the New Orleans Times Picayune, a reputable news source, as I've shown (not that such coverage is necessary).

The bottom line is that Toto is a well established professional film critic writing for a very popular, high traffic news/opinion site. Your anti-Offer section only said you wanted to include a quote from an "established" critic, and you outright said even reviews posted on the personal blogs of such critics would be acceptable: "You're right, we can cite personal blogs for personal opinions when appropriate, but I don't believe it is appropriate to cite a non-notable opinion." - Gamaliel Clearly Toto is at least as "notable" as the guys currently quoted in the section. VictorD7 (talk) 20:14, 11 September 2014 (UTC)

"Can" does not mean "should", and in this particular case, we should not, for reasons we've gone over at length. Even if I accept that Toto is more notable than every single person on the above list, that doesn't change the Breitbart issue. We can choose from any number of established critics writing for established outlets. You want me to change my opinion, give me a reason that we should pick that one in particular. Gamaliel (talk) 21:00, 11 September 2014 (UTC)

The only pertinent "Breitbart issue" is whether we can consider the site an authentic source for Toto's words, which clearly we can. The review quote was allegedly deleted on sourcing grounds, not because of the quote's content or any weight issue. VictorD7 (talk) 23:48, 11 September 2014 (UTC)

In the overly narrow RFC, perhaps that is the only pertinent issue, but in editing the article we are obligated to consider all issues. Gamaliel (talk) 00:56, 12 September 2014 (UTC)

That allegedly "overly narrow" topic was the only rationale given for deleting the quote, so it merited the above discussion. VictorD7 (talk) 20:19, 12 September 2014 (UTC)

Although they list him as an approved critic, the fact is they have not used his columns since May 9, 2014, or 4 months ago, since shortly after he joined Breitbart. He remains on the list because his columns were used in the past for calculating RT scores. Similarly, Roger Ebert, who died April 4, 2013, is still on the list. The important issue is weight - we do not want to imply that critics say any merit in this film which was universally panned. I would hate to have readers pay to watch this film based on a misleading portrayal of critical reaction in this article, Even people who agreed with D'Souza would likely be disappointed. TFD (talk) 21:19, 11 September 2014 (UTC)

More factual falsehoods from you. Toto joined Breitbart years ago, and RT cites and links to about 70 of his Breitbart ("Big Hollywood") reviews stretching to at least mid 2012. It also cites some self published Toto reviews from his personal blog "What Would Toto Watch?". Sometimes several published the same day are counted, and at other times there are gaps of several months. You've provided absolutely no evidence to support your assumption that they've somehow dropped him. I proved above that RT doesn't count every review from its approved critics. RT has cited Breitbart at least hundreds of times for various critics though. You're also wrong about the reception. The largely negative pro critic reception is already well covered by this article, but the overall response by viewers has been overwhelmingly positive, as the historically rare A+ Cinemscore grade shows. America beat Michael Moore's most recent documentary to become the #6 highest grossing political documentary of all time. Every negative review I've seen has been written by a leftist, often spending more time attacking D'Souza personally or conservativism, Christianity, and/or the USA generally than commenting specifically on the movie, but that the pro critic response has been largely negative doesn't mean we shouldn't provide any positive quote, since there are pro critics who reviewed the film positively. Your concern here shouldn't be to dissuade people from watching the movie, and it's unfortunate that you just expressed such an agenda. The film MOS guidelines state that, "To maintain a neutral point of view, it is recommended to quote a reasonable balance of these reviews. This may not always be possible or desirable (e.g. films that have been almost universally acclaimed or panned), and best judgment should again be used." Past weight discussion here determined that adding a positive review, given the several negative ones already quoted, would be reasonable balance, and it's certainly possible to find positive reviews, as Toto demonstrates. Even Gamaliel said he doesn't oppose adding a positive review. While you're certainly free to challenge consensus by initiating a new weight discussion, that would seem superfluous until the simpler and completely different question of Breitbart's RS in this context is settled, a discussion above that you plunged headfirst into.VictorD7 (talk) 23:48, 11 September 2014 (UTC)

A positive review from a reputable source, which was already added to the article by SRich. Given the lack of positive reviews from mainstream outlets, I'm beginning to think that including a positive review at all might be an UNDUE violation, just as over-representing climate deniers in science articles gives a skewed picture of the 97% scientific consensus. Gamaliel (talk) 00:56, 12 September 2014 (UTC)

That 97% consensus claim has been debunked. Your arguments against Breitbart are unconvincing. Your primary argument is that you don't like it because it is a conservative site. I'll weigh against your long history of defending liberal sites. Seriously, I cannot believe that liberals are so against this movie that this issue has become such a contentious one. Arzel (talk) 01:02, 12 September 2014 (UTC)

I'm going to start calling you Scarecrow because you love the straw man so much. My primary argument is "unconvincing" because you have no idea what it is. I have to keep repeating it for you so much I should just create a template for it. For the umpteenth time, it has zero to do with its political orientation and everything to do with its lack of a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy as required by policy, the same reason I also oppose including reviews from Rush Limbaugh and Daily Kos. Gamaliel (talk) 01:13, 12 September 2014 (UTC)

And the personal attacks continue. Clearly the argument of a person that has no logical response. Considering your false analogy of the 97% climate myth and the double straw men of Rush and DK, I find it humorous to see you level that attack against me. You should really stop though, it is unbecoming of your position as an admin. Arzel (talk) 12:59, 14 September 2014 (UTC)

Arzel, you are providing an opinion piece by James Taylor of the Heartland Institute. Here's a link to an article by Mark Hoofnagle that debunks the debunking. I can find sources that debunk the moon-landing. The problem is we cannot dismiss a meta-analysis in a peer-reviewed journal based on what a columnist, even one who minored in atmospheric studies, says. TFD (talk) 15:48, 14 September 2014 (UTC)

Hogwash. That "positive" quote was warped into a mostly negative one, much to the frustration of Srich and other good faith editors here. Again, your own words: "Obviously he doesn't need to be a reliable source, since this is just an opinion we're talking about." -Gamaliel, (29 July) Guidelines state that "Sources that are regarded as reliable are professional film critics". You earlier supported adding a positive quote in principle. Perhaps you felt you could do so while finding case by case excuses for deleting all the truly positive ones proposed, and are now finding that more difficult. Regardless, the question of which sources are RS logically precedes the evaluation of RS weight, and the Toto review was deleted on pure sourcing grounds. Toto is undeniably a professional critic, making him RS here per film guidelines. The next question is whether Breitbart can be considered an authentic source for his reviews. If that answer is "yes" (which it clearly should be), then would come the issue of due weight, which has already been decided but could be revisited. Of course, since Toto is the most prominent pro critic to positively review the film, opposing his review would essentially mean that one opposes adding any positive reviews, which would require some position reversals and would violate the spirit of the "reasonable balance" that guidelines call for to construct a neutral article. Using a conservative reviewer is even more important than usual given the film's political nature, and the overt, one sided political bias of the liberal reviewers already quoted. But first thing's first, the Breitbart/Toto sourcing issue must be cleared up. 20:19, 12 September 2014 (UTC)

