Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 155

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Background: The Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) declared their independence in 1976. Morocco objected to this and claims the territory as their own. Since then, numerous other states have recognized the SADR's independence, but many of the states that did so have since withdrawn their recognition. In dispute is whether Vietnam still recognizes the SADR's independence, and how they should be listed on International recognition of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic.

We have several Moroccan sources which claim that Vietnam has withdrawn their recognition: [1], [2], [3], [4], [5]. The most recent source is from June 2013 and states (from google translate): "The chairman of the delegation of the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) visiting Morocco from 2 to 5 June at the invitation of the Party of Progress and Socialism (PPS) reaffirmed Monday, June 3, 2013 in Rabat, the position support of his country and his party to the territorial integrity of the Kingdom." This seems to pretty clearly state that Vietnam considers the SADR to be part of Morocco.

Contradicting this claim is a list available from Vietnam's Ministry of Foreign Affairs ([6]) of states with which they claim to have diplomatic relations. This list has been around since 2007 and has since occasionally been updated (to add new states to the list). The list claims to be accurate as of May 2/2013 (or one month prior to the most recent Moroccan source.) The list claims that they have diplomatic relations with the SADR.

So, the question is, is the fact that SADR hasn't been removed from this list sufficient evidence that Vietnam hasn't withdrawn recognition? To me, this is implicit evidence, and given that it is contradicted by explicit evidence (and the list has not been updated since the most recent Moroccan source) needs to be given due weight. A similar example, if we found a source which said Vietnam and Prussia established diplomatic relations on 1 January 2013, but Prussia was not listed on Vietnam's MFA list, I don't feel that this would be good evidence that they hadn't established diplomatic relations. As such, I think that Vietnam should be listed as having withdrawn recognition. Another user (Jan) argues that because the only sources claiming that recognition has been withdrawn are Moroccan, they aren't reliable and hence Vietnam should be listed as still recognizing. What are others thoughts on this? TDL (talk) 21:59, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

Both views should be presented: "Moroccan sources [ref] state that ..., but the Vietnamese ministry [ref] still lists ... ". Your suggestion that a statement "seems to pretty clearly state that Vietnam considers the SADR to be part of Morocco" is just your opinion. It may of course be quite correct. But it may also be typical politician-speak, allowing them to say to Morocco "yes, of course Western Sahara is yours really" while at the same time denying anything of the sort to the Sahrawis, "but of course we weren't talking about your country". Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 23:45, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

Of course we can't rule out the possibility that they are saying different things to differ people, but that's true of any statement ever made, regardless of how clear it is. My point was that in the absence of contradicting information, the statement seemed to be clear enough to justify moving them from the "recognizers" to the "non-recognizers" category. Unfortunately, the situation is confused by the MFA list...

I completely agree that both views should be presented in the text, and I have no doubt that me and Jan can come to a compromise on that. However, due to the current structure of the list Vietnam needs to be classified either as a "recognizer" or a "non-recognizer". The key question is: do we colour and count them as recognizing or not? How do we depict them on the map? How do we give due weight to the sources presented above? Unfortunately there isn't a lot of room for a middle ground compromise on this issue without a complete restructuring of the list, it is one way or the other. Perhaps the only viable solution is to create a third category of states who's status is "unclear". TDL (talk) 00:54, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

That sounds like a good solution until and unless the status of Vietnam becomes unambiguously clear. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 08:46, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

Seconded! --Stephan Schulz (talk) 18:35, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

This is an important debate for me. Soon I'll add a comment here, please be patient, I don't have free time. Jan CZ (talk) 00:11, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

I would like opinions on the reliability of globalresearch.ca ([7]). To my eye it meets the definition of WP:QUESTIONABLE for the following reasons:

1. The website is a frequent publisher of fringe material. The website has a long history of publishing 9/11 and other conspiracy theory material. To see that, on any given issue, this website will take a fringe position, one has only to look at today's homepage, which includes items such as:
   1. Saudi Arabia’s “Chemical Bandar” behind the Chemical Attacks in Syria?
   2. Did the White House Help Plan the Syrian Chemical Attack?
   3. US and Allied Warships off the Syrian Coastline: Naval Deployment Was Decided “Before” the August 21 Chemical Weapons Attack
   4. Turkish Official: “Chemical Weapons Sent From Turkey to Syria”
   5. The US Government Stands Revealed to the World as a Collection of War Criminals and Liars
   6. The Murder of Dr. David Kelly. “A Symbol of the Blackness of the Tony Blair Cabal”
2. User-submitted content and a weak editorial policy. The website accepts submissions from authors and appears to have minimal editorial oversight. The about us page states: "The Centre for Research on Globalization will not be held responsible or liable for any inaccurate or incorrect statements contained in Global Research articles." If they decline to stand behind the work that they publish, why should we consider them reliable?
3. While the person who runs the website, Michel Chossudovsky, is a retired academic, there is no reason to believe that the website practices any form of peer review. or holds itself to any academic standards

globalresearch.ca was discussed on this forum back in 2007. See Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_1#globalresearch.ca. At this point User:DGG argued that the website was not reliable while User:Piotrus and User:Blueboar argued that use of globalresearch.ca required attribution. GabrielF (talk) 15:59, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

Actually all DGG argued was that they were bias, but that is immaterial as all sources are. The reason for this RSN is this edit, [8] that Gabriel and friends, socks, keep on cutting out a source written by the article's subject because they dislike the organization hosting the source. As for the source for other cases, the author of the specific article being sourced to is of high importance, and any statement attributed to the website itself must be attributed, and also not refuted by other sources. Sepsis II (talk) 16:49, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

I agree that this is a highly questionable source, which does not appear to meet the requirements of reliable sources. There is no indication of any editorial oversight - the "about" page of the website does not even name any of the individuals associated with it, and has a disclaimer, as you note above, that dissociates itself from the articles it publishes. GoGoTob2 (talk) 16:56, 6 September 2013 (UTC) EDITED TO ADD: you misrepresent what DGG said back in 2007. He said " I do not consider it quotable as factual news unless otherwise supported".

This account is an obvious sock, engaged in blockable offenses. Sepsis II (talk) 17:46, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

• Globalresearch.ca appears to be devoted to WP:FRINGE editorials and its content clearly contradicts what reliable sources say. HAARP is a secret weapon, Big Pharma conspires with the WHO to cause pandemics, Kosovo was stolen from Serbia by NATO, Gaddafi was a philanthropist (and the USA committed genoicide in Libya), global warming is a myth, Srebrenica is a hoax to make Serbs look bad, the twin towers were brought down by controlled explosions, and so on. Globalresearch.ca should not be used as a source, and any attempt to use globalresearch.ca to support an editor's opinions should be considered a red flag. bobrayner (talk) 18:26, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

Articles on Globalresearch.ca are certainly not a reliable source for factual unattributed claims, but that does not forbid us from adding:

• Faruqi, Shad Saleem (Nov. 5, 2009). Bush and Blair accused of War Crimes, Globalresearch.ca.

to, say, a bibliography section of the Shad Saleem Faruqi page (whether that meets WP:DUE will depend upon how may such articles Faruqi has authored etc). As an analogy, a self-published book, is (with some exceptions) not regraded as a reliable source, but it is still ok to mention on the author's page that he wrote such a book. The relevant policy for such use of questionable and SPS sources is WP:ABOUTSELF. Just be sure not to repeat claims made in that globalresearch article as facts. Abecedare (talk) 19:01, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

Agree with Abecedare. The fact that they're a fringe publication means we shouldn't treat what they wrote as facts. It doesn't mean we can't mention that the article subject wrote for them - if that were the case, then we couldn't write that Alex Jones had a radio show, that David Icke ever wrote books, etc! --GRuban (talk) 20:47, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

• I have certainly consistently said that no source is absolutely reliable for all purposes or unreliable for all purposes, and that every source is intrinsically subject to a greater or less degree of bias, being composed or compiled by humans. Not all sources, however are equally biased. In the earlier discussion,I did not say that they were only biased in the way other sources are, but that they were a frankly and openly politically motivated source, attempting to promote their cause, rather than attempting to be neutral. Sometimes they reprint outside material, but the true source is then the outside material which must stand on its own--that they quote it doesn't say anything about it being trustworthy or otherwise. The immediate source for this essay is http://www.criminalisewar.org/blog/, which published Faruqi's essay as Reflecting on the Law, and that is what should be quoted. Faroqui did not use the sensational headline: "Bush and Blair accused of War Crimes:" that wording is globalresearch's own wording, and is not a correct reprint of the original--indeed, the original does not even mention Blair. We can not say that Faroqui wrote for them, because he didn't. he wrote elsewhere, and they reprinted it. DGG ( talk ) 02:35, 9 September 2013 (UTC)
  • As far as I can tell such "reprints" (reposts) are clearly signalled on globalresearch.ca, with the original post clearly linked. I can't see why the repost should ever be cited instead of the original. Podiaebba (talk) 16:12, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

globalresearch.ca doesn't claim editorial oversight, so as far as I can see it has no status beyond that of the author. It is worth pointing out that Project Censored has repeatedly highlighted stories published on globalresearch.ca (6 of the 10 in Michel_Chossudovsky#Project_Censored_highlights were published there; and there are other cases from other authors, eg this). I conclude that for authors with significant reputations, the fact that a piece is published on globalresearch.ca shouldn't immediately and entirely disqualify it from being mentioned, with appropriate "Author X said" attribution. Podiaebba (talk) 16:09, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

• If Project Censored lauds Chossudovsky for his insistence that "the WTO is actually an illegal institution" &c, that counts against Project Censored rather than counting in Chossudovsky's favour. bobrayner (talk) 16:28, 11 September 2013 (UTC)
  • The "illegal" phrasing sounds odd given the WTO's undisputed status in practice, and Project Censored's summary loses a bit of the wording that makes it clear why Chossudovsky used it - the way the WTO agreement contradicted and/or overrode existing international law. copy of the original Try not to be so quick to judge. Podiaebba (talk) 17:45, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

I'm just wondering why FoxNews is not considered an accurate source for science and technology when similarly "opinionated" sources such as CNN, NYT, and CBS are. Since there isn't a used Talk page on that subject page, I thought I'd post the question here. Obviously FoxNews is RS in general, but I've seen editors argue through edits/reverts and on Talk pages against even this (which is simply biased silliness). Any honest, nuetral observer can see that CNN, NYT, CBS, and FoxNews all have the same issues with opinions turned into facts and vice versa and having to recant "mistakes" so why is FoxNews singled out as not reliable? Really not trying to make some conservative/liberal point or start a political discussion - just honestly asking the question. Thanks - Ckruschke (talk) 18:24, 11 September 2013 (UTC)Ckruschke

Are there subpages of FoxNews that focus on S&T? If so, why not WP:BB and simply add them. The page has not been edited for some time. If there is any dispute about this the issue can be brought up on the (empty) project talk page. – S. Rich (talk) 18:36, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

Thanks much! Ckruschke (talk) 18:59, 12 September 2013 (UTC)Ckruschke

This book is currently cited in around 1,000 articles.[9] It's a nice, colourful book, and a good read. It's also fairly accurate when it comes general, superficial overviews of Japan-related topics. But it also has a large number of errors. It translates Hyakunin Isshu as "Simple Poems by One Hundred Poets", even though the "simple" is not in Japanese and has never appeared in any of the 12+ translations of the work into English.[10][11] It misspells the name "Ariwara no Narihira" in its article on him, despite spelling it correctly in the article on his brother immediate below.[12] It's article on the Kujiki claims the latter to be a 1644 forgery, when an extensive debate between myself and User:Shii on Talk:Kujiki showed no reliable sources that indicate the work was written later than the 10th century.[13] Japanese encyclopedias all say so.

I'd tend to attribute these errors to the fact that Nussbaum, apparently an art historian by training, was not expert in everything Japanese, and so a book written solely by him is inherently not the best possible source on everything to do with Japan. I don't know of any reputable general reference "encyclopedia" in which all of the articles are written by a single person. In fact, his original work in French didn't include the word "encyclopédie" in the title. This word was added by the translator, Roth, a [French-English translator who apparently has no significant background in Japanese studies, having only translated this and one other francophone book on Japan. This is troubling when her translation of the Japan Encyclopedia (not even Nussbaum's still questionable original) is being cited in disputes about very specific terminological and orthographic issues.[14] I'm not even the first to notice these errors on Wikipedia: User:Stone-turner pointed out some other errors in January.[15]

I know the book claims to be written by a well-known historian of Japanese and Asian art, and is published by a reputable university press. But it's just got too many misprints and places where we can't tell if certain claims originate with the author (who appears to only be a reliable source on certain parts of Japanese culture) or with the translator (who is not a reliable source on anything to do with Japan). Therefore, I'd like to settle here once and for all whether the book can be used as a source for potentially controversial material when no other sources can be found.

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 06:38, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

It sounds like WP:TERTIARY applies here, but the test of that would be whether the author uses primary sources or relies on intermediate secondary sources. Tertiary sources often have the type of errors you mention. Good secondary sources would normally be taken as more definitive, but in general you would need to find such secondary sources in order to eliminate this source in each particular case. I don't think you can can just eliminate it as a source altogether on account of your own judgment. Perhaps some strongly negative reviews from acknowledged experts would suffice, though. Zero^talk 07:09, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

I agree with the preceding statement because I know of one situation where this source is actually more reliable for terminological issues than most other sources. Louis Frederic's Japan Encyclopedia correctly spells the name of a battle taking place in 587 AD as the Battle of Shigisan. A search on Google Books seems to indicate that a slight majority of published sources spell the word as "Shigisen" or "Shigi-sen", which anyone with knowledge of the Japanese language would know to be incorrect. Evidently, either Louis Frederic or his translator made some typos, but here is one place where they accurately fixed a common mistake. As was said above, care should be taken in using such tertiary sources, but if someone is proposing to "eliminate this source", that would not seem to be a good course of action.CurtisNaito (talk) 07:32, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

Zero: So does that mean that if there's a reliable secondary source that contradicts it, we can just remove the Nussbaum citation and the text based on it, and replace it with the better source? I've tried this before with sources that were arguably much worse than Nussbaum, and been accused of "removing referenced text" and violating NPOV ...

Curtis: That's just an unfortunate coincidence. But we don't need English (or French) sources to tell us how to correctly pronounce or romanize the names of Japanese mountains. Reliable sources place the battle at Mount Shigi, and so if Wikipedia calls Mount Shigi "Shigisan" or "Shigisen" or "Shigi-san" or "Mount Shigi" or whatever, we can spell it that way. Plus, I looked into it and apparently -san is the kan'on and so likely dates to the Nara or Heian Period, whereas -sen is the go'on and so was more likely used during the period in question.[16] Therefore, it's likely that both are technically correct, and since no one in modern Japan calls it "the Battle of Shigisan" anyway, there's not much point splitting hairs over whether the "English name" of the battle should be using the modern Japanese pronunciation. My source for the readings of 山 is Gakken's 2006 Kanji-gen. Therefore, Sansom is still a better source and isn't even technically wrong on this minor detail. Anyway, I'm not proposing "eliminating this source" -- that would be far too much work. What I'm saying is that if an editor finds a particular statement questionable, and Nussbaum is the only source that can be found for the statement, then a reliable secondary source should be required: a translation of a tertiary source that is known to contain many errors should not be good enough by itself.

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 08:23, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

Update: User:Enkyo2 is probably the book's main advocate, but even he recognized that it contains errors. In response, User:Bamse said that Nussbaum "does not work [as a reference]". Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 08:49, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

Every book contains errors but they are often minors and concerns details. This is comes more often in 3rd sources than in 2nd sources.

