Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 84

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New World Encyclopedia is not a reliable source

[I posted the following comment on the talk page for a specific article. However, when I searched for other information on the reliability of this source I found nothing of value. The WP Mirrors list gives it a "medium" rating, but that seems to refer only to its GFDL compliance, not its reliability as a source. Since its published goal is to modify facts to reflect Unification Church values, this "encyclopedia" should never be considered a reliable source of information. There may be other articles that cite the New World Encyclopedia, unaware that its objectives are radically different from WP's or from any other even marginally legitimate encyclopedia. I have not removed the specifics relevant only to the article on the House of Romanov because they do not obscure the information about the so-called encyclopedia. Here is my comment:]


According to both its own web site and the Wikipedia article that mentions it, the New World Encyclopedia is in essence a WP mirror site with modifications to highlight Unification Church values and doctrines:

One section of the New World Encyclopedia standards referenced above states:

(Note: I have added WP formatting to the quotations above so that they look approximately as they do on their own sites, but I have not modified the content at all.)

I quoted only the beginning of the New World Encyclopedia's "Addressing values in articles" standard. The entire section is very long and detailed in telling editors how to infuse Unification Church values into encyclopedia articles so subtly that the reader is not even aware he is reading anything other than simple facts. That hardly makes that "encyclopedia" a reliable source. The last paragraph quoted above is particularly disturbing in its assumption that readers are incapable of evaluating encyclopedia articles if they are presented with facts alone.

The New World Encyclopedia is cited as a reference only once in this article, with regard to the dynasty name (R vs H-G-R), but the articles are so similar that it's practically impossible for a casual reader to determine which is the chicken and which is the egg. Its symbiotic relationship with the corresponding Unification Church article seriously undermines the credibility of this whole article.--Jim10701 (talk) 22:55, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

  • Specifically non-specialized tertiary - hence a very poor source absent anything better at all. With emphasis on "anything better at all." No need to assert anything more about the source. Collect (talk) 00:20, 15 December 2010 (UTC)
Wow, 251 links as of now. Just skimming thru the entries, most of them appear in the articles as references and not just externals. Definitely needs some cleanup. 96.228.129.69 (talk) 06:49, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Mastercollector

Is mastercollector.com a reliable source for toy/character reviews? They publish print paid subscription newsletter, they have reviews that are done by professional staff members who use their full names, not anonymous fan contributed reviews. Mathewignash (talk) 12:45, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

RIA Novosti

I just got reverted without comment on Sukhoi PAK FA by User:Mr_nonono. Is RIA Novosti not reliable about Russian projects? Hcobb (talk) 00:06, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Can you explain what RIA Novosti is? Jayjg (talk) 03:40, 17 December 2010 (UTC)
RIA Novosti is a Russian state owned news agency. I don't see why it should be less reliable than any other press release from the Russian Military Industrial Complex. Hcobb (talk) 16:33, 17 December 2010 (UTC)
For what claim is it being used as a citation? Jayjg (talk) 01:27, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

Richard Littlejohn

There is a group of users registered and IP who are trying to force a claim about Richard Littlejohn having a criminal record. The 'source' they are trying to use is a book review from a biased left-wing newspaper which is known to have a dislike of Mr Littlejohn. They keep arguing it is a reliable source. But I do not feel an opinionated book review by a left-wing author is a reliable source. Also the 'source' does not even support the claim in the article. I have tried explaining this but they persist in reverting it. I would be grateful for your intervention. Christian1985 (talk) 16:34, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

It's from The Observer, which is undeniably a relable source according to Wikipedia's policies. Calling it "a biased left-wing newspaper" is rather over the top. It's liberal.Paul B (talk) 17:15, 18 December 2010 (UTC)
But that's not the point I was making. The 'reference' they are attempting to use is a book review of Littlejohn's Britain. I hardly feel this is a solid source. The 'source' isn't from an article, it is an opinionated book review, surely that does not meet guidelines. Christian1985 (talk) 17:19, 18 December 2010 (UTC)
For clarity to save people looking, it's Ben Summerskill's book review here in The Observer and this edit. I would move this to the WP:BLP/N noticeboard if I were you. Sean.hoyland - talk 17:26, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

Will do, thank you for your assistance Christian1985 (talk) 17:27, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

(ec)The article is clearly an "opinion piece" and thus not a reliable source for a claim of criminal acts in a BLP - where not only is the requirement absolute that the source be strong, it is also established that opinions are to be avoided in such cases. One would need a specific RS for the precise claim for it to be in any BLP at all, and the matter of political spectrum analysis is irrelevant here. Collect (talk) 17:28, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

It's a book review. Reviews are just as much subject to the usual checking as other articles. You can be sure they'd check this or Littlejohn would be ranting in his next column about the incompetence of the Observer and the lies of liberal left blah blah. It's not, however, a "criticism" as such. The fact would be better placed in the biographical section. Paul B (talk) 18:06, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

Obviously it is a reliable source. I agree this discussion would be better posted on WP:BLP/N.Dlabtot (talk) 17:47, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

Agreed. It's a reliable source but misused both in that the edit overstates what the Observer article says, and it's too trivial for the article. But if anyone insists on keeping it in, BLP is the place to discuss it. Dougweller (talk) 17:50, 18 December 2010 (UTC)
  • The Observer is a reliable source. Also, it is unlikely it would be able to publish that Littlejohn has a criminal conviction without facing a libel claim, if it were not true. It's not an opinion, or an analysis of the facts, it's a plain fact and reliable sources can be used to cite facts. Betty Logan (talk) 17:56, 18 December 2010 (UTC)
  • There are several problems here. Opinion columns (such book reviews) are only to be used with attribution to the author, see WP:NEWSBLOG; they are not strong sources for a BLP article; and, as pointed out by others, the source does not actually support the edit, which claims acts of violence (plural). The book review supports only one act of violence (brawling), with no mention that there was a criminal conviction.--Slp1 (talk) 18:12, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

The Observer is unquestionably a reliable source. Notwithstanding that this is contained in a book review, the particular assertion is not an expression of opinion, it is a statement of fact. So to require attribution in the text on the lines of, "according to X, Y was convincted as a youth of Z" is a bit of overkill. Given the ridiculously stringent libel laws in Britain, and that this is a mainstream newspaper rather than a tabloid gossip rag, there should be no question about this being a reliable source. I see no claim that the factual assertion is wrong or inaccurate in any way. That the newspaper or the author may have a bias (which has more to do with the subject being at a rival paper than with any political or idological bent) is utterly irrelevant. So, summarily removing this would seem to me to be improper edit warring. I will note that the text in the BLP does not seem to track the source with perfect accuracy, but that is not an issue for RSN. Fladrif (talk) 21:06, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

Echoing Fladrif, I think we can let any such claim let through, probably even without attribution, given that the state of libel laws in Britain and the Grauniad's general adherence to journalistic standards (i.e., it doesn't have a reputation of making things up wholecloth) makes it unlikely to be anything other than a statement of fact. Sceptre (talk) 21:26, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

Reliability of US military summary reports

User:Geo Swan has been treating the summary reports from the Office for the Administrative Review of the Detention of Enemy Combatants (or OARDEC) on the Guantanamo detainees as "secondary reliable sources" in writing biographies, e.g. see discussion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Fazaldad. An example of the memos is at:[1] He writes that "I honestly see no reason that the OARDEC summary memos should not also be considered secondary sources which are suitable WP:RS." The "summary memos" are unclassified reports prepared for the Combatant Status Review Tribunals (see Summary of Evidence (CSRT), though note that it is an article written entirely using primary sources). They were apparently each written by a US military officer on the basis of more extensive reports. What is the status of these summary memos as reliable sources, and are they suitable for use in BLPs? If this isn't too wide a question, would other internal military or government documents ever be considered to be reliable sources? Fences&Windows 21:15, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

(ah shit, was answering the general question in the header, not looking at the specific sources). Adendum: Those summary reports are primary, but of pretty high quality, unlike the general field reports i address with the following comments: 1. They're primary sources. 2. They are highly unreliable unto themselves (they consist in large part of reports of rumors, scraps of intelligence that may or may not be accurate, self-serving after action reports that were later corrected, etc...) 3. They are reliable for their own contents, which occasionally might be good to link/use (for instance if the contents of one of these things became highly controversial and the subject of investigation and that was the topic/part of a wikipedia article).Bali ultimate (talk) 21:25, 13 December 2010 (UTC)
Seconding Bali. Primary, unreliable for external reality. Government documents are routinely written to give opinion. The purpose of an Office for Administrative Review of the Detention of Enemy Combatants is to provide administrative review: opinion. The documents themselves are insufficient to be "simple" primary sources regarding biography. Do not use, remove any sections reliant as synthesis, particularly where BLP. Fifelfoo (talk) 21:31, 13 December 2010 (UTC)
The bulk of the example linked was from the Officer In Charge, Combatant Status Review Tribunals. This is the work of several people, but not a large agency, under a strict chain of command. Inevitably, the neutrality of this particular kind of "court" will be doubted, and their standards for including content may not necessarily be journalistic standards. However, it would also be biased to assume that they are publishing false information. The tribunal may be less reliable than a civilian court or a good newspaper, but it may be more reliable than a local paper in a developing country or a news tabloid. In the end I look at it and say, are they making an effort to print the truth? Maybe. The distinction between "primary" and "secondary" is a crude one, and sometimes a source straddles this boundary. In the interests of fair coverage of living persons, I think it would be best to treat the source as primary - in other words, to say "the tribunal found that Abdul fought with al Qaida..." rather than "Abdul fought with al Qaida..." One should be careful when drawing conclusions from primary sources, but the same is true of secondary sources really. Wnt (talk) 02:18, 14 December 2010 (UTC)
For the uses given "in writing biographies" they are written by a clearly involved instrumentality: primary source. Wikipedia editors do not need to "assume that they are publishing false information"; we only need to assume whether using a document will require non-trivial analysis and contextualisation (ie: original research or synthesis) to produce encyclopaedic knowledge. The proper seating and contextualisation of these document would require non-trivial analysis. Search for journalists who've seated and contextualised these biographies. Fifelfoo (talk) 02:32, 14 December 2010 (UTC)
  • I do my very best to understand the positions taken by other parties in discussions. I don't think I can rely on guessing what some of the more obscure phrases used in the above comment mean, so I can't count on understanding what that comment means. Specifically, I don't know what a "clearly involved instrumentality" is. I don't know what "proper seating and contextualisation" are. The above comment seems to be implying that the memos can't be understood at first glance. On the contrary the memos have clear surface meanings.

    In other discussion some correspondents have asserted more interpretation was required so "readers might draw the wrong conclusion". I think this approach is a mistake. I think we need to respect the intelligence of our readers. If our articles are written from a neutral point of view, if we properly attribute material from our sources, and our intelligent readers draw different conclusions from those we personally hold this is not a failure -- this is a sign of a successful compliance with WP:NPOV. And trying to prevent readers from "drawing the wrong conclusion" lapses from WP:NPOV. Geo Swan (talk) 20:45, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

Fences & Windows invited me to correct misconceptions in the way they framed this discussion.
    1. No, the summaries do not rely solely on primary documents. All summaries relied on documents from at least six agencies, including the State Department and the office of the DASD-DA, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Detainee Affairs. These are not agencies that would be producing field reports, as they had no contact with the detainees, or with field agents.
    2. The summary memos weren't written by a single author. They were written by teams of authors.
    3. In regular scholarship the distinguishing characteristic of a secondary document include intelligent analysis, interpretation and synthesis of other source documents. That is the definition scholars use, if I am not mistaken it is the basic definition used here, for most fields we cover. I believe we should use our standard definition of secondary source for documents related to the detainees. Geo Swan (talk) 02:42, 14 December 2010 (UTC)
WRT: "In regular scholarship the distinguishing characteristic of a secondary document include intelligent analysis, interpretation and synthesis of other source documents."
Please understand OARDEC is a US military body who is running the Guantanamo tribunals. OARDEC created these factors. They can not be a secondary source for their own findings.
WRT "No, the summaries do not rely solely on primary documents. All summaries relied on documents from at least six agencies, including the State Department and the office of the DASD-DA, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Detainee Affairs. These are not agencies that would be producing field reports, as they had no contact with the detainees, or with field agents."
Please provide sources for your claims. As far as i can see this is absolutely unclear. Have you been involved with OARDEC?
WRT: "The summary memos weren't written by a single author. They were written by teams of authors."
Please provide a source for that claim.
IQinn (talk) 02:58, 14 December 2010 (UTC)
  • I have addressed these questions in more detail here.

    Briefly, the second paragraph above contains the serious misconception that the authors of the OARDEC memos were commenting on "their own findings". That is incorrect. Their documents were based on reports from other agencies.

    Other documents make clear which other agencies's documents OARDEC relied on, including documents released due to the captives' habeas proceedings, the documents drafted the OARDEC Board members, after their hearing, recording how they arrived at their determinations, the "exhibit lists" published for serval dozen of the hearings, and finally the affidavit of whistleblower and challenger Stephen Abraham. Geo Swan (talk) 22:19, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

No, I have no involvement with OARDEC, other than reading their documents, and citing their documents here. Geo Swan (talk) 22:24, 18 December 2010 (UTC)
I think that is turning again into a disrupting filibustering discussion where one editor comes out with "walls of words" after the vast majority has already agreed that these are primary sources.
I have ask you to provide references that could back up your claim how these documents were created. You have provided none. It is absolute unclear how OARDEC created these documents, what sources they used, how reliable these sources are, how they selected, summarized and rephrased them, and how reliable are these memos themselves. According to the findings of the habeas corpus court cases - the only opportunity where someone could independently verify the underlying information - a lot of their allegations where crap and many prisoner won their cases.
Of course the documents are the findings of OARDEC. :} It does not matter what information they use the final product is theirs. OARDEC created these documents they created these memos.
Please understand OARDEC is a US military body who is running the Guantanamo tribunals. They are not a news agency and they have no reputation. OARDEC created these memos. They can not be a secondary source for their own papers that are use in Tribunals organized by themselves OARDEC is running the Tribunals at Guantanamo. Simply a laughable claim they could be a secondary source in context of documents created by themselves regarding the Tribunals.
No offence but i think you should have a look at WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT. The overwhelming consensus of this discussion is that they are primary sources. IQinn (talk) 02:25, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

It's a primary source. Dlabtot (talk) 03:10, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

I agree, these are primary sources. They're internal government documents intended primarily to be read by other members of the government. Nick-D (talk) 08:05, 14 December 2010 (UTC)
Agree. The documents are primary sources (just like court documents), and with no particular presumption of impartiality or reliability. They are not usable as sources in a BLP. They are reliable for attributed opinions only, and I don't see why these opinions would be particularly notable. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 16:31, 14 December 2010 (UTC)
I also agree that these documents are a primary source. They simply are what they are. --Yachtsman1 (talk) 17:41, 14 December 2010 (UTC)
  • The comment above asserts the OARDEC memos are "just like court documents". Sorry, but i think this assertion is based on several serious misconceptions.

    First, the OARDEC review Boards are specifically not courts, although they bore a surface similarity to courts. Civilian courts and military courts martial are adversarial proceedings where two sides fight it out, and try to establish a particular position. We see them as fair when both the Prosecution and Defense were evenly matched in their skills, staff, resources, and access to the raw evidence. In non-judicial inquiries all the staff are supposed to be committed to the same goal, working together to see that the inquiry reaches a fair, accurate and reliable conclusion. Fairness is not left to the judge, all the staff are supposed to be doing their best to be fair. In an adversarial. two-sided, court proceeding the documents prepared are inherently biased to support the position of the Prosecution or Defense. In a one-sided non-judicial inquiry the documents are supposed to be reliable, not favoring a single position.

    WRT to the assertion "with no particular presumption of impartiality or reliability" -- these proceedings have been characterized as being impartial and reliable since they were first announced. In particular, they were characterized as being superior to the "competent tribunals" required by the Geneva Conventions. You and I are entitled to question this characterization in our personal discussions. But, should your personal doubts or my personal doubts play any role in article space? I don't think so. Have human rights and legal scholars challenged them? Yes. And the documents where authoritative legal and human rights workers have challenged the fairness of the proceedings. We don't pick sides. That is policy. Both the OARDEC memos, and documents written by challengers, should be treated as RS. Geo Swan (talk) 21:42, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

  • Same here: No offence: In my opinion: Fillibustering "walls of words" from an editor who Refuses to "get the point". WP:HEAR. No new clear defined arguments that could help us in the discussion, you might also read WP:NOTOPINION. The overwhelming consensus of the community is that they are primary sources.
  • The description of what the Tribunals are is an biased opinion piece. How fair the Tribunals are that "they have been described as characterized as being superior to the "competent tribunals" required by the Geneva Conventions." is strongly biased and irrelevant. By the way very often these tribunals have been described as courts -- wait actually it was Kangaroo courts - IQinn (talk) 02:50, 19 December 2010 (UTC)
  • Nick-D writes, "They're internal government documents intended primarily to be read by other members of the government." I agree, the intended audience were government officials. But, is there a policy or guideline that states that if a document's intended audience are government officials it shouldn't be considered a reliable source? Why shouldn't they be considered a reliable source? Geo Swan (talk) 01:07, 16 December 2010 (UTC)
  • Could you please also reply to above. Do you have sources for your claims? They are primary sources as i guess that is the overwhelming consensus of this discussion. Reliable in what sense? Recent cases where the Government was forced to show of the underlying classified information in court has show that most of that is simply crap. Dozens of Guantanamo detainees won their habeas corpus cases in court because the Judges found that a lot of it is unreliable or false. IQinn (talk) 01:17, 16 December 2010 (UTC)
They are primary sources. They don't establish notability, but they may be used within the limits of WP:BLPPRIMARY. For instance, it may be appropriate to cite them for supplemental details, such as where a detainee was captured and what weapons he was carrying. Squidfryerchef (talk) 13:22, 15 December 2010 (UTC)
  • Anything produced by any government that could in any way be considered contentious should be considered a self-published source as well as WP:PRIMARY. I'm not aware of any distinction between governmental and non-governmental entities in our policies. But I didn't doublecheck. Dlabtot (talk) 02:00, 16 December 2010 (UTC)
    • Government documents considered self-published? Realistically you won't find a single government document that someone won't find "contentious". Some Senators, including Kerry, spent close to a decade investigating whether the Vietnamese had secret camps holding GIs originally declared Missing in Action. They concluded all the MIAs were lost n combat, and that there were no captives. Contentious? Yes. Self-published? I can't agree with that. That is not what we mean by self-published for any other topics, and I suggest we shouldn't redefine what we mean by self-published here. Similarly, it seems to me you are suggesting redefining what we mean by the distinction between primary and secondary sources.
    • We have some strong policies, good policies -- including WP:VER and WP:NPOV. We shouldn't let fads influence which references we use. When I started using these memos, in 2005, they were regard as authoritative. Since then some legal and human rights scholars have published analyzes of them, and more former captives have been interviewed about camp conditions. But this is where WP:NPOV kicks in. When multiple references take different positions we neutrally report what all significant sides state. We don't pick sides and suppress the references based on our personal interpretations. Geo Swan (talk) 20:16, 18 December 2010 (UTC)
"All governments lie", but of course that doesn't mean we don't weigh the particulars of individual sources. Dlabtot (talk) 22:43, 18 December 2010 (UTC)
Of, I'm not suggesting that we 'redefine' anything, nor am I suggesting that we 'pick sides' or 'suppress the references based on our personal interpretations'. Those characterizations of my comments are entirely false. I said nothing like that; I implied nothing like that; I said nothing that could be reasonably inferred to mean anything like that. Dlabtot (talk) 18:10, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

To concur with what others are saying, these are clearly primary sources that are the same as court documents, since they were evidence at military tribunals (essentially military court hearings). For BLP articles, secondary sources are still needed to show notability. First Light (talk) 21:38, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

Primary vs secondary

Poll. Please answer with Primary or Secondary. Are the summary reports from the Office for the Administrative Review of the Detention of Enemy Combatants (or OARDEC) on the Guantanamo detainees "primary" or "secondary" sources in writing biographies?

