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Middle East Quarterly book review

This addition [1] (the block quote) in particular, is sourced to an opinion piece in the

Khirurg (talk
) 08:32, 30 January 2018 (UTC).

Question to RS volunteers. If that quote from the Middle East Quarterly by historian
wp:reliable) such as by Donald W. Beachler (2011) The genocide debate: politicians, academics, and victims, Palgrave Macmillan, p. 123.[2], is the quote or citing what historian Pipes' views about the issue are ok for use in a Wikipedia article? Best.Resnjari (talk
) 08:52, 30 January 2018 (UTC)
The book review text is simply summarising McCarthy's book and cannot be considered (in itself) a statement of Pipes' views on the figures presented. The review could reasonably be used to support a statement along the liens of 'Maccarthy's work has been described as significant and reliable by other historians such as Pipes (ref)'. Martinlc (talk) 13:08, 30 January 2018 (UTC)
But the problem is Pipes is not a historian, he is in fact a failed historian. He dropped out of academia and is primarily known for in character assassination of academics he dislikes (
Khirurg (talk
) 00:22, 31 January 2018 (UTC)
Sorry, but that is not the case. The attempted character assassination there is contradicted by his biography and the wiki article
wp:secondary. Question to RS volunteers: If one uses Bleacher as opposed to the original MEQ source (to allay concerns) to cite Pipes, would that suffice (as in this instance it would have had the additional scrutiny of another historian as well)? Best.Resnjari (talk
) 07:34, 31 January 2018 (UTC)
If Bleacher cited Pipes for the figures from McArthy's book then he was wrong to do so. If Pipes has presented his own data somewhere it can be cited. Neitehr Bleacher nor Pipes' quoting of Macarthy's stats can be considered corroboration.Martinlc (talk) 12:21, 31 January 2018 (UTC)
@
wp:secondary, instead of using MEQ as a reference to source Pipes would it be appropriate to just cite Bleacher as a reference who cites Pipes instead? Best.Resnjari (talk
) 13:36, 31 January 2018 (UTC)
  • Comment I am really confused, Resnjari, why don't you just cite McCarthy for what McCarthy has said?Seraphim System (talk) 09:42, 1 February 2018 (UTC)
    • I assume the answer is that McCarthy's work is of dubious RS status and the chain of citations is intended to somehow make the conclusions usable in WP. Book reviews are not peer reviewed even in journals that are peer reviewed. The most that can be said of Pipes' summary is that McArthy's conclusions were not obviously incorrect, which is a low bar.Martinlc (talk) 11:06, 1 February 2018 (UTC)
I checked Google Scholar and the source does not seem to be of dubious RS status. I think the citations in some of these Ottoman-era persecution articles to Bat Ye'or and Peter Balakian are more of a problem, since Ye'or doesn't have any academic credentials and has never held any academic position and Balakian is a poet. I don't think we should censor widely cited academic sources because some parts of their work may be controversial. Quoting McCarthy for his own estimates of persecuted Muslims is within Wikipedia's policies, especially as the number seems to have been repeated by multiple subsequent sources.Seraphim System (talk) 14:15, 1 February 2018 (UTC)
  • Adding that the quotes cited in the diff above say McCarthy is often viewed as a scholar on the Turkish side of the debate. - they don't say he is dubious and based on how widely cited he is, and his academic credentials, I'm not sure what you mean by "dubious RS status". That said, to answer the original question, It puts into perspective the deportation of Armenians in 1915 and turns this from an act of hatred into one motivated by fear (had the Armenians, with Russian support, rebelled, Ottoman Muslims could have expected to be slaughtered). This is at the least a
    WP:FRINGE
    . It seems pretty speculative to me. There is a lot of "I wonder what he felt like that night, sword in hand, waiting for the coming battle" type historical narrative that isn't particularly suitable for Wikipedia style articles.
  • I don't think this is the right way to deal with the problems in the area. Yes, the persecution of Muslims in the Balkans is not in dispute, but genocide studies is always focused on the victims, its not about making these types of justifications or comparisons. (The same is true for the Balkans and ICTY obviously and this is pretty much settled in scholarship. I don't think the majority of
    WP:RS have drawn an explicit connection between the Armenian genocide and human rights abuses against Muslims in the Balkans and Greece - they are both condemned. I would be extremely surprised if strong academic sourcing exists for this.)Seraphim System (talk
    ) 15:15, 1 February 2018 (UTC)
Seraphim System, Pipes is no fringe historian and if anything criticism toward him comes from parts of the Muslim side and parts of the left as opposed to anything else. Martinlc, he did a review of McCarthy's book so is it ok to use and say in a sentence or two Daniel Pipes states that ..... McCarthy's work is so on and so forth but citing Bleacher, that is the jist of my question. I am not using Pipes to cite McCarthy's numbers, but to cite the context and views among scholars who are heavyweights, experts in Islam and Genocide studies of where McCarthy's work sits in that spectrum. Best.Resnjari (talk) 15:22, 1 February 2018 (UTC)
So, I am surprised to find that there are actually a lot of sources that support this. I thought a majority position like this would at least be mentioned here
WP:RS but this is a bit much, imo.) The problem with Pipes language in my view is that it is more extreme - it guesses at motivations, calls it "deportation", discusses intent (implying a legalistic argument against genocide), etc. - the majority of academic sources do not call the genocide into question. It's a subtle difference, but important. Having checked for additional sources, it seems a more muted version is not only non-controversial, but widely considered an essential part of scholarship about the Armenian Genocide. (I guess I should read things other then Wikipedia from time to time?) This can easily sourced to much stronger sources than Pipes or McCarthy, and I don't think either of these sources is preferable source where others exist: Britannica, Hovannisian a blackwell source discussing McCarthy and Mann Altorki again Seraphim System (talk
) 16:47, 1 February 2018 (UTC)
Seraphim System, yes over the years there are more and more academics doing research Muslim civilian casualties/expulsions regarding the Ottoman era, as also on the Armenian Genocide. I am aware of Mann and also Bloxham both of which have been used and make similar remarks to Pipes on McCarthy. Nonetheless back to the main thing here, Pipes, a noted historian only does a review of McCarthy's work and gives his analysis of it and roughly he says that McCarthy's work places into context what was happening to the Ottoman Empire during its violent breakup and events such as the Armenian Genocide and others. Pipes does not deny the Genocide. Please read the whole review. Bleacher quotes Pipes in the discussion about Genocide. My question is about use of Pipes via Bleacher citing Pipes' view as he is a heavyweight in academia especially relating to Islam studies. Best.Resnjari (talk) 17:42, 1 February 2018 (UTC)
I can only answer the original question, because I'm not able to access the citation you gave to Bechler. The review is written by Pipes before MEQ was "peer-reviewed" so it is
WP:RS for anything other than the think tank's position. Seraphim System (talk
) 02:32, 2 February 2018 (UTC)
Thank you for your honesty. As for Pipes, he is definitely not a historian of any kind. Here's what a real historian
Khirurg (talk
) 07:05, 2 February 2018 (UTC)
For additional perspective, Pipes wrote his supportive review of McCarthy in the mid-90s, the golden era of Turkey-Israel relations. Now that Turkey-Israel relations have gone south, the MEQ has changed its tune [4].
Khirurg (talk
) 07:12, 2 February 2018 (UTC)
@Seraphim System, that's the clarification on MEQ i wanted about usage. Nonetheless on another matter how has Pipes failed? He graduated with a PHD from Harvard and taught as a historian of Islamic studies at a whole host of prestigious universities? To date Harvard has not taken away the granting of his PHD and he has not been declassified in some way within the scholarly community as a historian.Resnjari (talk) 14:10, 2 February 2018 (UTC)
I would urge everyone exercise the usual care in discussing living persons., including scholars. A personal opinion like the one from Benin above is obviously in BLP/tabloid territory. The main objection I have to Pipes is that the review is self-published.Seraphim System (talk) 14:23, 2 February 2018 (UTC)
Agreed, hence my questions. Also agreed on Benin.Resnjari (talk) 14:26, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

Quick question about wikilinking

When citing a journal as a ref, do we have a guideline that encourages wikilinking to WP articles about the journal itself and/or author in the actual citation footnote? I ask because it's customary to link the citation to a verifiable article that was published in the journal, or at least to the journal issue (if online) rather than wikilinking to WP. Atsme📞📧 16:49, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

Sorry, I fail to get your point.Gen. in cases of materials that are accesible online, the link will obviously target the off-WP site (that houses the research-paper etc.) but the accompanying details (journal name etc.) may be wikilinked.In offline cases, Volume/Issue/Page no. will be obviously not-linked whilst the name of the journal/book can be linked internally.And, authors are never wikilinked but author-linked.But, can you be more specific? Regards:)~ Winged BladesGodric 16:55, 2 February 2018 (UTC)
I think she means like this:
  • MacDonald, Nathan (2017). "The Date of the Shema (Deuteronomy 6:4–5)".
    doi:10.15699/jbl.1364.2017.196197
    .
or
I am unaware of any guideline favoring or disfavoring these kinds of bibliographic wikilinks. I find them annoying, as I waste time trying to figure out which link is the correct one that leads to to the actual source and not some other WP article Jytdog (talk) 17:04, 2 February 2018 (UTC)
Hmm..To be fair, I like the internal-linkings:) Anyways, it's per the discretion of the editor.~ Winged BladesGodric 17:08, 2 February 2018 (UTC)
Well... we do want to avoid OVERlinking. No need to repeatedly wikilink to the same WP article in multiple citations. Editorial judgment can be used. Blueboar (talk) 17:25, 2 February 2018 (UTC)
I'm actually referring to Male expendability. Atsme📞📧 18:29, 2 February 2018 (UTC)
That all seems normal, with WLs to a couple of the journals and one of the authors. I re-read your OP. Are you talking about doing this, Journal of Genocide Research, instead of this: Journal of Genocide Research? Jytdog (talk) 19:04, 2 February 2018 (UTC)
Yes - if there are online links to the verifiable information, that should be made available for our readers first and foremost. I'm of the mind that including Wikilinks in the citations can be more of a distraction than helpful. They are typically added in the body text when citing the journal or author and I wanted to know if there is a guideline approving inclusion of wikilinks in the citation. Atsme📞📧 20:11, 2 February 2018 (UTC)
I am not really sure if this noticeboard about the reliability of sources was the best place to ask as opposed to somewhere like Help talk:Citation Style 1, but I think that the wikilinks can be useful in some cases however if the article is linked in the text body they no need to link a citation. Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 21:07, 2 February 2018 (UTC)
It does occasionally flare up at Help talk:Citation Style 1, yes. About the only thing that gets agreement is that the only external link should be to the actual text of the source, and (optionally) the same document hosted by an archiving service. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:54, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

Germanic peoples

  • Pavlovic, Zoran (2007). Europe. Infobase Publishing. ISBN 1-4381-0455-3. Described by publisher as "a useful reference on the geography of Europe" [5]. Pavlovic appears to be a Psychologist who writes about many things including the relationship between Eastern Europe and the rest of Europe [6] although I have not yet found confirmation that he is the one to write this book.
  • Minahan, James (2000). One Europe, Many Nations: A Historical Dictionary of European National Groups. Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN 0-313-30984-1. [Google books.] Described by publisher as "an essential guide to the national groups populating the so-called Old World-groups that continue to dominate world headlines and present the world community with some of its most intractable conflicts". James Minahan on Amazon [7]. I note from Amazon: "JAMES B. MINAHAN is an independent researcher living in Barcelona, Spain. He is the author of Nations Without States: A Historical Dictionary of Contemporary National Movements (Greenwood, 1996), which was named an ALA/RASD 1996 Outstanding Reference Source, and Miniature Empires: A Historical Dictionary of the Newly Independent States (Greenwood, 1998)." From what I can see on Amazon, every entry about a modern group noted as Germanic is written as a passage about who they are descended from.

Not saying anything negative about the authors, my two cents is that possibly the two sources can be generalized as being, with regards to this specific subject, general/popular, and not academic or specialist. It would be good to get community feedback about whether such sources are good enough, especially if none better can be found (implying, according to a long running argument on the article, that specialists do NOT use the term "Germanic people" to refer to modern groups this way).--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 09:28, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

Just noting that almost all Irish people speak English (a Germanic language) as their first language, but no one would say "The Irish are a Germanic people". Listing off modern ethnic groups that speak a Germanic language and claim lineal descent from the "original" speakers of those languages as "Germanic peoples" is almost as weird; or perhaps even weirder, given that "Germanic" as a term is used primarily in historical linguistics and so one would assume a "Germanic person" is someone whose first language is a Germanic language regardless of their ethnicity (similarly to how the early inhabitants of Greece are classified as Greek or not based on the language that we assume they spoke). Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 09:46, 31 January 2018 (UTC)
True, but I suppose supporters of this insertion would say modern Germanic peoples also have (or see themselves as having?) Germanic ancestry, as well as the connection to language (and perhaps other cultural things) that come from those ancestors. It seems some people talk and think this way, but OTOH the question here is whether the sources are considered reliable enough to have it in an encyclopedia. You have not commented on the reliability of the sources.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 11:04, 31 January 2018 (UTC)
I think the article scope needs to be clarified first. If its about historical (as in, Roman era) Germanic groups, then its irrelevant if the sources are reliable, they are not relevant to the article scope. If its about all Germanic-derived ethnic groups, then the above may be relevant. Only in death does duty end (talk) 16:07, 31 January 2018 (UTC)
(Respponding to AL, not OID) Well, yeah, but in reality almost everyone in Ireland also has (at least some) Germanic ancestry. We were conquered by the "Anglo-Normans" (don't ask what they were because I don't know -- their name implies Norsemen but they spoke French), most of our cities were founded by "Vikings" from modern Norway, we were later colonized by the "English" (and "Scots"), and then part of the United Kingdom for more than a century. Irish people don't generally identify as "Germanic" because of a fictive national identity, not because of any certainty about stronger genealogical ties to the ancient Celts than to the ancient Germans. Modern scholars, when discussing such issues usually recognize that such things are usually not based in fact. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 20:28, 31 January 2018 (UTC)
@Only. I think that approach creates a chicken and egg problem. FWIW the article has definitely always been historically focused, but the question keeps arising as to whether this is enough. And the discussion of whether the article should include mention of modern equivalents, depends on whether there are reliable sources (and notability). You could argue that if there are another option is to have two articles, but no one has ever proposed this, because it seems everyone who wants the modern Germanic peoples included also (I think MAINLY) wants them presented as modern versions of the ancient peoples, and that's their main point. They would have nothing much extra to write about which is not covered in other articles? I notice we have articles such as Pan-Germanism and Germanic languages (which covers "Germanic speaking peoples"). @Hijiri yes, but even fictional or semi-fictional narratives can have WP articles about them, if notable etc, and in fact all nations are "in the mind" and based on narratives which are basically always "questionable". I am in any case thinking that the subject we are discussing (probably like with the two sources being used) is more connected to a sort of light version of Pan-Germanism?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:21, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

More feedback would be great. In the meantime a definition question to help focus. Are these two sources not tertiary sources?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:44, 3 February 2018 (UTC)

Cryptocurrency Notability

Since the notability noticeboard is no longer active, and the Cryptocurrency task force is not very active too, posting here. To prevent creation of unimportant cryptocurrency coin articles, and to keep important articles we should be guided by the existing notability guidelines. However, editor Jytdog challenged the existing guidelines. In my opinion a market capitalization which brings a currency to the top 50 of Coinmarketcap.com is sufficient, and or enough coverage in reliable secondary sources (majority likely in the Crypto Trade Press). Additional the talk page template should be updated with a direct COI warning, since it is a common issue that involved people edit their currency. Related current AFDs,

  • a (Cardano) Notability per MC (Market cap) / NT (New technology) / UB (User base) unclear
  • b (IOTA) Notability per MC (Market cap) / NT (New technology) / UB (User base) unclear
  • c (Shadow, now Particl) Notability per MC (Market cap) unclear / NT (New technology) unclear / UB (User base) unclear.
    prokaryotes (talk
    ) 09:57, 29 January 2018 (UTC)
One way would be to simply say that it is only notable if RS outside the "system" have noticed it.Slatersteven (talk) 10:15, 29 January 2018 (UTC)
There is no "existing guideline" that is specific for notability of a cryptocurrency. Per the
WP:PAG policy, a guideline is a set of "best practices that are supported by consensus." What Prokaryotes is linking to above and calling "the existing notability guidelines" is Wikipedia:WikiProject_Numismatics/Cryptocurrency_task_force/notability, which was created three years ago in one diff per its history, and is watched by less than 30 people per the page information. So we follow GNG and probably better NCORP. Jytdog (talk
) 15:26, 29 January 2018 (UTC)
The amount of edits a page receives or the amount of people watching a page isn't really a strong argument. The page was likely posted after a consensus process by the Cryptocurrency Task Force took place, crafted elsewhere.
prokaryotes (talk
) 16:07, 29 January 2018 (UTC)
Please review
WP:PAG; you have done nothing to show that it has any level of consensus. However, its having been edited one time, three years ago, and its being watched by less than 30 people are evidence that hardly anyone is even aware of it. Something people are hardly aware of cannot be said to have consensus much less be a guideline. It would be a governance nightmare if anybody could create a page in project space, call it a guideline, and it actually would be one. I will not reply further on this issue.Jytdog (talk
) 16:11, 29 January 2018 (UTC)
The Cryptocurrency Task Force lists its Notability Guideline on their page under guides, stating, "On which cryptocurrencies are notable."
prokaryotes (talk
) 16:17, 29 January 2018 (UTC)
Since you have brought a new claim, I will reply. Yes it was added to that page at the same time it was created. The project page itself has less than 30 watchers per its information page. There are no walled gardens here, and one editor in a barely-breathing task force cannot proclaim "Guideline"! Again what you are claiming here has nothing to do with how Wikipedia actually works. Jytdog (talk) 16:24, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

Given the amount of hype and speculation in the industry (that translates to extremely strong incentives for editors to violate

talk
) 17:27, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

Alternative proposal ,based on a recent discussion at NCORP: we should define what sources, those generally specific to Cryptocurrency, are considered reliable for that field, with the presumption that more general sources like the NY Times or the Verge are automatically considered reliable and do not have to be listed (eg this is like what we do for

WP:VG/S for video game sources). Once you can set what sources should be considered independent and reliable, then you can use the GNG as the baseline without having to establish any other cases. Now, if that cuts out too many types of cryptocurrency, then maybe we should consider a more specialized SNG (or on an existing SNG page), but it is almost always best for notability to see if you can make the GNG work by proper source selection, than creating yet another SNG. --Masem (t
) 17:34, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

Proposal

Use the existing Cryptocurrency Task Force notability guideline to assess crypto article notability. After we re-establish this, we could extent it further with for instance more precise guidance such as a market cap minimum for notability. Any such discussion should take place at the Task Force talk page. Main currencies are notable on its own, and articles about them also help to reduce security issues, ie. phishing links, scams.

prokaryotes (talk
) 16:49, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

Well said, has my support, and great that you showed up here as the original author.
prokaryotes (talk
) 20:30, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

Verifying a Primary Source directly from Author

I have this question on reliable source. An editor User:Jeffro77 have challenged material appeared in The Watchtower magazine here. He have asked to submit secondary source to verify a statement about New World Translation made by Dr. Jason BeDuhn in a personal letter to the publisher of the translation, Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania.