Given the descrption that you give of this book (well-recognised as well as his author), it should be given credit and each time there is a doubt, some secondary sources should be found to confirm the doubt.

If this happens too often (I would say between 5 and 10 times), then other sources should be prefered in the redaction of the articles.

Pluto2012 (talk) 10:24, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

The short answer is, with attribution, if the matter is obscure and otherwise unattested. However, since he wrote basically a derivative compilation, I very much doubt whether no other source could be found even for the obscurer matters he might mention. Only one example is given 'Shigisan'.

The Hyakunin isshu translation is certainly a blooper; the Ariwara no Narihira mispelling just editorial oversight on a lapsus calami; on a thing like Kujiki, a generic source like Frédéric cannot be used because it is subject to academic dispute, and in these instances, one must always have recourse to secondary specialist sources, never tertirary sources that push on opinion; 'The battle of Shigisen' is English usage, yet 信貴山 is read 'Shigisan' in modern Japan. I don't think he should be used here either, and I don't think indeed that that English wiki article bears a proper title: its only justification is that none of the other current Japanese terms have stabilized to allow one to be ascendent. A cursory glance at this obscure episode (the Nihonshoki doesn't appear to name it, by the way (Sakamoto Tarō, Ienaga Saburō, Inoue Mitsusada, Ōno Susumu (eds.)Nihon Shoki, Iwanami Koten Bungaku Taikei 68, vol.2 pp154-171, unless my quick glance through it missed something, doesn't appear to mention any name for the battle. When was the term coined? One thing I do know is that this was undoubtedly the traditional reading of an ancient text source, because

• George Sansom,A History of Japan to 1334, (1958)1974 p.49
• Edmond Papinot, Historial and Geographical Dictionary of Japan, (1899,1906,1910) Tuttle reprint 1972 sub. Soga no Umako, p.597
• James Murdoch,History of Japan, 1903, p.137
• Charles William Hepner, The Kurozumi Sect of Shinto, 1935 p.9

Now all of those extremely erudite Meiji (or close to Meiji) Japanologues write 'Shigisen', and it is not a slip but reflects, undoubtedly, their transcription of original sources, as edited by Japanese scholars. It can't be coincidental that it is also retained in some modern scholarly monographs by period specialists, e.g.Gary L. Ebersole, Ritual Poetry and the Politics of Death in Early Japan, Princeton University Press, ‎1992 p.148.

Hijiri's call is therefore probably correct on the original historical (go'on) pronunciation (and also because of the fact that it is the lectio difficilior), against Curtis. Most Japanese would now read Shigisan (信貴山), because it looks standard. If you pronounced that shigisen they’d probably hear that as a reference to the Kintetsu branch line from Kawachi-Yamamoto station (信貴線)! Some might recall also that the Shigisan engi emaki is pronounced that way, reflecting Heian pronunciation.

So (a) it's pointless to have a blanket dismissal of a fairly good general encyclopedia (b) but on tricky issues, they should not be used, unless there is no other source. In this case, one uses attribution. Shigisan should really be, in my view, Shigisen, on the basis of the evidence above.

p.s. Hijiri. (it's = its) as of course you know. Rapid internet reading tends to make us pick up even the illiterate confusions of youth. I have to stay on guard myself against stuff like this. It doesn't matter (but it does!) By the way 'Shigisen, sounds to me like it might have meant 'Snipe-Hill' (鷸)? Well, no matter. Just an idle thought. Cheers. Nishidani (talk) 16:44, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

"It's article on the Kujiki claims the latter to be a 1644 forgery" Belated, but in my research on the use of the Kujiki in the 17th century I've never seen anyone claim this. If the claim isn't an outright fabrication, the author of this "encyclopedia" was working from remarkably old and poor sources. As Hijiri and I discussed on the Kujiki page, since the Meiji period the debate has been between the 7th, 8th, and 9th centuries as the date of authorship.

I clicked on one of the links above and saw that the article on Arita-yaki is similarly confused: it describes it as consisting of Kakiemon and Nabeshima styles, when in fact these are just the most famous and refined styles among a large variety of Arita-yaki. That is just the error I noticed on the page linked to. I didn't look at the pages before or after. Shii (tock) 22:35, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

A description of this one-volume work is at the website of the Japan Society of the UK here. The reviewer suggests that Japan Encyclopedia would ideally be used in conjunction with other referential sources so as to aid in cross checking the information presented. This work is a useful part of the ordinary cross-checking process which is conventional in our wiki-project.--Enkyo2 (talk) 14:01, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

Enkyo2, as I have painstakingly pointed out several times now both here and on ANI, has a tendency to "cross-check" Nussbaum with 12th-17th century primary sources that don't actually say what he says they do... Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 14:15, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

• I don't know what is done or not by Enkyo2 but cross-checking must be done with secondary reliable sources. It is not forbidden but it is very delicate to use primary sources to discuss/criticize how secondary reliable sources analyse them. Rejecting secondary sources analyses on the base of the primary sources content requires high expertise on a topic, which wikipedians are not supposed to have.
• "Japan Encyclopedia would ideally be used in conjunction with other referential sources so as to aid in cross checking the information presented, and this is facilitated by a fairly extensive bibliography, which is included." -> This comment makes think that there are several (or even many) factual errors in the the Japan encyclopedia but that doens't reject this. If case of controversy, a secondary sources should be brought to prove the information of the Encyclopaedia may not be correct ; in case of sensitive information, the Encyclopedia should be rejected and a secondary source immediately prefered. For contexts, the Encyclopedia seems perfect.

Pluto2012 (talk) 06:13, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

I suppose one can find a lot of good things to say about this book, but it is simply not reliable, that is, one cannot count on it to being right. It doesn't matter what his sources were. Facts that went in often come out mangled. In [17] I pointed out several problems with the calendar article where things were wrong or backwards. Some others: In Ansei no Taigoku (purge), that Ii Naosuke carried out the purge becomes "the first to be purged was II Naosuke." In Yamato, Yamato-chôtei, "court of Japan" is translated as "heart of Japan."

Though daimyo had to have a revenue of 10,000 koku or more, the article on Fudai-daimyo says that fudai daimyo "generally had revenues of 10,000 koku or less." In the article Hitojichi, the fact that Tokugakwa Ieyasu was held as a hostage for twelve years becomes he took hostages for twelve years. For Mathematics, "Algebraic rules...arrived in Japan during Hideyoshi's time and were published in 1299." Hideyoshi wasn't yet around in 1299. In Ethnologywe read that "student-aged individuals today may reach a height of more than 170 for men (with the exception of sumotori)…." How many short sumotori are there? In Aso-san, the three people to die in the 1979 eruption of Aso-san become hundreds.

In the Chronology, the death (assassination) of Sanetomo, the last Minamoto shogun, in 1219, is listed as a cultural event of 1215. And Oda Nobunaga did not become shogun in 1573. How do you go about disproving his statement under G" "They are partnered with the syllables…ye to give gye." Do you have to find a reputable source that says "Japanese does not have the sylable gye"? If you want more strange statements, I am confident I can come up with some.

By the way, on the pronunciation of 山, there is a Mt. Daisen 大山 in Tottori.

Is the question "whether the book can be used as a source for potentially controversial material when no other sources can be found"? If this book can have so many mistakes with well-known facts, how can it be trusted for things that only it says? --Stone-turner (talk) 14:18, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

Okay. We should move a motion to the effect that that where L-F-N has been used, he must be cross-checked with another independent source. He should not, on the strength of the now many examples cited above, be used in future. Take citations from him as flags demanding that the point be checked when they are not obvious (well-known) or deal with historical details.Nishidani (talk) 15:12, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

Regarding "heart of Japan": That clearly was either a misprint on Nussbaum's part that Roth accidentally made much worse based her not speaking any Japanese, or a misreading of Nussbaum's French by Roth. The French words for "court" and "heart" are spelled almost the same, and I think are nearly homophonic.[18][19] This indicates that this mistake was Roth's, not Nussbaum's, which means that at the very least if we are not going to take this source off the table completely, we must always check the French (my copy is in the mail from Amazon now).

Regarding the death of Sanetomo: The date is a serious blooper, but that's all it is: a blooper. The book's actual articles give the correct date.[20] More likely, "Sanetomo" is a misprint for his regent Tokimasa, who actually did die, apparently of natural causes, in 1215. Unfortunately, I think having accidental internal contradictions is just as bad as getting the facts wrong. Also, until I checked and found it more likely that the 1215 date was meant for Tokimasa, I was going to point out that calling the assassination of Sanetomo a "cultural event" is not problematic when one considers that Sanetomo is better-known as a poet than as either a warrior or a statesman. But I know nothing about Tokimasa's contributions to culture, so I can't say whether these theories gel with each other. Google search indicates that Sanetomo's relationship to waka was an indirect consequence of his association with Sanetomo. Either way, you're right that this is a bad error.

Regarding the pronunciation of 山: I searched my electronic dictionary for all words ending with the character and pronounced as either sen or zen, which is how I limited my search to the names of specific mountains. I found 10 such words (out of several hundred). These were 氷ノ山 (hyō-no-sen), 七金山 (shichi-kon-sen), 佉羅陀山 (kya-ra-da-sen or ka-ra-da-sen), the aforementioned 大山 (dai-sen), 象頭山 (zō-zu-sen), 弥山 (mi-sen), 須弥山 (shu-mi-sen or su-mi-sen), 霊山 (ryō-zen), 鷲山 (ju-sen) and 霊鷲山 (ryō-ju-sen). Among these 10 results, I found some interesting facts. 象頭山 is a mountain not in Japan but in India, and the middle character is pronounced zu (which is the go-on) rather than the much more common reading tō, which fits with the fact that the following sen is also a go-on; the mountain being in India and connected with Shakyamuni indicates that the word's "correct Buddhist pronunciation" has likely been preserved since Buddhism first entered Japan -- at the time of the Battle of Shigisan, when go-on readings were more prominent than they are now; there is also a mountain in Kagawa Prefecture with the same kanji, read as zō-zu-san. 須弥山 is the Japanese name for Sumeru, a mountain in Buddhist mythology. 霊山 can also be read as rei-zan; like with 象頭山 rei is the kan-on and ryō being the go-on. The 金 in 七金山 not being pronounced kin is for the same reason; 七金山 and 佉羅陀山 are both associated with 須弥山. 霊山 and 鷲山 are both abbreviations of 霊鷲山, a place where Shakyamuni preached. The dictionary entries for both 大山 and 弥山 indicate them as pilgrimage-sites and/or the sites of temple complexes. Of the the 10, the only one with no specific connection to Buddhism is 氷ノ山.

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 09:38, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

At a guess about half of the problems are due to the translation, probably including the problems I mention for Ansei no Taigoku, Hitojichi, and Ethnology. That still leaves a lot due to the original, such as the calendar problems. That he gets something right in one place doesn't mean he understands it or gets it right in another; he often seems to copy and paste without understanding. But, however they came about, the problems make the book under discussion unreliable. And I don't think using the French original will help much with problems as he does not cite sources in articles, so you cannot check him. --Stone-turner (talk) 13:39, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

As for Minamoto Sanetomo, he was not particularly a notable figure in himself, though he was a poet, but with his death there were no more Minamotos, which meant the Hojo regents could control completely the various high-ranking children who they made shogun. So his death was definitely a significant political event.--Stone-turner (talk) 07:09, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

I know his death was a significant political event, but he is regarded as having been maybe the third or fourth most important poet of his age, and that includes his own tutor, who is regarded as the best waka (as in tanka, not chōka) poet ever. The death of such a figure is definitely a cultural event (even if neither our article on Sanetomo nor Nussbaum's properly emphasize his poet-ness). Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 01:07, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

The reliability of the anime/manga publication Protoculture Addicts has been questioned at BLPN, but I think this is a more appropriate board for the issue.

To sum it up, for an edit, I used the editorial (officially reprinted online) of Protoculture Addicts issue 41. It's a North-American paper publication about anime and manga that has been going on since 1988, first as a fanzine, then as commercial publication. It was later absorbed (with publication still going on) by Anime News Network.

Protoculture Addicts has been referred to as "the oldest American anime professional specialty magazine" in Watching Anime, Reading Manga: 25 Years of Essays and Reviews by Fred Pattern, published by Stone Bridge Press, 2004, p.108. The magazine has also received coverage in Cartoon Cultures: The Globalization of Japanese Popular Media by Anne Cooper-Chen, published by Peter Lang Publishing in 2010, p.134-135. It has also been mentioned in a various other publications as can be seen in a Google Book search.

The PA#41 editorial I mention was written by Claude J Pelletier, editor-in-chief of the magazine, who has also been mentioned in various publications (Google Book search).

So is Protoculture Addicts a reliable source, and particularly its #41 editorial which provides a translation/summarization in English of an interview with an anime director (Hideaki Anno) originally published in the Japanese magazine Newtype ?Folken de Fanel (talk) 19:23, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

• Please don't forum shop. The editorial is an opinion piece that is not even faithfully taken from the original document because it was translated via a friend/colleague and than loosely reported on. Secondly, the translation is being paraphrased, citing this as Anno's words in quotes is misleading (owing to BLP concerns). Third, you are taking that source and arriving at a further conjecture that runs into BLP issues that are outside the purpose of this board. The magazine may be a good source, but it has had dozens of inaccuracies and errors like many other publications. This editorial is flawed because it lacks context and has errors and ambiguity that is not in dispute in the original document. I say the brief editorial cannot compare to the original or even the faithful full translation and given the errors should not be used in any capacity, including those separate from the BLP concerns. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 19:34, 11 September 2013 (UTC)
  • You have been told by two users this wasn't a matter for BLPN. I'm merely moving the discussion to the relevant board. Had you read the editorial, you'd have seen it contains direct quotes/translations and not just paraphrasing. The source doesn't need context to provide an accurate translation/summarization of the original Japanese interview, and I have seen no full-translation except in a self-published, unreliable fan-website. Per all the published content I've found, I'd say Protoculture Addicts is perfectly reliable to provide the translation/summarization of a Japanese interview. I know your POV on the question, but now I'm trying to have outside opinions on the question.Folken de Fanel (talk) 19:50, 11 September 2013 (UTC)
    • I'm done here. Folken's polemic arguments here are toothless; the original source should be used over some paraphrased translation and Folken's insertion is not backed by the original. If his response to criticism is really relevant than we take from a secondary source and not a tertiary interpretation that is at odds with the original. Anno's response, in English, to criticism was summed up as "I have no problem with them. If there's a problem, it's all with you guys. Too bad." And that "Too Bad" was in English and is held in numerous accounts.[21][22] Sorry, but this is a moot matter in my eyes, because Wikipedia should never advocate using a third-party account of what a source says over what the original source actually says.— Preceding unsigned comment added by ChrisGualtieri (talk • contribs)
      • As neither you nor I are Japanese-speaking users, we have to rely on the most reliable source providing translation/summarization. That source is Protoculture Addicts, not your self-published fansite. But there is nothing at odds with the fan translation anyway. They say the same things. This isn't about Anno's response to criticism, this is about Anno's reponse to anonymous fan backlash on the internet. The source you mention isn't about fan backlash, but about "Evangelion's last two episodes", that is what Anno has no problem with, not the fact that they upset many fans.Folken de Fanel (talk) 20:20, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

You may not read Japanese, but don't tell me what I can and cannot read. The original source is what we go by. Just because I don't have it on hand to show you doesn't change its contents or reliability. For interviews, the interview as reported is more reliable than some paraphrased comment done by the translators friend. This is not about the sources' reliability as a whole. You made the matter into something of a BLP concern. The source is Newtype Magazine for June 1996. And that is the only citation I need and that is the reliable source for that interview. PA's error is their own, but in cases like this, go with the original. Plain and simple. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 01:27, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

We don't have access to the original source so we go with what reliable source tell us about it. What is the BLP concern exactly ? And what is PA's error exactly ? The original, you don't have it, and you have no idea what is says, so why are you making such a fuss ?Folken de Fanel (talk) 06:57, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

The original source is fine - I do not need to show it to you. The translation on Gwern's is good enough. I doubt scans are still out there on the net. I've got all you need to verify it yourself if you wish to do so including page counts; the text has been quoted and re-quoted in various places. You are saying something that is simply not held by the source. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 12:29, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

I don't see any issues with Protoculture Addicts being considered a reliable source in general, but there is some concern that the translation may not be accurate, and is introducing errors (some of which could count as breachs of the BLP policy). There is no evidence the translation has been confirmed with the subject as being accurate, we don't know how the translation was carried out or what level of skill the translator had. We should err on the side of caution and discount the Protoculture Addicts article and any content referenced to it in this case. Hope that helps everybody. Nick (talk) 18:35, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

If we were to take that objection seriously, almost no source containing a translation would be usable, because sources containing translations normally don't say "and by the way, we checked this with the subject, and by the way, our translator has a high level of skill".

