Misplaced Pages

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Janweh64 (talk | contribs) at 21:02, 8 February 2017 (→Use of memoir written by the subject of the article but published in a peer-reviewed journal). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Before posting, check the archives and list of perennial sources for prior discussions. Context is important: supply the source, the article it is used in, and the claim it supports.

Sections older than 5 days archived by lowercase sigmabot III.

Additional notes:

• WP:RSN
• WP:RS/N
• WP:V/N

• RFCs for deprecation, blacklisting, or other classification should not be opened unless the source is widely used and has been repeatedly discussed. Consensus is assessed based on the weight of policy-based arguments.
• While the consensus of several editors can generally be relied upon, answers are not policy.
• This page is not a forum for general discussions unrelated to the reliability of sources.

Colin Heaton's biography of Hans-Joachim Marseille

The source in question is Heaton, Colin; Lewis, Anne-Marie (2012). The Star of Africa: The Story of Hans Marseille, the Rogue Luftwaffe Ace. London, UK: Zenith Press. ISBN 978-0-7603-4393-7.

It is used several times for lengthy paragraphs in Hans-Joachim Marseille#Marseille and Nazism to make the case that Marseille was "openly anti-Nazi". I have argued at Talk:Hans-Joachim Marseille#Evidence for Marseille's "anti-Nazi" stand that these passages in Heaton's bio are almost exclusively based upon personal reminiscences by former comrades and Nazi persona like Karl Wolff, Artur Axmann, Hans Baur and Leni Riefenstahl, which are renowned for being talkative about the Nazi era and being apologetic at that. Their stories are not supported by other sources, but in fact appear to be very unlikely, if not impossible. Heaton's gives dates which contradict themselves and commits obvious errors. The stories he relates about Corporal Mathew Letulu , i.e. Mathew P. Letuku, contradict much better documented secondary literature. Apart from interviews, possibly conducted by himself, which is difficult to tell given the rudimentary nature of the footnotes, Heaton relies almost exclusively on two biographies, one by military pulp writer Franz Kurowski, the other a "tribute" by some Robert Tate. Based upon this evidence Heaton draws far reaching conclusions, namely that "Marseille was perhaps the most openly anti-Nazi warrior in the Third Reich." (p. 4) Given its focus upon oral evidence, collected somewhat 40 (?) years after the events, its poor editing and obvious errors, I consider that biography to be an unreliable source that should not be used excessively (and it is used for many more dubious claims) in a GA in the English Misplaced Pages, because it is misleading.--Assayer (talk) 20:14, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

I agree with you that this source is very weak for an article on a Nazi era figure. I wouldn't have a problem with it being mentioned as "some biographies say", i.e. carefully attributed. It seems to be overused at the moment. Itsmejudith (talk) 21:26, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

It seems to be usable only as evidence for what unreliable sources say, and I'd use it only when it is explicitly described as unreliable. Richard Keatinge (talk) 12:38, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

Nothing but opinions from an agenda-driven Misplaced Pages editor. Assayer wants Heaton off Misplaced Pages. He has failed to show Heaton unreliable. Those are the facts that matter.

I am also concerned with the comments from Itsmejudith. What do you know about the literature of aerial warfare in World War II? And how could you say that about a book you've never read?

I'd encourage people to have a look at the talk page of Hans-Joachim Marseille - where the complainant makes accusation and assertion with no evidence. Dapi89 (talk) 11:12, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

See WP:HISTRS. Popular books by non-historians are not reliable for the history of WW2. Itsmejudith (talk) 12:20, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

• You are miss quoting what is a guideline; see section: What is historical scholarship. The question as to the book for evaluation is whether it is considered WP:RS or not; I do not know this work and therefore cannot offer an opinion. Kierzek (talk) 18:46, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

Unfortunately, biographical works by academic historians on members of the Wehrmacht or SS below the rank of general can be numbered on the fingers of one hand, so WP:HISTRS is useless and we must fall back upon the traditional methods of evaluating a book and its author like use of primary sources, use of puffery or biased language, etc. All that requires actually reading the book more thoroughly than a Google snippet can allow. I've never read Heaton so I really don't know if I'd consider him RS or not. Personally, I'd be most interested to see what Wübbe has to say.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 14:19, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

He doesnt have a biography here, but from what I can google online he probably passes muster as a reliable source. Ex-military, ex-history professor, current historian and consultant for TV/Film on WW2. He is qualified in the area, has been published on the subject as well as earning a living from it for a significant time. If the only thing being held against him requires second-guessing him, thats not how WP:V works and is bordering on original research. Only in death does duty end (talk) 14:36, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

As to the argument that Heaton is "qualified in the area": According to Heaton's own CV on his own commercial website he holds a BA and two MA degrees in history, was consultant and adjunct professor to the online American Military University and guest historian for a single episode of a History channel programme. That's not very impressive. What is more, I looked for reviews of his works and could not find much. It seems, however, that Heaton regularly uses "oral testimony" from people involved. That is stressed by Stephen M. Miller in a recent review of Heaton's Four-War Boer for the Journal of African History (2016), commenting that the information of the interviews are not substantiated in the text or in the notes ("unfortunately") and Horst Boog, reviewing Heaton's Night Fighters (which is his MA thesis at Temple Univ.) for the Militärgeschichtliche Zeitschrift (2010). Boog also points to numerous errors, for example Heaton's estimate of 1.2 million civillian German bomb victims. (The highest estimate is actually 635,000 victims, recent research (Richard Overy) estimates 353,000 victims.) I might add that by now I am challenging the reliability of the book for a certain, controversial characterization of Jochen Marseille. Thus one does not need to read the whole book (which I did), because I refer to a couple of pages which are cited at length in the article, I point to the sources and how they are used and I point to the language.--Assayer (talk) 17:05, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

The above is a combination of original research which we dont do and actual genuine concerns. If multiple reliable sources have cast doubt on his credibility (critical reviews, peers countering his claims etc) then that does shed doubt on his useability in an article. Could you make a list of the sources critical of him/his book? Only in death does duty end (talk) 17:19, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

I've looked. Nothing. I did say earlier in this thread, this claim of unreliability is just an opinion of one editor. This type of personal attack on sources has been made across multiple threads and articles with the same old result. Heaton qualifies as reliable. Dapi89 (talk) 13:07, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

I'd like to add that you could find critical reviews about facets of any one of these academics work, even Overy and Miller. Using the differentials in casualty figures, which vary among all academics is a weak argument (never mind what the latest, supposedly new, research has to say, which doesn't automatically make it accurate anyway). And can you define victims? Anyone who suffered a gash from an air attack can be considered a victim. Such vague descriptions are unhelpful. Opinions are also unhelpful. Assayer is well aware of what is required here. Does this editor have reviews that are directly critical or not? Dapi89 (talk) 13:28, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

@Only in death: Could you please elaborate where you draw the line between OR and "genuine concerns"? Neither do I use unpublished sources nor do I come to a conclusion on my own. I simply hold what Heaton says against what other published sources say. Isn't that what User:Sturmvogel 66 asks for, if we don't have biographical works by academic historians at hand? How else could we evaluate the reliability of a publication, that is ignored by historiographical works? Please do also take into account how the material sourced to Heaton's biography is presented in the article, namely as factual accounts. Of course this is what Heaton does in his work: He weaves lengthy quotations of various anecdotes related to him through interviews into a coherent narrative. These anecdotes are not supported by third party sources and Heaton does not discuss their reliability. Thus many of the information can only be traced to oral testimony. Do we have to accept that as reliable, simply because Heaton does?

@Dapi89: Although I chose to ignore your continuous personal attacks I have to say that remarks like "Anyone who suffered a gash from an air attack can be considered a victim" are highly inappropriate. And the literature on aerial warfare in World War II is not that "vague".--Assayer (talk) 17:29, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

It's not an attack it is an observation on your behaviour. Those comments are entirely appropriate unless you feel the wounded don't count. I didn't say it was vague. I said you're vague. All this is hot air. You're trying to use discrepancies and differentials in accounts and figures, and unbelievably spelling differences (!!), to try and have an author discredited. OR is being kind. You're views are personal and tendentious. You're a polemist. End of story. Dapi89 (talk) 20:16, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

If Horst Boog, one of the most respected German authorities on aerial warfare during WW II, devotes a whole paragraph of his review to a list of errors, concluding that there were even more errors, then this does not add to an author's reliability as a source. I take notice that this biography is predominantly cosidered to be a "very weak" source, to say the least. One editor questioned the applicability of WP:HISTRS in cases such as this, while yet another considered the evaluation of certain claims against the background of other published sources as OR. The contradictions between these different approaches were not resolved. One editor rather commented on me than on the content, so that my evidence remains unchallenged. Maybe, as a piece of WP:FANCRUFT, the article in question is fittingly based upon anecdotes told by veterans and former Nazis. I find it troubling, however, that this is a GA by Misplaced Pages standards and short of FA status only because of the prose, not because of dubious content or unreliable sources.--Assayer (talk) 21:12, 12 January 2017 (UTC)

I've previously raised concerns about Heaton on the Talk page (Talk:Hans-Joachim Marseille#Unreliable sources tag) as a WP:QS source, due to problematic POV he exhibited in one of his articles. He has called an action of a German commander an "act of humanity". A "daring raid" or "skillful military ruse" would be okay, but "an act of humanity"? That is just bizarre. (See: Talk:2nd SS Panzer Division Das Reich#Heaton. Comment from another editor was: "Heaton removed as biased pov and non WP:RS").

A related question, does Heaton indeed cite Franz Kurowski in his work? If yes, how extensively? K.e.coffman (talk) 03:53, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

"the applicability of WP:HISTRS" Assayer, what applicability? The link leads to Misplaced Pages:Identifying reliable sources (history), which is an essay, neither policy, nor guideline. Per Misplaced Pages:Essays: "Essays have no official status, and do not speak for the Misplaced Pages community as they may be created without approval. Following the instructions or advice given in an essay is optional. There are currently about 2,000 essays on a wide range of Misplaced Pages related topics."

And this particular essay does not discount works of popular history: "Where scholarly works are unavailable, the highest quality commercial or popular works should be used." Dimadick (talk) 07:59, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

@Dimadick: I did not bring WP:HISTRS up, but User:Itsmejudith. I did find that comment more helpful than others, though, because it provided at least some kind of guidance. I did not argue, however, that "highest quality commercial or popular works" should never be used. In general the comments during this discussion were contradictory. But how would you determine the quality of sources?

@K.e.coffman: Heaton considers Kurowski's bio of Marseille to be "very good" (p. xiv). Given the number of Heaton's footnotes I would say about a third of them refer to Kurowski. I did not check every footnote, what and how much material he borrowed. Heaton's main source are his interviews. In chapter 4 "Learning the Ropes", for example, there are 21 references, six refer to Kurowski, the rest refer to interviews.--Assayer (talk) 19:59, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

@Dimadick: Does the editor consider Heaton to be high quality commercial / popular work? K.e.coffman (talk) 16:46, 18 January 2017 (UTC)

If you mean me, I am not particularly convinced of Heaton's quality. I just noted that the discussion was using an essay to ban popular history works. Dimadick (talk) 16:49, 18 January 2017 (UTC)

Thank you for the clarification. K.e.coffman (talk) 00:57, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

Assayer and K.e.coffman have used Misplaced Pages to attack sources about any German serviceman who served in World War II if it dares to complement their personal bravery or service record. Coffman has opposed the advancement of these articles, namely the Knight's Cross lists and has deleted hundreds of articles about these recipients. It should come as no surprise that their singular agenda here is to degrade and delete portions of the article that doesn't fit with their opinions. Assayer in particular has scoured the internet for anything he can find that is critical of Heaton. The tiny and weak tidbits of those academic(s) (just the one?) that are critical of small aspects of his work is nowhere near enough to decry Heaton. Virtually nothing else.

This attack on Heaton should be treated for what it is: OR and opinion by a pair of anonymous internet users. And they don't get to decide who is admitted to Misplaced Pages and who isn't. I'm glad at least one other editor can see that. Dapi89 (talk) 19:24, 18 January 2017 (UTC)

@Dapi89: "at least one other editor can see that" -- Which other editor is that? K.e.coffman (talk) 01:00, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

I found a review of Heaton's book on Marseille from Aviation History. Mar 2013, Vol. 23 Issue 4, p62-62. 1/2p.. It reads in part:

• "Writing the biography of a 22-year-old, most of whose life remains undocumented, isn't easy. The only way to turn it into a book is lots of photographs (Kurowski's method) or this husband-and-wife team's choice, spending way too many pages reciting the exact details of 158 aerial combats…which in turn requires suspension of disbelief on the part of readers. How, exactly, did the authors know which rudder Marseille kicked and what the airspeed read, whether he pulled full flaps or skidded to avoid a pursuer's rounds, just what Marseille saw through his windscreen and exactly when he saw it?"

K.e.coffman (talk) 06:01, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

Which editor do you think? Or do you ignore posts you don't like?

So? If K.e.Coffman knew anything about Marseille, he'd know that through interviews with his commanding officers, and pilots in his units, Heaton is able to understand how he approached air combat. Marseille shared his knowledge with all those around him. I've seen interviews with Korner and Neumann that explicitly discuss Marseille's unorthodox tactics, some of which are sourced in the article. Simple really. Dapi89 (talk) 10:55, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

Perhaps K.e.Coffman needs to remember (if he knew, which I doubt), that 109 of the 158 claims filed by Marseille are recorded which included many combat reports with short but vivid descriptions of how he engaged the enemy in successful combats. Dapi89 (talk) 11:00, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

Editor Dapi89 state that criticism of Heaton was "nothing but opinions from an agenda-driven Misplaced Pages editor". I have provided a 3rd party review of Heaton's work on Marseille, which points out that the work is close to being historical fiction in its depictions of the areal battles ("requires suspension of disbelief on the part of readers"). Is this review also wrong? K.e.coffman (talk) 20:52, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

That says what exactly!? I repeat; the reviewer and it's number one wikipedia fan don't seem to understand that actions, tactics and the subject's point of view are quite easy to record.

And even if this reviewer had something insightful and factually accurate to say, using it to attack and remove another source from Misplaced Pages shows the agenda driven nature of the attacking editor. It shows K.e.Coffman, you're not interested in researching the subject for its own sake, but scratching around for dirt you can throw at Heaton. It is absurd to contemplate labelling Heaton unreliable because he receives some form of criticism from someone who likely is not an authority on Marseille. Heaton is.

It should be obvious the reviewer, whoever they maybe, is too ignorant to be entertained. Dapi89 (talk) 23:26, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

@Dapi89: please see: WP:no personal attacks.

The review is of the work under discussion, it's by "Wilkinson, Stephan" from the Aviation History magazine. Unless the magazine is not reputable, I don't see how a 3rd party review can be dismissed on the grounds that (in the opinion of one editor) it's been shared by "agenda-driven" contributor to "scratch around for dirt throw at Heaton". K.e.coffman (talk) 23:49, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

It isn't an attack. It's an observation. Understand the difference. I've lost count of the number of editors that have said the same thing.

Once more, you are using a non-expert source to attack the credibility of biographer. That is OR and Tendentious. You can see why a score or more of editors regard you as agenda driven. You've spent the last few months doing this type of thing. Your efforts to destroy the article on German personnel won't be tolerated without exceptionally good reason. Dapi89 (talk) 07:32, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

Summary on Heaton

Summarising, as the discussion has been long and involved:

• this source is very weak for an article on a Nazi era figure via Itsmejudith
• It seems to be usable only as evidence for what unreliable sources say, and I'd use it only when it is explicitly described as unreliable via Richard Keatinge
• He doesnt have a biography here, but from what I can google online he probably passes muster as a reliable source. Ex-military, ex-history professor, current historian and consultant for TV/Film on WW2 via Only in death
• I've never read Heaton so I really don't know if I'd consider him RS or not via Sturmvogel 66
• I am not particularly convinced of Heaton's quality via Dimadick

K.e.coffman (talk) 02:36, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

How many times do you have to be told, that you don't get to decide whether a source is reliable. Neither does anybody else, unless they can provide good cause.

The personal opinions of Misplaced Pages editors are useless. Dapi89 (talk) 21:36, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

@Only in death: I was able to clarify that evaluation of sources is not original research; please see this discussion: Misplaced Pages talk:No original research#Evaluation of sources. K.e.coffman (talk) 23:42, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

You were not evaluating a source. You don't like it. You made a decision it had to go, then scoured the internet for anything that would support your pre-existing prejudices against sources that write about German military personnel and that don't label them Nazis or falsifiers of their own records. Using anonymous reviews, from non-experts to ban sources about which they offer only the very slightest of criticism is tendentious AND OR. Dapi89 (talk) 13:18, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

Please visit Misplaced Pages talk:No original research#Evaluation of sources and engage with the editors there. K.e.coffman (talk) 00:11, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

I don't need to. You're behaviour encompasses more than OR, also Tendentious and selective editing. Dapi89 (talk) 12:48, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

The above comment incorrectly identifies historian Horst Boog as a "non-expert". He was the pre-eminent expert on the Luftwaffe operations during World War II, having contributed to three volumes of the seminal series Germany and the Second World War.

General note: this is a noticeboard to discuss reliability of sources, not user behaviour. For the latter, please see Misplaced Pages:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents. K.e.coffman (talk) 03:55, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

• This discussion has been going on for more than a month now. It is fair to say that no consensus has developed that this source is unreliable. Let's close this discussion per WP:DROPTHESTICK. --Nug (talk) 09:52, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

• I do not see it this way.

• Three editors expressed concerns about the source (see above).
• The nom expressed concerns.
• I've not considered Heaton to be reliable since encountering content cited to him at SS Division Das Reich.
• One editor stated that Heaton is probably RS and expressed concerns over OR in evaluating the source, but have not come back to the discussion.
• One editor has expressed an opinion that Heaton is RS.

Thus, the rough consensus seems clear to me that Heaton is not a suitable source for the claims in the article. K.e.coffman (talk) 20:10, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

• Expressing a concern isn't the same as declaring it unreliable. You have misrepresented what the various editors have said in your summary. For example you quote Itsmejudith: this source is very weak for an article on a Nazi era figure but omit her next sentence: I wouldn't have a problem with it being ... carefully attributed. Only you have openly stated this source is unreliable, but two stated it is RS, well make that three since Itsmejudith thinks it okay if properly attributed, actually make that four as I think Heaton is a reliable source for his own opinion that "Marseille was perhaps the most openly anti-Nazi warrior in the Third Reich." --Nug (talk) 21:03, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

He's a reliable source for the decades-later reports of people with a strong point of view. This does not suggest that his interpretations are reliable for the sort of judgements that are being made about "anti-Nazi" attitudes in the early 1940s. He is on the margins of usability, and then only when appropriately framed and very carefully used. Richard Keatinge (talk) 14:29, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

I started this debate to get some additional input whether this particular source is reliable for the content it supports and I would like to thank you for the input. As a reminder: In the article in question Heaton's biography of Marseille is not simply used to present Heaton's opinion. Instead numerous anecdotes and stories related to Heaton through interviews and quoted by him at length are presented as facts.(Perma) It seems fair to summarize that Heaton is a reliable source for his own opinion and for the decades-later reports of people with a strong point of view. Thus the consensus of this debate is that these opinions and reports are to be carefully attributed.--Assayer (talk) 00:24, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

No I don't think that is a fair conclusion. While Heaton's opinion with respect to Marseille's anti-Nazi sentiment should be attributed, there is nothing to suggest that the numerous anecdotes and stories related to Heaton through interviews and quoted by him are unreliable. In fact a review of his book by the journal Military Review in the March-April 2015 edition states "A well-written, insightful, quality book, it entertains while it educates; it is highly recommended." --Nug (talk) 02:32, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

@Nug: Since you seem to offer dissent to my conclusion that opinions and "decades-later reports" were to be attributed, please clarify: Do you argue that the anecdotes and stories that can be found in Heaton's bio are to be accepted as fact and presented as such in a Misplaced Pages article? Because my argument is that anecdotes and "decades-later reports of people with a strong point of view" are in general biased and opinionated and thus should be dealt with according to WP:BIASED, i.e., with WP:INTEXT at the least, although in regard to the details I would point to WP:ONUS and WP:EXCEPTIONAL. That anecdotes by former Nazis and comrades are quoted at length by Colin Heaton may add color to the picture, but does not transform their anecdotes into truthful, objective, reliable, and accurate representations of historical truth. I have specified my concerns on the talk page of the article, so you might look for examples there.--Assayer (talk) 15:06, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Daily Mail RfC

The general themes of the support !votes centred on the Daily Mail’s reputation for poor fact checking, sensationalism, and flat-out fabrication. Examples were provided to back up these claims. The oppose !votes made three main arguments:

• The Daily Mail is actually reliable for some subjects. This appears to have been adequately addressed by the support !voters: if there are topics where it might be a reliable source, then better sources (without its disadvantages) should also exist and can be used instead.
• The Daily Mail may have been more reliable historically, and it could make sense to cite it as a primary source if it is the subject of discussion. These seem to be good points, but should come up very rarely. Editors are encouraged to discuss with each other and apply common sense in these cases.
• Singling out one source does not deal with the other poor sources that are currently permitted. This point is outside the scope of this RFC, which concerns only the Daily Mail. However, the discussion is closed without prejudice towards future discussions on such sources.

There are multiple thousands of existing citations to the Daily Mail. Volunteers are encouraged to review them, and remove/replace them as appropriate. Yunshui _水 12:59, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

• Countersigned. Primefac (talk) 13:05, 8 February 2017 (UTC)
• Countersigned. Sunrise (talk) 17:10, 8 February 2017 (UTC)
• Countersigned with an emphasis on point #2. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 17:42, 8 February 2017 (UTC)
• Countersigned. Tazerdadog (talk) 19:00, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

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.