Example document

Personal data on findmypast.co.uk

The website www.findmypast.co.uk has been used as a source for the date and city of death for Stan Aldous. Is this website considered a reliable source? --Jezebel'sPonyobons mots 18:16, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

I believe it is a reliable source for verifying information as they just faithfully regurgitate public records and then charge you for digitization. The public records themselves are available for free in physical archives and the issue here is that a service provider is making a charge for viewing the digital record. The citation should be to the public record (for example the birth certificate) rather than findmypast.co.uk and unfortunately it does not seem possible to make a permalink to the findmypast.co.uk record match. I suggest we insist that someone citing findmypast quote exactly the text returned and give a context to the record they viewed (i.e., the birth certificate reference number and any names and dates on the certificate) so that you don't have to pay to see all potential records returned by searching (in this case the only "free to view" match I find is "ALDOUS, Male (unnamed), Romford, Essex, 1922" which appears to be the wrong year of birth).
Note that though findmypast are making money from freely available public records, this is not a scam. In fact they are a recognized partner used by government agencies to aide with public access to public records even though this has, regrettably in my opinion, resulted in access charges for images that in principle are public property and cannot be copyrighted. From a copyright perspective, there is nothing to stop someone taking the digital image of a public record from the findmypast website and uploading it to Commons under a PD-scan license; though findmypast may try to stop users from doing this in the T&C's on the website there is no current case law to support such a user contract.
The relevant part of the website terms states "You may only use the Website, the Services, the Records and any information you obtain through all or any of these (together the "Resources") for your personal family research." However once you have a copy of a public record, such as a faithful reproduction of a birth certificate, by definition there cannot be any copyright claim by the website owner for the resultant image and consequently they cannot retrospectively enforce any constraint on the use of such an image as it is not in any way materially different to a scan of physical copy of a public record you might make for yourself at a public record office. Fæ (talk) 12:15, 16 December 2010 (UTC)
Ok, so the gist of it is that the information derived from the site is reliable in the sense that it relies on Government issued statistics, however there are certain issues with verfiability due to the paywall? --Jezebel'sPonyobons mots 15:24, 16 December 2010 (UTC)
The issue is that the public record must be clearly cited, rather than providing a vague reference to findmypast. Fæ (talk) 17:27, 16 December 2010 (UTC)
Findmypast does not give access to view actual death certificates. What it gives is access to a transcribed digital index, together with details necessary to order the death certificate, and view access to the book (master record)from which the index is transcribed - which is itself a transcription from the actual death cert, made by the ONS. There is a slight chance that either transcription may not be accurate. Only for the most recent death certs is the whole process digital, reducing transcription errors.Elen of the Roads (talk) 17:43, 16 December 2010 (UTC)
You shouldn't be using such sources, they are basically primary in nature and attempting to find personal details in this way is close to investigative reporting, I suggest you consider if personal details are not widely available in multiple mainstream reliable citations then consider not searching and searching in obscure locations so it can be fantastically added to wikipedia. If its not widely available it might not be notable. Off2riorob (talk) 18:00, 16 December 2010 (UTC)
Primary sources can sometimes be used on Wikipedia but this would not be a good case, because interpretation is required in order to apply this raw material to the subject matter being discussed in Wikipedia. What I mean is that, as any genealogist will tell you, identifying that a particular death record is a particular person you are interested in is non obvious and therefore original "research". The paywall is not the issue. See WP:PAYWALL.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 18:57, 16 December 2010 (UTC)
This is plainly the record for our Stan [2] (it's from the Ancestry site, so the paywall shouldn't apply), and I found it by typing his full name in the search box, so no OR here (otherwise no-one would every be able to use Google books!), but I can't see it gets us much further. Ponyo could order the death cert, but we already know he died in 1995, from the Football League source. Elen of the Roads (talk) 21:38, 16 December 2010 (UTC)
I just get a request to pay money, the guys not even noteworthy, what a waste of time, what relevance and desperation is the desire to add his exact date of birth, and this whole section about such an irrelevance, . Off2riorob (talk) 22:03, 16 December 2010 (UTC)
It's a valid query - JSTOR is a source of info behind a paywall also. I can't see there's any reason to get actually angry about it. Elen of the Roads (talk) 22:07, 16 December 2010 (UTC)
A clarification as to how I became involved. I added a source from the Oxford Mail to the Stan Aldous article and had been trying to update his birth/death date stats at the same time but came up empty handed. Two days later another editor added the month and city of death but did not provide a source. When I asked where they obtained the info they mentioned the Findmypast website - unsure if this was a reliable source and wondering how to proceed should I come across it being used in the future, I thought it best to check here. --Jezebel'sPonyobons mots 16:26, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Just a point on interpreting the results: the register entries are ordered by month of registration of the life-event, which isn't necessarily the month the life-event took place. So, for instance, the site coming up with a date of "death" of January 1975 would only confirm the death was registered in that month, and the subject could well have actually died the previous year. cheers, Struway2 (talk) 21:47, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

I would disagree with interpreting a public record as a primary source. A birth or death certificate is easily verifiable and is not written by the person the document is about and so is not truly primary. So long as the facts from the public record are being added to the article without interpretation or analysis, there is no original research. The idea that public records cannot be cited in Wikipedia seems rather wacky so perhaps I have misunderstood the point being made. Fæ (talk) 14:38, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

Breitbart as News RS

All: I would like to request some community input on the following question: Is Andrew Breitbart's Breitbart TV (and Breitbart.com) a reliable source for news? It describes itself as a "news syndicate," and appears somewhat similar to the Huffington Post, in that it feeds from other sources such as the AP and AFP and PR Newswire. The only other discussion on this noticeboard that I've found even remotely relevant is here in which User:Cpx86 comments, "I'd venture to say that it's a fairly established media outlet by now" (emphasis added). However, that thread is largely about Youtube. Finally, my question stems from my review of these two articles. I made some minor corrections, but looked at the citation used in Vecuronium for the news stories referencing the Daisuke Mori murders (see note 2 within Vecuronium). It's to Breitbart's Breitbart.com. (N.B.: The citations within Daisuke Mori are all to the Japan Times and other clearly, unquestionably reliable sources.) I just want to see what the community's consensus is here. As of now, my personal opinion is that if the Huffington Post is a reliable source then Breitbart's websites are, also, as news aggregators if nothing else. Thanks for everyone's input. Apologies in advance if this is a settled issue--I did search this noticeboard in advance--but there's no big pre-existing list of vetted, community-accepted reliable sources (is there?). Thanks again. Saebvn (talk) 14:50, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Opinions are always citable as opinions. Where an "original source" other than Breitbart is given, that source is best for WP purposes. Where Breitbart is the originator, it is RS for facts in factual articles, and for opinions properly cited as opinion from opinion articles. It has "editorial oversight" which is the primary requiremnet. This is also true for Huffington. Collect (talk) 15:29, 17 December 2010 (UTC)
Many opinions are, however, not particularly notable or valuable. Just because an opinion has been published, even in a reliable source, it doesn't mean it should be included in an article. Jayjg (talk) 01:27, 19 December 2010 (UTC)
Breitbart is categorically not a RS, for very famous reasons regarding his (lack of) journalistic integrity. Sceptre (talk) 07:11, 19 December 2010 (UTC)
No. Dlabtot (talk) 17:50, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

Rape during the Occupation of Germany

A schoolteacher has estimated that there were 10,000,000 rapes of Soviet women during WWII committed by the German army. Is this a reliable source?

A new section about German rapes in Russia has been added to the article on Rapes during the [Allied] occupation of Germany[3]. In one of the new sentences it is stated that: "estimates speak of up to 10,000,000 victims [of rape] in Soviet Russia alone." This is referenced to Zur Debatte um die Ausstellung Vernichtungskrieg. Verbrechen der Wehrmacht 1941-1944 im Kieler Landeshaus 1999 which seems to be a paper published in connection to a debate surrounding a museum exhibition about Wehrmacht crimes. The PDF contains many articles, the one that seems to be the referred to is; "Vergewaltigungen und Zwangsprostitution im Krieg" by Ursula Schele. Ursula seems to work as a schoolteacher for children of ages 6 to 15, but she also leads an organisation against sexual violence.[4]

In her article she writes:

My tentative translation (please correct me): Dr. Eichwede had a discussion with Dr. Reemtsma in connection to an exhibition in 1997. Dr. Eichwede described that in the Soviet Union there were extraordinary amounts of children fathered by German Army soldiers. He relied on both Russian and German sources to claim that more than one million children were made under war-circumstances, and stressed that there are many testimonies of rape. (compare with Thiele, page 96). Since statistically every tenth sexual intercourse results in pregnancy it must be deduced that 10 Million rapes were committed by Germans in Russia.

How usable is this source?--Stor stark7 Speak 00:00, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

Without wishing to detract from the undoubted horrors of the time, would it be OR to suggest that not every incident of sexual intercourse resulting in pregnancy need necessarily have been non-consensual? AndyTheGrump (talk) 01:39, 18 December 2010 (UTC)
Without Eichwede's sources, we don't know where the original figure comes from: it may have been statistical extrapolation already. All we know is that it has been multiplied by ten. I'm not saying whether the result is "true" or not -- we can't know that -- but it isn't sufficiently solidly based to be used in the historical background to Rape during the occupation of Germany. Andrew Dalby 14:43, 18 December 2010 (UTC)
The opening statement is misleading and tries to present the author as schoolteacher- this is not correct and seems to try to downgrade the importantce of Ursula Schele leads Bundesverband Frauenberatungsstellen a German wide organisation which researches sexual violence.He work is based on cooperation with Profesor Wolfgang Eichwede who researched the topic.She represents National Network of Rape crisis centres[5] or Bundes- und Landesverbandes der Frauenberatungsstellen und Frauennotrufe. . The conclusions were presented on numerous symposiums. The number is also given in scholarly book Gleichsam wird die Anzahl von Vergewaltigungen durch deutsche Soldaten auf russischem Boden auf etwa 10 Millionen geschätztSander, Helke; Johr, Barbara (Hrsg.): BeFreier und Befreite. Krieg, Vergewaltigungen, Kinder, München 1992 page 71--MyMoloboaccount (talk) 14:56, 18 December 2010 (UTC)
In any case statements by scholars are reliable enough to be presented, in this case it will be enough to attribute the figures to people making them-since per Wiki rules scholarly sources and statements published by such people organisations are allowed they can be given. Unless any source contradicts this, pursuing different opinion on its own is OR or SYNTH.--MyMoloboaccount (talk) 15:02, 18 December 2010 (UTC)
@AndyTheGrump. Good question. That is exactly the same methodology that has been used to estimate the number of rapes of German woman by Soviet military: the number or pregnancies times 10 = the number of sexual contacts, and all of them were assumed to be rapes.--Paul Siebert (talk) 15:42, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

The fact that Ursula Schele apparently has no academic credentials to support her when making this type of statement is quite relevant. Extraordinary assertions require extraordinary evidence. The fact that she leads some sort of crisis center, which I already mentioned and indeed linked to, does not lead additional weight to her credentials, other than explain her interest in the topic.

This "Women Against Violence" that you associate Schele with[6] seems like an organisation that campaigns and raises awareness on violence against women. Please provide evidence that it also produces academic research. Checking the edit history I now see that it was you, MyMoloboaccount, who inserted the 10,000,000 claim, referenced to the PDF.[7] Please explain, then, why you referenced the 10,000,000 rapes claim to a debate article by Ms Schele, instead of the book by Barbara Johr that you above claim contains the same allegation (without a page reference indeed). Checking the sentence you provided it seems you copied it from the homepage of the "Women against violence".[8]. No citation is given for the claim in the web-page. Hardly a reliable source. You have provided no evidence either that Ms Schele has cooperated with Dr. Eichwede. The claim is extraordinary, and not backed up by any reliable sources.--Stor stark7 Speak 15:56, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

Could you point out what source makes this is an extrordinary claim? I am not aware of any serious scholarship claiming Nazi forces didn't commit mass rapes, I encountered some claims on that like that from fringe revisionists(who by their very nature are unreliable fringe best left alone) or right wing people but nothing scholarly. The available research on German mass rapes in WW2 admits they were widespread as far as I know. Do you have some serious sources claiming otherwise or other estimates on Nazi German mass rapes and their victims? Professor Eichwede is a reliable, scholarly source-are you claiming otherwise? I did not copy the text from the website-please redact this.--MyMoloboaccount (talk) 16:17, 18 December 2010 (UTC)
I am still waiting for an answer to my questions, MyMoloboaccount. Please do not try to avoid answering them by posting copious amounts of text, remember the terms of your parole as regards "disrupting talkpages with tendentious filibustering". This may not be a talk, page, but it is close enough. I see now that you after I made my question inserted a page number into your earlier post, without any edit summary.[9] Please avoid such things in the future, it only serves to mislead those who read this thread. If you did indeed not copy-paste the sentences from that web-page then I apologize, but since you provided no page number, and the wording is exactly as in the webpage I think it was reasonable to write "it seems you copied it". I will check the wording in the book and compare it. All the best.--Stor stark7 Speak 21:54, 18 December 2010 (UTC)
Excellent, please do. I will expand the text to reflect Ursula Schele article.--MyMoloboaccount (talk) 10:02, 19 December 2010 (UTC) I removed the Sanders book until confirmation-unfortunetely the source from which I took it is no longer available to me for re-checking.--MyMoloboaccount (talk) 10:59, 19 December 2010 (UTC)
Also note that other available figures confirm the numbers:

A 1942 Wehrmacht document suggested that the Nazi leadership considered implementing a special policy for the eastern front through which the estimated 750,000 babies born through sexual contact between the German soldiers and Russian women (an estimate deemed very conservative) could be identified and reclaimed as racially German. (The suggestion was made to add the middle names Friedrich and Luise to the birth certificates for boy and girl babies, respectively.) Although the plan was not implemented, such documents suggest that the births that resulted from rapes and other forms of sexual contact were deemed as beneficial, as increasing the “Aryan” race rather than as adding to the inferior Slavic race. The underlying ideology suggests that German rape and other forms of sexual contact may need to be seen as conforming to a larger military strategy of racial and territorial dominance. (Pascale R . Bos, Feminists Interpreting the Politics of Wartime Rape: Berlin, 1945; Yugoslavia, 1992–1993 Journal of Women in Culture and Society 2006, vol. 31, no. 4, p.996-1025)

Using the same calculation as used by profesor Wolfgang Eichwede and which was used to claim rapes in Germany by Soviet soldiers(mainly x10) then above number of 750.000would indicate 7.5 mln rape victims in 1942 already.Should we give this information or would be that considered OR? In any case it is obvious that there is nothing extraordinary in the issue of rape victims in German occupied Europe and Soviet Union.--MyMoloboaccount (talk) 16:37, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

That would be OR, most definitely. As for the more general issue, I think we owe it to the victims of such events to seek to present the truth, as much as we can find it, and leave speculation to others. I think any references to figures in articles on the topic should make clear the methodology used to derive them, and also make clear that any definitive answers are unlikely to be found. AndyTheGrump (talk) 19:43, 18 December 2010 (UTC)
I would urge user MyMoloboaccount to focus more on the applicability of WP:RS to the source in question - the debate article by Ursula Schere - and less on copy-pasting blocks of text in an attempt to support her conclusions.
If there are RS academic books or articles out there who provide support for 10,000,000 rapes, or other numbers, then I am all for including them in the relevant articles, but the article by Ursula Schele in the Gegenwind magazine where she makes her conclusions is a sub-standard source and should not be used in Wikipedia.
I think we can safely conclude that a debate-article[10], in an obscure magazine[11] by Ursula Schele, who is neither a historian nor an academic, and whose only claim for notability is as a leader of a 3 person group that campaigns against sexual violence in schools[12] can not be seen as a reliable source, in particular not for a claim for 10 million rapes. --Stor stark7 Speak 12:24, 19 December 2010 (UTC)
I must admit I find the numbers less than convincing though it is possible. There were about half a million Germans for about two years who could have done this but only a small number would risk their lives doing this outside of army brothels. Personally I wouldn't be surprised if the majority weren't fathered by Russians who were in greater numbers for longer and would be better received in the countryside. Dmcq (talk) 12:44, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

The only fact that seems to be questionable is 10,000,000 rapes: this number was obtained using the same flawed methodology that was used to calculate the number of the rapes of German women: since the latter has been extensively criticised, I don't think we can trust the former. By contrast, the number of 750,000 babies, as well as other facts come from other sources (Bos etc), which meet RS criteria. In my opinion, the figure of 10,000,000 should be removed, because it creates a false visibility of accuracy, and we can speak about "hundreds of thousands, if not millions rapes" (in full accordance with what RS say).--Paul Siebert (talk) 15:04, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

I'm not doubting the number of babies, only where they came from. The figures just make no sense to me an I'm quite good with figures. Dmcq (talk) 16:59, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

Ibn Warraq

I would like to inquire about the policy of using Ibn Warraq's works as a source in articles on Islam. The reliability of his works has been questioned by established experts in Islamic fields (see Ibn_Warraq#Peer reception). As far as one can tell from his biography, he is not considered an authority in any Islamic field to have two of his books listed under the "further reading: books and journals" section of the main article on Islam:

  1. Warraq, Ibn (2000). The Quest for Historical Muhammad. Prometheus.ISBN 978-1573927871.
  2. Warraq, Ibn (2003). Leaving Islam: Apostates Speak Out. Prometheus.ISBN 1-59102-068-9.

The first mentioned work, much like his other works, has received very negative reviews, see The Quest for the Historical Muhammad (Ibn Warraq)#Reception.

As I understood from reading the Wikipedia guides on source reliablity, Ibn Warraq's views may be cited and used in an article if that view has been previously stated or published by an established expert on the topic of the article, but this is hardly the case for many of Ibn Warraq's views.

I should mention that he is cited heavily in the article, Criticism of Islam (which in my opinion and as others noted on the talk page, doesn't follow the same standards applied to Criticism of Christianity and Criticism of Judaism or any other Wikipedia article in general) in addition to many other critics who are not recognized within the scholarly community of Islam, like Ali Sina. Please see Criticism of Muhammad#Ali Sina for an example of his "criticism".

So to split the question into parts:

1. Can Ibn Warraq be quoted in articles such as Islam, Muhammad...etc ?
2. Can Ibn Warraq be quoted in Criticism of Islam and similar articles such as Criticism of Muhammad...etc even when Ibn Warraq's view was not quoted by a reliable third party ?