If the source is generally reliable, and you have no reason to think it's specifically unreliable with respect to translations, then it should also be considered reliable for translations. Otherwise you could object to anything: "sure the source says that the building is 500 feet tall, but we don't know if the building measurer had a high level of skill". Ken Arromdee (talk) 22:18, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

Uninvited editor trying to parse this: Am I correct in reading that some editors, or at least User:ChrisGualtieri, has access to the original source? And that he is saying there are errors in this particular English translation? Well, if there is at least some access to the original, then that should be used rather than what appears to be a possibly shoddy translation. Protoculture Addicts may be an RS in general, but a short, poorly written editorial with possible translation issues is a lot to hang a potentially controversial comment by a BLP on. Gamaliel (talk) 22:51, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

The faithful translation is the best that I have from the original document spanning six pages and starting on page 10. I've been trying to track down the original, but it was referenced in the July publication for which I have the text (no scans) and the June Animage text (no scans either). Of the precious few scans I do have, most are from postings on sites like Evageeks. I've pondered asking Newtype for a copy, but they don't want a gaijin like me writing to them. And unless I can provide the Japanese text at minimum, I'd say keep it out until it can be verified in its native language. Japanese is merciless to online translation systems and foreigners in general. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 23:10, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

To sum it up, ChrisGualtieri does not have access to the original Japanese source. He is basing his remarks on an English fan-translation self-published on this fansite (what he calls the "faithful translation"), which is itself a translation of an older French fan-translation of the interview found on the net and of unidentified author. I agree with Ken Arromdee that if Protoculture Addicts is regarded as a reliable source for its anime coverage, which includes a lot of translations and direct interviews with Japanese authors, and the only objection to the editorial is based on a so-called difference with unreliable sources, then it is absurd to claim this editorial would not be reliable. I agree that possible translation issues must be taken into account, but we are also supposed to weigh the seriousness of the objection, and in that case there is none.Folken de Fanel (talk) 01:03, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

So after reading this it seems the alleged problems with the translation may only be speculative. But I still have concerns about pulling out controversial quotes from a shoddy editorial, no matter how reliable PA is in general. Is there no other source for similar comments? Why must these particular comments be used? If they are so important, why is there not more coverage of these comments? Neon Genesis Evangelion isn't obscure, so there must be coverage elsewhere. Gamaliel (talk) 02:25, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

NGE sure isn't obscure, but untranslated Japanese interviews from 1996 are more likely to be. The official English version of Newtype didn't appear until 2002 and didn't delve into the Japanese version's backlog. Back then, when animation was still a niche undercurrent, the only kind of publication where you could read that kind of interview was ...Protoculture Addicts. You see how ChrisGualtieri tells us it is almost impossible now for non-Japanese to get Newtype back issues. The only other publication with mention of this particular interview and comments was Neon Genesis Evangelion: The Unofficial Guide by Kasuhisa Fujie & Martin Foster.

Now, to tell the truth, this isn't an issue of translation at all. I believe that ChrisGualtieri, in good faith, has initially misread my edit in the article, the PA editorial, and the fan translation, and got confused along the way. He clings to an interpretation that my edit and the PA editorial would say that Anno qualified fan criticism as toilet graffiti. But that is just not what the editorial and my edit say anyway.

Please read the editorial (relevant part quoted):

Now my last edit: "in response to excessive criticism and gratuitous attacks from anonymous fans on the internet, he made controversial comments in a Newtype interview in June 1996, in which he compared offensive and anonymous online messages to "graffiti in a public toilet". Anno concluded on the remark that some fans on message board "don't have anything certain to hold on" and advised them to "go out and visit towns"

We can always discuss whether this is relevant or necessary for the article, and for the sake of compromise I'm ready to drop it altogether. But the real issue here is that ChrisGualtieri's good faith enthusiasm prevented him to take the time to carefully read my edit and what it was based on. And rather than questioning himself, Chris chose to blame the PA editorial for an absurd problem that doesn't even exist. This is not the first time Chris gets confused over some text interpretation (see here) and I'm not ready to see a reputable publication that can provide extremely valuable content for dozens of other articles (because they were the only ones translating this stuff) be labelled as "shoddy" and "unreliable" just because of a communication issue between Chris and me that's been blown out of proportion.Folken de Fanel (talk) 09:52, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

Oi, again with the bringing up of the mud to sling around like your prose is picture perfect. Clearly, the topic moved to the "Anno is dead" reports, if next to him, he may strike you (from my translation of the French), but online they are safe and its like "toilet graffiti" where you don't even need to sign it for it to arrive at your feet! This is not criticism of the show, this is people being insulting and sending death threats and spreading rumors of his suicide for making that ending. There is a fine difference between their criticism being "toilet graffiti" and the people who spread news of his impending/self-imposed death! Combining the two and adding a quote which is not that accurate is my concern because it is not accurate. We disagreed over the definition of religious symbolism versus theme and meaning. Let's sum this up rather simply; the last dispute was over "it had no particular meaning", but four sources disagreed including the creator who said, "Evangelion also includes a "salvation-like" story, but it’s not true salvation. It was a work where, thinking about the destination of mankind, I began by borrowing elements from Christianity." So it had a meaning to build the salvation-like story owing to the title "Gospel of a New Century", you can debate the prose all you want, but I'm not the one with the Bible in hand asking questions about it to be accurate about such depictions and the Biblical stories which are so well represented that the entire backstory consists of Adam and Lilith right down to Eve (Eva) being made of Adam with the Fruit of Life and Fruit of Knowledge being path to god and Humanity. More and more similarities exist, the work uses such texts to draft the story, but this is not a sponsored production from the Catholic Church and it carries no religious message, but it does present a religious meaning in humanity's search and desire to become, reunite and find God. Let's not quibble over nuance and word choice forever, it's over and done with - better out than left in wrong. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 14:15, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

If anyone needed a proof of Chris' communication issue, here it is, full force. He still insists that "criticism" is being compared to "toilet graffiti", while my edit states "he compared offensive and anonymous online messages to "graffiti in a public toilet"." How can anyone read "offensive and anonymous online messages" and understand "criticism" is beyond me. Neither my edit nor Protoculture Addicts portrays "criticism" as "toilet graffiti". Clearly this is not an issue of translation here, at least not as far as Protoculture Addicts is concerned, but of ChrisGualtieri not reading comments properly.Folken de Fanel (talk) 14:34, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

Your terrible prose has a number of issues that not only compound problems, but is confusing and inaccurate. Your words at ultimate removal were, "and in response to excessive criticism and gratuitous attacks from anonymous fans on the internet, he made controversial comments in a Newtype interview in June 1996, in which he compared offensive and anonymous online messages to "graffiti in a public toilet". Anno concluded on the remark that some fans on message board "don't have anything certain to hold on" and advised them to "go out and visit towns"" Asides the run-on sentence, misquoting, a missing period, you have made an improper cause and effect and synthed something out of context. First, he didn't do the interview to response to controversial comments as you suggest. Second, the "controversial comments" are more about the personal attacks he received and not the criticism as can be interpreted. Third you lack the context of these messages, avoiding the subject of death threats or claims of his suicide which were widespread, this not "gratuitous attacks" this is people telling him that they are going to kill him and/or tell him to commit suicide for the ending of Evangelion. Some of these messages were added to the film itself including the vandalism of the company. The response was to those messages and is not relevant for discussion of the article, at all. The "some fans on message board" is not even proper and the quotes make no sense either and given the reality of the messages received were often directly sent. Given that the Protoculture editorial is rife with grammatical and spelling errors, I really wonder about the accuracy of this terrible translation, even the unquoted segments suffer grammatically, like "They attack other while they are staying in a safe place." Talk about some good prose. Say what you want, but the insertion was a problem and means little, this one interview out of the dozens that I have is also the one interview that I cannot get the original text for. The magazine may be exceedingly rare outside of Japan, but that is to be expected and unless you want to pay 700 yen + international shipping for it, I think we should not use something that no one can provide the original text for. Nick was correct; this way I can't screw up the quote by taking from the unofficial French translation and you can't use this questionable paragraph in PA. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 16:42, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

"First, he didn't do the interview to response to controversial comments as you suggest." I could play your game and tell you that "reponse" is a noun, and in English, the particle "to" is used to introduce a verb, "respond" in this case. I could throw your personal attacks back in your face, but there are more important things to deal with.

No, I don't suggest Anno did the interview to responD to controversial comments. During the interview, Anno was questioned on harsh criticism from online fans, and in his response to that specific question from the interviewer, he made the comments quoted. Hence, "in response to excessive criticism and gratuitous attacks from anonymous fans on the internet, he made controversial comments". How you can read "...he made an interview with Newtype" instead is a complete mystery.

"Second, the "controversial comments" are more about the personal attacks he received and not the criticism", and I agree. That why I say "he compared offensive and anonymous online messages to "graffiti in a public toilet"". "Criticism" is not mentioned in this sentence.

"this not "gratuitous attacks" this is people telling him that they are going to kill him and/or tell him to commit suicide for the ending of Evangelion." So yes, in English you can call that "gratuitous attacks". There is no context lacking.

"The response was to those messages" That's exactly what PA and I are saying.

"The "some fans on message board" is not even proper" Please explain how.

"and the quotes make no sense either and given the reality of the messages received were often directly sent." this whole sentence of yours doesn't make sense.

So we agree that the PA editorial is accurate, and so is my edit.Folken de Fanel (talk) 17:16, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

I made no personal attack and I think its time to drop the stick. No one cares to debate moot points anymore. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 18:32, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

As long as you drop accusations of the PA editorial being "libel", "defamation", "mistranslated", and refocus on my wording being ambiguous, I can accept to drop the stick as far as the RSN is concerned. A dispute resolution process is however inevitable. And you made personal attacks.Folken de Fanel (talk) 18:42, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

This issue is really exacerbated by the poor communication between the two of you. It's very difficult for an uninvolved editor to follow. I'd encourage both of you to cut down on extraneous prose and try to boil things down to essential bullet points.

I understand the difficulty of finding sources that you describe. I was in comics fandom in the 90s and it's difficult to cite even widely-known facts because the reliable sources of the day haven't made it on to the internet yet because nobody's scanning old issues of TCJ or CBG en masse. Even so, we have to go with the sources we do have, and I don't think PA establishes what you say it does in this edit. The source doesn't establish that Anno's comments were "controversial", only that Pelletier disagreed with them. Nor do I think the source establishes a characterization of "gratuitous" or "excessive".

The translation issue is something of a red herring, but still, what remains here is the fact that we're presenting something as an accurate and exact quote that was read from a magazine in one language by one person and spoken to another, who is now recounting it in a different language. Translation aside, that's also an accuracy and BLP issue. Gamaliel (talk) 19:14, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

My latest edit was this one, not the one you refer to here. I acknowledge there might have been issues with my wording before, but I tried to address it as best as I could given what we have in PA.

As for "controversial", NGE The unofficial Guide seems to establish that, but it's true I had not used it in my edit.

"excessive" is straight from Pelletier's summarization, and "gratuitous" is my rewording of "easily and anonymously".

I understand accuracy and BLP issue, and if this is an issue of wording on my part, as the latest comments tend to show it, then I have no problem discussing further rewording, which is a matter of regular editing and not of source reliability, or "libel" or any other fantastic accusation. PA's reliability has not been fundamentally questioned and you pretty much agree this is more of a communication issue than anything else, so I'm leaving it at that as far as RSN is concerned. We have 2 sources for the graffiti quote, and even a 3rd (though it can't be used in the article) to at least have a level of certainty, between users, that PA did not make it up. Further discussion as to how paraphrase it accurately in the article, or whether it really needs to be used, can always happen at the article's talk page, but the source itself is fine and that's what I wanted to establish. PA does not state anywhere that Anno has equated "criticism" with "toilet graffiti", and whether ChrisGualtieri is ready to acknowledge that fact is a communication/behavior issue that, if persistent, can be dealt with at other forums.Folken de Fanel (talk) 20:07, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

For the record, i don't think PA made anything up, I'm just concerned about presenting something as an exact quote that might not be quite exact. I'd be more comfortable with paraphrasing and only quoting select phrases. Gamaliel (talk) 20:31, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

Would hellokpop.com be considered a reliable source? While it isn't a blog or a simple fan-forum, and has a staff [23], the staff is comprised of volunteers, which is why felt that I should ask about it here. The website does have an application process, [24] so it doesn't seem that just anyone can work for it, and they claim to have been referenced by several esteemed publications, such as The New York Times and Wired. --Jpcase (talk) 21:02, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

This is a tough call. Maybe I'm misreading it, but the first two sections at their disclaimer page don't inspire confidence.The wording isn't clear, but it appears to be saying that their articles are based on sources that may or may not be reliable. In a sense, that's true of a lot of sites, so it may be that they're just being overly cautious in the disclaimers. Still, a reputable site will expect its writers to differentiate between reliable and unreliable sources, and expect its editors (of which hellokpop apparently has several) to verify content before it's published. Rivertorch (talk) 16:09, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

I noticed that the Emirate of Granada article did not have a lot of references for historical facts presented in the article. I added this one: Google Books. After I added it I looked up the book publisher: Mobile Reference. http://www.mobilereference.com/. I noticed that it is from a company that publishes travel information to mobile devices. Is this a valid reference. While it is in Google Books, it seems like it might be a mobile app or something. I welcome opinions on this. Thanks Elmmapleoakpine (talk) 23:20, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

No, it is not a valid source. If you scroll down to the last page of the e-book, you will note that it uses Wikipedia as a primary source for information. That means that it is essentially a Wikipedia scrape, and therefore not usable as a source. You should find something else as a reference; it is possible that a related article on Wikipedia has a valid citation to a reliable source, which be a good starting point. Horologium (talk) 23:42, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

Thank you! I feel dumb. I didn't look at that. Elmmapleoakpine (talk) 23:45, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

I'm glad that's sorted :) Just for information, finding a book on Google Books is no evidence of reliability. Andrew Dalby 09:19, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

You have to be careful with Google Books searches. Most of the obvious WP scrapes say so up front, but there are some other publishers like Lulu and iUniverse that are completely self published and have no editorial control. To be honest, you can sometimes tell why they're self published by the quality of the writing. ;-) Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 09:47, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

Sorry to ask a question I think I already know the answer to, but an editor has been repeatedly overwriting parts or all of the article Mark Feygin with an unsourced version from the Russian Wikipedia. Am I correct in stating there that Russian Wikipedia is not in itself a reliable source, but that independent secondary sources should be provided? An outside opinion would be appreciated to help move the discussion forward. -- Khazar2 (talk) 23:09, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

No, the Russian-language Wikipedia, like this one, is not a reliable source for our purposes. If there's a sound article in the Russian Wikipedia, then it should have reliable sources to draw on. --Orange Mike | Talk 23:30, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

Okay, thanks. -- Khazar2 (talk) 23:46, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

I agree, but an extra comment: Translations from other language wikipedias are pretty common as a starting point and I guess it worth remarking that this in itself is not bad. Like with all edits, it is once that editors express reasonable doubt that demonstration becomes necessary that things can be verified in reliable sources.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 15:43, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

Can I get consensus on whether or not articles (not comments) on this website are reliable? Their about page states that they are owned by "Bluewater Press" and written by "Martin Kelly", but I don't know them from a hole in the ground and have no idea what his credentials are on this topic. The main reason for questioning this is to try and de-puffery STA Travel, a recently created article, with some criticism grounded in reality, and their article here was the top hit in a Google News search on the company. I don't want to do it, though, if this is just one non-notable person's rant. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 09:45, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

The article you mentioned is unreliable gossip published in an SPS form. While this forum may change its nature later, at the moment it is SPS. Fifelfoo (talk) 02:36, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

There is a long-running dispute in the article about the Georgian alphabet regarding the history of said alphabet. See here for the "History" section of this article as it currently stands. See also here for the current talk-page discussion of the issue (the non-English name of this section, likely unreadable to most of you, is "Georgian alphabet" in Georgian). Following is a description of the issues as I currently understand them; hopefully I haven't misspoken, and I apologize in advance if I have inadvertently misrepresented anyone's arguments.

