User:Headbomb/unreliable

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

How to install

unreliable.js
DescriptionEasily detects unreliable and potentially unreliable sourcing
Author(s)
WP:TOPSCRIPTS #13
UpdatedMarch 11, 2024
    (28 days ago)
SourceUser:Headbomb/unreliable.js
Method 1 – Automatic
  1. Go in the 'Gadgets' tab of your preferences and select the 'Install scripts without having to manually edit JavaScript files' option at the bottom of the 'Advanced' section. Refresh this page after enabling that.
  2. Click on the 'Install' button in the infobox on the right, or at the top of the source page.
Method 2 – Manual
  1. Go to
    skin
    .)
  2. Add importScript( 'User:Headbomb/unreliable.js' ); // Backlink: [[User:Headbomb/unreliable.js]] to the page (you may need to create it), like this.
  3. Save the page and bypass your cache to make sure the changes take effect.

Once installed, you can go to User:Headbomb/unreliable/testcases to see if it works.

What it does

The script breaks down external links (including DOIs) to various sources in different 'severities' of unreliability. In general, the script is kept in sync with

and common sense "duh" case I come across (like a parody website) with some minor differences.

Severity Appearance Explanation
Blacklisted example.com The source is blacklisted on Wikipedia and can only be used with
WP:RSPSOURCES are highlighted. Only in extremely exceptional circumstances should those links be allowed to remain, typically only on articles about said source. For example, a link to Breitbart News
is appropriate on the Breitbart News article and pretty much nowhere else.

Note: Some blacklistings have a time component, like Lenta.ru (blacklisted from 2014 onwards). The script cannot tell if an article is from before or after the time of blacklisting, and so will highlight all cases.

Deprecated/predatory example.com There is community consensus to
deprecate the source. The source is considered generally unreliable, and use of the source is generally prohibited. This includes a slew of predatory publishers and journals, propaganda, fake news
, and other terrible sources of information. The source should only be used in exceptional circumstances, similar to blacklisted sources, but these circumstances are not as rare.

Note: Some deprecations have a time component, like journals from the formerly-reputable Pulsus Group, acquired by the predatory OMICS Publishing Group in 2016. The script cannot tell if an article is from before or after the time of acquisition, and so will highlight all cases.

Generally unreliable example.com The source has a poor reputation for fact-checking, fails to correct errors, is
violates copyrights
, or is otherwise of low-quality. The source should generally be avoided, but context matters a lot here.

Note: In the case of user-generated content and social media, first check who the user/account is (

Randy in Boise vs NASA
official account).

Marginally reliable example.com Sources which may or may not be appropriate for Wikipedia. For instance
WP:RSPSOURCES
are currently detected.)
Note: This is where using your brain matters the most as these sources are generally the least problematic and may not even be problematic at all. This is mostly a double-check this reminder, rather than a probably should be removed warning.

If you see a source that should be highlighted but isn't (or shouldn't be highlighted but is), first let me know on the

WP:RSN
, in case of mistakes, accidental misclassifications, etc.