Thank you –Al-Andalusi (talk) 07:10, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

I would split the question into parts differently:
  1. Are Ibn Warraq's views on Islam suitable for incorporation into Wikipedia material on Islam, without further qualification?
  2. Are Ibn Warraq's criticisms of Islam quotable in Wikipedia material dealing with criticisms of Islam, if attributed to Ibn Warraq ("Ibn Warraq has criticized Islam as being...")
As explained in Wikipedia:RS#Statements_of_opinion, the criteria for reliability will be different in the two cases. Spacepotato (talk) 11:11, 18 December 2010 (UTC)
It appears to me that it would be as inappropriate to cite Ibn Warraq in articles on Islam, as it would be to cite Israel Shamir in articles on Judaism, or Richard Dawkins in articles on Christianity. Each of them could be used as appropriate in the respective criticism articles; but their use as normative and reliable sources in other articles could not be justified. RolandR (talk) 18:05, 18 December 2010 (UTC)
Thank you. There was a discussion on using Robert Spencer (another critic of similar credibility) as a source on Islam and the conclusion was (see Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_5#Consensus) that these works are not reliable to be used for facts despite being notable, and therefore they should be used only when quoted by a reliable third party (yet their views should be attributed).
The stange thing is that Ibn Warraq's works are referenced all over the place, mostly in a scholarly context, probably even more than some established experts in the field! Some examples:
Islam, History of the Qur'an, Historicity of Muhammad , Golden age of Jewish culture in Spain Mosque, Apostasy, Apostasy in Islam, Freedom of religion and more.
– Al-Andalusi (talk) 23:32, 18 December 2010 (UTC)
I think that it is not required for Warraq's views to be quoted by a third party for him to be used in the sense #2 I give above. He is certainly a notable critic of Islam, and in this case, he is a reliable source as regards his own views, which is all that is being claimed. I would also like to thank User:RolandR for giving his opinion and to ask his opinion as to the exact dispute that prompted this query, which is the propriety of the quotation of Ibn Warraq's criticisms of Islam, attributed to him, in a small subsection of the Islam article which discusses criticisms which have been made of Islam. Spacepotato (talk) 01:04, 19 December 2010 (UTC)
I agree with the conclusion regarding #2, but I was referring to the use of Ibn Warraq's works in a context that is not critical of Islam (so basically case 1) such as the inclusion of his books in the article on Mosques: [13].
As for the dispute that prompted this query, I think I made my inquiry clear when I made the distinction between "scholarly context" and "criticism context". If I understood "RolandR"'s answer correctly, it's fine to state that Ibn Warraq is a critic of Islam claiming that Islam/Qur'an are so and so (even on the main article of Islam ?), but in articles other than Criticism of X, it is not appropriate to use his works in the sense #1 which includes referencing his books on the "further reading: books and journals" section of Islam. Do you agree ? – Al-Andalusi (talk) 02:22, 19 December 2010 (UTC)
In my opinion, quoting Ibn Warraq in the sense #2 is appropriate in the criticism articles, and also in the subsection of the Islam article dealing with criticisms of Islam, since the issues there are no different.
As for the inclusion of Ibn Warraq's books in the "further reading" section of Islam, or other articles, I think that is a different issue again (#3?) from either the #1 or #2 which I mentioned above. Ibn Warraq's books can be divided into (a) works by Ibn Warraq himself, (b) collections of scholarly papers by others dealing with Islam, and (c) the book Leaving Islam. Looking at (a), I think that it would be possible to place Ibn Warraq's book Why I Am Not a Muslim under a "criticism" subsection of the "further reading" section, if such a section existed. For (b), I think that the question will depend on the quality and relevance of the papers included, rather than Ibn Warraq himself. And for (c), I think that it might be worthwhile to add this book to a "further reading" section of Apostasy in Islam, simply because it includes the personal testimonies of those who chose to leave Islam.
In any case, Ibn Warraq is not currently mentioned in the "further reading" section of Islam. Rather, his works are listed in the "References" section, but were not specifically cited; that is, they are so-called Wikipedia:REFERENCES#General_references. So, the question of keeping them is neither #1, #2, nor #3. Rather, they should be kept if they are needed to substantiate material in the article (in which case questions #1 or #2 might arise again), or, if not, they (along with other uncited, unnecessary works) should be removed (or possibly moved to the "further reading" section, in which case see above.) Spacepotato (talk) 10:33, 19 December 2010 (UTC)
So we both are in agreement that Ibn Warraq can be mentioned in the subsection of the Islam article dealing with criticisms of Islam, that's good. However, I disagree with the suggestion to add Ibn Warraq's type (a) works in a "criticism" subsection (which doesn't exist yet) under the "further reading" section of Islam, as this kind of work better fits in Criticism of Islam, where notability seems to be the threshold for inclusion, as opposed to Islam where sources must be reliable as well (with the exception of the criticism section).
For type (b): The reviews clearly indicate that the works Ibn Warraq chose to publish are not relevant anymore and do not represent the scholarship on Qur'an or Muhammad. Todd Lawson states in his review of the The Origins of The Koran: "It is difficult to recommend this production, except perhaps for antiquarian interests and the archaeology of the study of Islam". Herbert Berg writes that "the reader should be aware that this collection does not fully represent classic scholarship on the Quran". His other works received similar reviews concerning the relevance of works he collected.
Type (c): The book "Why I Am Not a Muslim" may be added to the "further reading" section of Apostasy in Islam, but it should be noted that Ibn Warraq is a critic of Islam.
Based on what has been discussed so far, I think we should remove Ibn Warraq's books from the "References" section in Islam and move the rest of the books to a "further reading" section, but the latter point is not that important. Al-Andalusi (talk) 23:36, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

Democracy Now! and CounterPunch

I'm having some disagreements with another editor about the use of these two sources. Neither appears, in my mind, to be a reliable source for controversial topics such as the ethics of medical research. In some cases the reports can be confirmed with independent sources, though in some of these cases all that's reported is an allegation without discussion. SDY (talk) 07:37, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

Why do you not feel that they are reliable? Do you have any sources claiming that they have a record of poor fact-checking? We don't base reliability on perceptions of "incorrect political stance". After all, if we did that, we couldn't use the New York Times, because of it's rabid support for corporate capitalism (or the inaccurate alternative perception that they are too "liberal"), or Fox News for it's ultranationalist far-right viewpoints. We can't allow editors to censor certain publications because they don't like their politics. We base determinations of reliability on criteria like professional editorial control, and record for factual accuracy, which both of these publications have. On the other hand, if you can provide peer-reviewed/academic sources that contradict them, then that's a different story. Otherwise, these are both clearly reliable sources. -- Jrtayloriv (talk) 08:01, 18 December 2010 (UTC)
Sources are reliable until proven beyond a reasonable doubt otherwise? That's a bold claim indeed, especially when it comes to a source that describes itself as "muckraking with a radical attitude." Fox News is the ur-example: it's a reliable source for news, but when the news is inseparable from opinion it is inappropriate to use it as a source. SDY (talk) 08:31, 18 December 2010 (UTC)
Yes, for you to claim that an award-winning, nationally syndicated news show like Democracy Now is unreliable, you need to provide some evidence that it is not accurate or something other than that you think they are an "activist" site. I think the New York Times does activism for its marketing clients, but you won't see me trying to censor them for that here, because although they are biased in the facts they select for presentation (as is every publication), their facts are generally accurate. -- Jrtayloriv (talk) 09:24, 18 December 2010 (UTC)
"muckraking newsletter" is enough for me to consider Counter Punch not RS. Democracy Now is certainly biased but I am not aware of any issues of their bias causing incorrect reporting (not sure though). They also have some journalism awards so it makes it even a little bit more of a challenge to dispute. However, we have much stricter neutrality standards then they do so the tone cannot be replicated and editors should question if any material only source from there is even worthy of mention if it is not seconded in a source that is less questionable. And Fox is RS. Some of their opinion pieces and shows may not be.Cptnono (talk) 08:36, 18 December 2010 (UTC)
Muckraking simply means reporting on issues of corporate and government corruption which are, for obvious reasons, misrepresented and underreported by corporate news media, and by the government press offices they are so fond of using as sources. Muckraking does not mean inaccurate. There is absolutely no reason to leave out sites because they claim to be doing muckraking or investigative journalism, as long as they are factually accurate. -- Jrtayloriv (talk) 09:20, 18 December 2010 (UTC)
They're both highly biased phenomenal journalism/opinion producers. You have to be careful to distinguish their opinion pieces from journalism pieces and where there is explicit or implicit advocacy going on. That said, their raw fact checking is not really in question, especially not Democracy Now. Counter Punch publishes many editorial articles, however, which might not have the same standard of fact-checking or fact-attribution. I'd be significantly more careful with that one. Both should be used where appropriate, but possibly with in-line attribution. My opinion... Ocaasi (talk) 08:50, 18 December 2010 (UTC)
Like every major news organization, they each produce both journalistic reporting and op-ed pieces. We cannot use their opinions without attribution, and even then, we should only be using their opinions if they are particularly notable for the topic at hand. However, we can report their statements of fact just like we do for the New York Times or Fox News. Every publication is biased. Corporate media organizations are biased in favor of their advertising clients and shareholders, nonprofit news organizations are biased towards whichever groups run them. What matters is not their selection bias, but their factual accuracy. By neutrally reporting what each type of publication has to say, we get factually accurate information and a more complete understanding of the situation. -- Jrtayloriv (talk) 09:31, 18 December 2010 (UTC)
I generally agree with this. I don't know if I feel comfortable grouping Counter Punch in with NY Times, Fox News, and even Democracy Now. The question is not just one of corporate scope or size or popularity. Counter Punch is much farther removed from the news discourse to be used as a basic fact-finding group. I tend to think it needs attribution where it is used. And I like the site a lot. Ocaasi (talk) 09:50, 18 December 2010 (UTC)
Mostly my concern is that there are better sources available for pretty much every time those sources are used, and the "muckracking" is creeping into the article. Some of the more questionable items have been addressed already through a review of sourcing, and in most cases the DN/CP cites are redundant with more normal sources (i.e. published books, though a few of those are certainly on the sensational side as well). The specific item that prompted this question was a comment about "killing babies" cited to DN (#114). For example, the Vanity Fair article (#115) explains the ambiguity about the deaths and does not immediately claim murder. It's this kind of polevaulting to conclusions that makes me very, very reluctant to use any source that's so obviously activist and partisan, because those kinds of sources never give you the whole story. SDY (talk) 10:03, 18 December 2010 (UTC)
Neither of the articles in question claims murder. Would you prefer the words "babies died" instead of "babies were killed"? I'd be willing to go with this, despite the fact that the actions of other people caused them to die -- i.e. they were killed.-- Jrtayloriv (talk) 10:10, 18 December 2010 (UTC)
The only reference to this in the Democracy Now transcript is this: " In Argentina, seven babies died while enrolled in clinical trials for GlaxoSmithKline. In New Delhi, India, 49 babies died at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences while taking part in clinical trials over a 30-month period.", is that called into doubt? It sounds more like an editorial issue than a problem with sources. un☯mi 10:18, 18 December 2010 (UTC)
In the Democracy Now transcript James_B._Steele, one of the authors of the Vanity Fair article,states: "So we concluded, therefore, that you’re talking about 200,000 people dying pretty much yearly from prescription drugs. I mean, that’s more than die from diabetes and a whole range of other illnesses that affect people out there. So, it’s one of those unknown, really undisclosed and unpublicized killers that are the consequences of many prescription drugs.", other than that I see no reference to 'kill' - and that is an attributable statement. un☯mi 10:21, 18 December 2010 (UTC)
I've changed "were killed" to "died". Thanks for the input. -- Jrtayloriv (talk) 10:29, 18 December 2010 (UTC)
There is a substantial difference between the two: the DN story implies intent (active verb) and when you look at the VF article it makes it clear that intent is by no means confirmed. Our article, in most of the statements attributed to CP or DN, has the same problem as this case: it concludes intent where ignorance is a perfectly valid explanation (e.g. the Serratia case where it was used on the assumption it was harmless). Given that we are talking about serious crimes, intent is a fact that has to be cited because it's the difference between negligence (bad) and malevolence (much worse). It's this interpretation from those sources that I'm challenging. In some cases, like the Tuskegee study, valuing the results at the expense of the well-being of the patients is well-documented and we can call a spade a spade. SDY (talk) 10:48, 18 December 2010 (UTC)
No, killed does not imply intent. Killed implies responsibility (with or without intent). I can accidentally (i.e. unintentionally) run over a child, and one would say that I killed them, whether or not I intended to. That said, I agree that we should not ascribe intent to people where it is not documented in the sources. As far as Democracy Now ascribing intent in this particular case: I think that's what any reasonable person would say. When, for the sake of profit, you willfully engage in dangerous research practices overseas to avoid safety regulations and government oversight, knowing that you are going to maim and kill in some cases, I think you can safely say that the harm caused is intentional. (And by the way, the person being interviewed in the Democracy Now article is one of the authors of the Vanity Fair piece) -- Jrtayloriv (talk) 11:24, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

(undent) Yes, but the DN interviewer is the one who called it "killing" and that was who you were citing. Your conclusions about what a reasonable person would think are your own, since I count five or six additional assumptions in your statement, and you're missing the real ethical problem which is not dodging of oversight but potential exploitation of vulnerable populations where consent would be considered invalid even if it the subjects gave it. Back on topic, I think we should be very careful about using these kinds of sources for anything other than statements of who/what/where/when/how fact (e.g. people died, army performed experiment). Statements of opinion or analysis (why) are basically unusable because of the partisan nature of these sources. We shouldn't "be careful" about ascribing intent or guilt, we must not do it unless we have real evidence (i.e. admissions against interest, convictions in court, consensus from historians, etc...). Partisan sources like these cannot be used to ascribe guilt in a neutral article. SDY (talk) 11:50, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

No, the interviewer said "died". I said in my paraphrasing of the article that the experiments killed the subjects involved, which is an objective fact. We can say that the experiments killed the children or that they died as a result of the experiments. I really don't care. But this is an editorial problem with the Wikipedia article, not with any of the sources cited. -- Jrtayloriv (talk) 12:11, 18 December 2010 (UTC)
(And by the way, I didn't miss the ethical problem that you mentioned. It's one of several serious ethical problems with what they are doing. In my mind, the taking of life for profit was also a serious ethical problem. I don't think you can call either of them "the real ethical problem". They are both "real", as are several other issues like lack of informed consent, academic dishonesty, and false advertising.) -- Jrtayloriv (talk) 12:22, 18 December 2010 (UTC)
Huh, odd, I thought it said killed. I stand (well, sit) corrected and agree that it is solely an editorial issue. SDY (talk) 19:09, 18 December 2010 (UTC)
Unless, there is more this than the quotes given above, both "the experiments killed the children" or "they died as a result of the experiments", are unsupported. DN does not attribute the deaths to the experiments at all. They are careful to say that the children died during the trials. Nobody can, without statistical analysis compared to typical infant mortality rates, make any claim about whether this is an unusual rate or not. Yes, Democracy Now is a reliable source, but you need to stick very close to the source given. Something like "Babies died during clinical trials in India and Argentina."--Slp1 (talk) 13:31, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

Without knowing which specific articles, edits and citations we are talking about, it is impossible to give a concrete answer, but DemocracyNow!, at least, certainly fits our criteria for generally reliable sources.Dlabtot (talk) 19:35, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

I havent read much of Cockburn's reporting efforts outside of his earlier work for The Nation, but he definitely blurs the line between journalism and opinion. And maybe I missed it, but I haven't seen anyone mention previous discussions like RS/N Archive 10 -- Counterpunch (March 2008) and RS/N Archive 2 -- Counterpunch (August 2007). -PrBeacon (talk) 06:18, 19 December 2010 (UTC)
There really is no reason for the two to be discussed in the same context. They are not related or in any way similar. I would not consider Counterpunch to be generally reliable. To say that it blurs the line between journalism and opinion is a bit of an understatement. Dlabtot (talk) 16:47, 19 December 2010 (UTC)
Was trying to be somewhat tactful, admittedly not my strong suit. -PrBeacon (talk) 06:25, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

Both of these sources have been brought to RSN many times and they are rs. TFD (talk) 06:54, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

No source is ever ruled forever reliable. WP:RS specifically requires looking at the context. So my answer as to whether the sources are reliable is to look at the context in which they are used. --LegitimateAndEvenCompelling (talk) 06:39, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

Back AGAIN regarding Reproductive Health Bill (Philippines)

So now what is in contention is whether the Catholic Social Science Review is a "scholarly publication" according to WP:RELIABLE. What is given in evidence that they are is this page [14], since they require "peer review." Mind you, that this "journal article" is entitled National Perfidy and the first sentence of said article is: "If there is anything notable about House Bills No. 16, 2029, 2042 & 2550, it is that they are outrageously pathetic and devoid of rationality." You can see the rest of the article here: [15] This is a position paper, but it is cited authoritatively in the article as if it was a scientific study. 122.3.45.29 (talk) 15:06, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure why anyone would assume that it's a scholarly publication based on what they say on their web site. Even WP:RS says "Care should be taken with journals that exist mainly to promote a particular point of view. A claim of peer review is not an indication that the journal is respected, or that any meaningful peer review occurs. Journals that are not peer reviewed by the wider academic community should not be considered reliable, except to show the views of the groups represented by those journals" I don't think there can be any clearer indication of promoting a particular point of view on this issue than prefixing the name of the review with the word 'Catholic'. Sean.hoyland - talk 16:31, 18 December 2010 (UTC)
Their papers don't seem to be cited much in other publications according to google scholar. Almost all the hits are for catholicsocialscientists.org and www.cssronline.org. On the plus side, apparently they did publish a retraction for this slight error. Sean.hoyland - talk 17:10, 18 December 2010 (UTC)
I think it might be less useful to argue about the tricky word "scholarly", which is just one of the types of fact checking, and more useful to consider that the problem here seems to be more to do with what to do with a source that obviously has a strong position, i.e. "point of view". In other words well known sources with a reputation for fact checking can sometimes have controversial and/or strong POVs. What we generally do is then consider whether those POVs are notable and then if they are we can mention them but attribute them in a balanced way along with opposed views.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 18:08, 18 December 2010 (UTC)
Good, I think we're making progress. So we've established a small but unanimous consensus here that this is a POV source. Can we now agree that this journal is not "peer reviewed by the wider academic community"? If so, it is by Wikipedia's definition, not a reliable source, except to show the views of the groups represented by those journals. And I think the information should be included in the article. The problem is that it is being cited as if a reliable source, not a minority view. 122.3.45.29 (talk) 11:04, 21 December 2010 (UTC)
Wikipedia does not use only peer reviewed academic sources, and we do not forbid the use of POV sources. Your last sentence seems to confuse the terminology as we usually use it. We normally distinguish between a reliable source and a source taking a minority POV. Minority POV's can be and generally should be reported BUT AS minority POVs. Is that what this is about? Technically it sounds like this is the wrong noticeboard for a neutrality/POV/due weight issue?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 13:01, 21 December 2010 (UTC) P.S. I should have written "can be and generally should be reported (as long as they are notable)". Of course we do not normally mention unknown theories for example.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 21:15, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Barack Obama as a reliable source: no, he's a self published source

In the Barack Obama article in the last section, there is coverage about his religion.

Naturally, this is a touchy subject. Some people are on a campaign to try to shout and advertise that he is Christian. Wikipedia is not an advertising agency. Those other people are including a big block quote "proving" that Obama is a Christian.

There are two problems: 1. It assumes that Muslims are bad, therefore, it must be advertised that he is not Muslim. 2. Using a big quote in a box is a SPS self published source. The quote is not a famous speech, like JFK's ask not what you can do for your country, ask what your country can do for you speech.

1. NY Mayor Koch was once called a homosexual. He said that he is not but that the accusations were made to show that he (and homosexuals) are bad. Obama is in the same boat. He is not a Muslim but it is not wrong or bad to be Muslim.

2. SPS should not be used, especially in a touchy article, like Obama. This report to this board primarily concerns #2.

Proposed resolution: use reliable sources, not self published sources, like a huge box to "prove" and advertise that he is a Christian. Just say it, provide sources, and no undue weight. MVOO (talk) 20:30, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

I'll withhold comment on the request above, but note that User:MVOO has removed this content three times from Barack Obama and has now been warned about edit warring.  Frank  |  talk  20:34, 18 December 2010 (UTC)
Self-published sources to establish someone's own religion -- the religion they claim for themselves -- are just fine. He talks at great length about his christianity and faith in his books, and his speeches, etc... and that establishes that he's, well, christian. All mainstream sources that deal with his religion also identify him as such -- hardly a controversial claim (indeed, the christian church he once belonged to was a target of controversy during his presidential campaign). Hope this helps.Bali ultimate (talk) 20:36, 18 December 2010 (UTC)
SPS are RS for information about themselves.Slatersteven (talk) 20:38, 18 December 2010 (UTC)
Agreed. Self published sources are fine, maybe even sometimes preferable, for their own opinions, beliefs etc.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 20:40, 18 December 2010 (UTC)
I think MVOO should read WP:BLPCAT: "Categories regarding religious beliefs... should not be used unless the subject has publicly self-identified with the belief or orientation in question; and the subject's beliefs... are relevant to their notable activities or public life, according to reliable published sources". The only legitimate source for the religious affiliation of a living person is self-assertion. I can't see how anyone reading the article could see it suggesting "that Muslims are bad" in any case. AndyTheGrump (talk) 20:42, 18 December 2010 (UTC)
An autobiography published by a respected, independent, mainstream publishing house is not a SPS. The argument being advanced here is based on a complete misconception of what an SPS is. That being said, even if it were an SPS, as pointed out above, it would be perfectly consistent with WP:BLP WP:RS and WP:SPS to source a statement as to what religion a person practices to a SPS by the subject about him or herself. Fladrif (talk) 21:24, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

PROPOSED NEW RULE

If that is the case, then the SPS rules should be changed. It could read that "references to one's religion and sexual orientation origination from the self published source are acceptable.".