There are two primary competing hypotheses for the origin of the Georgian alphabet. One version claims that the alphabet is of indigenous origin, having been created before the Christian era, and commonly attributed to the 3rd-century-BC king Parnavaz I. The other version says the Georgian alphabet was invented around AD 400 by an Armenian scholar, Mesrop Mashtots; Mesrop (or Mesrob) is also credited with the invention of the Armenian alphabet. (Note, by the way, that although Georgia and Armenia are right next to each other, their languages are totally unrelated.)

The article currently mentions both of these hypotheses, each with several references to sources. The problem we are having is that Wikipedians favouring each version are insisting the other version's sources are unreliable — and that, by consequence, only their favoured version should be mentioned.

• The person currently championing the Armenian origin theory completely discounts the recorded accomplishments of King Parnavaz (and even the claimed existence of Parnavaz) as largely legend and refuses to accept that these legendary claims deserve any credence. The Armenian theory, on the other hand, is (so he points out) supported by numerous modern academic sources, and is in fact (as he understands) the only origin theory for the Georgian alphabet that has any currency in the scholarly community.

• Supporters of an indigenous creation of the Georgian alphabet contend that the stories of King Parnavaz are historically credible, whereas the Armenian accounts of Mesrop Mashtots are not; also, that it unreasonably strains credibility to imagine that a non-Georgian could possibly have been familiar enough with Georgian to create a workable alphabet for this language. As for the numerous modern academic sources backing an Armenian origin, it is asserted that all these sources are simply regurgitating the (suspect) Armenian claims on the subject, so these modern sources are allegedly unreliable on this issue, even though they might appear on the surface to be the kind of sources we would generally accept on Wikipedia.

There also seems to be a lot of nationalist-based accusations being flung around, but I hope any outsiders willing to investigate the matter can look past the various ad-hominems and concentrate on the question of which (if any) of the sources being used right now are sufficiently reliable to be used.

I imagine this matter will probably also have to go WP:NPOVN — to try to figure out how either or both of these two competing origin claims should be dealt with in the article — but before trying to take it to NPOVN, I think it's best to get a better idea of the reliability of the sources backing each claim. Any outside input would be welcome. Thanks. — Richwales (no relation to Jimbo) 07:25, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

This board is good at assessing particular sources rather than in resolving disputes between sources. Could you list one or two of the best sources for each position so that we can assess them? Zero^talk 07:45, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

A quick look around scholarly sources doesn't reveal much in the way of evidence for either theory. Page 4 of this book describes both theories as legends. In any case, since both theories are out there both should be presented in the article. Zero^talk 08:04, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

I agree with the points made by Zero. The source that Zero cites here is (I would say) highly reliable. Since it describes both of the origin legends, we can do so too, citing this book itself if necessary. Andrew Dalby 09:02, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

There is certainly some poor sourcing going on here. Among the sources allegedly supporting the indigenous Parnavaz version (unfortunately all cited only in Russian), probably the highest quality one is the one by Tamaz V. Gamkrelidze, who is a well-reputed historical linguist. The work exists also in an English translation uner the title Alphabetic writing and the old Georgian script (which I haven't so far been able to consult directly). However, according to this [25] summary of the state of research, Gamkrelidze wasn't in fact advocating the hypothesis in question – he proposed that Parnavaz practiced some different form of "alloglotographic" writing, not that he invented the current Georgian alphabet. All these sources need to be checked carefully in case there are more such misrepresentations. The article I just linked to (Nino Kemertelidze, "Theories of the origin of Kartuli writing") may be a decent starting point for a rewrite. It should also be checked whether the current structure of the article, strongly implying a dichotomy between just two competing hypotheses (Mashtots versus Parnavaz), might not be quite badly oversimplified. If the Kemertelidze article is anything to go by, the issues are much more multi-faceted than that. Fut.Perf. ☼ 09:39, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

A large number of the Russian sources (notes 17-25) are too old to be useful. We have a very large number of quality sources from English academic works on this question that can easily replace them. That is the first thing that requires substitution (though contemporary Russian linguistic papers, on the cutting edge, of course should be accepted). I would advise using sources like these :-

• Nino D.Kemertelidze, 'The Georgian Tradition' in David Cram,Andrew Robert Linn,Elke Nowak (eds.) History of Linguistics, 1996: Traditions in linguistics worldwide,John Benjamins Publishing, 1999 pp.227-233 because it reviews the field, and gives each theory is due weight.
• Mzekala Shanidze,'Greek influence on Georgian linguistics,' in Sylvain Auroux (ed.),History of the Language Sciences, Walter de Gruyter, 2000 pp.444-447
• Harold Haarmann, 'The Caucasus: Scenarios of ethnic conflict and trajectories of standarization,' in Matthias Hüning,Ulrike Vogl,Olivier Moliner (eds.) Standard Languages and Multilingualism in European History, John Benjamins, 2012 pp.283-307, pp.297-300 (an easy overview but useful because it tries to stand outside the ethnic biases that influence interpretation)
• Tinatin Bolkvadze, 'Eastern-Christian tradition and the Georgian language,' in Tope Omoniyi,Joshua A. Fishman, Explorations in the Sociology of Language and Religion, John Benjamins Publishing, 2006 pp.60-67 Nishidani (talk) 09:59, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

Thank you all for what you have come up with so far. I've looked at the above papers and find it instructive that they portray the question as more complicated than simply having to decide if the Georgian alphabet was invented by Parnavaz or by Mashtots. I also like the fact that we have scholarly treatments which discuss the competing claims; this is, after all, what we are supposed to be doing in Wikipedia (per WP:PSTS) — citing reliable secondary sources which discuss and interpret the primary sources, rather than trying to interpret the primary sources ourselves.

A comment, by the way, on the word "alloglottography" (or "alloglotography") — AFAIK, this refers to the practice of writing in a different language from the one being spoken (e.g., ancient Georgian scribes may have "written" their language by translating what they wanted to say into Aramaic, and then writing the Aramaic, and the resulting text would be translated on the fly back into Georgian for later reading). — Richwales (no relation to Jimbo) 03:37, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

05:20, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

Note. It appears at last that Czixhc has accepted the overwhelming consensus both here and at WP:ANI that the source is not reliable for the purposes proposed, [70] and accordingly, this discussion can be considered closed. AndyTheGrump (talk) 04:16, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

Additional aclaration As i said in that noticeboard, I desist for now, but i reserve the right to wait until one or more administrators unrelated to this issue revise my case on detail, with the proper time and without the pressure that several editors (the majority not administrators) might apply to the case. Additionaly I will take measures regarding the unrespectful behavoir that you've shown on this discussion. Czixhc (talk) 04:48, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

In which case, I have no alternative but to once more call for you to be blocked for your refusal to accept consensus, and your continued tendentious behaviour. AndyTheGrump (talk) 04:51, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

• Which part of I desist didn't you understood? you need to catch a breath. Czixhc (talk) 04:56, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

1. Source: Barma, Sukhbilas Bhāwāiyā (2004) Ethnomusicological Study by Sukhbilas Barma, Global Vision Publishing Ho
2. Article: Kamrupi dialect
3. Content: diff
4. Issues:
   • Barma uses the name "Kamrupi" to denote the Rajbanshi dialect (p97). This is non-standard because Kamrupi is already used for the dialect of the Kamrup region, much further to the east of the region Barma defines for Rajbanshi. Is Barma (2007) a reliable source for the definition of "Kamrupi"?
   • Barma further claims that Chatterji and Sen (in the next paragraph) calls the a language "Kamrupi", which is not true. Chatterji defines a dialect of Middle_Indo-Aryan Magadhi Prakrit "Kamarupa dialect", where Kamarupa denotes a much larger area that includes Kamrup region. Chatterji's use is given here: (https://digitalcollections.anu.edu.au/bitstream/1885/45743/33/08chapter7.pdf, Figure 7-3, page=302). Is Barma a reliable source for the usage of "Kamrupi" for the Magadhan dialect that Chatterji calls "Kamarupa Dialect", and imply it is the same dialect as modern Kamrupi?

Chaipau (talk) 18:19, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

Okay, it seems this is too arcane an issue for general interest. So let me ask a general question instead. If author-one claims author-two said something, but if on scrutiny I find that author-two did not say such a thing, then how should I address this issue without WP:OR on my part? Chaipau (talk) 19:48, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

Sorry no one replied, Chaipau. But I don't think the question's difficult. Just cite author-two. There are any number of mistakes and misreadings in the world's academic history: most of them are best ignored and forgotten. If author-one is extremely influential, or very frequently cited by Wikipedians (Q: is that the same thing?) then author-one's error may need pointing out in a footnote. Does that work for you? Andrew Dalby 09:56, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

Thank you, Andrew, for your comments. It is helpful. I could not find a citation template to tag this particular instance.

In this case Author-one (Barma) is not influential, but his work is available on books.google.com and searchable, so is widely used on Wikipedia. He is an ex-Bureaucrat and a current politician, and the book reflects his particular brand of politics. By no means is he a linguist. To push his political views, he uses non-standard terminologies not used in scholarship. There seems to be some serious problems with this work. Author-two (Chatterji), OTOH, is a very well regarded scholar, whose work is not searchable on the web.

Chaipau (talk) 01:49, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

Yes, exactly, this is the most difficult kind of case for us: we naturally steer towards sources that can be read online.

Since Chatterji is a reliable source, we can use him as much as we need to. It is a matter of Wikipedians' editorial judgment, and not a question of OR, whether we use Barma at all, and whether we point out that Barma's use of Chatterji is misleading (with all necessary quotations, if the matter is sufficiently important). In sum, I think you need not worry unduly about OR. Maybe others will now want to comment too ... Andrew Dalby 08:14, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

I am ready to scan parts of these unsearchable sources and upload them on Wikipedia, if the need so arises.

A related problem I am facing is addressing cherry-picked quotes, especially when quoting scholars whose first language is not English. I have seen sometimes, while emphasizing a point, scholars go on to connote something entirely different. For example, they make comments like "A is nothing but B" to emphasize a strong connection between A and B, but the connotation is "A is B", and I have seen it being used as such. I see that this cannot be addressed without the participation of a larger number of editors with some degree of domain knowledge. Chaipau (talk) 14:23, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

not sure any of the external refs have any real relevance besides a passing mention that the site exists, nothing to do with notability. Thoughts on this madnesss? 05:21, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

Are the sources cited in the subsection "England" here reliable for the statement made in that subsection? Esoglou (talk) 06:42, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

They are. But whether or not the text should be included is another matter. TFD (talk) 18:55, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

I think that Roscelese's objection is that information that (to me, at least) certainly falls into the category of the "Catholic Church and abortion" somehow doesn't fit the topic. It would seem that she now thinks the topic is only supposed to involve conflicts within the Catholic Church over abortion. Badmintonhist (talk) 20:36, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

• I've already explained repeatedly to Esoglou that a) the event's lack of relevance to Catholicism or the Catholic Church is the primary reason it doesn't belong, with the poor quality of the sources a secondary concern, and b) that there is a range in source quality and "not outright fabricating something" is not the only standard that needs to be met. This WP:IDHT is very childish. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 22:13, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

I agree with TFD's comment. Unfortunately, this had to be got out of the way first. It is indeed regrettable that a posting here was needed to get acceptance of something so obvious as the reliability of the cited sources for their report on the Church's declaration. Discussion on inclusion of the declaration can now follow. Esoglou (talk) 06:41, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

Since nobody said that the sources were unreliable in the sense that they had possibly fabricated the statement, your claim that you've somehow achieved any kind of consensus here is annoying and tendentious. Please stop, and discuss the points people have actually made as though you were a productive editor. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 15:27, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

TFD has clearly stated that "the sources cited in the subsection 'England'" in the article are "reliable for the statement made in that subsection". Nobody has contradicted him, at least not explicitly. You have remarked that there is a range of source quality, but have not said he is mistaken in judging that the sources reach at least the necessary minimum level of quality. You say that nobody said that the sources were unreliable in a certain sense, but again have refrained from stating your own view on their reliability for what they say. Do you contradict TFD's statement, which I support? If you do, please say explicitly that you hold that the cited sources are not reliable for what they state. We could then see whether the view you will be the first to express gets gets support from other editors. This noticeboard is about reliability of sources. It is not the place to discuss claims that there is no relevancy for the Catholic Church in its own public protest against the impunity that enables doctors to break the law by accepting to perform forbidden abortions (!) We can discuss points like that elsewhere. Esoglou (talk) 19:32, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

You're making yourself look like a fool and I can't help feeling second-hand embarrassment just from being in this conversation. Please stop humiliating yourself and stick to the topic: whether a self-published statement of someone's opinion on an unrelated event justifies inclusion of that event in an article. Nobody has stated that the sources don't support the statement, although if you do think that these niche opinion-based sources have a habit of fabricating material, that would be a good thing to consider before you use them. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 20:53, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

That the cited sources are reliable for the statement based on them is the only view that has been expressed here. Not even Roscelese has denied their reliability. This noticeboard is not the place to discuss the topic of whether what these reliable sources say should be included in the article. Esoglou (talk) 06:56, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

At Khazars, an editor has introduced a large amount of material from this source. The scholars are all notable, and the paper will be published shortly. But in 7 years, I have never seen anything like this kind of snippet, prepress, pre-peer reviewed, allowed to warrant any addition to a text. One simply cannot yet access the unpublished paper's contents. The board gave a thumbs down to a similar problem, with a preprint of a genetic paper on Khazars here, and I think the same principle applies. This looks like impatience for pushing in the results you want to read overriding the cautions of the wiki rulebook to me.Nishidani (talk) 20:55, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