Perhaps you felt you could do so while finding case by case excuses for deleting all the truly positive ones proposed. This shit is exactly why dealing with you is so unpleasant, because any attempt to collaborate or engage with you is met with a punch in the dick. When I said I would support a positive quote, I thought it was obvious to any sentient being that it also meant from a reasonably significant, mainstream, notable source. Instead I'm on the receiving end of months-long harangues about someone's low traffic blog and a partisan shit sewer. Fuck this noise, go argue with your mirror. Gamaliel (talk) 20:29, 12 September 2014 (UTC)

It's far more unpleasant to deal with a poster who refuses to address the glaring contradictions in his comments from section to section. A genuine collaboration would have seen this issue cordially resolved weeks ago. There's no policy prohibiting the properly attributed, subjective opinions of an alleged "partisan shit sewer" from being covered in a section dedicated to subjective opinions (as your own earlier quote agreed with), which is why I don't oppose The Huffington Post, rogerebert.com, THR, or The A.V. Club from being quoted on sourcing grounds. Of course, as one of the highest trafficked news sites in the world (per Alexa rankings), Breitbart is certainly a significant, notable source (and mainstream conservative), not that it needs to be for Toto's review to be quoted, since being a pro critic makes him RS per guidelines, as long as Breitbart can be considered RS for relaying his words. VictorD7 (talk) 20:56, 12 September 2014 (UTC)

There is no contradiction, I've addressed the issue over and over and over again. Your response has been consistently WP:IDHT. Gamaliel (talk) 22:13, 12 September 2014 (UTC)

No, my response has been patient, reasoned argumentation against a blatantly invalid argument and has now progressed to the next step of an RFC for wider community input. I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on your statements' inconsistency, and whether your position amounts to WP:IJUSTDONTLIKEIT. VictorD7 (talk) 23:03, 12 September 2014 (UTC)

I just laughed outloud at the idea that you actually believe you have engaged in "patient, reasoned arugmentation", and it's extra hilarious because you just posted it above TFD's response to you accusing him of lying. I'm beginning to think you are some sort of performance art project. Gamaliel (talk) 23:11, 12 September 2014 (UTC)

More that we disagree on, but readers can decide for themselves. I'll only add here that I did not accuse TFD of "lying". I pointed out that he made factually false claims, which I corrected. VictorD7 (talk) 00:18, 13 September 2014 (UTC)

VictorD7, In the British Parliament MPs are routinely expelled for accusing their colleagues of lying. It would be pleasant if you maintain the same degree of decorum, and keep in mind that verbal abuse is no substitute for facts and well-reasoned arguments.

Most people would not consider 2012 to be "years ago", although one might say "2 years ago." Your link shows that RT picked up Toto's Big Hollywood reviews from May 16, 2012 to May 9, 2014. Can you explain why they are no longer counting his reviews, other than that they have dropped him?

The film is not the 6th highest grossing documentary of all time, it stands about 16, just ahead of Moore's Capitalism. But so what?

It's easy to say that everyone who panned the movie was "left-wing" by defining the Left as anyone who did not like the movie. D'Souza's brand of "conservatism" reflects a fringe view that is ignored in reliable sources except by scholar who write about the fringes of the political views.

TFD (talk) 01:07, 12 September 2014 (UTC)

I didn't accuse you of "lying", TFD, but of posting factual falsehoods, and I proceeded to prove my claim. There's more to clean up from your latest post. I said America is the 6th highest ranking political documentary (reread my post), and it is. I never defined "the left" as anyone who didn't like this film. I said I hadn't seen a negative review from anyone who wasn't a leftist. Read the reviews yourself. The negative ones all attack D'Souza's politics. And those politics are very mainstream conservative, not "fringe". Two years ago is "years" by definition, which is certainly more accurate than your misleading claim that RT hadn't used him since "shortly after he joined Breitbart". I already showed you above that RT doesn't count every review from its approved critics, and indeed can go several months between citations, so that doesn't prove anything. RT isn't the end all be all anyway, and we certainly aren't restricted to only quoting critics they do. That RT has cited Toto 665 times and Breitbart at least 287 times is only relevant in helping to establish that Toto is a professional critic and that other media outlets take Breitbart at face value as an authentic source for his (and others') reviews. You have yet to post a single argument on that score, which is the actual topic of the RFC you chose to participate in above.VictorD7 (talk) 20:19, 12 September 2014 (UTC)

You keep saying, "I already showed you above that RT doesn't count every review from its approved critics," Well no you have not. You stated that they did not carry Andy Webster's review, but the reason they did not include it was that he did not write a review of the film - few critics did. And D'Souza's politics are not "mainstream conservative." They are never mentioned approvingly in mainstream academic writing and are most often mentioned in books and articles about fringe views. TFD (talk) 21:12, 12 September 2014 (UTC)

I haven't mentioned Andy Webster. Above I linked to several Toto reviews from before your cutoff date of May 9 that weren't quoted by RT either. That demonstrably didn't mean they had dropped him, since they proceeded to quote him on May 9. Your claims about D'Souza's politics are wrong and irrelevant. You keep dodging the actual issue of Breitbart's reliability in this context. VictorD7 (talk) 23:03, 12 September 2014 (UTC)

Maybe they phased his columns out. I don't know. But their methodology is to use every column of every reviewer they use. Imagine a film got a 100% "fresh" because RT decided only to inlcude positive reviews. Also, it makes no sense to rail against the liberal media and the left-wing academic world, then claim that people like D'Souza are in the mainstream. If mainstream is a Marxist-Alinsky-anticolonialist conspiracy that D'Souza opposes, he is obviously not part of it. TFD (talk) 19:26, 13 September 2014 (UTC)

Or maybe they didn't; at least now you admit you don't know. You've posted nothing supporting your claim about their methodology, which, btw, is certainly not scientific. D'Souza's views are firmly in the American mainstream (which isn't defined by the liberal media), and I don't know of any specific factual claims his film makes that have been disputed. That's all irrelevant though. You're still dodging the actual issue of Breitbart's reliability as a source for Toto's review.VictorD7 (talk) 22:32, 15 September 2014 (UTC)

Since you are the one who brought up RT as evidence of Toto's notability, you need to provide the methology they use, not me. If you do not know it, then you cannot use them as evidence of Toto's importance.

D'Souza's views are well outside the mainstream. You refer to the "liberal media" - that is the mainstream. Notice on page 145 of Obama's rage, D'Souza distinguishes between the "mainstream media" and the "conservative media." His example of the latter is Sean Hannity. That show does even meet rs standards, except for the opinions expressed on it.

Asking whether Breitbart is rs for Toto's column is begging the question. As I worte above, "Any editor could write a review and post it on facebook and it would be a reliable source for what they said. The real issue is whether is notability."