I have added this idea to WP:V. Otherwise, your opinion about SPS not applying to religion is simply your opinion and not Wikipedia policy. This addition should not be controversial, except that anything related to Obama is always controversial, even the brand of toilet paper he uses, probably. MVOO (talk) 21:39, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

A Self Published Source is one published by the author, not one written by the subject. A personal website is SPS. A 'vanity' press is de facto SPS. Obama's books are not SPS. In any case membership of a Christian church makes him a Christian. Of course in his secret soul he may be a worshipper of the Great Spaghetti Monster. But we can't see into his secret soul can we? Paul B (talk) 21:50, 18 December 2010 (UTC)
Exactly. The source isn't a SPS. Period. End of story. Fladrif (talk) 21:54, 18 December 2010 (UTC)
WP:AGF and all, but why are we even having this discussion? Saying that people are trying to "convince" and "advertise" that he is a Christian sounds more like giving in to the dumbasses that think he's a Muslim (if he was, there would be nothing wrong with it, but he is no more a Muslim than the Pope or Dalai Lama). Ian.thomson (talk) 21:59, 18 December 2010 (UTC)
Which is why we shouldn't give and have a big box proclaiming he's a Christian. Ian, you and I agree. MVOO (talk) 23:18, 18 December 2010 (UTC)
He is one of the best known Christians in the world. If it is ever OK to put the religion into a biography infobox, it is in this case. Itsmejudith (talk) 23:26, 18 December 2010 (UTC)
WHAT? Are you serious? No, MVOO, I'm disagreeing with you. I'm saying that there's nothing wrong with trying to "convince" people that Obama is a Christian by having a quote of him discussing how Christianity is a part of his life. He is not a Muslim, a lot of people mistakenly think he is, and trying to downplay his faith only serves the ignorant POV of right-wingers that believe we've elected a non-Christian. Ian.thomson (talk) 23:38, 18 December 2010 (UTC)
His self-identification as a Christian is both reliably sourced and notable. There's no reason for removing this information. Jayjg (talk) 01:21, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

One thing about having RSN on your watchlist is that you are guaranteed to read some of the most ridiculous and hare-brained arguments on a regular basis. Dlabtot (talk) 01:36, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

On a technicality I note Paul Barlow's correct remark and that some of us above were writing on the basis that we were really talking about an SPS. The practical conclusion is the same of course, but those comments would indeed have been more appropriate to cases such as a personal webpage by Barack Obama, should one exist. Of course when his opinions have been published by a reputable publisher that is much more preferable, so in this case there is no need to worry about that.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 12:07, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

PS. I'll add an observation, just in case it is not clear, that MVOO seems to have created an example of unanimity rarely seen on this board. It is to be hoped that he got the message.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 16:21, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

Just to correct myself. An autobiography published by a reputable publishing house (rather than a vanity press) is not a self-published source. Though in the case of people deemed notable enough for articles, who declare their religion in SPS's (not the case here) i would think the SPS should be allowable (though the SPS would not be sufficient to establish notability, can certainly be used judiciously to flesh out people's claims about themselves).Bali ultimate (talk) 20:19, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

Unless the claim of religious affiliation is "unduly self-serving" (which would be rare), or there was some other relevant specific problem, I don't see how using a subject-WP:SPS (even were this a SPS) for this would violate WP:SELFPUB. HrafnTalkStalk(P) 05:29, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

In this particular case, the book in question would count as a primary source, which, just like SPS-sources, are fine for the personal opinions of the author. --Saddhiyama (talk) 22:14, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Source

Hi, does Collective work under the direction of Louis Cardaillac, Les Morisques et l'inquisition, Publisud, 1990, preface of the book cover is an acceptable source on en.WP ?--Morisco (talk) 16:12, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

Publisud is a respected French academic press, so the book is certainly a reliable source. The book's preface would be included as part of that RS. But what is a "preface of the book cover"? A book cover doesn't have a preface! Fladrif (talk) 02:07, 21 December 2010 (UTC)
Thank you. Book cover, you know in the back of a book, like an abstract about the subject and the the writers who participated in work.--Morisco (talk) 03:05, 21 December 2010 (UTC)
I can't imagine what would be on a book cover or dust jacket that wouldn't be better sourced to the text in the book itself. There have been a number of prior discussions about publishers' summaries and dust jackets at RSN. My sense of those discussions is that they're probably RS, but not to be preferred. [16] The actual text of the book would usually be a much better source, but that depends on context. What is the specific quote at issue, and how is is being used, or proposed to be used, in the article? Fladrif (talk) 03:17, 21 December 2010 (UTC)
Please see Talk:Morisco#Source.--Morisco (talk) 03:24, 21 December 2010 (UTC)
If the book jacket is being cited for support of the Morisco's being forced to convert to Christianity, the actual text of the book would be a better source for that proposition. Cite to the actual text of the book itself rather than the dust jacket, with page reference. It makes no sense in this context to be citing the dust jacket. Also, the discussion doesn't show what the language of the source says. If this is a contentious point, you should provide on the Talk Page the text in the source, with translation into English, that is being cited. Fladrif (talk) 03:35, 21 December 2010 (UTC)
Thanx a lot.--Morisco (talk) 03:40, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Dust jackets are not generally subject to the same editorial control as the contents of the book - they are essentially ads. I agree with Fladrif - cite the book, not the cover. (I think there is a related truism we all know.) Dlabtot (talk) 16:08, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Agreed, the book is reliable; the citation itself needs improvement to cite the book directly.--Cúchullain t/c 17:05, 21 December 2010 (UTC)
Thank you !--Morisco (talk) 19:22, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Jesus Freak Hideout, No Life 'til Metal, Metal for Jesus!

I have been doing some heavy sourcing recently, and have a question about whether some websites pass WP:RS.

The first is Jesus Freak Hideout. From what I can tell, this site is reliable, but I'm not quite sure.

The next one is No Life 'til Metal [17]. This site was created by musician Scott Waters, and is a music information/review database base off Waters' personal cd collection. This one I really have trouble telling if it is reliable.

And the last one I have a question about is Metal for Jesus!. The author, Johannes Jonsson, built the site as part of a non-profit ministry, and has also collaborated with several hundred Christian metal musicians to compile the Swedish version of The Metal Bible.

If someone can back to me on these I would greatly appreciate it.--3family6 (talk) 17:46, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

Hi 3family6. I would say Jesus Freak Hideout is certainly RS, provided the information drawn from it is about the type of Christian rock/pop music they cover. It clearly has a decent sized staff team with a structure. The other two appear to be sites run by individuals and are probably not RS, even though the webmasters may be very knowledgeable. If you can find evidence that either of them is a notable established expert in their field (eg have they had any books published? - possibly this metal bible thing may count - was he the editor?), then that might change things. Cheers. --FormerIP (talk) 21:13, 20 December 2010 (UTC)
Thank you for the prompt response. Johannes was "project leader" for the Metal Bible, though I am not sure what that means. From what a news post on this Blabbermouth News Archive says,[18] it appears he the was the compiler and editor of the information collected from the musicians. As to nolifetilmetal, I do not think Waters' has had any books published, so I will not use his site. Thank you again for the reply, --3family6 (talk) 13:28, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Rabbi Pinto

Rabbi Pinto controversial NYC Rabbi - User Beobjectiveplease on the page is a single user account and dominates conversation at the page. He has also whitewashed any criticism repeatedly. Please review and make edits (including The Real Deal which they accept as a source but dont welcome the commentary there - Please review how can it be a source accepted for good but not for bad ?).

Please welcome edits to Rabbi Pinto page. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Babasalichai (talk • contribs) 12:21, 21 December 2010

what sources do you wish to discus?Slatersteven (talk) 14:47, 21 December 2010 (UTC)
By my count, this is ay least the twelfth report which this editor has submitted about this article on various boards over the past month. The editor has also been repeatedly warned on her/his talk page about canvassing and edit-warring on this article, and was recently blocked for this. This report seems like more of the same; these content issues should be resolved at the article talk page, and not repeatedly spammed over several noticeboards. RolandR (talk) 17:34, 21 December 2010 (UTC)
This time, he didn't even bother to comment on the talk page about the source (The Real Deal). --Habap (talk) 18:06, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Natural Philosophy Alliance

There is an archived noticeboard discussion thread of 2 years ago <link rel=NPA discussion in Wiki archive http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_14#Reliability_of_Proceedings_of_the_Natural_Philosophy_Alliance.2C_Storrs_2005_ISSN_1555-4775. There were 3 editors discussing whether papers published in the web-journal at http://www.worldnpa.org are considered to be conforming to wp:IRS. The outcome of the discussion was not finished. At the end, there were 2 editors for and 1 against, with no apparent agreement.
I would like to use a source " Joseph J. Smulsky, "Gravitation, field, and rotation of Mercury Perihelion", pp.254-260 , vol. 5. No. 4, Proceedings of the NPA, Albuquerque, NM, USA, copy stored at http://www.ikz.ru/~smulski/Papers/08Smulsky2c.pdf. " in an edit located at Talk:Tests_of_general_relativity#Mercury_precession_-_minority_test. Can I get a poll of scientists that think that this source can be used to give a neutral point-of-view NPOV.D c weber (talk) 23:49, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

The NPA is self-described as a proponent of fringe theories outside mainstream physics. So, papers presented at its conferences are not Reliable Sources on science articles, and those sources, even with attribution, could not be described as having a NPOV. Fladrif (talk) 02:41, 18 December 2010 (UTC)
I am not asking if a paper in NPA can be used to create an article of it's own, I'm asking if a paper in NPA can be used as a source to add a view to an existing article in Wiki that has other referenced viewpoints in it. That is, I'm trying to add a minority viewpoint to an existing scientific treatise.D c weber (talk) 16:13, 20 December 2010 (UTC)
If, like Fladrif says, papers presented at its conferences are not Reliable Sources on science articles, then no, a paper in NPA can not be used as a source to add a view to an existing article in Wiki that has other referenced viewpoints in it. That is the idea behind the wp:RS policy. DVdm (talk) 17:55, 20 December 2010 (UTC)
The NPA is not a recognised scientific organisation. Their raison d'être is to push fringe theories and in particular to dispute the theory of relativity. Its publications are not reliable sources at all. They are not a notable viewpoint for science-based topics, either. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 00:02, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
Agree 100%. The fringe views of papers presented at NPA conferences cannot be used to "balance" a physics article any more than papers from a conference of the Flat Earth Society can be used to "balance" a geography article. Fladrif (talk) 17:16, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

Facebook page "likes" to show level of support (when cited in an RS)

When a reliable source such as Norway's biggest newspaper, Aftenposten, writes "The last year the movement [English Defence League] has grown at record speed, with over 40,000 members on Facebook." (Norwegian: Det siste året har bevegelsen vokst i rekordfart, med over 40000 medlemmer på Facebook.)[19], then surely there is no WP:RS issue with including this in the article on the English Defence League?

Also, there's a side issue with editors updating the count based on originally researching the Facebook page in question. How do we deal with either of these related issues? __meco (talk) 13:11, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

Aftenposten is a reliable source; you're right that there is no problem reporting what it says about EDL's Facebook support. Aftenposten is then the source, not Facebook. "Updating" the figures is misrepresenting the source, and if done deliberately is vandalism. Whether the group's Facebook support is an important detail to mention is a matter for the article talk page. Itsmejudith (talk) 13:27, 20 December 2010 (UTC)
That said, the amount of Facebook likes is a useless metric: as "Hearing 'just a small town girl' and shouting 'livin' in a lonely world" has 1.4 million likes. Ho hum. Sceptre (talk) 20:59, 20 December 2010 (UTC)
Objectively, possibly, however, when the newsroom of a reliable source has found it significant to describe the organization's size and growth in this way, all merit cannot be denied to it. __meco (talk) 21:04, 20 December 2010 (UTC)
  • "all merit cannot be denied to it" All merit can be denied to it as it is ORIGINAL RESEARCH from PRIMARY SOURCES to derive this directly from Facebook. If a newspaper is willing to put its reputation on the line, by claiming it has fact checked the capacity of facebook membership to represent a social trend, then we can use that, because the newspaper is a secondary source and allowed to conduct original research. As wikipedia editors, we do not conduct original research, we report on original research published in secondary sources. Fifelfoo (talk) 21:48, 20 December 2010 (UTC)
  • Unless presented evidence otherwise, Aftenposten is a reliable source. I do not speak Norwegian so I will accept on good faith that this article says what you say it does. That said, this noticeboard only deals with issues of reliability. Just because something can be sourced doesn't necessarily mean it should be in the article. Judith and Sceptre raise good points which should also be considered.
  • As for the side issue of editors updating the count based on the Facebook page, this is not original research. In this case, Facebook is being used as a primary source which is not strictly disallowed.
  • Vandalism is any deliberate attempt to compromise the integrity of Wikipedia including adding obscenities, page blanking, and the insertion of nonsense into articles. Good faith attempts to improve an article should never be called "vandalism". A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 22:12, 20 December 2010 (UTC)
If the count of friends is from a reliable source and cited as such, then changing the numbers to reflect current friends is certainly not appropriate. Active Banana (bananaphone 22:17, 21 December 2010 (UTC)
That's right. Here's a parallel. Say you find anthat UK government figures (HESA) gives the number of students at University of Poppleton as 25,000 in the academic year 2010-2011. You add that, with the source. The next year the university website shows that the number of students is now 26,000. The new number can be added alongside the old one, or can replace the old one. What you can't do is say it is 26,000 and still cite the original source. And if someone came along and changed the number to 250,000, that would be vandalism. Itsmejudith (talk) 00:02, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
But the website of Poppleton University is (notionally) an RS per se, which makes things slightly different in that case. In any event, the issues here are not to do with RS. --FormerIP (talk) 03:22, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
Judith: No, good faith efforts to improve an article should not be called vandalism. You've already been corrected twice on the WP:RSN talk page[20][21] so I wish you would really stop saying this because you may be giving newbies a false impression of what vandalism really is. Again, vandalism has a specific meaning on Wikipedia: the deliberate attempt to compromise the integrity of Wikipedia such as the inclusion of obscenities, nonsense or blanking of articles. Editing a number to a more current number is clearly a good-faith attempt at improving an article and is therefore not vandalism. For more information, please see WP:VANDALISM. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 04:16, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
I also strongly object to Judith's misuse of the term vandalism. That term is reserved for willfully destructive edits, not incompetent edits such as not adhering to guidelines. Our policy page states: "Vandalism is any addition, removal, or change of content made in a deliberate attempt to compromise the integrity of Wikipedia. " Furthermore it states: "Even if misguided or ill-considered, any good-faith effort to improve the encyclopedia is not vandalism. Even harmful edits that are not explicitly made in bad faith are not vandalism." It could not be any clearer. __meco (talk) 10:29, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
Just to be clear, in the case we're specifically discussing, the original figure was referenced with the Norwegian newspaper article, but the Facebook page itself was added as a reference for the updated figure. __meco (talk) 10:34, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
Obviously any good faith edit isn't vandalism. I said "if done deliberately". If there is a sentence referenced to a particular source, and then someone else breaks the link, so that we are making the source say something that it didn't, then we have a problem. If the sentence in an article is "EDL has 40K members on Facebook"<ref>Aftenposten</ref> and someone changes it to "EDL has 50K members on Facebook"<ref>Aftenposten</ref>", they've made it seem that Aftenposten said something it didn't. Which is a nuisance even if the number has in fact risen. Deliberately messing up an article is vandalism; accidentally or mistakenly messing it up isn't. No? Itsmejudith (talk) 01:40, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

Question

I added this map as source for population numbers in the article Pashto language. It is from the Gulf/2000 Project of Columbia University. Before that, I had explained my concerns regarding this and other sources on Talk:Afghanistan. However, User:Lagoo sab immediately removed it, saying that "maps are not allowed as sources". This is quite interesting, because he himself adds all kinds of (googled) sources to the article, as long as they suit his POV. He has been criticized for source picking, selective quoting, and POV-pushing by various other users. This map, despite being published by a major US university, was immediately removed because it does not support his POV. Considering the whole situation in Afghanistan, Languages of Afghanistan, Pashto language, and Dari language currently, I think some expert help is needed. Thank you. Tajik (talk) 23:21, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

The maps were prepared by Mehrdad Izady. I think they are a reliable source. Izady got his Ph.D. at Columbia and is considered an expert on Middle Eastern Languages and Civilizations. The project itself, the map is taken from, has its own WP article Gulf 2000 Project (not much to it). The project has been ref.ed in serveral articles. So why shouldn't the map be a source? Chartinael (talk) 23:34, 21 December 2010 (UTC)
Tajik (talk · contribs) found a map at (http://gulf2000.columbia.edu/maps.shtml) and decided to use it for his 25% Pashto claim. I don't see percentages of speakers in the map, and such maps are suppose to be based on some kind of research work, but I don't see that either. All academic sources on the languages of Afghanistan state that Pashto is 35-60%. This map only sits in Columbia University online library but the actual source or author is M. Izady. Maps usually contain obvious errors and for this and many other reasons we shouldn't accept this map as a reliable source. I tried to download it to verify the info on it but was unable to, and I have a very fast PC and 2 MB net speed.--Lagoo sab (talk) 23:50, 21 December 2010 (UTC)
Read the darn text. Look at the sources, Izady gives. Chartinael (talk) 23:54, 21 December 2010 (UTC)
I just got done explaining that I can't view the text or the sources used. If you don't mind, can you quote it in full and provide which sources Izady relied on to get the 25% for the Pashto-speakers of Afg.?--Lagoo sab (talk) 00:33, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
Well, I saw the source. Guess you just have to wait longer until the file is downloaded. However, you are not gonna like it anyhow. If I find the time I will make a pdf out of it. Chartinael (talk) 00:37, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
I have quoted the source on Talk:Afghanistan. But it's interesting that everyone else can see the map but Lagoo sab. And that's how he justifies his immediate revert ... @ Lagoo sab: there is no need to confirm the sources that Izady uses. I mean, have you actually provided information on the sources that your favorite books use?! For example, where does this book get the 60% from?! How did Ethnologue get to this? Can you help us out? Tajik (talk) 00:51, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
You keep getting me wrong, I downloaded it but it's barely readable. I don't know how you can read that, and I have no problem with my eye sight. Asking us how researchers who write books on Afghan languages got their info is not our job to solve. The basic rules of Wikipedia is to include all reliable sources even if they may be off a little. The 40-60% is a scholarly guess based on researches done from the 1960s to 1980s by experts in the field of Afghan studies. These book writers usually read previously scholarly works to come up with their own conclusions. Afghan studies were conducted in the 19th century, many Europeans wrote about Afghanistan since then.--Lagoo sab (talk) 03:55, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

Is this the map in question? It doesn't download in Firefox (it gives an error message that it "cannot be displayed, because it contains errors"), but can be downloaded (albeit slowly) in Explorer. However, because of its huge size, it's hard to read. Can you quote the sentence(s) in question? Jayjg (talk) 03:04, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

It loads fairly quickly for me, without errors in any browser. Try doing a ctrl-shift-r. Magog the Ogre (talk) 03:21, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
For my 2c: how can we tell the percent of the population that speaks a language by a map? We can tell the percentage of the territory covered by the language, but not the percentage of speakers, which will change in density depending on the location. Magog the Ogre (talk) 03:24, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

As an interested reader who wants to verify very important information provided by the editor (Tajik). He states that Pashto is 25% in Afghanistan, this is very surprising to me because I've never heard such thing before. Imagine if someone cited a map similar to this in the reference list and claimed in his edit that Spanish language is spoken by around 80% of the [U.S.] population, that would shock many readers. That's how I feel now.--Lagoo sab (talk) 03:55, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

