User talk:JzG/unreliable sources

Hi - you've been removing freeper sources from articles, which is fine, but please replace them with a real link or a ^{[citation needed]} tag if you can't find a real link rather than leaving them hanging like youve been doing -- or, if the info seems questionable, erase the claim entirely. It's better to have no claim at all than to have one without a source or with a dubious freeper source. Also, by the way, please be judicious about accusing organizations of "copyright violations"; your understanding of fair use may be different from that of others. csloat (talk) 22:40, 18 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I know this may sound petty and somewhat partisan, but (especially since the dispute over the two was the subject of a very high-profile arbitration case), if Free Republic is to be blacklisted, shouldn't its equally BLP-violating mirror image be blacklisted as well? Democratic Underground has 298 links [1], including quite a few article space links and many article talk pages. Horologium (talk) 21:37, 20 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• No, not petty at all. Democratic Underground seems to have the same issues: copyright violation, unreliable. I will add it to the list. Guy (Help!) 08:32, 21 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

That's... well, a lot of links. I'm going to see about going through the list of the Spartacus links. Looking over the site, I have trouble seeing whether anything on it could possibly be used for verification of anything on WP. Polemics, fringe theories, etc. And I even have personal affection for some fringe theories but that doesn't mean I can't recognize they are fringe theories and of only marginal use to Wikipedia and not at all as RSs. Thanks for the list. If I come across any similarly unreliable source sites in widespread use, do you want a heads up or should I just pursue them myself? Cheers, Pigman☿ 22:51, 25 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Eh, maybe it's not all bad. But certainly a mixed bag and certainly promotional to be inserted by the owner. Pigman☿ 23:09, 25 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Should this site be on your list: www.hollywoodusa.co.uk

Looks like copied (copyvio) garbage

IP4240207xx (talk) 04:35, 11 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

We seem to be using *.sourcewatch.org a lot, even on BLPs. Useful as it may be, it's still an open Wiki and has a political bent, to boot. A candidate for your list, I think. <eleland/talkedits> 16:21, 2 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Here is another one: http://current.com/

IP4240207xx (talk) 20:17, 4 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Would it be possible to blacklist these "sources", with a whitelist to the main page of each on the Wikipedia articles pertaining to them? I cannot see of any reason that these sites should show up anywhere in Wikipedia, and while there are plenty of talk page links still in place, many (if not most) are in archives, which don't get edited and won't trip the blacklist block. Horologium (talk) 18:10, 20 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• It's usually considered less disruptive to review and depopulate first, as I did with Free Republic. Guy (Help!) 19:54, 20 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Did you remove all of the Freep links, or just those on article pages? As I mentioned at that AN thread, there are currently 310 links to Democratic Underground, but many of them are on talk pages, user pages, and user talk pages. What is the protocol for removal? I'm hesitant of getting several hundred outraged messages from people screaming that I should stay out of their pages, out of the archives, or whatever. Horologium (talk) 20:00, 20 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hey, I was just over on one page where you deleted some "Worth Playing" references. My only complaint is, when you deleted a couple of references of the < ref name = "..." > format, yet you didn't delete the subsequent recalls of these ref names (Here's where I deleted them to tidy up).

People use this "ref name = " form for just one purpose: when they want to reuse the same reference multpile times. This can be to minimise the number of "different" references used in an article, or just to give detailed referencing while saving on typing/article space. It's described

. After the initial declaration ( < ref name = "some site" > ... < / ref > ) that same reference can be called againand again any number of times within that article just using a mini-tag ( < ref name = "some site" / > ) - i.e. without entering all the details again. (Very useful!)

So if you see this "ref name = '...' " form when you're deleting a reference, there are almost certain to be later mini-references throughout the article. You really need to scan the article for these and delete them too, otherwise you're gonna leave a lot of orphaned reference pointers littering articles, and messing up the article's reference section (note the useless no 10 reference and the big red warning text in the reference section in this version of the page).

I've fixed this now, so you don't need to do anything. I'm just informing you here, so that you can avoid messing up the articles you're working to improve. Hope it helps.

Cheers, The Zig (talk) 23:47, 18 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I just went through and cleaned out a bunch of links to various articles in DKosopedia, the wiki run by the people at Daily Kos. I left the link from the Daily Kos page, and only removed links in article space, not on user pages or article talk pages (or AFD discussions; gotta love using a wiki as a reference to oppose deletion...). There were quite a few links in article space, some of which were actually being used as references. Horologium (talk) 20:25, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]