It is a primary source and therefore the issue is WP:WEIGHT. What degree of acceptance has the paper received? That can only be established through secondary sources. TFD (talk) 21:24, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

The paper looks reasonable, but it should not be cited before it is properly published, and even then it's only a single study that should not be overblown. But no, it's not a primary source (by reasonable definition of "primary"). --Stephan Schulz (talk) 21:34, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

It is primary, it says, "Here, we assemble the largest sample set available to date for assessment of Ashkenazi Jewish genetic origins...." It reports its authors research and findings. TFD (talk) 21:56, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

No. An unpublished abstract from a conference meeting is not a reliable source, and agree with TFD that it is a primary source. Arzel (talk) 21:57, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

I was not informed about this, although I think I should be. All the genetic studies mentioned in Khazars article comes from primary source. This is especially true for Elhaik. However, here is not as it was called an "unpublished abstract from a conference meeting" but a genetic study presented by highly respected American Society of Human Genetics--Tritomex (talk) 23:58, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

In many areas of study research articles, which some people consider primary sources, are the only decent sources. But this is a good example of why the primary/secondary distinction is not always useful. So I don't think we should get hung up on that term.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 12:47, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

Notice of a paper to be presented at a conference is not reliable publication of the paper. Since this is not a behavioral noticeboard, I won't say more, but it sure is tempting. Zero^talk 07:41, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

Just to add to this, conference presentations themselves should never be accepted as reliable sources, since usually only the abstract is "peer reviewed" (and that itself may be a fairly light process). I would only consider a conference paper acceptable if it appeared in a conference proceedings, and then only under the WP:PRIMARY restrictions. There are a few other exceptions; if, for example, the presentation was itself a sort-of "review" article, in that it wasn't presenting novel results but just summarizing those that had already been published. Qwyrxian (talk) 07:50, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

Technically it is graded as a 'poster' not a paper, i.e. an announcement of results that the broad scientific community has not yet had an opportunity to examine. Tritomex. You haven't even taken the care to notice that that page was sourced most rigorously, excluding anything that did not pass a very high bar. I made a compromise, while I think breaks the rules, by retaining mention of it (given the profile of the scholars it will certainly be published within several months). But as it stands, we have (a) no mention of the journal where it is to be published (b) no knowledge of the eventual publication date. I see an edit war has broken out on this, despite near unanimity here. Tritomex. The way you did that violates not only RS. Please do not persist against a majority of independent peers, esp. when I have myself reached out to find a minimal accommodation for citing at least the poster, even though this is definitely not acceptable at the moment on the page, particularly one written according to extremely rigorous principles of RS. This is a matter of waiting a few months, as with the Elhaik paper, as as User:Jayjg also noted on the Khazar page on that occasion, such preprints are too early to allow incorporation.('Elhaik wrote something considerably more complex than that, but in any event his study was neither published nor peer reviewed, so we can't use it. arXiv is a an archive for preprints of articles. If it's published in a peer-reviewed journal, then we can re-visit what it says at that time. Jayjg (talk) 01:46, 19 November 2012 (UTC) )Nishidani (talk) 08:47, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

I want to add that user Zeero000, is not uninvolved editor, he has been involved in at least 20 content dispute with me (all content dispute I had) including on this same question. --Tritomex (talk) 08:58, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

It's OK to mention that, but it doesn't affect this case one way or the other. A conference pre-print or a pre-conference abstract certainly can't be treated as a reliable factual source. Normally, the conference itself (i.e. reactions by other scientists) will be the first stage of peer review; the second stage is the submission and evaluation of a final text after the conference. Before the conference there is little if any peer review.

I would add that the dispute about primary vs. secondary doesn't seem really relevant to me. If and when the conference paper is published, it's just like any other academic/scientific article from that point onwards: a typical secondary source. Such academic articles are "primary" to Wikipedia only in the sense that they tell us what sources of information the author used and what the author thought, but those things only matter to Wikipedia if we're writing the author's biography. Andrew Dalby 09:10, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

I just want to agree with those that are pointing out that a paper given at a conference is not a reliable source for us. We've discussed this before, maybe it needs to be in WP:RS. I agree with Andrew, the primary vc secondary issue isn't relevant here. Dougweller (talk) 10:13, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

This differs very much by field. In computer science, conference papers (at real conferences, not things called "World Multiconference on X" ;-) undergo full peer review, are usually published by recognised academic publishers (e.g. in the Springer LNCS series), and are often the primary (as in "most important", not WP:PSTS sense) line of publication. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 11:11, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, I was oversimplifying. I'm still a bit dubious about material that hasn't been published, whatever the status of the conference. And we need to be able to see the entire paper, not an abstract. Dougweller (talk) 11:16, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

I think we are in violent agreement about that issue. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 11:40, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

[71] I just found out that the material was already under per review "All accepted abstracts will be published in the ASHG 2013 Meeting Program and cannot be withdrawn from publication after June 6 (even at the request of the author and/or principal investigator). Abstracts not withdrawn by June 6 will be reviewed and programmed by members of the Program Committee. Abstract Publication Abstracts selected for presentation will be available on the 2013 meeting Web site in late August and are published online." Also see "How to Cite Abstracts" --Tritomex (talk) 12:07, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

It looks as if the conference has no full papers, only abstracts (of the talk). In that case, at best the abstract is published. Meaningful peer review is not possible on the abstract only - the review by the program committee will not involve full evaluation, it will just filter out obvious crap and off-topic presentations, and maybe select contribution based on significance and variety to create a balanced conference program. I'm reasonably sure the authors will also submit the paper to a journal, maybe after receiving feedback via the conference. You may have to wait for that (typically a few months). --Stephan Schulz (talk) 12:26, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, Stephan Here is additional prove: "Review of Abstracts. All abstracts are reviewed by at least one 2013 Program Committee member and two ad hoc reviewers. The reviewing process is strictly confidential. The Program Committee reviews all abstracts submitted for presentation and determines whether an abstract is suitable for platform or poster presentation. The Program Committee reserves the right to decline a presentation to any submitted abstracts that lack scientific content or merit, or merely announce the availability of a resource or service...Abstract Publication Abstracts selected for presentation will be available on the 2013 meeting Web site in late August and are published online. " [72]

That doesn't contradict what Stephan wrote. All it means is that it's ok for platform or poster presentation, as it says. This is pretty standard for conferences and does the filtering Stephan mentions. It doesn't mean that there is a paper, or indeed anything, that has passed peer review. In fact, it's possible that any paper that comes out of the conference will be different in significant ways. You'll have to wait for that. Dougweller (talk) 12:42, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

It is accepted for a poster session only. There is no indication in the guidelines that anyone on the program committee looked at more than the 330 word abstract. Calling this "peer review" is preposterous. In fact it doesn't mean that a full paper even exists yet (though it might). It is pretty hard to take this all seriously, especially from someone who argued for ages against reporting on Elhaik's paper after it was published in a peer-reviewed journal. Zero^talk 13:08, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

Nishidani, I'd hesitate to give a blanket ruling on all such cases, which seems to be how you've stated the question and how some have answered it. In some fields abstracts from a conference might be widely cited and at least a bit pre-checked. And in certain contexts I've seen it widely accepted that certain types of things can be cited from snippets or abstracts. But there are certainly several warning signs here, and so then the another question is whether this is being used to source something surprising or something uncontroversial. I also try to keep in mind a principle that we should be cautious of trying to be "cutting edge" in research, which is not really what encyclopedias do. We could just wait?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 12:55, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

As it is written in American Society of Human genetics website all abstracts are reviewed by Program Committee members before being published at ASHG website (august 2013). Also, changes to the papers are restricted to before June 6th (and of course before being officially published by ASHG website) . I myself can not be a reason for accepting/rejecting this genetic study into Wikipedia (already accepted by American Society of Human Genetics and reviewed by its appointed official committee members ) and my arguments regarding Elhaik papers were totally unrelated to the origin of its publisher.--Tritomex (talk) 13:53, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

Of course we should wait, as Steven says. I would say 90% of what I read of in the I/P area I judge important (NGO on-site observer reports), but I never use it on principle, because the status of the source would only give rise to bickering or is generally not good in wikipedia's terms. One simply withholds one's material until it is reliably sourced beyond challenge(and that rarely happens). The curse of this place is impatience, which is usually a sign of wanting to get something one personally approves of in, or disapproves of, out. Eran Elhaik's preprint was in a much greater stage of advance in publication when objections immediately arose precisely of this kind. Tritomex even opposed its use after full publication (because its conclusions were wrong!), while here he proposes using a source that is pre-prepublication (because its conclusions are right). I'll race you, Tritomex or anyone to get this paper into Khazars (and other articles) as soon as it comes online, published by any of the usual human genome journals. Nishidani (talk) 14:16, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

More importantly to me, as main drafter of the page, is the aesthetics. We can't give a link, we can't give the publication year, or the journal in which it will appear. It violates the template norm established for an article that tries to approximate GA level standards. Worse still, whereas all other genetic papers cited, pro (very few) or con (many), are given extremely brief, succinct and collective notice (per WP:Undue, since this stuff has little to do with the Khazars, except as a minor historical theory), and Tritomex added virtually half of the abstract conclusions to it, making a complete mess of that studied brevity and neutrality of the section. Its weighting more or less reads:'Yeah, yeah . . but this is the truth, just published' (the conclusion happens to be what Tritomex believes. I personally don't believe anything either way on this issue).Nishidani (talk) 14:29, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

This is not a pre-print and not a self published study, but a study published by highly respected genetic institution, the American Society of Human Genetics.It is not an anonymous PDF file but a study already reviewed by specially appointed experts, committee members of American Society of Human Genetics. To quote Stephen "It looks as if the conference has no full papers, only abstracts (of the talk). In that case, at best the abstract is published."---Tritomex (talk) 14:32, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

No, the study is not published. The abstract is. A core requirement for a scientific publication is reproducibility of the results. The abstract does not have enough data for meaningful replication. It's possible to cite the abstract, but WP:WEIGHT makes it very hard to do more than at most mention it in passing. As I said, be patient. The authors are recognised scholars, and, from the home page of the first author, he routinely publishes similar results on different populations in academic journals. Chances are excellent that this will happen here, too. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 15:03, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, Stephan. Despite my general reservations, that is precisely how I made my call in this edit, which Tritomex, refusing a compromise, immediately reverted. I will withhold rereverting for several hours, just in case the strong consensus that Tritomex's use of it is inappropriate at the moment changes. But I hope that he accepts that when there seems to be a solid third party consensus, one is not entitled to persist in reverting to one's personal preferred version. This is a collaborative venture.Nishidani (talk) 15:20, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

The abstract was published but not the whole paper. We cannot give the abstract the same weight was a whole paper. A substantial quote from the abstract is too much weight. Binksternet (talk) 15:48, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

In every field, academics pursue research through experiments, surverys and reinterpretation of existing data. Other scholars then examine their methology, and attempt to replicate their research, or in some cases totally ignore them. A consensus then emerges whether the findings become the new consensus, are accepted as a majority or valid minority view or are relegated to the fringe. At that point WP:WEIGHT kicks in and we can decide how the findings should be presented or if they should be ignored. Until other scholars have commented on this research however no weight can be established. TFD (talk) 17:09, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

Having been on several abstract reviews for conference proceedings I have to say that the peer review process for an abstract is not at all like the peer review process for an actual paper to be published in a journal. Arzel (talk) 18:10, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

Nonetheless it is written by the authors of the paper and is therefore rs for what they said, "Our findings support the Khazarian Hypothesis", which is what the disputed edit says.[73] The only objection can be weight. TFD (talk) 20:26, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

Wrong edit, wrong year, wrong paper (and, apparently, a real paper, not a bare abstract). The source currently under discussion comes to the opposite conclusion - it "does not support the hypothesis of a significant contribution of the elusive Khazars into the gene pool of the Ashkenazi Jews." --Stephan Schulz (talk) 20:42, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

Thank You for your suggestions: So is there a support (from uninvolved editors) for proposal to add following sentence (until the paper is published in journal) to Khazars page: A New genetic study presented in September 2013 found no support for the hypothesis of a significant contribution of the elusive Khazars into the gene pool of the Ashkenazi Jews."--Tritomex (talk) 04:34, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

Not from me, if the citation is to a pre-conference abstract. I gave my view above. When the results appear in a peer-reviewed article or book, that's the time to cite them. Andrew Dalby 07:51, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

Tritomex, that is a gross distortion of the discussion, where outside input has suggested )(a) don't use the poster ((Zero),Qwyrxian; Arzel; Dougweller (b)unless it is weighted according to secondary source support (TFD,Andrew Dalby (=a); 'it should not be cited before it is properly published,'(Stephan Schulz ); (c)we should wait (Andrew Lancaster=b ); (d) mention only in passing ((Stephan Schulz),Binksternet.

The majority are against using it until it is either published in a journal, or (higher bar) referred to in secondary texts, and do not think the poster is in conformity with RS standards. They advise patience. I made a decent compromise which ignores this general scepticism, and wrote 'or not significant'+poster source, notwithstanding the fact that the new paper's results conform to the other thumbs-.down sources in the lead (with the unique difference that, this paper, like Elhaik's, uses proxies for the Khazars). Notwithstanding this you read this as a chance to expand the already generous terms I offered. It is POV pushing. Were I a precisian, I would be technically in my rights, on the basis of these varied comments, to cancel all mention of the text, until it is published. I gave you an inch, you want two thirds of a yard.Nishidani (talk) 09:29, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

Nishidani, I don't mean to sound mean here, but there cannot be any "compromise" here. A paper that has not been published is not a reliable source. I have to say that the idea above that we could cite it strictly as verifying the author's opinions is likewise not acceptable, because technically until it is published in a paper, it's not really their "official" (in a scientific sense) opinion. And, like Arzel, I've also been involved directly and indirectly with the conference review process, and, as already stated, papers can get presented on conferences based on nothing other than an abstract, and, sometimes, nothing other than a title plus the author's names. Finally, the notion that we would ever cite an abstract (not a published paper) is likewise a very poor idea, in that abstracts simply do not capture the subtle details, which are often quite important. All an abstract is supposed to do is to give enough info so that other researchers know whether or not the article is sufficiently relevant to their life that it's worth reading. Yes, it's better than, say, a trailer for a movie in that it does usually "give away" the "ending", but not much better. Tritomex, my position, at least, which I believe is wholly consistent with WP:RS and WP:V, is that you cannot ever use an unpublished paper (which is what a conference paper is) as a source in a Wikipedia article. Qwyrxian (talk) 09:41, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