TFD (talk) 02:23, 16 September 2014 (UTC)

You keep ignoring what's been posted, causing people to repeat themselves. Again, RT was cited as one piece of a mountain of evidence proving that Toto is a professional film critic. While your various claims about RT's methodology are completely unsupported and in some cases have been proved false, in the above section Dr Fleischman did copy paste RT's methodology and review process regarding critic approval (what's relevant here). Other evidence, like Toto working as a critic for the Washington Times for years, being cited by other media sources, and belonging to major professional critic organizations was also cited. There should be no doubt whatsoever among good faith editors that Toto is an established, professional critic. That alone makes him RS per film guidelines as I quoted a few paragraphs above. As to his "notability", by which here you presumably mean his prominence, being the feature film critic for widely read publications like the Washington Times and Breitbart (both publications themselves are extremely notable) make him at least as notable as the critics already quoted in the section, and probably more so. Your comments on D'Souza are both incorrect and irrelevant. The "media" doesn't determine which political views are mainstream. If they did, a Republican would never win a national election. Getting back on topic, does your next to last sentence mean that you do accept Breitbart as an RS for Toto's words? VictorD7 (talk) 17:15, 16 September 2014 (UTC)

It is not being Republican or Democrat that makes one mainstream, it is one's opinions. For example, birtherism, 9/11 truth, death panels, young earth creationism, and climate change denial are all views popular with some Republicans but that does not elevate them to mainstream views. You still have not explained the irony of someone claiming that mainstream views are lies, yet your claiming that is a mainstream view. It is a logical impossibility: TFD (talk) 17:53, 16 September 2014 (UTC)

You're still dodging the central issue here. Do you accept that Breitbart is RS for Toto's review? As for your post, leaving aside the fact that some things (like 9/11 conspiracy theories) are far more popular with Democrats, you haven't pointed to anything D'Souza states in the film (or even happens to believe) that's supposedly "fringe", or explained the relevance to this conversation even if you could. You're also conflating certain mainstream views, like anthropogenic climate change skepticism, espoused by many scientists, with the truly fringe. Your final two sentences continue to mistakenly conflate the "mainstream" (or "old", or "liberal") media with political views that are societally mainstream, so your "logical" claim is based on a false premise. D'Souza criticizes the "mainstream" political bias of certain niches, and his views are certainly mainstream on the political spectrum. VictorD7 (talk) 18:10, 16 September 2014 (UTC)

If you are going to argue that "anthropogenic climate change skepticism, espoused by many scientists" is a mainstream view, then we are not going to get anywhere. Your view of what is mainstream differs from what policy says and how it is interpreted. Instead of arguing across numerous articles that fringe views are mainstream, you should take your arguments to discussions of policies. (The 9/11 truth movement is mostly extreme right Republicans.) TFD (talk) 19:48, 16 September 2014 (UTC)

The 9/11 "truth" movement was mostly liberal Democrats (with a few libertarians), and who defines the "mainstream" varies from topic to topic. For example, for general political views the mainstream is not defined by the media's own political preferences. None of that is relevant to this discussion though. Your posting here has been almost entirely obfuscatory and diversionary. If you continue to refuse to address the topic actually under discussion then your comments will merit no further response.VictorD7 (talk) 22:28, 16 September 2014 (UTC)

Perhaps this will finally be the blissful silence we have all been looking forward to. Gamaliel (talk) 23:12, 16 September 2014 (UTC)

Reviews - starting from scratch

Per WP:RTMC: "The "Top Critics" at Rotten Tomatoes and the critics at Metacritic are generally considered reliable and authoritative sources and are ideal for sampling." I took the lists of the RT "Top Critics" and the Metacritic critics for this film and found six critics who were cited in both places. I selected four of the six and used only the pull quotes that were used by RT and Metacritic (in some cases, by both) and excerpted no other material from their reviews. I thought six was too many, and all six were unfavorable reviews anyway. I can't think of a way to make the selection process any more objective than this. It leaves out Christian Toto, but it also leaves out that evil liberal plotter Peter Sobczynski that Victor has such a seething hatred for, so it's a wash. Gamaliel (talk) 06:10, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

Quotemining makes terrible articles. POV quotemining makes bad articles worse. Section was cut down to simple facts without quotes or ideological POVs. Every quote you chose seemed to be based on the critics ideological review rather than a critical assessment of the film itself. Are critics "fact-checkers" such that they can make sweeping statements about truthiness and be considered a reliable source? --DHeyward (talk) 07:36, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

It would be better if you can summarize critical assessment of the film itself. "Reliance on dramatizations over interviews" was a criticism of the style and is valid film critic area of expertise. It's harder to make them into content experts, though, so facile and strawman are harder to stick. As an example, whether a film critic believed "Life of Pi" was true or not based on his personal experience with tigers might be in his review but it's not ripe for the WP article on the film. --DHeyward (talk) 07:59, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

"Cherry picked"? "POV quotemining"? These accusations make no sense given the methodology I used to include the quotes, which removed almost all human intervention and made the most representative selection possible of the "critical assessment". Your objections lie with the selections and decisions made by RT and Metacritic. When we had eight quotes, I can understand the objection of "quotesoup", but half that number is reasonable to include, which is why I only used four instead the six I could have. None is unreasonable. Including review excerpts is standard in film articles, and of all the editors who have discussed the matter here, so far you are the only editor to favor the opposite approach. Gamaliel (talk) 15:08, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

Overkill in quotes to show just how horrid the fake-umentary is is not really needed, and when people engage in making absolutely sure every reader knows how evil the film is simply negates the primary rules of Misplaced Pages - including the non-negotiable principle of "neutral point of view." At this point, we have the neat position where the only remotely positive review suggested for inclusion, which was specifically found to be reliably sourced in the RfC above, is not mentioned at all. Cheers. Collect (talk) 15:23, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

NPOV requires fair and proportional representation. The overall critical assessment is poor, and the article should reflect that. Claiming that quotes which reflect the critical assessment violate NPOV turns NPOV on its head. Gamaliel (talk) 15:57, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

Um -- since I edited without a single favourable review in the edit, that would seem a reasonable percentage. Might you tell me how I could get to over 100% negative with a straight face? I would rather think 100% is an upper bound mathematically - can you get higher? Cheers. Collect (talk) 16:03, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

Lies, damned lies, and statistics. I could just as easily say you violated NPOV by reducing the negative representation by 50%. Gamaliel (talk) 16:07, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

I trust you will read the Joseph Widney article which I reduced in size by 160,000 bytes, or about 80%, thus making it a "Good Article". Having a hundred negative reviews against zero positive reviews is not "more neutral" than having two negative major reviews and zero positive reviews. Cheers. Collect (talk) 16:16, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

In hopes of finding common ground regarding your concerns while keeping this article in line with other film articles, I'm going to try to reduce the length of the quotes instead of their number. Gamaliel (talk) 04:19, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

Given the unusual circumstances surrounding this film and the politicized reception, it's clear that linking directly to any review will be a poison pill inviting further expansion. If you add negative quotes I will restore a positive one, probably the Breitbart review, since among all reviews it has by far the most endorsement on this page. There is no policy mandating a certain ratio of positive to negative quotes. That most pro critics panned the film (not to be confused with the total reception, which was more positive than negative) is made clear by the section leading off with the aggregation scores, avoiding any danger of a false equivalence. The purpose of the quotes would not be to precisely represent weight in character space, but provide coverage of the salient, differing points of view. We don't need several quotes essentially repeating themselves.

