Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 362

This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Is https://ininet.org/ reliable? Does anyone know how is the content generated, and by whom?

It is used in very few places in wikipedia as far as I can see.

It is the only place though which I can find some details I need for another article. Aoziwe (talk) 05:48, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

Given that it seems to be nothing but a random collection of uploaded documents about who-knows-what, no, it isn't a reliable source for anything. AndyTheGrump (talk) 06:13, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

It seems on a cursory examination to contain at least some reasonably accurate and neutral information, but nothing appears to be attributed to any original source. Like AndyTheGrump says, it should not be considered reliable or authoritative. A bit like unsourced Wikipedia content, except that they do not even give a hint as to who wrote anything, who takes responsibility for the content, or who owns the site... · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 06:34, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

Looking at the website further, I suspect that at least some of the content is copyright material, copied without attribution from elsewhere. If that is the case, it must not, per policy, be linked at all. AndyTheGrump (talk) 07:00, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

Thanks all. Aoziwe (talk) 01:11, 27 December 2021 (UTC) No longer watching so ping me if anything further.

allhiphop.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com

I'm having a hard time believing that AllHipHop is a reliable source on account of mass-posting authors such as here. I strongly doubt that an article that says something such as "BKS has been able to move so fluently through the industry by maintaining a disciplined mindset when it comes to work ethics" is not some form of PR churnalism.[6] There's plenty of other very suspect looking articles, too—many of which appear to me to be fluff pieces of some sort, but I can't find anything on AllHipHop's website that suggests they accept these.

Since this is a rather heavily used source on Wikipedia, as well as other places, I'm curious if anyone can offer any insight into why these articles are being written in such a clearly promotional manner that reeks of paid-for PR, and if this is truly as reliable a source as its heavy usage might imply. (It's been added over 20,000 times on Wikipedia.) Perryprog (talk) 01:36, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

Although I haven't yet found on the AllHipHop website where they openly solicit paid posts or press release submissions, there is an entire section of "sponsored posts": https://allhiphop.com/sponsored-posts/ so it appears that they do accept some form of consideration for content. —Scottyoak2 (talk) 02:14, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

It's rather poor quality. Have there been discussions about it? --Hipal (talk) 19:16, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

None of substance; see here. Perryprog (talk) 19:27, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

• It is listed as a reliable source at Wikipedia:WikiProject Albums/Sources, imv Atlantic306 (talk) 01:25, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

The relevant discussion from WikiProject Albums seems very limited. --Hipal (talk) 01:33, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

I'm concerned that Vox does not clearly distinguish fact from opinion. For example, this recent article opens and closes with an opinionated statement about invasive species from the author's perspective (including the headline), although it presents attributed opinions from others. There are other examples, but I don't have the time to seek them out. The main page of this website also does not segregate op-eds, as other mainstream news sites like The Guardian do. –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 16:48, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

That is correct. Vox should be treated as analysis or opinion source, which means that generally it should be attributed. It does not even pretend to be news, rather than "explanatory journalism".

In your example the author uses first person singular: "I posed this question to ..." The author is not introduced in their profile and does not seem to have any other articles under their belt for Vox.

Another random example, from the front page: "I will conclude by reiterating a point I've made several times before; that the most important question in Dobbs is not whether the Court writes the magic words "Roe v. Wade is overruled."[7] Millhiser does not seem to have strong journalistic credentials: before joining Vox, they wrote columns for Thinkprogress. And so on.

Politrukki (talk

) 22:42, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

My concern is that this is not mentioned in the website's

WP:RSP entry. –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄

) 06:13, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

Yes, this a problem and should be reflected in the RSP entry and color.

WP:RSOPINION is toothless if people can just get around it by using outlets like Vox to recycle opinions as fact. Right-wing outlets that mix fact and opinion like this are considered unreliable, as are some left-wing ones, and that should be applied here too. Crossroads ^-talk-

08:53, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

What specific text in which specific Wikipedia articles is that Vox piece being used as a citation? --Jayron32 14:45, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

While I enjoy reading Vox, it is, by its own admission (see its about us and ethics pages), "explanatory journalism", which I like and value, but I also recognize is something different than straight news journalism. It's opinion/analysis. I'm not sure they do any actual news reporting or even real investigative journalism. I could be wrong about that, I haven't read everything they've published of course. But we shouldn't be citing to Vox analysis for statements in wikivoice. I agree it shouldn't be green at RSP, and the RSN threads linked there are old (2014, 2017, 2020) and/or don't really grapple with general reliability (especially the 2020 one). I don't think those linked RSN threads support a green listing as it stands now, but would support an RfC and would probably !vote to mark it yellow (use with attribution only). Levivich 14:58, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