I am a trained scholar of the Bible, familiar with the texts and tools in use in modern biblical studies, and, by the way, not a member of the Jehovah's Witnesses. But I know a quality publication when I see one, and your 'New World Bible Translation Committee' has done its job well. Your interlinear English rendering is accurate and consistent to an extreme that forces the reader to come to terms with the linguistic, cultural, and conceptual gaps between the Greek-speaking world and our own. Your 'New World Translation' is a high quality, literal translation that avoids traditional glosses in its faithfulness to the Greek. It is, is many ways, superior to the most successful translation in use today.

Now I contacted the professor by email. He replied back and said he is mystified by this request since Watchtower is certainly a citable source and suffice Wiki Standards. He said he would be happy to send me back a letter with the quote above verifying that he did sent the letter in Norther Arizona University letterhead. My question is how can I use it in Wikipedia? Can I upload the letter in Wikipedia Commons. Or should the professor have to give extra permissions via OTRS to put it in commons? --Roller958 (talk) 20:29, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

The author of the source, unless he is a regular contributor to Wikipedia, is not an expert on our sourcing standards. Anyway, the claim that a publication like Watchtower is inherently "reliable" for factual claims in general is nonsense, and in this case you are (or seem to be, based on the above) trying to cite it for a claim that the JW translation of the New Testament is accurate, high-quality, faithful to the Greek, etc.? No way. I have no idea who BeDuhn is, but until his death
Bruce Metzger was basically the foremost authority on the Greek text of the NT in the English-speaking world, and from what I understand he hated that translation. Granted, I'm getting this from some fundamentalist video clips on YouTube that may well have taken the recordings of Metzger out of context (it wouldn't be the first time), but he did definitely express a dislike for the New World's insertion of the name "Jehovah" all over the NT where it did not appear in the Greek original. Hijiri 88 (聖やや
) 06:38, 2 February 2018 (UTC)
BTW, our article implies he is a specialist in a later strand of Christianity; Mani was born well over a century after most of the New Testament was written. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 06:42, 2 February 2018 (UTC)
And no, you can't upload an entire copyrighted letter onto either Wikipedia (why would you want to put it on Wikipedia?), Wikisource (which is for public domain texts) or Wikimedia Commons (which is for photographs). The copyright holder (and it's not clear from any of the above whether that is BeDuhn or Watchtower) would need to release it under a license, and you can't do that for them. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 06:46, 2 February 2018 (UTC)
Please stay specific on releasing his statement. The question is not about whether the author is qualified to opine on New World Translation (even Metzger acknowledged "tolerably good impression of the scholarly equipment of translators" except for what he thinks as passages differ from his theological viewpoint, those passages are debated even among scholars). BeDuhn is certainly a New Testament scholar and competent Greek translator (translated Marcion's New Testament). Since we need a secondary source to verify his statement appeared in Watchtower publications, he said he is willing to verify the statement appeared in Watchtower exactly as it appeared by means of official letterhead with a note saying "free to be distributed in public domain". I can upload the letter in Wikimedia commons with Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 4.0. --Roller958 (talk) 12:48, 2 February 2018 (UTC)
The problem (As I see it) is anyone can create a letter head.Slatersteven (talk) 12:51, 2 February 2018 (UTC)
What if its signed and dates too? --Roller958 (talk) 12:54, 2 February 2018 (UTC)
Those are not proofs of identity, any one can sign and date something.Slatersteven (talk) 13:00, 2 February 2018 (UTC)
So if its uploaded in his university Website space, then it would be acceptable? --Roller958 (talk) 13:03, 2 February 2018 (UTC)
Not sure, that would depends on what you mean. If you mean his official page and only he has access to it I see no reason why not. But his view is not a secondary source, it is primary (he is being used as a source for his opinion). Also we need to know what it is being used for.Slatersteven (talk) 13:08, 2 February 2018 (UTC)
We are explicitly attributing in article that Dr. BeDuhn said so and so (in quotes) to Watchtower. (which Watchtower & Dr. BeDuhn independently confirmed). In that case how can even a secondary be possible? Its a personal communication with another party.--Roller958 (talk) 13:20, 2 February 2018 (UTC)
A third source citing him (it happens in academic papers and books).Slatersteven (talk) 13:25, 2 February 2018 (UTC)
Alright. I trust this as an authoritative answer. He have mentioned the impracticality of uploading file to his space in his university personal space. I will not proceed with verification of the material. If he does sends me back a letter as he promised I would upload it to Wikimedia commons as a material released to public, but I won't insist on using it anywhere in Wikipedia. Thanks.--Roller958 (talk) 13:32, 2 February 2018 (UTC)
  • The discussion above is kind of unfortunate. There are a few issues here.
  1. Our mission is to provide articles summarizing accepted knowledge to the public. We aim high, always!
  2. we find that "accepted knowledge" in published sources. The higher the quality, the more sure we are that we are meeting the mission
  3. higher quality is generally: independent, secondary, written by an expert in the field who is trying to summarize the state of the field; peer-reviewed, and published by a high quality publisher (with a reputation for excellence in that field). The higher the quality of the source, the more sure we can be that it is useful for the mission. (Generally, the more people stray from that, the more likely it is that they have something they are passionate about, that they want represented in Wikipedia.)
  4. to meet NPOV, you get several such sources, and see what each of them say, and give WEIGHT as they give WEIGHT
So looking at this letter to the editor, published in the magazine of the publisher of this specific translation.... that is a low quality ref.
If you all want to meet the mission of WP per NPOV, you will go to high quality sources in the field, say Journal of Biblical Literature, and other widely read journals in the field (lots are on jstor), or books published by academic publishers in the field of biblical studies.
so sure, the letter to the editor is reliable for BeDuhn's opinion, but that specific ref - a letter to the editor in the magazine of the publisher of the bible in question is a very low quality source that really should get no WEIGHT in the article. The person wanting to use it is probably trying to prove some point.
If BeDuhn had published a review of the translation in say JBL or the like, that would be a great source that would make sense to cite, but the WEIGHT given to what that ref says should be proportional to the WEIGHT of other high quality refs. Jytdog (talk) 15:48, 2 February 2018 (UTC)
Thanks for your valuable input. Like I said the critical review section of NWT have several highly positive to highly negative evaluations from wide number of scholars. BeDuhn have studied several verses on nine major translations in his book that is used as a source in the NWT article on his positive & negative opinions, but the dispute here is whether he also made above positive statements to WT by means of the letter. I take your words "the letter to the editor is reliable for BeDuhn's opinion" as it is said. --Roller958 (talk) 16:42, 2 February 2018 (UTC)
I see I've been discussed here without being advised. Interesting. Anyway, I've already tried to explain to Roller958 how it is a conflict of interest for the publisher of a work to be used as a source for quoted testimonials about the publisher's works; and I've already explained to him that the primary concern is cherry picking rather than misquoting. Instead of spending so much effort trying to use Watch Tower testimonials, it would be a better use of Roller958's time to find reviews of the work that are independent.--Jeffro77 (talk) 00:33, 3 February 2018 (UTC)
@Jeffro77:, if I thought the ping was insufficient notification of this discussion, you can guarantee I would have told the OP off for it. This is RSN, and no one is discussing you, so there is no obligation to notify you. I'm on your side in this content dispute, but remarks like the above passive-aggressive Interesting. are inappropriate. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 05:03, 3 February 2018 (UTC)
Thanks. However, there was no ping, just a link to my User page.--Jeffro77 (talk) 05:07, 3 February 2018 (UTC)
Not quite true, User:Jeffro77; indeed, you were not notified, but not because there was a link to your user page. Instead, it was because the original edit by Roller958 did not name you - the link was added in this edit, also by Roller958; and since it was added to an existing post, no notification is sent. The essential criteria for a successful notification are: (i) there must be a new post containing one or more new lines; (ii) one of the new lines must include a link to the user page of the person to be notified; (iii) one of the new lines must include a signature. Moreover, it all has to be done in the same edit. Regarding (ii), it makes no difference whether a direct link is used - as here - or one of the various templates like {{reply to}}. The notification failed because criterion (ii) was not met in the first edit, and criteria (i) and (iii) were not met in the second. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 11:19, 3 February 2018 (UTC)
Not sure why I would even need to notify the editor here. May be I should not have mentioned his username above. My question have nothing to do with the editor. I wanted to know if a letter from the primary source would satisfy the verification requirements. I acted with good faith, and I would expect other editors will do the same instead of being highly skeptical of my intentions. --Roller958 (talk) 13:32, 3 February 2018 (UTC)
You came here about a request to add a Watch Tower source quoting a third party in support of a Watch Tower publication. Other editors have told you what I told you elsewhere—it's not appropriate. You didn't get the response you wanted at
forum shopping to me.--Jeffro77 (talk
) 23:49, 3 February 2018 (UTC)
Regarding his other arguments I am not going to say anything since the question have been answered, and I don't have to waste my time --Roller958 (talk) 13:34, 3 February 2018 (UTC)
This has nothing to do with other edits on NPOV noticeboard regarding Jeffro77s conduct. I never asked Jeffro77 the specific question I raised here for him to answer in 1st place. Peace Roller958 (talk) 01:13, 4 February 2018 (UTC)
It has everything to do with it. Your false accusation at the noticeboard alleging improper conduct by me was window dressing intended to lend support to your desire to use a Watch Tower Society testimonial quote to endorse the Watch Tower Society's New World Translation. The only practical difference here is that you're trying to use a Watch Tower Society testimonial from BeDuhn instead of the other one from Kedar. In both cases, the solution is unambiguous attribution. This has already been done to an extent that I think is suitable, but other editors may have other views.--Jeffro77 (talk) 01:22, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

Dispute about RS at Fomitopsis betulina

I'm being told by Zefr (see article talk page) that the following source

Pleszczyńska, Małgorzata; Lemieszek, Marta K.; Siwulski, Marek; Wiater, Adrian; Rzeski, Wojciech; Szczodrak, Janusz (2017). "Fomitopsis betulina (formerly Piptoporus betulinus): the Iceman's polypore fungus with modern biotechnological potential". World Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology. 33 (5).
PMC 5380686
.

does not have a high enough impact factor to be able to source the following statement: "Fomitopsis betulina has been widely used in traditional medicines, and has been extensively researched for its phytochemistry and pharmacological activity." Is this true? Can I start going around and removing uncontroversial sourced statements because the journal impact factor is not high enough? Polyporales (talk) 00:21, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

Rather than making drama, are there stronger sources you can bring? If that is all you have that is very weak. This is a low quality ref in a low quality journal hyping something (they actually wrote "Recently, Stamets (2011, 2014) has invented formulations prepared from different medicinal mushrooms including F. betulina, which are useful in preventing and treating viral and bacterial diseases, i.e. herpes, influenza, SARS, hepatitis, tuberculosis, and infections with E. coli and S. aureus ." and the reviewers actually let that pass. oy.). So do you have any better refs? Jytdog (talk) 00:44, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
Stamets needs to start working on the fungus drive for the Starship Discovery, or we shall all be speaking Klingon! -Nunh-huh 14:26, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
  • This seems correct to me. Medical claims (which this implicitly is) are governed by
    WP:MEDRS. Being "traditionally used" for something tends to be a way that woo-mongers sell a product without having to show that it actually does anything at all. Guy (Help!
    ) 18:04, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
This is a review article (qualify per WP:MEDRS), but yes, one should use multiple RS, such as here: this fungus is toxic, do not just boil it for the dinner! My very best wishes (talk) 19:52, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

User submitted Executive Profiles on Bloomberg.com

Are executive profiles such as this one with user submitted content [8] on Bloomberg.com reliable sources? First of all, Bloomberg does not take responsibility for the content, it says "The information and data displayed in this profile are created and managed by S&P Global Market Intelligence, a division of S&P Global. Bloomberg.com does not create or control the content." While someone may still argue that "S&P Global Market Intelligence" is a reliable source, the information is clearly from user submitted sources as indicated by the button that says "request profile update".

Rusf10 (talk
) 20:15, 3 February 2018 (UTC)

I would have to agree with RAN. External control is different to user generated. Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 20:29, 3 February 2018 (UTC)
Yep. essentially SPS and not independent. not useful for notability. OK for uncontroversial facts only. Jytdog (talk) 20:32, 3 February 2018 (UTC)
If it is self published, please add yourself or add someone else and then display the link here. I see no evidence that it is a
pay to play or self published. --RAN (talk
) 21:14, 3 February 2018 (UTC)
It is published by a marketing company. That is an unreliable source, as we do not know the degree of control their clients have over what they say or how much editorial control they exercise. However, Bloomberg explicitly disclaims responsibility and states that the marketing company controls the content. Therefore, the marketing company, as a user of the Bloomberg website, distributes its content that way with no editorial control or oversight from Bloomberg, and Bloomberg explicitly says so. "Self-published" does not mean that anyone at all can edit or add themselves to it. Seraphimblade Talk to me 21:17, 3 February 2018 (UTC)
  • Evidence please. "S&P Global Inc. (prior to April 2016 McGraw Hill Financial, Inc., and prior to 2013 McGraw Hill Companies) is an American publicly traded corporation headquartered in New York City. Its primary areas of business are financial information and analytics. It is the parent company of S&P Global Ratings, S&P Global Market Intelligence, and S&P Global Platts, and is the majority owner of the S&P Dow Jones Indices joint venture." They are a business information company, not a marketing company. When the New York Times publishes something from the Associated Press they are not "explicitly disclaim[ing] responsibility" with an AP byline, they are properly crediting their source. --RAN (talk) 21:20, 3 February 2018 (UTC)
  • I have come across these a number of times, and they contain typographical and grammatical errors often enough for me to doubt that much editorial attention is being paid to their contents. I would be fine using this as a second source to confirm background provided by another reliable source, but would be wary of using this as the sole source for information on a subject, and definitely not as a source for notability. bd2412 T 21:27, 3 February 2018 (UTC)
That is a good point if true, can you post some examples. --RAN (talk) 22:13, 3 February 2018 (UTC)
Easily done. For example, this profile of Neil Dryden says "He advised numerous cases in the European Union" and "He educated at Oxford University". This profile of Arnd Fröhlich says he "worked as an Editor fort he World Economic Review". This profile of Eric Lin Doub says he "recieved" a degree. Not that it is impossible to find errors like these in reliable sources, but they stack up much more readily here. bd2412 T 20:47, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
  • It's acceptable as a source of uncontroversial facts, it is not evidence of notability (it's directory-type information), and it lacks intellectual independence regardless of fact checking so it does not qualify as independent. Guy (Help!) 21:45, 3 February 2018 (UTC)
  • This is not user submitted or self published. You may request an update or correction - but it is vetted by S&P. S&P mainly updates information by itself - without execs talking to them (most willl not talk to them at all) - relying on financial reports, regulatory filings, and possibly press releases too. The data is reliable, and can be used for CV information - positions and years of service. While data is reliable - it does not establish notability - execs of very small companies are in the database - every public company exec named in reports and many private companies as well.Icewhiz (talk) 19:11, 4 February 2018 (UTC)
    • They are user-driven; they are not even close to independent so you can trust they omit anything negative. They are perhaps useful for some facts about the person. Perhaps. Jytdog (talk) 02:34, 6 February 2018 (UTC)
      • They are not - you may (as a company representative) request an update if their data is incorrect (e.g. if someone just resigned, or if there is a bio error) - but for the most part this doesn't happen - most of it is sourced from various regulatory filings to federal and state authorities. Even if you request a correction - you have to provide a public source confirming your request - try requesting an update, you get "All data changes require verification from public sources. Please include the correct value or values and a source where we can verify. (+providing contact info so they can talk to you)Icewhiz (talk) 14:18, 6 February 2018 (UTC)
        • If all of the information requires a public source, why don't we just find those sources? I would note, however, that regulatory filings can also be written in a self-serving manner. bd2412 T 19:12, 6 February 2018 (UTC)
          • about SEC filings... kind of true, but there is securities law in place with SEC filings that is not quite the same as something like a bloomberg listing. in my view SEC filings are much better than a bloomberg listing, because of that. and if you get them through EDGAR they are just as accessible and probably more permanent Jytdog (talk) 19:17, 6 February 2018 (UTC)
            • We may find those. However if you are sourcing that person X served on the board of Y during years Z1 to Z2 as well as being the CEO of C during.... It is much easier to source this from one source that collates all the filings (which for firms not regulated by the SEC can be local, and regarding SEC - may require combining several reports). The Bloomberg profile (and this is a reputable source!) - combines all these reports, through the years, into one coherent profile - being a SECONDARY aggregation of these PRIMARY reports with some editor oversight. Notability wise this is not worth much (as there is one of these on just about anyone who appeared a publically available report (not just SEC). And in terms of source quality - this is close to the quality of the regulatory filings (though there is some overaight) - but it is generally better than a singular filing. This is not PR - and some execs probably would prefer not to be listed.Icewhiz (talk) 19:49, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

It's time to talk about biography.com generally

I know they are owned by A&E, which gives them an air of "truthiness," but they do not cite sources or list authors. In particular, the birthdates they give are very often in conflict with journalistic sources of high repute. For examples, see Fergie (singer) and Chadwick Boseman. I'm not convinced we should be treating them as reliable at all, especially when their information contradicts better sources such as interviews and journalistic mini-bios. Does anyone have any insight into their editorial process? Without that knowledge, I see no reason to assume they are doing anything but copying other websites. Krychek (talk) 16:37, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