Your op here links to a non binding essay someone wrote, and even it says "Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic, are considered reliable sources, but information from them should be used in proper context and have some limitations"....and "critical reception should also benefit from other reliable sources". The actual film guidelines only really mention Top Critics to say "There is a consensus against using the "Top Critics" scores at Rotten Tomatoes based on several concerns:". By contrast, total RT and MC aggregations are listed as "citable", but there's nothing mandating we use them, much less restrict ourselves to the sample of critics they happen to choose for a particular movie. Guidelines do say that "Sources that are regarded as reliable are professional film critics, though notable persons or experts connected to the topics covered by the film may also be cited." Nothing about them having to come from RT, much less RT's "Top Critics". We're also instructed to provide a "reasonable balance" of quotes, but we aren't required to provide quotes at all, especially given the unusual issues at play here. Guidelines call on us to use "best judgment", flexible instruction implying adaptability to differing circumstances. Any honest editor will admit that critical reception to this movie has at least largely broken down along political lines, so best judgment cautions us to be wary about only quoting from one side. VictorD7 (talk) 19:55, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

Gamaliel. Again with the Daily Kos source? really? You know better than that. Arzel (talk) 20:31, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

What is the problem with this source? If this is a political documentary, it makes sense to include and attribute political commentary. The key is to structure that commentary per WP:STRUCTURE. Erik (talk | contrib) 20:34, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

The RFC established that fringe political websites like Brietbart and Daily Kos are allowable sources to reference their own reviews. Gamaliel (talk) 20:37, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

No, actually the RFC established that the news/opinion site Breitbart and its pro film reviewer Christian Toto are RS here. It said nothing about non pro film critics on truly fringe liberal group blogs. That said, I agree with Erik that expanded political commentary is appropriate for an explicitly political film, including commentary about the reception itself (which is common, as I've shown before), as long as we fully cover both sides, and you don't try to engage in one sided censorship. VictorD7 (talk) 21:03, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

One-sided censorship? Like when you deleted only the liberal reviews? I do so enjoy patient reasoned argumentation like this from you, it reminds me of visiting the monkey cage. Gamaliel (talk) 21:09, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

Except that never happened, lol. You seem particularly upset today, Gamaliel. What's the matter? VictorD7 (talk) 21:22, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

I guess we have always been at war with Eastasia. Gamaliel (talk) 21:32, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

I only deleted the quotes from non-critics; all such quotes from non-liberals had already been dropped down the memory hole (deleted), so there were only liberal ones left to delete (you left out what a late great radio host might call the rest of the story). Now that there's sentiment for expanding the Reception section beyond pro film critics, both perspectives are represented. VictorD7 (talk) 01:00, 6 November 2014 (UTC)

Can we all please focus on the content? I agree with the conclusion of the RFC because we are dealing with statements of opinion here (see WP:RSOPINION), and the conclusion should extend to similar sources on the other end of the political spectrum. If sources are notable (Misplaced Pages's notability standards can be one rule of thumb), then opinions published by them can be noteworthy. I am fine with including and attributing both conservative and liberal statements in this article, though I would prefer to paraphrase where possible to get away from any slang that may be used. Erik (talk | contrib) 21:20, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

Sounds acceptable to me, Erik, but you see with this revert by Gamaliel the kind of intractable, one sided, POV censorship I'm talking about having to deal with. He deleted almost all the conservative commentary while leaving the liberal pundit attacks. Gamaliel even violated 3RR to do it, his edit summary containing nothing but what I surmise is his family photo album (set to some touching audio). Maybe he miscounted his reverts, so I politely notified him on his talk page. Regardless, clearly the current page grossly violates NPOV. I'll add that the two commentators he completely deleted, John Fund and Ben Shapiro, are both notable (along with their publications, of course), while none of the leftist pundits he put into the article are notable enough to have their own Misplaced Pages articles, and it looks like only one pro film critic is. VictorD7 (talk) 03:01, 6 November 2014 (UTC)

UTC)

After all that you've put up with, and yet you still manage to engage in patient reasoned argumentation. Your talents are wasted on Misplaced Pages, truly. Have you considered bringing your brand of patient reasoned argumentation to a struggling inner city school? Within six months they will all be getting 5s on the AP Calculus exam. Gamaliel (talk) 04:17, 6 November 2014 (UTC)

I know, sometimes my patience astonishes even me. I don't spend that much time on Misplaced Pages though.VictorD7 (talk) 18:40, 6 November 2014 (UTC)

New tags

One is supposed to post talk page rationales when they add things like NPOV tags, as I did. For the record, since there seems to be some confusion, the conservative perspective is not a "minority political view" as it was erroneously called in a recent edit summary. RT style aggregations are only meaningful from a weight standpoint when assessing pro film critics' views. When the scope of coverage is expanded beyond that narrow set, as it appropriately has been here given the film's political nature, the negative skew goes out the window. There is a lot of positive material about this movie, especially from conservative commentators.VictorD7 (talk) 18:47, 6 November 2014 (UTC)

Yes, I do not find the tags necessary. I think that there could be more copy-editing, especially not to quote directly so much, but otherwise, the grouping of content is fine. However, I think at least in the "Political commentary" section, we should attribute the political stances of the sources attributed. If these sources' Misplaced Pages articles open with the political slant, we should state them here so readers unfamiliar with the sources don't have to go to the articles to find that out. Erik (talk | contrib) 18:54, 6 November 2014 (UTC)

I don't necessarily oppose tagging the pundits "conservative" and "liberal", as long as we're even handed, though I'm not sure how necessary it is. Regarding the quotes, I think allowing full coverage of a thought is more important than worrying too much about character length. Sometimes that can be done easily with a sentence fragment, especially when one is essentially just name calling, but other times it might require a sentence or a sentence and a half. I think right now the combined negative quotes sufficiently cover that perspective, which is given more space, number of reviews, and emphasis (especially leading off with the aggregations) in the pro critic section, with the positive quote being slightly longer than the average negative quote (much smaller than the combined liberal quote paragraph) but needing more space to fully cover that view since it's the only positive quote used. VictorD7 (talk) 19:08, 6 November 2014 (UTC)

You've been taking here about this for months, you are well aware of the rationale. The section gives the longest quote to a conservative review, included solely because of its political viewpoint, because it would obviously be excluded by any objective methodology for selecting quotes based on the critical consensus. All the reviews from liberal publications were removed to another section. This is a biased presentation which gives undue weight to Toto's minority viewpoint. Gamaliel (talk) 20:45, 6 November 2014 (UTC)