Should we prohibit the use of The Daily Mail as a source? I envisage something just short of blacklisting, whereby its introduction to an article could be accepted only upon there being a demonstrable need to use it instead of other sources. --Hillbillyholiday 13:44, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

Survey

• Support prohibition Looking through the archives and talkpages across WP reveals a clear consensus not to use it at all. Many, many editors (and Jimmy Wales) have said over the years that the Mail is not a relaible source in any area. A list of reasons why would be enormous, it doesn't need reiterating, the paper is trash, pure and simple. There may be rare exceptions where a reference may be useful, perhaps when a Mail story is itself the subject – cases could be presented here for discussion. There is little chance anything of encyclopedic value would be lost from such a move, and everything to be gained, not least an end to continual Mail-related arguments. --Hillbillyholiday 13:44, 7 January 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose There is no justification for the blanket banning of a mass-circulation newspaper as a source. There will be cases where it is a suitable rs source. The problem with the "Mail-related arguments" mentioned, if the latest example here is typical, is just with editors not knowing what appropriate sources to use. Should the Daily Mail be used to support a claim related to astronomy? Well duh, obviously not! The proposer seems to have a longterm pov agenda here, in an earlier comment he actually compared the Daily Mail to Völkischer Beobachter and has been busy compiling . Tiptoethrutheminefield (talk) 14:16, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

  We obviously shouldn't use it for anything science related, it is de facto prohibited from BLPs and BLP-related articles, and politics would seem out of bounds given their continual lies and misrepresentation in this area. Even their photography can't be relied upon (sorry, Martin). In what scenario would the Mail be an irreplaceable source? They regularly publish sexualized photos of children. A coroner blamed them in the death of a transexual they had hounded. How on earth is dailymail.co.uk (current front-page headline: "Patrick Swayze was a 'flirt' and Ariana Grande hung out with 'snobby entitled rich girls': Former classmates of A-listers reveal what they were REALLY like at school - but who were the meanest?") a suitable source for an encyclopedia? --Hillbillyholiday 16:03, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

  Is anyone proposing to use those articles for Misplaced Pages citations and article content? Making over-the-top hypotheticals and comparisons and very dubious allegations are not convincing. 99.999% of the content on the Daily Mail that could be in some way be Misplaced Pages notable will also be source-able in more appropriate sources, so I do not see a problem that needs to be addressed in this way. The problem is editors not using appropriate sources. Tiptoethrutheminefield (talk) 21:33, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

• The Mail should be on the citation blacklist. There's no area of news where it is actually reliable. It can be relied on to accurately report celebrity gossip, but in that case the gossip itself is frequently false and the Mail doesn't check it. Their coverage of medical, science and political topics is a byword for deliberate inaccuracy. It is pretty close to a fake news source in some areas. Also: this: . Guy (Help!) 16:50, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

  That link is absolutely hilarious.  InsertCleverPhraseHere  21:56, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

  Hipsters with access to a guitar, freshly-bought artisan-brown T-shirts, an A3 color laser printer, and a slightly lighter brown blank wall make formidable satirists (or at least they seem to think they do). I suggest we derail their brown revolution by providing a suitable framed poster to stick on that blank wall. Something hipster ironic - like a reprinted wood-cut on rice-paper Bolshevik propaganda poster perhaps? Tiptoethrutheminefield (talk) 22:12, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

  Very funny link, Guy! DrChrissy 23:19, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

  Yes, a gem. Martinevans123 (talk) 23:33, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

  A Grammy worthy example of songwriting if I've ever seen one. MjolnirPants Tell me all about it. 06:32, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

  Maybe not a Grammy (it's weak musically) but certainly worthy of a Tubey. I say a 72-to-1 thumbs-up ratio with 2.2 million views constitutes a consensus. ―Mandruss ☎ 08:51, 18 January 2017 (UTC)

  Hilarious. And I notice that Tiptoethrutheminefield conspicuously says nothing about the actual content. --Calton | Talk 11:04, 18 January 2017 (UTC)

  There is nothing to say about the actual content because two smug hipsters with a guitar and freshly-bought artisan-brown T-shirts do not a RS make. Tiptoethrutheminefield (talk) 16:31, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

  Who said it was a reliable source? Also, that's only one hipster and some clever editing. And it's not smugness, but dry humor. MjolnirPants Tell me all about it. 16:07, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

• Support prohibition As others have said it is a byword for the worst kinds of yellow journalism, it is (in effect) a fake news organ. Just because a lot of people buy it (or even by it) does not mean it is a reliable source for anything other then it's own views.Slatersteven (talk) 16:54, 7 January 2017 (UTC)
• Only very limited circumstances. I've defended the use of the Mail in the past for uncontroversial stuff like sport news, but actually the paper has got much worse and I can't think of many circumstances when it would be the best source or even acceptable. Definitely never for international news or science. Itsmejudith (talk) 17:03, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

  Seems to me that if we restrict it's use to anything uncontroversial we are (in effect) prohibiting it anyway.Slatersteven (talk) 17:08, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

• Support prohibition It's just a mouthpiece for Paul Dacre & I remove it on sight. JRPG (talk) 17:49, 7 January 2017 (UTC)
• Support prohibition unless directly relevant to the article - Anything found in the Daily Mail which can't be found in a more reliable, trustworthy source probably shouldn't be in Misplaced Pages at all. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 19:59, 7 January 2017 (UTC)
• Support prohibition (within reason) if it can't be found anywhere else reliable, then it probably isn't reliable anyway.  InsertCleverPhraseHere  21:53, 7 January 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose I find the Mail to be just as ok as other large outlet news/trendycr@p places, and anyway there are bigger outlets (read: Wired, TTAC) to fry than Mail.L3X1 (talk) 22:13, 7 January 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose prohibition, but there are very few circumstances in which we should rely on tabloid journalism. Exceptions include when BLP subjects have a byline in one of those newspapers, so long as they're not disparaging third parties. I can't see a reason to single out the Daily Mail; there are others just as bad and worse. SarahSV 22:43, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

  I agree. We should put it on the reference revert list (so good-faith additions of refs are reverted and can be discussed individually) but not blacklist it, and we should strongly consider doing the same for other tabloids, especially the Express and the Sun. Guy (Help!) 23:26, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

  Yes, I'd support that. I've come across a few BLPs at FAC that rely on these tabloids, and the nominators get upset when asked to remove them, so a broader solution would help. It would also be good to add something more detailed to WP:BLPSOURCES. SarahSV 00:05, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

  @JzG: where is this reference revert list, please? DrChrissy 23:50, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

• e/c Comment I am totally fed up with seeing this subject come up. Many, many readers are not aware of the disdain with which the Mail is viewed by some editors and then when they try to use it as a source, they are treated as if they are stupid or deliberately trying to get around PAG's. I know this from personal experience when in the distant past I tried to use the Daily Mail as a source - a sharp learning curve ensued. I agree with comments that if it is not in other newspapers, then it should probably not be in Misplaced Pages at all. However, I also agree with SlimVirgin above that there are others just as bad, and worse. This means we need to be looking at a number of papers. On occasions, I have been editing and used a website source. However, when trying to save the article, Misplaced Pages automatically rejects it because it has been blacklisted. Can we not set up a similar system for those newspapers we consider to be unreliable sources? DrChrissy 23:30, 7 January 2017 (UTC)
• Follow up: For those who wish to stop short of blacklisting, maybe we could flash up a warning message that the source is widely considered to be unreliable and the saving editor should reconsider its inclusion and use other sources instead. DrChrissy 23:35, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

  The fact that there may be others as bad does not justify using the Mail. And my proposal, with which I think SV agrees, is to use the citation revert list, as we do for predatory journals. Guy (Help!) 01:06, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

  I think DrChrissy has a good idea. A warning message whenever anyone puts 'dailymail.co.uk' or 'The Daily Mail' between a pair of <ref> tags would be a great idea. I get uneasy about fully blacklisting any source (it's the sort of thing that adds fuel to the fire of every editor who whines about WP being censored), and would rather see a more educational than legalistic approach taken.

  I also agree that there are many other sources just as bad, and possibly even worse. I think getting something going that would create a list of these sources and generate a message when folks try to use them is the way to go. Hell, I'm a coder myself, and I'd be happy to work on it. I don't think it's a big project, but I'm not sure where to get started with something like this, beyond maybe taking it to the village pump or the main page talk to get enough editors behind it to impress the WMF or the en.wp staff. MjolnirPants Tell me all about it. 06:40, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

  An edit filter could do that. Guy (Help!) 17:47, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

  It honestly never occurred to me that we have edit filters. Sometimes I like to eat glue. Ooh! SHINY!!! <wanders off> MjolnirPants Tell me all about it. 23:41, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

• Support prohibition I thought it was considered unreliable before I saw this RfC. The worst kind of tabloid spam journalism. Laurdecl 10:56, 8 January 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose Editors are supposed to always use judgment when choosing sources. Usually the broadsheets are better than the tabloids but there are circumstances when tabloids provide better coverage such as sports and crime. And if we exclude the Mail, there are a lot of other publications of lower quality that would still be considered reliable. TFD (talk) 12:18, 8 January 2017 (UTC)
• Kill it. Kill it with fire. Under NO circumstances should the Daily Mail be used for anything, ever. They have proven themselves to be willing to make up fake quotes and to create doctored pictures, and nothing they say or do is to be trusted. Even in the cases that some of the editors in this discussion believe to be OK (sports scores, for example), if it really happened then the Daily Mail won't be the only source and if the Daily Mail is the only source, it probably didn't happen. Relevant links: --Guy Macon (talk) 20:19, 8 January 2017 (UTC)
• Support with reasonable exceptions It should never ever be used for any support for factual content, but there are cases where the DM itself is part of the story, so referencing relevant articles by the DM that are a part of that story is reasonable. And there may be appropriate editorial content where we would attribute those opinions to the author that can be included. Outright blacklisting is probably not appropriate but its use absolutely must be kept away from any type of factual claims. --MASEM (t) 20:53, 8 January 2017 (UTC)
• Support prohibition with the usual reasonable exceptions as outlined or mentioned by Masem, NorthBySouthBaranof (these would be rare: i.e., IAR exceptions). Neutrality 23:14, 8 January 2017 (UTC)
• Support prohibition though noting that common sense also applies.Volunteer Marek (talk) 23:15, 8 January 2017 (UTC)
• Comment By coincidence, I have just noted a recent edit to the Cheetah article used the Daily Mail as a source for the maximum speed of cheetahs. I tagged this with "Better source needed" and an editor replaced this with the scientific sources. However, the problem here is that we have gone from a secondary source to a primary source. Many editors object to this, but new or inexperienced editors will see this as good editing until they understand this secondary source is considered non-RS. I am not for one second suggesting the Daily Mail should be allowed for this, but this is a matter of educating editors or simply prohibiting those sources considered non-RS. DrChrissy 23:30, 8 January 2017 (UTC)
• support this RfC is kind of beating a dead horse as the community has rejected this source pretty much every time it comes here. so much time has been wasted explaining people not to use this. It has no place in WP where our mission it to summarize accepted knowledge. so yes kill it with fire Jytdog (talk) 02:54, 9 January 2017 (UTC)
• Support with reasonable exceptions per Masem. For news items if it isn't covered in a broadsheet newspaper then it probably isn't significant anyway, but for references to specific opinions or perspectives it may be useful. ----Snowded 03:10, 9 January 2017 (UTC)
• support It is unnecessary to allow for the unlikely scenario that the Daily Mail would both a trustworthy and the only available source. That other tabloids exist that are just as bad doesn't mean we should keep the Daily Mail: It means we should blacklist those too. Mduvekot (talk) 04:25, 9 January 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose. Bashing the Mail is fun, and it doesn't look as if anyone disagrees much that it is best avoided, but that there will possibly be rare occasions when it will be a good source, given the context (eg, as noted, something about the paper itself). But that's the point: identifying appropriate sources is all about context, and there are plenty of rubbish websites out there that should rarely or never be used, and plenty of occasions when even broadsheet reporting isn't worth much for an encyclopedia. And even if we accept the idea of effectively banning certain sources – which is fraught with problems itself – this is being done back to front by singling out one newspaper for blacklisting, rather than establishing the principle of a blacklist and then working out what to include in it. I don't see how existing general principles don't broadly deal with the problem – and are there really endless cases of people insisting on using it, such that we need this draconian intervention, aimed at this one paper? N-HH talk/edits 11:34, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

  Unfortunately existing general principles don't deal with the problem. Questioning the use of DM regularly comes up; people argue it's not a tabloid, or refer to its status as the biggest online news service, etc. I can't tell you how much bullshit I've had to remove from articles, especially after searching for dailymail.co.uk incategory:"Living people", John, who has done sterling work in this area, could elaborate. Ideally, yes, each edit should be examined in context, and banning a source outright is something of a blunt instrument -- but in this case I think the benefits of something like an edit-filter will heavily outweigh the negatives, there are simply too many articles to keep an eye on (~800,000 BLPs!). I would support a filter for other unreliable sources too, and I agree that it is a somewhat back-to-front process, but I really think the DM is a special case. --Hillbillyholiday 21:56, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

  What are you suggesting when you talk about an edit filter. Does this prevent the entire edit, or does it just filter out the source? By the way, if this goes ahead (and I think it should) there are plenty of other sources that should be considered - the Daily Mail is just a precedent. DrChrissy 22:39, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

  I don't really know which options are available or appropriate, I guess a separate discussion regarding this will be necessary pending the outcome of the RfC. --Hillbillyholiday 23:04, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

• Comment. The DM does occasionally get exclusive interviews with well-known people and gives direct quotes of what they say. It's hard to believe these stories and quotes would ever be fabricated or published without the express permission of the person concerned. So a full-on ban would deny this material. Just sayin' Martinevans123 (talk) 23:21, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

  That would be a natural assumption, but this is yet another area in which their standards are pretty low, eg. "Daily Mail Accused of Fake Interview by Paul Pogba, French Soccer Player, May Sue" and "The Inquisitr, Daily Mail Admit Roger Moore Quotes Fake" or "Andrea Pirlo slams Daily Mail on Instagram for making up interview trolling Man United" --Hillbillyholiday 01:05, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

  Oh dear. That hardly inspires confidence. Maybe a price worth paying then. Martinevans123 (talk) 17:15, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

  Another example, from Daily Mail censured for fictional story about Amanda Knox verdict in The Guardian:

  "The Mail's website reported that Knox has lost her appeal against her conviction for murdering Meredith Kercher when, in fact, she had been successful. These included quotes attributed to the prosecutors apparently reacting to the guilty verdict, and the description of the reaction in the courtroom to the news, stating that Knox 'sank into her chair sobbing uncontrollably while her family and friends hugged each other in tears'. It further stated that the family of Meredith Kercher 'remained expressionless, staring straight ahead, glancing over just once at the distraught Knox family'. The newspaper apologised for the mistake. It said that it was standard practice in such high-profile cases for two alternative stories (plus supporting quotes) to be prepared in advance"

  So we now know that it is standard practice for The Daily Mail to fabricate direct quotes. Add that to the many examples of photoshopped images and the conclusion is inescapable; we cannot trust anything written in The Daily Mail. --Guy Macon (talk)

• Support more or less as per the terms in the opening statement, that it still (very occasionally) be allowed when there is some sort of need for that content. I have no clear idea what that might be, other than maybe a few useful celebrity interview exclusive comments, or matters regarding lawsuits, or something like that. John Carter (talk) 23:43, 9 January 2017 (UTC)
• Request There has been talk here of a "blacklist" and a "reference revert list". Please could someone direct me to this/these. DrChrissy 23:45, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

  There is no such thing, another indication of flaws inherent in this RfC. I think "support" opinions for an non-existent thing can safely be dismissed - they are not based on Misplaced Pages guidelines but on personal animosity towards the source. Tiptoethrutheminefield (talk) 16:35, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

  I don't know about a "reference revert list," but Misplaced Pages:Spam blacklist is I think the blacklist being referred to. John Carter (talk) 23:47, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

  Thanks very much for this John. It appears that this blacklist only applies to URLs. I may be getting ahead of the subject here but I suspect what is needed is an easily accessible page which lists newspapers (perhaps also magazines) where consensus has been reached that they are generally considered unreliable and consensus should be sought (on here perhaps) if they are to be used. Perhaps this could be called Grey-listed popular press sources? DrChrissy 00:10, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

  We have one for video games. --Izno (talk) 00:30, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

  Thanks very much for this. It is interesting to note that in the table of Unreliable Sources toward the bottom - one of the sources is Misplaced Pages itself! DrChrissy 01:09, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

  I know that Misplaced Pages is an unreliable source because I looked it up on Misplaced Pages. :) --Guy Macon (talk) 03:21, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

  There's also a (less detailed) list at Misplaced Pages:List of companies engaged in the self-publishing business, many of which give no indication in their books that said book has been self-published. On academic subjects, we also refer to Beall's list. The Daily Mail, would belong, if anywhere, in a totally new kind of list. It actually wouldn't be a bad idea to make a well-annotated list like for videogames, and list the various publishers that have come up here with a note to their consensus outcome and links to every discussion. Someguy1221 (talk) 03:29, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

  We don't even have a list that says The Onion isn't a reliable source. That being said, if you look at the recent "fake news" meme you will find that it has been used to label things that are not actually fake news (a fake news site is one that knowingly spreads fabricated content), but rather unpopular editorial content combined with low quality sourcing. See the RfC at Talk:List of fake news websites#Request for Comment - Removal of Infowars from this list also see this: We need to strictly limit any such list to avoid it being used as a club to suppress unpopular opinions. --Guy Macon (talk) 11:50, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

  Infowars is identified by reliable independent sources as a fake news site, based on its tendency to publish things with absolutely no care as to whether they are objectively true or not. It's not our job to second-guess the sources which call it fake news, see WP:NOR. Guy (Help!) 12:18, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

  '"You have yet to produce any quality sources, let alone a majority of reliable sources, which actually state that InfoWars intentionally publishes hoax stories. WP:SYNTH expressly forbids drawing conclusions based on an editor's own personal conclusions not actually stated by the sources." -- posted by User:A Quest For Knowledge on 12:28, 18 December 2016 (UTC) on Talk:List of fake news websites.

  CNN is also identified as fake news sources by a reliable independent source Seriously, please read this editorial and give careful consideration to the possibility that the "fake news" label is being used to try to silence opposing views. --Guy Macon (talk) 01:16, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

  Come on, did you even read those first three sources? The first one doesn't go anywhere near an accusation that CNN is fake news. The second one only accuses CNN of "stooping to the same level as fake news sites" on one specific story, and the third is merely reporting that Trump has accused CNN of being fake news. Anyway, as for InfoWars, there are grades of fake news. There are obviously the purest of fake news sites that publish deliberately false stories for either clicks, luls, or godknowswhat. Then you have things like InfoWars and NaturalNews, which no one can prove are deliberately dishonest, but whose writers are utterly paranoid and have no bullshit filters. Plenty of reliable sources will refer to them as "fake news" all the same, just as publishing false and defamatory statements with malicious disregard for the truth is legally considered the same as intentionally lying, at least in the US. We should clarify these things where possible, but you know as well as everyone else here that "fakenews" on Misplaced Pages is what reliable sources say is "fakenews". Someguy1221 (talk) 01:53, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

• Support Because the current position is that its not reliable for much (except itself) and for those things it could be used for, better sources are available, and if the only source is the daily mail, its not worth covering. An easy-to-direct discussion where we can point people who ask 'Should I use the Daily Mail' with the answer 'no' would make everything a lot simpler. Only in death does duty end (talk) 13:17, 10 January 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose - there are some things for which it's useful, despite all that's been said above. Occsaionally it accurately rakes muck that nobody else has turned over. If the proposer could be a little clearer about how we might demonstrate need to use it in those rare cases where the DM can be considered reliable, I might well change my mind. Richard Keatinge (talk) 17:10, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

  Editors attempting to add DM as a ref (and any others deemed suitable for a "greylist") could be directed here, or if that runs the risk of swamping the RSN, a new board. Alternatively, any such edits could be flagged in a similar way to pending changes, needing the nod from a reviewer (if that's possible?) I'm afraid I don't know how the edit filters work, so am not sure exactly what options are available/feasible. --Hillbillyholiday 17:31, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose Noting that this has been discussed a few dozen times now. Neither the DM nor any other news source is absolutely reliable on articles concerning celebrities. IMO, Misplaced Pages would be best off declining to republish "celebrity gossip" in the first place. More to the point, the DM has not been shown to be unreliable in other matters, although its headlines may misstate the content of articles, this is also true of every single newspaper known to man. I suggest, in fact, that "headlines" not be allowed as a source for what an article states, and only be allowed to illustrate what the headline stated and cited as such. Collect (talk) 14:27, 11 January 2017 (UTC)

  Agree about headlines, but the DM has been shown to be unreliable in other matters many, many times, far more than other publications. Remember the Amanda Knox guilty verdict? --Hillbillyholiday 16:29, 11 January 2017 (UTC)

  Re: The oft-repeated claim that the DM is specifically evil, read for information about all major media and their use of press releases. In fact, moreover, other than in the area of celebrity gossip (where no paper should be trusted in the first place), the DM's record is akin to the record of The Guardian and other broadsheets. Collect (talk) 20:23, 11 January 2017 (UTC)

  Sorry but that's utter bollocks.

  Press Complaints Commission records over a ten-year period: Successful complaints against Fleet Street publications: average = 43, Daily Mail = 153. Let us not forget that Paul Dacre was a member of the "toothless" PCC for a decade, and that they rejected over 90% of cases without investigation. Nick Davies (2011). Flat Earth News.