This page (PDF bypass) hosted by
CSU–Global Campus lists it under the section "INTERNET SOURCES TO AVOID". --Emir of Wikipedia (talk
) 16:51, 11 January 2018 (UTC)
along with us --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 16:55, 11 January 2018 (UTC)
A&E as in Arts and Entertainment as in entertainment. That's not a credential. Darkfrog24 (talk) 20:25, 11 January 2018 (UTC)
Leaving aside whether one Joyce Ann Kievit at a college in Colorado finds Biography.com credible — and the website gives no reason or rationale whatsoever for its claim — a TV network lierally devoted to biography and biographical research, part of one of the largest media conglomerates in the country, with a professional staff of researchers and editors, is unquestionably WP:RS for biographies. --Tenebrae (talk) 15:52, 13 January 2018 (UTC)
We have no evidence that the website has a professional staff of researchers and editors. On the page of Fergie [11] it has a section saying "Fact Check" with the words "We strive for accuracy and fairness. If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us!" written underneath. The contact page links to this [12] which as the bottom says "Send feedback, report errors and submit general questions to [email protected]". Nothing about the about page shows anything about any staff. Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 16:10, 13 January 2018 (UTC)
Emir, you're a valued colleague with good judgment. In this case, I do have to say I'm surprised anyone would suggest that a TV network — Biography Channel having changed its name to FYI — does not have a staff.
Secondarily, the fact that someone, i.e., a staff, actively solicits feedback to help ensure that its articles are correct is a good and proper thing. --Tenebrae (talk) 16:17, 13 January 2018 (UTC)
Also, and I know this is a personal claim and I can only ask that you consider me credible after our many collaborations, I was once interviewed in my capacity as a journalist for a Biography Channel show, and there was a Manhattan office filled with about a dozen people. --Tenebrae (talk) 16:19, 13 January 2018 (UTC)
Meanwhile, I'll see if there's a staff directory available, and this Variety article may be useful background: "‘Biography’ Franchise Returns as Event Programming Across A+E Networks Channels (Exclusive)" by Cynthia Littleton, March 21, 2017. Rob Sharenow, exec VP and general manager of A&E and Lifetime, is interviewed. I'm sure there are people under him.--Tenebrae (talk) 16:24, 13 January 2018 (UTC)
Four executive producers for the Biography franchise are Elaine Frontain Bryant, Shelly Tatro and Brad Abramson. As executive producers, they would have staff. --Tenebrae (talk) 16:27, 13 January 2018 (UTC)
Hello Tenebrae. Sorry if I surprised you, but perhaps you misunderstood me. I am in now way making any claims about Biography Channel or program but rather just the website. This is not a case like a newspaper where the articles are published both online and on paper, but a site with over 7000 biographies. If someone can show a clear link between the program/channel and the website then I would look on this source more favorably. My point about the feedback was that is the only thing they list as fact checking, that people can contact them if they are incorrect. If they had their own fact checking process then their would be no need for soliciting feedback after being published. Even if you did not misunderstand me I am still grateful for you calling me a valued colleague, and I will still respect you even if we have a difference of opinion on this matter. Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 16:42, 13 January 2018 (UTC)
Absolutely. I work very collegially with many editors, some of them for many years now, and differences of opinion occur. I find discussion, compromise and calm help prevent hard feelings. And I'm always impressed with your care and meticulousness.
This might answer your perfectly reasonable question about whether the website and the network are indeed part of the same entity: Indicia at the bottom of Biography.com reads "© 2018 Bio and the Bio logo are registered trademarks of A&E Television Networks, LLC." The Copyright page at Biography.com goes to an A&E page beginning "A&E Television Networks, LLC and its subsidiaries and affiliates (collectively, 'A+E Networks' ...." From there, the Careers page doesn't break down A&E jobs into specific divisions (A&E, Lifetime, FYI, etc.), but there are listings for "Research" and for "Digital Media." So whether or not there are current open positions at the Biography franchise, we know there are research and digital-media staff positions, at least. --Tenebrae (talk) 17:00, 13 January 2018 (UTC)

Hmm. This is a tricky one. I have added a do not archive tag so hopefully other people can give us some input. If dedicated researches are present then I would say it is an RS without a doubt, but the possible contradictions with other sources make me wonder if they are just honest mistakes or unreliable sources. Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 17:17, 13 January 2018 (UTC)

  • There is a missing question in this debate... “Reliable compared to WHAT?” In the absence of any OTHER source, Biography is probably “reliable enough” to use. But there are certainly lots of other sources that are way MORE reliable, and if there is a discrepancy we should certainly defer to those other, more reliable sources. Blueboar (talk) 17:32, 13 January 2018 (UTC)
I'm actully not seeing where the suspicion of unreliability comes from. As a journalist, I've found Biography.com information to check out with other sources, such as interview subjects and public records. Nothing is 100%, not even Encyclopedia Britannica, but I've found this website to be reliable at a professional level. --Tenebrae (talk) 18:28, 13 January 2018 (UTC)
  • Per this article, biography.com is operated by SAY Media, not the A&E television network. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 20:27, 13 January 2018 (UTC)
  • Mostly reliable. Because the
    A&E Network is so prominent, they likely factcheck their work pretty well, but their work can still be challenged on a case by case basis. This is similar to citing Stratfor, the global intelligence company. Their articles often do not have citations or named authors, but it is well known they are one of the most reliable in their industry. See [13] Waters.Justin (talk
    ) 00:40, 14 January 2018 (UTC)
I'd tend to agree. Per the article
WP:RS. --Tenebrae (talk
) 00:25, 15 January 2018 (UTC)
This sounds like
WP:IDONTLIKEIT. You've personally had bad experiences. I haven't. Who's right? Also, I'm not sure what History Channel has to do with it.--Tenebrae (talk
) 00:25, 15 January 2018 (UTC)
No, it sounds like WP:SOME PEOPLE ARE PAYING BETTER ATTENTION THAN OTHERS. Part of our job is evaluating sources, using our common sense. Are you seriously going to call reliable a source that asserts, with a straight face, that the Nazis might have had a time machine? EEng 04:49, 15 January 2018 (UTC)
First, that's the History Channel. It's not Biography.com. Second, Biography.com is a reliable source according to Wikipedia's definition. Finally, you're letting your personal feelings color your comments. You don't like the History Channel, and so you're condemning anything that appears in anything connected with A&E Networks.
Also, from your description, it sounds as if the History Channel was debunking myths and rumors. That's exactly what responsible historians do. --Tenebrae (talk) 23:11, 15 January 2018 (UTC)
First, the History Channel is part of A&E, like Biography.com. Second, whether Biography.com is a reliable source is what we're debating. Finally, my personal feelings have nothing to do with it, but my personal judgment (which is what we're supposed to exercise here) does; I'm condemning the reliability of A&E-related sources because they all, in my experience, are mediocre at the very best in their factual reliability.
And no, they were not debunking myths and rumors, they were presenting absurd ideas (like a Nazi time machine) with "some people have said"-type false balance. EEng 02:29, 16 January 2018 (UTC)
  • I'm not sure I understand what part of Wikipedia's definition of "reliable source" would fit biography.com. It is definitely not scholarly, and I think it would be a mighty stretch to call it a news source. So to keep saying it clearly meets the
    WP:RS criteria -- as if that's obvious to everyone -- is disingenuous at best, when in fact this is the reason we are discussing it at all. Krychek (talk
    ) 15:55, 16 January 2018 (UTC)
  • Individual cases of error aren't enough; as we all know, there are
    times the New York Times published lies, and times the National Enquirer published facts, neither of which is enough for us to go on as a general rule. We need evidence that says it's generally reliable or generally not reliable. The fact that it's a mainstream documentary series on a TV network of some decades of longevity, that published thousands of relatively in depth biographies of well known people, tends to lean towards the reliable category. (There are oodles of sources that say the National Enquirer is generally not reliable.) One university web page that doesn't explain its reasoning for disliking Biography.com and History.com isn't sufficient. If you have specific cases where Biography.com conflicts with better sources, we can certainly consider using the better sources in those cases. If you have more reliable sources that say that in general Biography.com is not to trusted, please say. --GRuban (talk
    ) 16:53, 16 January 2018 (UTC)
These are not "individual cases of error"; what I said is that I find errors on a regular, frequent basis whenever I dip into A&E's brands. We don't need metasources to tell us that a given source is unreliable, but quite the opposite:
WP:Identifying_reliable_sources calls for sources to have a "reputation for fact-checking and accuracy". If you have such metasources re Biography.com, please pass them on. Otherwise we have to use our real-world judgment, including personal experience. Delving into their A&E's job postings is idiotic: National Enquirer has "research" staff too. EEng
18:10, 16 January 2018 (UTC)
We don't rely on our experience, that's called
Wikipedia:Original research. We rely on the experience of Wikipedia:Reliable sources
. You asked for some, which seems a very reasonable request. Here is a 5 minute web search.
Reliable sources recommending Biography.com in general
Reliable Sources relying on individual Stories on Biography.com
If many respected mainstream newspapers and television stations consider Biography.com as reliable, I think we should too. --GRuban (talk) 18:45, 16 January 2018 (UTC)
WP:OR says This policy of no original research does not apply to talk pages and other pages which evaluate article content and sources, such as deletion discussions or policy noticeboards. right there in the first paragraph. Furthermore it seems you have ignored the comment of when the website began being operated by SAY Media, being reliable at one point doesn't mean you are reliable forever. Emir of Wikipedia (talk
) 19:50, 16 January 2018 (UTC)
Oh, yes, OR on a guideline talk page is not forbidden as in article space - after all, my web search compiling its uses could be considered original research too - but we can take the opinion of one person on a college website and a couple of anonymous Wikipedia editors that don't think it's reliable ... or of the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, and other newspapers and television stations, that pretty clearly do. I'm proposing that it's obvious which should have more weight. The SAY Media operation was February 2014? You'll notice most of the uses of Biography.com listed seem after that point. (The latest one is from yesterday, in fact.) --GRuban (talk) 22:13, 16 January 2018 (UTC)
If we ever declared something acceptable as a source of last resort, maybe this and other TV shows might qualify. In most if not all of the topics they cover, there will be other sources more clearly reliable which could be used instead and should be used instead. If such a program makes a negative claim about a BLP not supported by better sources, it might perhaps be removed. And, given it's status as a general entertainment source, I think they would be among the less optimal sources for determining comparative WEIGHT regarding somewhat sensationalistic aspects of the subjects' lives. John Carter (talk) 22:29, 16 January 2018 (UTC)
Yes, and I'll just repeat what I said above: I'd use it, at most, as a provisional source[
better source needed] for hard-to-get-wrong, uncontentious stuff. EEng
22:50, 16 January 2018 (UTC)
"10 Sports Names That Will Help You Become a Better Crossword Solver" from the NYT crossword puzzle section; another crossword-puzzle "learn more" list from 1999, for classroom teachers; "CNN Entertainment" stating that one of Whitney Houston's albums "earned her a Grammy but does not match the performance of her previous albums, according to Biography.com"; and a 2002 list of "Online reference tools" (for an unstated purpose or audience) isn't exactly what I meant by metasources telling us that Biography.com has a "reputation for fact-checking and accuracy". It's actually quite telling that many or most of your items referencing Biography.com added the qualification, according to Biography.com i.e. "don't blame us if this is wrong -- we got it from Biography.com". My favorite from your list is the Oscar de la Renta obit, which lists among its sources, along with Biography.com, the scholarly research journal Vogue; I think it's safe to say that's not an item researched at the Wikipedia BLP level of source quality. EEng 22:50, 16 January 2018 (UTC)
Vogue is a perfectly acceptable source as well, and cited in hundreds if not thousands of our articles. Given it's "the world's most influential fashion magazine", if there were a biography of Oscar de la Renta that didn't cite Vogue, I'd find it highly questionable. And just as Vogue specializes in fashion, Biography.com specializes in biographies. We're not talking about botany or physics, mind you; coverage of modern biographies in scholarly research journals are few and far between. Relying on mainstream media is perfectly acceptable, and as has been shown, mainstream media relies on Biography.com. If you're proposing that only scholarly research journals be acceptable, we'd have to delete most of our articles for lack of sources. --GRuban (talk) 14:58, 17 January 2018 (UTC)
But if a biography of Oscar de la Renta failed to cite biography.com, you wouldn't bat an eye. I think that's a rather telling point. Also, if such a bio did cite both Vogue and biography.com, and the two sources contradicted each other, which would you be more inclined to believe? I'd pick Vogue in a heartbeat, because it has a reputation as a serious magazine about the fashion industry. Biography.com, on the other hand, is pure infotainment. There is no "biography industry," and no one is holding biography.com accountable when it makes mistakes. If Vogue screws up, however, you can bet there will be immediate repercussions. Krychek (talk) 15:30, 17 January 2018 (UTC)
Correct. And in turn, if Vogue were contradicted by the NYT, you'd take the NYT. EEng 15:42, 17 January 2018 (UTC)
The "telling point" boils down to no one having claimed that Biography.com is "the world's most influential" biographical source, merely that it is an acceptable one for our purposes. There are good sources and better sources, but that doesn't mean the merely good ones are unacceptable. If
Wikipedia:Reliable source. --GRuban (talk
) 18:48, 17 January 2018 (UTC)
So can we agree that, in the specific case of birthdates (and possibly other purely statistical data), serious journalistic sources should be given priority over infotainment sites like biography.com? If I'm being honest, that's the main consensus I wanted to get out of this discussion. I don't mind at all if people use the site for anecdotes, as long as they don't contradict better sources, but in areas where we should be attempting to give definitive answers, I hate the idea of forcing a WP article to say, "Everyone except one weak source claims he was born in 1950, so we're presenting both years because we at WP don't know how to distinguish a reliable source from infotainment." Krychek (talk) 16:02, 18 January 2018 (UTC)
Huh. I would have thought the opposite -- birthdates are easy to get right, but anecdotes can be made up shit. EEng 16:09, 18 January 2018 (UTC)

That is the point if something can't even get birthdates right then do we believe that they are a reliable source? Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 16:12, 18 January 2018 (UTC)

Intuitively, that seems true, but if it were so easy to corroborate a birthdate, this would be a non-issue. I'd just point to the One True Source of Celebrity Birthday Facts, and no one would ever try to cite biography.com again. Krychek (talk) 20:09, 18 January 2018 (UTC)
When reliable sources disagree, we have to take it on a case by case basis. In general, if multiple reliable sources differ on a fact, we give all the options ("Born in 1923 according to sources A and B, or in 1932 according to source C"). But that's in general, for specific cases there are so many possibilities that I can't even list them. For example, usually a person is a less reliable source than their birth certificate; but see our own
Jimbo Wales#Early life. Or say that one source A says 1923, and another source B specifically says "unlike what it says in source A, she was actually born in 1932". Let's see the specific case. --GRuban (talk
) 20:58, 18 January 2018 (UTC)
  • And may I add to the list above that just the first three pages of a Google search results in a host of libraries, including college libraries, recommending Biography.com as a reliable research tool, and at least one book citing it:
Some local librarians saying that some people might find Biography.com useful, for some purposes, is hardly the kind of endorsement that helps us. Got any serious researchers or first-class universities? EEng 06:34, 22 January 2018 (UTC)
Now this is getting ridiculous. You've been given multiple mainstream sources, including some of the most popular and respected sources, using and recommending Biography.com. You've been given libraries! You've been given universities! Plenty of perfectly reliable sources would struggle to pass such a test. And you are saying those aren't "useful" endorsements because the universities aren't "first-class"? You are
demanding a shrubbery, if not already going straight for the tree and the herring. --GRuban (talk
) 16:45, 22 January 2018 (UTC)
I'm so glad you took the time to draw my attention back to those library "recommendations", because I see now that, for example, the Sonoma County Library link you so helpfully provided (and here it is again [14]) lists Biography.com as a resource for "School-Age Children (5-12)" (meaning grades 5-12 i.e. ages 10 to 17). Now I ask you again, do you have any sources recommending Biography.com as a resource for serious research, by grownups? EEng 17:42, 22 January 2018 (UTC)
While debating on their factual aspects, remember the other part of RS checking is if they have editorial control, and specifically, if they had made a mistake in a fact, have they corrected it and issued a statement to that degree? That's one of the reasons NYTimes is generally a top-tier source because they will correct if they were wrong and make statements to that effect. If the biography.com pages are edited behind-the-scenes without any statement of update, that's a bit troubling. --Masem (t) 16:58, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

Recommendations:

Usage: CNN:

Los Angeles Times:

Chicago Tribune:

National Public Radio:

Boston Globe Magazine:

--GRuban (talk) 14:38, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

When are you going to get that when an article says, "According to biography.com...", they're not endorsing it as a source, they're distancing themselves from it? As for the ALA "Best Free Reference Web Sites 2002", well, um... that was twenty years ago. Is it on "Best Free Reference Web Sites 2018"? EEng 16:05, 23 January 2018 (UTC)
So you think it's a Catch 22 - if they say they're using biography.com, then they're doing it to distance themselves from it, and if they trusted it then they wouldn't say they're using it? It depends on how they write it. If they attach adjectives like "the tabloid" or "the controversial source" then they're distancing themselves. In the context above, they're using it as a reliable source, they're saying that they personally didn't research this fact beyond Biography.com, but they trust Biography.com enough to put the fact there. That's exactly how we want to use it. You now have something like thirty recommendations and usages from highly reliable sources and you're nitpicking the date on one of them. It's getting to where if Socrates himself were to come back from the dead and say that the source looked good to him, you'd be saying that was an outdated recommendation, and we don't really know whether Socrates was that important in the definition of truth anyway, we should ask Plato. --GRuban (talk) 16:59, 23 January 2018 (UTC)
You've missed the point. Being cited as a source does not make anything a reliable source. It only makes it a source. Reliability is established only when we have some idea of where they are getting their information, how that information is vetted, and how they handle corrections when errors are found. For established journalistic sources, we have reason to believe these things are internally monitored because of Journalism ethics and standards. Biography.com does not describe itself as a journalistic site, and there's no reason to believe they adhere to such guidelines. In fact, there's every reason to believe that that don't, as that would drive up costs. (And clearly, people seem to be taking them seriously for no reason other than that they are writing things down under the aegis of a well-known media conglomerate, so why should they bother investing in the credibility they enjoy for free?) Krychek (talk) 21:04, 23 January 2018 (UTC)
Well, there are actually articles about how Biography.com does its work. But more importantly, our guideline WP:RS says: "
Reliable sources may be published materials with a reliable publication process, authors who are regarded as authoritative in relation to the subject, or both. These qualifications should be demonstrable to other people." The fact that many if not most highly respected sources regard Biography.com as authoritative has now clearly been demonstrated. That suffices. Asking us to know their process in depth and detail is more than you are demanding for newspapers, since you're just assuming they must have one, since they're newspapers. Give the same credit to Biography.com, assume they must have one since they're trusted by those same newspapers (and libraries, and universities)... --GRuban (talk
) 16:10, 24 January 2018 (UTC)
many if not most highly respected sources regard Biography.com as authoritative – This is just nonsense. What we've seen is sources distancing themselves from Biography.com, a small-town library recommending it as a source for children, and a list from 20 years ago. EEng 21:53, 24 January 2018 (UTC)
OK, now, if we're debating, let's keep things honest. This page gives a large number examples of source recommending Biography.com, not just "a small-town library." There are universities, magazines, newspapers, radio, cable news and other sources using it / recommending it. You don't like it or find it generally accurate. I'm a journalist who does find it generally accurate. Who's right? Who's wrong? All that matter is that it is a staffed resource whose literally only job is producing biographies, and that reliable sources use it and recommend it.--Tenebrae (talk) 22:16, 28 January 2018 (UTC)
Also, you've just linked two stories about how TV shows (i.e., Infotainment) are made. The channel's shows are not the website, and none of this has anything to do with the fact-checking process (or lack thereof) at biography.com. Furthermore, you have at least two people here telling you that you have not sufficiently demonstrated the site's qualifications. Most tellingly, you have grossly mischaracterized my faith in newspapers. There are plenty of newspapers I would never cite, and I think you know that. I do not believe a publication's reliability stems from the mere fact that it is a newspaper; it stems from the newspaper being an established, reputable journalistic source. Biography has done nothing to become reputable where facts are concerned -- quite the opposite, their site is riddled with errors that they have made no effort to correct, and if you go to the trouble of directly inquiring into the nature of their editorial process, or even just ask them where they got contradictory information, you will hit a brick wall. Reputable, reliable sources will go out of their way to clear up discrepancies; they would never just flat-out ignore such inquiries. Krychek (talk) 22:04, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