I think that's a good point. The Daily Kos and Salon passages both state that the pieces are film reviews. These should be in the same camp as Breitbart. Media Matters for America, on the other hand, is not labeled a review and can stay in the "Political commentary" section. Erik (talk | contrib) 20:49, 6 November 2014 (UTC)

No, being an established pro film critic is more than having one piece labeled "review" on a group blog. Toto's extensive credentials are laid out all over this page. So far I've seen no evidence that the Kos and Salon bloggers are critics. They don't even seem like major members of those blogs, much less people who have had reviews published by various outlets, have had their reviews cited and quoted by mainstream media, are members of professional critics organizations, etc., like Toto. If there's evidence to the contrary I'd be happy to see it. VictorD7 (talk) 03:07, 7 November 2014 (UTC)

I strongly disagree with your premises. The Toto quote is only slightly the longest, because it's making a more complex point than tossing out a bunch of invective, and far shorter than the combined negative quotes. The pro critic weight skews negative, and our coverage clearly reflects that, especially with the extended RT/MC segment. There's no false equivalence. But, ideology aside, the positive view merits some coverage to achieve reasonable balance. Toto happens to be conservative, but all of the other publications and negative critics in the pro critic section are liberal. Everyone has their political views. What makes the liberal and conservative pundits in the other section different is that they aren't pro film critics. VictorD7 (talk) 03:07, 7 November 2014 (UTC)

The Wrap, Variety, and The A.V. Club are all entertainment publications, not political ones. Brietbart is an explicitly political publication so it should be coupled with reviews from explicitly political publications of different perspectives per NPOV. Gamaliel (talk) 03:53, 7 November 2014 (UTC)

There's no policy, guideline, or good reason to disregard the writers and only categorize by publication. Toto is an established pro film critic who used to write reviews for the Washington Times, and he'd be RS as a film critic even if we were using his personal blog as a source. Besides, Breitbart is a major news/opinion site and not the equivalent of group blogs like Kos and Salon. It happens to be conservative. So? The NY Times, The Wrap, and CNN all happen to be liberal. Policy explicitly states that bias doesn't disqualify sources from being used, and Breitbart's political leanings don't change the fact that Toto is a pro film critic who usually reviews non political movies. If you want to group all the critics and pundits together that would be one thing, but if we're making a distinction then Toto belongs with the pro critics. VictorD7 (talk) 04:36, 7 November 2014 (UTC)

You are singling out Toto because of his political orientation and the political orientation of his publication. You can't do that without presenting other political viewpoints, and you can't claim that every single one of dozens of non-political entertainment and general news publications and critics mentioned on this page as meeting the criteria for inclusion in that section are all "liberal". The reception section should be representative of the non-political consensus of film critics. if you want to introduce politics into that through Toto, then NPOV requires representing all political points of view. Gamaliel (talk) 04:46, 7 November 2014 (UTC)

No I'm not. I pushed for Toto's inclusion (assuming that's what you meant by "singling out") because it was a positive review, and that side needed at least some coverage for reasonable balance, per an earlier talk page agreement. First I supported other editors' attempts to include the RT cited positive review of Offer, who may be a liberal for all I know, but you rejected him because you didn't like the way his blog looked, saying you'd accept a positive review but that it should be from an "established critic" (I believe those were your exact words). Toto is a very established pro critic. Sure, having at least one conservative perspective when all the other pro critics quoted are attacking D'Souza's politics and conservatism in general (of course they're liberal, like most of the entertainment industry) is especially important in an article covering a political film, but that just strengthens the case. I'd support a positive quote anyway. Of course the liberal perspective, both critic and pundit, is well represented, and the mostly negative state of pro critic opinion has been covered all along. VictorD7 (talk) 05:06, 7 November 2014 (UTC)

Months ago, I stated that I was willing to consider including Avi Offer if any editor could substantiate that he or his publication had any sort of audience or positive reputation or anything at all besides being on RT. You keep mentioning him, but you are unwilling to provide any of that evidence. I'm not singlehandedly keeping Offer out, I just raised my concerns on the talk page, and for that you've been sniping at me for months. You want Offer in? Provide evidence or develop a consensus for inclusion, otherwise WP:DROPTHESTICK. In regards to critics in general, "of course they're liberal, like most of the entertainment industry" is your personal opinion, not substantiated by policy or evidence or supported by consensus (and irrelevant anyway since they are writing for non-political general entertainment and news publications), so that personal opinion should not be guiding article content. Gamaliel (talk) 05:18, 7 November 2014 (UTC)

I'm not trying to get Offer in now. I only mentioned him to refute the notion that I'm only supporting Toto because he leans conservative. I support Toto's inclusion because he's the most prominent pro critic to positively review the film, and therefore the best choice to represent the positive critic sentiment. That he represents an ideological perspective otherwise lacking in the section is just a bonus. Those other outlets may be narrower in focus, but they're no more "non-political" than Breitbart is. Regardless, our respective assessments of their politics is secondary. The bottom line is that they could all be conservative, liberal, or non-political, and it wouldn't change the fact that Toto is an "established", well credentialed, pro film critic, so if we're creating a pro critic section he belongs in it. Speaking of WP:DROPTHESTICK, we just had months of debate culminating in an RFC that didn't go your way. At some point maybe you should step back and let this Toto/Breitbart thing go. Including that one quote can't possibly cause you this much pain. VictorD7 (talk) 05:43, 7 November 2014 (UTC)

Here I was thinking you were finally trying to be mature about this, but you just couldn't stop yourself from including more of that patient reasoned argumentation that we all enjoy. Gamaliel (talk) 05:54, 7 November 2014 (UTC)

I really hope you're not complaining about me commenting on the WP:DROPTHESTICK concept you raised.VictorD7 (talk) 05:58, 7 November 2014 (UTC)

Honestly, do you think your parting shot is really an example of patient reasoned argumentation? Do you think that it furthers this discussion and gets us towards resolution? Have you considered that this discussion has gone on for months not because of everyone else's behavior, but because of yours? Gamaliel (talk) 06:05, 7 November 2014 (UTC)

I'm just trying to understand why this is such a big deal to you. It's a big deal to me because it represents the section's only positive quote, and because the sourcing rationale used to exclude it just because it came from Breitbart was, as another editor put it, "odious". It was important to establish a consensus that Breitbart is RS in situations like this; perfectly fine to use. That consensus being established, I'm obviously not going to walk away if that means the quote gets purged from a section still filled with negative quotes. But why is this so important to you? The quote itself is fairly innocuous, and all the section's other quotes are still negative. That said, you're obviously under no obligation to answer a personal question; you can tell me to screw off or just ignore it if you want to. But you can't ignore the fact that Toto is an established professional critic, while Kos's Falcone and Salon's Bruenig aren't.VictorD7 (talk) 06:14, 7 November 2014 (UTC)