  Independent Press Standards Organisation from 2014 to 2015: Mail 11 breaches, Guardian 0 breaches; reparations by Mail 34 times, Guardian 0 times. --Hillbillyholiday 04:23, 12 January 2017 (UTC)

  IPSO 2016: Daily Mail was the worst publication, with a total of 17 sanctions for inaccuracy. The Sun followed with 14, the Daily Express with 12. The Independent and Guardian had none. --Hillbillyholiday 09:57, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

  Sweet. But I guess most readers of The Sun don't know how to complain. Or, if they did, just think it's 100% true. Martinevans123 (talk) 10:07, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

  Not so sweet. --Hillbillyholiday 10:41, 14 January 2017 (UTC) "the 2014 World Cup will always be remembered as the Milkybar penis"

  I think Robin Jacobs, 31, should upload the image for the pareidolia article. Martinevans123 (talk) 10:47, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

  IPSO does not regulate the Independent or the Guardian. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 17:00, 18 January 2017 (UTC)

• Or treat it like any other fake news site, how do we deal with those normally?17:35, 10 January 2017 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Slatersteven (talk • contribs)

  as an example.Slatersteven (talk) 16:33, 11 January 2017 (UTC)

• Support. The problem isn't that it is wrong or even that they might have a rogue journalist from time to time (even the NY Times have been caught out this way), the problem is that their editorial decisions seemingly contribute to the deception. They had the Amanda Knox story ready to go with fake quotes and reactions, and there was also the time that George Clooney took them to task over fake quotes. It simply can't be trusted. Betty Logan (talk) 05:10, 12 January 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose. Context matters, and that's up to the editors covering the particular issue. Whether it's a "well-established news outlet" matters, and it is. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 22:09, 12 January 2017 (UTC)
• Sort of support. As I've said previously, the problem with Daily Mail appears to be their habit of taking ludicrous sources at face value, often publishing entire articles based on a single anonymous tweet or blog post. They appear to be not as willfully gullible as say, the National Enquirer, but it doesn't come close to what we normally consider reliable. However, it's probably the case that much of their content is factually accurate, especially on non-controversial subjects. I suspect this is a case of, "what is good is not unique; what is unique is not good." Basically, if something is covered in the Daily Mail and is true, we can probably find a better source for it. If something is only covered by the Daily Mail, it's probably not true. So I would support a more complicated prohibition, that the Daily Mail should not be a source for anything controversial, and where it is a source for anything else, it should be replaced as soon as possible by a better source. Someguy1221 (talk) 01:58, 13 January 2017 (UTC)
• Support. The time has come. It is already rightly unacceptable for BLPs. Lousy record for making things up, in some well-attested cases to the detriment of living people. In a world where fake news is a thing, we should avoid knowingly using material sourced from its proven purveyors. Opposers have highlighted that most of it is true, but that which is true and genuinely noteworthy will have been covered by better sources. Something only covered in the DM, which it is vital for us to cover on Misplaced Pages; other than its comments about itself I have not seen an example given and could not imagine such an example. I challenge opposers to come up with one. --John (talk) 00:27, 15 January 2017 (UTC)
• Support prohibition There should always be a better source for anything than the Daily Mail. Nick-D (talk) 01:11, 15 January 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose. The reliability of a Daily Mail should be judged on a case-by-case basis. Most material is uncontroversial and mistakes occur no more often than in other publications. A user should not have to hunt around for the same fact to be found in a different source because the Daily Mail is disliked by certain editors. ¡Bozzio! 05:37, 15 January 2017 (UTC)
  • User:Bozzio, do you have evidence that mistakes occur no more often than in other publications? It doesn't match my information or the figures cited by Hillbillyholiday. --John (talk) 14:23, 15 January 2017 (UTC)
• Support prohibition -- if a particular sources of content can only be cited to DM than it's not worth including in an encyclopedia anyway. If it were important, it would be covered by better sources. K.e.coffman (talk) 05:40, 15 January 2017 (UTC)
• Support without hesitation. This is long overdue given how notorious Daily Mail is for inaccuracies, and I would also have no reservations on blacklisting it, especially after seeing flat out absurd claims like "using Facebook could raise your risk of cancer". Snuggums (talk / edits) 15:05, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

  Yes, but is anyone suggesting using that piece? Everyone supporting the proposal is telling us what most of us already know: the Mail is generally not going to be a good source, either because it reports on things that would not be of interest to an encyclopedia in the first place or because much of what it reports is dubious, possibly to a greater degree than other papers. The actual question is whether a blanket ban on the Mail – and the Mail alone, as currently mooted – is needed to solve that problem, and whether it sets a dangerous precedent for people to push for "bans" on news sources they don't like for other reasons. Yes it's currently used quite a bit on WP, but I'm not aware of a widespread problem of people insisting on using it when it's removed or challenged. And, for example, are people suggesting it be banned from this page? N-HH talk/edits 15:18, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

  The Daily Mail should be banned from that page most of all. There are plenty of reliable secondary sources that describe the actions of TDM in that case, and we should use those sources rather than trusting what the known liars at TDM say happened. Again I say, kill it. Kill it with fire. --Guy Macon (talk) 18:27, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

  What, the Guardian editorial that commends the Mail's "bold journalism" (yes, in that instance)? Of course secondary sources on the Mail's role would be useful too, but my point was that a total ban would disallow even sourcing the Mail headline/front page directly to the Mail. It's a bit surreal to suggest that a Mail story is not good evidence for what that story said, or that the Mail would not accurately report what its own editor said about its actions in that case. And anyway that isn't the only such case, nor was that brief rhetorical question my main point, which was a broader one about efficacy, process and practical effect, which you haven't addressed at all. And I'm not sure constantly repeating "kill it with fire" helps rational debate. N-HH talk/edits 18:51, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

  We have many, many sources that are banned, and all of them are by nature of being banned banned from being sources for their own headlines. Your argument can be used to argue against banning any source, no matter how bad. There will always be some contrived situation where it would be convenient to use the banned source Just This Once, but that doesn't stop us from banning sources. Nor do we want to allow individual editors to decide whether maybe this time The Daily Mail isn't lying. You want us to allow a source that has been shown to fabricate direct quotes and photos, and your arguments can be used to argue against banning any source. I stand by my "kill it with fire" comment. Misplaced Pages editors are grown-ups and do not need to be protected from a colorful turn of phrase. --Guy Macon (talk) 19:51, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

  I'm not aware of any sources which are specifically, by name, "banned" currently or any list detailing them. And I do think individual editors can make judgments in context, not about whether a newspaper is lying in any individual instance (although obvious errors can be demonstrated by reference to other sources), but about whether certain sources might sometimes be appropriate for the material in question. Indeed, that's the basis of current policy, which is again part of my point: what is being attempted here is a rewrite of that policy, but relying on people's – entirely legitimate – concerns about one paper, which is far from the worst one out there (National Enquirer? Daily Express?) to spearhead it. It's all back to front. And as I suggested, yes, let's have grown-up discourse. N-HH talk/edits 09:38, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose prohibition The paper carried useful material at the time of World War I (though even then considerable caution is required) and it would be very sad to lose pictures such in St Paul's Survives which require attribution. Maybe something about requiring need would work but I'd want to see the wording to decide. Don't we effectively require need for challenged material anyway? With historical newspapers very different considerations are needed always. Thincat (talk) 20:33, 15 January 2017 (UTC)
  • That's a very important point, Thincat, and one so far wholly overlooked here, I think. Would it be feasible, or even possible, to provide some kind of year-based restriction/ regulation? Martinevans123 (talk) 20:50, 15 January 2017 (UTC)
  • That "heavily retouched" photo wouldn't necessarily be affected as the DM is part of the story there. There will always be exceptional cases when using the DM is necessary/desirable -- editors can demonstrate need here, and as long as their edits gain approval by consensus in the usual way, there's no problem; I really don't think it will come up too often. An edit-filter would, I assume, look for any new additions to WP which contain dailymail.com and thus pick up the more recent "stories". These are a real problem, and given the immense online presence of the DM, something that regularly comes up. A default position of the DM is barred as an unreliable source with the onus on the editor to justify its use would prevent a great deal of misinformation/lies/inaccuracies from creeping in, and would benefit those editors who currently have to make the same old arguments on talkpages across the project. --Hillbillyholiday 22:34, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

  • Yes, it would save, or at least reduce, a lot of repetitive removal. Martinevans123 (talk) 23:09, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

  • Be very careful: few newspapers of combatant countries are solid in wartime. For the DM in WWI, consider the effect and circumstances of William Beach Thomas. - Sitush (talk) 15:23, 17 January 2017 (UTC)
    • Be very careful also: The photo was taken in December 1940 which was actually part of World War II (1939-45) not World War I (1914-18). Martin of Sheffield (talk) 16:02, 24 January 2017 (UTC)
• Support prohibition per JzG. The Daily Mail is demonstrably unreliable in comparison to other publications. Obviously there are exceptions, as Thincat demonstrates, but the presumption should be that DM isn't a reliable source. An edit filter would be a good solution. Mackensen (talk) 00:17, 16 January 2017 (UTC)
• Comment There is an elephant in the room here. Despite comments by some editors, it appears there is currently no blacklist, greylist or edit filter that would prevent an editor using the DM or warning them about its use. I have no doubt whatsoever that if this precedent is set, editors will be suggesting other newspapers (nobody has mentioned the Daily Star yet!). How will these be decided? An RFC for each newspaper suggested? I have tried in the past to fathom how editors reach their decisions on deciding whether a newspaper is RS or not, but all I have been met with is "It depends on the case". I am not opposing the formation of grey/blacklist/edit filter, rather the opposite: I believe editors should be made aware immediately that consensus is that a source should not be used. Currently, this is opaque and has led to massive time sinks and a certain degree of animosity from some editors. DrChrissy 00:40, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

  @DrChrissy: The blacklist is at MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist and adding a new entry there is trivial. Creating an edit filter to look for the addition of Daily Mail references also wouldn't be difficult. Sam Walton (talk) 08:55, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

  Thanks very much for this Sam, but this spam-list appears to only restrict URLs. As far as I know, there is no blacklist of physical newspapers, so, I could cite using the {{cite news }} template "The Daily Mail" but receive no feedback on this except from vigilant editors. DrChrissy 21:21, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

• Strong Oppose Daily Mail gives coverage to many international news outside Europe and America. Daily Mail is not a good source in content dispute. But Daily Mail is good to prove notability of a subject. Daily Mail covers news stories which are not getting coverage in other English Media. We can use Daily Mail to establish notability of a politician, celebrity from Eastern Europe, Asia. Sometimes Daily Mail gives coverage to very ordinary things, but due to this they give coverage to many important Asian news, North African news and East-European news (where English is not official language). Marvellous Spider-Man 03:03, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

  "Daily Mail is not a good source in content dispute" is just another way of saying "not a good source for content on Misplaced Pages", which is the whole point of this RfC. Sure, you can use it demonstrate notability, but that's usually only necessary at AfD. --Hillbillyholiday 03:10, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

  Daily Mail can be used for articles outside USA and UK as these two countries has many reliable sources in English. The RFC doesn't say that we can use it for Romanian/Algerian/Latvian/Ukrainian/Turkish/Russian/Chinese/Japanese/Brazilian articles. Marvellous Spider-Man 03:38, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

  If you are talking about the English Misplaced Pages, yes it does. The phrase "should we prohibit the use of The Daily Mail as a source?" is quite clear. If this RfC passes, The Daily Mail will not be allowed as a source on Russian or Japanese articles on the English Misplaced Pages. If you are talking about the Russian or Japanese Wikipedias, no decision made on the English Misplaced Pages is binding on those other Wikipedias. --Guy Macon (talk) 03:55, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

  Then, I oppose this RFC, as per my first statement. Daily Mail is very inclusive and has no WP:GEOBIAS. Marvellous Spider-Man 05:07, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

• Strong Oppose. The Daily Mail, as hated as it is, is a very mixed bag. It can contain wonderful information such as accurate and informative interviews of highly respected people like Lord Puttnam (yes, I've seen that; can find the link if you need it), informative and detailed film and television articles, detailed information on various openings, galas, and so on. Many of these items are exclusives, so we can't blacklist the publication. It also has an excellent (theatre, film, etc.) review team. We just have to keep in mind that it often stoops to tabloid scandal-mongering (and ridiculous political opinions). I think any intelligent editor can tell the difference. So with this publication it has to always be on a case-by-case basis. It's a middle-market newspaper, so we cannot avoid it or blacklist it. I'd say it's not to be used as a source for politics, science, medicine. But as a source for entertainment updates it is often helpful and often contains accurate information that is not available anywhere else. If it is contradicted by a more reliable source, it should not be used. Nothing negative, contentious, or potentially libelous or in any way scandalous should be sourced to the DM (unless it is a direct quote from an interview). Softlavender (talk) 06:26, 16 January 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose and educate Strong support not to use it for BLPs, but I see no issue on using it to report on "news". However, any editor who uses it as a source should be reminded that better sources can be found and those should be used instead (should, not must). I challenge anyone to find a notable news story in the DM that isn't covered in better sources elsewhere. Lugnuts 08:20, 16 January 2017 (UTC)
• Strong oppose The DM falls on a spectrum of news quality and it is far from the worst; singling it out for prohibition is not the solution here. It is hard not to suspect that it is being singled out because it combines a strong right-wing bias with a very large circulation. I see several editors above citing statistics regarding complaints and corrections as though this was a reason for prohibiting its use; but WP:NEWSORG gives the very fact that a complaints process exists and corrections are published as a reason to consider the source reliable. It should certainly be considered WP:BIASED, but then so should every news organisation that takes an editorial stance. This is already policy. Outright banning established, regulated, large-circulation newspapers from use on enwiki would be a terrible precedent to set, especially for having "ridiculous political opinions," as one editor has put it a few lines above. GoldenRing (talk) 10:56, 16 January 2017 (UTC)
  • And, for those citing statistics above, do we really think that, for a daily newspaper, averaging somewhere near 15 upheld complaints in a year is sufficient to ban the whole output of that organisation as a source? GoldenRing (talk) 11:04, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

  Yes. The volume of upheld complaints is symptomatic of the Mail's deference to editorial ideology over factual accuracy. It is legendary for the inaccuracy of its articles on medicine and science, especially. Guy (Help!) 13:34, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

  Here are more examples: 10 Egregiously False Stories In The ‘Daily Mail’.

  Also, see this quote:

  "You probably know the Daily Mail as a race-baiting tabloid that once supported the Nazis. But it has another, secret identity it tries to keep hidden at all costs. The Daily Mail is possibly the biggest news media troll in history. Thanks to American outlets thinking it’s a respectable news source, the Daily Mail has managed to get the media to print more hoax stories than everyone else on this list combined. In 2014, a New York–based correspondent simply made up a story about Beijing installing giant TV screens so smog-choked residents could watch fake sunrises. Time, CBS, and the Huffington Post all ran with it, despite it being clear nonsense. In 2012, the Daily Mail made up another story about a Polish dentist pulling all her boyfriend’s teeth after he cheated on her. That one fooled most of the Internet, plus MSNBC, the LA Times, and the Daily Telegraph. In 2015, the Daily Mail ran a story that was picked up by other tabloids about a guy on welfare who was too busy working out to get a job. The guy turned out to be an actor. Go digging, and you’ll find more examples of the Daily Mail flooding the media with more fake stories than we can comfortably list here. Like that time it convinced Fox News a transgender kid was harassing girls in a school bathroom. Or that time it totally made up a poll and the Huffington Post believed it. Okay, we’re calling it now: The Daily Mail is officially the greatest media troll in the world." (source)

  --Guy Macon (talk) 14:13, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

• Support. Any sources that demonstrates a willingness to make shit up just to sell papers does not meet our definition of reliable source. If there are other newspapers that do this they should not be used either. Bradv 14:24, 16 January 2017 (UTC)
• Support A bunch of people have made "but sometimes there's no other source" comments; well, in those cases, then, there's no legitimate source at all, and the material shouldn't be believed, much less used in Misplaced Pages. We waste too much time on the DM, and we aren't going to lose anything worthwhile by utterly excluding it as a source. Mangoe (talk) 14:58, 16 January 2017 (UTC)
• Support? "Prohibit" seems like an imprecise word in the context of wikiguidelines, especially when combined with "just short of blacklisting". In general I like the idea of making "formal" that there is consensus that one should almost never use a given source, to avoid having those discussions or pointing to a smattering of RSN threads, often with unclear outcomes. Like others, I would oppose blacklisting this, but support an edit filter and certainly support the notion that this should almost never be used in articles. That seems like it would largely support this? But I see people opposing who have the same opinion. This makes me think what probably needs to happen is a more specific question within technical parameters (e.g. once an edit filter is established, an RfC to add this to it). Fun fact: in 2014, as listed in User:Emijrp/External Links Ranking, Daily Mail was our 86th most used external link, with more than 26,000 uses just in the article space. — Rhododendrites \\ 15:37, 16 January 2017 (UTC)
• Support its classification as a non-reliable source; it simply cannot be trusted. GiantSnowman 18:47, 16 January 2017 (UTC)
• Support except in the exceptional circumstance of where something appearing in the Mail is itself the topic ("after he was accused by the Daily Mail of…"). Any legitimate story will also be found in a genuine newspaper; anything only appearing in the Mail can usually safely be assumed to be made up. (FWIW, as I write this the Mail front page is currently informing the world that "Astronauts on board the International Space Station are hiding evidence of aliens".) ‑ Iridescent 18:54, 16 January 2017 (UTC)
  • Read the second sentence: "At least that's the latest wild claim made by a group of UFO hunters ..." Context matters, eh? Peter Gulutzan (talk) 22:28, 16 January 2017 (UTC)
    • Yes, I noticed that too. It is repeated in the caption. So we are faced with the Daily Mail reporting that a group (easily debunked - ) is making a "wild claim", but it is not the newspaper itself making the claim. Is the Daily Mail a RS for this statement? DrChrissy 22:40, 16 January 2017 (UTC)
• Never use for a BLP or anything contentious. A minority of the Mail's reporting (notably its sports, which is award winning) is absolutely fine, but its news reporting is on the level of the Sunday Sport (or for our American cousins, the National Enquirer); not only does it misrepresent stories, but it makes them up completely. Black Kite (talk) 19:05, 16 January 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose as Tiptoethrutheminefield "There is no justification for the blanket banning of a mass-circulation newspaper as a source. There will be cases where it is a suitable rs source. " The Mail is editorially heavily biased, but that's not the same thing as unreliable for reporting of simple objective facts. Andy Dingley (talk) 19:12, 16 January 2017 (UTC)
  • If you say so. Pop us up a wee list, will you? Of things it is essential to cover on Misplaced Pages, for which there is no other source but the Mail. --John (talk) 19:23, 16 January 2017 (UTC)
    • You've already seen one -- brought to BLPN, closed by admin User:Number_57 with the closing sentence "There was clearly no consensus to blacklist the Daily Mail, as consensus was that the DM was an acceptable source for the material in question." Peter Gulutzan (talk) 22:28, 16 January 2017 (UTC)
      • I reread that and I am not seeing the list. Perhaps you could copy and paste it here when you do. Thanks. --John (talk) 07:05, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

        • I meant you'd already seen one case. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 16:56, 24 January 2017 (UTC)
• OK I note I see a consensus above from basically everyone (no matter their ivote) that there needs to be guidance or restriction on this source (I say guidance because it's not fair to expect the rest of the English speaking world to know much about DM), given that, given the evidenced problems with DM, and given the policy standard for using sources is information that is "challenged or likely to be challenged," then explicitly putting everyone on notice, that the default is never use this source, unless you can convince (and are convinced) a rare exception should be made is the way to go - the proposal says "demonstrable need" - so, ok. Alanscottwalker (talk) 19:45, 16 January 2017 (UTC)
  • 'Oppose' does not mean 'Support', there's no such consensus. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 22:28, 16 January 2017 (UTC)
    • Actually, there is - many of the people opposing a blanket ban on the source do say that there are some circumstances under which the source is not reliable and should not be used. And obviously the people who think it should be banned would agree. The lack of consensus at the moment appears to be the degree of guidance and/or restriction needed. Nikkimaria (talk) 03:55, 17 January 2017 (UTC)
      • It's a dreadful source, and anyone who thinks otherwise should not be editing an encyclopedia. What we are arguing here is whether it should be outright banned or whether it can occasionally be used. --John (talk) 07:05, 17 January 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose per Andy Dingley above. Awful and biased as the Mail often is, there is also much that may be uncontentious. For example, take e.g. an article that I did some editing on a long time ago, on Mary Marquis, a Scottish newsreader of the '70s and '80s, who is still a much cherished and remembered figure in Scotland. The article contains multiple citations to an 1998 interview / profile piece from the Mail -- all of which, I would submit, are entirely uncontroversial; and (I submit) contribute valuably to giving a rounded-out account of her. Of course there are reasons why one should very often be cautious of the Mail, but IMO a blanket ban is not the way. I would add that, although people like to throw around the word "Tabloid", there can be a distinction between the connotations of that word on different sides of the Atlantic, and I wouldn't throw the Record or the Mirror or the Standard or Metro into the same class as eg the National Enquirer. Jheald (talk) 20:03, 16 January 2017 (UTC)
  • And you know that they didn't fabricate the entire interview (as they have done in other cases) ... how? --Guy Macon (talk) 22:48, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

  • @Guy Macon: Given that I strongly suspect that this edit (diff) may well have been by her husband, I suspect the rest of the text is reasonably sound. It seems highly unlikely that such an interview would be fabricated -- she wasn't in the news at the time, nor particularly newsworthy, so why bother? Jheald (talk) 23:26, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

  • Why bother getting an actual interview? Surely it is easier and cheaper to simply make up some quotes rather than bothering to interview someone. It would seem reasonable to assume that The Daily Mail choose the cheaper, faster option. Once we have established that The Daily mail fabricates such material on a regular basis, the burden of proof is on the editor who decides that they aren't lying in one particular case, and "I suspect (but do not know for sure) that the quote is sound" isn't quite good enough. Was there any other source for the quotes, or were they only in The Daily Mail? --Guy Macon (talk) 03:09, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

  • @Guy Macon: It was an interview, with somebody who had already been retired for 10 years. Not a press release, not a cuttings piece, not a news story. Why would you expect anybody else to have replicated the quotes of a random human-interest piece that happened to appear in the Mail ?

  And, BTW, what's your evidence that the Mail routinely fakes interviews with random retired celebrities reflecting on their lives (ie not Amanda Knox, not crusading news stories, not shock stories from foreign websites), just people as human beings for the human interest? Jheald (talk) 12:47, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

  They regularly fabricate quotes and interviews -- one would think that would rule them out as a reliable source -- but if that's not specific enough, here's an entirely fake interview with a random retired celebrity reflecting on his life. (bonus points for also being a copyright violation.) --Hillbillyholiday 13:22, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

  Anyone can get hoaxed, even the New York Times. It seems to me that there is a difference between what is gossipy or sensationalist, which eg WP:BLPSOURCES rightly warns against, and what is more mundane or routine. Extraordinary claims rightly demand extraordinary sources (which the Mail definitely is not); but less extraordinary claims rather less so. For myself, I think User:softlavender wrote a lot of sense above, noting that the Mail can be quite a mixed bag, including (as they put it) a strong team of critics, "accurate and informative interviews of highly respected people like Lord Puttnam, informative and detailed film and television articles, detailed information on various openings, galas, and so on", and that many of these items are exclusives.... I think an intelligent editor can tell the difference. So with this publication it has to always be on a case-by-case basis." Jheald (talk) 07:03, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose Per Andy Dingly. No need to blacklist a whole publication because of a few opinion pieces that may not be to some tastes. The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 22:45, 16 January 2017 (UTC)
  • Opinion pieces? Where did anyone mention opinion pieces? The problem is not opinion pieces, the problem is that they routinely make stuff up. --John (talk) 07:05, 17 January 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose: The paper has been around since 1896. Its bad reputation in the first few years of the 21st century speak nothing about the reliability of more than a hundred years of volumes. Clearly a blanket ban is unjustified (per Thincat). – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 03:17, 17 January 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose: Existing policy is enough. If it is worth adding to a Misplaced Pages article, it will have appeared in better sources than the Mail and other red top British tabloids. I am not an anti-tabloid snob like some of the people here, and the broadsheets are not perfect either. However, the Mail should be off limits for anything BLP related. This discussion is reminiscent of this tweet by Gavin Phillipson, who is also a member of IMPRESS. I can be hacked off by the Daily Mail sometimes, but not enough to want to ban it outright.--♦IanMacM♦ 09:03, 17 January 2017 (UTC)
• Support The Mail lacks sufficient editorial oversight. I regularly see spelling and grammatical errors on their front page, let alone the dubious content of the actual stories.LM2000 (talk) 09:59, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

  God, no, not spelling and grammatical errors! Someone better start a new RfC about the Grauniad... GoldenRing (talk) 11:34, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

  When The Guardian starts printing patent BS on a regular basis, while also failing to check their spelling, an RfC may be appropriate.LM2000 (talk) 21:30, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