Well guys, the thing called MAP is not just a map. If you look at it it has plenty of text to explain the cartographic display. It is huge, I think 15 MB? So it will take time. Had no issues loading it with any browser. I suggest right click and safe, though. The text of the map is where the figures come from. I extracted it for all of you [22]
Quoting from the document: Although by ethnic and tribal affiliation Afghanistan is a complicated place, linguistically it is not. Over 85 percent of the population speaks as their first language one of the two primary and closely related languages of Persian and Pashto. Persian in its various dialects serves as the first language of a majority of the citizens of Afghanistan Approximately one-fifth of the Pashtuns also speak Persian dialects as their first language Pashto is spoken as the first language by over a quarter of the citizens of that country, although over a third of the citizens of Afghanistan are Pashtun by ethnicity.
Extraction: Pashto spoken by over a quarter of population (= 25+ % but less than 33+% - no surprise, 20% of ethnic Pashtuns speak Persian as L1), 85+% speak Pashto or Persian as L1. Go do the math yourself. This source is valid. The author is an academic expert in the field. Chartinael (talk) 09:19, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
Thank you for your effort, Chartinael. It should not surprise readers that this map puts the number of Pashtuns at "over 1/3", because until 2001, the CIA Factbook also had the number at 38% (hence "over 1/3"), but that was updated in the following years to 44% and then to 42%. I see no reason why this map (and the text in it) by Mehrdad Izady should be considered unrealiable. Tajik (talk) 09:51, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
Please read Identifying reliable sources, i.e. questionable sources are those with a poor reputation for checking the facts. I believe that editors Tajik and Chartinael are doing W:Original research, i.e. synthesis. According to this, "Wikipedians should never interpret the content of primary sources for themselves... Avoid undue weight when using single studies..." Tajik and Chartinael incorrectly interpreted "over a quarter" as 25%. It states "Pashto is spoken as the first language by over a quarter of the citizens of that country, although over a third of the citizens of Afghanistan are Pashtun by ethnicity... but that doesn't set any minimum percentage numbers. "Over a quarter" and "over a third" are indeterminate, vague, and ambiguous, because these could apply to any numbers between 26%-100% or 34-100%, and we the editors cannot draw our own conlusions. The CIA Factbook is the most widely accepted source in Wikipedia and it states that Pashto is spoken by 35%[23] of the total population of Afghanistan and that the Pashto-speaking ethnic Pashtuns are 42%[24] in that country. However, the early 1990s CIA estimates stated that Pashto was spoken by 50% of the population [25] [26] All other academic sources put the number of Pashto speakers at 35-60%[27] [28] [29] [30] [31] and the number of ethnic Pashtuns at 42-60%.[32] [33] [34] [35] [36] [37] There is not a single source that supports the 25% for Pashto as claimed by Tajik and Chartinael, who are collaborating in the Pashto language and related articles. According to this, the map in question is considered unreliable for the purpose of being used to support Tajik's 25% Pashto claim because it fails to directly support Tajik's POV.--Lagoo sab (talk) 11:46, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
Lagoo sab: I think it has been shown many times by now that the only person in here who is in fact doing original research is you. What you do is source picking and selective quoting. You take sentences from different sources, some of them from the late 60s and others from the 21st century, and then you construct (i.e. WP:Synthesis) a POV edition. A good example is the article Pashto language: while you use this reference from Ethnologue to back up your claim regarding the percentage of Pashto among Afghanistan's population, you reject the same source (that means the same website) when it comes to actual numbers of Pashto (everyone can see the discussion here). You do the same in the article Afghanistan, and you were criticized for this by me, as well as other users, such as User:Dmcq ([38]). Here you claim that the CIA Factbook is unreliable and that instead this source should be used, which you call "reliable sources" because it is published by a notable university. But again, you are only source picking and selectively quoting, because that very source is contradicting itself. While in fact it is stated that "roughly one-third of the population of Afghanistan (approximately five million) speak the language", the very same text also states that "It is one of the national languages of the country and is used by roughly 50% of the population." You only took the first part, but left out the second part. Of course it is an obvious contradiction, but you are doing original research by cherry picking the first part (which perfectly suits your POV) and ignoring the last part. In my opinion, a site that is contradicting itself is not reliable at all. But again, if you take that source as a "reliable" one, only because it was published by a university website (without actually citing source itself), then I see no reason why the map published by Mehrdad Izady and the the Columbia University should not be regarded reliable. You are not the one who decides what's reliable and what's not. Either we remove all of these questionable and disputed sources and only keep the most recent and stable ones (that would be the most recent CIA Factbook data), or we keep all of them and cite all of them. Anything else would be POV and OR. There are no reliable sources regarding Afghanistan's demography, and all sources are just guesses and estimates. Perhaps the most reliable sources we currently have are two opinion polls from Afghanistan (i.e. these two polls are actually based on real figures from Afghanistan, and they are from 2005-2009) - and neither one is supporting your POV. Both polls have been cited in the relevant articles. Tajik (talk) 12:18, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
The situation here is that Mehrdad Izady, a Kurdish nationalist, decided to make a map on the languages of Afghanistan and in doing so Izady reviewed the CIA Factbook's statistics on Afghanistan which showed Pashto 35% and so Izady translated this in his own words to "over a quarter", and now Tajik/Chatinael have decided to use Izady's misleading interpretation to claim that Pashto is 25%. Tajik is now trying to divert this discussion to other irrelevant nonsense.--Lagoo sab (talk) 13:52, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
Insulting authors that you do not like, calling names, and wild speculations ("Kurdish nationalist ... reviewed CIA Factbook ... translated in his own words") won't help you and and it won't help the project. I am once again asking you to maintain civility (in fact, admin User:HJ Mitchell advised you yesterday to read WP:CIV)! None of your claims is sourced, it's just an emotional outburst which shows that you have no idea what Wikipedia is about. You see yourself on a mission and you are convinced that there is some kind of an anti-Pashtun conspiracy going on which includes and involves everyone in here, now even Mehrdad Izady (who is now being insulted by you). Just stop it! Tajik (talk) 14:00, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
Anti-Pashtun conspiracy? Why do you say this? What mission are you talking about? He is Kurdish and I assure you that he is a nationalist, which is the case for nearly all people from the Middle East. This isn't offensive and it's not insulting him, at least that wasn't my intention, I mentioned his background (which is clearly stated in his article) to explain that he's unrelated to Pashto-speakers.--Lagoo sab (talk) 14:15, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
You are rejecting a an accomplished academic scholar as a source based on ethnicity once again. Furthermore you are suggesting that he is a Kurdish nationalist, can you support your assertion. Can you please ascertain your implication as to where Izady got his figures? Chartinael (talk) 14:09, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
I'm not rejecting him, I'm pointing out that he didn't state Pashto 25%. Everyone who make maps showing languages of Afghanistan will first look at what major sources show, and that is CIA Factbook. It is your job to tell us where Izady got his figures since you are defending him. According to his article, it doesn't mention anything about him being an expert on anthropological linguistics or ethnolinguistics. He is a map maker, in fact I like his map but I'm only against his misleading interpretation of 35% as "over a quarter".--Lagoo sab (talk) 14:15, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
I am detecting a whiff of POV editing on both sides here. I would advise both of you to stop cherry picking lines of policy statements to keep out the numbers you don't like (a form of Wikilawyering).
Now, as to the issue at hand... We have to remember that sources can and often do disagree. This disagreement does not make them unreliable. Nor does the fact that the author of a source may have a bias or an agenda of his own. It simply means that we have to account for the disagreements and biases when we write our articles. The way to do this is to present the disagreement, and to attribute views to their authors... so that the reader knows exactly who says what. ... something along the lines of: "The number of Pashto speakers in Afghanistan is debated. According to the CIA Factbook, the number of Pashto speakers is X%, but according to Mehrdad Izady the number is Y% and according to this other source it is closer to Z%". Don't argue over which is correct... Don't try to exclude views that you don't like... maintain a WP:Neutral point of view. Blueboar (talk) 14:59, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
The question here is to decide whether a map maker (M. Izady) is a reliable source for giving us the correct percentage of Pashto-speakers in Afghanistan. He says somewhere "over a quarter" and we need some kind of idea where he got this from. CIA is widely refered to by everyone in the world, especially the media and government agencies, when learning Afghan statistics. CIA states Pashto 35% but when one (1) individual claims lesser than this they need to clarify a little how they made this figure. We have to avoid poor sources, especially when it concerns stuff like this.--Lagoo sab (talk) 15:34, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
Izady is not just a mere "map maker". He received his BA degree in History, Political Science and Geography from Kansas University, and then attended Syracuse University where he received two masters degrees in Remote Sensing-Cartography and in International Relations. He received his PhD at the department of Middle Eastern Languages and Civilizations of Columbia University in 1992[2]. He taught for six years in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University and in the Department of Middle Eastern Studies and History at the Joint Special Operations University in Florida. He has testified before two US Congressional Committees and has authored many books and articles on Middle East and Southeast European subjects[3] If you wanna know where he got his figures from, go read the sources he provided. Chartinael (talk) 15:39, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
What does BA in History, Political Science and Geography have to do with anthropological linguistics or ethnolinguistics? I don't think this guy has ever been mentioned with relation to Pashto or Afghanistan works, and Pashto is not a Middle Eastern language.--Lagoo sab (talk) 16:36, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

Let's cut to the chase. The source is a document, prepared and published by the Gulf 2000 project of the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. It is a reliable source. Period. It doesn't matter who actually wrote it, nor what his ethnicity is, nor whether he is or isn't biased. There is a misconception about verifiability that comes up in all sorts of discussions on talk pages suggesting that editors can, should or must look behind a reliable source and check what sources it used. No, we don't. That is original research. One might argue that this is a primary source, but this is an instance where use of such a source would be permitted, as there is no interpretation of the source going on here, and no-one can seriously question what the source actually says as opposed to whether or not it is right or wrong. If the source says "over a quarter speak X ", the accurate way to represent the source is to say "over 25% speak X" rather than "25% speak X", because that (while technically accurate, but incomplete) could be misconstrued, and attribute that to this source. If someone also wants to cite the CIA World Factbook for "35% speak X", that's a RS as well. To my eye, lacking a feel for whatever POV fight is underlying this kerfluffle, the sources don't look inconsistent, and they both are reliable even if they are inconsistent. Report them both, with attribution. Fladrif (talk) 16:22, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for sharing your interesting opinion, but we must follow the guidelines of Wikipedia as pointed out by me above.--Lagoo sab (talk) 16:36, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
Seems reliable to me, in that it is not self-published, but is published by an entity which can reasonably expect and verify to have a reputation for fact checking. That is all we need. The arguments of Lagoo sab do not seem to reflect Wikipedia policy to me. Of course if someone can find more sources, or research the sources used by sources, then maybe WP could be imprved as a result, but that is not reason to remove this source. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 16:48, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
You're welcome Lagoo, and thank you for sharing your palpable condecension. Following my recommendation (which is identical to BlueBoar's recommendation above) would be entirely consistent with and a proper application of Wikipedia sourcing policy and guidelines. As Andrew has also pointed out, your arguments, on the other hand, misapply, misinterpret and fundamentally violate WP:RS,WP:V, WP:Primary and WP:NOR among other core policies, to exclude a reliable source on specious grounds. Consider that all of the uninvolved editors commenting here, all of whom have posted extensively on RSN and have more than passing familiarity with the relevant policies, uniformly disagree with your position. Fladrif (talk) 16:57, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
The source is just a map which states that somewhere "over a quarter" (refering to CIA's 35%) percentage of Afghans speak Pashto as a first language, but Tajik/Chartinael are using the text on the map for their own POV pushing in which they claim that the map is saying "25%" Afghans speak Pashto. This is against the guidelines of Wikipedia. See Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources and start reading from the part: The reliability of a source depends on context. Each source must be carefully weighed to judge whether it is reliable for the statement being made and is the best such source for that context. In general, the more people engaged in checking facts, analyzing legal issues, and scrutinizing the writing, the more reliable the publication. Sources should directly support the information as it is presented in an article, and should be appropriate to the claims made.... I feel that none of you are understanding me. I like the map and I hold no grudge against the author M. Izady, I'm saying that his "over a quarter" (which clearly refers to CIA's 35%) is by no way to be interpreted as "25%". Especially when all leading experts say 35-60% Afghans speak Pashto.[39] [40] [41] [42] [43] [44] and not a single other source support the 25% POV claim.--Lagoo sab (talk) 16:36, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
Lagoo Sab, the author has nowhere referenced or taken figures from the CIA world factbook. In fact, no academic is likely to source that anyhow. As he is a Kurdish nationalist in your opinion, he is hardly contributing to any Pashtun- or Persian-POV. Have you been able to download the map now, so that you can actually truthfully say that you like the map? Chartinael (talk) 20:45, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
I think Andrew and Fladrif are correct here... the map is absolutely RS by our standards. Now, it may be that what the map says is being misrepresented in order to push a particular POV (I am not saying it is... but it would not surprise me). If this is the case, that should be discussed on other noticeboards. The solution to that issue is not to attack the reliability of the map... the solution is to reach a consensus on how to accurately represent what the map says in the text of the article. I strongly recommend that both sides in this dispute read WP:NPOV Blueboar (talk) 17:33, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
You summed it up very well. Thank you.--Lagoo sab (talk) 18:14, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
Thank you all for your interesting comments. I, too, think that the map and the text in it are RS. I had added the source to Pashto language, but it was immediately removed by Lagoo sab. I suggest to restore the source in the article and change the wording to something like "a reported 25-60% of the people in Afghanistan speak Pashto", then adding the currently available RS to it. I'd like to point out again that there are almost no reliable numbers available, and that almost all sources are either biased or mere guesses. The most reliable numbers were have are those of two recent opinion polls in Afghanistan, dating from 2004-2009. They are actual numbers from Afghanistan, based on a randomly selected collective from 30 of Afghanistan's 32 provinces. Both were conducted in a joint effort by reliable sources (BBC, ABC, ARD, The Asia Foundation, Kabul University, and a few more) and the results can be seen in Languages_of_Afghanistan. It is noteworthy that neither poll supports the POV of User:Lagoo sab. In fact, one of the polls is much closer to the statement of M. Izady in that map than to Lagoo sab's POV. Tajik (talk) 18:20, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
Tajik, someone just got done explaining that the issue in which you're misrepresenting the map to push your POV should be taken to elsewhere, i.e. Neutral point of view board. End of discussion here.--Lagoo sab (talk) 18:31, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
Lagoo Sab, Blueboar went out of his way to say "I am not saying it is [misrepresented]". Misrepresentation is what you just did. I must say that anyone reading the way you argue must surely get the impression that you are wikilawyering in order to push a point of view, and not worried about policy. Please do understand that this is noticeable. Anyway, what Blueboar has said you should do, and I agree, is to now make yourself reach a consensus with Tajik. Trying to wipe this source out on a technicality has not worked. No one is supporting your contention here that there is any obvious policy violation. Please ask yourself if there is any editing solution you and Tajik could both accept.-Andrew Lancaster (talk) 20:38, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
Andrew, "in which you're misrepresenting the map to push your POV" are my words describing this action of Tajik to him (to Tajik). I didn't tie Blueboar with anything other than what Blueboar wrote which doesn't need to be repeated by me. I'm willing to work with Tajik but he just needs to relax with the extreme POV, and like I already said several times that I'm not arguing over the reliablity of the source (M. Izady), I was trying to explain all this time that the text on Izady's map was misrepresented in the Pashto language article, and I believe this comes in conflict with the RS policy. Although we're done here, I'll point out the following 3 guidelines:
  • [45] "Articles should be based on reliable, third-party, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy. This means that we only publish the opinions of reliable authors, and not the opinions of Wikipedians who have read and interpreted primary source material for themselves."
  • [46] "...Wikipedians should never interpret the content of primary sources for themselves...."
  • [47] "Some sources may be considered reliable for statements as to their author's opinion, but not for statements asserted as fact without an inline qualifier like "(Author) says...". A prime example of this is Op-ed columns in mainstream newspapers. When using them, it is better to explicitly attribute such material in the text to the author to make it clear to the reader that they are reading an opinion."
This entire dispute is over M. Izady's (primary source) statement, in which he says "Approximately one-fifth of the Pashtuns also speak Persian dialects as their first language Pashto is spoken as the first language by over a quarter of the citizens of that country, although over a third of the citizens of Afghanistan are Pashtun by ethnicity." Tajik (Wikipedian) interpreted this by claiming that Pashto is the mother tongue of 25% of the citizens of Afghanistan, and I believe this interpretation is wrong (misleading). Let's focus just on this and forget everything else.--Lagoo sab (talk) 01:24, 23 December 2010 (UTC)
No, Lagoo sab, this discussion is not only about the Gulf/2000 Project of Columbia University, because you are the only person in here who is rejecting that source. This discussion is about all sources used in the respective articles, and it is abour your unencyclopedic behavior. You are selectively quoting and you are cherry picking sources. You only select the parts and sentences of a source that suit your POV, and then you mix them together, violating WP:OR and WP:Synthesis. And, no, you are neither interested nor willing to find a consensus. This and this kind of behavior which includes not only POV pushing, deletion of reliable sources, and source picking, but also ignores the current discussions, is the best evidence for that. Tajik (talk) 02:46, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

Reserve requirement and limits on money creation - new evidence

It is my assertion that the "textbook model" of how "the reserve requirement" places limits on money creation is known to be false by the senior bankers and regulators that actually operate the system. I and other people have produced lots of evidence on the fractional reserve discussion page on this issue, but just recently I came across this particularly explicit piece:

In the book "Towards True Monetarism" by Geoffrey Gardiner it states on page 4: "conventional textbook theory needs a slight clarification. Popular textbooks even modern ones seem to imply that there can be shortages of funds in which the Bank of England can supply only by creating new money. There authors may have somewhat misinterpreted the practicalities of the situation through incomplete mastery of the principles of double entry book keeping. They failed to see that all money is debt and that if debt has been created by a bank the money for a balancing deposit has inevitably been created too. Any funds needed to eliminate a shortage must already be on there way to the bank of England because any surplus must show up in the books once the systems brief time-lag has been overcome a permanent creation of new money should therefore never be necessary judging by their private statements bank treasurers well understand this principle[1]" then he gives as the reference: "In a lecture the head of treasury operations of a large clearing bank was most emphatic: 'If we are short of funds we know they have to be around somewhere: it is just a question of finding where they are and then paying the price to get them'".

Given this (and much other evidence besides), it seems essential that references to support any statements to the contrary must not simply be "textbooks for students". Only refereed papers will do. If my claim is incorrect then there should be no shortage of such papers to support any counter-claims.