I agree Vox tends to wear its opinions on its sleeves, but when you distill out the facts, they are still reliable and engage in proper editorial practices. As more and more sources take this type of accountability journalism approach, I think we can't rule out their reliability, just know when the writer is speaking in a subjective voice versus an objective voice (eg per

WP:YESPOV). We need editors to be fully aware of how to use such articles, not only from Vox but other sources in the future. --Masem (t

) 15:03, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

Do you think it should be yellow to alert editors to this? I fear if it's green, editors will just adopt it in wikivoice without question, and any editor who questions that will be told it's green at RSP, end of discussion. Levivich 15:21, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

Given that what's happening with Vox is indicative of many other nominally reliable sources, I don't think it should change as the source is still good, but one just has to be more careful of what's included in wikivoice. --Masem (t) 16:05, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

Vox is exceptional in mixing opinion and fact, and does not even purport to do otherwise. Many editors are of the mindset that an opinion in a green-listed source becomes a fact that we can state in wikivoice, and this leads to laundering of POV into fact. I support Levivich's proposal. Crossroads ^-talk- 20:10, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

Heartily seconded. It's position on https://adfontesmedia.com/ is not impressive, but I actually think it's overly generous. EnlightenmentNow1792 (talk) 22:58, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

Masem (and others), not always proper. Vox has edited this 2020 analysis several times. It has issued maybe four editor's notes, but hasn't actually corrected the article, except for some details; a poor journalistic practice that is sadly becoming a norm. The Washington Post reported on this (calls Vox "explanatory news site"). The Vox analysis was cited in

Politrukki (talk

) 16:19, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

Unless I am misreading, those updates reflect changes to the scientific consensus that happened after the article was published. Updates and corrections like that are laudable and are signs of a

WP:RS, but it's especially absurd to blame them for not being able to see the future. --Aquillion (talk

) 21:29, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

Some language was softened, but editors did not do – and have refused to do – major corrections. Barclay asserted as fact something that was not established as fact. Barclay opined that "We'll need to be patient for Chinese investigators to get to the bottom of how the virus made the jump from animals to humans." That's just naïf pandering to China, which contributed to making it more difficult to get to the bottom of finding origins.

Politrukki (talk

) 11:55, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

WP:HEADLINE has us well-covered here. Once you're past the headline, I don't see any issue with this one article. "Explanatory journalism" is not a reason to say a source is less reliable. Firefangledfeathers

15:55, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

Vox is more of an opinion magazine that also publishes news, rather than a news magazine that also publishes opinions. User:力 (powera, π, ν) 17:35, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

@

talk

) 12:32, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

The headline is just covered by

WP:USEBYOTHERS, see [9][10][11][12]. The New York Times describes Vox as a site known for explanatory journalism and podcasts. The Washington Post describes it as a digital-news site. I'm not seeing any particularly compelling arguments above to question these usages and assessments. --Aquillion (talk

) 21:29, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

Do you understand that your argument "are basically saying 'I disagree with their analysis and the conclusions they make, therefore it is mere opinion and not staid factual analysis'" can be turned against you? I.e. you are simply treating Vox as straight news because you agree with their viewpoints. That's not how this works. You didn't address the usage of first person singular: if a Vox writer says "I", do they refer to Vox as a person? Has Vox shared their pronouns?

Take a look at this editorial: It's Not Just Jennifer Lawrence: Women In Pop Culture Are Under Attack by VanDerWerff. It's not labelled opinion/editorial, which it obviously is. I haven't even read the article, yet I know it's an opinion piece because smarter people have said so. In this paper the author explicitly calls it an editorial: "Similarly, the editorials connected the privacy needs of the victims and the privacy needs of "regular women." In Vox, ... VanDerWerff wrote". The Los Angeles Times editorial that is mentioned next is properly labelled opinion. (Another Vox editorial included in the study is mentioned by name only.)

What is "Evaluating the scale, growth, and origins of right-wing echo chambers on YouTube", the source you are citing? Preprint? Has it been published in some academic journal? Have you or A. C. Santacruz and XOR'easter who cited you read the source? It's some kind of research about Youtube channels. You say it "puts them in the same category as the Washington Post, the New Yorker, NBC News, and so on", but Vox Youtube channel is also in the same box with "

The Jimmy Dore Show", "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert", and "The View" (apparently refers to The View (talk show)). In the same source BuzzFeed News, The Intercept, and ProPublica are labelled "far left". The authors didn't come up with the labels, but rather picked them from other sources. [23] used Ad Fontes Media and Media Bias Factcheck, [20] apparently labelled Vox per Media Bias Factcheck, though it's not 100% clear to me at this juncture.