Of course. I made it clear from my original edit summary that in my reading of WP:RS, this should simply not be cited for the moment. I knew Tritomex would read my partial revert as motivated, not by editorial scruple, by some obscure ideological or antisemitic or POV-angling prejudice that undermined the origin of the Jewish connection to Israel. That is how, unfortunately, he reads every edit I do, and almost automatically reverts whatever I do to a page he is interested in. As a published scholar (in retirement) I'm quite familiar with the peer-review processes, but I also contacted geneticists who gave me exactly the analysis you and others have given. Without meaning to be personal, my experience told me however that Tritomex's reappearance on that page meant battles, edit-warring, and walls of talk page argument mainly based on WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT. I thought once of revising Ashkenazi Jews, and I had to abandon the page through sheer exhaustion. I don't report people on principle. At the same time, there is a limit to what I can stand when editors talk past everything to get their way. I am only one editor, and in my original edit summary, I said explicitly what the board has now confirmed, and esp. what you stress, namely No, Tritomex. This is (a) violating of summary style, WP:Undue (b) an abstract of an unpublished paper is not RS (c) one must be patient, as one was with Elhaik (d) I've put a footnote, but, strictly speaking, this is against the rules. A compromise. This compromise can be accepted by Tritomex (he didn't though it was his best bet) or rejected by other editors who, hewing closely the RS rules, could reject it, and remove the source. The 'compromise' I suggested is against the rules, as is now clear, but its function was to signal to Tritomex that I, for one, have absolutely no ideological antagonism to including of a scholarly nature anything that undermines the Ashkenazi-Khazar hypothesis. Nishidani (talk) 10:34, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

I can not say I am uninvolved, but I do know that Nishidani is right that in past cases like this Tritomex you have taken the opposite position. I do think the article will be an interesting one and almost certainly worth citing when it comes out, if nothing else because of the author list. But I think even if the abstract seems clear now, there is too much chance that the eventual published title and abstract will be different. The words you are most interested in are PRECISELY the types of ones which might be allowed more easily in a congress, but neutralized a bit in a final paper.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 11:12, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

Exactly. This is not peer reviewed and only when the final paper is published can we consider using it. Consider using it. Not all peer reviewed papers are equal, and there are editors who believe that we should wait to see what other professionals say about a paper before using it, although I think this should be decided case by case. What I do feel strongly about is that an editor must have read the entire paper before adding text sourced to the paper, abstracts are never good enough. In fact, we've had heated debates over whether abstracts should be used at all. Dougweller (talk) 11:50, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

We should be careful of abstracts, but I think a blanket ban of citing abstracts is probably un-called for. More controversially, I think we can not apply the standard of waiting for a "field" to come to a consensus first. This simply won't work for many fields, and the idea can lead to some very twisted and strange articles and strange debates in those fields. But both of these points are not really important here where the abstract itself is not final.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 12:08, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

I agree with Doug, for another reason. We are, really, supposed to be writing to encyclopedic standards. People who have been commissioned to write articles know well that it is presumed (obligatory) that you master the sources, and are not using hearsay or thin hints. Esp. in citing technical papers, the tendency is to cite the abstract, and not read past it (much as editors generally prefer in controversial area to edit the lead, without reading the whole article- a source of endless problems). Abstracts can be deceptive. Much of the earlier page consisted of selective use of the abstract, ignoring the details in the printed pages, as I showed when I examined all of the papers. See here. Nishidani (talk) 12:33, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

Nishidani: just an aside but from the context I presume you are agreeing with Doug about abstracts. Concerning that point I only wanted to say that I hesitate to write blanket statements. The other point, above citing individual research papers, would mean we would end up needing to cite whatever scraps of 10 year old secondary source we can find. That would give a very distorted view in the field of human genetics. I believe there was a fairly big communal discussion about this some time back concerning this very article. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 13:26, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

Andrew. Yep.I don't think the idea that we can only cite scientific papers through secondary sources holds. Suffice it that we have the full reports themselves (secondary sources take too much time to see the light of day). I am wary though of using newspaper reports of scientific papers as reliable secondary sources. From what I see, it's all selective spin, and we've had that crap at Khazars and elsewhere. Editors must in any case assume a responsibility not to cherrypick nice bits. It took days to read through all of the scientific papers, and correct the bias of citation one chap (or another) introduced. Doing that is a serious behavioural issue if it continues.Nishidani (talk) 14:02, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

Not reliable, for all the reasons already cited, and the consensus is clear. In an overpoliticised field, where the science is moving forward quickly we have to keep the bar high. Itsmejudith (talk) 12:54, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

Is Michael Lohan's page on mugshots.com reliable for his place of birth?

And if it is reliable, would it violate WP:BLPPRIMARY? Nightscream (talk) 02:49, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

Unreliable. The source takes no responsibility for its content, "MUGSHOTS.COM DOES NOT GUARANTEE THE ACCURACY OR TIMELINESS OF THE CONTENT OF THIS WEBSITE. NAMES MAY BE SIMILAR OR IDENTICAL TO OTHER INDIVIDUALS. FOR LATEST CASE STATUS, CONTACT THE OFFICIAL LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENCY WHICH ORIGINALLY RELEASED THE DATA". There's no guarantee this source transmits any material intact, it certainly doesn't check it. Fifelfoo (talk) 02:31, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

Okay, thanks. Nightscream (talk) 18:56, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

Can a village website such as this be used as a source for statements about that particular village, sort of like WP:SELFSOURCE? (Normally I avoid using such sites, but this particular page provides a very detailed history of the village in question, with no reason to suggest it's grossly unreliable). PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 08:35, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

Fine for uncontroversial material. It seems very well researched, and I would expect that most of the information is drawn from sources that could be traced, so you could search for corroboration. Itsmejudith (talk) 11:25, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

It is a good source for articles about the village. It is important to use the best sources available, and for villages that often would be the village itself. TFD (talk) 04:29, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

Thanks! Using it will help fill in gaps in the history section in the article. PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 08:08, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

Don't like to be the skeleton at the feast, but I'm doubtful about this. I agree it looks great and well-researched, but (unless I'm misreading something) we don't know who wrote it, and we do know that the aim of the website's proprietors is to promote business in the village. It is not a site that we would normally consider RS. Rather like a not-so-good Wikipedia page about a similar topic, it has a POV: it uses available facts to enlarge the village's history and importance. Putting this page under external links, yes, yes: using this page as a help in finding good sources (as Judith says), great: citing this page in a stable Wikipedia article, not so good. Am I wrong?

Knowing that there isn't yet a Victoria County History for Dorset villages (which would often be the best source), here are three online sources that you might or might not have looked at:

1. Lewis, too old for Fifelfoo but quite good in its way
2. Inventory of national monuments: masses of stuff on Abbotsbury
3. English Heritage "professional" website. Type Abbotsbury into the search box

Any use? Andrew Dalby 08:35, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

Not so much a skeleton at the feast, more like an echo of my own suppressed misgivings. Having already learned something of the village's history from other sources, I doubt that the village website makes fantastical claims, in fact I suspect it may be more accurate than some other RS (e.g. national newspapers), though as you rightly say, it wouldn't normally be considered RS. (Sigh!) I'll have to use it as a springboard for finding other sources - hopefully I can find them! Thanks for your suggestions above - can the Lewis one be cited, or, seeing as it's so old it's effectively an historical document in itself, is using it directly a form of OR? PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 09:31, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

Well, yes, I admit that the RS question arises with Lewis too. (Echoing your sigh.) One does indeed get a bit stuck. You will find more stuff on the same "British History Online" site, again by typing Abbotsbury in the search box ... notably the generous Victoria County History text covering Abbotsbury Abbey. That's certainly RS, but whether it's any use to you I don't know. Andrew Dalby 12:41, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

Andrew you point to a valid concern, but normally I suppose it will be possible to identify the types of information which are likely to be promotional. To take an obvious extreme, anything about the local pub having the best fish and chips in England might be dubious. I do realize that some villages promote dubious historical links to famous people, but in such cases I suppose that would be a moment to go off to the websites you mention and try to double check. Put it this way: seems better than no source, and probably quite good enough for some things.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 12:55, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

Fair enough, Andrew. Currently a large number of statements on Wikipedia pages are sourced to sites much less serious than this one :) Andrew Dalby 14:56, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

I think this discussion has been quite productive. The advantage of the village website is it's very readable and presents the whole history sequentially on one page, which makes placing the context of some of the other sources easier. I've so far used the British History Online page (provided by Andrew D) as a source for a statement about abbey records having been destroyed, yet I might have missed the bald BHO statement if I hadn't previously been impressed (I'm obviously very impressionable) by the more colourful description of the same incident on the village site.... PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 16:36, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

I found this page on a support section of Microsoft Office's official website. Could it be used as a source on Deliverable without changing any content? The article only has one citation (as of right now) and I was hoping to beef it up a bit. MezzoMezzo (talk) 09:37, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

And what about this? The article seems to be written by an industry professional with references citated...which I guess makes it a tertiary source. MezzoMezzo (talk) 09:39, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

These are pretty weak sources. A textbook for MBA students would be better. Itsmejudith (talk) 15:39, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

Or a project-management textbook. (Although PM methodologies tend to nurture their own sets of keywords which have significant differences from common usage, cf "control" &c). Speaking from personal experience I'd be particularly wary of this as all my deliverables are intangible. bobrayner (talk) 16:17, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

I was a tech comm major, and I still have all my textbooks at home (at the office right now). Some courses involved a bit of PM, so I will see what I can find in those instead. MezzoMezzo (talk) 03:29, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

Is this a reliable source[74] --HistoryofIran (talk) 13:01, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

WP:CIRCULAR is a problem here, as Professor Manuocheher Vahidnia cites Wikipedia. Binksternet (talk) 15:33, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

Per the clever minds at (the website that shall not be named), it was discovered that reference.com is linked from ~12k articles. However, reference.com itself often hosts copies of wikipedia articles. Thus, citogenesis.

• [75]

This is a classic example: Landala - no source other than reference.com, which itself contains a copy of the article from Wikipedia.

I think we should list reference.com and (in some cases) dictionary.com as non-reliable sources (do we have a black list?) and start an effort to clean this up. What do you think? --Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 15:00, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

After playing around a bit, I did a search on:

• "reference.com" -"classic.reference.com" -"filmreference.com" -"football-reference.com" -"hockey-reference.com" -"basketball.reference.com" -"dictionary.reference.com" -"chemistry-reference.com" -"sports-reference.com" -"baseball-reference.com" intitle:-reference.com

That's getting me 370 hits. It's an underestimate, but probably not by a lot. Here's what I'm seeing:

For those keeping score at home, I've now gotten this down to 319 hits using

• "reference.com" -"shark-reference.com" -"haiti-reference.com" -"vhsl-reference.com" -"classic.reference.com" -"filmreference.com" -"football-reference.com" -"hockey-reference.com" -"basketball.reference.com" -"dictionary.reference.com" -"chemistry-reference.com" -"sports-reference.com" -"baseball-reference.com" intitle:-reference.com

• With the exclusion of shark-reference.com we're down to 234 hits. Lesser Cartographies (talk) 02:05, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

• Fixed Michelle Malkin
• No issue at dictionary.
• Fixed gapyear.com
• fixed Howling Laud Hope
• Not sure why Dwarf sawfish is showing up.
• Fixed Gholam Mujtaba
• Fixed Joseph Oppenheim
• Fixed Vanga Kingdom
• Fixed Da Nang Port
• Fixed Reginald Case, Drummonderinoch, Liquor license, Romanos II, Women in Sikhism, Terminating bias circuit, Frederick W. Green (Egyptologist), Philip Knights, Baron Knights, Paul Barsky, AdPack USA.

If anyone else wants to lend a hand cleaning these up, add what you do to the above list.

Lesser Cartographies (talk) 21:51, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

• Fixed Floor, dwarf sawfish has shark-reference.com in External links. Tobus2 (talk) 02:02, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

• Nice catch! Don't know why I didn't see that. I'll update my query. Lesser Cartographies (talk) 02:05, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

Do we have a list somewhere of sources that people may think are good, but which aren't? Also, I haven't checked the diffs above, but I hope we're not just removing the links - should we ensure that the content that is there is not itself the product of citogenesis?--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 02:08, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

I don't know of a list, but ask.com should definitely be on there. I'm not "just removing links", but aside from adding an odd {{cn}} tag where I think it's warranted I'm not bothering to track down additional sources. So far these all good like good-faith, benign and trivial mistakes on low-traffic pages. If you want to make a pass through and validate this for yourself, you're more than welcome (I could stand another set of eyes on these edits).

I've just finished another dozen. The list gets reordered as I continue to add filters (which is a little strange), so I don't know if you're seeing the same order to the search results as I'm seeing. Rather than me marking down each article, do you want to start from the end of the list and I'll continue working forward? Lesser Cartographies (talk) 02:19, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

I just removed the link - it was for "sub-floor, also called Underlayment[cite]" which I don't think really needs a ref, could put back a cn or link to a glossary if others think it does.

I'm about to start work so won't be doing anything for at least 8-10 hours... if the list is being reordered then I'd suggest an "A-M"/"N-Z" or other alphabetical split - easy to subsplit if others join in too. Tobus2 (talk) 02:29, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

Updated search query (194 hits, ~100 are done): "reference.com" -"site-reference.com" -"kata-reference.com" -"wordreference.com" -"racing-reference.com" -"shark-reference.com" -"haiti-reference.com" -"vhsl-reference.com" -"classic.reference.com" -"filmreference.com" -"football-reference.com" -"hockey-reference.com" -"basketball.reference.com" -"dictionary.reference.com" -"chemistry-reference.com" -"sports-reference.com" -"baseball-reference.com" intitle:-reference.com
Lesser Cartographies (talk) 04:03, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

Ok, I've plowed through the lot. I'll run the search again in a week and see what has changed. Thanks for bringing this up. Lesser Cartographies (talk) 05:26, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

Many thanks for your work. You might enjoy looking at the large scale problems at the top of this page which involve similar problems in finding and locating issues. Fifelfoo (talk) 05:59, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

My pleasure. I'll take a look at evolutionnews. Don't expect too much progress before the weekend, though. Lesser Cartographies (talk) 08:21, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

• As a reminder, if a site (or a book or a publisher) mirrors wikipedia content, it's a good idea to list it at Wikipedia:Mirrors and forks. That list is sadly not complete but it does help stop circular sourcing, and this is a handy thing to point to when other editors worry that you're removing something that seems, at first glance, to be sourced content. bobrayner (talk) 23:39, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

• Didn't know that existed—thanks! Lesser Cartographies (talk) 00:00, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

Hello! Is this encyclopedia-type site a reliable source? 79.117.175.246 (talk) 07:33, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

In a word, no. "Our standard is correctness over verifiability (the reverse of Wikipedia)".[76] Previous discussion from this noticeboard has some more info:[77]. Siawase (talk) 08:43, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

Hello

This is Anna Timms, Senior Manager, Social Media for Johnson Controls. I am aware of the conflict of interest policy, so will not make any edits to any company related articles.

I would like to ask for guidance from this noticeboard on whether I have enough sources to request a new Wikipedia article or whether I should suggest an addition to the existing Johnson Controls article.

The Institute for Building Efficiency is an initiative of Johnson Controls to provide information and analysis of technologies, policies, and practices for efficient, high performance buildings (http://www.institutebe.com).

Here is a list of sources that have written about the Institute for Building Efficiency: (Citations and inline comments by Lesser Cartographies (talk) 22:58, 19 September 2013 (UTC).)

• http://distributedenergy.com/DE/Articles/22289.aspx?goback=%2Egmr_3102657%2Egmp_3102657#%21

• Hull, Paul (19 July 2013), "Saving, Not Speculation", Business Energy. IBE mentioned once in passing.

• http://www.economist.com/blogs/schumpeter/2013/05/measuring-energy-efficiency-buildings

• "Turn that light off!", The Economist, 28 May 2013. IBE mentioned only once in comments. Not a reliable source.

• http://www.navigantresearch.com/blog/articles/findings-of-the-institute-for-building-efficiency%E2%80%99s-energy-efficiency-indicator-2011-study

• Findings of the Institute for Building Efficiency’s Energy Efficiency Indicator 2011 Study, Navigant Research, 26 July 2011. See WP:BLOGS for guidance. This may be acceptable, but I'm not sure.