• Note The "bad examples" are all pretty much either "headline complaints" or "celebrity gossip" issues. One should actually read the "actual complaints" made to press groups rather than use them as "paint by numbers" proof that the DM is unreliable. I cited an actual research study above which showed that every single newspaper uses "press releases" instead of actual journalism on science articles, and, to that extent, not a single paper is actually "reliable." As for "grammatical and spelling errors", note that even the New York Times has them, as it has no paid proof-readers whatsoever. And I iterate that I know of zero "reliable sources" for "celebrity gossip" at all. Collect (talk) 14:00, 17 January 2017 (UTC)
• Support prohibition. To claim that "The "bad examples" are all pretty much either "headline complaints" or "celebrity gossip" issues" is not true, I'm afraid. These are the lies, damned lies and the even more damned lies from outside the "headline complaints" or "celebrity gossip" issues". It's a trashy paper that cannot and should not be trusted on too many subjects for us to allow any use on any subject. These DM-lies are from "actual complaints", by the way. Take a spin over a Google search of ("Daily Mail" "factual inaccuracy") and ignoring all the websites that we wouldn't generally regard as reliable, and there are still too many sources to justify the use of the DM. All the best, The Bounder (talk) 14:28, 17 January 2017 (UTC)
• Support prohibition. This is a good example of the sort of thing the Daily Mail is currently publishing. I rest my case. -- The Anome (talk) 18:31, 17 January 2017 (UTC)
• Comment the article above describes it as "the latest wild claim made by a group of UFO hunters." Silly season stuff perhaps, but not in the same league as BLP violations, or "World War 2 Bomber Found On Moon" which the Sunday Sport really did expect its readers to take seriously.--♦IanMacM♦ 18:50, 17 January 2017 (UTC)
• Support prohibition (...And I never thought I would say that!). I was leaning towards supporting with exceptions; but I am not convinced that there are any exceptions we could make that would not be available in more reliable sources. After all, if the DM was the only source for an item, we instinctively wouldn't touch it with a barge pole. O Fortuna! 10:37, 18 January 2017 (UTC)
• Support. If you have an actually reliable source confirming something in the Mail, why aren't you using that? If it's just the Mail, you're doing it wrong or it's probably too ridiculously trivial to include anyways. Maybe there are exceptions, but there had better be VERY strong arguments for ANY use of the Mail. Misplaced Pages isn't losing much, if anything at all, by a blanket jettisoning of this crappy source. --Calton | Talk 11:04, 18 January 2017 (UTC)
  • Comment and note to closer Well said, Calton. Although the claim has been made repeatedly, in spite of asking several times I still haven't seen where any of the opposers have actually given examples of what a DM article could best be used for on Misplaced Pages, other than as a primary source on its own statements. If this is still the case at the time of closure, I recommend discounting those opposes. After all, we are here for facts, not opinions. --John (talk) 13:32, 18 January 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose for now. Make no mistake, The Daily Mail is a bad source. But in the realm of mass media, most sources of the junk food news variety seem very bad. And these can be published by supposedly reliable news outlets. I would much rather see this more firmly clarified in policy. The Daily Mail is a bad source, and everybody knows it. But other outlets, even "reliable" news outlets, are also guilty of publishing the same kind of churnalism as the DM. (For example, I've seen the DM quoted in a broadsheet source, which editors really ought to know better than to do.) So, if we find ourselves in a position of needing to ban the DM because it's so bad, the problem is not the DM as a source, the problem is our guidelines that are apparently lax enough to allow this to be used in the first place. Also, from the discussion above it appears as thought DM is reliable for some things, and not others. WP:CONTEXTMATTERS might require clarification; the vagueness of that guideline bothers me. Sławomir Biały (talk) 11:37, 18 January 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose Each case has to be judged on its merits because all sources are prone to error. The Daily Mail seems fairly average as journalism goes and should not be singled out when there are many worse sources. The following specific points demonstrate this. Andrew D. (talk) 13:50, 18 January 2017 (UTC)
  1. The Daily Mail is somewhat unusual for a UK paper as it was the first newspaper specifically aimed at women and is read by more women than men. For example, the word suffragette was first coined in the pages of the Daily Mail and so is naturally cited by the Oxford English Dictionary.
  2. When the singer Lynsey de Paul died, there was some confusion about her exact age. The Daily Mail was one of the few news sources which got this right.
  3. I started our article about churnalism and this can be found in most news media now. One interesting case was a project which deliberately planted fake stories to see whether they would be circulated. The Daily Mail didn't fall for this when many other news media did. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Andrew Davidson (talk • contribs)

  • I am not sure that inventing a word over a century ago makes this a reliable source, nor do I think it germane what the target market was 120 years ago. - The Bounder (talk) 15:43, 18 January 2017 (UTC)

  • Misplaced Pages is an encyclopedia with a historical perspective and so recentism should be avoided. The Daily Mail has had some particular interests over the years which may make it a good source for certain periods. For example, it started the Ideal Home Exhibition which was influential in changing households in the UK. And it supported early aviation with prizes and coverage. Andrew D. (talk) 16:03, 18 January 2017 (UTC)

  • That is an different point to the one you raised earlier, so thank you for your clarification. (Although starting a sales exhibition is, again, no guarantee of being a reliable source). - The Bounder (talk) 16:07, 18 January 2017 (UTC)
  • Does citing any of those require a link to the daily mail website? Because the daily mail website is what we are talking about banning here, not citations to material that was published long before computers existed. --Guy Macon (talk) 16:11, 18 January 2017 (UTC)

  • The Daily Mail was a newspaper for most of its history. Its website is a new thing with a different editorial team. And there are other publications like Metro and the Mail on Sunday. The proposal seems unclear. Andrew D. (talk) 16:14, 18 January 2017 (UTC)

  • Is it clearer if we change it from "Should we prohibit the use of The Daily Mail as a source?" to "Should we prohibit the use of DailyMail.com as a source?" --John (talk) 16:22, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

  • It would be clearer but it's not clear if that was the original proposal. Some people here seem to be Americans who may only be familiar with the website but the orginal proposer seems to be British and so have meant the newspaper proper. It's a muddle. Such issues are best sorted out on a case-by-case basis as is our usual practise. Andrew D. (talk) 19:21, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

• And just in today .Slatersteven (talk) 16:30, 18 January 2017 (UTC)
• Related: Misplaced Pages:Administrators' noticeboard#Daily Mail RfC --Guy Macon (talk) 21:10, 18 January 2017 (UTC)
• "Support prohibition': Although Daily Mail isn't always incorrect, many of its stories are dubious, do not have proper journalistsic standards and are meant for sensationalization. Although not everything is false, it still cannot be regarded as trustworthy or reliabile because of what it does. MonsterHunter32 (talk) 22:02, 18 January 2017 (UTC)
• Support prohibition with the exception mentioned in the proposal (and possibly with a restricted date range; I am sure it is a useful source for some things in the past). The Daily Mail of today contains too many (probably deliberate) factual errors to be used as a source. —Kusma (t·c) 11:33, 19 January 2017 (UTC)
• Note that many of the examples cited here and elsewhere on Misplaced Pages are either of "celebrity gossip" for which I find no sources actually reliable, and "headline claims" again for which no source should be asserted. Note that the article with the headline "Is Nasa hiding aliens? Astronaut covers up evidence of mystery flashing lights moving past the space station, UFO hunters claim" is specifically about "wild claims" by "a group of UFO hunters" and is not a claim that NASA is hiding anything at all, and specifically is not the claim made above by a colleague here. The actual article clearly states: At least that's the latest wild claim made by a group of UFO hunters who believe they have spotted strange flashing lights near the ISS. In short, the DM is accurate on the topic. When giving "examples" it behooves us all to use accurate examples, lest Misplaced Pages be viewed, itself, as the laughingstock. I suggest any closer deprecate !votes made with clearly errant "examples" or which are clearly based on political or other opinions, and not on the use of one of the world's most-read journals. Collect (talk) 13:12, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

• .... I suggest any closer deprecate !votes made with clearly errant "examples" or which are clearly based on political or other opinions Huh, you mean like the statement where you made the blatantly false statement the DM's record is akin to the record of The Guardian and other broadsheets? --Calton | Talk 22:39, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

And when you quote others, kindly quote them accurately. As you elided the rest of my statement so cavalierly, I suggest you seek employment as a journalist. lists the salient facts, and you manage to elide my clear statement

In fact, moreover, other than in the area of celebrity gossip (where no paper should be trusted in the first place),

and the elision of that part of the sentence might appear to neutral parties to excise a key part of my position. Did you actually read the scholarly study about blind use of press releases, by the way? Collect (talk) 13:32, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

...except that that by no means are the false stories all related to celebrity gossip. There's the slew of fiction about the hordes of Eastern European immigrants invading Britain (including a story with twenty-six falsehoods in it which was even discribed as nonsense by the Conservative government), the one where they said Israel was opening dams to flood the Gaza Strip and get rid of Palestinians (the Mail showing it hasn't dropped its WWII anti-semitism), the one that said women working full-time caused autism in their children, the one about semen being an anti-depressant, the one about the giant hedgehog ... etc. You do realise that the Mail does this purely for clickbait for its website, don't you? Black Kite (talk) 19:58, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

I'm afraid Black Kite is right, Collect. As I said at AN, your mistake seems to be to buy in to the Mail's world-view in which any newsworthy person is treated as a "celebrity" about whom lies can be told, with the expectation that most will not sue. Misplaced Pages cannot afford to follow this line for ethical and possibly legal reasons. --John (talk) 20:03, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

Black Kite gave no URLs but I think I see some of the articles. The "Gaza flood" story was corrected, now it's Gaza Floods: Dispelling the myth about Israeli 'dams'. The "autism" story is merely a report of what a theorist said. The "giant hedgehog" story is clearly about a sculpture. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 16:56, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

• Support prohibition with edit filter, with exceptions for when it is actually indispensable. Jc86035 (talk) Use {{re|Jc86035}}
  to reply to me 13:54, 19 January 2017 (UTC)
• Hope is today's featured article. I read through this just now as it is an interesting and topical article. At the end, notice that it cites the Daily Mail. Andrew D. (talk) 14:02, 19 January 2017 (UTC)
  • "according to an unverified report in the Daily Mail". In any case the DM is a primary source there and the statement is also supported by a secondary source, so it doesn't really matter if the DM citation is removed. Jc86035 (talk) Use {{re|Jc86035}}
    to reply to me 14:09, 19 January 2017 (UTC)
• Support It's not a good source, and it won't be useful in the vast majority of cases, so it shouldn't be used. ThePlatypusofDoom (talk) 14:29, 19 January 2017 (UTC)
• Support - This publication has a poor reputation as many others have already shown. In the rare event that they are the only source that covers something of encyclopedia value, unrelated to living people, exceptions can be made. As a side note, I think we should have a subpage that lists sources that should be avoided such as The Daily Mail, Breitbart, and WND.- MrX 17:11, 19 January 2017 (UTC)
• Support, anything that actually cites it will probably be removed anyway, so banning the source itself is a easy solution. Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 16:06, 20 January 2017 (UTC)
• Support rational prohibition According to the Daily Mail, this is an oppose vote. --AntiCompositeNumber (Leave a message) 02:42, 22 January 2017 (UTC)
• Support as it is not a reliable source. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:43, 25 January 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose - There's worse sources out there!, On the whole DM is okay and should be used where necessary. –Davey2010 19:35, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose total blacklisting References are used to verify facts, and perhaps the Mail is not reliable for this. However, they are also used to demonstrate notability. I would use a Mail reference as a second source for a fact that was also verified by another source. For example: I work on a lot of articles about musical groups. Often quite a bit of information can be verified by articles in local press or online music magazines, but coverage in a national paper carries more weight when deciding if a band meets notability requirements.—Anne Delong (talk) 05:08, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

I agree with Anne Delong. Marvellous Spider-Man 03:58, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

Reliable sources should be verifiable, so if as you say, the facts in the daily mail are not verifiable, then they are not a reliable source. Only reliable sources can be used to establish notability, per WP:GNG. Therefore the daily mail is not a reliable source nor can it be used to establish notability, so this oppose seems to be misguided. I would also note that in practice I would never consider the daily mail to be a source that establishes GNG over at AfC, or when patrolling new pages.  InsertCleverPhraseHere  04:58, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

You don't consider, but I consider it as a reliable source. We are opposing "total" blacklisting. Daily Mail is very reliable source for entertainment and sports. Daily Mail haters can keep Daily Mail out of Science, Religion, Race, Astronomy, Economics, British politics and American politics related articles. Marvellous Spider-Man 05:26, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

The Daily mail has printed a large number of factual inaccuracies, in some cases blatant lies in 'entertainment' articles, so I don't think they should ever be considered a reliable source there (a quick scan of this RfC will reveal several of the best examples). As for sports, while their reporting in this area seems relatively verifiable, very rarely does the Daily Mail ever report anything that is not also covered in other, more reliable, sports sources. Therefore they are not essential for this category, and it should not be the reason they are not blacklisted.  InsertCleverPhraseHere  05:44, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

And Misplaced Pages also has many notable hoax articles. Do we need factual and scientific accuracy for tooth fairy, dragons, wizards, bigfoot articles? If Daily Mail is used in these articles about mythical and urban legends, what is so wrong about it? Marvellous Spider-Man 05:30, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

Not sure what you are asking here, factual and scientific accuracy is always essential for all articles, as is not applying undue WP:WEIGHT to extraordinary claims. I do not see how the Daily Mail's coverage can help anything with regards to fringe, pseudoscience, myth or hoax articles. On the contrary, as an editor in many fringe areas of the wiki I, and many others, delete Daily Mail citations on sight.  InsertCleverPhraseHere  05:44, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

I edit a lot of articles about musicians, novelists, actors and other artists. Their notability is often determined by the amount of discussion and review of their work. A lot of this is opinion. Is there evidence that the professional reviewers at the Daily Mail don't write actual opinions? If not, I don't see why, for instance, a review can't be cited to show positive or negative "reception", for example. A blacklisting would mean that citations to the paper would be physically blocked; the even obvious facts such as "she was featured in a full page article in the Daily Mail" couldn't be cited. These limited uses should be allowed.—Anne Delong (talk) 14:30, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

• Support prohibition -- because this will improve the encyclopedia. Any losses are outweighed by gains. It's more of a problem to include a crappy claim (sourced to the Mail) than it is to leave something out. Moreover, the likelihood of leaving something out simply because of a probation on the Mail seems quite low -- if it's worth including, then we'll likely find other sources. Nomoskedasticity (talk) 14:32, 23 January 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose. I share the opinion that the Daily Mail is not remotely trustworthy in many respects - certainly not in a lot of its news and politics coverage. But I think a blanket prohibition on citing it is overkill. For one thing, its financial coverage is often very good, and I'm also told it does sports just fine too (I never read about sports so I wouldn't know myself). Then there's the thing about notability - even if a DM story might not be good enough to support a factual claim on its own, it can be useful for adding to the sources that demonstrate notability. I think we do fine as we are, judging each use of a DM source in its own context, and I see no need to change that. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 14:43, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

I've said it before, I'll say it again, how can the Daily Mail establish notability if it isn't considered a reliable source? The two are mutually exclusive. Moreover, if it is not trustworthy, then surely far less damage is done by banning it than by allowing it, especially as the areas you pointed out. Even where the DM are mostly reliable, we have plenty of good reliable coverage elsewhere and these areas are not even the primary areas of interest for the Daily Mail (they cannot be considered to be experts on financial matters, nor is this their primary focus).  InsertCleverPhraseHere  18:58, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

Re" "Even where the DM are mostly reliable, we have plenty of good reliable coverage elsewhere", I would add that those very few times when we have no reliable coverage elsewhere are almost always the times when The Daily Mail decided to simply make things up. If there is a better source, use that source. If there isn't a better source, then the rational assumption is that it didn't happen the way The Daily Mail said it happened. Remember, The Daily Mail doesn't just fabricate things to make a point. Sometimes they fabricate things because they are too lazy to get the facts and because to a Daily Mail reporter there are never any negative consequences to telling lies. --Guy Macon (talk) 19:31, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

@Insertcleverphrasehere:I've said it before, I'll say it again, how can the Daily Mail establish notability if it isn't considered a reliable source? To be perfectly fair, I could point to a number of conspiracy theories that have never received much coverage in reliable sources, but their widespread attribution in popular-yet-unreliable sources demonstrates their notability. As a general rule, I would say an unreliable source can still be used to establish notability, though with far (FAR) less weight than a reliable source. And only when said unreliable source is fairly popular, like the Daily Mail. I'm not going to argue this point, though. I wouldn't hold it to be unreasonable for an editor to insist that only reliable sources can evince notability, it's just not my interpretation, and it's one to which there are exceptions on WP. MjolnirPants Tell me all about it. 21:53, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

@MjolnirPants Far be it from me to insist that editorial judgement isn't necessary, I've seen plenty of AfD discussion similar to what you've been talking about, where a cobbled together group of -ish sources are used to demonstrate notability. I've even agreed in some cases. There is always room for a little WP:IAR. However I must point out that my comments above are in line with WP:GNG. According to WP policy, only reliable, independent, sources demonstrate notability. There are good reasons why these restrictions exist, and in the case of the Daily Mail, they apply rather aptly in my opinion.  InsertCleverPhraseHere  22:08, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

InsertcleverphrasehereYou may be exactly right about the policy pages. I've never spent much time reading those particular ones (on notability), because discussions of notability are so hairy anyways, and can go either way, with both sides accusing the other of clear policy violations. Generally, I've only ever read them to verify that what an editor put in quote marks as coming from that page actually did (it shocks me how often it doesn't...) MjolnirPants Tell me all about it. 22:22, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

Oppose. The Daily Mail is reliable for general news. They are under much tougher libel laws in the UK than US papers, so they do check their facts. SW3 5DL (talk) 21:48, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

It is exactly their reputation for not fact checking that is the problem. I don't know much about libel laws in Britain, but the consequences can't be that strict given the stuff that the DM has printed, and gotten away with (here are 10, with a surprisingly varied list of subject matter --note that i found this in 5 seconds, there are FAR, FAR more. ). I find this Oppose to be rather odd, as if he/she has not read the above section, as it is clear that the DM has the opposite reputation from the one implied in this comment.  InsertCleverPhraseHere  22:57, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

Honestly the more I look the more their behavior disgusts me. in this story they got sued, but they just keep continuing to print false made up shit. The libel laws might mean they get sued, but they make money from the carnage anyway so what do they care for the truth? Blacklist it already, at a certain point we need to have some professional integrity.  InsertCleverPhraseHere  23:13, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

• Tepid support. I do fully support the idea the the Daily Mail is not a reliable source for anything because it does not have a reputation for fact checking. If there is something that would maybe considered from the Daily Mail for sourcing, mention of that content should be found in a different source. Otherwise, it isn't of sufficient weight. Regardless of blacklist or not, this RfC should be closed with this idea either way. I'm hesitant to blacklist a source in general, especially since anyone should be able to link to this RfC's close to demonstrate it's not a reliable, end of story, but I haven't seen an example above that would indicate blacklisting would harm anything either. Kingofaces43 (talk) 03:33, 24 January 2017 (UTC)
• Question: Wire-service stories. As well as its own internally rewritten stories, Mail Online also carries a lot of wire stories verbatim, often from AP, and often at greater, more complete length than other sites -- see eg its "wires" main page, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/index.html . Such stories can be distinguished by the "Wires" strap at the top, the lack of a comments section at the bottom, and perspectives that can often seem somewhat at variance to the Mail's usual obsessions / imposed editorial lines. Is there any objection to continuing to use wire-service reports, identified as such, that happen to be being distributed via the Mail site -- since the reporting for such stories will be AP's, rather than the Mail's own? Jheald (talk) 06:32, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

• Wire stories are, by their very nature, generally available in other publications. It's back to the point of 'if it's a reliable and newsworthy piece of information, someone else will also have published it'. All the best, The Bounder (talk) 07:01, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

• Comment Remember the Murder of Meredith Kercher? Remember the dramatic end to the court case? Let us recall with the aid of a Daily Mail article.

  As Knox realized the enormity of what judge Hellman was saying she sank into her chair sobbing uncontrollably while her family and friends hugged each other in tears.

  A few feet away Meredith's mother Arline, her sister Stephanie and brother Lyle, who had flown in especially for the verdict remained expressionless, staring straight ahead, glancing over just once at the distraught Knox family.

  Prosecutors were delighted with the verdict and said that 'justice has been done' although they said on a 'human factor it was sad two young people would be spending years in jail'.

  Sources: PoliticalScrapbook, Guardian, Journalism.co.uk

  What a colourful bit of reporting. Makes you feel like you are right there in the courtroom, watching Knox be carted off to jail. It makes you feel the stoic suffering of the Kercher family too. Exactly the sort of human interest one would wish to inject into a courtroom story.

  Just one minor problem. It didn't happen. Knox wasn't found guilty. All that colour reporting was made up. The quotes were made up. This wasn't just a prepared background story they published by accident. This was an article purporting to present direct on-the-ground reporting and quotes from involved parties. With this record, why should anyone trust a word they say on anything? —Tom Morris (talk) 15:40, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

Five years ago MailOnline had a false post re Knox for slightly over a minute before correcting, their explanation and apology is here. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 16:22, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

Good job missing the point entirely. The point isn't that they accidentally published the wrong story or how fast they fixed the error. Lots of newspapers make mistakes, and the correction was very fast indeed. The point is that they admitted to making up direct quotes and eyewitness reports. The point is that the Press Complaints Commission upheld a complaint against the Daily Mail (and upheld it again in adjudication), saying "the article had sought to present contemporaneous reporting of events (describing, in colourful terms, how individuals had physically behaved) which simply had not taken place. This was clearly not acceptable.". and "it is vitally important that descriptions of events, especially trials, are published in a manner which complies with the Editors' Code. Describing reactions and behaviour that have not taken place, in a factual manner as if they had, must always raise a breach of Clause 1 of the Code." --Guy Macon (talk) 17:29, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

Oppose. This is ridiculous that you even consider to ban such a large newspaper. It reminds me of a witch hunt or collective responsibility (good articles banned by default, because someone else did something wrong earlier). Someone reverted DM as a source, even though DM was the only source, which actually bothered to interview the authors of the paper, therefore it was a better source than all other sources. There was nothing wrong with that DM article the only reason for removal was actually this discussion here. That can't be right. Musashi miyamoto (talk) 17:18, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

That removal was me, you've steadfastly ignored me in the past when I informed you that the DM is not appropriate for fringe articles. The problem is that the DM has outright fabricated interviews before, and it is impossible to verify if they have done so again. The issue is one of verifiablity; facts found only in the Daily Mail are not verifiable, therefore they can't be used as a sole source for content, especially contentious content like the instance you are talking about.  InsertCleverPhraseHere  18:48, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

It is not "impossible to verify if they have done so again". It is easily verifiable in this case, just ask the authors of the paper, if DM interviewed them and if they confirm that the quotes in DM are true. Their e-mail addresses are in the paper. Also, please note that other massmedia often quote DM, so if they do it why shouldn't we? They should know better after all. Journalism is their profession. Musashi miyamoto (talk) 22:08, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

That would effectively be original research. The reason why we rely on published *reliable* sources is precisely to avoid doing that sort of leg-work. Only in death does duty end (talk) 22:36, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

If you cant trust a source to print truthfully, and have to contact the authors to verify that the haven't lied *this time*, then the source is of no use at all. Also, the act of verifying with the authors directly can't be used on wikipedia as it would constitute original research (and now we have to take your word for it--and so-on ad nauseum). Reliable sources must have a reputation for reliability (within reason, everybody makes small errors from time to time), if they don't, they are no use at all to an encyclopedia. The DM has shown a reckless disregard for truth.  InsertCleverPhraseHere  22:38, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

Besides, I did ask the authors of the paper if DM interviewed them and if they confirm that the quotes in DM are true. They said no. Either that or I am lying through my teeth to make a point. What is Truth? If only we had some sort of policy where you didn't have to trust me to not tell lies... --Guy Macon (talk) 00:17, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

As for other media outlets quoting the DM, many have been caught out by doing this, republishing false stories. As a result, the republishing of DM stories is now rare, except in cases where the other sources are either just as unscrupulous as the DM, or else where the other authors have done the legwork necessary to verify that the quotes are true themselves.  InsertCleverPhraseHere  22:42, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

• Support, but allow on a case-by-case basis. The default should be to exclude it instead of include it. Some people have argued that it is reliable for sports or entertainment reporting, and they can make their case on the article talk pages. For everything else, it appears to be wildly unreliable. Editors, including people on this page, shouldn't have to re-litigate the issue endlessly. Felsic2 (talk) 02:00, 25 January 2017 (UTC)
• Guilty until proven innocent. We should begin with a straightforward recognition of policy as codified in WP:V; i.e., the Mail does not have "a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy." Nevertheless it is possible for things to be true even if the Mail prints them. Thus while we should presume that the Mail is an inappropriate source, there may be specific circumstances where it would be appropriate to cite the Mail. The burden of proof will lie on editors wishing to use material cited to the Mail. Shock Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 02:42, 25 January 2017 (UTC)
• Support. Time and time again the DM shows that it absolutely does not have a reputation for accuracy. If there is a demonstrable need to cite it, that can be argued on a case by case basis, but for the most part I think it's time we put our foot down and admitted that the DM simply isn't reliable. Sam Walton (talk) 11:16, 25 January 2017 (UTC)
• Support The DM has been caught misrepresenting and outright fabricating stories far too many times to be considered reliable for anything. Capeo (talk) 17:39, 25 January 2017 (UTC)
• Support prohibition Editors are entrusted with the responsibility of uphold the integrity of Misplaced Pages by presenting appropriate trusted citations for article content.--Moxy (talk) 00:30, 28 January 2017 (UTC)
• Support The Daily Mail like the National Enquirer is not a source suitable for an encylopedia. It is the worst kind of sensationalist, gutter journalism imaginable. After the result in R (Miller) v Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union just last year the Mail infamously attacked the judges as enemies of the people and pejoratively referred to one of the judges as "openly gay". This is a publication that publishes hoaxes about solar panels made from human hair, falls for parody Steve Jobs Twitter accounts, falsely accused Nicholas Cage of tax evasion ; had to apologise for lying about George Clooney and his in-laws, steals and republishes stories hours later under false by-lines and has a permanent obsession with Kim Kardashian's backside. It has no legitimate place here and it demeans our work. AusLondonder (talk) 02:34, 28 January 2017 (UTC)
• Support This should be obvious, so there is some dismay at seeing this discussed. Blacklist it. Anything that they accidentally get right can always be sourced from a reliable source. First Light (talk) 10:28, 31 January 2017 (UTC)
• Very conditional support: if the implementation is an edit filter set on "warn", and as a temporary measure pending further discussion. (This is a next-best solution given that I am coming late to the battle.)