OK, let's try it the other way. We've given thirty or so highly reliable source links recommending (like The Times) or outright using Biography.com. What similar sources can you show recommending against using Biography.com? --GRuban (talk) 16:27, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

I appreciate the discussion here. I wish this was easy, and it certainly is not.
I think it's far better than most of the celebrity biography sites available, but that's not saying much when it comes to what we're striving for with sources of biographical information. I certainly have no problem with it for undisputed content. I don't believe I've ever found it very helpful for disputed content. For example, in the case of the birth year of
talk
) 02:39, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

GRuban, I find it hilarious that you are trying to justify your position by citing a Times article whose first sentence is: "Internet fact-hunters know not to place too much faith in Wikipedia ..." Krychek (talk) 16:00, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

As does
back to the request? --GRuban (talk
) 15:39, 30 January 2018 (UTC)
Sorry, but no. According to
WP:RS, which you yourself quoted above, the burden is on the person citing the source to demonstrate its qualifications. You are asking me to prove a negative, and I won't fall into that trap. The fact is, biography.com is bound to get a lot of things right a lot of the time, but that doesn't make it reliable. You may make some headway by showing me an instance where biography.com has corrected its own false information, cited a source, credited an author, claimed to follow journalistic guidelines for fact-checking, or explained its own editorial process. These things alone are not always sufficient to establish credibility, but I think we should require at least one as a bare minimum. Krychek (talk
) 16:36, 30 January 2018 (UTC)
Neither you nor we can prove something absolutely, all we can do is give evidence. Tenebrae and I have given roughly thirty pieces of evidence from highly reliable sources. You have given ... what? --GRuban (talk) 17:09, 30 January 2018 (UTC)
By the way, I'm now looking at what caused you to start this request to WP:RSN in the first place. It's a dispute with Tenebrae about whether Chadwick Boseman was born in 1976 or 1977, and whether Fergie (singer) was born in Hacienda Heights, California, or Whittier, California, one of two neighboring small towns of under 15 square miles each? And Biography.com says straight out in an indepth article that Boseman was born in 1977 and you're disputing that based on a bit of math and an ABC news article of "5 things to should know" that says the actor was 37 in Oct 29, 2014? Honestly, I have to agree with Tenebrae. One is an indepth piece, one is a list of trivia, and requires math, based on when the article author thought the article would be published; since, if we agree the actor was born in November, his age would change by 1 in just a month, right? They're both reliable sources, we go with the more indepth piece, and the one that doesn't require age math. Here is another source that says Boseman is 30; it was published in 2013. Doing similar age math would mean he was born in ... 1983? That source is Ebony (magazine). Should we now disqualify it as a reliable source, because it's clearly off by six years? No. You're building a mountain out of a molehill. If you want to show that Boseman was born in 1976, fine, find a source that actually says that, and we'll put it in. Even if we assume you are correct in both places, starting this long thread to disqualify Biography.com outright, because it's off by one year or one mile, when the evidence either way is highly debatable, is a severe overreaction. --GRuban (talk) 17:34, 30 January 2018 (UTC)
Wow, thanks for using your psychic powers to delve so deeply into my motives. Yes, those are the two most recent incidents that prompted me to finally act, but this is a problem that I've been noticing for years now. As for your "in-depth article" on Boseman -- are you kidding me? This is a piece cobbled together from a variety of secondary sources, much like a Wikipedia article. There is no personal interview, no author listed, and no source given for the birth date. And you also want to discredit me for using math? Please tell me this is all a bad joke. Straw man, ad hominem, and post hoc ergo propter hoc -- congratulations on scoring the trifecta of debate faux pas. Krychek (talk) 16:22, 31 January 2018 (UTC)
Clearly strong feelings. I don't think we're getting anywhere. I don't see any evidence of lack of reliability from your side, except for the two rather minor and debatable differences that I listed in my last post above. You discount or ignore the evidence of reliability we provide, and ask that we somehow document the procedures the site uses to gather its information, which is not only impractical but not a requirement made of most sources. Any suggestions on how we can move forward? --GRuban (talk) 17:54, 31 January 2018 (UTC)
  • A&E's lack of diligence in curating biography.com (and I've seen some egregious factual errors, as well as remarkable claims about people which aren't supported in readily accessible outside documents there) all argue it is not what we in Wikipedia think of as "usually reliable". Sole reliance on one of their articles to support a statement should never happen, and if you have a better source, why use biography.com, too?
Regarding the list of news agencies who rely on biography.com for information regarding people, shame on those news agencies. It's a false issue, anyway - not one of the places either endorsing biography.com or using them is an encyclopedia. We are.
A citation from biography.com on an article about a living person is a bright red flag and a reason to delete any statement it supports (if you can't find a better source), referring the matter to the article's talk page - biography.com's articles aren't known for their verifiability, and
WP:BLP requires better care about sourcing articles about living persons. loupgarous (talk
) 22:37, 4 February 2018 (UTC)
Evidence? --GRuban (talk) 19:51, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
loupgarous's statements are simply personal opinions without evidence, and which are contrary to the lists of libraries, schools, universities and news agencies that use or recommend Biography.com. Saying "shame on those news agencies" ... what can I say? Apparently that anonymous editor knows better that professional journalists, editors, researchers and others. --Tenebrae (talk) 23:23, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

A Britannica article edited by a long term sock puppet

I raised this at the talk page but that was an error.It seems relatively easy to edit a Bitannica article online. All you have to do is join and then edit it. It does say "Your contribution may be further edited by our staff, and its publication is subject to our final approval. Unfortunately, our editorial approach may not be able to accommodate all contributions." which sounds great. Yet I've found one of our prolific socks, Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Relpmek/Archive, has edited the Mona Lisa article.[16] If you look at the article history you'll find that Roni Kempler of the Kempler video (a professional accountant) has added his favorite ideas to it. I've been reverting socks of his for a few days this week. I'm not suggesting that we abandon the use of the Britannica, although frankly I think it wouldn't hurt, but that checking the edit history might be something that should be done if there's an issue. It was easy to see what Kempler had added. Doug Weller talk 14:23, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

I have seen that happen before. An editor made an edit to EB then used it as source here.
I think a broader problem is the use of tertiary sources in general. They don't provide sources so we cannot tell if the information is wrong, outdated, ambiguous or over-simplified. An article in a U.S. freshman history textbook explaining the French Revolution for example might lack nuance. TFD (talk) 00:15, 7 February 2018 (UTC)
I was the one who objected years ago to online EB being used as a reliable source as "suggested edits" were generally accepted. I suggested an edit which was accepted by them, and was a legitimate suggested edit. The person who had backed the EB as an absolutely "reliable source" then wrote to them accusing me of violating their terms of service - though the point was that the first editor freely cited his own material that he cited from other pages as well. I just want to make clear that the problem was not with the person whose edit the EB accepted. That edit was absolutely proper. Collect (talk) 01:35, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

NPR webpage entry on a Japanese children's book?

Mottainai includes five citations of this for claims like Mottainai is an old Buddhist word, which has ties "with the Shinto idea that objects have souls." I recall reading that particular children's book in a Japanese class for expat children in Ireland I was volunteering at way back in the day, and I never thought that mottainai must be some unique cultural concept that merits a standalone Wikipedia article. But whether or not that is the case, it really seems like this kind of source is at best less-than-ideal for claims about ancient Japanese religious concepts. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 13:25, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

Question regarding source used in Y&R ANZ

An IP has deleted referenced content from

reliable, or is it not? Thanks in advance! PohranicniStraze (talk
) 06:22, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

While some of IP's objection may have some credibility, his claim that it is not about the company seems inaccurate. Article is much about "George Patterson Y&R",[17] and Wikipedia's description of this newspaper as "The Advertiser is a conservative, daily tabloid-format newspaper published in the city of Adelaide, South Australia" on The Advertiser (Adelaide) should be noted too. Excelse (talk) 07:35, 7 February 2018 (UTC)
@
WP:BLP should apply, and that the source is not sufficiently reliable for BLP. The "tabloid" description gave me a bit of pause, even though the source looks good and the author seems trustworthy, but I know tabloid has a different interpretation in British/Australian English than in US English. PohranicniStraze (talk
) 14:15, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

Inclusion of Buddhist scholarly sources

Trutheyeness (talk) 06:11, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

Hi all

I'm looking to use a number of sources as primary source references and would like to get your take on whether this is permissible.

I would like to reference Thanissaro Bikkhu and Bikkhu Bodhi's printed works (which include English translations of the Buddhist Pali cannon), also available online at accesstoinsight.org.

Thanissaro Bikkhu

Credentials:[1]

  • Has a degree in European Intellectual History from Oberlin College, the second oldest continuously operating coeducational institute of higher learning in the world.[2]
  • Ordained as a monk in 1976 in Thailand
  • Established Metta Forest Monastery in San Diego County, USA
  • Is part of the Thai Forest Tradition, a Theravada order with an international presence
  • Has published 27+ books on Buddhism as counted on the first couple of pages on Amazon.com, none of them self published[3]

References

  1. ^ https://www.dhammatalks.org/
  2. ^ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oberlin_College
  3. ^ https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_c_1_11?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=thanissaro+bhikkhu&sprefix=thanissaro+%2Caps%2C321&crid=2NLHU059UI15O

Bikkhu Bodhi

Credentials:[1]

  • B.A. in philosophy from Brooklyn College
  • PhD in philosophy from Claremont Graduate University
  • Ordained in the Vietnamese Mahayana order in 1967
  • President the Buddhist Publication Society, Sri Lanka
  • Gave the keynote address at the United Nations' first official Vesak celebration
  • Currently teaches Buddhism at Chuang Yen Monastery (Carmel, New York)
  • Founder of the organization Buddhist Global Relief, which funds projects to fight hunger and to empower women across the world.
  • Publisher of approximately 22 books, none self published [2]

References

  1. ^ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhikkhu_Bodhi
  2. ^ https://www.amazon.com/Bhikkhu-Bodhi/e/B001JXB7VI

accesstoinsight.org

Characteristics:[1]

  • An online repository of published works, including that of Bikkhu Bodhi and Thanissaro Bikkhu
  • Maintained by the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies

References

  1. ^ https://accesstoinsight.org/faq.html#whatis

My Belief

My belief is that Bikkhu Bodhi and Thanissaro Bikkhu are credible sources because:

  • They are 'published' as defined in
    WP:RS
    - i.e. they have printed works available that are not self published
  • They are 'scholarly' due to vetting on the part of the publishers, who belong to various Buddhist organisations that have a vested interest in maintaining the integrity of the Buddha's teaching; and due to the academic background of the monks concerned

Question to Wikipedia community

My question is, given the above, is there any additional information required by the Wikipedia community to establish the credibility of Thanissaro Bikkhu and Bikkhu Bodhi? Trutheyeness (talk) 05:55, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

Re. "... is there any additional information required by the Wikipedia community ...?" – Yes, sure: it is specified above the editing window:
  • regarding source: which page?
  • in which Wikipedia article are you proposing to use the source?
  • which content (i.e. the exact statement(s) or other content) are you proposing for such Wikipedia article?
It would be great to be a bit more precise in your request, thanks: a blanket approval (i.e. permitting any content in whatever Wikipedia article referenced to whatever part of the production of these authors) would not usually be given at this noticeboard. --Francis Schonken (talk) 06:26, 7 February 2018 (UTC)
Thanks. I would like to edit the page on Nihilism. There is a line in there where Nietzsche refers to a certain form of Nihilism as Western Buddhism. I would like to take a couple of quotes directly from translations of the Pali cannon to refute this. I understand that I cannot use primary sources to create new conclusions, and I don't believe that I need to do this. All I need to do is to supply the relevant quotes from the Pali cannon that refute this.
@Francis Schonken: Thanks for your guidance. The source I will use is accesstoinsight.org, which contains an online copy of the two monks' published works. Therefore, I cannot provide page numbers, but can provide urls to the translations. An example of one such translation is below (note that the line pertaining to nihilism is at the end, but I have provided a longer passage for context):

"Monks, you would do well to possess that possession, the possession of which would be constant, permanent, eternal, not subject to change, that would stay just like that for an eternity. But do you see that possession, the possession of which would be constant, permanent, eternal, not subject to change, that would stay just like that for an eternity?"

"No, lord."

"Very good, monks. I, too, do not envision a possession, the possession of which would be constant, permanent, eternal, not subject to change, that would stay just like that for an eternity.

"Monks, you would do well to cling to that clinging to a doctrine of self, clinging to which there would not arise sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief, & despair. But do you see a clinging to a doctrine of self, clinging to which there would not arise sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief, & despair?"

"No, lord."

"Very good, monks. I, too, do not envision a clinging to a doctrine of self, clinging to which there would not arise sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief, & despair...

Monks, where a self or what belongs to self are not pinned down as a truth or reality, then the view-position — 'This cosmos is the self. After death this I will be constant, permanent, eternal, not subject to change. I will stay just like that for an eternity' — Isn't it utterly & completely a fool's teaching?"

"What else could it be, lord? It's utterly & completely a fool's teaching."

"What do you think, monks — Is form...feeling...perception...fabrications...consciousness constant or inconstant?" "Inconstant, lord." "And is that which is inconstant easeful or stressful?" "Stressful, lord." "And is it fitting to regard what is inconstant, stressful, subject to change as: 'This is mine. This is my self. This is what I am'?"

"No, lord."

"Thus, monks, any form whatsoever that is past, future, or present; internal or external; blatant or subtle; common or sublime; far or near: every form is to be seen as it actually is with right discernment as: 'This is not mine. This is not my self. This is not what I am...'

Speaking in this way, teaching in this way, I have been erroneously, vainly, falsely, unfactually misrepresented by some brahmans and contemplatives [who say], 'Gotama the contemplative is one who misleads. He declares the annihilation, destruction, extermination of the existing being...Both formerly and now, monks, I declare only stress and the cessation of stress."[1]

A note here is that depending on the translation, some translations use the word 'annihilation' while others use 'nihilism' or similar. Regardless, the above quote shows that Nietzsche's assertion of Buddhism being nihilistic and that it encourages a 'willing oneself into nothingness' is incorrect.
There is potentially some explanation necessary, for which I may need to find secondary sources such as Thanissaro Bikkhu or Bikkhu Bodhi's other works if other editors request it. It is possible that short of reading the whole sutta a reader may not understand what the Buddha taught from just the above quote.
The main thing I am trying to get here is an acknowledgement that the sources themselves are fine if they are used in the appropriate context (i.e. that I am not accused of using sources that are 'un-scholarly' or otherwise unreliable). Trutheyeness (talk) 07:25, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/mn/mn.022.than.html
Sorry to disappoint you, but IMHO this is not usable in the way you propose: one monk contending he has not declared "the annihilation ... of the existing being" (and needing a lot of quoted text and possible detailed explanations in the process) has little to do with Nietzsche's assertion as represented in the nihilism article. Simply wouldn't work. --Francis Schonken (talk) 07:43, 7 February 2018 (UTC)
@Francis Schonken: To correct, it is not one monk contending this, as most sutta translations are in agreement on the translation... it is that the Pali cannon itself asserts this. I'm thinking that since the cannon is a primary source and the Nietzsche is a secondary source that anything Nietzsche says that contradicts the primary source would be invalid, no matter how well regarded he is. With respect to why the above wouldn't work, could you elaborate (e.g. is the logic too difficult to follow, is the quote too long etc..); and could you provide an alternative approach that would work? The problem is that without a counter argument those three lines in Nihilism make it seem that Buddhism is actually nihilistic in nature. Given this, I would still be happy if the few words pertaining to Buddhism were taken out as I don't necessarily need to add to the article. Trutheyeness (talk) 08:04, 7 February 2018 (UTC)
Sorry, "since the cannon is a
WP:PRIMARY source any time. So you'd need a reliable secondary source confronting Nietzsche's comments on Shopenhauer with a Buddhist line of thought to add something to the context here (and yes, that secondary source would also need to mention "nihilism" to make it at least suitable for inclusion in the nihilism article). --Francis Schonken (talk
) 08:19, 7 February 2018 (UTC)
@Francis Schonken: Thanks for your feedback so far, it is much appreciated. I am not trying to be argumentative, but am trying to understand so that I get this contribution and future ones correct so please bear with me.
  • Nietzsche is indeed the primary source for his own philosophies, but should not his comments on other religions be justified by some logic that can be proven or disproven? Otherwise any reputable person could make any comment about anything regardless of their knowledge on the topic, and as long as that comment is the only thing on that page it would be taken as true.
  • Also, what makes a secondary source superior to a primary source if the primary source, quoted verbatim contradicts a secondary source?
  • In case that the arguments above don't stand, I have found an article pertaining to a critique of Nietzsche's stance on Buddhism entitled "Beyond good and evil? A Buddhist critique of Nietzsche"[1] by David Loy. Would something such as this be an appropriate starting point to provide a counter argument in Nihilism? Trutheyeness (talk) 08:45, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ http://ccbs.ntu.edu.tw/FULLTEXT/JR-ENG/loy1.htm
@Francis Schonken: Thanks for your time and feedback, it is much appreciated. Since the sources are not in doubt, and it is just the way that they are used, I'll take it to the talk page on Nihilism. Trutheyeness (talk) 09:44, 7 February 2018 (UTC)
@Only in death: Thanks, I believe I understand now. To test this, could the following quote be used to present a contrasting view to Nietzsche (It's likely that I'll have to ask in the Nihilism page as well, but it would be good to have your thoughts). Given your clarification, I believe the following excerpt from Nyanaponika Thera (different from the above two sources, but I believe just as reliable) may work (I will likely paraphrase it, but it is here in its entirety for review as a secondary source). Could you comment:

The materialistic philosophy of annihilationism (ucchedavada) is emphatically rejected by the Buddha as a false doctrine. The doctrine of kamma is sufficient to prove that Buddhism does not teach annihilation after death. It accepts survival, not of an eternal soul, but of a mental process subject to renewed becoming; thus it teaches rebirth without transmigration. Again, the Buddha's teaching is not a nihilism that gives suffering humanity no better hope than a final cold nothingness. On the contrary, it is a teaching of salvation (niyyanika-dhamma) or deliverance (vimutti) which attributes to man the faculty to realize by his own efforts the highest goal, Nibbana, the ultimate cessation of suffering and the final eradication of greed, hatred and delusion. Nibbana is far from being the blank zero of annihilation; yet it also cannot be identified with any form of God-idea, as it is neither the origin nor the immanent ground or essence of the world.[1]

References

  1. ^ https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/nyanaponika/godidea.html
On another note, since the section on Nietzsche shows Nietzsche comparing nihilism to Western Buddhism without any justification, could I simply include the following quote from the Pali cannon primary source as a contrasting view?