"I'm just trying to understand why this is such a big deal to you." is not a response to the guestion of "Why are you acting like a jackass?" Gamaliel (talk) 17:47, 8 November 2014 (UTC)

I rejected your premise. VictorD7 (talk) 20:34, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

The film has an 8% rating on RT amongst professional critics. That is an almost universally panned film. It would be inaccurate that a "well-balanced" article would include positive and negative review of the film, you would have to deliberately cherry pick good reviews because there appear to be so few of them. -Xcuref1endx (talk) 01:49, 8 November 2014 (UTC)

Maybe we could expand on quoting the negative reviews? We could quote The Washington Post since it is a very well-known periodical, as well as The Hollywood Reporter, which with Variety makes up the major film-related trade journals. Erik (talk | contrib) 13:13, 8 November 2014 (UTC)

No, there are enough positive reviews that even an article that only focused on pro film critics should include at least one to cover that perspective. But, of course, this being a political documentary, the set of views has been expanded beyond pro film critics, and the broader reception was far more positive.VictorD7 (talk) 20:34, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

(od) Four negative reviews along with the RT and MetaCritic cites stating that the reviews were overwhelmingly negative would appear to be quite sufficient. Cheers. Collect (talk) 14:00, 8 November 2014 (UTC)

Most well-developed film articles have a good number of reviews. I understand that we don't want to repeat "it's bad" over and over, but the point of referencing individual critics is to expand on the particulars of the consensus. Basically answering the question of what elements worked or didn't work for the critic. I find it very shotgun-editing to just have a quoted sentence from each critic (and I admit I do that sometimes). Something like American Beauty (1999 film)#Critical reception weaves the critics appropriately. I don't know if we'd get to that FA level, but we should strive for it. Erik (talk | contrib) 14:08, 8 November 2014 (UTC)

That is the ideal, but we can't even get to the point where we can agree what critics to include, much less figure out how to weave them together without accusations of cherry picking. Hell, all I did was cut and paste only the quotes used by both Metacritic and RT and I was accused of cherrypicking. I think first we have to get a stable article. Gamaliel (talk) 17:47, 8 November 2014 (UTC)

Four seems like a reasonable number if we limit the section to non-political reviews. Gamaliel (talk) 17:47, 8 November 2014 (UTC)

CinemaScore

As MOS:FILM now outlines, audience response content is not required to be under critical response content. In addition, box office gross indicates how an audience responds to the film, and CinemaScore is another such indicator. It is commonplace to show the demographic breakdown with the CinemaScore grade. It shows what kind of audience the film attracts, like a Transformers film would attract young men. It is not "frivolous". Erik (talk | contrib) 17:38, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

To show how relevant demographic information is, Entertainment Weekly reports here about who went to see Ouija last weekend. Erik (talk | contrib) 17:47, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

VictorD7, a number of film articles include demographic breakdown as seen here. Erik (talk | contrib) 18:07, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

No one ever said it's "required", but I agree with Flyer22 on the MOS page that CinemaScore grades fit better under the Critical reception section because they're opinions about the movie rather than box office stats about sales or theater count, and there's no good reason to move it. The Guidelines' Critical response section already makes it clear that reception content isn't limited to pro film critics, stating..."Sources that are regarded as reliable are professional film critics, though notable persons or experts connected to the topics covered by the film may also be cited." The new compromise Audience Response section certainly doesn't mandate that CinemaScore polls appear in the box office section, as it states that "Polls of the public carried out by a reliable source in an accredited manner, such as CinemaScore, may be used and placed in the appropriate release or reception-based section, depending on the available context." Either is acceptable, and my opinion is that readers will tend to look at the BO/Release section for sales stats, skipping over that and looking at the Critical response section when searching for opinions, so a major opinion segment shouldn't be buried in the middle of a bunch of box office stats. It's also been the status quo on this article for months, and there's no consensus to change that.

Regarding the demographic breakdown, your search yielded 28 results (for perspective searching for "cinemascore" alone yields 239), and only some of those actually have demographic breakdowns. None are as detailed as what you posted, typically only featuring male/female ratios and sometimes limited age info (like percentage "over 25"). None mentioned race, except for Season of the Witch, which only mentioned it due to its unusually high "non-white" viewer percentage. None were political documentaries. I noticed no demographic breakdowns in any of the Michael Moore movies I scanned. When there is a demographic breakdown (typically male/female), it often appears on the BO/Release section, with the CinemaScore grade appearing separately in the Critical reception section. Usually there's no demographic breakdown at all and CinemaScore grades are presented as a single sentence, like in the Avengers or Godzilla Critical reception sections. Posting a demographic breakdown here, in a political documentary film article, especially with the racial/"over 55"/"religious" components, wittingly or not comes off as an attempt to marginalize the movie's audience and threatens to open a Pandora's Box right when the article was finally approaching a stable consensus after months of turmoil. The pictures of CinemaScore ballots I've seen don't even ask about race, so it's not even certain the demographics mentioned in that article are CinemaScore stats. Regardless, this article is better off without such skewed, special demographic treatment. VictorD7 (talk) 19:26, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

In my experience, sometimes the demographic breakdown is provided with the CinemaScore, and sometimes it is not. I saw a search result somewhere that said sometimes the grade comes out first, then other details follow, so maybe some periodicals just report on the grade. I would support any film article, political documentary or otherwise, having a demographic breakdown. I'm not sure why you think the breakdown is marginalizing in effect. We are not marginalizing young men by saying they are the chief demographic to see the latest Transformers film, or young women for The Fault in Our Stars. Researching CinemaScore further, this says it has 33 demographic categories, so perhaps depending on the film, only the most relevant ones (like for Season of the Witch) are reported. Erik (talk | contrib) 19:43, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

And yet no other documentary article I've seen has a demographic breakdown. Surely you can understand why singling out a conservative political documentary article that's been the subject of extremely contentious editing for months over neutrality issues, and is finally quieting down, to become the first to have a demographic breakdown, much less one emphasizing stereotypes about age, race, and religion, is less than ideal. It would smack of biased, unfair treatment. I'm sure most political doc. audiences skew older and white, including Moore movies (maybe less religious). In fact most films period likely skew white, which is why the only racial mention I noticed in your search results was because a high non-white percentage was deemed noteworthy. A political documentary appealing to an older, whiter audience isn't noteworthy. If you're serious about adding such material to film articles though, there must be better places to start. VictorD7 (talk) 19:56, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

I expanded the passage concerning aggregate scores to show a more detailed breakdown. I was doing the same for audiences as detailed by a reliable source. Blockbuster films tend to have detailed articles which include such breakdowns (you should see WikiProject Film's comic book films task force), so I'm not surprised that articles about non-blockbuster films, getting less attention, lack this detail. This does not mean breakdowns are not out there. Son of God has a breakdown here, and Heaven is for Real has a breakdown here. I'll restore the gender/age passage since that is not controversial. I posted a notice at WT:FILM about this discussion. Erik (talk | contrib) 20:22, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