Common cleanup and non-problematic cases

See also: Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2022-08-01/Tips and tricks
  • WP:RSCONTEXT
The first question to answer about whether or not a source is reliable is reliable for what? For example,
WP:BLPSOURCE
, and many other policies and guidelines. Compare these two situations, using the same hypothetical source
Secret
CIA experiments like MKUltra successfully indoctrinated the French and Italian prime ministers in the 1970s. Evidence for these this is secretly held in Area 51. It is suspected that the current heads of state of Lesotho, Canada, and Finland are under currently influence, but experts' opinion vary on whether or not the CIA truly controls them, or if the Reptilians or perhaps even Zeta Reticulans are using the CIA as a proxy.[1]
  1. ^ Smith, John (16 September 2006). "MKUltra: IRREFUTABLE Proof of Reptilians Infiltration". Unreliable.com.
Conspiracy theorists like John Smith often claim that CIA "mind control" experiments have indoctrinated heads of states.[1]
  1. ^ Smith, John (16 September 2006). "MKUltra: IRREFUTABLE Proof of Reptilians Infiltration". Unreliable.com.
The script cannot distinguish between these nuances, so use it as a scalpel, not a hammer. If you are worried about the drive-by removal of a source which is used acceptably, you can always put a
comment
next to the source, e.g. <ref>Gawker... <ref/><!-- See [[Talk:Article#Should we use Gawker?]]-->.
Often times, the 'problem' highlighted by the script is really a citation in need of cleanup more than an actual sourcing problem. For instance,
not considered a reliable source. However, people will often link to Amazon.com as a way to refer to a book sold on Amazon. In those case, the Amazon citation should simply be converted to a proper {{cite book
}}
  • Amazon.com → Serway, Raymond; Moses, Clement; Moyer, Curt (2004). Modern Physics (3rd ed.). Brooks Cole.
    ISBN 978-0534493394
    .
Likewise, if an {{
ASIN with and ISBN and/or OCLC
number, if available
If there's an ASIN as well as an ISBN/OCLC, the ASIN should be removed, otherwise leave it there as an identifier of 'last resort'. Likewise, if you find a link to a good document hosted in violation of copyright, simply update the citation to refer to the proper document, and remove the copyright violating link.
  • External links
Many sources are not acceptable as sources, but will be acceptable as
WP:ELNO
.
  • General repositories
Many citations will look like
Green tickY Lewoniewski, W.; Węcel, K.; Abramowicz, W. (2017). "Analysis of References Across Wikipedia Languages". In Damaševičius, R.; Mikašytė, V. (eds.). Information and Software Technologies. Communications in Computer and Information Science. 756. Cham: Springer. pp. 561–573.
ISBN 978-3-319-67641-8
.
When you have a yellow "article" link, but a plain DOI link, that usually means the article links to a general repository like
DOI prefix
is over 10.20000). Note that if there is no freely-available PDF at those repositories, but other identifiers (like the DOI or ISBN) are present, you can remove the repository link as pointless.
When no plain DOI link is present, you may wish to verify that the document being cited is from a proper journal, as general repositories usually do not filter against preprints and papers from predatory journals being uploaded. For example, this publication, like the one above, is also hosted on ResearchGate
Red XN Feng, Youjun; Wu, Zuowei (2011). "Streptococcus suis in Omics-Era: Where Do We Stand?". Journal of Bacteriology & Parasitology. S2: 001.
Inspection of this source reveals that the Journal of Bacteriology & Parasitology is published by the OMICS Publishing Group, one of the most infamous predatory publishers out there. Thus this second source is problematic, while the first one (published by Springer Science+Business Media), is not.
Google Books and OCLC host a variety of content, including self-published books and books from blacklisted publishers. As such, both Google Books and OCLC links will be highlighted in yellow. These links will often not be problematic, but you may wish to verify that the book being cited is from a reputable publisher.
Green tickY Wong, S. S. M. (1998). Introductory Nuclear Physics (2nd ed.). New York: Wiley Interscience.
OCLC 1023294425
.
Red XN Pratt, J. (2011). Stewardship Economy: Private Property Without Private Ownership. San Francisco: Lulu.com.
OCLC 813296703
.
Note that if you have an 'main' OCLC link, it's usually a good idea to convert it into an OCLC identifier (or remove the link if the OCLC identifier is already there), as it makes it look like a freely available version of the book is available.
  • Preprints
The links to
cite biorxiv
}}.
  • Social media and video-sharing platforms
The sources are as reliable as the account owner is. For example, a
Randy in Boise uploaded a video from BBC News
or some other valid source.
Green tickY Valentine, Andre. (15 July 2023). "Celebrating the Webb Space Telescope's First Year of Science on This Week @NASA – July 14, 2023". NASA's YouTube Channel – via YouTube.com.
Red XN CoasterFan2105. (6 May 2016). "California Trains! 1 Hour, 150+ Trains!". CoasterFan2105's YouTube Channel – via YouTube.com.

Limitations

What the script looks for

The script only operates on

  • URL links, including those generated through templates like {{citation}}, {{cite journal}}, {{cite web}}, {{doi}}, and others.
  • If no URL link is present, the text inside <ref>...</ref> tags
  • If no URL link is present, the text inside list items

That is, it will detect links to Deprecated.com, as well as references and list items that mention Deprecated.com, but it won't recognize other mentions of Deprecated.com in the text. In practice, this means that all URLs are checked (regardless of where they are), as well as all lists of publications/bibliographies/references that follow a regular format (including those in the Further reading/External links sections).

  • John Smith (2014). "[https://www.deprecated.com/article Article of things]". ''Deprecated.com''. Accessed 2020-02-14.
→ John Smith (2014). "Article of things". Deprecated.com. Accessed 2020-02-14.
  • John Smith (2014). "Article of things". Available on ''Deprecated.com''. Accessed 2020-02-14.
→ John Smith (2014). "Article of things". Available on Deprecated.com. Accessed 2020-02-14.

The script can easily classify

publishers, some are individual journals
.

The script can also classify DOIs through "starting patterns", but this is trickier. For example,

doi:10.1023/a:1022444005336). They could also be so closely related to the patterns of other journals to cause a collision
.