As I am not as I do not teach, so have I been baselessly, vainly, falsely and wrongly accused by some ascetics and brahmans thus: 'A nihilist is the ascetic Gotama; He teaches the annihilation, the destruction, the non-being of an existing individual.' What I teach now as before, O monks, is suffering and the cessation of suffering[1]

References

  1. ^ https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/mn/mn.022.nypo.html
Trutheyeness (talk) 09:44, 7 February 2018 (UTC)
Re. "since the section on Nietzsche shows Nietzsche comparing nihilism to Western Buddhism without any justification, could I simply include the following quote from the Pali cannon
WP:OR, as has been pointed out to you several times at Talk:Nihilism#Nietzsche incorrect and Talk:Nihilism#Correction to Nietzsche's statement on Western Buddhism (following on from section 'Nietzsche incorrect'). I think we're done here. --Francis Schonken (talk
) 11:11, 7 February 2018 (UTC)
I believe I have the gist of things so I won't bring up specific examples any more. So to tie up:
  • @Francis Schonken: @Blueboar: If I have your views correct, because I'm looking at directly modifying the Nietzsche section under Nihilism, I need a reliable secondary source that mentions both Nietzsche and nihilism with sufficient weight. (Apologies for taking a while to get this point... it wasn't stated as such above and wasn't immediately clear to me that this was why a source that included nihilism but not Nietzsche was unacceptable)
  • @Only in death: Re: If either of those primary sources discuss Nihilism in relation to Buddhism you would at least be able to present another viewpoint => From this, can I take it that since Buddhism has an opinion on Nihilism, its definition and the impact to humanity that I could add a section within the Nihilism article that is separate from Nietzsche's section (thus eliminating the requirement that a secondary source mentions Nietzsche in addition to Nihilism)
  • @Francis Schonken: I understand with respect to the above that I would have to limit my discussion to Therevada Buddhism unless I can get secondary sources to widen the scope
  • @Francis Schonken: Also, you're presenting different translations & comments by different authors now (neither by Thanissaro Bikkhu nor by Bikkhu Bodhi, nor by David Loy) => Yes I was, because the author in question has similar credentials to those of Thanissaro Bikkhu and Bikkhu Bodhi - which I can list if in doubt. The original conversation on the Nihilism talk page had a moderator questioning the validity of using monks as scholarly sources and accesstoinsight.org as an online source. Given that there has been no objection on that front (and only on the front of how those sources are used and in what context), I believe that, unless someone takes great exception to a source, if a monk's credentials are similar to those of Thanissaro Bikkhu and Bikkhu Bodhi, and their works are archived in accesstoinsight.org, they can be considered reliable.
The issue isn't whether the sources are “reliable” ... it’s whether you are using them to support
Original research. Context is important... in a different context the material you want to use would be fine. But you are using them to support your own conclusions... THAT is what isn’t acceptable. No matter how reliable or respected the sources might be... you cannot use them in the way you want to use them. Blueboar (talk
) 00:29, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
@
WP:SYN
from now on. However, it was also good to get consensus that my sources themselves are fine if used appropriately, as this will allow me to create content where I won't have to defend the respectability of my sources.

Is Fox News a
WP:RS

closed, RfC launched Jytdog (talk) 17:39, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Original section header was User

WP:RS.Changed per TPO~ Winged BladesGodric
16:39, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

MShabazz has twice deleted a Fox News ref.[1], arguing:
(1) «Faux News is even less reliable»
(2) «deleting garbage sources -- WP:RS/N is that way»
MShabazz further adds: «Fox News has neither a reputation for fact-checking nor a reputation for accuracy.»
I don't think Fox News is not a

WP:RS.XavierItzm (talk
) 18:12, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

Four, three years ago... yes, they were reliable. But these past two years they've jumped the shark, pushing conspiracy theory and airing straight up false stories (e.g. Seth Rich). So no, not reliable for anything political of the last two years.Volunteer Marek (talk) 06:10, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
They retracted the Seth Rich story you are referring to. That's what RS's do when they make an error. --DHeyward (talk) 06:29, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
Not quite. First they doubled down. And oh yeah, they originally manufactured the story by having one of their own employees serve as a source for it. Then finally, after several days and multiple articles in other media, and strong complaints from the victim's family, they issued a "retraction" WITHOUT an apology and WITHOUT explaining what exactly was wrong with the story. So no, that is not what RS do at all.Volunteer Marek (talk) 14:24, 6 February 2018 (UTC)
I'd also like to note that they did the same with the Roy Moore accusers. Fox News falsely tarnished one of them as having "forged" evidence that she interacted with Moore as a teenager; Fox News later edited its story but did not issue a correction, clarification or apologize to the victim[18]. This is not how a normal ethical news organization behaves. Note that this is not the pundits, it's the news division.
talk
) 14:35, 6 February 2018 (UTC)
Actually if you look at the Fox news story in question here. Right at the bottom it states the corrections they made. PackMecEng (talk) 14:39, 6 February 2018 (UTC)
Wow, good on Fox News for behaving like a normal news organization after being called out on it by PolitiFact.
talk
) 14:43, 6 February 2018 (UTC)
Eh if it was in response to Politifact is a sketchy guess at best. PackMecEng (talk) 14:49, 6 February 2018 (UTC)
I'd agree with that. Emphasis on the generally EvergreenFir (talk) 18:54, 4 February 2018 (UTC)
  • Fox News is definitely a reliable source. Just because someone doesn't like their opinion shows, doesn't mean they don't have accurate reporting in their new reports. People really need to get over the "Let's ban this source because I don't like the opinions their hosts express", its quite childish. I could find just as many sources pointing out false reporting by CNN, but that does not mean that they are not usually considered a reliable source.--
    Rusf10 (talk
    ) 19:20, 4 February 2018 (UTC)
WP:NEWSORG is probably what you are looking for. Emir of Wikipedia (talk
) 20:05, 4 February 2018 (UTC)
  • WP:IRS says "Articles should be based on reliable, third-party, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy." Fox News has neither a reputation for fact-checking nor a reputation for accuracy (despite their slogan). Ergo they should not be considered a reliable source. If you don't like the requirement, change the guideline. At the moment, Fox News falls far short of it. — Malik Shabazz Talk/Stalk
    20:16, 4 February 2018 (UTC)
  • I'd just like to note that I don't consider Fox News a
    talk
    ) 20:32, 4 February 2018 (UTC)
    • For what it's worth, I disagree. The Wall Street Journal has a very strong wall between the editorial and journalism departments. The former leans far right, and the latter leans mildly left. — Malik Shabazz Talk/Stalk 20:46, 4 February 2018 (UTC)
    • I also don't recall any Fox News stories that crashed the market with false Russia stories (ABC) or "enhanced" recollections of Iraq War danger (MSNBC) or the old "rock motor" trick to make it seem like SUVs explode (NBC) or the 1970 MS-WORD Bush "letter to file" (CBS). But again, I don't consider errors to be what defines a reliable source. Neither does ideology. If there is a single thing to say about Fox News it is that there errors don't seem large enough to lead the coverage in other news organizations. Their personalities have done so but the errors rarely make news like the ones I mentioned. --DHeyward (talk) 06:08, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
      • More of this "no news source is good" nonsense. News sources, like scientists, or anyone else, get things wrong occasionally. What matters here is the extent of the inaccuracies and how the news sources deal with inaccuracies. ABC immediately retracted its story, apologized, explained what went wrong and sanctioned the reporter behind it. It took Fox News a week to retract a story that was blatantly false within hours (but the story did what it was intended to do: deflect attention from major breaks in the Russia investigation), and Fox News did not sanction its reporter, did not explain what was wrong about the reporting and did not apologize for the inaccuracies which led to the harassment of a murder victim's family. Fox News is not like normal ethical news organizations.
        talk
        ) 15:24, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
  • Fos is RS, last time this was Discussed consensus was it is, that ain't changed in the last few weeks Darkness Shines (talk) 20:35, 4 February 2018 (UTC)
  • Fox News is sometimes reliable, but slipping.[19] The content in dispute should require additional sources for corroboration and
    WP:DUEWEIGHT. It's suspicious that no other major news organizations seem to have reported on the matter.- MrX
    🖋 20:38, 4 February 2018 (UTC)
That politifact page you cited is not randomsourced (they check quotes that are user submitted); as a result the 'scorecard' distribution is almost certainly not representative of total reporting (cherry picking). However, it still gives some good example of where they should be used with attribution (political stuff)CNN's listing also holds some egregious examples (and both of the listings hold mostly political quotes). Just goes to show that we should be wary of any political reporting by US sources (attribution, attribution, attribution). — Insertcleverphrasehere (or here) 20:57, 4 February 2018 (UTC)
    • Actually, other news sources have reported on it and are cited in the article. Why add a shitty source as well? — Malik Shabazz Talk/Stalk 20:46, 4 February 2018 (UTC)
      • That is proof of being a reliable source. There is also a distinction in headlines which are written by editors and the story which is written by journalists. It is not uncommon to have the same story appear in various outlets. Headlines should never e used as reliable, but the story is. --DHeyward (talk) 05:58, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
No, it actually isn't proof of anything. So they air some true stories alongside the made up stories. Why again should we use them? Volunteer Marek (talk) 06:11, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
  • I'd say it is generally a reliable source for uncontroversial facts, but often is better attributed when used for opinions or for controversial facts (just like similarly left wing sources such as
    Infowars levels of right wing unreliability. — Insertcleverphrasehere (or here
    ) 20:40, 4 February 2018 (UTC)
The left-wing equivalent to Fox News is Mother Jones and Think Progress, not the Guardian and CNN.
talk
) 20:49, 4 February 2018 (UTC)
Book and article length studies exist on what Fox News does with the 'news'. For example
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2012. They cite, for just one example of failing to check elementary facts while showcasing a video with false claims, the following: 'Fox News runs with San Bernardino ACORN video without needed fact check Research,' Media Matters for America September 16, 2009, which underlines a complete disregard for careful news evaluation. This is an encyclopedia, and our RS standards are supposed to cleave to high standards, not notable spin-maverick sources. As MS states, if the material is sourceable elsewhere, then Fox News is superfluous. If only Fox News cites the material, then, given its moronic muckraking record, the issue should be raised on the talk page before plunking it on an article, esp. BLPs- Nishidani (talk
) 21:07, 4 February 2018 (UTC)
CIting a book by David Brock as any sort of authoritative source on
WP:NPOV. loupgarous (talk
) 21:49, 4 February 2018 (UTC)
Fox puts effort into ensuring that its news reporting is accurate, even if its other shows provide crazy theories. While it may, as
weight. All news media must choose which stories to cover which is determined partly by their ideology. For example, Fox, CNN and MSNBC all chose to broadcast an empty stage where Trump was scheduled to speak, rather than Bernie Sanders who was speaking at the same time,[20] However, in this case the source used does not support the text, it does not say that Farrakhan met Obama but that someone said he did. If for example CNN reports that Donald Trump calls it a fake news network, that does not mean that we should describe it as one. TFD (talk
) 21:13, 4 February 2018 (UTC)
When a right wing source is needed to balance converge, Fox is often a good balance to other media sources. Otherwise we end up with systemic bias. Attribution is the solution for controversial facts, not trying to ban. — Insertcleverphrasehere (or here) 21:22, 4 February 2018 (UTC)
There are better right-leaning sources out there that are also not accepted as
WP:BLP articles, and I think the same goes for FoxNews here. There is a difference between systemic bias, and the high-quality sources just not being available right now. FoxNews has a well-established credibility problem [21] that has escalated to defamation litigation recently. That is a pretty good indidication of a source that should not be used in BLP articles, imo.Seraphim System (talk
) 00:51, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
This is utter nonsense. It's a meaningless, evidence-free assertion. If we hold CNN to the same high standard as Fox ... it comes out looking helluva better: [22] vs. [23]. And the standard isn't "at least one bad report". The standard is "not airing bullshit all the time".Volunteer Marek (talk) 06:31, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
  • Fox News is a usually reliable source when their news reporting is the issue. Where Fox News's more extreme critics among our editors go wrong is conflating the opinion and "talk" segments of the channel's programming day with their news reportage. CNN, MSNBC and all the major broadcast news networks also have opinion and "talk" segments which also fail prevailing standards of journalistic objectivity, but no one questions their
    WP:RS
    status, because opinion and "talk" programming on a news channel are never subject to accuracy concerns for other news networks.
There's no general sentiment for removing
WP:RS
status.
Until we subject all news sources to the standards some editors want to judge
WP:RS, too, we ought to leave Fox News in the usually reliable source list. loupgarous (talk
) 21:34, 4 February 2018 (UTC)
Just to clarify, when I say Fox News is not
talk
) 21:40, 4 February 2018 (UTC)
And, just to clarify, your issue with the accuracy of Fox News' news reporting isn't grounds for excluding them from the list of usually reliable sources. If it were, we wouldn't be able to use any broadcast news source to support statements here, they all have detectable bias to some extent. We have
WP:BIASED loupgarous (talk
) 21:58, 4 February 2018 (UTC)
I am really getting tired of people treating Fox News like it is similar to other broadcasters. It was created to be very different from news organizations and has acted in a way different from every news organization, consistently and relentlessly. This is not the place to go over what it has, um, accomplished on the way to changing things, but it absolutely has. It has also established a reputation for not fact-checking and for not making retractions even in the most high profile instances where it gets caught out (e.g Seth Rich. it is not like mainstream news organizations. it is very much like RT. I think we are going to end up with an RfC on this.... Jytdog (talk) 23:11, 4 February 2018 (UTC)
There's little question that Fox was created to handle news in a different way (specifically, trying to personalize and use opinionated journalism on breaking news, leading to ), and to that end, I do point out we should use caution with news only sourced to Fox (but if other RS confirm, there's no reason to remove). However, a missing piece here that is going to be an issue for us on WP is that the Fox News model is being slowly taken up by other media sources, because it has show it "works" by proving itself popular to draw massive audiences by going off traditional journalism approaches, and this is a key way that struggling media can regain their audiences. This doesn't make all of our RSes bad, but just that we use the same care we'd apply to Fox to any of their other stories that are not labeled as op-eds that are filled with similar hyperbole. (All this is related that the more we adhere to NOT:NEWS, the less these types of issues will be a problem.) --Masem (t) 23:32, 4 February 2018 (UTC)
  • The claim that Fox News has no reputation for fact checking and accuracy is 100% pure bullshit. They certainly do. The fact that it's not as good a reputation as that of it's major competitors doesn't really matter, because it's still a better reputation than those of the local newspapers which get used in thousands of articles on this site. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 23:16, 4 February 2018 (UTC)
If there is a problem with local newspapers we can rule them as not being RSs either, but just because sources with a worse reputation than Fox are currently used doesn't mean that Fox is exempt from analysis. Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 23:20, 4 February 2018 (UTC)
If I felt it were exempt from analysis, I'd have closed this discussion, not participated in it. What I meant was quite literally what I said. The claim that they have no reputation for accuracy and fact checking is bullshit. We have already established a precedent of using outlets with much less of a reputation for fact checking and accuracy without questioning them. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 23:25, 4 February 2018 (UTC)
Yes they have a reputation and it is a reputation of being very careless, not-fact-checking, spinning things very hard, and not making retractions when they get caught. And for doing "reporting" along the lines of "IF Hilary knew about Benghazi, then blah blah" like this - called What if Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are hiding the truth about Libya, Syria? This is so much not "news" that only comedians even bother to rebut this shit, like Jon Stewart here (best line: "IF. If dingleberries were diamonds i could open a kay jeweler in my underpants. IF") and here. (Really - it is like how we treat pseudoscience with PARITY refs here in WP -- real news organizations are busy reporting on the real world and only comedians point out how ridiculous this "news" is) Jytdog (talk) 23:44, 4 February 2018 (UTC)
That Fox link is an opinion piece, the opinion in the URL ought to have been a clue Darkness Shines (talk) 00:05, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
This would not be a productive thing to play whack-a-mole on. The "what if" was the Fox line about benghazi and it is everywhere in their opinion, "politics", and "news" pieces discussing it. Jytdog (talk) 00:28, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
  • Fox News is a reliable source. Same as NBC, CNN, ABC, CBS, AP, and Reuters. --DHeyward (talk) 23:51, 4 February 2018 (UTC)
  • 'Second
    WP:IDLI and bias being used in place of rational, reasonable, critical thinking. At the end of the day, our personal news preferences don't matter in this discussion. If you don't want to like Fox, fine. If someone else doesn't want to like MSNBC, fine. One's personal preferences should never determine when an RS is an RS, but that's exactly what I'm seeing. In spades. Incredible. -- ψλ ● ✉ ✓
    00:52, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
yep it is clear what you see. this is not about anyone's political positions but about what Fox News does and doesn't do. Jytdog (talk) 00:55, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
The discussion isn't also about what all the other news groups do and don't do. Based on that, I have a real hard time believing the "Fox isn't an RS!" faction isn't allowing their "political positions" to influence their arguments and rhetoric. -- ψλ ● ✉ ✓ 01:31, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
WP:BIASED as we do for other agenda-driven sources, we're not making an encyclopedia, but re-creating The Great Soviet Encylcopedia, complete with periodic deletions for political reliability. loupgarous (talk
) 00:03, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
You have drunk the Fox koolaid - that nobody is actually trying to give neutral reporting, that all the news organizations before them were terribly liberal, and they came to 'save' news from that overwhelming "liberal bias". This is the core poison that has been infused into the American body politic for over twenty years now. Jytdog (talk) 00:09, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
I hate Fox News. I think the company should go bankrupt and the executives should all be jailed. But that doesn't prevent me from recognizing that when they do news coverage of anything non-political, they do a perfectly acceptable job of it. I sure as hell haven't drunk the kool-aid and I agree with Vfrickey (loupgarous) here. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 01:36, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
But this seems to be an argument that they're only reliable when they cover non-political issues (your words). I don't think that's what the controversies are gonna be about. (And seriously have you watched it lately? Spend some time with it for awhile and come back to us - perhaps your impressions are outdated. They've changed A LOT in the past two years, probably because they found themselves in competition for viewers with places like InfoWars).Volunteer Marek (talk) 06:28, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
  • That argument is moronic. Almost as moronic as the mango Mussolini tweeting that error-correcting by major media "proves" they engage in fake news. No, correcting one's errors shows a level of responsibility that most major media—but not Fox News—engage in to "set the record straight" when they get something wrong. Trying to paint this as political point-scoring is absolutely wrong, and I only see that on one side. — Malik Shabazz Talk/Stalk 00:13, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
So they are pretty much like RT then, right. Not "generally reliable" but "only OK for routine coverage that you can get in any number of other refs". Jytdog (talk) 01:52, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
Won't justify that with a detailed reply, just refer you to
Huffington Post and The New Republic there. loupgarous (talk
) 00:17, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
The perspective from which Fox approaches things, is that the real villain in Watergate was the Washington Post. That is why Ailes, a former Nixon adviser, started it. Guy (Help!) 18:16, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
If the material was unduly critical, and there's reason to suspect it, then that's fine. But the arguments against Fox News here are attempting to put it on a level with the Daily Mail which is just blatantly untrue. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 01:36, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
I am fine with challenging a specific news report being used in a specific article (any news outlet can get a report wrong occasionally)... but to go from there to saying the entire outlet is unreliable is beyond ridiculous. Is Fox reliable?... yes. That does not mean every report appearing on Fox is reliable. Blueboar (talk) 01:44, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
Nobody can say with a straight face that Fox has a reputation for either. I have said it several times in this very discussion, and I am a card-carrying liberal. Your argument is 100% pure partisan hyperbole, and the fact that you've chosen the more correct side of the partisan divide doesn't make it any less hyperbolic. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 02:43, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
When you step outside of political circles, Fox's news has a very strong reputation for reliability. Their bias shows when you get to their politics, which is where we should be careful with them, but that doesn't rule them out as a RS. If we go by how we judged the Daily Mail unreliable, one'd have to show that Fox is deliberately; making up news and/or falsifying it. So if it is a political story, we should be looking for corroboration to make sure, but they are far far far from the Daily Mail territory. --Masem (t) 02:44, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
They are close close close to Daily Mail in spewing bullshit (speech intended to persuade without regard for truth) on a daily hourly basis. This is what they were created to do and they have been wildly successful. Jytdog (talk) 03:32, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
""Articles should be based on reliable, third-party, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy." Nobody can say with a straight face that Fox has a reputation for either." Several have, you've just chosen to not listen. But since you're the one claiming Fox, when compared with its competitors and counterparts, is unreliable, I'd say the onus is on you to provide some reliable sources, some data, some statistics, that support your claim, Malik Shabazz. Do you have anything along those lines? -- ψλ ● ✉ ✓ 02:48, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
So says the person who can't distinguish between NBC News and MSNBC.... — Malik Shabazz Talk/Stalk 04:24, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
In other words, you aren't going to provide any reliable evidence to back up your claims, hence the weak attempt at changing the subject and discrediting Winkelvi. Got it.
Lepricavark (talk
) 20:09, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