Now, with restoring the uncontroversial gender/age sentence, the CinemaScore passage is even less qualified to be under a section about how critics responded to the film. Let's please merge that back into the above section as the more pertinent location. Erik (talk | contrib) 20:25, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

The "over 55" segment is uncalled for (perhaps as evidenced by the use of "while"), and something I don't remember seeing in any other article, much less a political documentary article. That aside, even if we agreed to make this the first political documentary to have a demographic breakdown for some reason, there's no reason we couldn't put it in the Release section while leaving the opinion segment in the opinion section where it properly belongs, as a high percentage of the relatively few articles with demographic breakdowns do. Even those that do keep the demographic breakdown with the CinemaScore grade often place them both in the Critical reception section. VictorD7 (talk) 21:54, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

If we had pulled demographics from CinemaScore, yes, doing so would be inappropriate. but our source did the noticing and found it worth noting. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 22:03, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

So you agree we should include the CinemaScore age/gender breakdown passage? Nothing wrong with it, despite Victor's claim that it should not be part of an article about a political documentary? Erik (talk | contrib) 22:13, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

In general Misplaced Pages:Manual_of_Style/Film#Critical_response we dont care what the audience thinks about a film anyway, so my preference would be to remove all the CinemaScore reference from the page. However, if we are going to include information about it being liked, we should identify who is liking it when the source has noted it. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 22:32, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

Just because something appears in an article outside of Misplaced Pages doesn't mean we have to put it in this article. Do you really want to start blowing the page back up again? VictorD7 (talk) 22:17, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

When you say blowing the page back up, do you mean adding content or continuing with discussions? I do not see the problem with either. Erik (talk | contrib) 22:19, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

I mean a bunch of content from various perspectives being added, deleted, restored, deleted, and restored again, replications of the pages of arguments that have already taken place here and were just winding down, restoration of the recently deleted NPOV tags, and general chaos and disruption. This article is best treated as a basic, vanilla, neutral encyclopedia piece, rather than a propaganda forum for partisan cheap shots or skewed and unusual subject treatment like slapping the "old and white" label on the audience when no other political documentary or film of any kind gets that treatment as far as I can tell. If you want to expand things, there are sources and segments we can use to provide context by discussing how historically rare an A+ CinemaScore grade is, commenting on the obvious political dynamic at play in the reception (like most film critics being left wing), and producing tit for tat talking points on once present tangents that have now been deleted in entirety, among other things. Every Misplaced Pages article only contains a tiny fraction of the material sources have written about it. VictorD7 (talk) — Preceding undated comment added 18:34, November 4, 2014‎ (UTC)

It is completely possible to have a more full-fledged article about this film. It is basic and vanilla, but it is currently not neutral because there is nothing to be neutral about. Being neutral means explaining the sides, fairly and without bias. This involves structuring and attributing. We can improve the article further. Erik (talk | contrib) 04:35, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

If there is no policy forbidding it and it comes from a reliable source, it should be included. It is a political film and understanding demographics is an important part of understanding politics. It would be useful and objective information for this article. I would hardly consider its inclusion to be superfluous or to be "blowing up the article". -Xcuref1endx (talk) 23:36, 6 November 2014 (UTC)

Quoting TheWrap's passage about the CinemaScore grade and the demographics behind it as follows: "Audiences loved the film, giving it a rare 'A+' CinemaScore, and 92 percent gave it a 'definite recommend” in exit polls. Conservative icons like radio host Rush Limbaugh promoted the film prior to its opening, and 'America' connected with its core. The audience was split nearly evenly in terms of gender but skewed older, with 69 percent over the age of 55. They were mainly Caucasian (93 percent) and 82 percent of those polled described themselves as 'very or somewhat religious.'" I think it is relevant to mention the grade and its rarity, the "definite recommend", and the demographic breakdown. The last part makes better sense to include now that the "Marketing" section details a religious focus. Erik (talk | contrib) 14:27, 8 November 2014 (UTC)

I still see no reason for this to become the first political documentary to have its audience demographically broken down in a Misplaced Pages article, including by race and "over 55". VictorD7 (talk) 20:12, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

Were it just a run of the mill cinemascore-rated film, I would agree, but its rare A+ rating justifies the extra scrutiny. Gamaliel (talk) 15:56, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

Now it's "scrutiny"? Interesting word choice. Of course that doesn't logically follow. VictorD7 (talk) 18:39, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

References

• The Paranoid Style in Conservative Politics at U.S. News & World Report
• Dinesh D'Souza's 'America' Will Have Some Conservatives Yearning For Michael Moore's at Forbes

References to consider using. I am thinking about how we could cover different sub-topics under "Political commentary" in a way that folds debates into the narrative, such as what different commentators have to say about the treatment of Zinn. This may mean the same source would be repeated across sub-topics, depending on what they cover. Thanks, Erik (talk | contrib) 20:31, 7 November 2014 (UTC)

I don't oppose adding more political commentary, but for the record (in case anyone doesn't know), Nicole Hemmer is a professional conservative basher who thinks the notion of a liberal media was a myth invented by the right, and Tamny is a Libertarian with a perceived interest in relentlessly pushing a "a pox on both parties" theme, just so we're clear on where they're coming from politically. Both those columns are filled with straw man arguments and claims about the movie that simply aren't true, and they both dramatically understate what's going on at modern universities (Tamny in particular sounds totally out of touch), including how widespread Zinn's book is used as a textbook, not that D'Souza ever claimed Zinn was the only leftist historian, but rather one of the prominent ones meriting special focus. The movie isn't about praising Republicans, D'Souza explicitly rejects the "conspiracy theory" label in interviews, and nowhere does he say anything remotely approaching the "slavery wasn't that bad" characterization found in some liberal columns about the film (quite the opposite). If specifics from these pieces are added, as opposed to quotes describing the movie generally, then we'd probably need to add counterpoints on those topics from other sources, particularly if D'Souza is explicitly denying something (like the "conspiracy theory" angle). VictorD7 (talk) 21:03, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

The notion of a liberal media was in fact a myth invented by the right. --NE2 03:26, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

<INSERT>No, that's your opinion, and not a well founded one. VictorD7 (talk) 18:23, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

Watch out, he's going to argue about this with you for the next six months. Gamaliel (talk) 15:59, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

At this point you're just trolling. VictorD7 (talk) 18:23, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

I have no idea who Nicole Hemmer is, but US News and World Report is a reliable source by Wikpedia standards and I don't see why we should exclude it. Gamaliel (talk) 15:58, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

<INSERT>Since this was a reply to me, I'll point out that I didn't say we should exclude it or say anything about RS standards. VictorD7 (talk) 18:23, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

Yes, I listed that and Forbes as major publications. We need to be careful about involving our personal perspectives. We need to focus on commentary as it relates to the film. Any further, what we can do is provide the necessary links so readers can read about certain political topics in a wider scope. For example, we do not link to A People's History of the United States, though it is mentioned. There are a lot of good links in the "Synopsis" section, but they may be worth repeating in the "Political commentary" section in the context of independent scrutiny (in the sense of being apart from the filmmakers) from various political stances. Erik (talk | contrib) 16:18, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