The DM, or at least its current editorial process, is crap and I see no circumstance whatsoever where they would be a reliable independent source. While this is IMO already covered by existing policy, it would make sense to adopt an automatic process to catch violations in new edits because it is easy to implement (match the URL string) and the false-positive rate will be extremely low. (Side note: the quality of the mainstream press is some areas (e.g. science news) is extremely low as well, but the key words are in some areas, whereas the DM is unreliable everywhere)

However, the technical implementation of the RfC will be either an edit filter or a spam blacklist entry, both of which are philosophically different from an "unreliable source" block. The former targets vandalism, the latter targets promotional edits / SEO attempts / etc.

What I would like to see is an RfC establishing the use of WP:EDITFILTER (or whatever other mechanism is chosen) as an "unreliable source filter", with details of how to add a source, how edits are logged/rejected etc.; then adding the DM to it (along with others, methinks). I doubt the second step will meet any opposition, but the first one could attract both opposition on philosophical grounds and technical remarks. Of course, it is far too late to debate that here, but technical questions will not go away - best-case scenario, they are debated in a second RfC where the focus on the DM obscures the full picture, worse-case a developer guesses what to do once asked by admins to "implement the RfC". Tigraan 12:53, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

• Support prohibition due to the long run of problems with it. The publisher lost its reputation as reliable source. I don't think encyclopedia will suffer without it. There are plenty of other sources around. It would be a very dangerous situation indeed if DM hold a monopoly on some piece of info. Staszek Lem (talk) 00:09, 1 February 2017 (UTC)
• It's complicated. I oppose a blanket prohibition, because there are some realms where the Daily Mail is perfectly fine as a source. Non-tabloid reporting of sports, for instance; it tends to contain some good human interest type stories about sportspeople. Also, older articles from before the paper went to shit. It should never be used to source controversial claims, though. ~ Rob₁₃ 09:01, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

Really? Most of the stories about sportspeople I have seen in the Mail (admittedly this is coloured by the fact that I actively seek to avoid both sports and the Mail) appear to be salacious gossip. Guy (Help!) 21:46, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

@JzG: Whoops! I intended to go grab some example articles to show you, but I realized I've accidentally conflated the Daily Mail with the Daily News. The latter has very useful sports coverage (see, for instance, Ian Allen (gridiron football)). The former, I'm not too familiar with. I've struck my comment. ~ Rob₁₃ 12:18, 4 February 2017 (UTC)

• support. If you had asked me before this, I would have said it was excluded as a tabloid, not a newspaper, and nowhere near being a reliable source. But if it needs clarifying with a formal prohibition and guideline then I support it.--JohnBlackburne_deeds 21:43, 1 February 2017 (UTC)
• Support for anything to do with current affairs. I have just had to correct a wild assertion at Brexit in which an editor cited a DM claim that a vote approving the first reading of a Bill means that the Bill has been passed. This is beyond incompetent journalism.

References

1. Tapsfield, James; Sculthorpe, Tim (1 February 2017). "Historic moment for Britain as the Brexit Bill is PASSED by MPs despite desperate bid by more than 100 Remoaners to block Article 50 from being triggered". Daily Mail.

• Oppose Meet every aspect of WP:NEWSORG--Shrike (talk) 14:49, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

Um, WP:NEWSORG is information about how to treat sources from news organizations. It doesn't define what a news organization is, let alone define what a reliable news organization is. You may want to read that link before you try to use it in this way again. MjolnirPants Tell me all about it. 16:05, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose Not every story DM publishes are unreliable, and a blanklet ban neglects undisputed articles on actual news stories, sports coverage, etc. Any DM article that is unreliable, disputed, etc should be dealt with on a case by case basis, as with other tabloid-style news outlets. Speaking as an Australian, the Australian version of the Daily Mail does contain junk, but it also publishes serious local news and sport stories as well and also runs exclusive stories, and in a relatively small media market like Australia, where DM is almost always in the top 5 most read news outlets, outright banning Daily Mail Australia as a source would lead to less verifiability available and ignores any good journalism they do. -- Whats new? 02:44, 5 February 2017 (UTC)
• Support unconditionally, to say the DM is garbage is a vast understatement. It's a good read if you're looking for salacious libel or right-wing propaganda, but that's about as far as it goes. Laurdecl 03:30, 5 February 2017 (UTC)
• Support right-wing tabloid trash BrandNewEditor2017 (talk) 19:31, 4 February 2017 (UTC)
  • Note: Just thought I'd point out that this !vote is the 3rd edit from the editor above. I have my suspicions about either someone with a POV to push or a SOCK. I do not believe this !vote should be given serious consideration in the count. The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 19:43, 4 February 2017 (UTC)
• Support The Daily Mail is untrustworthy even by tabloid standards. Revolting rag and not one that any entity claiming to be an encyclopaedia should be citing for anything other than what the DM says about itself. Spartaz 09:32, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

Impact assessment ?

It's increasingly common for real-world legislatures to be required to consider impact assessments when considering new regulations or legislation. In that spirit, do we have an idea of an impact assessment for the proposal under discussion? How many citations do we have in all to the Mail at the moment, and quantitatively what sort of things are those references for? Jheald (talk) 06:39, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

There are just under 12,000 links to the Daily Mail. Not all of them are links to footnotes but then not all footnotes for the DM are linked to the article. So my guess it is in the thousands, and mostly source non-controversial facts. I have no idea how much of this can be replaced. The DM provides detailed coverage of crime, celebrities and sports which may not be in other sources. Also, we need to establish what sources are acceptable. It would be wasteful to change all the references to the Daily Express, which is almost identical to the DM and find it is banned as well. TFD (talk) 07:02, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

The DM should not be used for coverage of crime or celebrities, period, they have been known to outright fabricate facts/quotes/even whole interviews. As for sports, any coverage they have made will invariably also be covered in other sources, unless it is gossip claptrap which has no business being on wikipedia. There will be some adjustment, but almost all of it will be for the better.  InsertCleverPhraseHere  08:34, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

Can you name any source at all which is reliable for "celebrity gossip" in the current universe? Note also that most of the complaints are about the content of headlines, and not about the content of articles otherwise. As I have iterated, on science and medical stories, every single newspaper studied relies on press releases, and errors are invariably found in those press releases. No major newspapers even have proofreaders any more. Ruling out the DM for using those same press releases is thus inane. Headlines are not part of an actual article, and the fact is that Guardian headlines are just as apt as DM headlines to be inaccurate. And note finally that blacklisting one source will absolutely result in blacklisting many sources, and one ought to anticipate the furor over dealing with politicized sources on the I-P conflicts, etc. Better to not open that can of worms, in my considered opinion. Collect (talk) 15:51, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

"Note also that most of the complaints are about the content of headlines, and not about the content of articles otherwise." I'm afraid that is just not true. Many (most?) of the examples given in this thread are about the content, not their titles. You've made this claim more than once, and it's been dismissed more than once. – The Bounder (talk) 18:33, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

And Collect is, again, confused about how newspaper jobs and how newspapers work. Daily newspapers don't employ proofreaders; that function is covered by copy editors. This confusion isn't as bad as his absolute howler, his breathless claim that the New York Times had laid off all of their factcheckers: daily newspapers don't have factcheckers. I ran that last B.S. claim past an actual New York Times reporter, and he agreed that it was, in fact, B.S. I have no idea what his hand-waving about "press releases" is supposed to mean, unless he's attempting to confuse reprinted press releases with actually reported stories. --Calton | Talk 11:31, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

• I assess the impact of The Daily Mail on Misplaced Pages to be 100% bad. --Guy Macon (talk) 00:01, 28 January 2017 (UTC)
• If I had the power to revoke someone's ability to publish, DailyMail would be it. It is entirely unreliable. Anything that isn't fake would be backed by other sources. -- Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 00:04, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

• "The Mail's editorial model depends on little more than dishonesty, theft of copyrighted material, and sensationalism so absurd that it crosses into fabrication. Yes, most outlets regularly aggregate other publications' work in the quest for readership and material, and yes, papers throughout history have strived for the grabbiest headlines facts will allow. But what DailyMail.com does goes beyond anything practiced by anything else calling itself a newspaper. In a little more than a year of working in the Mail's New York newsroom, I saw basic journalism standards and ethics casually and routinely ignored. I saw other publications' work lifted wholesale. I watched editors at the most highly trafficked English-language online newspaper in the world publish information they knew to be inaccurate." ---Source: My Year Ripping Off the Web With the Daily Mail Online --Guy Macon (talk) 07:30, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

Not necessarily to dispute what is said there, but Gawker is not exactly a paragon of journalistic integrity either. Sławomir Biały (talk) 13:33, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

See Daily Mail's price for Gawker settlement: Words, not money "The lengthy statement to be added includes the Daily Mail's refutation of King's claim that the company depends on "dishonesty, theft of copyright material', and the publication of material we 'know to be inaccurate'." It goes on to say King worked "sporadic shifts at DailyMail.com" and "threatened a woman editor with violence and had to be repeatedly reminded about the need for proper attribution in his work."" The reporter who emitted the scandalous claims turns out to have rather clayish feet. Collect (talk) 20:45, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

Seriously? If he didn't have "feet of clay" he would have quit in less than an hour. Only a sleazeball is able to say what it is like working for The Daily Mail because only a sleazeball is willing to work for The Daily Mail. Besides, I don't believe what The Daily Mail says about an ex-employee any more than I believe what they wrote about George Clooney or Melania Trump.

If you seriously doubt the truth of what he wrote, how do you explain this? What it’s like to fall victim to the Mail Online’s aggregation machine

We need to ban The daily Mail not just because it knowingly lies, but also because anything published by the daily mail has a good chance of being a copyright violation. --Guy Macon (talk) 23:53, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

Yes, clearly it turns out that the Gawker story was so wrong that it had to be pulled--wait, it's still there, just with the addition of The Mail's "Letter to the Editor"-style response and the original writer's rebuttal. Gee, not as damning as you're trying to imply. --Calton | Talk 11:37, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

Did you know that Gawker is kindasorta dead? "Gawker.com is shutting down today, Monday 22nd August, 2016, some 13 years after it began and two days before the end of my forties. It is the end of an era." Few dead sites actually do much more than lie in Internet repose. Collect (talk) 14:38, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

Further to "fake news" allegations: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-38790254 Martin of Sheffield (talk) 11:56, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

Example (covering the Guardian, Independent, Daily Mail, and Times) In 2008, researchers at the Cardiff School of Journalism, UK, discovered that 60 percent of the articles in British newspapers the Daily Mail, the Guardian, the Times, the Daily Telegraph and the Independent had been copied from wire reports and press announcements issued by various corporations, businesses and universities. Three out of four such stories had also gone to print without being fact-checked, a trend that seems widespread: in 2012, an audit sponsored by the European Observatory of Journalism found factual errors in approximately half of all news stories published in Switzerland, Italy and the United States :60% - and including the "elite" newspapers (Guardian and Times) in the same group. Collect (talk) 16:42, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

Yes, this is a very widespread problem. The effort to ban the Mail seems misplaced. As I said in my comment, what we need is shoring up our guideline against the increasing problem of poor quality control in "reliable" sources. The Mail is merely the lowest hanging fruit of an orchard of journalistic malfeasance. Sławomir Biały (talk) 16:46, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

The results so far

We are now 7 days away from the normal 30-day RfC closing.

So far it looks like we have 46 support !votes and 24 oppose !votes. (My rough count; a more careful count should be made checking for dupes)

There were 7 !votes in the last 5 days (all suppport) and zero !votes in the last 2 days.

(Crossposted to Misplaced Pages:Administrators' noticeboard#Daily Mail RfC). --Guy Macon (talk) 17:54, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

Have any of the "supports" cited Misplaced Pages policy or precedent to support their proposed blanket ban of a major mass-circulation print and online newspaper? In contrast, many of the "oppose" opinions do cite policy to support their position. I think it would have been better for the proposer to have gone and had a private fume about the Daily Mail on their own time and not wasted everyone's time here (both supporters and opposers) by proposing something that is, basically, unenforceable and against Misplaced Pages policy. Reading the ridiculous tirades by those with an over-obsession about the Daily Mail has provided some amusement though: like the proposer comparing it to the house newspaper of the Nazi party and the above vote summarizer claiming "only a sleazeball is willing to work for The Daily Mail". Tiptoethrutheminefield (talk) 16:35, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

I stand by my assertion that only a sleazeball is willing to work for The Daily Mail. I also assert that only a sleazeball scientist is willing to become a house scientist for one of the tobacco companies and author studies about smoking being safe, and that only a sleazeball medical doctor (I am looking at you, Dr. Oz) touts homeopathic remedies. Res ipsa loquitur -- the thing speaks for itself.

As for Misplaced Pages policy, the policy that the supporters cite is Misplaced Pages:Identifying reliable sources, specifically "Questionable sources are those with a poor reputation for checking the facts", "Sources that publish fake news are not reliable for facts or opinion", " engages in fact-checking and has a reputation for accuracy". this page is filled with dozens of specific examples of The Daily Mail failing these criteria. And many of the oppose !votes agree that TDM has a poor reputation for checking the facts.

You claim that "many of the 'oppose' opinions do cite policy to support their position". Please list those policies. --Guy Macon (talk) 21:16, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

Point of order: It should be noted that the addition of Sources that publish fake news are not reliable for facts or opinion is recent and is currently being discussed on the relevant talk. TimothyJosephWood 23:25, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

Thanks! I didn't realize that. I struck that part of my response; I only want to cite long-established and non-contentious policies here. --Guy Macon (talk) 05:20, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

@Tiptoethrutheminefield I am a bit confused, I don't see Oppose vote!s citing policy above. I've just had a read through the entire section above and have not found a single instance of someone citing policy in an oppose vote above (I might have missed something of course). On the contrary, nearly everyone admits that the Mail's reputation for fact checking is terrible, admit that they often print false material and then go on to argue that we should somehow try not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Most say that while some of the Mail's publications are terrible, some are good and worthwhile. However, if we are going to be honest, nearly everyone here, (oppose or support) agrees that the reputation for fact checking is terrible, and there are many instances cited above that show blatant printing of known false information or outright fabrication of interviews that did not happen. Given these facts, how can we suppose that editors are to know if the DM is being honest this time? How do you know that the interview that was cited actually happened and that the DM didn't fabricate it as they have done before? The short answer is that we can't, that is why WP policy doesn't allow sources that have a reputation for printing false information, and have a reputation for not checking their facts before printing. If nearly everyone, oppose or support, is in agreement that they don't check their facts and are inaccurate, the answer is simple, they are not a reliable source and should not be used on Misplaced Pages.

How restricting the DM on wiki actually works is a different story. We can add it to the blacklist, so that sources containing their URL can't be added, or we could simply note it on one of the policy pages as being a non-reliable source, and then citations can be removed on a case by case basis. That's up to the closers, and likely a future RfC, but I think it is clear given the discussion above that nearly everyone is in agreement on the fact that the DM is not reliable in many cases, even most of those opposing an outright ban.  InsertCleverPhraseHere  21:52, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

I don't think we will be seeing that list of policies cited by oppose !voters any time soon. They appear to be homeopathic policies... :) --Guy Macon (talk) 08:24, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

I specifically cited policies, as well as actual studies of newspaper usage of press releases. That the people who call the DM the "Daily Heil" seem to feel personal animus is sufficient to ban a journal is, I fear, not supported by actual published studies. I also note that the very same people who ask that it be banned have done so repeatedly in the past, and that the upshot has always been that no newspaper is a "reliable source" for celebrity gossip, and that the headlines for every newspaper are designed to get readers, and only the body of the article is what counts. I also note that actual data is superior to anecdotal hatred of any source, and that my position is the same for many other unpopular journals of all ilks. Collect (talk) 12:47, 1 February 2017 UTC)

When I said "Oppose" I quoted the WP:IRS guideline. Now you're quoting a different section re reputation. I expect that any big entity has a bad reputation in some quarters; these are some reasons I say that The Daily Mail has a good reputation in some other quarters: according to peers, to other reliable sources, and to Misplaced Pages. (1) British Press Awards has declared it National Newspaper Of The Year at least six times; to take a recent year for an example (2014) its journalists were recognized as Young Journalist Of The Year, Sports Journalist Of The Year, Interviewer Of The Year Pop, Columnist Of The Year Pop. The Mail On Sunday and the web site have been winners too, but maybe the ban proposal isn't about them (there's some "muddle" about what the ban proposal is about). (2) I checked the Misplaced Pages entries of current Mail columnists -- Baz Bamigboye, Craig Brown, Alex Brummer, Stephen Glover, Max Hastings, Dominic Lawson, Quentin Letts, Richard Littlejohn, Jan Moir, Bel Mooney, Andrew Pierce, Amanda Platell, Martin Samuel, Tom Utley, Sarah Vine -- and saw a few had been accused of something (distasteful, hatchet job, hypocrisy, plagiarism) but not that their reputation in general was poor. As for op-ed columnists: reality-TV judge Simon Cowell + former communist Claire Fox + Google/Alphabet executive Eric Schmidt + politician David Cameron etc. are controversial, but to some of us that's still okay. This is relevant because the proposal would ban even attributed opinions, though of course there's some muddle about that too. (3) from a source with a better reputation than gawker (a New Yorker article): "The Mail pours money into its product, triple-commissioning features and flooding doorsteps with reporters when its competitors are content, or compelled, to rely on wire reports.", (and quoting a former editor of The Independent) "Even if a story has been somewhere else, you’ll find it the next day in the Mail, done bigger, very often done better ...". (4) Quoting WP:IRS again: "One signal that a news organization engages in fact-checking and has a reputation for accuracy is the publication of corrections." As we've seen above, the Mail does that, so some of the supporters' weak anecdotes are actually evidence for the opposers. (5) those 12,000 cites indicate what many editors think, maybe they'd rather outnumber the 46 !votes for "support". Peter Gulutzan (talk) 17:38, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

Let's not pretend that one side has clear policy on its side and the other doesn't. WP:RS contrasts mainstream publications with self-published blogs and wesbites, and WP:NEWSORG is quite clear in its current presumption:

• "'News reporting' from well-established news outlets is generally considered to be reliable for statements of fact (though even the most reputable reporting sometimes contains errors)"

The issue is whether the Mail is an exception to that guideline, not one about policy or guidelines per se. Plenty of people, myself included, have argued that current RS and other rules re tabloid journalism, due weight, bias in sources, context etc and editorial common sense deal with the problem, such as it is (and I admit there's quite a big one with the Mail as a whole, but as there is, to an even greater degree sometimes, with plenty of media sources). And beyond that of course, what the proposers are asking for is a entirely new policy, based around a one-paper blacklist, possibly even enforced automatically so that this one paper literally cannot be cited. An entirely reasonable conclusion here that the Mail is pretty much best avoided, for various reasons, along perhaps with a slight rewrite of the main RS guidelines to stress the problems with using media sources, is a very different thing from an out-of-the-blue formal, outright ban on just one mid-market paper, enforced by technology, with no exceptions. There's a huge hurdle to get over to justify that. N-HH talk/edits 22:00, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

Point of order: if those 12,000 citations are allowed to outnumber the 46 support !votes, then all the other citations to all the other sources should be allowed to outnumber the 24 oppose !votes. --Guy Macon (talk) 22:38, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

Citations don't !vote.  InsertCleverPhraseHere  23:14, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

"Ain't ya glad that shoes don't talk?" Martinevans123 (talk) 23:21, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

• Help is on the way. Can we all agree that, once several uninvolved administrators have evaluated the results of this RfC and posted a decision, everybody involved will accept the consensus and abide by that decision? --Guy Macon (talk) 14:06, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

No. Prior discussions always allowed the DM as a source, and it appears a few did not "abide" by those discussions. Did you not know how many times the "Ban the Daily Mail" proposal has been made in the past? And "Ban Fox News" and the like? As some did not accept prior consensus, I fear saying "but this consensus is different" is not likely to be a Misplaced Pages policy. Collect (talk) 14:30, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

To be fair, the discussions each time they come up have gotton more and more towards the 'The Daily Mail is awful' because in the meantime the Mail has printed more crap, been sued etc. Its been going on for years. At some point (absent a severe editorial policy change) it was always going to tip over to the default position of 'this is not a reliable source for anything, even things we previously would have given it a pass on' as it starts to fail the basic reliability tests. I dont think anyone above can seriously argue it has a track record (in the last 20 years anyway) for fact-checking and accuracy. If the default position as a result of this discussion is 'The Daily Mail should not be used without explicit justification' it would make the encyclopedia a better place. Only in death does duty end (talk) 14:41, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

@Collect: So, you're saying you're not willing to abide by consensus if you don't agree with it? Don't take this the wrong way, but we generally indef block those types of editors (that's not a threat). I don't think that's what you meant, but you need to clarify if you want others to understand you. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 14:43, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

I said nothing of the sort, kind person. Note that I find zero sources usable at all for "celebrity gossip" which is what many others agree with. As for using medical and scientific press releases, I provided a study pointing out that no newspaper really writes such articles on its own, and they all use press releases. And that essentially no newspapers proofread or fact check any of their own articles. Lastly, that the only egregious errors generally pointed out are in headlines, and we should bar headlines as being used to assert that any claim is made within an article from any source. In short, that the proper finding should be "No Celebrity Gossip. No Headlines" in Misplaced Pages sourcing. This answers all the issues about the Daily Mail, and a lot of other problematic claims. Collect (talk) 14:58, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

Accurate or not, you know on a realistic level no proposal to ban celebrity gossip is going to pass. (The headlines one can probably be put in guidance however) Too many editors enjoy stalking updating their fave celeb. Only in death does duty end (talk) 15:08, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

I said nothing of the sort, kind person. Actually, you did. Guy asked if everyone will abide by consensus and you answered "No." That being said, I accept that you didn't mean you will not abide by consensus, though you still haven't explained your answer in a way that makes sense. I understand what your argument is above, though I find a few problems with it. For example, you said "no newspapers proofread or fact check any of their own articles." and that is just plainly false. One of the criteria for news sources is that the outlet have a reputation for proofreading and fact checking their articles. It's what an Editor's job is, in those places. Now, I understand this is true for press releases, but it's false for most news articles. I agree with what you are saying about celebrity gossip, unless the gossip is relevant and can be cited to something more reliable that "a good reporter's private source". I also agree with what you said about headlines, although again with the caveat that headlines can be used to inform questions of focus and tone we may have about the article, which is more of a meta-concern. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 15:34, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

Um - I fear you have some level of comprehension difficulty. I never said I was not going to abide by consensus - I have abided by the slew of consensi in the past about the Daily Mail. I pointed out that there is no history of those seeking once again to ban the DM of abiding by prior consensus. And the sad fact is that "proofreader" and "fact checker" positions have long departed in this era when over 60% of newspaper jobs have disappeared and their focus is on internet clickbait. "Copy editors are being bought out or forced out; they are dying and not being replaced." Not to mention major newspapers with articles about "amphibious baseball pitchers" and the like. In 1912, the CSM reported that the Titanic passengers were all safe, and the ship "in tow." In 1916, the New York Times reported that the new president would be Charles Evans Hughes. In 2006, USAToday reported that all thirteen miners in the Sago Mine disaster wee safe. 12 died. On 2004, the NY Post reported that Kerry had chosen Gephardt as his running mate. But now computers with interesting ideas of their own are nothing compared to headline writers whose sole job is to attract readers. Total NYT employee count is only about 3,500. It was well over 5,000 only four years ago. More examples available on request. Collect (talk) 16:36, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

If you can't engage without insulting other editors, you're going to end up blocked.