One more in support of DHeyward, Mjolnir, Winkelvi, and so forth. Fox News is a mainstream media source, and should be treated as one. Malik, you are letting your personal opinions influence your editing. --GRuban (talk) 03:03, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

FoxNews' poor reputation is not limited to political circles. Academic criticsms about the extent of the bias and the nature of the bias are plentiful. There has been plenty of academic research on this, including what sources FoxNews uses. I think Jytdog's suggestion is best, if it appropriate there will be other sources for it, so in the interests of not rehashing this every time, it's better to prefer one of the more widely accepted sources like Reuters. The point is not whether Fox is "mainstream" - Fox diverges wildly from the mainstream consensus of academic secondary sources. News sources are fine as long as they are used responsibility and with good judgment, but they are become a problem when used in a way that undermines the consensus of actual scholarship.Seraphim System (talk) 03:13, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

Here's a question: Have the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC, and ABC had to retract anything they've reported in the last 18 months? -- ψλ ● ✉ ✓ 03:18, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

  • Yes. --Masem (t) 03:22, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
Having to retract or correct something is not the end of the world. What is devastating is refusing to. Jytdog (talk) 03:29, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
Oh yes, they have. Believe it or not, there actually is some credibility to Donald Trump's
Rusf10 (talk
) 04:07, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
  1. There is no way we're going to find consensus that Fox News is simply not a reliable source.
  2. There is no way we're going to find consensus that Fox News is always a reliable source.
  3. Which part of Fox News is relevant. There are several programs, not all created equally, and with different kinds of content.
  4. It matters whether it's being used to back up facts or to include attributed opinion.
  5. For supporting facts, there are some things it will be reliable for, some things it may be borderline, and some things for which it may be unreliable.
  6. I'm surprised to see that after the initial post of this thread, I don't see anyone actually talking about the specific instance linked. In this case, it's backing up something that was covered in other reliable sources, and the claim is backed up by an interviewee, not a Fox News host (presumably the same source as the other publications).
  7. IMO there is good reason to think that the New Yorker, or, well, plenty of other sources, would do a better job of reporting on this confluence of race, religion, and Obama, than Tucker Carlsen's show would (though I realize the story was not a transcript but a story based on that interview). So if they're covering the same story, parsing the same facts from the same source, what would the point be of also including Fox News, since at best it would give a neutral presentation of the facts, and at worst it would color the facts with editorial opinion. On the other hand, if you read the source and find it doesn't add editorial opinion beyond what the interviewee said, why not include it?
  8. The trickiest thing to me is judging
    WP:WEIGHT. If Fox is the only network to cover a particular story, and that story is, say, Obama-related secrets, I think it would usually be an uphill battle to argue weight for inclusion. On the other hand, if it's covered in multiple places, it's possible Fox News's coverage is as good or better than some others. Meh. A lot of text for a non-answer, but this thread was never going to have an answer anyway. — Rhododendrites talk
    \\ 04:02, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
  • That has been my point from the beginning, which XavierItzm conveniently chose to leave out. He included three sources, one of which is unquestionably reliable and two of which are dubious. It is not my responsibility to investigate whether, in this instance, Fox News is telling the truth. We already have a good source. Why do we need to include Fox News as well? — Malik Shabazz Talk/Stalk 04:24, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
Unless they're contradicting other sources which the community has found to be more credible for this use, why should we exclude it? ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 04:51, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
Because excess citation clutters the article and is completely unecessary when there is a stronger source. The statement Farrakhan and Obama had met at least once before does not need three sources, and there seems to be a rough consensus that the New Yorker is the strongest of the three cited sources for this statement, so both of the weaker sources should be removed. I don't see any reason to include an unecessary additional citation to a weaker source.Seraphim System (talk) 05:29, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
Sure but now you are making a value judgement based on multiple sources that say the same thing. Newsweek covered it too [24]. The learning from this isn't that Fox News is unreliable when they are saying exactly what all other reliable sources are saying even when the editorial opinions of those outlets are remarkably different. That's a sign of a reliable source, not a mark against it. --DHeyward (talk)
A number of editors in this discussion have agreed that the New Yorker is the strongest source for the statement currently in the article, but the article itself is not very good. My strong preference would still be more something like the National Review over FoxNews[25]. I think that FoxNews will damage the credibility of the article because their reputation is so poor - this is not the forum to defend it, even if some people like it. A lot of people will not accept FoxNews as a reliable source, and we have to keep them in mind also. I also would not prefer left-tilting sources where other sources were available - because about half the population of the United States would reject it out of hand. So it does not improve the credibility of Wikipedia articles to use these polarizing sources, especially if it is just for POV reasons. FoxNews and Breitbart are not the only right of center news sources in America, but the fact that Breitbart has accused National Review of being "anti-Trump" is a separate matter.Seraphim System (talk) 07:10, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
Seraphim System, please do not ignore that Shabazz also more than once deleted alternate sources Algemeiner Journal[2] and Talking Points Memo[3] for the same content. The Fox News citation was added only because of his disruptive serial deletion of sources; it was a fallback! So the only reason we ended here is because, if anything, mShabazz was even more disruptive in deleting the Algemeiner and TPM sources of the exact same incident.XavierItzm (talk) 08:50, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
Seraphim System There is not a progression of "right wing" where National Review and others like the Weekly Standard criticise Trump because he is "further right-wing" than they are. In fact it is his leftist/populist policies of domestic spending and protectionism that separate them. Trump won Michigan and other blue collar states because of that schism (moderate and conservative Republicans don't win states in the Blue Wall). He is not more "right-wing" rather his mix of populism and conservatism conflicts with more ideological positions. There is a reason deficit hawks, libertarians and free trade conservatives oppose him. It would be incorrect to use the positions of commentators on Trump to try and quantify where he stands ideologically as Trump is generally either equivalent to or more poplist/leftist than those outlets. It would be difficult to define any particular position he holds as being more "right-wing" than National Review or the "Weekly Standard" so saying support of Trump implies they are further right lacks any type of objective review of position. It's used as a pejorative, not a descriptor. --DHeyward (talk) 03:09, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
The one thing the Fox source adds that I don't see in the others is a discussion with the photographer to get the details of the when and where. While excessive citations are a problem, this seems like unique information that should also be included through the inclusion of that ref (not necessarily in the article) --Masem (t) 06:10, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
  • Fox News (the news portion, not talk shows) is just as reliable as CNN (the news portion, not opinion). They both have their issues - Reuters, AP, WaPo, WSJ, NYT would be better than both - particularly when covering a partisan issue. The editorial bias on Fox (and CNN, as well as other outlets) mainly plays out in the choice of what to cover and opinions/analyst choices - not in basic verification of fact.Icewhiz (talk) 04:59, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
  • The idea that Fox News is "just as reliable" as CNN, NBC, ABC and similar outlets is simply not grounded in reality. It is being presented here in this discussion as an assertion rather than backed up by anything. People are basically making the
    WP:IJUSTLIKEIT
    argument. In reality, Fox News is in a completely different category from these other outlets - it fabricates stories and narratives, its anchors regularly make false statements and in the past year or two it has pushed outright conspiracy theories (I presume that their main competition is outlets which are even more wacky, like InfoWars and Breitbart, so as not to lose their audience to these they've heavily shifted into crazy territory. Needless to say, just because there are outlets out there which are even more unreliable, does not make Fox News reliable). So here's some actual data:
For Fox a freakin' 60% of statements made on air by anchors and pundits were rates as false. Sixty. Freakin' Percent. Another 18% were rates as "half-true". 60+18=78, which means that ONLY 22% of the statements which appear on the network can be reasonably be called "true" [26]
For comparison, for CNN the same statistic was 27% [27]
ABC News does a little worse with [28] was 45%. Not shiny but nowhere near as bad as fox.
One more thing - couple users have rushed to claim that it's only the talk shows (Hannity, Carleson whatever) that are not reliable and that that doesn't apply to the news. I'm sorry but that's a stupid argument. You're admitting that most of the programming of the network consists of bullshit (the talk shows are the most popular part of it), yet, in the same breath are demanding that we trust the rest of the programming? Why exactly? It's like saying "I'm a professional con-man, but I'm currently off the clock, so how about you lend me some money, I'll pay you back". Seriously, come on.Volunteer Marek (talk) 06:24, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
All of the fact checks with "Pants on fire", "False" or "Mostly false" results for Fox News claims presented there are based on statements made by commentators, pundits or guests. None of them stem from news reporting. Not. One. Single. Fact check. We're all in agreement that Fox News' political talking points are bullshit. We're not discussing their reliability for political "facts", but for news reporting.
Tell me all about it.
 13:38, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
Not quite. The above source cover Fox News, including anchors, as well as the talk shows. Without more micro data it's hard to say what part of that 60% of falsehoods (or 78% falsehoods + half-truths) are from the news and what part are from guest etc. But again - if they lie in one half (or 60% or whatever) of their programming, why exactly should we consider the other half to be trust worthy? "Look guys, we have these show were we just bullshit you and make shit up. But we have these other shows were we only tell the truth and nothing but the truth! Trust us!". I'm sorry but at some point the fact that the non-news portions are such blatant campaigns of misinformation starts to affect the reliability of the news part. It's the same organization at the end of the day.Volunteer Marek (talk) 14:32, 6 February 2018 (UTC)
"fact checking" scores are quite prone to manipulation in terms of what you choose to check and your choice of "true facts" (which in some cases is not clear-cut) - however reliability of these scores aside - looking at the politifact drill down for Fox - they mainly checked analysts/opinions - and not hard cold news reporting - which are totally separate. Analyst opinions should be attributed to the source in any event if used.Icewhiz (talk) 10:14, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
Nonsense. On all accounts. Again, this is just throwing mud at actual reliable sources (fact checking outlets) to obfuscate the fact that the other source - Fox News - we're discussing is just garbage. If you're going to assert that fact checking orgs "manipulate" whatever, show evidence. Also, no, those sources also cover Fox News. And one more time, it's actually false that the "hard cold news reporting" and the rest of Fox are "separate". Some editors keep saying that but that's just made up. It's the same organizations, the same people in charge, the same agenda. At best it's just part of a "good cop, bad cop" strategy. To argue that "well yes, this half of Fox is total garbage, but the rest is pristine, I promise!" is just ridiculous.Volunteer Marek (talk) 14:32, 6 February 2018 (UTC)
  • I'm sure surprised as I read this. I had no idea that so many Wikipedia editors would suggest that Fox was considered to be as unbiased as most of the other widely read news sources. For example, one thing that really stuck in my mind: When I read (during the health care debate) that "Fox News vice president Bill Sammon sent a memo to staff asking them to refer to the 'public option' as the 'government option'",[29] I knew right away why he did that and I bet that those that see Fox as a biased source do as well. Gandydancer (talk) 08:03, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
    • The question isn’t whether Fox has a bias... it’s whether Fox is reliable. Having a bias does NOT make a source unreliable. Blueboar (talk) 11:29, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
    • And I would say calling a government program the "public option" without qualification is propaganda and repeating it as what the government wants is not the job of independent news. Whether it's "Public Broadcasting Corporation" (now upset that they are lumped in with other government funded news like RT) or dictator that calls their country or revolution "The Peoples...<insert benevolent phrase here>." Would you have a problem criticising the choice of name for "Pravda?" It's the Ministry of Truth and language manipulated to create an argument from authority or sympathy. Remember "No Child Left Behind?" No news organization should have reported that as fact. It's a title and should be attributed as a title rather than a factual assertion. --DHeyward (talk) 16:33, 7 February 2018 (UTC)
DH, I'm having kind of a hard time parsing your message here, but do you have an instance of any mainstream sources stating as fact or without evidence that "no child left behind" actually resulted in no child having been left behind? I don't, and I'm trying to understand why the media, by using the official title when referring to that Act was complicit in whatever deception you think the Bush Administration and their co-conspirators may have been trying to perpetrate. This just seems to be a different issue than fact-checking vs. disregard for same. SPECIFICO talk 16:49, 7 February 2018 (UTC)
Please strike the personal aspersion. The editorial decision to refer to the "public option" as the "government option" is a form of attribution. It's similar to Obamacare. If the person who commented think that distinction is somehow unreliable or biased, it's more about their opinion of the term rather than a structural difference of construction. No one had difficulty understanding what it meant. --DHeyward (talk) 03:09, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
  • I think there have been legitimate concerns raised here regarding Fox's reliability as a reference, especially in politically charged matters. If it's the only source to report something, especially in an area like that, I think we should use a lot of caution proceeding with what they've said as a statement of fact. That type of situation would likely call for attribution instead. If other references corroborate the particular fact in question, then that's a different story. Seraphimblade Talk to me 08:10, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2018/01/25/congressional-black-caucus-tried-to-bury-2005-obama-farrakhan-photo-photographer-says.html
  2. ^ https://www.algemeiner.com/2018/01/26/previously-unseen-photo-of-obama-with-louis-farrakhan-revives-controversy-over-ex-presidents-early-links-with-nation-of-islam-leader/
  3. ^ https://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/photo-of-obama-louis-farrakhan-to-be-released?utm_content=bufferff926&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
  • Some above make a blanket statement that Fox is reliable. I think the dominant view on Wikipedia is that no such blanket statement is defensible. If one were to draw a quadrant diagram, Fox would be in the low reliability / high bias quadrant, along with RT, the Daily Mail, Occupy and many others. I would not go so far as to say Fox is never reliable, but for anything at all contentious I would want an alternative source, largely because they blur the line between news and punditry, and their punditry is very often (again, commonly agreed above) tendentious or outright false. Fact checkers consistently show Fox statements to be heavily skewed towards falsehoods or half-truths (e.g. http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/tv/fox/). I would accept Fox as a source for uncontentious facts but in relation to anything remotely politically charged. Guy (Help!) 14:10, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
    • But no one disagrees that their pundits are often lying about a lot of things. That's what pundits often do and just because FN pundits are #1 in lying, does not mean FN is always unreliable. After all, NBC's PFC record shows 41% Mostly False, False or PoF statements. I personally don't like FN either but I can't agree that their news division is unreliable. Like Colin Jost said on this week's SNL, even Fox News won't back up Trump on everything he claims (cf. [30]). So despite their clear bias they don't seem opposed to fact-checking (when it comes to news, not opinions) and that's enough to classify it a RS. If there are instances where only FN reports something and everyone else reports something else, they can be handled individually. Regards SoWhy 17:05, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
Yes, but Fox is much less scrupulous about the distinction between opinion and fact than it should be. As per the fact-check stats, basically. It publishes falsehoods and distortions, sometimes it then retracts them, but often it does not. In anything relating to politics, if Fox is the only source for a claim it may safely be assumed to be false or at best misrepresented. For any genuinely significant fact it will always be possible to find a better source. Guy (Help!) 18:10, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
  • Their news section is just as reliable as anybody. The opinion side, like every other source we have, would generally not be reliable. PackMecEng (talk) 14:25, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
  • The FoxNews site and talk shows lean so far that they’re horizontal. The news programs are generally OK. The problem in my mind is that such a large proportion of Fox is commentary. Looking at the foxnews.com home page right now, there are dozens of slams again various Dems and praises of Trump. Nothing in the other direction. The main headline on MSNBC.com right now is Reince Priebus disputing a report negative to Trump. I avoid using both Fox and MSNBC just to be safe. That doesn’t mean I think they are entirely non-RS. Just that political stories nearly always have safer sources. O3000 (talk) 14:33, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
  • I wouldn't hold any news outlet to be reliable - they all have agendas and audiences that they want to please. Now, the typical "village fete" report should be fine. However, any reporting an a controversial topic, I think, should need to use multiple
    WP:NPOV. For example, the BBC, which I doubt many would dispute as an RS, encountered controversy last year over a report where it translated the Arabic word "Yahud" ("Jew") as "Israeli" - because the editorial team felt that was what was meant. If wikipedia covered such a topic (it was more of a documentary though), I would expect us to put in an accurate translation, potential caveats, and let readers decide. ∰Bellezzasolo✡ Discuss
    16:34, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
I think that was over two years ago, and as far as I can see the criticisms came from non-RS. The BBC was translating not the literal word; but how it was used by Palestinian children. I can imagine that's how those children would use the word. O3000 (talk) 16:43, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
It stills shows that even what are regarded as some of the most reliable sources can be criticized. Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 17:48, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