Columbia Journalism Review published a piece that covers "best and the worst of recent works of data journalism". Tanveer Ali picks a Vox piece and obviously treats it as an example of the latter. Ali writes "The Vox author seems to be banking on the reader having preconceived notions of life in Tehran rather than explaining what qualities it shares with the St. Louis suburb. ... the reporting and evidence is sorely lacking in the Vox piece to tie the cities with this piece of data ... Other than clickbait, we don't see any reason for the Vox story to exist. [13]

In Information Today (Oct2014, Vol. 31 Issue 8, p17-18. 2p.) Mick O'Leary writes "Overall, Vox's explanations work well. The staffers are adept at breaking down extensive news stories into easily comprehended short pieces ... Vox is noticeably left wing. There is more than one way to explain a controversial story, and Vox's interpretations lean to the left. This is fine by itself, but people of different political persuasions may identify Vox as a leftwing site that's to be avoided". (Some of O'Leary's criticism that I have omitted is much outdated: missing "About" page, lack of editorial policy, the dominant role of Ezra Klein, etc.)

In Reason, Bobby Soave largely criticises the analysis of Vox's David Roberts: "It's also true that Vox, The New York Times, CNN, et al are closer to neutral than Breitbart or Fox News. But let's not pretend these outlets have ever been very interested in playing nice with conservatives. And in cases where they were willing to humor a conservative perspective, they are often punished for it.

Sometimes Vox publishes two pieces that largely cover a topic from two different viewpoints. For example in 2016 Matt Yglesias wrote a piece critical of a Associated Press story. A day later Jeff Stein criticised Yglesias: "On Tuesday, my editor Matt Yglesias argued that that [sic] there's an 'absence of any clear evidence of actual misconduct.' ... By some criteria, Yglesias is certainly right ... But the money in politics experts argued that these aren't the only standards of wrongdoing by which we can or should judge Clinton."[14] So the question is, which of these pieces, if any, we as Wikipedia editors should treat as news? I would say neither and to me this and similar incidents indicate that Vox is not consistently partisan.

By the way, Yglesias was smoked out from Vox for unrelated reasons. The Atlantic's Conor Friedersdorf writes in an editorial that Yglesias's "absence as a staffer ... will make the publication he co-founded less ideologically diverse at a moment when negative polarization makes that attribute important to the country".[15]

Concur. Vox is fine. Attribute if you're particularly concerned. A few editors here think that if they can claim "bias" then factual reliability doesn't hold, and that's not how anything has ever worked here - David Gerard (talk) 02:09, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

Disagree. "Vox is fine", "A few editors here think that if they can claim "bias" then factual reliability doesn't hold, and that's not how anything has ever worked here". https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/vox/ grades Vox as Hard Left bias, as "Mostly Factual", as it has failed two major fact-checks, while only publishing one retraction. "In review, Vox looks at the issues from a progressive liberal perspective, and there is also an anti-Trump tone in their reporting. Therefore, the majority of stories are pro-left and anti-right. Further, Vox publishes stories with emotionally loaded headlines." - EnlightenmentNow1792 (talk) 21:10, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

Status Quo. Agree with @David Gerard here. All news is biased. What matters is their reputation for reporting facts accurately. And nothing about that has changed wrt Vox. — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 19:00, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

Disagree. "All news is biased." Actually, not it isn't. The wire services aim for pure objectivity and get the closest (AFP, AP, Reuters). Vox is in nowhere near the same category of these venerable institutions. "What matters is their reputation for reporting facts accurately" - their reputation for that is poor, graded as "Mostly Factual" by https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/vox/ - EnlightenmentNow1792 (talk) 21:10, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

Encyclopedias shouldn't be news aggregators while I concur with @

WP:RECENTISM - however I would make sure it's understood that I would say the same thing about the Guardian, the CBC, CNN or China Daily as sources. Simonm223 (talk

) 17:01, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

I agree with

Please ping me!