• http://www.matternetwork.com/2011/1/institute-building-efficiency-expanding-pie.cfm

• Wapner, Mike (12 Jan 2011), The Institute for Building Efficiency: Expanding the Pie, Matter Network. Looks good.

• http://scalinggreen.com/2012/08/institute-for-building-efficiency%E2%80%99s-jennifer-layke-insights-on-communicating-the-enormous-potential-of-energy-efficiency/

• mikec (13 August 2012), Institute for Building Efficiency’s Jennifer Layke: Insights on Communicating the Enormous Potential of Energy Efficiency, Scaling Green. Also a blog, and probably not one with editorial oversight. Would not consider this a reliable source.

• http://www.fierceenergy.com/story/institute-building-efficiency-reveals-findings-future-demand-response/2011-05-16

• Lundin, Barbara Vergetis (16 May 2011), Institute for Building Efficiency reveals findings of the future of demand response, Fierce Energy. This reads a bit too much like a recycled press release.

• http://www.gbpn.org/newsroom/achieving-scale-energy-efficiency-us-new-video
• http://www.uli.org/centers-initiatives/new-research-identifies-opportunities-and-obstacles-for-energy-efficiency-in-buildings-sector/

• Simpson, Molly (20 June 2013), New Research Identifies Opportunities and Obstacles for Energy Efficiency in Buildings Sector, Urban Land Institute. Not a lot here.

• http://www.facilitiesnet.com/energyefficiency/article/Longerpayback-Energy-Upgrades-Maximize-Building-Efficiency--12300
• http://www.opportunitygreen.com/green-business-blog/2011/09/30/johnson-controls-research-indicates-cost-savings-remains-the-single-biggest-driver-for-energy-efficiency/
• http://www.racplus.com/news/johnson-controls-releases-building-efficiency-report/8632389.article
• http://www.eia.gov/conference/2013/pdf/presentations/hughes.pdf
• http://www.jsonline.com/business/survey-more-commercial-building-owners-want-to-energy-efficient-oe5pg8d-159139065.html
• http://www.uncsd2012.org/index.php?page=view&nr=489&type=1000&menu=126
• http://greenwisejv.org/californias-capital-leads-the-nation-in-energy-efficiency-financing/
• http://www.progressivefix.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/11.2010PPI_Memo-Hodum-Efficiency_Boom.pdf
• http://www.texascleanenergy.org/Commercial-PACE-TCEC8.pdf
• http://www.ecmag.com/section/miscellaneous/building-owners-fighting-rising-energy-prices-efficiency
• http://buildotechindia.com/india-leads-in-importance-placed-on-building-efficiency/
• http://boston.1thingus.com/reevaluating-the-word-%E2%80%98retrofit%E2%80%99-when-it-comes-to-building-efficiency/
• http://constructionpronet.com/Content_Free/20120622-GBI.aspx
• http://www.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/category/29016/publisher/institute-for-building-efficiency/
• http://gestion.pe/empresas/72-empresas-nivel-global-planea-invertir-ecoeficiencia-2070110
• http://www.propertyoz.com.au/Article/NewsDetail.aspx?p=16&id=6133
• http://www.propertyobserver.com.au/news/retrofitting-the-empire-state-building-provides-profit-lessons-for-going-green-in-australia/2012080855794/Page-2

Based on the list of sources above, I'd like to ask for your guidance: are there enough reliable sources to justify a separate article on the Institute for Building Efficiency? Or would it be advisable to ask for the Institute for Building Efficiency to be made a subsection of the existing Johnson Controls article?

Thank you--Anna C Timms (talk) 19:24, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

Hi Anna. First, thanks for respecting the COI policy. I'm going to convert a few of your links above into citation format; that'll make it easier for others to evaluate. If for whatever reason you'd prefer that I leave the list as it, feel free to revert my changes. I'll also add a comment or two after the cite. Working... Lesser Cartographies (talk) 22:44, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

Ok, having taken a look at a half-dozen of these, I'd say it's much more important to isolate the four or five best references and build the article out from there. You should probably take a look at WP:RS and WP:CORPDEPTH to see what we're looking for. Ideally, we'd like to see substantial third-party reporting in a well-known magazine or newspaper. The closer you get to blogs and press releases the more difficult it will be to establish sufficient notability for an independent article. If you'd like to pick your top-five I'll be happy to take a look at them. There are other folks here with much more experience in corporate articles so feel free to solicit other opinions as well. 23:38, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

www.brainyquote.com is a collection of quotes from various artists, authors, and public figures. Is this a reliable source? The quotes contained in brainyquote.com do not appear to have any secondary or primary source attribution. Herzlicheboy (talk) 20:40, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

Doubtful. Any quote worth quoting can be sourced to a reliable, researched book of quotations (Bartlett's, Oxford, etc.) or a primary source. Gamaliel (talk) 20:49, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

So can I unilaterally remove any quote in any Wikipedia article solely attributed to Brainyquote.com? Herzlicheboy (talk) 20:56, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

If it is attributed to a living individual, yes. Otherwise, you might want to just add a fact tag. In some cases it would be quite easy to come up with an appropriate source. Did you have any particular articles in mind? Gamaliel (talk) 20:59, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

Yes, the quote attributed to Wilhelm Steinitz in the third line of this section: French_defense#History. Is it solely attributed to "Brainyquotes". Herzlicheboy (talk) 21:11, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

I was able to find that quote via Google Books and added the new citation. Gamaliel (talk) 21:42, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

Excellent, very impressive find. Herzlicheboy (talk) 21:51, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

When using a quotation, you should include a reference to where it was originally published. But Brainquote does not do that do it is best avoided. Also, it is rarely a good idea to provide a quote unless a secondary source can establish what it means. Otherwise it is original research. TFD (talk) 14:30, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

four deuces, please elaborate, because as your statement stands you are more than incorrect, your bordering on competence issues. We use quotes from primary sources all the time, it is only when talking about what the quote means is a secondary source needed, and in fact you can use a primary source to explain the quote if the primary source goes on to say "this means..."' OR means YOUR own OR, not OR dome by a respected author who was published and peer reviewed.Camelbinky (talk) 23:58, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

Hello,

I'm a contributor to the Camille and Kennerly Kitt page. They have released several singles in MP3 format on iTunes and other similar sites, so a discography section was created, here: Camille and Kennerly Kitt#Discography. As you can see, the section includes release dates, the names of the tracks, and the harp duet type (acoustic or electric). Would it be acceptable to insert a link to the corresponding iTunes page next to each track name, since those iTunes pages are the ONLY way to support the release dates and tracks mentioned? Or would that be considered promotional? As we know, the contents of Wikipedia pages must have verifiable sources, and those iTunes links would be the only way to prove that the discography section is true.

Here's one example:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/game-of-thrones-single/id551895996

Many thanks in advance for your time and help. Dontreader (talk) 22:27, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

Articles should be based on reliable, third-party, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy. A shop that is trying to sell the product is not reliable source. Independent sources have no conflicts of interest (no potential for personal, financial, or political gain from the publication). That counts out shops. Wikipedia is not here to help businesses sell products. duffbeerforme (talk) 23:39, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

duffbeerforme should not be here since he is the user who took down those links a day ago, and therefore he is biased. Besides, a much more experienced Wikipedian recommended me to do what I have asked about here. Furthermore, when the page was proposed for deletion, Duffbeerforme spent far more time than any unbiased Wikipedian arguing that the page must be deleted based on his knowledge of the Wikipedia rules, yet the consensus that was reached by much more seasoned users was to keep it. Therefore, I ask once again for help from an impartial Wikipedian with greater experience. Thanks in advance. Dontreader (talk) 03:20, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

Trouts to duffbeerforme for not pointing out they were a party to the dispute. That said, Dontreader, if no one in the music press given a list of gear for each song then we probably don't need to either. Once you find a reliable source with that information I don't see any objection to including it in the article. Yes, this is annoying. No, it doesn't have to be this way. But overall the problems caused by a conservative interpretation of WP:NPOV, WP:V and WP:RS are (in my opinion) slightly better than the problems we'd have with a more liberal interpretation. Lesser Cartographies (talk) 04:48, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

Lesser Cartographies, I appreciate your response very much. I see your point; however, you said "probably", so I just would like to please know if for sure my proposal would clearly violate Wikipedia rules or not. I have taken a look at Lindsey Stirling's page, and in the discography section Lindsey Stirling#Discography it says, "Singles and EPs The following list of official music singles is available at the official independent record label website.", followed by this link: http://lindseystirling.mybigcommerce.com/music-singles-1/ Therefore, her page is promoting sales. I fail to understand the difference between that link and the iTunes link that I provided. You said that I should find a reliable source, which I understand, and it sounds quite reasonable, but is that link on Lindsey Stirling's page a reliable source? If not, can I proceed with what I suggested for the Camille and Kennerly Kitt page? Again, I appreciate your kindness and help. Dontreader (talk) 08:47, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

@Dontreader: That's a fair question. Poking around a bit, I see that Wikipedia:WikiProject_Discographies/style#Sources mentions "the artist's or label's website" as allowable for discographic information. As lindseystirling.mybigcommerce.com appears to be both, I'd say using that cite is within current consensus. iTunes is neither the artist's site or the label's site, so use of iTunes falls outside current consensus (at least for this purpose).

Lesser Cartographies (talk) 15:21, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

Lesser Cartographies, I'm very grateful for the impressive research. You have been very helpful, and I won't ask you to keep on addressing my points because I don't want to abuse anyone's generosity, but taking an even closer look at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Discographies/style#Sources, I think it's important to stress a couple of things:

1. When you quoted "the artist's or label's website" as allowable for discographic information, that certainly explains why the Lindsey Stirling website is fine, but that quote is under the category of "Useful resources", so it does not claim that those are the ONLY acceptable sources.

2. Furthermore, on that same page, I see that I can invoke Wikipedia:WikiProject Discographies/style#Ignore all rules because "if there is a reasonable justification for deviating from the above guidelines to most accurately or appropriately document an artist's body of work, then ignore all the rules and go with what's best for the article. It is our goal to provide information in the best way possible, so a strict adherence to the guidelines listed above may not always be the best way to accomplish our goals." The reasonable justification, in my opinion, is that both Lindsey Stirling's link and the iTunes link that I showed as an example serve the exact same purpose, which is to support the claims made in the discography section. I certainly hope consensus can be reached on this matter because I'm tired of my edits being systematically reverted by duffbeerforme, who takes advantage of the fact that there is a lack of consensus. Thanks again for the kind help. Dontreader (talk) 00:12, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

@Dontreader If you're going to play the WP:IAR card (and everyone should at least once in their editing career) then you're going to need to make a case as to why the benefits of ignoring the rule outweigh the costs. At the moment I'm not seeing a lot of upside here: including links to iTunes will let you fill in a few details, but those links aren't going to improve the overall quality or make the article significantly more complete.

I do see a substantial downside, though. I don't think you can make an argument that iTunes links be limited to just this article, so I'm going to have to evaluate how this change would affect all music articles. Alexa Internet ranks sites by traffic. Wikipedia is #6. Apple (and by extension iTunes) is #44. If we were to allow all band articles to point to iTunes, I have no doubt that we would become the largest referrer to iTunes within a handful of weeks. At that point, record labels and bands have an empirical metric (money) for the effectiveness of a band's article in driving sales. Because real money is now on the line, those articles aren't going to be left to the best efforts of overworked, amateur, volunteer, and above all, neutral editors.

The current solution severs the link between the article and the point of sale: no links to iTunes, Amazon, eBay, etc. This policy doesn't entirely remove wikipedia's substantial effect on sales, but that effect is harder to quantify and there's less of a monetary incentive to try to game the system.

So that's the big picture as I understand it. As I said, WP:IAR works when you can show the benefits of ignoring the rule outweighing the costs. Based on the information I have, in this case I'm seeing negligible benefit and potentially crippling costs. I can be persuaded otherwise, but to do so you're going to have to make an argument on how your change benefits the encyclopedia, not just this article.

Hope that was helpful, and I'm happy to continue the conversation.

Lesser Cartographies (talk) 03:51, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

For sake of completeness, I'll point out that Leck mich im Arsch has an iTunes link tucked away in the external links section, and I don't have any problems with that at all: it's informative, and The Academy of St. Martin in the Fields is not making a substantial portion of their budget from sales generated by that link. There is not, however, an iTunes link in the Leck mich im Arsch (Insane Clown Posse single) article; such a link would also be informative, but there's far greater potential for promotion and thus abuse. The Camille and Kennerly Kitt article is, strange as it may be to say it, closer to ICP than AoSMinF. Lesser Cartographies (talk) 04:05, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

Lesser Cartographies, I really appreciate your time and kindness, and especially the effort to explain your points as thoroughly as possible, instead of reverting edits and basically saying in the edit descriptions that I don't know what Wikipedia is about (please see the history section of the article that we are talking about, if you have a moment - I find that behavior far from civil). However, I have no idea what ICP and AoSMinF mean, so if you could explain that, I would be grateful. The rest is very interesting and I don't have the knowledge to contest anything that you said. My concern is very simple: if the discography section remains (as it is now) without verifiable sources, anyone might come at any moment and take it down. Isn't that a valid concern? Then, without the discography section, it would look as if the Harp Twins are not serious musicians, who have never released any music, when in fact they have spent lots of time and money making many of their tracks available for purchase on several sites (remember the licensing fees involved in making covers). I don't think it would be right for their page not to contain a discography section, which, as I said, is in danger of disappearing any second. You mentioned a rather obscure external link to iTunes on another page. I saw it. I'm perfectly fine with an iTunes link being an external link (perhaps the link to their page with all of their tracks, which includes all of the release dates). Any suggestion/help you can give me is enormously appreciated. Please understand why I'm so worried. Thanks again for all your generous help. Dontreader (talk) 05:21, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

ICP=Insane Clown Posse. AoSMinF=Academy of St Martin in the Fields. Apologies for being obscure. Lesser Cartographies (talk) 05:42, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

In fact, Lesser Cartographies, not that I want to sound abusive, but if you could edit the page yourself, that would be awesome because if I do whatever you recommend, Duffbeerforme will automatically revert it. Dontreader (talk) 05:28, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

@Dontreader I'll take a look. Lesser Cartographies (talk) 05:42, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

I used template:cite doi to cite journal articles, but this editor is asking for specific page numbers. This is awkward, especially if a statement is repeated in various pages and you certainly do not do it if you are using APA style, unless it's a quote. What's the Wiki opinion about this? Cavann (talk) 23:56, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

In my opinion, adding page numbers to citations is a kindness to the reader and page numbers should be added where feasible. I prefer using {{rp|pagenum}} after the {{refn|name=foo}} because (a) it gives me an easy-if-slightly-ugly way of pointing out the cite is spread over several pages, e.g., and (b) I can use the "pages" parameter to give the length of the work instead of the page of the citation. All that said, if the article is cited adequately then the presumption is towards leaving well enough alone. Lesser Cartographies (talk) 05:10, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

If you have ready access to the page number(s), simply provide the information as a courtesy. But page numbers are not essential. If a reader had a copy of that issue of the journal in their hands, it would be an easy matter to look at the table of contents, skim the relevant article, and verify the information. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 05:57, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

I think that it is not always reasonable to demand page numbers, but there will be cases where it is very reasonable. Hard to generalize. In general I would say that for short journal article it should hopefully never become a cause for big disagreements anyway.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 11:19, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

Strongly disagree with Cullen. In humanities subjects this should certainly be done - journal articles almost never have "tables of contents", and often no abstract or clear summary at the start, and articles may be up to 40 pages long. Very often points cited will be incidental and not mentioned in any introduction or conclusion. Articles should be treated just like books, and if the template doesn't allow this, use another one. Johnbod (talk) 11:28, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

As a courtesy to this user, I have posted quotes and page numbers in the article talk page.[78] I guess I can use {{rp|pagenum}} after the {{refn|name=foo}}, I just was not sure about moving journal articles from references to bibliography section.Cavann (talk) 23:21, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

Off course if this is a matter of content dispute, a full citation, in that way, is necessary: Especially when the one part of the dispute asks kindly of the precise part/page, where the claimed fact is supported in the reference. I see no reason why this should be neglected.Alexikoua (talk) 13:07, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

Due to some recent bot issues, Archive.is is up for discussion.—Kww(talk) 16:20, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

Source: caic.org.au

Article: Landmark Worldwide, and others:

• culthelp.info: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com
• caic.org.au: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com
• (other domain redirects may exist as well)

Content:

• In the article Landmark Worldwide: and (in the lede):
• On the Talk:Landmark Worldwide, it is being used by editors to forward claims that the company is a cult.
• These claims (among others) are then being used to support the company's inclusion at List of new religious movements.