Reliability is always in context. I would not agree to a blanket prohibition against citing Fox, and I doubt the majority here will either. In the case in point, nobody doubts that the Fox story is reliable for the fact cited. So why are we having this discussion? Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 17:47, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

It is absolutely a reliable source. Mr Ernie (talk) 17:53, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

  • Reliable. Of course it passes RS. FNC is really no different than ABC, CNN, CBS, NBC etc, except that they fall on the other side of the ideological fence.Niteshift36 (talk) 18:18, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
  • Reliable yes, FN is a reliable source. Whether it's biased or not (as CNN, MSNBC, NYT, WSJ ,etc.) is irrelevant. Sir Joseph (talk) 19:19, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
  • Reliable for opinion cited as opinion and for facts stated as facts Just like just about every source found on Wikipedia. A huge percentage of "reliable sources" use press releases as their primary sources for stories - across the entire world. Not even the NYT does fact-checking before publication, nor The Guardian. The idea that FN is somehow "dirty" or "attaint" is not how
    WP:RS is intended. Collect (talk
    ) 19:28, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
Ante hoc fact-checking is a thing according to our own article on
fact checking. The section in the article on it even says Sarah Harrison Smith spent some time and also headed the fact checking department for The New York Times. --Emir of Wikipedia (talk
) 19:42, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
The NYT publishes are large number of stories 365+ days a year. And you are now bringing up something from 14 years ago? And, they retracted any errors. Please read
WP:IRS. O3000 (talk
) 01:07, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

Yes, it's a reliable source. You can cherry-pick stats from left-leaning sources all day, but that won't change anything. Personally, I think preserving our credibility as an encyclopedia is more important than excluding sources that some of our editors dislike for political reasons.

Lepricavark (talk
) 20:09, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

  • It's as reliable and unreliable as many other mainstream sources, including CNN or MSNBC, per Niteshift36 and others above. While I'd say it's not as high-quality as the NYT or WashPo, the various biases of Fox News, the NYT and the WashPo are well known to all who read the news regularly. I'd also agree with Collect and Sir Joseph above that Fox News' particular bias does not exclude it from being used in sources. On the contrary their perspective, which I very much disagree with, might actually be needed to make an article meet NPOV for readers. And lastly I am very skeptical of establishing a precedent whereby newspapers or perspectives that deviate from the NYT or WashPo are simply removed when they are used correctly (as I've seen done with RT). Reporting an uncontroversial fact — as in this case — is using a source correctly. -Darouet (talk) 22:00, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
  • Reliable as all the other "reliables" above. -- ψλ ● ✉ ✓ 01:45, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

It's not RS for anything except its opinion. That's not to say that it doesn't broadcast many accurate statements of fact, but that's not what WP demands. We need a dedication to and process to ensure best-efforts fact-based reporting. That's clearly not the business they're in nowadays. In general their business model more or less disregards conventional journalistic standards. Now, even the tawdriest supermarket tabloids contain lots of fact. Yes Liz Taylor was married to Richard Burton. But they don't hesitate also to state numerous falsehoods and fabrications in the same article. On balance, Fox disregards fact. It's not a matter of "bias" -- it's that fact is irrelevant. If any fact that is so simple or obvious that Fox or the British tabloids accurately report it, then there will be dozens of other sources we can cite that are RS most of the time instead of occasionally or rarely. So citing Fox gets us nothing and opens up endless debates with editors who, like Darouet above, apparently have little objective understanding of what makes NY Times RS for just about everything it reports and erroneously think this has to do with POV or bias. SPECIFICO talk 04:52, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

Glad I got a shout-out. -Darouet (talk) 23:04, 6 February 2018 (UTC)
  • Questionable, especially for matters relating to Barak Obama or Hilary Clinton, as was the example that started this discussion. FN has a strong bias when it comes to these two subjects; I would not use it when it comes to these two subjects. In the case of the article in question, a non-questionable source was providing the same information, so I don't see the point of citing FN as 2nd or 3rd source. --K.e.coffman (talk) 05:11, 6 February 2018 (UTC)
  • Reliable source for all articles in Wikipedia. --DHeyward (talk) 05:21, 6 February 2018 (UTC)
An assertion is not an argument.Volunteer Marek (talk) 14:32, 6 February 2018 (UTC)
  • Can be RS, but must be used with caution as it is fundamentally different from normal news sources in several ways:
  1. This is especially true regarding American politics (heavy GOP bias), and the existing GOP/Putin/Trump/Russia collusion, as it's part of that collusion. Fox News and Fox and Friends are Trump's primary news sources, and essentially his morning intelligence briefing. He then repeats their talking points, resulting in this, summed up by expert research: "People got vastly more misinformation from Donald Trump than they did from fake news websites -- full stop." -- Researcher Brendan Nyhan.[1][2] See our Fake news article for more about this and how it affects his audience and followers. It's pretty dramatic.
  2. They may call themselves "news", but are entertainment, part of Fox Entertainment Group. They don't practice serious journalism or follow serious, ethical, journalistic practices all the time. In politics they rarely do.
  3. Also, Fox "has no office or executive dedicated to standards and practices." -- "No Apology, No Explanation: Fox News And The Seth Rich Story, NPR.
  4. They are a GOP channel. They used to be more neutral, but Roger Ailes got together with Rupert Murdoch and created his dream, a GOP channel, and that's what it's been ever since.
  5. On political subjects, they sometimes mention facts, but they often don't mention those counter to their own GOP POV, and when they do, it's with very heavy spin.
    Shep Smith
    is the only real journalist, and he frequently calls out his own colleagues for their spin and dishonesty.
  6. Its political
    fact checking is horrendous (and that's fundamental to Wikipedia's RS evaluation). Multiple fact-checks consistently show it as unreliable. See comment by JzG
    .
Yes, they can get ordinary facts right, but that's about it. --
talk
) 16:07, 6 February 2018 (UTC))
The Trump White House credentialed InfoWars. Doesn't make them any more reliable as far as we're concerned.
(Also, as I've pointed out several times, the Fox News of 15, 10... even 5 years ago, was a different animal. Yes, back in 2008 or whatever, they could be considered RS. They've changed *dramatically* since then and no longer meet our standards for reliability) Volunteer Marek (talk) 14:35, 6 February 2018 (UTC)
  • Considering that Infowars is typically sympathetic to Trump, credentialing them isn't a huge shocker (if they actually are credentialed). FNC was certainly not sympathetic to either Clinton or Obama, yet there they were, sitting next to CNN et al. in prime spots. Niteshift36 (talk) 16:30, 6 February 2018 (UTC)
That says more about the Obama administration and the Trump administration than about the relative quality of Fox News.Volunteer Marek (talk) 00:41, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
Niteshift36 and Volunteer Marek, it also says very different things about them, but, before we go on, let's correct something: Infowars claimed they'd get press credentials, but Hope Hicks denied that was true. What is true, is that Breitbart and other fringe sources got presses from the White House, but Breitbart was rejected by Congress.
We recognize that Fox News used to be more neutral, and when the Obama administration simply accepted existing practices, that was a "duh" move that really means nothing. Fox was going from better to worse at that time. They are at a very much worse place now.
With Breitbart, it was already about as fringey and fake newsey as it gets (Infowars is worse), and yet Trump lauded it and was buddies with Bannon. To give them, a non-journalistic and extreme endeavor (literally supporting O'Keefe's deliberately deceptively edited videos), a press pass was very shocking and showed a severe lack of judgment on the part of Trump. So we can see that the two situations were widely different. --
talk
) 03:46, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
  • Note that I questioned if Infowars had actually been credentialed. Niteshift36 (talk) 14:03, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
  • Yes,
    talk
    ) 05:38, 9 February 2018 (UTC)
  • I did read it. That's why I mentioned it the second time. It was in recognition of your clarification. No need to treat me like I didn't read it. Niteshift36 (talk) 14:36, 9 February 2018 (UTC)
  • Fox News is a reliable source and just like every other source we should judge the information if it is
    WP:DUE or not. Recently some editors were also disputing reliability of CNN[31], it happens often that the source may not be credible for the information that is being included but it doesn't means that the source has no credibility. Excelse (talk
    ) 09:14, 6 February 2018 (UTC)
That qualifies as a blanket statement that is contradicted by data (see my comment above). There is abundant objective evidence that Fox is unreliable in important areas. I am happy to entertain the idea that it may be reliable in some areas, but there are so many fact-checks showing it to be false or misleading that it is certainly not possible to say that is is blanket reliable, as you do. Guy (Help!) 10:29, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

Questionable - for run-of-the-mill uncontroversial news reporting, it's usually fine, but for any of that, you can usually find a better source than Fox anyway. For most political reporting, I would say that if another editor takes issue with a statement using Fox as a source, and there aren't any other sources available, then that's a pretty good sign that we shouldn't use Fox as a source in that instance. There's many reasons given above (the Seth Rich story is a prime example of this) supporting this view so I won't rehash them; I'll just say I agree with the positions above pointing out the deficiencies in Fox as an RS. Rockypedia (talk) 14:31, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