23:44, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

Comment. Concerned with some of the language used here, such as "Vox is no more or less reliable than any other journalistic source". C'mon, we're better than that, surely? AP, AFP, Reuters, BBC - these are much more fact-based news outlets than the likes of Vox. I was excited when Vox rolled out, with its manifesto of "explanatory journalism", and I knew Ezra Klein's work. Thus I felt equally betrayed when it turned out to not only be below-par when it came to fact-checking, but more importantly fell into the same, safe, lazy NY/DC bubble of received opinion - for all the millions that was invested and all the talk of a new type of online journalism, turns out it's basically a re-hashing of what one can already expect to read on the NY Times opinion pages... but with only the left liberal pieces. I don't know what it is about the USA (being non USAianese myself), but the mainstream media just seem incapable of creating a news outlet that doesn't play party politics, and just, well, does what Vox was supposed to do, explain sh*t to people! Rant over! Vox sux. EnlightenmentNow1792 (talk) 22:56, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

Concur with the rest, the status quo is fine. The presented article has two sentences at the end that can be described as the author's opinion, if anything this is restrained, most news publications publish similar articles in line with their individual editorial standpoints. Headlines in general are not reliable, which is already covered at

WP:HEADLINES. Tayi Arajakate _Talk

10:53, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

• Comment: At the very least, the listing should be updated to mention that Vox does not always distinguish fact from opinion in line with evidence provided, and that editors should determine whether an article is fact or opinion before using it. BilledMammal (talk) 21:53, 12 December 2021 (UTC)
  • Absolutely not; nobody has presented any evidence beyond "it reads as opinion to me." Compare to eg. The Atlantic ([16]) - whose RSP entry currently simply says they are "generally reliable" - that is a source with much more serious problems distinguishing fact and opinion, especially their ideas page, which many editors insist on trying to treat as news; but even the rest of their coverage has a tone essentially similar to the articles that have some people's heckles up above, eg. [17]. If we're going to accept editors just making general readings like that and are going to write them into RSP entries, then a lot of existing RSP entries need to be re-evaluated - and that's a decision we should make as a general policy so as to avoid situations where editors just lash out at statements they disagree with and accept eg. the Atlantic ending articles with stuff like In the age of climate change, in other words, the beaches must remain a playground for the rich—now more than ever to provide the author's opinion on someone's comments. --Aquillion (talk) 22:21, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

The “Ideas” section of The Atlantic is very clearly labeled

talk

) 13:04, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

Every news article has to be parsed for fact/opinion distinction at the granularity of individual claims. That remains true whether or not it categorizes articles as news or opinion. For example, if a source says, "It rained on December 10, and that was terrible," the first part necessarily has the character of a fact, and the second part the character of an opinion. Sennalen (talk) 02:31, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

Have I missed something? Have we suddenly accepted mediabiasfactcheck.com as a reliable source? Doug Weller talk 12:41, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

Vox is a generally high-quality source and editors should have enough media literacy to understand what is fact and what is opinion. I'm seeing no evidence of factual errors or a problem in the professionalism of its writers or its corrections process (well, there is one bit of evidence presented above but it's not enough to show a systemic issue). Green is good. If editors don't understand what the green means then that is either their problem or a wider

WP:RSP problem. I've found editors don't understand what yellow means ("I can blindly revert your addition of this source and filibuster on the talk page to keep it out of the article"). — Bilorv (talk

) 00:56, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

Status Quo and I concur that no media bias site is a reliable source. Nor is "well it reads like opinion to me". No journalist simply lists dry facts, which means that all journalism contains some element of analysis. (And even if they did, which facts and in which order would still contain an element of analysis.) Vox is no different. That makes them the same as other news sources, not different. Loki (talk) 07:17, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

Bumping this since it got no attention last time...

I have seen Saving Country Music show up in a myriad of country music-related articles. According to the about page, it is written and published entirely by one person. This means that there is no editorial oversight or fact-checking involved. The content of such blog does lean a bit

In addition, most of the uses I've seen of it are for biographical information, peacocking a barely-notable artist, or unduly pushing the author's viewpoints. Given the nature of the site, it should clearly be at least deprecated, if not outright blacklisted.

Paging @Caldorwards4:, @ChrisTofu11961:, @Gatoclass:, @Martin4647: due to their history of edits related to the topic. Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 17:31, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

@TenPoundHammer: I also find Saving Country Music to be an unreliable source. The word "editor" (used to the describe the person managing this website in this case) is a loose term. He/she appears to wear multiple hats, which is fine in some circumstances. Yet in this case the "editor" often does approach his writing from a non-biased standpoint. I have often avoided this website due to its biased language. When we evaluate media outlets for reliable sources we should consider whether or not they any professional journalistic background. If they appear not to, then their content should be avoided. In this case, Saving Country Music should be avoided. ChrisTofu11961 (talk) 23:35, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

While I won't pretend to have taken an in-depth look at the site in question, the fact that either it or its author have evidently been repeatedly cited in reputable journals indicates to me that it is reliable. However, given that it basically appears to be a one-man blog, it would probably be a mistake to give too much weight to it in articles, and certainly, claims made by the author about himself should be taken with a large grain of salt. Gatoclass (talk) 08:12, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