I pointed out that Guy asked a question. A question to which you responded "No." There's no level of comprehension difficulty that would allow me to operate a computer and yet still not understand that. If you weren't answering his question, but saying "no" in response to something else you should have made it clear what you were responding to, instead of the yes/no question that immediately preceded you stating "No". If you weren't responding to Guy at all, you should have indented your comment appropriately and done something (like quoting or summarizing whatever you were responding to) to indicate to what you were responding. Don't think for one second that the fact that your comment was poorly worded reflects poorly upon any other editor here, and don't think for one second that gives you license to hurl childish insults.

I'm not responding to the rest of your rant because I've responded to it below. But I will say that if you think that citing a handful of mistakes makes all news media inaccurate by definition, you probably have no business getting involved in discussions like these. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 16:46, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

I apologize if you feel I insulted you. Guy asked: "Can we all agree that, once several uninvolved administrators have evaluated the results of this RfC and posted a decision, everybody involved will accept the consensus and abide by that decision?"

I did not say "Collect will not abide by consensus" at all. I stated that experience here shows that such a prognostication about "everyone else" is not of much value. I trust you see where the misreading might have occurred?

And the fact that a scientific study showed errors in 60% of articles including The Times and The Guardian does show that "fact checking" is not done even for those journals. And that study was on full articles, not headlines. Collect (talk) 16:59, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

I didn't "feel" insulted, I'd have to care what you think for that. But you blatantly obviously accused me of being stupid, so (unless you're once again meaning apparently the exact opposite of what you said) it's pretty damn clear you meant to.

I did not say "Collect will not abide by consensus" at all. That's right. You said "No." Directly after the question was asked. If you read the question, you might notice it's a yes or no question. I really don't understand what's so difficult about saying "Okay, I misspoke. I didn't mean that." I did it myself, just at the bottom of this thread.

As to the newspaper thing, unless you can prove that "60% don't fact check" is the same thing as "100% don't fact check" then once again: I've already addressed that. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 17:13, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

Actually there is fairly credible evidence that isnt the case anymore. A lot of print newspapers have eliminated their factchecking positions/staff. So while basic 'is this spelled correctly' proofreading is done, factual proofreading is not. Or at least, not by dedicated staff members. 'Editors' these days are not the editors of yore. Only in death does duty end (talk) 15:47, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

I should have been more specific: It was the "no newspapers" part that I was disagreeing with. If it said "most newspapers" I'd be in agreement. And yes, things were better back in the day. God, I'm old... ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 16:31, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

Michael Marshall is touring with a talk on bad PR which identifies a lot of the reasons for this RfC, and why the situation has changed in recent years. Mail staffers have to turn out more stories per day than average for all newspapers, they tend to be young, in their first job in the industry, and they only stay a couple of years before moving on to a less awful job. The PR agencies know all of this so spoon feed them (and all journalists, but them especially) copy written in the house style. The rule of thumb is: if a company name is mentioned in the fourth paragraph, that company probably paid for the story. Mail staffers, especially, are harangued to meet targets, and pushing through a press release has pretty much no negative consequences, whereas not getting enough stories out, does. The Mail Online publishes more articles every day than any other newspaper website. It's clickbait farming, basically, and the fuel is PR (and of course the sidebar of shame). Guy (Help!) 17:25, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

That appears to sum up your position - but how do you feel about the statistics that all of the newspapers use press releases, often with minor rewriting? Oughtn't we bar The Times and The Guardian for doing what is objectionable at the Daily Mail? I fear I find the logic inherent in this RfC applies equally to all media, and any article which is likely to have come from any Press Release should be barred. I still abide by my suggestion that zero sources are "reliable" for celebrity gossip, and that headlines be estopped from being used for claims of what an article itself claims. This would keep out a lot of Daily Mail cites, and also cites from any media providing "celebrity gossip", stop the practice of using "multiple cites" which clearly derive from the same press release, and the use of headlines as supporting stronger claims than the body of an article supports. Fair enough? Collect (talk) 17:44, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

The summary that Consensus has agreed to a ban does not really capture the views expressed.Martinlc (talk) 20:47, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

Analysis of location of Ai

This is the source I'm talking about -- http://www.biblearchaeology.org/file.axd?file=The+Search+for+Joshuas+Ai.pdf --- it's a paper that was published to the journal of Critical Issues in Early Israelite History, a peer-reviewed journal. It has been cited multiple times in scholarly material, such as the 2014 book 'The Authors of the Deuteronomic History' by Brian Neil Peterson, page 94. It is also cited in the scholarly work 'The Israelite conquest : history or myth? : an achaeological evaluation of the Israelite conquest during the periods of Joshua and the Judges' -- in page 159. It is cited in this paper --- http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1179/0334435515Z.00000000044. These are a few examples to show it has been cited a number of times in many scholarly works -- all the sources that cite it can be found here in Google Scholar https://scholar.google.ca/scholar?cites=13627279837402623804&as_sdt=2005&sciodt=0,5&hl=en --- the author of the paper in question is Bryant Wood who has a PhD in Syro-Palestinian Archaeology and was the excavation director for the ancient site Khirbet el-Maqatir, which is a site that is part of the main discussion in the source that I'm asking evaluation for. In other words, the author of the paper is a PhD in the field, the paper is peer-reviewed and published into a respected archaeological and academic journal, and it has been cited many times in scholarly material. I think this easily qualifies WP:IRS. Any thoughts on agreeing or disagreeing?Korvex (talk) 04:16, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

The edit itself, which Korvex doesn't challenge, is "although most archaeologists support the identification of Ai with et-Tell, there is some disagreement. Bryant Wood has identified it with Khirbet el-Maqatir but this has not gained acceptance."

The paper in question, by Creationist archaeologist Bryant Wood, is in fact cited in those two sources. He wants to add a link to the literalist website with which Wood is associated, containing a copy of the paper. Wood was indeed excavation director of a dig funded and organised by the biblical literalist grolup Associates for Biblical Research where Wood is its research director. I'd say that in this article and similar ones we should never use Wood on his own. The question is whether to use the link. Is it required to link to the original source where your sources already cite it? Doug Weller talk 06:40, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

We should accept the judgment of the editors of the journal about the reliability of the article rather than second-guess them. The journal would not for example allow a creationist to present the world was created 6,000 years ago as a fact or even as a credible theory. However it seems here that the issue is not reliable sourcing but what weight to provide to an opinion expressed by the author which is not dependant on creationism. In that case, we need a secondary source that explains the weight that view has in order to include it. And if it has no weight, it should not be included. The fact the paper has been cited merely means that other others find its facts reliable, not that they endorse its opinions. TFD (talk) 06:58, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

@TFD: I'm afraid you have been misled as it isn't a journal at all. Zero 07:12, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

Some corrections:
(1) Critical Issues in Early Israelite History is not a journal at all. It was published as a supplement of the Bulletin for Biblical Research, a publication of the Institute for Biblical Research, which "offer to evangelical biblical scholars and Ph.D. students a venue for creative, reflective and serious biblical scholarship". I.e., it publishes articles by people who pass the right ideological test. The volume is the outcome of a weekend conference and I can't find any evidence of peer review.
(2) The paper http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1179/0334435515Z.00000000044 by a famous Israeli archaeologist definitely does not cite it, regardless of what Google scholar says. In fact it doesn't cite any of the 12 authors of Critical Issues for any their work.
(3) "The Israelite conquest : history or myth?" which Korvex strangely does not provide a URL for, is a Masters thesis, so not even citable itself.
(4) Assistant professor of Old Testament Brian Neil Peterson works with the Associates for Biblical Research (Bryant Wood's outfit), so he is hardly a supportive example.
Altogether the case for this source is very weak. Zero 07:07, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

References

1. Mullins, Robert (2015). "The Emergence of Israel in Retrospect". In Levy, Thomas E.; Schneider, Thomas; Propp, William H.C. (eds.). Israel's Exodus in Transdisciplinary Perspective: Text, Archaeology, Culture, and Geoscience. Springer. p. 519. ISBN 978-3319047676. Retrieved 26 January 2017.
2. Hawkins, Ralph (2015). How Israel Became a People. Abingdon. p. 109. ISBN 978-1426754876. Retrieved 26 January 2017.

Actually, this link -- http://uir.unisa.ac.za/bitstream/handle/10500/5727/thesis_kennedy_t.pdf?sequence=1 absolutely DOES cite the paper in question, in page 159. This is an exact quote from the paper;

"The final site to be evaluated as a possible candidate for Ai is the only one of these sites at which excavations are presently being conducted. The site of Khirbet elMaqatir is located approximately 1 kilometer west of et-Tell and approximately 1.5 kilometers southeast of Beitin, near the town of Deir Dibwan. The site occupies about 2.5 to 3 acres, but the Late Bronze Age settlement may be slightly smaller (Kennedy 2011: 17; Wood 2008: 230)."

As you can see, the citation at the very end of the quote I provided cites a paper from 2011 that was written by himself (Titus Kennedy) -- in fact it's citing the very paper we're talking about. The second citation is from "Wood 2008: 230" -- Bryant Wood's only publication in 2008 with a 230th page that talks about Khirbet el-Maqatir is in fact 'The Search for Joshua's Ai' by Bryant Wood, the very source in question for reliability. The citation is abysmally clear. Zero strangely says its not citable because it's a thesis, although the Misplaced Pages website has its very own page on how to cite a thesis -- Template:Cite thesis. The paper is also clearly peer-reviewed, as peer-review is simply various experts reviewing a paper before publication, and the editors of the paper 'The Search For Joshua's Ai' are listed clearly on the top of it -- Richard S. Hess, Gerald A. Klingbeil, and Paul J. Ray Jr. These guys are good scholars. So the paper is in fact peer-reviewed and has been cited in several scholarly papers as shown. There are more papers and scholarly books that cite it that I haven't mentioned yet, and an example would include the book of Phillippe Guillaume's titled 'Land, Credit and Crisis: Agrarian Finance in the Hebrew Bible' -- I can't find the exact page where the book cites 'The Search for Joshua's Ai', although I can clearly see its in the bibliography. As for the 'creationism' Doug talks about -- I've already been over this with Doug and that is absolutely irrelevant as creationism has nothing to do with the source at hand, and the fact that Wood believes in creationism is just about as relevant to this issue as Newton's belief in alchemy is with the reliability of his work on gravity. Doug, your attempt to dismiss anything because the authors pertain to a worldview that is absolutely irrelevant to the reliability of the paper in question or even the field we're discussing of archaeology is a pure Ad hominem. Wood is in fact a PhD archaeologist with a good amount of published work in the field and the excavation director of Khirbet el-Maqatir. Just imagine if an Atheist academic was barred from publishing in a peer-reviewed journal because he believes the universe randomly arose, there would be an outcry and accusations of bigotry all over the place, rightfully so. So the only conclusion I see here is that the paper is a scholarly and peer-reviewed paper written by a scholar in the field that has been cited in numerous scholarly works. If a peer-reviewed scholarly book can reliably cite the paper in question, then why can't a Misplaced Pages page?Korvex (talk) 23:41, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

I'm afraid that you have a very poor knowledge of both Misplaced Pages policy and academic publishing. Templates are just macros for convenient formatting of text and they don't establish policy. To see the policy on Masters' theses, read WP:RS: "Masters dissertations and theses are considered reliable only if they can be shown to have had significant scholarly influence." Also, having editors is quite different from having peer-reviewers. Guillaume does indeed cite Wood, for one sentence: "Maybe ancient Bethel was sited elsewhere, at el-Bireh rather than Beitin, and Beitin was Beth-Aven" (p227). Finally, scientists have religious beliefs or lack of beliefs like everyone else, but it doesn't mean that anything goes. Seeking to understand the universe in terms of physical laws is the overwhelming mainstream position for both believing and non-believing scientists. Ignoring physical evidence and believing in the physically impossible, such as a universal flood or an earth only a few thousand years old, is beyond the pale. Claiming that having such beliefs isn't relevant to someone's status as an archaeologist is simply preposterous. Zero 00:59, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

edited books are dicey sources - sometimes some of the chapters can be reliable, but so much depends on the agenda of the publisher and the book editors or editor (who is often the person who invites authors to submit chapters). Seeing where this one comes from - a semi-scholarly organization with a very clear theological agenda, we should not use this source for something as controversial as archeology related to the Bible, unless it with attribution and appropriate framing - but it is even better to use mainstream sources in order to give content originating in such sources appropriate WEIGHT. Jytdog (talk) 01:44, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

I've unfortunately been gone for a few days, but I am now back. Zero, editors are in fact not technically the exact same thing as peer-reviewers, but what exactly is peer-review? Peer-review is when multiple academics review your research in order to see whether or not it can be published, and that's exactly what we have for Wood's paper with the 'editors' Richard S. Hess, Gerald A. Klingbeil, and Paul J. Ray Jr. One of the leading scholars in this field is James Hoffmeir, and he published a book called 'The Exodus and Wilderness Narratives' -- it didn't have peer-reviewers, rather it had two editors for its publication. Those two editors were Bill T. Arnold, and interestingly enough, the second one was Richard S. Hess, one of the exact three editors of Wood's publication. The briefness of Guillame's citation seems especially irrelevant to me, considering the citation I'm looking to use Wood's paper on the page Ai (Canaan) is also just as brief. And as noted earlier, the only thing preposterous about Wood's creationism is trying to use it in a field that's totally irrelevant to creationism such as archaeology, especially when Wood has a PhD in Syro-Palestinian Archaeology, which in and of itself should be vastly prioritized over his fringe views in an irrelevant subject. So it seems that this papers editors, which act just like peer-reviewers in this case as they did with Hoffmeir, as well as its publication to some theological-archaeological journal and having been cited in a number of scholarly works makes it more then good enough to get cited itself in the Misplaced Pages page.Korvex (talk) 22:26, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

Peer review is a formal process quite different from editing. When there is peer-review, the editor acts as intermediary between the authors and reviewers, keeping the identities of the reviewers secret from the authors. This helps to ensure that the reviewers are candid in their remarks. It is permitted for an editor to engage in depth with the content of an article but there is no assumption that he/she has even read it. Zero 23:17, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

I can't get my head around the idea that Creationism is irrelevant to archaeology. Do I really need to show what nonsense this is? When your religious beliefs affect your views of reality as much as Creationism/biblical literalism does, you end up with nonsense archaeology (usually called "cult archaeology" or "fringe archaeology", ranging from the Paluxy footprints (man and dinosaur had to be living at the same time) to the London Hammer and museums such as the Creation Evidence Museum. And of course to a mindset that makes it impossible for a Creationist archaeologist to acknowledge that archaeology might show that the Bible is incorrect. Doug Weller talk 12:19, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

Obviously, any sort of religious conviction will taint results in related sciences. I think I've seen some atheist/humanist academics who have expressed opinions on religious matters which seem to be driven by their personal beliefs as well.

There is a question, unfortunately, fairly common in the field of religion and the occult, regarding whether "peer-reviewed" journals which in some way advocate for a given position really meet WP:RS standards. I don't know exactly how to address that. It also seems to be, maybe to a lesser extent, relevant in pseudohistory as well, and I wouldn't mind seeing that field put under pseudoscience DS if that were possible.

Regarding the case for linking to the source, I don't necessarily see that much objection to doing so in general, particularly if, as is sometimes the case, there are misprints in the paper versions corrected in the online versions. Some of us might remember an article in The Atlantic that underwent a lot of post-printing changes. I guess the question here is whether doing so would give unwarranted apparent credibility to the source. On that basis, I guess I could see not using the link, although if there were any subsequent changes or similar ways in which the online is "better" than the print, that might weigh to the contrary. John Carter (talk) 16:07, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

Reliability of s:The Imperial Gazetteer of India (cont'd)

restoring the post, as there was no conclusion.

Hello all,

It seems the editor User:Sitush feels that the source s:The Imperial Gazetteer of India is biased, or as he says "unreliable". I have found a similar discussion with this editor from a few months ago, where the previous opposition made a few good points (albeit in a crude manner), and cannot find any valid rebuttals by Sitush in that thread before it was derailed. I note that at least one editor asked why the source was unreliable and did not get a reasonable response.

I also note that many of the sources discussed, including the one provided by Sitush himself in the discussion above, all are in general agreement with the text that is being cited in the article Phulkian sardars (Bhati Rao of Jaisalmar was a Rajput , and this was the branch responsible for the Sidhu Jats). Since it does seem that Sitush is of a religious denomination that may have some conflict with the legitimate content that is supported by British sources, in no small part due to the history and evolution of British rule in India, I am asking if others can objectively contest whether the Imperial Gazetteer of India is unreliable.

It seems this is a good source used for many articles involving India, and provides us with some confidence that there is corroboration of claims from a non-ethnic source. Is this wrong? I note this source is also on wikisource. Surely the editor has erred? Also, it seems William Wilson Hunter (the visionary behind this compendium) isn't somebody whose life work we dismiss with blanket arguments like "Raj sources not reliable"? I have not seen anything from the opposition that provides strong counter claims to what is provided in the multitude of sources supporting the content he disputes.

Some articles I've found that this source is used in:

• Richard Burn (indologist)
• North≤western Provinces
• Great Famine of 1876-78
• Agra Province
• Imperial Service Troops
• Presidencies and provinces of British India
• Saiyid Khurd

(etc)

It really does seem this is a good quality source that the opposition does not like due to the content, and not the source.

edit: Hello everyone. It seems User:Sitush and User:Bishonen are ignoring Misplaced Pages ettiquette, where item (3) on What is Wikisource? article clearly states wikisource provides wp:RS, thus refuting alleged bias claimed by these editors. Can we please get some action on this matter? It seems Bishonen was involved previously as well, and as an administrator he is ignoring the established criteria of Wikisource. I also find it very curious that Bishonen called following protocol 'disruptive editing'. I will be posting htis on the administrator's noticeboard as wel. Thank you.

• Misplaced Pages:Wikisource identifies three categories of sources it holds. It says that, of the many things Wikisource contains, some are reliable sources. And if you head to the original full page of which that is just a summary, here, and from there to here, you'll see that Wikisource contains a lot of sources in various categories. So a source contained in Wikisource might be a (1), might be a (2) might be a (3), or might be something else which is not included in that brief summary. It does not say that everything held by Wikisource is a (3) and that everything held in Wikisource is a reliable source. Also, "reliable source" is not a yes/no option, and what are reliable sources for some things are not reliable for others - they need to be individually assessed in the context in which they are to be used. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 17:43, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

Hi, well, nothing stated in that source is disputed by the others in the previous RSN discussion. The source originally used by User:Sitush (given here) to argue that the original content was invalid (on the basis of "Raj source"), was self-contradicting because the "non-Raj" source said the same things as the sources used previously (which are now also supported by the s:Imperial Gazetteer of India, which was not used in the prior discussion).

I also find it curious that User:Bishonen attacked my english here, when he deemed the previous editor's concerns over Sitush's ethnicity as a personal attack even though it seemed more about conflicts of interest.

Such a conflict is apparent here, where User:Sitush and User:Bishonen claim the sources are not reliable, yet have been supported by a multitude of references.

User:SageRad suggested that criticising others' English comprehension was a personal attack, and the previous editor was banned as a result. As an administrator who was intimately involved in the previous situation, User:Bishonen should know better than to use the same tactics as the previous editor, especially when others deemed it as a personal attack (I do not, but a violation is a violation).

Is this not a double standard, where the perpetrators are now behaving in the same manner as their previous opposition? Sitush wastes no time attacking other authors, and I have yet to see any body of work that he has produced that validates his stance. He seemingly disregards any source that is British, even though for this specific tribe (Phulkian), the most reliable of sources would be British (given their alliance as early as 1803&endash;predating the cis-Sutlej states by two years)

I think what you need to decide is whether you want to use this noticeboard to try to get a consensus on the reliability of this source for the context in which you want to use it, or whether you want to use it to attack two other editors. The former is what this board is for. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 18:27, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

Hello User:Boing! said Zebedee, thank you for engaging.

I disagree that I am attacking anyone. I think if anyone is being attacked, it was User:Bishonen attacking my english comprehension (as the other editor did towards Sitush, resulting in him being banned) instead of demonstrating the insufficiency of the source.

• Now I will get back on point regarding reliability of the sources.

It is simple, really. One day, User:Sitush decided to delete legitimate content using "Raj sources unreliable" (a recurring theme if you inspect his edit history). Someone obviously took offense to that, as it is an attack on the reliability of the documentation of their family history.

As stated above, User:Sitush was originally challenged on this point (re: what made the cited content unreliable) by User:SageRad, and he did not muster an acceptable response, which presumably frustrated the (now banned) editor into asking about his english comprehension.

I think it is being charitable to say that Sitush's response to User:SageRad was arrogant, as it attacked prominent authors (among them James Mill, who fathered one of the greatest liberal philosophers of our time John Stuart Mill), but never answered the original question about what made the content of the source insufficient.

• Was the (now banned) editor's response arrogant, as well? Sure, but it seems they correctly point out that the source Sitush provided to demonstrate the (removed) source's purported unreliability actually contradicted his point, as it contained support for the content that he removed

I find it hard to believe that the British would sacrifice the high quality of s:The Imperial Gazetteer of India (evidenced by its archival as a wikisource) by exercising bias (and thus being "unreliable") on this specific matter, especially after reading the source User:Sitush provides as evidence for the unreliability.