I was clarifying those authors' political perspectives, which is relevant for us to do on a Talk Page. I believe you were the one who went so far as to suggest that we add labels like "conservative" and "liberal" to commentators in the article. I'm not sure going that far is necessary, though I wouldn't oppose it either. Explicitly stated or not, I do think editors should have a handle on commentators' ideologies.VictorD7 (talk) 18:32, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

Shapiro quote

Regarding this, I am fine with including it per WP:BIASED ("Common sources of bias include political... beliefs. While a source may be biased, it may be reliable in the specific context") and WP:SUBSTANTIATE ("Biased statements of opinion can be presented only with attribution"). Per WP:SUBSTANTIATE, we can state the nature of Breitbart.com (as well as the other politically slanted sources) when using them in this article. Erik (talk | contrib) 20:57, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

Commenting further, I've seen two instances where the Shapiro quote was removed via dubious rationale. One revert cited WP:QS & WP:SPS and the other cited WP:BLP. None of these guidelines applies. Breitbart is certainly not SPS, so that does not apply. It might be a WP:IDONTLIKEIT source, but it not being used for factual assertions so QS does not apply. Finally, Shapiro does not refer to any particular people so I cannot see how BLP would apply. (Consider an extension of the BLP argument – the film reviewer summary webpages actually refer to particular reviewers, but these sources don't violate BLP.) Whether editors like or dislike Breitbart should not impact editing decisions. The Shapiro comment is WP:NOTEWORTHY and proper for inclusion. – S. Rich (talk) 22:28, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

Really? I'm surprised you've chosen to cast aspersions on the motives of other editors here. We have a quote from an extremely poor source with a negative reputation in the required areas or reliablity and factchecking, written by a known fabulist (google "Friends of Hamas" for Shaprio's "reliability" regarding the individuals he opines about, I won't repeat his libel here) who is casting aspersions on the motives of individuals cited in the article. Any one of those things should make a conscientious editor think twice about including this material at all, much less edit war to include the material without consensus or discussion in violation of WP:BRD. Gamaliel (talk) 23:55, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

Srich, you should read SPS because it applies to both self published sources and questionable sources. So it does apply because Breitbart.com is a questionable by multiple metrics defined by WP:QS. Furthermore, nothing in WP:QS or WP:Aboutself limits the policies to statements of "fact". They apply to all claims made by questionable sources and that includes opinions. The very nature of the word "contentious" is something that isn't verifiable as fact, and is therefore arguable/argumentative. So his opinions are his argumentative viewpoints about critics who disliked the movie and are therefore not allowed by WP:QS. Furthermore, WP:QS specifically addresses how questionable sources are heavily reliant on personal opinions, meaning that the limits on QS applies to opinions as well. WP:Abouself specifically says "it does not involve claims about third parties". This is not restricted to facts but to all "claims" which includes opinions. Is Shapiro making claims about third parties? Yes. Therefore it's a violation of WP policy to include it.Scoobydunk (talk) 10:24, 6 December 2014 (UTC)

Off topic - For the record, Erik, the balancing material on the bio/legal issue is neither "SYNTH" nor "OR", as it consists of direct source quotation, any more than the background legal sentence in the old version of the previous paragraph was, which was sourced to an article that didn't mention the film, or than the current background legal clause/link is. It's irresponsible for this article to omit any mention of D'Souza's claim having serious support, which it does, if we're going to have some hack partisan blogger say it doesn't. If you're trying to make a distinction between Dershowitz and the WT commenting on the actual case while the HP bloggers are merely commenting on the film not supporting the claim, that's a fine, convoluted tightrope to walk considering the HP quotes used don't make that clear. If balancing material is banned here, at the very least it would be wise to add a clarifying paraphrase along the lines of "...embarrassing and without support" in the film. after the closing quote, lest readers be misled. VictorD7 (talk) 23:51, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

I have NOT cast aspersions on the motives of any editors. My commentary has been towards the rationale given. Gamaliel, given that you said (above) "We need a pretty compelling reason to employ a contemptible source like Breitbart...." I think IDONTLIKEIT applies, but I AGF as to your motives. As for edit warring, please note that two editors commented here on the edit and you did your reverts without discussion. – S. Rich (talk) 01:54, 6 December 2014 (UTC)

At Erik, WP:Biased strictly applies to reliable sources. "However, reliable sources are not required to be neutral, unbiased, or objective." It does not apply to questionable sources. Questionable and self published sources have their own stringent guidelines that have to be met. Those sources can be biased, but they can not include claims about third parties. So WP:biased does not override or bypass the guidelines in place regarding questionable source or SPS. WP:biased goes on to say "When dealing with a potentially biased source, editors should consider whether the source meets the normal requirements for reliable sources, such as editorial control and a reputation for fact-checking." This, again, proves that sources still have to meet WP requirements for being a reliable source. If the source is not reliable, then it can not be included under an argument of WP:biased.Scoobydunk (talk) 10:24, 6 December 2014 (UTC)

Try reading the RfC from not long ago - where the consensus was that Breitbart is absolutely RS for opinions cited as opinions here.

Consensus is yes/acceptable/reliable in response to the question. Samsara 06:50, 29 October 2014 (UTC)

Which rather seems to end the arguments ad nauseam. Once a WP:CONSENSUS is found, it takes a bit of chutzpah to reargue the exact same issue. (proposing to change a recent consensus can be disruptive.) Cheers. Collect (talk) 13:51, 6 December 2014 (UTC)

This dispute is not about the same question. SPECIFICO talk 15:16, 6 December 2014 (UTC)source for opinions expressed by its writers?

It is precisely the same question: Is Breitbart a Reliable Source for opinions cited as opinions? I would trust you concur that film reviews are, indeed, opinions. Cheers. Collect (talk) 15:34, 6 December 2014 (UTC)

The issues are a bit different than those brought up in the RFC. Mainly the RFC did not address BLP concerns. In the recent Shapiro edits and reverts the argument is made that because Shapiro is talking about unnamed critics, BLP should apply. But does Shapiro talk about any individual or about any individual's politics? Well, since we do not have individuals named, the most pertinent policy is at WP:BLPGROUP. But what is the "group" of persons we seek to protect? In this case it is those critics that Shapiro sees as liberals. But are they a "group" in the BLPGROUP sense? I don't think so – they have not identified themselves as the "Association of Film Critics who Don't Like America" Indeed, they don't even qualify as a Neighborhood Watch. They are simply an assortment of critics that Shapiro describes as liberal. And we do not know if they identify themselves as a group. Bottom line – the BLP argument is not applicable. If it were, then any critic who said "The filmmaker(s) has/have created a dud/masterpiece." would not be acceptable because of BLP concerns. – S. Rich (talk) 15:37, 6 December 2014 (UTC)

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