I've got some familiarity with this particular website, and having read a few of its pieces before, I'd recommend against its use for most purposes. It's essentially a one-person blog, has a tendency towards the polemic, and a tendency to self-aggrandize. While I wouldn't say it should never be used, there's generally going to be better sources for things such as biographical information, and we need to make sure that usage here meets due weight, given the nature of the claims it makes itself (the Sturgill one is a good example) and the tendency to publish polemic-like pieces. Hog Farm _Talk 19:31, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

victimsofcommunism.org is a website of an educational and research foundation with an academic council with research and education programs. It was previously discussed

• It seems Nug forgot to mention that this source has been recently a subject of the RSN discussion. Nug is perfectly aware of the previous discussion, so I have no clue why he never mentioned it.

In addition to that, the problem with this source not its reliability. It is closely affiliated with the US authorities: It was established by the Act of Congress, and is currently lead by Andrew Bremberg, a former director of the Domestic Policy Council in the Trump's administration. In addition to this source, the article cites three other sources that are closely affiliated with the US federal authorities of with VoC. That creates a serious bias, for Wikipedia is not supposed to reflect official position of any state.

In addition,this source provides desperately obsolete data for the USSR, so it is unreliable for the USSR and for the total figure. The highest figures available from modern data (e.g. Rosefielde) are at least three times lower.

In addition, the link to this "source" is a dead link. This information is available only from some web depository, and it is not at the official site any more. Therefore, there is no proof that these figures reflect a current position of VoC. No matter if this source reliable or not: it does not say that anymore, so, strict;y speaking, it is not a source. Paul Siebert (talk) 04:34, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

?? I did link the previous RSN discussion above. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is also closely affliated with the US government and was established by an Act of Congress and is led by political appointees. --Nug (talk) 05:12, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

My bad, a blue colour is barely visible on my monitor.

However, your summary of previously expressed opinia is somewhat deceptive. Yes, majority of users pointed out that it is an extremely biased source, however, many of them noted its poor reputation in fact checking and accuracy, and their tendency to exaggerate figures.

WRT CDC, do you claim that CDC as a source is independent from the US government?

In addition, the main goal of VoC is not a study of Communism, but "educating Americans about the ideology, history and legacy of communism." In other words, this is not a neutral research institution, but the organisation that pursue some ideological goals in accordance with the policy of the US administration.

And, finally, you carefully avoid an answer to my criticism: it is no evidence that VoC figures reflect a current point of view of this organisation: its web site contains no such figures. I pointed your attention at that fact previously, why you restore a dead link? Paul Siebert (talk) 05:22, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

The Foundation is a bi-partisan non-profit, the

WP:BIASEDSOURCES, and usage in this context is appropriately attributed to them. There are no policy issues against using Wayback machine, even Wikipedia:Reliable_sources#Notes and Wikipedia:Reliable_sources#References uses it. Nug (talk

) 05:44, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

BIASEDSOURCES say that biased sources

may be reliable in the specific context

, and that is exactly what I say: it is reliable for the views expressed by organisations that have close ties with US administration, but not for figures themselves, and that is a proper context for its usage.

WRT Wayback mashine, the main link is not dead in your example. Paul Siebert (talk) 05:57, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

The CDC also has close ties with the US administration, so this argument is nonsense. And the claim that it has a “poor reputation in fact checking and accuracy” is totally without any evidence what so ever. The Academic council is comprised of these scholars, many of them specialists in communist studies: Peter Rollberg (chair), Peter Boettke, Jonathan Brent, Marek Jan Chodakiewicz, Paul A. Goble, Paul R. Gregory, Hope M. Harrison, John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr, Mark Kramer, A. James McAdams, Sean McMeekin, Aaron Rhodes (editor of Dissident), David Satter, F. Flagg Taylor IV and George Weigel. --Nug (talk) 06:22, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

I share Paul Siebert's concern that the figures are not on the website anymore. JBchrch talk 06:35, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

• If the figures compiled in 2016 are not on the website anymore, it appears as though the VoC memorial foundation doesn't stands by them anymore. The sentence should thus be removed from Wikipedia, especially if we identified methodological errors in the calculation.
  Mottezen (talk
  ) 07:51, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

Bias is not an issue and never is. I think this is usable with attribution.Slatersteven (talk) 10:13, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