This appears to be a content issue. Was there a complaint with the Gardiner book as not reliable? Are you claiming textbooks used in the article are not reliable? Also, isn't the issue more specifically, how banks work their little magic trick, namely by the purchase of instruments from the Treasury or other financial institutions (at least in the US).. Ocaasi (talk) 09:36, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
Sorry, maybe I should have made it clearer. It is not the Gardiner source that is being contested as a reliable source. It is the sources used as support for the idea that the reserve requirement places a limit on the money supply that I am contesting. Currently they are two "textbooks for students". I am suggesting that these need to be replaced by refereed papers in journals. That is the entirety of the issue. Reissgo (talk) 09:49, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
I'm trying not to get into content, but I think I must. Reserve requirements limit lending, and money flows (M1-M3...) (see: Money_supply#Empirical_measures). Reserve requirements don't limit the base money supply M0, because, obviously, the Fed is the reserve. I think it's not clear which type or level of money you're discussing. If you could clarify it, that might make the sourcing issue easier. Ocaasi (talk) 10:01, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
If I can look ahead an edit or two, I think you're right that the textbook is not an ideal source. But as some others suggested , the view espoused by modern textbooks is the mainstream one. If you are advocating the Chartalism view, then you can only present it with WP:DUE weight in proportion to its presence in all reliable sources. You might visit WP:NPOVN for that discussion. Ocaasi (talk) 10:09, 22 December 2010 (UTC)


By "money supply" I was referring to the higher numbered money measures like M3 or M4 (depending which country you are from). If the reserve requirements were applied super-strictly such that they could not be broken even for a nanosecond then the textbook description may indeed be correct, but in reality the regulations are in fact applied in a more relaxed way and the rules may be broken temporarily so long as they are repaired later. This allows for the following "leak" in the system: The bank may make a loan which breaks the ratio limits - but they know that the money that has been lent out will make its way back in to some other part of the banking system. This money that has gone "somewhere" will be more than enough to fulfil the requirements. This means that the banks can then search around to find someone to get the money from and so fulfil its obligations *after* having made the loan.
With regard to what is the "mainstream" view - what defines that? The view that is held by the most people in the world is that money is created by the government and not by banks at all. This popular view is in fact false. Now presumably you would reply that the "mainstream" view is that which is held by "the experts" - Ok, then who are the experts? My answer is that the experts are the people who are actually "at the coalface" i.e. the senior bankers that manage compliance with the regulations and the regulators themselves. The Gardiner book suggests that amongst those people the "leak" is well known. So I would suggest that the leaky view *is* the mainstream view. Reissgo (talk) 10:24, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
A question: If there are 100 books, written by academics, about how they make widgets at factory X, which contradicts the (one) document written by the factory owner which instructs workers what to do, then what info should appear in wikipedia? Reissgo (talk) 10:27, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
The books by the academics- those are descriptive, the owner's document is prescriptive, and is a primary source. Ning-ning (talk) 14:27, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

Back to Ocaasi's question, what specific sources are you challenging as not being reliable sources? When I look at the footnotes for the Money supply article that you linked to, I have all kinds of problems with the majority of sources being cited, at least at first glance. There are blogs, and personal web sites, and tertiary sources like dictionaries and encyclopedias being used as sources. There are many tags calling for sources for currently-unsourced sentences and whole sections. The whole article looks like a mess from a RS standpoint. That being said, in the abstract, a textbook from an respected academic publishing house is a perfectly legitimate and reliable source, and would likely reflect the mainstream view on the issue. And, I agree that, the way you have framed your question, that it is your theory that experts know that the mainstream view is bunk, and the way things really work is X instead of Y, and you've got "new evidence" to support that view, this looks like a content issue rather than a reliable sources issue. Fladrif (talk) 15:05, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

A claim I dispute is "Central banks generally mandate reserve requirements that require banks to keep a minimum fraction of their demand deposits as cash reserves. This both limits the amount of money creation that occurs in the commercial banking system,[6]" The reference Given is a book by Mankiw. Mankiw is not a monetary specialist, and so I do not think he counts as an expert. I think a higher quality reference is needed for this claim which is disputed in many refereed papers by monetary specialists and senior bankers. By the way, I wouldn't be the slightest bit surprised if no modern refereed paper supporting such a claim could be found... after all, the claim is false. Reissgo (talk) 18:56, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
The source is a widely-used, intermediate-level college textbook on macroeconomics written by a notable and influential economist formerly on the Council of Economic Advisors, and currently on the Harvard faculty [49] published by a reputable academic publishing house. The unsourced claim "he's not a monetary specialist, and so I do not think he counts as an expert" would seem to be contradicted by his having edited a book on monetary policy published by the University of Chicago Press[50] and having written extensively on the subject in peer-reviewed publications.[51] To say that the objections to this source are frivolous would be a gross understatement. Fladrif (talk) 19:59, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
Ok, guilty as charged. I thought he was most famous for having written a very generic economics textbook. But even so, given that the claim in question is undoubtedly disputed in peer reviewed journals, the claim should be supported by a peer reviewed paper. Reissgo (talk) 20:52, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
No, it is a reliable source. A "better" source is not required even if other sources take a different view. Fladrif (talk) 22:12, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

Commodity fetishism

This began as a content dispute but is turning into a verifiability dispute (or NPOV) - I think an editor is on a crusade to use the article to deprecate some reliable sources. To non-Marxists, a word of explanation: the author refers to French Philosopher Louis Althusser and UK historian Perry Anderson. The world of Marxism (in my view) is a world of competing orthodoxies, and there certainly are many established scholars who reject Althusser and Anderson's interpretation of Marx. But they are clearly reliable sources, published in reputable presses, thir books still in print, and often cited. I appreciate fresh views. Slrubenstein | Talk 10:19, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

This sounds exactly like a content dispute. Books and articles by Althusser and Anderson published by respected publishing houses and journals are reliable sources for their views on Marx. Books and articles by others critical of Althusser and Anderson published by respected publishing houses and journals are reliable sources for their own views on Marx. Those sources should be used to support opposing views, not an editor's individual opinion. But, once that hurdle is cleared, how one goes about crafting an article using those reliable sources critical of one-another is not a RS issue, nor a Verifiability issue, but a WEIGHT and NPOV issue for another board. Fladrif (talk) 16:44, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

What is the general feeling about the reliability of allkpop.com

This site is used as a source in many Korean pop band articles [[52] It straight out says that it is a gossip site (edit to add) and a blog, (end edit) but also claims to be cited by major news organizations. As one of the few English language Korean sites, at least it is realitviely easy to verify if it actually makes the claims people are citing to it.Active Banana (bananaphone 05:30, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

Morning Star (UK newspaper)

The UK communist newspaper Morning Star curiously seems to be the only media outlet to present views about the contentious British anti-Islamism group the English Defence League by a high-ranking police official that could be interpreted as very valuable to supporters of this group ("'EDL not far-right,' says police extremism chief"). There is currently an ongoing discussion on the talk page of the group's article about whether the Morning Star can be considered a reliable source in this context, and subsequently also of whether the quote is in any case relevant for inclusion into the article as it may have been taken out of context, or that the terms used by the police official may be special police terminology that really doesn't mean what the casual reader would take it to mean. __meco (talk) 10:06, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

In the sense of "admission against interest" the cite would be informative, I suppose. The cite would have to be properly ascrived to the newspaper, and, if it is commonly categorized as "communist", that can be included. Collect (talk) 11:29, 14 December 2010 (UTC) Collect (talk) 11:29, 14 December 2010 (UTC)
It seems to me (assuming they are not quoting out of contextx that he does in fact sat "but they are most certainly not extreme right-wing organisations". So the question is (to my mind) only is the Moring Star RS. I am in two minds its an far left paper that is opposed to the police and it has a clear agenda. It has also been known for printing blantna falsehoods in the past to further that agenda. On the otehr hand its not much worse then many othe in that respectr sources. I would rather there were better sources for this material (there is not), but that has nothing to do with this sources status as RS.Slatersteven (talk) 12:48, 14 December 2010 (UTC)
Part of the issue here is no search shows the same material being reported in other newspapers which makes it dubious. Even if it is accurate then its meaning is specific to legal issues (see the talk page). --Snowded TALK 12:52, 14 December 2010 (UTC)
  • The Morning Star is a tabloid newspaper in the United Kingdom almost entirely dependent upon its readership for financial operation. The paper's goal is "to inform, to publicise and to advocate." The paper has a clear editorial bias, "For peace and socialism." Questions: at the present point in time does the editorial bias affect the content of stories to the point of falsehood? In the given article, apparently not. At the present point in time does the paper differentiate news from opinion? Yes, and the article in question is listed as news not opinion. Does the newspaper unduely emphasise fringe or minority view-points? Yes, it interviews the CPGB CPB (apologies to the Gen Sec of the CPGB, I'm not up to date on my British groups)Fifelfoo (talk) 13:27, 15 December 2010 (UTC) in relation to the Police's view of the EDL. Consider notability before using components, but the article is reliable for police views on the EDL. Fifelfoo (talk) 00:24, 15 December 2010 (UTC)
Please note that the Morning Star quotes the General Secretary of the CPB, not, as stated above, the CPGB, which is an entirely separate and unrelated organisation. RolandR (talk) 00:38, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Fifelfoo: I think your on the right lines with your questions, but for the question (which I would rephrase slightly) "with reference to the case in hand, what is the potential for the editorial bias of the paper to make the source unreliable" I would give a slightly different answer. The communist bias of the newspaper (according to it's Wikipedia article) may lead it to tendentious misrepresentation when reporting on matters to do with the police (as well as the far-right).

There seem to be two rival ways of looking at the source. (1) The officer quoted was simply stating his view about the political nature of the EDL, and that's all there is too it. A problem for this version is that this would seem to be quite a newsworthy thing to happen, but does not seem to have been commented on by anyone other than the Morning Star (2) The officer was stating that, within the bounds of the idiosyncratic definition under which his police unit operates (on its website here: [53]) the EDL are not defined as right-wing extremists because their activities are not, per se, unlawful (note that this is not how most people would define "right-wing extremism"). Given the known bias of the source, it seems to me that it is at least plausible that it has failed to properly contextualise the comments of the officer in order to give an impression that the police are overly-sympathetic to the far-right. The question for other editors is whether or not it really is plausible. --FormerIP (talk) 01:53, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

I was about to simply say, yes it probably meets RS, but the report should be attributed as "according to the socialist newspaper Morning Star". But that's a pretty good analysis, FormerIP. If there's a way to put the officer's comments in context without straying into SYNTH, that would make a good contribution to the article. Squidfryerchef (talk) 13:15, 15 December 2010 (UTC)
Yes, that would make sense as a prescription. --FormerIP (talk) 18:13, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

I don't see what has changed since it came up in May. Use with caution, particularly in areas where it would have bias, and try to find more mainstream newspapers as sources instead. Jayjg (talk) 04:29, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

It somehow doesn't appear that you have appraised yourself of the actual discussion in this section and your cursory opinion seems for that reason mostly redundant. This section hinges specifically on the publication having printed information that could be seen to go against their inherent interest and that no other outlet can be found that has duplicated this information. __meco (talk) 08:55, 17 December 2010 (UTC)
Actually, I did read the entire discussion above, and made my comment with the full knowledge and understanding of its contents. And my comment still stands. In an area where it would have bias (such as this), its best to find more mainstream newspapers as sources instead. Since no other papers (or other reliable sources) have published this, it calls into serious question whether or not it should be used at all. Jayjg (talk) 01:00, 19 December 2010 (UTC)
That position is a non-sequitur as the source's bias would be in the opposite direction. This is clearly a case of "admission against interest" as User:Collect lucidly observes above. That would seem to more than cancel out any bias that could generally be assigned to the source on this topic. As previous discussions have clearly marked out, this newspaper has editorial oversight and there are no general concerns about its standing as a reliable source, except where conflicting interests would be a factor. __meco (talk) 12:45, 20 December 2010 (UTC)
I've read the previous discussions (and was a part of them), and it's clear to me that there were and are "general concerns about its standing as a reliable source", which is why it should be used with caution, if at all, and why its best to find more mainstream papers instead. All of this has also been pointed out to you by other editors on the Talk: page of the article in question. It's also unclear why you would state categorically that the material presented here is "admission against interest"; the paper would have many interests, including (as an example), discrediting the Detective Chief Superintendent/police. Jayjg (talk) 02:37, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
As I believe, the Morning Star is affiliated with one of the communist parties (as opposed to mere support, like the other papers mentioned by Jim Hacker), I wouldn't use it as a reliable source on politics articles. Sceptre (talk) 01:13, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

http://www.businessofcinema.com/

In the Genelia D'Souza article, I wish to add a statement about her brother saying that her younger brother who works with the Bombay Stock Exchange, which is present in http://www.businessofcinema.com/news.php?newsid=13968. Is businessofcinema reliable. It seems to be reliable after visiting their About Us page. Just wanted to confirm here. Xavier449 (talk) 15:03, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Looks okay to me, at least the News and Interviews sections...material in the Database section may well be submitted by the companies concerned and not subject to editorial oversight. Barnabypage (talk) 16:28, 16 December 2010 (UTC)
It's a website that appears to be relatively professionally made, but the About Us page actually says little about it. We know nothing of its ownership, editorial policies, editorial board, etc. It doesn't help that the About Us page has an html error on it. I don't see anything indicating it meets WP:RS. Jayjg (talk) 03:57, 17 December 2010 (UTC)
Considering, it is owned by Join The Dots (JTD) Entertainment Media Pvt Ltd, and their journalists are well known, who provide news reports to leading websites, it should be considered reliable. Accroding to this dispatch, media organizations are generally considered reliable. Xavier449 (talk) 15:22, 17 December 2010 (UTC)
It is unfortunate that the site doesn't give a bit more detail about its structure or ownership, and JTD doesn't seem to have a corporate site, but I think ownership by a company is a helpful indication that it's more than a blog with pretensions. These help too: http://in.linkedin.com/in/hetaladesara and http://www.businessofcinema.com/news.php?newsid=10000 Barnabypage (talk) 16:36, 17 December 2010 (UTC)
I'm still not seeing much evidence that it meet's Wikipedia's WP:RS requirements. Jayjg (talk) 21:00, 19 December 2010 (UTC)
WP:IRS states that, " Reliable sources may be published materials with a reliable publication process, authors who are regarded as authoritative in relation to the subject, or both.". This link clearly indicates that they atleast have a team. Secondly, the authors are well-known journalist.

THis clearly indicates this link meets WP:RS. Xavier449 (talk) 06:06, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

Claiming to have a "team" is not an indication of editorial oversight, nor is it any indication that a source is reliable. Also, publishing an article by Chuman Das does not automatically make a source reliable; assuming that Das is an expert Reliable Source, all that would indicate is that specific article by Das meets the requirements of WP:SPS, no more. Jayjg (talk) 02:43, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
I still didn't understand why this source cannot be considered reliable. As per WP:IRS, " Reliable sources may be published materials with a reliable publication process, authors who are regarded as authoritative in relation to the subject, or both.". No idea about of their publication procss, but doesn't it satisfy the second criteria of the author Chuman Das being authoritative in such topics. WP:SPS is out of question, as Das has not published this article. Xavier449 (talk) 09:35, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
So your question here, then, is if Chuman Das qualifies as an expert WP:SPS for the purposes of WP:BLP? Jayjg (talk) 20:59, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

Fingerpoke of Doom article

I have only recently created an account, so I apologize if this is structured incorrectly...

I have great exception to the article Fingerpoke of Doom. I see that the article has already survived deletion nomination, but it is still, quite frankly, apalling. It reads as total POV and inaccuracy from the very first sentence. Fo example in his RF Shoot Interview, Kevin Nash refers to it as the "One-Finger Finish", NOT the "Fingerpoke of Doom". The latter term seems to exist solely on the internet. Anyway, of the sources, there appear to be websites such as lordsofpain.net and onlineworldofwrestling.com. One site entitled "sportingnews.com" turns out to be a blog. Also WWE's website is cited, despite the obvious conflict there. Of the books mentioned, i do not have information regarding the others, however, the Goldberg book makes no such claim as is cited on the page. Also, as far as Realiability and Verifiability of the others goes, that's a matter for the Administrators and Experts, but it does seem rather "off" to me. Not sure of the Reliability of this site http://www.100megsfree4.com/wiawrestling/pages/wcw/wcwnitro.htm , but it shows the actual "slump" only occurring some months later! This is a a problem with Wrestling Fan "Smarks" who have a notorious (in Wrestling circles) hatred for Hulk Hogan and Kevin Nash, calling them the "orange Goblin" and "Big Poochie" and blaming them for everything that has ever gone wrong in Professional Wrestling. Anyone who has read Eric Bischoff's autobiography or listened to/watched interviews with people like Harvey Schiller and Bill Busch will realize what a horrendous article the Fingerpoke of Doom is. Like I said it (somehow) survived AFD nomination, but I am now questioning the Reliability of what scant sources it does have. Thank you. Seeker of the Torch (talk) 12:20, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

Having read the last deletion discussion it seems the main reason why it was kept because it tied in with the Montreal Screwjob as a turning point of the Monday Night Wars but you do raise a good point although I am fairly sure there are some reliable sources on this. I'll have a look now, hang on a sec... The C of E. God Save The Queen! (talk) 12:45, 23 December 2010 (UTC)
You do seem to be correct, a brief Google search for me has only turned out more and more Wrestling fourms. As for other sources, I think it was mentioned in Hulk Hogan's autobiography (unfortunatly, I've mislaid it so I can't help) and as for WWE, it did happen before WCW was purchased but then again as WWE now own all the rights to WCW I think it turns from secondary to primary source. I'm sure an admin could double check and see if my opinion was right or not. The C of E. God Save The Queen! (talk) 12:53, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

It's been years since I read Hogan's book, but I can't remember him even mentioning it in passing(I could be wrong though). I DO remember him stating that WCW started to slide even before Goldberg got the belt(ie. 6 months BEFORE the "Fingerpoke of Doom"), and blaming Eric Bischoff's being more of a business man than a wrestling man, as well as the WWF's usage of T&A(eg. Sable) and profanity (eg. Steve Austin) as ratings ploys. I also remember him stating (as do several others) that "working with Goldberg was a nightmare" or words to that effect, and that Goldberg's being champion or not being champion made no difference to business whatsoever. I'll see if I can find the book somewhere...Seeker of the Torch (talk) 13:16, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

I found the Hogan book and, flicking through it, it doesn't appear to even mention January 4 1999 in passing. Further, the wwe.com article makes no mention of the "incident" either! The Ross Davies books are listed as "Juvenile Nonfiction". Other links are either dead links, fan websites. The RD Reynolds books do seem to agree with the article, but I am unsure as to the Reliability of this person? Having skimmed those books, I again find a wide variety of personal attacks and outright hatred for both Hogan and Nash, and an almost worshipful attitude towards Ric Flair. Is this NPOV? Brian Fritz's book doesn't seem to mention the term "Fingerpoke of Doom", but states that "Hogan and Nash selfishly schemed to protect each other's careers" Fritz aalso calls it the "one finger title change", echoing the "one finger finish" described by Nash and Feinstein, with no mention of the "Of Doom" part. I also must admit to never having heard of Messrs Reynolds or Fritz, and am totally unsure as to what would make either man an Expert on this subject? Seeker of the Torch (talk) 15:47, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

It would be more helpful to this board to actually list here the specific sources that you have questions about, and how they are used, rather than make other editors go to that article and sift through the sources. As for those you specifically mention above:
  • WIA Wrestling [54] is a fansite, and not a RS. It should be removed.
  • Lords of Pain [55] is part of UGO Enertainment, which could have some material that would qualify as a reliable source, depending on what specific part of the site is being used as a reference, as it also includes blogs and reader submissions that would not be RS
  • Online World of Wrestling [56] is largely composed of reader contributions, and is not a RS and should be removed as a source
  • The blog at Sporting News looks like it really is just a blog, though sometimes news organizations have things that they call blogs that are really daily columns by writers. In those cases a blog can be a RS. Not in this case. It should be removed as a source.
  • WWE's website is a reliable source for information about what is says about itself, just like any other corporation's website. But, it should be used with great caution as a source.
  • Whether or not other sources like books from reputable publishers are accurately reflected in the text is another question, not for this noticeboard. So are questions whether someone is "biased" or not. Being biased doesn't render an otherwise reliable souce unreliable. A reliable source can, and usually does, have a POV. If so, you accurately report what the source says, with attribution. Fladrif (talk) 18:27, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

Well, the problems are that a)I am questioning the Reliability of ALL of the Sources on the page, and that b)at least 3 of the Sources provided, whether Reliable or not, do not state what the article uses them as References for! As an example whether or not WWE's own website is Primary Source or not, the website itself makes no reference, even in passing, to any sort of "Fingerpoke of Doom" or any controversy or "turning point". It states only that Mick Foley defeated The Rock to win the WWE Championship. However, the article then continues on using MAJOR unsourced OR and POV, yet implying that WWE's website is somehow connec ted to this outburst! The Sources listed are:

1)a book by Brian Fritz(sorry I have no idea who hes is). This book does not use the term "Fingerpoke of Doom", and merely states that Hogan and Nash schemed to help each other's careers.

2)a "Juvenile Nonfiction" book by Ross Davies(sorry again as to who he may be), that makes no reference at all to "fingerpoke of Doom" or anything besides Goldberg losing the belt.

3)Some guy's called "Rowdy"'s Blog, which appears to now be a dead link.

4)A book by Bryan Alvarez and R.D. Reynolds (I had heard of the former but not the latter) called "The Death of WCW". Again the expression "Fingerpoke of Doom" is never used. They DO point to this as a pivotal point....along with at least half a dozen other events. In fact this is a running joke in the book, as everything from 1996-2001 is "The Beginning of The End....well the latest one". The whole book is written with tongue-firmly-in-cheek.

5)Ross Davies' (again) book of Kevin Nash. Haven't found a copy of this one, so can't say what it does or doesn't say. But again it's "Juvenile Nonfiction". Davies' books are all the size of kids' booklets btw.

6)Something from "WrestlingDigest"(really) Sadly, it's another dead link. Unsurprising as WrestlingDigest was a fringe pro wrestling website.

7)Slam Wrestling!'s article on Kevin Nash, where we encounter the term "Fingerpoke of Doom" for the first time! However, they use it in parentheses, and never state that is was a significant incident. The article also appears to have been written recently(ie. AFTER this Wikipedia Article was created in 2005)meaning that it is possible that they got the term from this article itself!

8)WWE's website, which only mentions what happened on WWE RAW that night, and makes no mention whatsoever of what happened in WCW on January 4 1999!