False positives

Because the script is looking for strings that correspond to URL domains anywhere in the url, it could match the urls of other websites. For example, the script cannot distinguish between

Both will be highlighted as 'deprecated', even though Alexa.com is not.

False negatives

Because the script is looking for sources that are often/generally problematic in some way, sources that are generally acceptable (e.g. Toxicology Reports) will not get flagged if they are misused or if a certain article is not reliable. For example,

  • Pott-Junior, H.; et al. (2021). "Use of ivermectin in the treatment of Covid-19: A pilot trial". Toxicology Reports. 8: 505–510.
    doi:10.1016/j.toxrep.2021.03.003
    .

is a retracted paper. The script has no way of knowing that this is the case, and thus will not flag the paper as problematic.

Likewise an

WP:MEDRS
. The script will also not flag those.

Likewise, if no URL/DOI is provided, the source will get not flagged. For example, the following paper

  • Lawal, J. R.; El Yuguda, A. D.; Ibrahim, U. I. (2017). "Survey on Prevalence of Newcastle Disease Antibodies in Village Poultry at Live Birds Markets in Gombe, Nigeria". Journal of Animal Sciences and Livestock Production. 1 (1): 1–9.

is from an

iMedPub journal, a subsidiary of the (in)famous OMICS Publishing Group
predatory publisher, and is not getting flagged because of a lack of recognizable URL/DOI.

Comments

For technical reasons, it will also sometimes highlight entire comments made in ordered and unordered lists for (i.e. comments that start with * or #):

This can be avoided by giving the actual link, in which case only the link will be highlighted

You can also use a [.] instead of a dot to suppress the highlighting.

Another alternative is to use : instead of * or # to start the comments.

Keep When searching for sources, I found something on Deprecated.com that would indicate that the Foobarological Remedies are responsible for over 25% of remissions. This should count for meeting
WP:N. User:Example (talk
) 17:29, 19 August 2020 (UTC)
Actually, that site is not a reliable source, and does not established notability, much less efficacy per
talk
) 18:29, 19 August 2020 (UTC)

However, this will

cause accessibility problems
, suppress such highlighting in the entire comment chain (including future comments), and will cause the script to not warn you (or anyone else) that a problematic source was mentioned (including on later comments), so this method is not normally recommended.

Custom rules

It is possible to define your own set of additional rules (so that, for example, you could test a new rule locally before proposing it). These rules will be applied after the default rules, so if a link matches both a default rule and a custom rule, only the default rule's formatting will be applied. To add custom rules, create the page Special:MyPage/unreliable-rules.js and add the following: 

unreliableCustomRules = [
	{
		comment: 'Name of the rule', // Will show as a tooltip
		regex: /regex rules/i
		css: {CSS style to apply to links that match the rule},
		filter: (filter to use for the rule, optional),
	},
];

See the section below for concrete examples. You may add additional rule blocks by copying and pasting the code between the curly braces multiple times. Make sure that the closing curly brace has a comma after it. You can also look at User:Headbomb/unreliable.js for other examples (search for the phrase var rules—your custom rules should be formatted the same way).

Example 1: Bypass highlighting

For example, if you do not wish to have Google Books links highlighted in yellow, you can add the following to Special:MyPage/unreliable-rules.js 

unreliableCustomRules = [
	{
		comment: 'Plain google books',
		regex: /\b(books\.google)/i,
		css: { "background-color": "" }
	},
];

and the background colour #fffdd0 will no longer be applied. If you instead want to change Google Books links to a different color with a red border, like #7cfc00, then use

css: { "background-color": "#7cfc00", "border":"2px solid red"}

instead of

css: { "background-color": "" }

in the above example.

Example 2: Add a source

If you have a specific source that needs to be added, you should generally ask for it to be added on the

WP:RSN (if consensus is needed), this way everyone using the script can benefit from its detection. However, if the source doesn't warrant being flagged by the script for everyone, but you'd like it to be flagged for you (for example, Biodiversity Heritage Library and ChemSpider links), you can create your own rules by adding the following to Special:MyPage/unreliable-rules.js

unreliableCustomRules = [
	{
		comment: 'Biodiversity Heritage Library',
		regex: /\b(biodiversitylibrary\.com)/i,
		css: { "background-color": "#40e0d0" }
	},
	{
		comment: 'ChemSpider',
		regex: /\b(chemspider\.com)/i,
		css: { "background-color": "#d8bfd8" }
	},
];

and these links will be highlighted in #d8bfd8 and #40e0d0 respectively.

Source code

Main page: User:Headbomb/unreliable.js

While I (

creffett
. Anything clever in the code is from them. I'm mostly just maintaining the list of sources to be covered.

See also

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Headbomb/unreliable&oldid=1200262511"