They have stated that they include the entirety of the end-total global death toll resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic (which now stands at over five million) as part of their tally of historical victims of communism: 1 2 3 (see their executive summary for link 2, in which they make clear they are talking about the end total no matter what that is). Their TL;DR reason for this is "China and the W.H.O. lied, people died, it was all communism". You can make of that what you will, but it has made me rather skeptical of their judgement. I will grant that they haven't repeated this line since last year, though, to my best knowledge. Probably prefer better academic sources where possible. --Chillabit (talk) 12:55, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

OK and pushing Covid misinformation is enough for me to say no it is not an RS, it's political get in the way of factual reportingSlatersteven (talk) 13:23, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, that's enough reason to not take them seriously. Chuck 'em on the unreliable pile.

talk

) 16:53, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

Two notes. Firstly, if the source being used is currently a dead link, we cannot be sure the organization stands behind the opinion presented, and phrasing their support in the present tense is problematic. Further, if they attribute the entirety of COVID deaths to communism, I question the value of including deeply polemic sources in our articles. Is there no better source for the information you want to include? This one seems deeply dishonest. Hipocrite (talk) 13:26, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

Due to the dead link and their COVID-19 misinformation and politicization, without any reliable source giving secondary coverage to that article and not being a good tertiary source on its own in light of all this, it is undue and not a good tertiary source. Attempting to merge it with other more reliable U.S. government sources, which has been Siebert's argument for using this and similar sources, would be too close to OR/SYNTH without a secondary source doing it for us. All of this may be worth to mention, including their fringe COVID-19 Communist death toll, at Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation as their own views but not anywhere else. Davide King (talk) 16:09, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

• The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation is an advocacy organization, and it should be treated as such. Use in-text attribution, use secondary sources to ensure due weight, and be cautious with
  WP:EXTRAORDINARY claims. MarioGom (talk
  ) 18:20, 13 December 2021 (UTC)
• Advocacy organizations are not reliable sources. Use scholarship. Levivich 03:06, 14 December 2021 (UTC)

  I am not in favor of using this website, as expressed above, but sometimes advocacy organizations can be reliable, such as

  WP:SPLC. JBchrch talk

  03:20, 14 December 2021 (UTC)

• This idea that dead links no longer contain reliable information is incorrect. Because every link dies eventually. Links can be taken for many reasons that have nothing to do with reliability or "standing by" the data, it's the nature of online media. Otherwise we do we bother with archive links, delete ever citation when the link dies. -- GreenC 03:18, 14 December 2021 (UTC)

  This is true, but when an organization dedicated to anti-communism removes from its website the number of victims of communism, we might need to think about why that may be, and consider that it might not be just linkrot. (

  My personal and uninformed opinion is that it's probably because they don't want to host information that contradicts the "100 million" figure that they display prominently.) JBchrch talk

  03:31, 14 December 2021 (UTC)

This is not the first time when this source is discussed here, therefore, in makes sense to collect all arguments in one place, to avoid their repetition. I checked the archived copy, and I found the "Works Consulted" section.

It is natural to conclude that these are the sources that were used for the final figure. Below, I analyse the quality of the sources from this list.

• Brzezinski, Zbigniew. Out of Control: Global Turmoil on the Eve of the 21st Century. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2010.

Actually, this book was published in 1993: Out of Control: Global Turmoil on the Eve of the 21st Century. New York: Collier Books, 1993. ISBN 978-0684826363. I see no evidences that the figure of 60,000,000 million is a recent addition to the 2010 edition. Therefore, this book is the old source. In addition, the author mentions this figure in passing, it is highly unlikely this figure was a result of his own research.

• Courtois, Stéphane, Nicolas Werth, Jean-Louis Panné, Andrzej Paczkowski, Karel Bartošek, and Jean-Louis Marolin. The Black Book of Communism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999.

This is a very controversial source, which was the subject of several RSN discussions ([22], [23], [24], [25]), and the figure of 85-100 million is the most criticised and controversial statements in this book.

• “Cambodians Recall Massacres.” AP, May 22, 1987. Per
  WP:NEWSORG
  , reliability of this source depends on context, and, since it is not clear what exact invormation VoC took from it, no judgement about its reliability can be made. The source looks desperately outdated.
• Fitzgerald, Mary Anne. “Tyrant for the taking.” The Times (London), April 20, 1991. Per guidelines, this source is reliable for the author's opinion. It is outdated too.
• Katz, Lee Michael. “Afghanistan’s President is Ousted.” USA Today, April 17, 1992. A piece of outdated news, which may or may not be reliable.
• Li, Cheng-Chung. The Question of Human Rights on China Mainland. Republic of China: World Anti-Communist League, 1979. What Is That Outdated Trash?
• Panin, Dimitri. Translated by John Moore. The Notebooks of Sologdin. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1976. This is an outdated estimate of Soviet death statistics. ALL researchers who study USSR, including even Conquest, reconsidered their old data in light on freshly discovered archival documents that became available after fall of the USSR. This source is never used by serious modern historians.
• Rummel, R. J. Death by Government. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 1994. AND
• Rummel, R. J. Lethal Politics: Soviet Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1917. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 1990.