Commentary:

• As near as I can tell, CAIC is now a self-published aggregation of material presumably published elsewhere. (A Whois search shows that the site is registered to an individual, not an organization.)
• The site is clear that it has an agenda.
• It (CAIC) has a statement on most pages that it is not saying anything in their voice.
• The site does not have clear ownership (the site copyright actually includes the phrase "Yada yada yada").
• Our own article on the only "source" for CAIC's voice says that she passed away nearly 13 years ago (over six years before the domain was registered).
• In the example of Landmark Worldwide, it is being used as a source to support a rather exceptional claim.

Is the source (caic.org.au and other redirected domains) a reliable source? Does it support the statements made at Landmark Worldwide quoted above?

• Not reliable - As proposer of commentary above. --Tgeairn (talk) 21:13, 6 September 2013 (UTC)
• Comment: As I suggested on the Article Talk page given CAIC is a clearinghouse of links to other articles (which are not being disputed individually) then one option would be to source each article directly. However, the opposite holds, if each CAIC linked article is not being disputed individually then why is CAIC being disputed as an aggregate of links? AnonNep (talk) 21:59, 6 September 2013 (UTC)
• Not reliable From looking around the site it appears to be mostly personal opinion pieces by people who have attended a Landmark course, I can write one of those, inclusion on that site wouldn't make it authoritative. Indeed on this page http://www.culthelp.info/index.php?option=com_content&task=category&sectionid=8&id=73&Itemid=12 the site maintainer "Jan Groenveld" says "Most of the articles regarding Landmark/Forum/EST are anecdotal - subjective experiences of others who have been through the Landmark/Forum/EST experience. They are provided to give an alternate viewpoint to that found on their own website." in other words articles on the site about Landmark are selected because they disagree with Landmark's own website, not because they necessarily have merit. Jasonfward (talk) 22:11, 6 September 2013 (UTC)
  • The specific page on CAIC that mentions Landmark lists its sources (including publishing a Landmark rebuttal to its own content for balance) and does include a few 'subjective experiences' but is more of 'a self-published aggregation of material presumably published elsewhere' than 'mostly personal opinion pieces by people who have attended a Landmark course'. But, as said, the 'subjective experiences' could be ignored & other sources directly linked to the same effect:
    • 42 Hours, $500, 65 Breakdowns - Mother Jones, Volume 34/August 2009
    • ABC Radio National "Background Briefing" documentary on Landmark Education - ABC Radio National (Australian National Broadcaster)
    • 60 Minutes: Werner Erhard (March 3, 1991) - US CBS '60 Minutes' with link to transcript
    • "The Fuhrer Over est" by Jesse Kornbluth - New Times, New York, March 19, 1976. Pp. 29-52.
    • Marriage licence for Jack Rosenberg / Curt Wilhelm VonSavage / Werner and Ellen Erhard etc - Book excerpt 'Outrageous Betrayal: The Dark Journey of Werner Erhard from est to Exile', Steve Pressman, 1993
    • AUDIO: Werner Erhard interview with Barbara Walters (1976) - as per description
    • Inside Landmark Forum (transcript) - English language transcript of French documentary "Voyage Au Pays Des Nouveaux Gourous"
    • Inside Landmark Forum (video) - video of above with English subtitles
    • Landmark Education reply to France 3 documentary - Right of reply offered by CAIC to Landmark
    • The Forum Begins: The Curriculum and Pedagogy - Ph.D Dissertation by Charles Wayne Denison, University of Denver, 1994
    • The Structure: First Sights Of The Forum - Excerpt from dissertation by Charles Wayne Denison, University of Denver, 1994
    • "Not interested in people - but only money" - Personal experience copyrighted to Rick Ross
    • Soul Training (another Landmark experince) - Boston Globe, March 3, 1999.
    • There's no meeting of the Minds - Westword, April 18-24, 1996
    • Mind game courses aimed at public sector workers - The Times, July 22, 1992
    • "Landmark Forum is a very aggressive and selfish program" - 'By an attendee of Landmark Education', 1988
    • The Con-Forumists - Swing Generation, November 1998
    • The Forum: Cult or comfort? - Boston Globe, March 3, 1999
    • Mellow Out Or You Will Pay - Argus Magazine, December 1980
    • Landmark Education - by Andy Testa
    • Cults & Psychological Abuse (my experience in the forum) - 'taken from remarks -- considerably expanded -- that I delivered as a panel member at a discussion called "Cults and Psychological Abuse" on 30 October 1992 at Western Psychiatric Institute in Pittsburgh'.
    • Part 1 Of a Discussion on AOL - as titled
    • Part 2 of a discussion on AOL - as titled.

AnonNep (talk) 01:12, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

• Comment Most of this gaggle of links appear to either be to unreliable sources (the AOL chat might be my favorite) or to sources that don't actually discuss the claims that this source is being used to report. In any case, these links are irrelevant to whether the CAIC itself is a reliable source. Nwlaw63 (talk) 14:47, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

• Reliable if used with care. Despite the statement by Tgeairn, CAIC is not cited as a reference for the "cult" label at all in the Landmark article (for which other sources are cited), but rather only for the statement that there have been reports of "manipulative and coercive techniques". Nor has this source ever been discussed on the Talk:List of new religious movements page. Although I agree that there are other sources that can and should be used to support this brief statement, that is no reason to deem the existing reference unreliable. CAIC, and its website, are cited in academic literature, and a very quick search turns up several:
  • Jeffry Kaplan: "Doomsday Religious Movements" in 2002. Millennial Violence: Past, Present, and Future. London: Routledge/Frank Cass Publishers.(references)
  • George Chryssides: "Heavenly Deception" in James R. Lewis, Olav Hammer, eds. 2007. The Invention of Sacred Tradition. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press (references)
  • George Chryssides: 2011. Historical Dictionary of New Religious Movements. Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press (bibliography)
  • Margaret Thaler Singer, ‎Janja Lalich: 1994. Cults in Our Midst. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers (acknowledgements as an important resource)
  • Nancy K. Grant Ph. D., Diana J. Mansell R. N.: "Eckankar (co-worker with God) The Religion of Light and Sound" in 2008. A Guidebook to Religious and Spiritual Practices for People Who Work with People. New York: iUniverse (references)
  • Thomas J. Badey, ed. August 2004. Annual Editions: Violence and Terrorism 05/06. edition: 8. Dubuque: McGraw Hill Contemporary Learning Series (references)
  • Sharon Brehm, Saul Kassin, Steven Fein, et. al.: Instructor's Resource Manual: Social Psychology 6th ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin (recommended resource)

Moreover, according to CAIC's Wiki article, it has had notable run-ins with Landmark in the past, and CAIC would also be a relaiable source for its side of that story, again, if used carefully. • Astynax ^talk 09:42, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

Regarding the statement that CAIC is cited in academic literature, please review your references:

• In Millennial Violence: Past, Present, and Future, it is listed in a list of Internet Addresses in the "References and suggested reading" section. CAIC is never cited in the book.
• In "Heavenly Deception", the actual reference is to "Hassan, Steve, "The Truth about Sun Myung Moon" and includes a url for a copy of that article on CAIC's site. CAIC isn't the source in that reference, and does not provide any content other than hosting a copy of someone else's web page.
• In Historical Dictionary of New Religious Movements, CAIC is listed in a list of Critical, Countercult, and Cult Monitoring Sites. Being listed in a list of websites does not mean it is being used as a source. There is a reference to caic.org regarding MSIA, which takes the reader to an unattributed copy of an excerpt of someone thoughts on the subject. Again, there is not material here from CAIC, only an unattributed copy of someone else's work.
• I cannot find any reference to CAIC in Cults in Our Midst. Can you verify that one?
• Following the pattern, A Guidebook to Religious and Spiritual Practices for People Who Work with People uses CAIC as a repository for other people's material (and is not exactly "academic literature").
• Annual Editions: Violence and Terrorism, included on a list of websites - the exact same list as the others.
• Instructor's Resource Manual: Social Psychology, the name of the website is listed in a list of websites that are accessible from a personal website. Again, no material from CAIC is being used as a source.

In none of the "academic literature" you listed is CAIC used as a source for anything at all. At best, it is included in a list of websites; and at worst it is being used as a webhost for someone else's material. Neither of these make it a reliable source. --Tgeairn (talk) 14:06, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

• Reply: You are again mischaracterizing the issue at hand. A great many reliable sources are collections of information from multiple authors/sources. For each book/journal listed, I already provided in which way the site was listed. Academic authors do not include items in their references unless they have used them as sources and/or regard them as reliable for their readers/students. They do not tend to put unreliable sources in their recommended reading lists or bibliographies unless they have either used the source or think it will be valuable for their readers/students. The sole exception for that would be if the article criticized the source as unreliable, which none of the above do in regard to CAIC. Even were we to dismiss reference, bibliography and recommended reading lists (and we should not), your contention that "In none of the 'academic literature' you listed is CAIC used as a source for anything at all" is patently false. Chryssides certainly cites them, and authors do not thank sources in their acknowledgements for the contributions made by the sources toward completion of the work unless they have made use of the source. • Astynax ^talk 18:20, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

• Not reliable As above, the CAIC website is clearly a self-published website that appears to have no scholarly or academic credentials. Moreover, the site itself doesn't even appear to make the claims that the source is being used to support. Nwlaw63 (talk) 14:40, 7 September 2013 (UTC)
• Not reliable per WP:SPS. Of course if some of the links on that site point to sources that are WP:RS, there is no reason why those references could not be cited directly. It does seem however that, of the links that point to to newspaper and magazine articles, many are Op-ed pieces rather than news reports, or quotations by the reporter of the opinions of non-notable or unnamed individuals. DaveApter (talk) 09:25, 8 September 2013 (UTC)
• As far as I can tell, it is not reliable in the sense that it can't be used to say Landmark Worldwide is a "cult" and therefore a "new religious movement". When you go to the CAIC site the first thing you see is a big disclaimer saying "Just because a group is mentioned on this site does not mean we regard it as a destructive cult. Both Cults and Isms are listed to provide information for those seeking the downside of many of these movements." So in their words, they're not saying it's a cult; also I don't think the self-published reviews there are reliable sources either. I'm not saying that Landmark doesn't have problems, but I don't think this is the way to deal with it. ~Adjwilley (talk) 00:37, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

This ones a bit tricky. Recently some copper mines in the Timna Valley were redated to Solomonic times. Various articles have been written about this (ignore the headlines as they don't reflect what the articles actually say). The Phys.org article[79] says "Scholarly work and materials found in the area suggest the mines were operated by the Edomites, a semi-nomadic tribal confederation that according to the Bible warred constantly with Israel." It also says " It's entirely possible that David and Solomon existed and even that they exerted some control over the mines in the Timna Valley at times, he says." An article in the Jewish Press[80] says "The archaeological record shows the mines in Timna Valley were built and operated by a local society, likely the early Edomites, who are known to have occupied the land and formed a kingdom that rivaled Judah." And "He also says that the findings at the Slaves’ Hill undermine criticisms of the Bible’s historicity based on a lack of archaeological evidence. It’s entirely possible that Kings David and Solomon exerted some control over the mines in the Timna Valley at times, he says" (he being the chief excavator).

This has been added to our article on the book King Solomon's Mines. I revised it (and I perhaps should have put in the speculation by the excavator) to match the source about the Edomites warring constantly with Israel, but an editor disagrees about the Edomites and so it now reads " Research published in September 2013 has shown that this site was in use during the 10th century BC as a copper mine possibly by the Edomites<ref>http://phys.org/news/2013-09-proof-solomon-israel.html</ref><ref>{{cite news|title=Proof of Solomon's mines found in Israel|url=http://www.jewishpress.com/news/proof-of-solomons-copper-mines-found-in-israel/2013/09/08/|accessdate=17 September 2013|newspaper=The Jewish Press|date=September 8th, 2013 Read more at: http://www.jewishpress.com/news/proof-of-solomons-copper-mines-found-in-israel/2013/09/08/}}</ref>, who are believed to be vassals of King Solomon<ref>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edom#Biblical_Edom</ref><ref>http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0006_0_05562.html</ref>." In other words, it contradicts and ignores what the original sources say (using an article of hours and the Jewish Virtual Library, which does not say they were Solmon's vassals and is clearly opinion, not fact, using words such as "apparently" and "According to the Septuagint, what is said about Aram in I Kings 11:25 refers to Edom, and it thus turns out that this Hadad rebelled at the beginning of Solomon's reign and ruled Edom. It is difficult to accept this version... It would therefore appear that Edom's liberation was possible only at the end of Solomon's reign."

I'm not sure how to handle this (and I'm not sure this belongs in an article about a book, so the easiest way would be to just take it all out and not have an article about a book fight out a debate over the historicity of these mines). I'm pretty convinced though that we can't just delete relevant material that is in the sources being used for these recent excavations. Dougweller (talk) 07:13, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

Ok, here's my take on it. The problem seems to be these two edits: [81] and [82]. I find both of these edits to be inappropriate. The first one misrepresents the source, and is technically OR, while the second edit uses a Wikipedia article as a source, which obviously fails RS. However, the point of the article is to publish archaeological evidence so maybe it isn't suitable for paraphrasing the bible (it is published by the science faculty after all), so perhaps the Edomites relationship to Israel should just be dropped. Betty Logan (talk) 09:09, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

Maybe I am reading it wrong but the sentence quoted above has, with respect to sourcing, two sections.

• The post above appears to be about the first section which only seems to have a "light" claims "possibly the Edomites". I don't see any contradiction with the sources described above? It just does not repeat everything? If so there would be no policy problem with saying less than what a source says, as long as the meaning does not really change.
• The second bit who are believed to be vassals of King Solomon looks inappropriately sourced, and indeed not really necessary to the subject.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 13:12, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

Slightly off topic, but I was surprised that Wikipedia didn´t have a article about king Solomons mines, as, you know, "theory". The word "mine" don´t even show up in Solomon until "Contemporary fiction". Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 13:55, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

That may be on topic after all. Does the idea that Solomon had mines, under his own control or that of "vassals", have any source? Andrew Dalby 09:15, 21 September 2013 (UTC)