9)Another R.D. Reynolds book, this one co-written with a Randy Baer called "WrestleCrap: The Very Worst of Pro Wrestling". Again the term "fingerpoke of Doom" is not used. Again they point to January 4 1999 as a significant event. However they state that it was "almost two years to the day after Starrcade 1997"... which took place in December 1997! They also make a far greater fuss about Vince Russo being the "Death of WCW", again a year AFTER the "Fingerpoke of Doom"!

10)OnlinWorldofWrestling. Another fan website, this is listed as the second "Biggest Blunder" of all time. yet again, no mention of a "Fingerpoke of Doom", and the author of this piece(one "Joe L") cites Kevin Nash as booker in late 1998, a clear and obvious error. It's some fan's website anyway, and can certainly not be Reliable?

11)LordsofPain, another fan website, and another dead link.

So we're basically left with whether Ross Davies is Reliable, however only one book MAY mention this. R.D. Reynolds never uses the term "fingerpoke of Doom" and appears to be a comedy writer first and foremost. He even has a website called "WrestleCrap"! SlamWrestling.com is the ONLY mention of "fingerpoke of doom" in lower case AND parentheses, yet makes no mention of this leading to any sort of "turning point" or even any significance!.......... In short, I question ALL 11 sources. Seeker of the Torch (talk) 07:12, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

To summarize, the Reliable Sources(which may not even be so) state merely that on January 4 1999 Hulk Hogan "won" the WCW World Heavyweight Championship from Kevin Nash when Nash lay down after Hogan jabbed him with his finger. The same night in the WWF(now WWE) Mick Foley won the WWF World Heavyweight Championship from The Rock. More than two years later the WWF(now WWE) bought full control of WCW. Somehow this seems worthy of creating a Wikipedia Article with a supposedly "common nickname", and pinpointing WCW's eventual sale to this one event! For what it's worth Hulk Hogan's autobiography, states that the decline had started more than six months before this event, and points to WWF's "raunchier" content, over WCW's more PG stuff. (Hulk Hogan Hollywood Hulk Hogan 978-0743457699).Eric Bischoff's autobiography continues this thread, saying the beginning of the end was when many Turner employees were replaced by Time Warner people, and the one specific event was a meeting in August 1998 where the Timer Warner people insisted on major changes to WCW, and a more "family-friendly" show. (Eric Bischoff Controversy Creates Cash 978-1416527299). A major problem with the sources(besides their questionable Reliability) is they don't state what they are supposedly referenced for. As an example the article states x(with Source), but the Source clearly states y. Or they say a+b+C(with Source), but the Source merely points to a. Seeker of the Torch (talk) 08:11, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

As of right now (5 minutes ago anyway), there are 11 footnotes in the article. All of them, except #3 and #10, look like reliable sources. They are books published by reputable publishing houses, or print and/or online magazines published by real news/entertainment outlets, plus one cite to a corporate website. As noted above, Footnote #3 is a blog, not a column by a SN reporter, and #10 has reader-contributed content. Those two sources are not a RS. As for the other big issues, it is not the function of this board to discuss whether the article accurately reflects those sources nor is is the function of this board to discuss whether the subject of the article is notable. There are other boards for those issues. Fladrif (talk) 17:30, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

The other fellow stated that at least 3 are Unreliable. So which is it? Likewise, where WOULD one go to discuss that the Sources do not state what they are used as References for? I would greatly appreciate any help. However, I will be unable to reply for the next few days, for obvious reasons. Seeker of the Torch (talk) 07:00, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

It seems to me that these articles do not have reliable third-party sources and probably do not meet the notability guideline. This content should be reserved for some sort of fan site. Other opinions very welcome. Just in general, there seems to be a tacit understanding in Wikipedia not to interfere with fans putting up all sorts of information on their favorite characters or books or whatever, regardless of whether they are notable or whether the articles are mainly based on third party sources. There is a fundamental disconnect between practice and policy such as "Articles should be based on reliable, third-party, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy. This means that we only publish the opinions of reliable authors, and not the opinions of Wikipedians who have read and interpreted primary source material for themselves." And "the article is not based primarily on such sources."

BE——Critical__Talk 03:02, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

This isn't a RSN issue. The three articles are completely unsourced. Either tag them as unsourced, or submit them to AFD for deletion if you think there are no sources that could be cited. Not an issue for this board. Fladrif (talk) 03:11, 24 December 2010 (UTC)
Ah, yes, I'm with you, really. But then let me explain why I came here. It's because I'm coming across HUNDREDS of these. And further, a while back when I tried to get one deleted, it was voted keep, because -get this- people thought it ought to be notable. Not because they could show it was. So basically, I'm frustrated, and I want to know what to do in these cases. I would be very happy to try and clean up all these unsourced and/or non-notable articles, but what do you do when a bunch of fans want them? Give me advice (besides "ignore the problem"). BE——Critical__Talk 03:15, 24 December 2010 (UTC)
For example, click the links in the box under "voices" on the Pucca (TV series) article. BE——Critical__Talk 03:20, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

I thought this query was going to be something about Púca. Nevermind. LadyofShalott 03:26, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

LOL, sry BE——Critical__Talk 03:39, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

On the night she premiered Girl Rush in her home town it was devastated by a flood caused by Hurricane Carol

The Firefox News footnote is not a RS. Firefox says that it is just a blog. The Jetix press release is marginal as a source; it would be better to find a news outlet that actually printed it. It looks to me like there are reliable sources for the subject of these articles that could be cited, they just aren't being cited. That's a problem, but not one that is going to get the articles deleted at AFD, and also not within the scope of this board. Fladrif (talk) 17:39, 24 December 2010 (UTC)
It should be within the scope of this board to discuss general issues of what happens when reliable sources can't be found for articles. Can you suggest another venue for this? Anyway, that's a primary question I have: if people think there should be RS, and no one can find any, does that mean we should keep the article? I would refer you to this deletion discussion for an example. I did manage to get the thing deleted even though most of the votes were Keep (later undeleted when sources were written), but only by strongly challenging people to find the source they though should be there. Read the closing admin's summary. I believe there should be a time limit on how long articles can sit around without notable sources before they are automatically deleted when put up for AfD (unless during the process someone finds sources). I think policy should be amended that way. What do you think? I mean, we already have that at WP:BURDEN, it's just not specific. And BURDEN is not followed in deletion discussions, and it's dammed frustrating. BE——Critical__Talk 19:25, 24 December 2010 (UTC)
How editors and admins behave at AFD is not RSN's problem. RSN is only for discussing whether a specific source is reliable or not.[57]Fladrif (talk) 19:59, 24 December 2010 (UTC)
In the absence of your suggestion of where such a question is appropriate I'll leave it here. If you can recommend a better place, I'll move it. BE——Critical__Talk 20:06, 24 December 2010 (UTC)
AFD is the appropriate place to discuss deletion of a particular article. If you want deletion policy changed, try the talk page on the relevant policy pages, or Village Pump (Policy)[58] Fladrif (talk) 20:45, 24 December 2010 (UTC)
Thanks, I'll take it to other venues. This did start out as mostly about RS, but I guess thee is a deeper problem. BE——Critical__Talk 21:17, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

This should have never been an issue brought up here. Articles concerning works of fiction geared towards children are not going to have the best sources. Therefore, we have to bend the rules a bit and use subpar sources (compared to the high standards you people are holding) which would normally not be allowed on more important articles such as those on hard science or biographies.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 03:52, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

I dumped sources here. There should be enough to source a) creation of character, b) popularity, c) adaptation to theater, d) Korean minister awards, e) plot and f) characters.
In general, there is a difference between:
  • "I have searched and I haven't found any good sources for this topic" and
  • "This topic is notable, so it's bound to have good sources, but nobody has bothered searching for them"
  • P.D.: or "This topic is notable, but all good sources are probably in Korean, good luck finding them"
--Enric Naval (talk) 12:21, 25 December 2010 (UTC)
As I noted above, it appears that there are RS for at least some of the material in these, which is why it obviously passes AFD. Why no-one has bothered until now to add them is a mystery, and claiming that non-RS sources like blogs and fansites should be used as sources because better sources are scarce or nonexistent is a non-starter. Fladrif (talk) 15:26, 25 December 2010 (UTC)
Why no one bothers to add them is that no one else made an issue of it. Thanks Enric for the research, you're better at it than I am, and you spent a lot of time. Or actually, I think Google may not be searching for me in other languages than English, so maybe I need to put in some other settings? I agree that maybe only one or two of those sources (if that) establishes notability by itself, but the number of mentions in RS is sufficient overall. So this takes care of the issue originally brought up here, though I think there is still a larger issue of non-notable and non-sourced material/articles on WP which can't get deleted because people think there ought to be sources, or else think basing an article totally on a primary sources is okay. I hope to have you guys help to sort this out in the future, it's an issue that interests me and I hope it interests you as well. BE——Critical__Talk 19:55, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

BOUML

Original sourcing and background

Hello, I'd like some help with that article. It's involved in a dispute on the french wikipedia AfD. The author of the software claims to be Bruno pages (talk · contribs) which is one of the latest contributor of the article. He's been indef banned on fr.wp for threatening to sue admins, his first contribs here have not been very nice either (see also the notice on the software web site).
So I need some help evaluating the references on that article:

  • The first ones come from Bruno Pages own web site
  • To me, the last are obviously the result of a random google search
  • fr:BOUML has a much better english bibliography, can anybody retrieve those papers and evaluate them?

Since I am French, I can offer some advice on the french ref: the url from the PLUME project is correct, however, its title violate NPOV. Another reference on free software in French is framasoft, but http://www.framasoft.net/article3966.html is outdated.
Czech and Italian references seems to be idle chat on forums, and I can't make heads or tail of the chinese one. Thank you for your help, Comte0 (talk) 11:00, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

This looks very much like WP:SPAM. Itsmejudith (talk) 17:38, 17 December 2010 (UTC)
Shame that he is to stop working on it, its actually a quite nice program. What did he threaten the admins over? un☯mi 20:44, 17 December 2010 (UTC)
At the french afd right now, a couple of people are also saying that it's a nice program used in teaching. I am then surprised that the sources' quality is so bad... Comte0 (talk) 22:50, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

I have replied at both your talk pages, I'd rather have us only discuss the quality of the sources on this noticeboard. Thank you. Comte0 (talk) 01:34, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

I have looked at the sources on both the English and French WP. I can't identify any reliable source on the English WP. The Italian source was definitely a blog post. I couldn't read the Czech or Chinese sources. However, on the French WP, while there are some internet forum and blog sources, there are also two academic papers: Kearney & Power, and Changizi et al., both in English. Also, in the "bibliography" section there are three books which appear from their titles and publishers to be decent reliable sources. Page numbers are given but the books aren't cited inline. Potentially five good sources, but it remains to be seen whether these are sufficient to establish notability. It would help if a specialist in software could comment. Information cited only to blogs and forums should be removed. Itsmejudith (talk) 12:24, 18 December 2010 (UTC)
WP:COMPSCI has been notified. Should I also contact WP:CZECH, and WP:CHINA? BTW, the Chinese article is still available through google cache. Regards, Comte0 (talk) 16:17, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

via an eXchanging Model Information (XMI) format" - User:af1n

Google points here, which looks like what you found. Indeed, it merely states that bouml has been used when writing the report. Comte0 (talk) 00:41, 19 December 2010 (UTC)
google points here. It merely says that bouml is a kind of software engineering tool. Comte0 (talk) 00:41, 19 December 2010 (UTC)
google points here. That quote merely says that bouml exports to XMI. Comte0 (talk) 00:41, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

IEEE

Good catches! With these three papers I think we can write a reasonable article. —Ruud 02:03, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
Where and by whom were these three papers published? They look like two presentations at conferneces and one student paper short of a masters or doctoral theses. That would mean they are self-published and not reliable sources. Fladrif (talk) 02:22, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
The first one is a master thesis, which is has been supervised but not peer reviewed, but in this context (article on a software product) I'd consider reliable enough. The other two are from conference proceedings, which is the "usual" publishing venue in computer science and will have been peer reviewed. —Ruud 02:30, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
Papers at IEEE conferences may or may not be reviewed, depending on the particular conference. IEEE Organizers Manual, p 12 Absent knowing what review process, if any was followed at that particular conference, it is impossible to know if that paper was reviewed. ISCE does require peer review of papers at its conferences, so that may pass[59]. A master's thesis would generally fall short of a RS. Fladrif (talk) 03:24, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
Fladrif, i think you are being a little to strict in regards to the quality and quantity of the scientific material needed to write an article about a very simple UML model designer. IMHO the fact that a UML tool is considered in academic papers already makes it noteworthy.af1n (talk) 04:07, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
A master thesis will likely have had more review than a benchmark in a computer magazine. The latter would obviously be accepted as a reliable source in articles on software. We're not going to make any extraordinary claims, so be don't need extraordinary sources. —Ruud 11:16, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
My strictness has to do with trying to determine whether a paper is self-published or not. If a conference doesn't review the papers submitted but simply bundles them for the attendees, I tend to view the paper as essentially self-published because of the lack of editorial oversight. Masters theses have been discussed many times on RSN; there's a division of opinion that I take to be pretty close to right down the middle. I'm on the side of not preferring them. Fladrif (talk) 14:26, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
Clearly there are good conferences and bad conferences (as there are good journals and bad journals). I somewhat doubt an IEEE conference wouldn't have a review process, but I'll look into it. Master theses in general would certainly not be a reliable source (if there is anything really ground-breaking in it a follow-up journal article will/should have been published), but in this context (you are making a general statement here, not taking the context into account) a master thesis would be an order of magnitude more reliable than a magazine article, which already would be acceptable here. — Ruud 16:35, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
Fladrif, even if IEEE would not peer review a document it certainly has some acceptance guidelines and the document is read by experts. Even the submissions to minor proceedings and conferences are reviewed to some extent, although politics play much higher role there then content. I would like to add that most of the universities also have an internal review process before you can actually submit a publication to an external institution. This is the part where they add some professors to your work :D Ask some phd friends if you don't believe me. - af1n 19:35, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

IEEE says, per the ref I provided above, that sometimes it reviews papers for its conferences, and sometimes it doesn't. Did it or didn't it in this case? I have presented lots of papers at conferences and seminars. Sometimes they are reviewed. Sometimes not. While I like to think that every word I write is authoritative, I am not so deluded as to think that the ones that aren't reviewed are anything other than self-published. Then we get to the question as to whether something I have written would qualify as a SPS nonetheless. Of course I am a recogized expert, previously published, on whatever I write about....but I need to be convinced about the jamokes who wrote the stuff we're discussing here. Fladrif (talk) 01:37, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

Why you need a bunch of peer reviewed publications in case of Bouml. Is this really required in case of a simple software package ? There are lots of uml modelers on wikipedia that don't meet your criteria of being mentioned in a peer reviewed publication like Gaphor and Umbrello. Are you going to mark them for deletion ? For the sake of consistency are there any definitive guidelines what are the requirements for software to be included on wikipedia ? - af1n 12:07, 26 December 2010 (UTC)
I'll try to contact IEEE and get the answers who reviewed these papers, just give me some time.- af1n 12:08, 26 December 2010 (UTC)
I left a note at the AfD page about that. Regards, Comte0 (talk) 16:06, 26 December 2010 (UTC)
BTW, please keep the standard of the discussion high. The derogatory term jamoke (clumsy looser) doesn't suit a technical discussion well. - af1n 12:41, 26 December 2010
Well, this is the reliable source noticeboard. You've been given an answer several kilobytes below, WRT common sense. From my POV, the difference is between keep and speedy keep at the AfD. See also Arguments to avoid in deletion discussions. Regards, Comte0 (talk) 15:34, 26 December 2010 (UTC)
and the guidelines about inclusion are here: Wikipedia:Notability Comte0 (talk) 15:43, 26 December 2010 (UTC)

As said above, those references were taken verbatim from fr:BOUML. The AfD at fr:Discussion:BOUML/Suppression yields lots of other french sources which may support the claim that it's widely used in education:

I agree with Itsmejudith that some of these are not fit to wikipedia, but I tried to be comprehensive. Regards, Comte0 (talk) 00:41, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

I don't think we're disputing whether this software exists or not. It does seem to be used by some people at least, because there are not that many competitors in the open source UML editor market. At best this software would be borderline notable however, making it not really that much of an issue whether the article existed or not. The real problem is that all those sources, with the exception of Kearney and Power, only seem to mention BOUML instead of actually discussing it. This would make it rather difficult to write a reasonable article on BOUML. In the end we're an encyclopedia, not a database of SourceForge projects. —Ruud 01:07, 19 December 2010 (UTC)
They seem to, yes. The reason why I dumped all of these urls above was that I'd like to get a final answer. Regards, Comte0 (talk) 14:44, 19 December 2010 (UTC)
From the engineer perspective wikipedia has much more information about the UML modelers then sourceforge and it gives the user the NPOV that is useful when selecting software. Consider [List of Unified Modeling Language tools]. af1n (talk) 02:11, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

Miscellaneous

Hi, just to say I was blocked on French wikipedia because an administrator reversed the meaning of one sentences I written. Good witch hunt, even though Halloween is already past. Bruno pages (talk) 22:33, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

Hi. We aren't here to take a view on events in French wikipedia. You could help out by pointing to some sources that discuss BOUML in depth. But if you can't or don't want to, then goodbye and good luck. The article in en.wikipedia may be deleted if there aren't enough good sources discussing it. Itsmejudith (talk) 01:21, 19 December 2010 (UTC)
Hi, We aren't here to take a view on events in French wikipedia, really ? in this case why the beginning of this discussion speak about events on fr.wikipedia and indicate I am blocked on it ? What is the link with the (theoretical ) reason of this discussion ? Bruno pages (talk) 09:39, 19 December 2010 (UTC)
We really don't care about all that. This is the reliable sources noticeboard. If you can provide some sources as asked for then please do. Dmcq (talk) 10:27, 19 December 2010 (UTC)
You are seriously mistaken if you only read the beginning of this discussion. You must read it all the way down to the part where I corrected people with "I'd rather have us only discuss the quality of the sources on this noticeboard". Comte0 (talk) 15:15, 19 December 2010 (UTC)
Kearney, S.; Power, J.F. (207). Proceedings of the 19th International Conference on Software Engineering \& Knowledge Engineering (ed.). "REM4j-A framework for measuring the reverse engineering capability of UML CASE tools". {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |lastauthoramp= ignored (|name-list-style= suggested) (help)CS1 maint: numeric names: editors list (link) andAlfonzo, O. and Dominguez, K. and Rivas, L. and Perez, M. and Mendoza, L. and Ortega, M. (2008). IEEE Software Engineering, 2008. ASWEC 2008. 19th Australian Conference on (ed.). "Quality Measurement Model for Analysis and Design Tools Based on FLOSS".{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: editors list (link) - this article compares bouml to StarUML, ArgoUML, Dia, Papyrus and others using MOSCA algorithm and gives it better score then ArgoUML and Dia. - actually compares BOUML to several other modeling toolkits, so your arguments don't hold very much. ArgoUML, StarUML, Umbrello and other similar modeling software is not discussed in much broader scale in scientific documents either. It's very hard to write a scientific article about software that already exists and uses established standards. af1n (talk) 00:07, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

Widely used in education?