these two sources use the same data summarised by Rudolph Rummel. Rummel was a subject of the RSN discussions too ([26], [27] (this may be relevant too)), and a conclusion was that he is not reliable for figures. Some fresh source that supports this conclusion is Karlsson

"... there have been major differences between the results presented by radical spokespeople for the different paradigms. While Jerry Hough suggested Stalin’s terror claimed tens of thousands of victims, R.J. Rummel puts the death toll of Soviet communist terror between 1917 and 1987 at 61,911,000. In both cases, these figures are based on an ideological preunderstanding and speculative and sweeping calculations. On the other hand, the considerably lower figures in terms of numbers of Gulag prisoners presented by Russian researchers during the glasnost period have been relatively widely accepted."

I believe noone can question reliability of Karlsson.

• Tolz, Vera. “Ministry of Security Official Gives New Figures for Stalin’s Victims.” Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Research Report. May 1, 1992. (The figure of seven million direct executions under Stalin, given by a member of the security services heading a commission for rehabilitation, may be taken as an absolute baseline figure to which should be added the many deaths suffered by labor camp inmates and the deaths preceding and following the Stalin period.) - Again, that is a desperately outdated
  piece of news
  .
• “Top defector says famine has killed over three million Koreans.” Agence France Presse, March 13, 1999. - the same.
• Vickery, Michael. Cambodia 1975 – 1982. Boston: South End Press, 1984. Actually, Cambodia is the only non-controversial piece of information. Interestingly, it is so uncontroversial, that the state that stopped this genocide was Communist Vietnam, and the state that started a propaganda campaign explaining the scale and horrors of this genocide was Communist USSR (while US provided Pol Pot with a tacit political support). That is arguable the only reliable source in this list.
• Zucchino, David. “’The Americans … They Just Drop Their Bombs and Leave.’” Los Angeles Times, June 2, 2002. - again,
  WP:NEWSORG
  .
• Matthew White’s website Necrometrics provides a useful compilation of scholarly estimates of the death toll of major historical events. - This is especially interesting. This source was authored by a self-described atrocitologist (who can explain me what does it mean?). However, what is interesting, this source takes information from: (i) Rudolph Rummel, Stephane Courtois, Zbigniew Brzezinski, i.e. the authors that are already named in this list.

Frankly, this desperately outdated sources that pick information from each other may be a reason why VoC removed this statement from their web site. The figures are outdated and unreliable.--Paul Siebert (talk) 22:25, 14 December 2021 (UTC)

No one is claiming their figures are up to date and reliable, it is just a mention of their attempt to estimate it in 2016 "In 2016, the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation made an effort to compile ranges of estimates...". Given it was made back in 2016, web archive of it is entirely appropriate. Regardless of your personal politics the VoCMF is a significant and notable organisation, their view ought to be presented regardless of your personal opinion of it. How would

WP:BIASEDSOURCES. --Nug (talk

) 01:28, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

You are actually advocating citing a source you acknowledge is outdated and unreliable in order to achieve 'WP:NPOV'? I suggest you read the first sentence of that policy: "All encyclopedic content on Wikipedia must be written from a neutral point of view (NPOV), which means representing fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without editorial bias, all the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic." WP:NPOV is achieved through citing reliable sources, not unreliable ones. AndyTheGrump (talk) 01:41, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

You seem to have a poor understanding of policy. Read

WP:BIASEDSOURCES: "Wikipedia articles are required to present a neutral point of view. However, reliable sources are not required to be neutral, unbiased, or objective. Sometimes non-neutral sources are the best possible sources for supporting information about the different viewpoints held on a subject. " Even if you think the view of Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation isn't objective, it can't be excluded if you want to achive NPOV. --Nug (talk

) 01:54, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

That is not how NPOV works. Achieving NPOV doesn't require citing this source (or any source, see

WP:BIASEDSOURCES says: When dealing with a potentially biased source, editors should consider whether the source meets the normal requirements for reliable sources, such as editorial control, a reputation for fact-checking, and the level of independence from the topic the source is covering. This source does not meet the normal requirements for reliable sources because as an advocacy organization, it has a low level of independence from the topic. Levivich