Secondly, I want to say, as the previous (now banned) editor also did, that this entire fiasco does feel like an embodiment of the history cited in s:The Imperial Gazetteer of India is on display here. Simply put, there were a select group of people who were fortunate enough to be allied with the British:

But the British Government, established at Delhi since 1803,

intervened with an offer of protection to all the CIS-SUTLEJ STATES;
and Dhanna Singh gladly availed himself of the promised aid, being

one of the first chieftains to accept British protection and control.

To suggest that the Phulkian sardars' alliance with the British did not result in the majority of their history also being told by the British isn't reasonable. This alliance resulted in the Phulkians fighting Muslims, Hindus, and even Sikhs! (see below)

This clan did not like Maharaja Ranjit Singh (an alleged Sikh), and were suspicious of his plans after his friendliness with Muslims (whose history of griefing Gurus was still fresh at that time).

Thus, it is not a personal attack to show concern for removed content that is rigorously and multiply-sourced when the opposing editors are (likely) of faiths who are still sensitive about the events that occurred during the times documented by the s:The Imperial Gazetteer of India.

Lastly, and at the risk of belabouring the main point: the content unjustifiably removed by Sitush has multiple sources (the most recent of which is a wikisource).

After analysing the source provided by Sitush provided in the previous RSN, it is difficult to fathom that multiple "Raj sources" are all incorrect on this matter when they are consistent with what he originally provided.

In light of this, how can a reasonable person not infer the editing behaviour surrounding this content as a "Sitush knows best " attitude? I feel I have taken a measured response that addresses the faulty criticism levelled by Sitush against s:The Imperial Gazzetteer of India.

This is not an attack on Sitush or Bishonen. Rather, it is an assessment of former & latter's behaviour on the earlier and current RSN respectively.

This response is simple Baconian induction of what they've provided.

I believe what was added originally was impartial and stuck to reliable sources, which are only disputed by those of religious denominations that were at conflict with the British (and consequently, the Phulkians) at the time.

I felt that what was added yesterday only emphasised the correctness of the content originally removed by Sitush and Bishonen approximately three months ago. Thank you for your time— Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.76.118.151 (talk) 16:36, January 22, 2017

References

1. Where I am charitably-interpreting his response as his justification for deeming the content he removed as unreliable.
2. "Ferozepur District". The Imperial Gazetteer of India . Vol. 12. 1908. p. 90.
3. ANI for Bishonen, but you get what I'm saying

• In general 'historical' sources are unreliable in some areas due to the changing culture, further research, distance and time from events giving a more accurate and broader view, classified documents may have been released etc etc. For historical India, most contemporary sources have been superseded by newer ones. A historical source may be accurate for the opinion at the time, but not necessarily for facts (in fact more than likely to be not, given the historic bias in most publications). This is why RSN requires three things: Article, reference, content supported by reference. Please provide these three with a short explanation of why you think the source is reliable for the content. Only in death does duty end (talk) 09:01, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

• The OP has been blocked for three months. - Sitush (talk) 11:26, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

• They've been using a number of IPs, only one of which is blocked as a proxy. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 12:00, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

Hello User:Only in death. I believe all three have been provided above, and while I respect your decision to not read it all (for whatever reason), I can only do so much I'm essentially repeating the above..

• Article: Phulkian sardars
• Reference: s:The Imperial Gazzetteer of India
• Content supported by references, using the article modified by Sitush on December 2015 (commentary: if it was so "unreliable", why did Sitush not remove it all in December 2015, instead of inexplicably deleting it entirely in September 2016 when someone added a source?) :

1. Rawal Jaisal's descendents were of Sikh origin, and were Sidhu Brars: Here are four separate sources (note, again, s:The Imperial Gazetteer of India is a wikisource).

I feel it is completely reasonable to hold User:Sitush and User:Bishonen accountable for their deliberate misinformation. I have shown four separate sources supporting the claims that Sitush left alone after his massive December 2015 edit, which he inexplicably deleted entirely in September 2015 after a single source was provided. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.109.239.64 (talk • contribs)

Accusing User:Sitush and User:Bishonen of deliberate misinformation is another personal attack, and I have already warned you about that. So you are now blocked, and you will be blocked for longer should you repeat it when your short block expires. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 18:41, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

References

1. "Ferozepur District". The Imperial Gazetteer of India . Vol. 12. 1908. p. 89. About the time of the first Muhammadan invasions a colony of Bhatti Rajputs from Jaisalmer settled in the neighbourhood of Mukhtsar, and the Manj, a branch of them, ousted the Ponwars and became converts to Islam about 1288."Ferozepur District". The Imperial Gazetteer of India. Vol. 12. 1908. p. 90. About the end of the sixteenth century the Sidhu Jats, from whom the Phulkian Rajas are descended, made their appearance; and in the middle of the seventeenth century most of the Jat tribes were converted to Sikhism by Har Rai, the seventh Guru. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help)
2. Temple, R. C. "Article VIII:Raja Rasalu". Calcutta Review. 79: 390–392. The Siddhu story is that they are descended from the Bhatti Rajput prince Jaisal, the founder of Jaisalmer, and the families that claim this descent in the present day are in order of seniority Kaithal, Jhumba, Arnauli and Sadhowal, descended from Siddhu's eldest son Dhar, then Nabha and Jind descended from Tilokha, the eldest son of Phul the senior eponym in descent from Siddhu, and the branches of Jind, Badrukhan and Dialpura... This gives us seventeen leading families from this one stock alone. Fortunately the dates of the leading names in the tree up to Jaisal are well ascertained, for Jaisal himself died in 1168. A. D and was succeeded by his eldest son Salbahan (not the great Salbahan), while his second son Hemal (died in 1214), sought his fortunes, in the Punjab and founded the Siddhu tribe, through Siddhu the sixth in descent from him. From whom the ninth is Barar, at which point the Faridkot line breaks off calling themselves Barar, and then twelfth from Barar comes Phul (died in 1652) from who the great families all spring.
3. Massy, Charles (1890). Chiefs and Families of Note in the Delhi, Jalandhar, Peshawar and Derajat Divisions of the Panjab. p. 28-29. The ruling family are of the same stock as those of Patiala and Jind, being Sidhu Jat Sikhs, counting back to the illustrious Phul. The foundations of the house were laid by Hamir Singh, who joined his Sikh brethren in the capture of Sarhand about the middle of the last century, and obtained as his reward the pargana of Amloh.
4. Lethbridge, Roper (1893). The Golden Book of India: A Genealogical and Biographical Dictionary of the Ruling Princes, Chiefs, Nobles, and Other Personages, Titled Or Decorated of the Indian Empire. p. 2B (369). Born in 1843; succeeded to the gadi 9th June 1871. Belongs to the great Sidhu Jat family, known as the Phulkian family, from its founder Phul; which has given ruling families to Patiala, Jind, Nabha, Bhadaur, and other Punjab states. The Raja of Nabha is descended from Tiloka, eldest son of Phul; whose great-grandson, Hamir Singh, founded the town of Nabha in 1755 A.D. He joined the Sikh Chiefs in the great battle of Sirhind, when Zain Khan, the Muhammadan Viceroy, was slain; and established a mint at Nabha, as a mark of independence.

• I would be highly unlikely to trust those sources for statements of fact about geneology, descent, or any other ethnic/race/caste/dynastic related facts - given the time period and biases (cultural as well as literal). Personally I would also exclude the information if they were the only sources available and look for better more modern ones to replace it with. If none are found, I would think a bit harder about if this material is worth including at all. Only in death does duty end (talk) 10:26, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

• Again, it is your job to provide EVIDENCE that these claims are wrong. You clearly ignored the part above that clearly states that the family/genealogy in question would likely only be documented by a "raj source" given the alliance made. I've provided four solid sources that you, like Sitush and Bishonen, have claimed are biased without any basis.

• Also want to add the fact that Sitush made the reversion no less than a minute after the revision was made, which I believe was insufficient time for him to process and analyse the sources rigorously. Even for the most initiated scholars on this matter, it would take them longer than a minute to interpret the claims before reverting. This further suggests that User:Sitush had no interest in doing that, as again it does not fit his narrative. I've now seen him refuse to participate in this discussion and use an abusive administrator User:Bishonen to avoid accountability for his actions.

Regarding User:Only in death's "support" for Sitush (if one wants to interpret it as that), I've answered this time and time again and it continues to be ignored due to the inconvenience. this "tribe" was allied with the "Raj" as early as the late 1700s, thereby making the documentation and discussion of their history almost exclusively Raj. The continued ignorance around this fact is astounding (as is User:Bishonen's personal attack that got the previous editor banned, and yet he goes unpunished ). --unsigned--

I have no comment on the particularly sourced involved, particularly since there seems to be little point looking into the source when others who are more trustworthy have said it isn't and you've made such a flawed claim that there's no reason to think you have any ability to gauge if a source is a reliable.

To elaborate further, I agree with others that plenty of things in wikisource aren't going to be reliable sources. Your claim that the linked page claims all content there are reliable sources is a clear misreading. That page doesn't say all wikisource content are reliable sources, it simply says some stuff is, and one of the purposes of wikisource is to act as a repository for reliable sources where possible.

This is further reaffirmed if you follow the wikisource page Wikisource:Wikisource:For Wikipedians which says "Instead, professional publication is necessary for a work to be added to Wikisource. Wikisource also hosts source documents of historical importance, regardless of publication history". Neither of these criteria are enough to make something a reliable source, nor is there any other criterion which requires something is a reliable source for wikipedia.

(Which would mean they have to defer to discussions here on deciding whether something can be included. And makes no sense anyway since there are multiple wikipedias each with their own ultimately unique definition of reliable sources and while the en.wikisource is mostly likely to be used by en.wikipedia, it could also be used by simple or any other language wikipedia so if you they were to bar stuff based solely on it not being a reliable source on en.wikipedia, they might be excluding stuff which will be acceptable at other wikipedias. And as mentioned by others, even here 'reliable source' isn't a binary. Maybe a source or parts of a source are suitable for some things but not for others.)

Therefore wikisource itself is saying that not everything there is a reliable source. And while you can't necessarily trust them if they say that everything is a reliable source, it's definitely wise to trust them when they say, with good reasons, that not everything there is a reliable source.

Nil Einne (talk) 23:34, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

• I can't imagine any way that the Imperial Gazetteer remotely qualifies as a neutral, third-party source, when you consider that the British had a very strong agenda and POV that they were pushing. First Light (talk) 04:00, 2 February 2017 (UTC)
• The sources are questionable for a reason. A highly biased point of view is most likely present within British sources during this time period in that region of the world. I recommend using more modern academic journal articles and more modern academic books pertaining to this topic. Otherwise you have to gain consensus for using these sources, and so far that has not happened. Also, Wikisource is not generally a reliable source but is a repository for original published works of years past. If you could find other unbiased sources that say what is of value, or what is accurate, within the sources you presented- that might work. I suppose using Wikisource material is possible, if the information is not dated and no bias is present. There are probably other useful applications of Wikisource material, but it depends on the material and the reason for its use in an article. Why has it been accepted in other articles is WP:OTHERSTUFF by the way. ---Steve Quinn (talk) 06:30, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

I know that WP:HISTRS still unfortunately only has the status of an essay, but quite a lot of work went into it from editors interested in history, including professional researchers and historians. All works of history written before 1945 have to be treated with great caution because they are often biased with nationalist and ethnic assumptions. That is not being disrespectful to their authors. Itsmejudith (talk) 11:07, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

• Reliable in principle, but on a case by case basis when applied to particular content. I think there have been far too many racial and cultural stereotypes and biases on open display here. The administrators of British India required accurate honest data and facts about those it ruled for it to function, it did not require propaganda or data massaged to fit alleged biases. It also had the self-confidence to feel it had no need for the production of such propaganda. In addition, the study of both contemporary and historical events from a viewpoint free from nationalistic or ethnic assumptions or biases was pioneered in Britain (though this standard has still not reached many corners of the world - in many countries, including India today, history is deemed to be subservient to national interests and requires rewriting and editing whenever it disagrees with that national interest). 19th-century British derived sources are likely to be more reliable than any other 19th-century sources. The kneejerk dismissal of this source as "Raj source" has no credible argument behind it - it is just editors expressing their political or cultural biases. However, it is always better to use more recent rs sources since they may have access to more source materials or new discoveries or be written in the light of newer writings. Tiptoethrutheminefield (talk) 17:33, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

• But the information was not reliable. That's why they got into such a mess. For examples, see Census of India prior to independence, James Tod, H. H. Risley etc. The Brits were duped, usually by Brahmins and other high-caste groups (or groups claiming a high caste). They even believed tripe such as about Rani Padmini, which belief subsequently turned folklore into "truth" and has resonated in India with riots as late as this week. - Sitush (talk) 17:44, 2 February 2017 (UTC)
• The problem with the Raj sources is endemic and indeed systematic. They got the wrong end of the stick in so many ways, right from the beginning, and persisted in their notions. The only way they can be deemed reliable is if a modern academic cites them for a specific point and in that event we wouldn't need the older source anyway. - Sitush (talk) 17:52, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

• User:Tiptoethrutheminefield, I think that for most of us who have been pointing out the non-neutrality and non-third-party relationship of the British in India, there is no "racial or cultural stereotype." We are simply pointing out an important Misplaced Pages policy and its application in this instance. In fact, some of my best friends are British :-). This WP policy would certainly explain one reason why the Imperial Gazetteer has been shown to be so unreliable — and thus why it's such an important policy for reliable sourcing. Sitush alludes to another RS policy explanation for why the Gazetteer is unreliable — not all of it was compiled and written by experts in history, race, and census-taking, so they were easily duped. First Light (talk) 04:36, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

Are there people here who aren't signing their statements, or is half the above thread just really weirdly indented? It's hard to follow. Someguy1221 (talk) 07:44, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

Both. Plus the OP has been blocked. And then it forked off into whether Wikisource is a Reliable Source, even though it's just "The Free Library." A bit like asking if a library is a reliable source. Now it's back to whether The Imperial Gazetteer is a reliable source, with a minor sidetrack of accusations of political and cultural bias. Just trying to save you some time and eyestrain. :-) First Light (talk) 11:21, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

In this case no, its not reliable for statements of fact (which is what the IP wants to use it for) due to its historical bias given the circumstances at the time. This does not make it 'unreliable' in totality, it could be useful for current events (at the time) happening and so on, but any editorial content is hopelessly skewed by the historical situation. Its certainly not useful itself for historical (even to the 19th century) geneological/ethnic issues other than as a primary source 'this is what the people who wrote the Imperial Gazetter thought'. That itself may be useful to modern historians who want to analyse the mood/prevailing thought of the time, which is why we would cite a modern historian. Sitush has said it in deeper detail previously, so perhaps the history wikiprojects could get him to write a guideline specific to Raj-era source use. Only in death does duty end (talk) 12:09, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

Alleging "bias given the circumstances at the time" is just another example of the editor biases I am objecting to here. If you are going to allege this you need to be specific, cite sources that specify what "bias" and what "circumstances" and what "time", not just vague statements containing generalities based on your cultural stereotypes. Tiptoethrutheminefield (talk) 15:15, 4 February 2017 (UTC)

So, did you read the articles that I mentioned? Eg: Risley's obsession with scientific racism, Tod's obsession with Rajput fairytales, or Indian suspicion about British data gathering and their desire to manipulate such gathering to improve their position? I feel sure we have had this discussion before somewhere, Tiptoethrutheminefield - has anything changed? - Sitush (talk) 19:55, 4 February 2017 (UTC)

Articles you mentioned? All you did was make some wikilinks. Wikipeda articles do not count as sources or as sources for opinions on sources. Nor do your personal claims of "obsession" - a word beloved by tabloid-newspapers since it implies incorrect behavior or views without having to bother to detail any hard evidence. Rather like many of the opinions in this thread. Tiptoethrutheminefield (talk) 02:57, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

More importantly, you have detailed NOTHING that would justify a blanket ban on this source. Where are your sources condemning the accuracy or veracity of The Imperial Gazetteer of India or of its editor William Wilson Hunter? I think what we have here so far are nothing more substantial than editors' personal prejudices and ideology. Tiptoethrutheminefield (talk) 03:08, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

The articles have the sources and plenty of people have weighed-in here. You just don't like it and, as Only In Death intimates in their comment of 16:58, 7 February 2017, it might be simpler just to ignore your opinion in future because it is so out of kilter as to be merely a time-sink. - Sitush (talk) 06:15, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

Ah, Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Dasti (tribe) was one such discussion, although I think there may be others. You were on the wrong side of consensus then and, seemingly, now. There comes a point when even you have to accept consensus, otherwise we'll just keep on reinventing this wheel. - Sitush (talk) 20:07, 4 February 2017 (UTC)

Tiptoethrutheminefield, It's clear that this Gazetteer is not a reliable source for statements of fact, particularly regarding history, census numbers, and caste (geography, maybe, but I'm only guessing). Whatever the underlying reason for the problem — naiveté, written by non-experts, cultural/religious/racial bias, or the desire to present a POV to enforce government rule — is an interesting subject, but the bottom line is "not reliable." First Light (talk) 03:11, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

Frankly Tiptoe, to educate you on Indian & British Imperial history to explain the socio-political issues would take far too long and I highly doubt you would change your mind anyway. If you do not already by your own research understand why the Gazetter is not a reliable source for many statements of fact, there is little benefit to further discussion. Only in death does duty end (talk) 16:58, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Is historyofjihad.org a reliable source for Philippine protohistory (900 AD to 1521 AD) articles?

Source: http://www.historyofjihad.org/philippines.html
Article: Ma-i, any other references to Philippine protohistory (between 900 and 1521 AD)
Content: "Before they reached the shores of Luzon, they subjugated the Buddhist Huangdom of Mai and that lead to its decline.The Buddhist culture of Mindoro gradually disappeared after Bolkiah forced the citizens of Mai to converted their faith to Islam. They forcibly converted and conquered people up to the fall of the Kingdom of Tondo."

Query: Requesting community consensus on the reliability of historyofjihad.org as a source. In this case, I think the text is actually a violation of WP:SYNTH, and I may take action to remove it on that basis soon. However, I want to know if there's anything in the source that is salvagable for the article. Before I do that, I'd like to ask if the community thinks the page is a reliable source? I'm not convinced it is, so I'm requesting feedback. Thanks! - Alternativity (talk) 08:55, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

Not reliable. It gives little information about its directors and appears to present an Islamophobic viewpoint. It seems to be quoted on extreme websites, such as Stormfront, but not in mainstream media. Furthermore, even if it were reliable, articles should rely primarily on secondary sources. The problem with tertiary sources such as this website is that if there are questions about specific facts, they do not provide sources so we cannot resolve factual discrepancies between different tertiary sources. TFD (talk) 15:18, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

Agee. It's not reliable for anything substantial. On the front page alone they promote two islamophobic movies (one by Durch radical-right figure Geert Wilders), and call for coordinated massive suicide attacks on Mecca. You can't make this stuff up.... --Stephan Schulz (talk) 15:52, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

So they have an agenda, that does not mean they are not RS, the issue of directors however is another matter. is there any evidence they have any kind of editorial over site?Slatersteven (talk) 15:59, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

An "agenda" like that is a giant WP:REDFLAG. Whoever controls this site has no interest to exercise editorial control with respect to factuality - as is obvious to everybody with a modest knowledge of history after reading the first few paragraphs of the main page. You might as well go to Stormfront or Jew Watch - sure, there is some editorial control there, but it very much does not contribute to make anything on the sites reliable. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 16:08, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

Indeed, it's not a reliable source for anything, and thank you Stephan Schulz for your beautiful and pertinent edit summary. Bishonen | talk 17:06, 3 February 2017 (UTC).

http://www.historyofjihad.org has the appearance of a crudely put together hate site, and it shouldn't be cited anywhere on Misplaced Pages. -Darouet (talk) 17:43, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

• NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. Seriously, we have to discuss this? A site that says "How Religion is a weakness of the human mind"? That's already an unacceptable POV. As for reliability--yes, it's put together by a bunch of amateurs in garish colors--go to that page I just linked, where you find that the site motto is "Site motto", with the sub-motto "We thank you for visiting this page which states our Motto." There's more depth in "I'm at the Pizza Hut, I'm at the Taco Bell, I'm at the combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell". As for reliability, cause suuuure a site this not-neutral can present facts reliably--well, here's the claim about scholarship: "Other contributors to this site include professors and members of the faculty from the Universities of Stanford and Michigan (Ann Arbor), Kansas State University, Ohio State University, and the London School of Economics." Yeah right. To whoever even thought this kind of thing was OK, NO. We need to see an editorial statement, and a list of members of the editorial board--and that's just for starters. Please. Drmies (talk) 17:51, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

The site doesn't look scholarly at all and frankly seems a bit agenda driven, so it does not qualify as a reliable source.--Kmhkmh (talk) 21:13, 4 February 2017 (UTC)

Hehe. Sorry, I felt I had to ask because I didn't want to be accused of acting unilaterally. - Alternativity (talk) 04:40, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Religiosity and Intelligence, self published opinion article being passed as scholarly,

This talk section was set up on the Religiosity and intelligence article to discuss my removal of this material given a source of "The myth of the smarter atheist. This source is a self published opinion piece, and violates WP:RS, and makes an extraordinary claim, as a lone source, so does not make the exceptions listed under WP:SELFSOURCE. Ramos1990 (talk · contribs) is insisting it is a quality source, however it is clearly not. The article is balanced, as it includes ACTUAL published counterarguments-not self published opinion pieces. The fact that it is a self published opinion, contradicts the WP:SCIRS statement that "Most books and monographs that are self-published or published by vanity presses undergo no independent fact-checking or peer review and consequently are not reliable sources."

The text is as follows

The Lynn et al. study has been criticized by Artificial Intelligence researcher Randy Olson who has noted that the correlation between wealth and intelligence is stronger and more suited to explain the differences in IQ because countries with lower IQ scores are less developed and countries with high IQ scores are highly developed. Furthermore, he notes countries with 20% atheists or more, which also happen to be highly developed countries, actually flatline at 100 IQ on average rather than increase in IQ. Furthermore, more atheists in a population do not equate to increases in IQ since countries with populations that have virtually 0% atheists have scored more than 100 IQ.

and

When looking at Kanazawa's paper on individual religiosity, or atheism, and intelligence, Olson noted that both the most religious people and atheists were all within the bounds of "average intelligence" (90–109) and from a practical point, the level of intelligence is indistinguishable from the other since they both scored very close to each other.

Petergstrom (talk) 18:40, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

Olson is probably correct to note that country IQ scores and atheism will both correlate with development. That said, I agree completely with Petergstrom that http://www.randalolson.com/ is not a source that should be cited on Misplaced Pages. -Darouet (talk) 19:50, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

Per wikipedia's policy, I think this qualifies as a reliable source since this is not merely a blog by a random person. Dr. Randal Olson is a professor of artificial intelligence at the University of Pennsylvania and also has contributed to both scientific publications and science journalism on various topics revolving around issues relating to informatics and intelligence. The wording provided by Petergstrom is actually more or less paraphrases of what Dr. Olson notes and the reference merely provides his professional observations and commentary on a research paper. Of particular interest is an important observation that Olson notes - that on the graph from the Lynn et al (added it here) clearly shows flat-lining and that increases in levels of atheists do not impact IQ or even increases in IQ since the average is at 100 IQ at 20% and even when it goes up to 70% atheists in a population. Average IQ is between 90-110 and in real life someone who has 90 or 110 IQ is indistinguishable.