  • I mean, I'd oppose a blanket ban on Fox News but it's definitely a source which should be avoided, and if challenged should not be used. At least regarding anything political (and these days it seems like everything is political). If the info is reliable you're gonna be able to find other RS. If it's only Fox News reporting on it, it's a pretty good chance it's garbage. There might be exceptions. But that's what they are - exceptions.Volunteer Marek (talk) 14:37, 6 February 2018 (UTC)
  • As reliable as a news site can be, which is not much, but singling it out as worse than other agenda-driven news sources (CNN, Economist, etc.) is odd. Rentier (talk) 15:10, 6 February 2018 (UTC)
This is not a case of signalling out, but a dispute about the reliability of a source being raised to gain consensus. If CNN or even the Economist is deemed unreliable then please open a new section and hopefully people will gain consensus there. Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 15:23, 6 February 2018 (UTC)
  • Reliable-If Fox is unreliable, then so are the WP, the NYT, NBC, MSNBC, ABC, and CNN for their consistently biased coverage of Trump (90& of which is negative) and repeated distortions. A great argument is made by Niteshift36: "Of course it passes RS. FNC is really no different than ABC, CNN, CBS, NBC etc, except that they fall on the other side of the ideological fence." The fact that we're even having this discussion over and over again when we would hardly dream of doing so at all for those other sources is an example of the liberal bias that has affected Wikipedia's coverage of current events. Display name 99 (talk) 18:37, 6 February 2018 (UTC)
More false equivalence nonsense. Making up stuff is not making an argument.Volunteer Marek (talk) 18:55, 6 February 2018 (UTC)
Agreed. This is not a cogent argument, and I wish that anyone who thinks Fox is an RS but only has arguments like this would just stay out of this discussion. You're making it harder to engage in a productive dialogue. Fox News is not, in any way, the right-wing version of CNN, ABC, the Times or WaPo. It's -at best- the right-wing version of MSNBC, and more often the right-wing version of Think Progress or Democracy Now. CNN, ABC, the Times and WaPo are all far closer to the center than Fox News.
Tell me all about it.
 19:02, 6 February 2018 (UTC)
An assertion is not a valid argument either. Rentier (talk) 20:04, 6 February 2018 (UTC)
It is when it's true. Technically, it is even when it's false, but it's cogent or
Tell me all about it.
14:54, 7 February 2018 (UTC)
Where a news outlet (including Fox) falls on the political spectrum is irrelevant to the question of its reliability. Sources can have a politically bias (left or right) and still be considered reliable.
What is relevant to the question of reliability is what a news outlet does when it makes a mistake and says something erronious. In this Fox is the equivalent of CNN, ABC, the NYT and the WaPo... all these news outlets (including Fox) get it wrong sometimes... and all (including Fox) have mechanisms in place to correct them. Blueboar (talk) 20:06, 6 February 2018 (UTC)
" (including Fox) have mechanisms in place to correct them" - this is a dubious assertion unless you're employing a uselessly low threshold for "mechanisms".Volunteer Marek (talk) 20:14, 6 February 2018 (UTC)
I use exactly the same “threshold” we use for any other news outlet. Which is the point... we should hold all media outlets to the same standard. And if Fox fails, then so do ALL the others. Blueboar (talk) 21:31, 6 February 2018 (UTC)
I agree with the premise - we should hold all media outlets to the same standards - but your conclusion - if Fox fails, then so do all the others - does not follow. Fox News does NOT have the same mechanisms in place for fact checking and accuracy as the other outlets.Volunteer Marek (talk) 03:23, 7 February 2018 (UTC)
Fox may not have the speed and dedication to making sure their editorial revisions following publication are in place as the Old Grey Mare, but they have them. WP:RS does not require that the source's corrections/redaction policies meet specific requirements, only that they exist. We can't rule a source unreliable because their editorial oversight is not as strong as the top-tier sources. --Masem (t) 15:13, 7 February 2018 (UTC)
talk
)
I don't know that I would go by that politifact ranking, even at the bottom it basically says take this with a grain of salt we only selectively checked stuff. The PEW was just a survey. PackMecEng (talk) 04:04, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
  • I think one can use Fox for sourcing (in general), just like one can use Daily Mail. But it is important to cross-verify all important claims using other multiple sources. I would not recommend sourcing any claims exclusively on Fox, and especially if other sources tell something different. If a claim has been supported by another and presumably better source, there is nothing wrong with removing ref to Fox as redundant - that is what MShabazz does in the diffs on the top of the thread. My very best wishes (talk) 19:31, 6 February 2018 (UTC)
  • Obviously reliable: First off, it seems many people fail to realize that Fox News's news coverage is different from their commentary. Hannity and Judge Jeanine are not news shows, while Bret Beier, Shepherd Smith, James Rosen (who just retired) are news (let's also remember that MSNBC and other stations have their own share of commentary shows). Also, it is true that Fox News intentionally appeals to conservatives, but so what? CNN and NBC intentionally appeal to liberals. Fox News does fact check, they have editorial oversight, and they do correct themselves and retract faulty reporting. Interesting to note, Harvard University found last year that Fox News was the most even-handed news source for coverage of Donald Trump, with 52% negative and 48% positive: [32][33] With the exception of its logo, slogan, and targeted audiance, there are no substantial differences between Fox, CNN, NBC, or other mainstream media outlets. --1990'sguy (talk) 21:40, 6 February 2018 (UTC)
Please Harvard University didn't find anything. An employee there issued a podcast that said somethingorother. And that's not RS either. Meanwhile, the simplest way to look at this is that, if there is anything true and worthwhile at Fox News, it will also appear in other sources that don't raise all the red flags we get from Fox. So this is like asking whether a human could survive on a diet of cardboard and moose yogurt. The answer is yes but there are tastier alternatives. SPECIFICO talk 22:24, 6 February 2018 (UTC)
What in the world are you saying? Here's the original link -- the study was conducted by Thomas Patterson, who holds the title of Bradlee Professor of Government and the Press, at the Harvard Kennedy School and Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy. I'm sure he'll be pleased to hear that you don't consider him or Harvard University a reliable source. :) --1990'sguy (talk) 23:08, 6 February 2018 (UTC)
You appear to be conceding my point, to wit: Patterson is not Harvard University. They're two distinct entities and it's incorrect to attribute the opinion of either one of them to the other one. And yes it appears to be podcast and not a peer-reviewed research finding. SPECIFICO talk 03:39, 7 February 2018 (UTC)
"Even-handed" is not the same thing as "unbiased". If you're covering something negative but showering it with praise, you're biased. Whitewashing a negative phenomenon is as much misinformation and inaccuracy as trying to smear a positive phenomenon. At the end of the day, the reason why the coverage of Trump in the media is mostly negative is because the things he does, the things he says, and the things he tweets are all "negatives" and there's no way to get around that fact without being dishonest. So this isn't exactly an argument in favor of Fox. (I'm trying to keep this BLP compliant but it's easy to think of other individuals where one would laugh at the idea of "even handed" coverage being neutral or reliable - plenty of those in history and politics).Volunteer Marek (talk) 03:32, 7 February 2018 (UTC)
This same logic can be applied in reverse to CNN/etc. (throwing excessive negative at a positive or even neutral story). For those of us that consider themselves middle of the spectrum, like myself, the entire situtaion with the current "news" since 2016 has through all traditional journalism out the window, making us needing to put news coverage from all sources in much more perspective, and emphasizing that we are not a newspaper and need to avoid recentism. This doesn't make any of these sources universally unreliable, but just that we have to be more aware of bias and slanted coverage. --Masem (t) 04:25, 7 February 2018 (UTC)
You're missing the point. 1990'sguy was claiming that because something has 50/50 good/bad coverage of something therefore it's neutral. He's the one making that claim. I'm just pointing out that it's nonsense.Volunteer Marek (talk) 20:21, 7 February 2018 (UTC)
Not really - read the WaPost article; the professor is going out how far slanted the other sources are compared to previous coverage, while Fox is much more balanced. Should the right balance in covering Trump be 50/50? Unlikely, but it shouldn't be as far out as 80/20 as this professor is saying. It's showing the bias in these sources. --Masem (t) 20:32, 7 February 2018 (UTC)
talk
) 04:08, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
Who is to judge if Trump is wrong or dishonest? (Remember that there are very extreme ramifications if he actually lied) Every politician stretches the truth to their own ends, some more than others. The only really good point we will be able to judge that is well after Trump's term in office is over, and we can have 20/20 insight without emotional drivers in either direction. Only then should be trying to judge percentages to use towards UNDUE, when we have secondary sources to evaluate the situation long-after that. --Masem (t) 04:56, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
talk
) 05:54, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
And anyway, this isn't even about how they cover Trump - though that often plays into it - it's about the fact that they often make stuff up and try to pass it off as true.Volunteer Marek (talk) 03:33, 7 February 2018 (UTC)
"They often make stuff up"? Any examples of them fabricating fake news out of the blue? And "often"? We're talking about Fox News (one of the largest, if not the largest, American media organization), not any of these websites. --1990'sguy (talk) 14:27, 7 February 2018 (UTC)
a) Murder of Seth Rich b) "Media" is not the same as "News". SPECIFICO talk 17:49, 7 February 2018 (UTC)
We already discussed the whole Seth Rich thing here. Fox News issued a statement retracting the story and admitting they were wrong. The fact they retracted the story shows enough that they care about accuracy -- writing a story before being shown the story was wrong is not damning, nor is it even unusual among news organizations in general. Just last year, ABC News, CNN (with three staffers resigning: [34]) and the Associated Press (1, 2) reported false stories or false things in their stories that they had to retract. And I'm probably just scratching the surface here. The point is that all news organizations make mistakes in their reporting. Fox's occasional errors do not make it any less of an RS than any of these other organizations with their occasional errors. And about the whole "media" and "news" thing, I was using those two terms interchangably. --1990'sguy (talk) 19:48, 7 February 2018 (UTC)
They didn't "retract" and "admit they were wrong"! They only "removed" the story, and gave some mealy mouthed bullshit excuse about how it "didn't meet editorial standards". They did NOT issue a correction. They did NOT note that they fabricated the whole story themselves. So, no they did NOT do what reliable sources do. And one more time - quit it with the false equivalence.Volunteer Marek (talk) 20:20, 7 February 2018 (UTC)
Oh, so Fox is unreliable because they didn't word their statement the way you wanted it worded? Fox fabricated the story all by themselves, publishing a story they knew was false? And the Seth Rich incident (one incident two years ago) is the reason why we should have a blanket ban on all Fox articles (of course, such a ban would include the 99.9% of articles with no problems or inaccuracies in them whatsoever that they appropriately did not retract)? No, Fox retracted the story and did what was appropriate. Quit it with your conspiracy theories about Fox News and Seth Rich. --1990'sguy (talk) 20:31, 7 February 2018 (UTC)
No, they're unreliable because they fabricated a story then removed it rather than retracting and clarifying. I mean, that was a direct answer to your question. "Fox fabricated the story all by themselves, publishing a story they knew was false?" - yup. The Wheeler/Seth Rich thing was exactly that. And the Seth Rich isn't the only thing, there's others. Hell, they published a fake story just today [35].Volunteer Marek (talk) 00:44, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
As I read about Fox's coverage of Seth Rich, they assumed their reporter had the proper sources, and published their story. They did not know they were publishing anything "false" (the same with the new link - no indication they knew it was false). Once they reassessed, they pulled it and say they didn't properly check the sources. That may not have the apology that is being asked for but that's not any type of requirement needed for a source to be an RS, only that they have the integrity to remove that. And I would argue the same that CNN and others do this too, publishing stories that are later proven wrong/debunked. They are not knowingly publishing falsehoods, they retract stories when they discover this, and the only other difference is generally the apology for being wrong. There is no difference here between Fox and CNN in the light of RS on that basis only. --Masem (t) 00:50, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
Really, every donkey in the circus knew that was fake news. Plausible deniability, especially when it's so implausible, is no substitute for editorial standards. There are a dozen triggers that would have prevented a legitimate news organization from publishing that stuff as news. SPECIFICO talk 04:45, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
Especially in light of the 24/7 news cycle these sources want to fill, and the known biases that these sources (CNN just as with Fox) will want to jump on a potential claim they feel they can back up that aligns with their bias. This at least to a source like NYTimes' credit (where they re filling the daily newspaper and not required to be 24/7) is that they are very careful before publishing to avoid egg on face, but they all retract stories as necessary. --Masem (t) 19:58, 7 February 2018 (UTC)
News and Media are not interchangeable, they're not the same thing. They should not be used interchangeably. I thought Disney was the largest media company. Anyway Mickey Mouse is not RS for public policy any more than Fox News is. As a matter of fact, I think it may be Time-Warner that's the biggest media company. So even within Time-Warner, we rather have more faith in Anderson Cooper's statements than Daffy Duck's,
that's all. WRT Seth Rich, RS tell us it wasn't just that they reported on the story, they contrived to sustain it knowing it was untrue. SPECIFICO talk
20:07, 7 February 2018 (UTC)
If the terms are not interchangeable, I will change my wording (as I already did in my last comment) to avoid it being a distraction. As for the Seth Rich story, what matters is that Fox retracted the story. What source do you have that says Fox News knowingly reported/defended a false story? (BTW, a competing news source saying the story is false does not mean that Fox now knows the story was false) --1990'sguy (talk) 20:22, 7 February 2018 (UTC)
The words are not the point. It's the missions of the organizations. When you have Fox News and a bunch of conspiracy theorists saying "X" and then the other 90% of life on Earth saying "Not X" then Fox is not going to be very well represented in an encyclopedia regardless of what they tell the public about their policies and procedures. SPECIFICO talk 21:25, 7 February 2018 (UTC)
This still comes back to NOT#NEWS and Recentism. The longer we wait to include what secondary sources says about a topic, rather than why media sources are yelling at each in the now, the better our articles will be. UNDUE should reflect what the long-term says, not the short term. And to that end, that makes a lot of issues of questions about Fox or any other news source's reliability in political circles relatively useless. They may still have bias in their long-term coverage but it will be very much tempered by time. --Masem (t) 21:51, 7 February 2018 (UTC)
Very true. Unfortunately, in the real world, the strong tendency for Fox to lean on the "getting more viewers" button, with eyes closed until forced by others to be opened, does very real damage in the sense that misleading propaganda is reaching people for much longer than when other, more reputable, media and news organizations make a mistake and quickly correct it. --
talk
) 04:15, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
Specifico, to put it very mildly, equating Fox News with conspiracy theorists and saying they disagree with "90% of life on Earth" (and all this just because of one incident almost two years ago) is quite an exaggeration. If you think Fox is unreliable, at least try to have more credibility than it does. --1990'sguy (talk) 22:36, 7 February 2018 (UTC)
So -- oh no! -- are you saying I have less credibility than Fox News? Oh no. SPECIFICO talk 04:48, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
  • I have used Fox News as a source for noncontroversial points, such as identifying the birth and death dates of a recently deceased notable individual. However, it is sufficiently controversial that it should probably be avoided in favor of a less controversial source where reasonably possible. I distinctly recall seeing instances where Fox News has taken a story from another source, such as AP, and altered the wording to suit a political narrative not supported by the original story. bd2412 T 20:33, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

Comment Honestly this conversation is a bit useless. Is Fox news a reliable source? Yes, no, and maybe. Context as they say is everything. Here and here probably not. What is the photo supposed to source that they met once? We need 3 sources to show that they met once? In context Fox can be a reliable source.-Serialjoepsycho- (talk) 20:44, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ Sarlin, Benjy (January 14, 2018). "'Fake news' went viral in 2016. This professor studied who clicked". NBC News. Retrieved February 4, 2018.
  2. ^ Guess, Andrew; Nyhan, Brendan; Reifler, Jason (January 9, 2018). "Selective Exposure to Misinformation: Evidence from the consumption of fake news during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign" (PDF). Dartmouth.edu. Retrieved February 4, 2018.

Comment - Is Fox news reliable? is CNN reliable?, is MSNBC reliable?, etc etc. Mainstream media's priority is ratings. If your audience is leaning Democratic? the coverage will be pro-Democratic/anti-Republican. If your audience is leaning Republican? the coverage will be pro-Republican/anti-Democratic. GoodDay (talk) 00:02, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

Comment This is probably a case of how not to open a RSN topic. Most of this conversation is a "Is Fox News a Reliable source?" It's unlikely that there will be a consensus that Fox News is a source that is completely unreliable on wikipedia and should never be used. Absent trying to answer just that would require context and discussion of that context. The context here was about whether it was reliable as used in the Farrakhan article.-Serialjoepsycho- (talk) 01:30, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

-Serialjoepsycho-, fortunately no one is calling for it to never be used. It's only the degree of "reliableness" that's in question.
You're right about the focus of this whole discussion, but the history is barely mentioned, so it immediately became a discussion about its reliability. At least there have been many good comments with food for thought. --
talk
) 04:15, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

Stepping back and looking

It is unclear to me what purpose this thread is serving at this point. Perhaps we should do an RfC? There are some rough themes that one can pull out - here are the positions that I am hearing from the above:

# Fox News is just as generally reliable as CNN, NBC, ABC etc (every specific source is always evaluated in light of the specific content it is used to support and other generally reliable refs, etc)

  1. For news, Fox News is just as generally reliable as CNN, NBC, ABC etc are for news. the commentary by everyone needs to be separated out and treated as opinion. Every specific source is always evaluated in light of the specific content it is used to support and other generally reliable refs, etc. (repeat for items below)
  2. For news that is not politics, Fox News is just as generally reliable as CNN, NBC, ABC etc are for news.
  3. For news that is not politics and not in any way controversial, Fox News is just as generally reliable as CNN, NBC, ABC etc are for news. (this is similar to consensus on RT)
  4. Fox News is generally unreliable and should be avoided unless there is some specific and very good prior justification made (this is similar to Daily Mail but without the "wow great sports coverage" that DM gets)
Did I leave any major position out? i think we should actually do an RfC and see if we find any consensus. I wonder if we would. Jytdog (talk) 06:18, 8 February 2018 (UTC) (adjust per below Jytdog (talk) 14:52, 8 February 2018 (UTC))
I'd take a modification of the first, with the addendum of the type "...in that they are generally reliable, but every use from these sources should be determined on a case-by-case basis if there are questions." --Masem (t) 06:25, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
added "generally" yes that is good. nobody is Perfect and we have no Rules. thx Jytdog (talk) 06:43, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
Indeed. On a case by case basis. That's a given.
Fact checkers find that Fox News (not Hannity and such like) rates much lower for accuracy. They don't have the same concern for fact checking, are slow to correct mistakes, and are very, not just a little, biased. When Ailes was the RNC media guy, he dreamed of a GOP channel. Then he worked it out with Murdoch, quit the RNC and deliberately created Fox News as the unofficial GOP channel, with talking points that must be followed, and that's still their function, but it's morphed into a Trump channel.
Mind you, some bias is allowed, but their bias is very skewed, to the point that spin is strong enough to cause them to either not mention subjects which contradict the GOP agenda, or spin it to the point of falsehood. That's what touches on our RS policy, and how fact checkers rate them as very often inaccurate. They are literally unreliable too much of the time.
So the list above is slanted toward the rosy picture and largely, except the last point, ignores many of the criticisms.
I suggest we demote them from the rest of MSM by a "Use with caution" flag, at least for American politics.
Now that they are siding with Russia, RT, and Sputnik, we should maybe include "all" politics. Keep in mind that Murdoch is still in the background, and he's an internationalist who is on the watchlists of many European countries, where he is considered a danger to democracy, largely because of his attempts to corner the market in media and news. I have lived in Europe for many years, and remember some years ago when several state leaders spoke out in alarm. --
talk
) 07:00, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
User:BullRangifer i have removed the first item. better? Jytdog (talk
) 14:52, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
Jytdog, that is an improvement, but I'd still like to see a few lines recognizing concerns. Here are three points and a proposition to meet those concerns:
  1. Their American politics reporting is very GOP biased.

    They aren't quite as close to center as CNN is on the left, but more like MSNBC is to the left. Pew Research Center is good on this. (Play with this.) They often literally won't mention basic political facts and news stories which are counter to their own GOP POV, and when they are finally forced to do it, it's with very heavy spin.

    My wife, who isn't political at all, will sometimes switch back and forth between CNN, ABC, MSNBC, and Fox, just to see how all MSM are discussing stories, but Fox is discussing some minor event of no significance, and often it's a distraction. She points it out.

    They refuse to cover stories against their POV, and then only with spin that turns it into actual falsehood and propaganda. Sins of omission have consequences. Good propaganda is often without direct lies, but by omitting certain information the effect is very deceptive.

  2. Their fact checking is weak, and correction of publicly noted errors is slow, and usually without apology. There are many well-known examples of this. Seth Rich is one we have mentioned. Another one that's current is related to Peter Strzok#Fox News coverage.

    This means they are literally fact checked by other MSM, which forces them to finally make a correction as the caboose, way behind on the train of facts.

    When they have a GOP talking point or POV to push, they are like a bulldog that won't let go. It blinds them so their bias is very obvious to anyone who compares news coverage, and they have occasionally repeated fake news from the extreme right.

    The pathway from Russia to Fox News has been described by Paul Wood:

    "This is a three-headed operation," said one former official, setting out the case, based on the intelligence: Firstly, hackers steal damaging emails from senior Democrats. Secondly, the stories based on this hacked information appear on Twitter and Facebook, posted by thousands of automated "bots", then on Russia's English-language outlets, RT and Sputnik, then right-wing US "news" sites such as Infowars and Breitbart, then Fox and the mainstream media. Thirdly, Russia downloads the online voter rolls." Source

    Note that Fox picks up a few of the fake news stories, but by that time the MSM is aware not to do it.

  3. Fact checkers have rated their accuracy last among the major MSM.

    This is directly related to this RS policy. It has to be weighted heavily against them.

    1. Fox's file at PolitiFact

    2. Comparison of MSM at PolitiFact.

    3. Snopes

    4. Fox least trusted in 2014. Pew Research Center

    5. Fox News Pounded In Ratings As Truth Mounts a Surprising Comeback, Newsweek

PROPOSED:
  • "Fox News is generally as reliable as CNN, NBC, and ABC for mundane facts unrelated to politics, but is deprecated for political subjects. Therefore it should be used with caution regarding politics and its opinions clearly attributed."
See comments below by
talk
) 17:19, 9 February 2018 (UTC))
Thank you that is very helpful. I want to pose a neutral RfC (per the spirit of the thing) So the supporting stuff would go in the discussion section, if i were to do this. I like the idea of proposing a single thing instead of the options. I would suggest changing and broadening the second sentence to "For anything else it is generally unreliable." Jytdog (talk) 16:38, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
User:BullRangifer that is better. How about getting rid of "American" in "regarding American politics"? Jytdog (talk
) 15:42, 9 February 2018 (UTC)
That's sounds fine to me. Done. --
talk
) 17:15, 9 February 2018 (UTC)
If you can produce
WP:RS attesting to the points you're making, that'd be one thing. But I don't see any independent confirmation for the "siding with Russia, RT and Sputnik" accusation. The closest I've seen to an independent source for these accusations was a book by David Lynch
someone else cited.
Fox News is a usually reliable source on news. Which fact checkers are you citing to indicate otherwise? loupgarous (talk) 09:19, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
Denial. Not just a river in Egypt. Snopes, for example. MMA has a good article highlighting the problem. The issue is not that they are "generally unreliable", but they often found to publish false or misleading stories, with consistent political bias to the right, and the do not adequately enforce separation between reporting and opinion.
Most news outlets are a stream of fact-checked information with at least some attempt at objectivity, interspersed with opinion pieces. Fox is a stream of right-wing talk, much of it independently assessed objectively false or grossly misleading, with occasional fact-based segments which might, on a good day, not be actually biased.
The idea that Fox is not a dependable source for politics is not even remotely controversial other than among a subset of Americans. They are a good primary source for how the right and far right will spin any particular thing, so they are often quoted in commentaries, but not for the truth of the thing itself. Guy (Help!) 09:51, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
The problem with both the snopes and the MMA articles you point us to is that they focus on misstatements made in “Analysis and Commentary” segments... and not on any misstatements in Fox’s actual news reporting. And THAT is a key distinction that needs to be highlighted in this discussion. The actual NEWS REPORTING on Fox is objective and factual (or at least as objective and factual as any other outlet). The Analysis and Commentary isn’t always so (but neither is the analysis and commentary aired by other outlets). Separating news reporting from analysis and commentary is vital to determining the reliability of any news outlet. Analysis and commentary are essentially OPINION, and should not be cited for facts (or at least need to be attributed). Blueboar (talk) 13:13, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
I think a big problem with this whole discussion is that it is not based on the specific context of the original post, but rather an attempt to make a blanket ban, which Wikipedia normally does not do, because it is not a practical approach. Almost any source can be reliable for something.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 14:43, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
  • Since when is Snopes a RS or Neutral source? Sir Joseph (talk) 16:18, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
  • I love Snopes for tracking down whether an urban legend is true or similar things, but they are hardly a reliable source for this. Snopes itself has a left leaning political view. MMA exists with the goal of being critical of conservative media. If it's a judgement call, they'll always side with "it was wrong". Niteshift36 (talk) 16:42, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
  • comment - if you are interested in continuing the debate about fox please do that above the break. Unless anybody has further comments on the proposed "statements" i will launch the RfC pretty soon to see if we can get a somewhat ordered discussion that can actually be closed and provide ourselves with some guidance on this issue. Jytdog (talk) 14:48, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
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