  • University of Wisconsin–Parkside Cs475 [60] - af1n
  • School of Engineering and Technology Asian Institute of Technology [61] - af1n
  • Lehigh University CSE216 [62] - af1n
  • Northeastern University CS 5200 [63] - af1n
  • The University of Alabama at Birmingham Dept. of Computer and Information Sciences CS304 [64] - af1n
  • many more, just google: BOUML homework

Back to the subject at hand, I think all we can reliably say about BOUML is something like: "it is widely used in education for teaching UML concepts", sourced with the yopdf.eu link above. Does anybody agree ? Comte0 (talk) 14:44, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

"Widely used" is a very subjective term and not something I would like to conclude from that webpage. Quantitatively we have the SourceForge statistics (compare to Dia) and the Debian popularity contest (compare to dia). —Ruud 14:55, 19 December 2010 (UTC)
There are some bias in those examples. Dia is hosted at gnome.org, not sourceforge; the sf.net statistics can only hint at something bigger. There is a newer BOUML debian package available on sourceforge, so we have to take into account people who install using the package from sf.net, among people who don't reply to the popcon poll. For all those reasons, I think a comparison with StarUML would be better. Comte0 (talk) 16:40, 19 December 2010 (UTC)
To establish notability we could even compare how much the article is read (BOUML vs. Dia) and conclude it is approximately 10% as notable. Personally, I'm even indifferent to whether we should have an article on Dia. In general poorly sourced article do neither much good (because the provide little information to the few people that read them) nor much harm. In this case the author seems to be using the article as a soapbox because of a conflict I do not yet think I fully understand. But I'm probably getting off-topic here regarding reliable sources and this discussion might be better continued at the AfD. —Ruud 15:34, 19 December 2010 (UTC)
why to compare Bouml and Dia whose don't have the same goal ? Dia is a tool to do graphic and sometimes used to draw UML diagrams, it is exactly like to compare Bouml and Paint. Sorry but do you know what UML and a modeler are ? Bruno pages (talk) 16:23, 19 December 2010 (UTC)
I chose Dia because it was the first example of a "small open-source application" that came to mind, not because its feature comparable. —Ruud 16:36, 19 December 2010 (UTC)
This doesn't sound reasonable Ruud. A comparison with Umbrello, ArgoUML and EMF would be much more fair. —af1n 00:29, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
it is difficult to use statistics, except of course in case there is no downloads ;-). One download may be reused by several persons (generally the case in a school because teachers copy the setup/binary to each pc to not have to download it several times), and at the same time some can download and use the tool only one time. On sourceforge the tool itself was downloaded 316000 times, on free.fr where it was placed before this was more difficult because I had to the stat myself and it was not possible to have all the numbers, but I count 160000. After there are a lot of versions and it is not possible to know when people go in a new version. Furthermore Bouml binaries are copied and placed on internet sites, and of course I don't have the number of download made from Linux/Unix distributions or of course not downloaded separately but part of a distribution. Note the Debian popcon stats applies only on people accepting to send statistics. In some cases when I receive a mail from a user I am able to know in which context Bouml is used, Bouml is not only used for studies, but also for industry (from very specific like Honda formula one team or 'serious' like about Airplane / satellite / Nuclear ) and administrations (example Nasa Ames research center or Neederland ministry of justice), mails come from all the world, but, being a primary source and the evil I know information coming from me don't have matter. About use in France for research and teaching perhaps people able to read French can refer to Nipou explanations about PLUME/ESR (Enseignement Supérieur et Recherche) ?Bruno pages (talk) 16:20, 19 December 2010 (UTC)
Yes, statistics are difficult, and no, as the author we can't just take your word for it. Not because we don't think you are untrustworthy, but because there exist people that are, and the Wikipedia community therefore decided to only rely on independent and reliable source. Compare it to double-blind testing in psychology. —Ruud 16:36, 19 December 2010 (UTC)
We can't really do anything useful with these statistics and what's here is just original research to no good effect, a good source discussing the product is what's required. Dmcq (talk) 17:14, 19 December 2010 (UTC)
As far as a definitive answer goes, that's going to be difficult. None of these sources are immediately apparently good enough. I can see two that are websites of higher education institutions. The CNRS one seems to have gone dead. The Ecole des Mines St Etienne is probably just about OK. With a few more like that it would be possible to show notability. I'm veering towards "not quite enough to demonstrate notability", but it should probably be decided at AfD. Itsmejudith (talk) 11:27, 20 December 2010 (UTC)
Hi, your comment concerning the CNRS is misleading, as you can see in [65] Bouml is also used for the company trainings done in 2011 by the CNRS. I'm tired to see people including administrators spreading untruths (or even lies) on Wikipedia to discredit me/Bouml.Bruno pages (talk) 17:22, 21 December 2010 (UTC)
This is us doing our best to find out whether your software is notable enough to warrant an article. If you want to help us in that endeavour, thanks. If you don't, then the article will probably be deleted. Itsmejudith (talk) 17:27, 21 December 2010 (UTC)
The links in Bruno Pages' above post show that CNRS have been using it for training in UMLs that they offer to business. CNRS is prestigious. The source doesn't discuss BOUML though. Itsmejudith (talk) 17:31, 21 December 2010 (UTC)
If you really want to know my dream is to see articles about Bouml removed in all languages, because this seems to be the only way to stop the witch-hunting made against me and to not have misleading information about Bouml. Bouml is a notable software largely used in his domain, lot of people say me they stopped to use already purchased modeler and use Bouml. I worked on it during 8 years alone at home on my free time and I give it for free. I don't need to have articles about Bouml on wikipedia, but I don't like to see misleading information about it. I am not a terrorist or a spammer but someone respectable although I am not a sheep, the way wikipedia administrators manage me since several years is scandalous and unacceptable.Bruno pages (talk) 18:17, 21 December 2010 (UTC)
Bruno, we're not talking about you as a person, and we're not talking about French wikipedia. The only thing we're discussing here is sources about BOUML software. I saw that it is used in some CNRS courses. Is there a book or a magazine that has a fairly long description of BOUML, two or three paragraphs or more, that tells us what BOUML does? Itsmejudith (talk) 20:51, 21 December 2010 (UTC)
Just remember, it's "free as in free speech, not free beer." Comte0 (talk) 18:45, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
How many sources (count) do you need to qualify BoUML as notable ? Are there some algorithms for that ? - af1n
No, just common sense. A single reliable source stating that "BOUML is widely used in education would probably be sufficient, while 20 that state "I used BOUML for a project" would probably not be. —Ruud 02:24, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
I get the idea, however i don't think we can find a peer reviewed study dealing the deployment base of UML modelers on universities. For sure we can say that to some extent it is used in education. - af1n 02:38, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
  • Everything in this section is original research. I haven't seen a reliable, secondary source anywhere in the discussion above stating that "Bouml is widely used in education", just arguments and conclusions based on extrapolation and interpretation of a variety of primary sources. I don't care how many university websites have links to download it. They aren't reliable sources to support the proposition. Fladrif (talk) 01:49, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
These are not links to download BOUML. Please carefully read the provided courses. These are particular example on how BOUML is used in educational institutions around the world to teach the basics of software engineering. af1n (talk) 02:27, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
The problem is that going from "has been used for these specific projects at the specific institutions" to "is widely used" in not necessarily a sound inference. —Ruud 02:38, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
You're right. - af1n 02:41, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
What about this statement ?
"BoUML is used by higher education and research institutions around the world"
I think we could find enough evidence on the internet to support that. Do we need a secondary source that summaries such usage cases ? (I'm sorry about my lack of experience in redacting the encyclopedic knowledge. ). - af1n 07:41, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
You're doing fine af1n. I don't think there's much point in continuing the discussion here right now. Let the afd run its course. Then, if the article is kept, go to WP:WikiProject Software and ask for an expert to help out. Itsmejudith (talk) 20:07, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

Disappearing page

I'm asking here about an issue which perhaps doesn't quite belong here, but this is the closest forum that I could think of as far as relevance to the issue at hand. I have come across an article in the publication New American (a publication of the John Birch Society) which appears to be only preserved in Google's cache (original url). I believe pages only reside in Google's cache for a very limited period. I have tried to use WebCite to archive the cache page, but that failed. If the Wayback Machine has archived it that won't be clear for another 6 months (on average). Is there any way of preserving this page so that it can be referenced in an article? What about making a screen capture of the cached page? Worst case, could the page be used as reference even though it is no longer accessible? __meco (talk) 12:59, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

Material has to be verifiable. So I would say no a page that dose not exstst cannot be used as a source. If its a magazine articel referacne the hard copy not the web edition.Slatersteven (talk) 13:03, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
If it is a print publication, then you can cite the print copy. There is no need for a source to be online. However, I'm not sure that a publication by the John Birch Society would meet our ciiteria as a publication with a reputation for fact-checking. Judging by a quick flip through this discussion, it would only be considered reliable for the opinion of the JBS, not for facts. --Slp1 (talk) 13:08, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
Try using the New American's search feature to find the article. Sometimes web sites simply move the page to a different URL. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 13:28, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
Including a page while it is in Google's archive is fine, because it is verifiable. Obviously if it is removed from the archive the claim it is sourcing can be legitimately removed as well, so I've created a back-up image of the google archive page at http://www.webcitation.org/5vASexJC6. I suggest making the google archive the main reference, and include the back-up image in the reference so that if the google cache is cleared your source can still be verified. Betty Logan (talk) 14:08, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
Yet again I will reiterate that there is not, has never been, and probably never will be, any requirement whatsoever that a source must be backed up with a live internet link. Print is print, and is perfectly fine. That said: nothing in American Opinion is a reliable source for anything except what the John Birch Society and affiliated writers said in print. --Orange Mike | Talk 15:08, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
If the source appears in a print publication that is true, but if it is only published on a website then it must be accessible in some form, either directly or through a recognized archive. Betty Logan (talk) 15:15, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
Agree on both points. (1) A print article does not need to be available online to be used as a source, per Wikipedia:V#Access_to_sources, and an online source that becomes unavailable requires removal of the source only if it is also unavailable in print per Wikipedia:Citing_sources#Preventing_and_repairing_dead_links. (2) New American is not a reliable source for anything other than for what the JBS says about its own opinions. Fladrif (talk) 15:19, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
Well, yeah; of course - that's why I said "Print is print"! American Opinion is a print publication. --Orange Mike | Talk 15:20, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
Orangemike, you've mentioned American Opinion twice now- do you mean New American? I presume so --Slp1 (talk) 17:44, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
Yes, of course; I've dealt with the older publication a lot longer. --Orange Mike | Talk 19:46, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
Or to answer the question if it cannot be verified it can be removed, the medium of verfication is irrelevant. So if the artciel was not availible by any means it would not be RS.Slatersteven (talk) 15:23, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
Whether its online, print or whatever is not really the issue. As has been noted, it isn't, in any event, a reliable source except for information relating to the John Birch Society. --FormerIP (talk) 15:38, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
I haven't used it (yet), but in the future you can try using WebCitation.org which archives web references in case the link ever breaks. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 14:47, 23 December 2010 (UTC)
What did you want to use it as a source for? It may be usable, with attribution, in areas where the JBS's opinion is notable. Squidfryerchef (talk) 14:27, 26 December 2010 (UTC)
Either the COP16, Dihydrogen monoxide hoax or perhaps the Politics of global warming article. __meco (talk) 17:13, 26 December 2010 (UTC)

Anime

Is this an RS for anime generally, and other related stuff such as pucca? See also [66] BE——Critical__Talk 20:24, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

Per its own website, this is basically a glorified fansite with no connection with any legitimate news organization. I would say that it is not a RS and just a big SPS. Fladrif (talk) 20:41, 24 December 2010 (UTC)
It appears to be pretty much a WP:SPS. Jayjg (talk) 20:50, 24 December 2010 (UTC)
Thanks, that's what I thought but I was hoping for the sake of the fan articles (see above) on WP that you would think differently. BE——Critical__Talk 20:56, 24 December 2010 (UTC)
At the bottom of the page you'll see links to staff bios, etc. Squidfryerchef (talk) 15:09, 26 December 2010 (UTC)

Sometimes, the rules can be bent to utilize the next best possible reference material. ANN is accepted as a reliable source concerning Japanese animation, particularly if Kotaku is acceptable for video games despite it being a blog.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 03:57, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

You are going on the assumption that Kotaku is acceptable, and it isn't [67]. The problem isn't confined to the subject of Pucca. BE——Critical__Talk 05:35, 25 December 2010 (UTC)
And you're pointing to a two year old discussion. What is done in practice works much better than what you are proscribing should be forbidden by policy.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 05:57, 25 December 2010 (UTC)
Yeah, Wikipedia either needs to go by its rules or change them. BE——Critical__Talk 06:29, 25 December 2010 (UTC)
Wikipedia policy is explicit. Everthing in an article must be supported by reference to reliable sources. If reliable sources are not available, the article is to be deleted. We do not keep statements in articles supported by non-RS sources like fansites and blogs just because there are no better sources. Fladrif (talk) 15:21, 25 December 2010 (UTC)
I just can't imagine that this would actually be done without a policy change so things can't sit around for years unsourced or be kept at RfD because they "ought to" have good sources. BE——Critical__Talk 17:20, 25 December 2010 (UTC)
I don't know. I was under the impression that Anime News Network is a reliable source, at least when it comes to what it is used for. Just because a bunch of you guys here don't think it's reliable doesn't mean that the people who generally edit the subject area will listen. This bit here seems to suggest that it could feasibly have moved out of the self-published source territory, considering later in the FAQ they note that while they take submissions from the public, it's still under editorial control.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 19:21, 25 December 2010 (UTC)
I'd lean to accepting ANN as a RS (and possibly Kotaku); its an accepted and reputable website, and Ryulong's digging seems to imply that it does have tight editorial control. Sceptre (talk) 19:59, 25 December 2010 (UTC)
This could be. I'm not sure what you're looking at. The FAQ says "ANN is operated by a team of people, under the guidance of Christopher Macdonald, Daniel DeLorme, Zac Bertschy, Egan Loo and Justin Sevakis. A full list of the staff can be found on the staff page....Christopher Macdonald (ANN Editor-in-Chief) represents the owners in all issues. " I don't know what this really means in terms of reliability. However, like I've been saying, we shouldn't make an exception to the rules for these articles, unless that exception is actually in the rules. Not having it in the policy leaves you open to wicked editors like myself who come in and tag your articles and question your sources and notability of subjects. Re this source in particular, there should be a discussion about it. And relative to articles with iffy or primary sourcing (like an article about a popular book which doesn't have any significant third party sources, where the article is based almost entirely on the book itself or the likes of this), we need to know what to do. If the decision is to allow, this needs to be written up in policy, and if the decision is that they don't meet the standard, then we need a way to get rid of them. And hey, I know this was hard for you, thanks for working with me on it (: BE——Critical__Talk 20:10, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

Let's back up. What on earth makes anyone think they are not a RS? Because they sometimes include submitted material on the site? As well damn the New York Times or any newspaper for its editorials and letters! RS covers this exact situation, and staffers and fans are fairly clearly specified as different, satisfying RS's requirement. They do everything a normal Internet media source does; they hire reviewers, columnists, podcasters, etc., to produce original content; they republish other RSs (translating where necessary, quite often given their Japanese focus); they report on cons and online events like software releases; and all sorts of things. (Their encyclopedia, while useful especially as a news index, is irrelevant to the question.) Google has no issue treating it as a news source. It is the principal source in English for many important events like the Tokyo Youth Bill. No one has questioned it before, not even the most ferocious deletionist in the wikiproject has ever said ANN is not a RS.

That we're even discussing it is kind of amazing. Before any more yelping about fan material or being online or Kotaku, let's see some specifics - quotes from RS or V and how exactly, with links, ANN fails them. Anything else is a waste of time or just so much smoke-blowing. --Gwern (contribs) 20:06 25 December 2010 (GMT)

So basically what you're saying is that the wikiproject has its own standards for RS which others have not in the past agreed with. This seems to me to be food for a general discussion. BE——Critical__Talk 20:14, 25 December 2010 (UTC)
No. They're saying that Anime News Network and Kotaku currently qualify as reliable sources, as do other news aggregate blogs.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 20:21, 25 December 2010 (UTC)
In the past they said Kotaku wasn't RS, and right now Fifelfoo, Jayjg and Fladrif are saying ANN is not RS. BE——Critical__Talk 20:29, 25 December 2010 (UTC)
I note that neither you nor they have cited any specific quotes from guidelines or policies, nor provided any ANN links. Hm, who was it talking about a small inbred group having its own standards which everyone else doesn't agree with? Oh right, the other guy opposed to ANN whom you have mysteriously failed to criticize. --Gwern (contribs) 20:37 25 December 2010 (GMT)

Anime News Network is a RS per Wikipedia:WikiProject Anime and manga/Online reliable sources#Situational. While not everything on ANN is reliable some does qualify including reviews and articles, pretty much everything that is not their encyclopedia. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 20:32, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

  • (edit conflict)ANN is one of the most widely respected anime news sources out there and is the "goto" website for news about the domestic and Japanese industry as well as reviews next to Mania.com (formerly AnimeOnDVD). ANN frequently interviews industry personal as well as report on announcements made in Japanese anime and manga magazine, viewer ratings and sales charts as reported by Oricon and Video Research, and receive industry and convention press releases. ANN has a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy as their reporting has had very few errors. And when there is an error, they are quick to correct it. Their review sections has editorial oversight, which is made clear by Executive Editor Zac Bertschy occupational complains on ANN's podcast about the poor quality of reviews submitted by people who try to apply for a reviewer position. The parent company of ANN has also publish Protoculture Addicts, one of the oldest anime and manga magazines in North America, since 2005. They also host regular columns by Jason Thompson (Manga: The Complete Guide) as well as Mike Toole (formerly of AnimeJump) —Farix (t | c) 20:32, 25 December 2010 (UTC)
Oh, Knowledgekid87 now that's a nice resource to know about, that you already have the sources reviewed, along with a guide of how to use them and how not to. It's interesting, because people here were responding to this, see above, as a WP:SPS. I think we're clearing some issues up here. There seem to be little sections of WP with their own traditions and knowledge base re RS. BE——Critical__Talk 20:39, 25 December 2010 (UTC)
I do have another question re notability: what sources are sufficient to establish notability? What is generally sufficient? Is ANN enough? BE——Critical__Talk 20:41, 25 December 2010 (UTC)
Becritical, stop poo pooing over the fact that the WikiProject that primarily uses ANN as a reliable source has proof that it is, as well as their own rules to deal with some of the editorials that may be posted there. And ANN is not being used to establish notability. It is being used to source various other aspects of a page. Generally, if a television show has been released nationally (or internationally), that pretty much cements its notability in the English Wikipedia, and there will be other sources (various news outlets in Japan) that will establish the notability.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 20:46, 25 December 2010 (UTC)
WP:BURDEN, WP:NOTABILITY, and please read the list of unreliable sources here, which includes FireFox news. You seem to be disturbed that I requested you prove notability and come up with some RS so that the Pucca article is not based mainly on primary sources as it was before yesterday [68]. That the show should have notability is acknowledged, but this is Wikipedia- please don't be too bothered when you're requested to source things and meet the other standards of this encyclopedia. It's not that that I have to prove that there is something wrong, it's that every article needs to meet these basic standards. BE——Critical__Talk 21:02, 25 December 2010 (UTC)
And re my sandboxing of the list article, that may have been hasty, but you said yourself it was full of cruft, and certainly at the time it was a list forked from an article which itself didn't have sources or establish notability. BE——Critical__Talk 21:15, 25 December 2010 (UTC)
Pucca isn't Japanese in origin so WP:ANIME and its various rules have no governance over it, and it is therefore completely unrelated to this discussion on Anime News Network.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 21:24, 25 December 2010 (UTC)
Pucca is Korean not Japanese. Although I did find something on ANN for Pucca, are you asking if this [69] is a reliable source? - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 21:36, 25 December 2010 (UTC)
I'm not sure why you're dragging ANN's reliability into the notability of Pucca. ANN doesn't have either a single article or a review on the series. —Farix (t | c) 21:44, 25 December 2010 (UTC)
Apologies, I seem to be mixing up discussions. Anticipation of eggnog. And I have nothing against ANN by the way ([70]). BE——Critical__Talk 21:51, 25 December 2010 (UTC)
Which is neither a review or an article. It is an entry in the user edited encyclopedia section and part of the website that is explicitly classified as an unreliable source at WP:ANIME/RS. —Farix (t | c) 22:01, 25 December 2010 (UTC)
I would further add that anime/manga editors do know how to use ANN appropriately; there is not a single use of ANN's encyclopedia in the main articlespace. --Gwern (contribs) 23:36 25 December 2010 (GMT)
They are present, but not that frequently and generally removed when spotted. Some editors not famliure with the whole subject don't realize that the Encyclopedia section isn't a reliable source. —Farix (t | c) 00:24, 26 December 2010 (UTC)
It appears to meet the requirements of a secondary source. I scrolled down to the bottom of the page and saw an editorial staff, job and internship openings, and so forth. While it appears to be an entrepreneurial organization, it's not a selfpub. The other part of RS is whether something has earned a reputation, and a quick look at Google Books shows that it's been cited many times. When citing a web site, it's good to include the name of the company that owns the site as publisher and the city where it's based out of; the publisher is Anime News Network, and a little more research shows a mailing address in Westmount, Quebec, a suburb of Montreal. Squidfryerchef (talk) 15:05, 26 December 2010 (UTC)
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