Of course if this was some random guy online then I would agree with removal, but the RS policy states that one should be cautious, not that blogs are prohibited from being cited on wikipedia. Here is what the RS policy notes under the "Exceptions" section: "Self-published material may sometimes be acceptable when its author is an established expert whose work in the relevant field has been published by reliable third-party publications. Such material, although written by an established author, likely lacks the fact checking that publishers provide. Avoid using them to source extraordinary claims."

I do not see how this can be considered an unreliable source in the proper context of a wiki article on intelligence. Any thoughts?Huitzilopochtli (talk) 02:28, 4 February 2017 (UTC)

"Relevant field" is the keyword here. Artificial intelligence is a branch of computer science. Expertise in this field doesn't automatically convey any academic authority in psychology or social sciences. Unless he has a track record of peer-reviewed academic publications in those fields, his self-published works are not RSs. P.S. I've skimmed through his publication list. He's done some cross-disciplinary collaboration, but I don't see anything that would be relevant here. Eperoton (talk) 03:19, 4 February 2017 (UTC)

Actually, it is not exclusively a branch of computer science since like the article you linked notes "The AI field draws upon computer science, mathematics, psychology, linguistics, philosophy, neuroscience and artificial psychology. The field was founded on the claim that human intelligence "can be so precisely described that a machine can be made to simulate it"." Obviously it involves the simulation and mimicking of intelligence including cognitive capacity and efficiency. The point to note is that these fields are inherently related and not separated. Similar to synthetic biology and biology - inherently related. Now as an intro from Berkeley notes, "The field of artificial r. intelligence, or AI, attempts to understand intelligent entities. Thus, one reason to study it is to learn more about ourselves. But unlike philosophy and psychology, which are also concerned with intelligence, AI strives to build intelligent entities as well as understand them." Also it notes "AI currently encompasses a huge variety of subfields, from general-purpose areas such as perception and logical reasoning, to specific tasks such as playing chess, proving mathematical theorems, writing poetry{poetry}, and diagnosing diseases. Often, scientists in other fields move gradually into artificial intelligence, where they find the tools and vocabulary to systematize and automate the intellectual tasks on which they have been working all their lives. Similarly, workers in AI can choose to apply their methods to any area of human intellectual endeavor. In this sense, it is truly a universal field."

It is not computer programming or computer science, it has wider set of to tools to investigate intelligence from various angles and is not limited to those. Hope this helps.Huitzilopochtli (talk) 08:00, 4 February 2017 (UTC)

The vast majority of people who work in AI (or similar fields, which now have more fashionable names) are computer scientists. There are a few who engage professionally with cognitive science, but Olson is not one of them. If you like, we can discuss his publications which you think are relevant here. It's in the same ballpark as what I do for a living, so I can help you understand what competencies they involve. P.S. The Artificial intelligence article is reasonably well developed. If you look at it in more detail, you'll notice there's very little there that relates to the study of human cognition. Eperoton (talk) 15:49, 4 February 2017 (UTC)

When it comes to manufacturing intelligence entities, computers are a big tool (not many ways to make intelligence like ours otherwise), but how does that remove from the research on biological intelligence? Tools need to be used to mimic it no? In particular with Dr. Olson, he notes in his current research page : "My research interests lie at the intersection of biology and computer science, where these two fields have the unique opportunity for mutually beneficial research. On the computer science side, I draw on what we’ve learned about biological systems and how evolutionary processes work to engineer AI systems that make our day-to-day lives just a little bit better. Similarly, I give back to biology by drawing on my computer science knowledge to create digital evolutionary models that help us test and refine the leading hypotheses explaining how and why intelligent animal behavior evolves."

If Dr. Olson was say a physicist or a geologist, I would agree with you, but he is involved in research about mimicking intelligence using various tools and this does not separate him from understanding issues involving intelligence. Much of the research in intelligence is not really complicated either. Just like biotechnologists, pharmaceuticals, synthetic biologists, and medicine all are diverse but integrated with biology does that mean one should say they are not because each one has diverse goals. Clinical psychology borrows from chemistry, but should the fact that chemicals are used and studied remove it from being related to psychology? I do not think that would be fair considering that rigid borders on many fields of study normally do not exist. Physics and chemistry even overlap which is why noble prizes in physics have been coven to chemists and vice versa.Huitzilopochtli (Ramos1990) (talk) 19:10, 4 February 2017 (UTC)

From the standpoint of policy, our goal is to assess the author's scholarly reputation in the relevant field, which can be done based on their peer-reviewed publications or explicit statements made about their reputation in RSs. We can't use the author's claims about themselves (which, in any case, describe his collaborations on evolutionary modeling with only a bit of rhetorical flourish at the end). As I said, I'm ready to help take a closer look at his scholarly publications. From a substantive standpoint, most research that falls under the rubric of AI these days derives from internal developments in statistics and engineering and has no interaction with research on human intelligence. Eperoton (talk) 20:44, 4 February 2017 (UTC)

Note that while self published source by an established expert may be used, it is nevertheless never an optimal source and peer reviewed source are to be preferred. In addition the more contentious or problematic a topic gets the better the sources should be. Based on that even if you see Olson here as an expert, his self published sources should not be used here due to the contentious nature of the subject. Instead only reputable peer reviewed sources by him or others should be used.--Kmhkmh (talk) 21:07, 4 February 2017 (UTC)

I think that the general consensus is that this source is not viable, only ramos and jobas want the source to be used.Petergstrom (talk) 21:40, 4 February 2017 (UTC)

As User:Ramos1990 clearly pointed out, Randy Olson is an authority on the subject and it is therefore acceptable to use the reference in the article as long as the sentence is properly attributed to him. We have consensus to use the source within the article. It should be noted that User:Petergstrom has a history of militant atheistic agenda-driven editing on Misplaced Pages, as demonstrated by his attempting to add information to our articles about Jesus and Moses, saying that they both had schizophrenia (see Example 1, Example 2). On the article in question, User:Petergstrom has inappropriately censored content that he just didn't like, possibly because it called into question his own antireligious POV. Other editors reading this discussion should not take it at face value but realize that this is part of a deeper problem concerning User:Petergstrom and their editing behaviour.--Jobas (talk) 19:33, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

Hi everyone. Appreciate your collective inputs. Most editors here see value in Dr. Olson's observations which are not extraordinary (even the paper Olson critiques noted better correlations between national IQs and education), but as others have mentioned that though the source can be used with caution (per WP policy), a source with some degree of oversight is preferable due to the controversial nature of the topic. Hope this helps.Huitzilopochtli1990 (talk) 02:44, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

References

1. ^ Olson, Randy. "The Myth of the Smarter Atheist".

Appropriation

Why Progressives Are Wrong to Argue Against Cultural Appropriation http://observer.com/2015/11/why-progressives-are-wrong-to-argue-against-cultural-appropriation/ Is this a reliable source? Benjamin (talk) 08:07, 4 February 2017 (UTC)

It's an opinion piece so it depends how you want to use it. See WP:RSOPINION. There's also an info page that helps craft the language when WP:Describing points of view NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 08:16, 4 February 2017 (UTC)

Milosevic trial

There's been a long-running dispute on the Slobodan Milosevic trial page, currently at the 3RR board, about including information from the ICTY ruling in a separate case, in which reference was made to the former Yugoslav presidents role in the Bosnian war. Basically one editor is insisting not only that the court judgment in the case of Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic (a primary source) be included but that what it says justifies the Milosevic trial page, including the lead, stating that there is no evidence Milosevic committed war crimes. Per this section on the talk page, the judgment simply doesn't say that.
The question is two-fold really:

• Is the ICTY judgment a reliable source for the page at all? I guess it stands generally as reliable, but it is as noted about a different case.
• Does the phrasing preferred by User:JamesJohnson2 accurately reflect the source material?

This could just as easily go to the NOR noticeboard I guess, but it seems to fit here too, as we do have a source. N-HH talk/edits 12:29, 4 February 2017 (UTC)

Court judgments is a primary source.--Shrike (talk) 07:55, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

• No and No. A primary source in itself is not forbidden, but it must be used with care, and it should relate directly to the subject, which is not the case here. Secondly, the ICTY document says there was not sufficient evidence presented in that case that Milosevic agreed with that specific plan. This falls far, far short of saying there was no evidence overall he committed war crimes overall during the war. --Dailycare (talk) 09:59, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

creationist book

Are books that publish creationist theory automatically not RS (As seems to be being cleaimed here and specifically in relation to this source and it's claim that someone is a scientist?Slatersteven (talk) 14:30, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

They are reliable for stating the views of their authors, attributed as such. Whether the authors are sufficiently prominent to merit inclusion of their views is a separate question. They are not reliable for any statements of fact. So we could say "the opinion of Smith is that Jones is a scientist" or similar wording. Shock Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 14:45, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

Thanks. So in essence, no it is not automatically not RS, it just has to be used with care?Slatersteven (talk) 15:49, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

Yes. RS but only for certain limited uses. Use with care and common sense. Consider the following claim:

• "The Creation Museum, located in Petersburg, Kentucky, United States, is operated by the Christian creation apologetics organization Answers in Genesis"

That is a statement of fact that we put in Misplaced Pages's voice without any citation, but nobody would have a problem if we were to back it up with a citation to https://creationmuseum.org/about/ A primary source like that is fine for a non-contentious claim about itself such as an address. Unless there is some reason to suspect that they may be lying about where they are located.

Now Consider the following claim from the same website:

• "The evidence that humans and dinosaurs lived at the same time is all around us." (Source: https://answersingenesis.org/dinosaurs/humans/ )

That is an extremely contentious claim, and the only use we could make of that source is to support a claim like "Answers in Genesis believes that humans and dinosaurs lived at the same time." The way we actually handle it in our article is "contradicting science, the museum depicts the coexistence of humans and dinosaurs".

Also, just because a source is allowed, that doesn't mean it should be used if there is a better source. Note that our article on Creation Museum which I just quoted uses reliable secondary sources to back up the claim that the museum depicts the coexistence of humans and dinosaurs. --Guy Macon (talk) 16:24, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

See my question below?Slatersteven (talk) 16:28, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

Now to add, as this is getting all rather nasty over at the talk page, is this RS for the claim he is a scientist? .Slatersteven (talk) 15:52, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

This is already under discussion at Misplaced Pages:Fringe theories/Noticeboard#Fringe sources identify someone as a scientist. Please don't fragment the discussion by asking -- or answering -- the above question here. --Guy Macon (talk) 16:30, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

In These Times

Source:

Article: American Legislative Exchange Council or to be within a new article

Content:

At ALEC’s 2016 annual meeting in July, the Convention of States was made a top priority. ALEC has adopted model rules for an Article V convention and gave its members model language for a resolution to call for a convention. The “State Legislators Article V Caucus” of the Balanced Budget Amendment Task Force (BBATF) is dominated by ALEC legislators, and pro-convention advocacy groups including BBATF and Convention of States are part of ALEC.

I had a dispute with 2 editors who question the reliability of the source, In These Times, as a longstanding socialist magazine. Help please. Calexit (talk) 18:11, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

It's certainly not what I would consider a broadly-accepted mainstream reliable source. I don't think it particularly has a bad reputation, but it certainly has a partisan/opinionated reputation, and I would be very careful about using it to make claims about political opponents. I would in-text attribute its reporting unless corroborated by a more mainstream source. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 18:17, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

Friends of the Article V Convention

Source

Article List of state applications for an Article V Convention

Content Any part of the page above that is reliant on this source.

I'm very troubled by the quality of this source. Also, the WP article seems almost as if it is an extension of their site! Please let me know what you think and correct me if I'm mistaken.Calexit (talk) 19:56, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

Source used selectively for contradictory information?

Template:LGBT rights table Europe

The source is cited 21 times, apparently mostly for the claim that sterilization is required in some countried before legal recognition of gender change. The source also says that numerous countries (Ireland, Lithuania, etc.) do not allow legal gender change. Our ... article (template?) lists a number of these countries as legally allowing gender change.

I know there is a lot of nuance in these cases, but it seems like if our article is going to declare a source to be wrong on some points (by saying that country X allows gender change), we shouldn't be assuming it is right on others (the places it is currently cited).

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 05:50, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

Just in checking some dates, I found what might be the root of the problem: That source was written before Ireland passed a gender recognition bill according to the source cited in the template: "A historic moment" – Oireachtas signs off on gender recognition bill. It's not so much inaccurate on that point as it is outdated. This might be the case for any inaccuracy, as there has been a notable uptick in trans issues in Europe and the US in the past few years. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 15:14, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Edward Tipper and List of Easy Company (506 PIR) veterans

Articles affected – Edward Tipper and List of Easy Company (506 PIR) veterans. The problem is that this person died on February 1, 2017, and the only source to justify it is this link. Of course, there's a user who claims that this is not reliable, but no other sources exist that can justify his death. What can be done about this? – Sabbatino (talk) 07:17, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

There are a number of problems.

First, List of Easy Company (506 PIR) veterans is a page that's trying to go out of business. In spite of its title, it's a list of Easy Company survivors and gets shorter every year. Leo Matz, who's on the page, died (I think) a couple of years ago but I put him back on because the news about him didn't mention his service. The list, I think, started as an effort to include everyone but its focus shifted. Over at Misplaced Pages talk:WikiProject Military history, we recently rejected a suggestion that a complete list of Easy Company personnel be created.

Second, Tipper does meet the criteria of WP:SOLDIER to even have a page. He no doubt served valiantly and faithfully, but if he had not been included in the book Band of Brothers and the subsequent HBO historical drama series we would never have heard of him. (Almost none of the men with pages qualify).

Third, Facebook is far from reliable. I Googled for an obituary and got no hits.

Although this exceeds the "charter" of this page, I would delete the list page and Tipper's page and almost all of the other Band of Brothers personal pages. --Jim in Georgia Contribs Talk 19:42, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

All is good with Tipper's source as The National WWII Museum posted about his death. As for Leo Matz – this page from 2016 indicates that he is well and alive. There is another article from 2013 that gives information about his current (well at least in 2010) affairs. And regarding the list – I agree that this particular page will be blank in the future and will be deleted. I would not have any problem if it was deleted now and I also agree that if not for the books and the TV series, nobody would even care about it. They were the same as every other soldier, but because of these two things they are treated as "gods". – Sabbatino (talk) 09:03, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

On "fact-checking"

I commend editors who believe that major newspapers are paragons of accuracy to examine:

http://rrj.ca/a-checkered-present/ from 1999.

http://articles.baltimoresun.com/keyword/newsweek Newsweek dismantled its fact-checking staff in 1996.

https://www.thestar.com/opinion/commentary/2016/02/14/you-cant-have-a-healthy-democracy-without-well-informed-citizens-honderich.html Do not expect Google or Facebook to fact check anything.

https://www.chapman.edu/law/_files/publications/CLR-11-davidanderson-lillianbevier-caroldarr-eugenevolokh-johnleo.pdf "Nor is it helpful to try to distinguish blogs on the grounds that they aren’t  edited  or  fact-checked, and are thus more likely to be inaccurate. To begin with, many op-eds and newspaper columns are at most lightly edited and fact-checked, if that much. Some magazines maintain professional fact-checking  staff,  but  most  newspapers  don’t."

http://www.designnine.com/news/content/news-downsizing-affects-reliability "The larger point made by Smerconish is that the pranksters behind the hoax got away with it in part because downsized news organization no longer have the staff to check this kind of stuff. In the "old days," newspapers particularly had a fact checking staff that made sure that what reporters put in their articles was actually true. "

In short, "fact checkers" other than the political ones who surface every four years, are almost extinct. Collect (talk) 17:32, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

I commend editors who believe that major newspapers are paragons of accuracy If I ever meet any, I will let them know that you think highly of them.

To be clear: Are you contending (which may have been the word you were looking for, but still isn't quite the right word for that usage. I would suggest "challenge" as the most appropriate word.) that the mainstream media is unreliable, or that all media is unreliable? Neither contention is in line with WP policies and norms, but I want to be sure I understand what you're getting at. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 17:42, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

Try Merriam-Webster "to recommend as worthy of confidence or notice". I am pretty good at English after all these years. Really. Is there a reason you wished to interpolate a quite different word and meaning? Collect (talk) 17:58, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

Your syntax is still very unclear for usage in that sense (it would have been better to phrase it "To editors who believe that major newspapers are paragons of accuracy, I commend you to examine:"). But it doesn't really matter because I obviously understood what you meant. I asked you a question, do you intend to answer it? ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 19:03, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

I trust my syntax was, in fact, both clear and correct. In fact, your odd suggestion of starting with a prepositional phrase is rather odd. I had a mom who was a Latin teacher, and went through four years of Latin, including a half year of Greek, as well as French and German. I stated, and iterate, that there exist absolutely no genuine "reliable sources" for "Celebrity Gossip" which I favour allowing for BLP article. Nor do I believe that headlines are an integral part of any newspaper article, reliably conveying the context of such article. Collect (talk) 20:53, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

For the most part, I have to agree that celebrity gossip material probably shouldn't ever be aloud in a BLP. The one exception I can imagine is if the subject of the gossip in some way draws attention to it by very publicly addressing it to such a degree that the whole matter becomes significant enough for inclusion. I'm thinking particularly here of maybe lawsuits or similar, when it might be reasonable to allow quotes from the gossip piece if those quotes are directly relevant to the lawsuit or whatever. I also tend to agree that, with maybe a few exceptions, like "Dewey defeats Truman" and others of that type which clearly summarize the content, headlines are often not the best sources. Also, I suppose, maybe, from what I remember, article writers don't always choose the headlines, so ascribing a headline to the writer of the article might be potentially problematic. John Carter (talk) 21:25, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

In fact, your odd suggestion of starting with a prepositional phrase is rather odd. It was the only way to make your bizarre word choice make sense, syntactically. The way you phrased it, it's the editors you're commending, not the examination. Even though you clearly meant the examination. I think perhaps you should not rely on your mother's command of Latin, French and German syntax to inform your use of English syntax.

I stated, and iterate, that there exist absolutely no genuine "reliable sources" for "Celebrity Gossip" which I favour allowing for BLP article. You iterated, eh? I'd like to see where you repeated yourself even once, let alone enough to call it iteration. But that's beside the point. Could you quote the part where you mentioned celebrity gossip in the OP? I've read it a dozen times and the phrase (or any synonymous phrase) continues to elude me. It must be my comprehension difficulties. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 21:39, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

(e-c) I think most of us know already major newspapers can be flawed, to put it mildly. Janet Cooke and Jayson Blair come to mind quite quickly. I've been involved in a few other "discussions" (again, being mild) here about some newspaper articles which facts indicate are flat out wrong as well. Unfortunately, except in a few cases where we know the sources are problematic, we here will have some difficulties in trying to determine exactly which generally reliable newspapers are and are not reliable in any particular instances. Except in those cases where the sources are discussed here or elsewhere at length, I think we do have to kind of "default" to accepting them for material of a breaking news type, and, unfortunately, we have to my eyes altogether too much of that here.

I remember that early editions of Encyclopedia Britannica didn't include any articles on living people. I kind of wistfully wish we were able to do the same here, but I can't believe that will ever happen. John Carter (talk) 19:05, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

That pretty much sums up my thoughts. I have no doubt there are tons of factual errors in each day's news. But the news (specifically, the highly reputable, mainstream news) still remains the most trustworthy source for the news which we have. I'm not sure if I agree or not with your sentiments about BLPs, but it doesn't seem to be difficult to make a case for their exclusion. (I imagine the same could be said of current events.) ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 19:12, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

Emmett Till RFC

There is an ongoing RFC which may be of interest to the participants of this board.

https://en.wikipedia.org/Talk:Emmett_Till#Emmett_Till_lead_sentence_RFC ResultingConstant (talk) 17:36, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

Question about Reliability of a Source (Haircutadvice.com)

Hello everyone. I was wondering if I could use the following source for the Liz Sanbourne page: 1? I would be using it for the "Critical reception" subsection as the website talks about how Marshall breaks the traditional look for women on soap operas. However, I am assuming that this site would not be usable on Misplaced Pages, but I just wanted to double-check to make sure. Thank you in advance and I apologize if this is obvious. Aoba47 (talk) 19:35, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

What exactly would you be using it to say? That her hair is curly? That her curly hair is unusual for a soap opera actress? I think the former probably doesn't need a citation, unless you added the word "naturally" to it (people could argue that she perms her hair, as unlikely as that may be), as photos of her show her with curly hair. If you're going with the latter (which I suspect), then I don't this this source is good enough. I think you should find a recognized critic (or at least a professional critic) who talks about it. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 15:09, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Makes sense. Unfortunately, there are relatively few sources about this subject matter and I believe that I have exhausted all reliable sources that could be used, but I just wanted to double-check. I apologize for any inconvenience and thank you for your comment! Aoba47 (talk) 18:38, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

It's no inconvenience! Responding to (notice I didn't say "answering"*) questions like these is exactly what this forum is for. And your particular question was better formed than most in that you gave the source, the article and described how you intended to use the source.

*I didn't say "answering" because this forum is for starting discussions and finding a consensus, not getting a definitive answer from an 'expert'. We're all just regular editors here. Except for me, of course. I'm an expert in everything. Just ask my ego, he'll tell you. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 18:53, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

By itself no. I wouldnt see any problem with a specialist hair website being used as a supplementary source if it turned out there was discussion about her hair already out there in the usual places that cover TV series. This is not usually a thing, but there have been issues over the decades with portrayals of black characters in media - accusations of 'whitening' etc which can focus on their hair (being straightened, 'white' cuts and so on). So I would not actually be surprised if this characters appearance had been discussed at the time she appeared. Only in death does duty end (talk) 10:13, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

Can Acclaimed Music be used to cite individual review scores?

I'm having a small disagreement with @Dan56: about the use of Acclaimed Music in the article Call the Doctor. In my opinion, Acclaimed Music is a tertiary source and therefore cannot be used to cite individual review scores. Instead, secondary sources should be used. Dan56 disagrees and thinks the source can be used to cite scores otherwise not easily accessible. I should also note that Acclaimed Music is not listed in Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Albums/Sources. More feedback would be greatly appreciated. Thanks. --Niwi3 (talk) 20:34, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

I understand secondary sources are almost always preferred, but I don't know where or what says tertiary sources are completely disallowed, let alone in an instance like this, i.e. citing individual review scores. Regarding Acclaimed Music, its reliability seems adequate. While a self-published sources, the publisher--Henrik Franzon--is a statistician and researcher whose work with Acclaimed Music has received, IMO, sufficient third-party coverage, as evidenced by the sources used in the article on Acclaimed Music and others specifically in the field of music journalism who've cited the website, including PopMatters, and the 33⅓ album book series (Matos, Michaelangelo. Prince's Sign o' the Times). According to WP:SPS, "Self-published expert sources may be considered reliable when produced by an established expert on the subject matter, whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable third-party publications." On the matter of scores and ratings, Henrik Franzon would appear reliable. Dan56 (talk) 14:54, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

• Misplaced Pages noticeboards
• Misplaced Pages dispute resolution