02:15, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

The American Heart Association is also an advocacy organization, advocating heart health through its educational programs. I already pointed to the fact that VoCMF has an academic board, it has a research and educational program, what evidence do you have that is doesn't have a reputation for fact checking, apart from your personal opinion? --Nug (talk) 03:33, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

That's not the same kind of "advocacy". While the AHA might "advocate" for heart health, there is nobody on the other side advocating against heart health. Levivich 03:48, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

I won't comment on the rest of the RSN as I'd rather not involve myself with the whole communism assessment effort in the last few weeks (bless all of you with the patience to do so). I do want to comment that I am increasingly annoyed by marking all groups of people that hold an opinion, professional or otherwise, as equally guilty of advocacy. Advocacy groups have different characteristics, goals, and methods and they are not all the same. At this point I'm almost expecting to read someone say that the Arsonist Lobby Group (fictional) and the legislators of the US fire code are both advocacy groups and neither should be trusted.

Please ping me!

13:11, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

No, Nug, I do not have a 'poor understanding of policy'. You, on the other hand, seem to, given your apparent belief that 'balance' is to be achieved by selecting sources for their political perspectives, rather than for their compliance with elementary tenets of said policies. Frankly, I'm astonished that a contributor with your experience could have such a fundamental misunderstanding of such matters. AndyTheGrump (talk) 02:38, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

NPOV means summarizing the available RS without distortion. If the available RS lean to the right, so too will the article content, probably, and likewise if they lean to the left. (For example, if the only places a book has been reviewed are the Wall Street Journal, the Economist and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, our article is going to read differently than if the reviews had been in the Guardian and the Daily Beast, and that's just how the cookie crumbles.) We don't aim for

talk

) 03:16, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

Oh, okay, so you are advocating removing any viewpoints by Kristen Ghodsee, a frequent contributor to Jacobin, a leading voice of the American left, with respect to MKuCR? --Nug (talk) 03:55, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

XOR'easter is correct. Of course, Nug avoided to mention in their fallacy that as an anthropologist, ethnographer, and specialist in former European Communist regimes, she is used for her speciality in memory analysis, that being a leftist is not considered to be an indictment to reliability in academia, that she is backed by other scholars like Neumayer, and she is used to say uncontroversial things about the use of body-counting and criticism. So that is indeed a strawman and false balance on their part. Davide King (talk) 11:58, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

Nug, please, keep in mind that that is a "Reliable Source Noticeboard". Whereas neutrality considerations are still important, the primary issue that we are discussing here is reliability of the sources, which includes a reputation of fact checking and accuracy. To cite NPOV in a discussion about WP:V is disruptive.

During this discussion, we must come to a conclusion if this source uses a fresh and recent information or an outdated and unreliable one, and if it treats this information correctly. After that, we may decide (here or elsewhere) if this source can or cannot be used in some concrete context.

Do you have any objections to the statement that it uses obsolete data and is heavily based on the (highly controversial) Black Book figures and (even more controversial) Rummel's data? Do you have any rational objections to that?--Paul Siebert (talk) 03:04, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

You seem to be labouring under some kind of misconception that the total death toll is some kind of precise number, but as you know, it can never be a determined beyond an estimate, and there are many different estimates. As Harff states "That is in fact an inevitable problem for those seeking reliable data on mass casualties. Few perpetrators make accurate counts of their victims. Estimates diverge widely … I fully understand what it takes to collect reliable, unimpeachable global data. It is impossible. … Over time I have become more critical of country experts who challenge systematic empirical studies. Case studies are scarce, of dubious accuracy, or non-existent for some episodes of mass death, and estimates vary greatly. Some episodes dating back to before say, 1918 happened in countries that no longer exist or in countries that did not yet exist. Colonial authorities in Africa and Asia kept scarce or no records of birth or death rates. Perpetrators seldom keep records of their misdeeds and if they do, as in Nazi Germany, death estimates often are greatly underestimated or attributed to circumstances rather than deliberate policies.". I already pointed to the fact that VoCMF has an academic board, it has a research and educational program, what evidence do you have that is doesn't have a reputation for fact checking, and are less reliable than say, William Blum? --Nug (talk) 03:33, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

Nobody is expecting an exact figure for a death toll, but there are such things as really bad estimates. As for the rest, well, the

talk

) 03:53, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

But we still cite the Discovery Institute as to their view on Intelligent design. --Nug (talk) 03:59, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

The difference, of course, is that we are using secondary, independent reliable sources to summarize their views, not the Discovery Institute themselves, which can only be reliable for uncontroversial "About" stuff. We have no such secondary coverage about this Dissident blog article, which makes it undue, especially when several of the sources they cite, we already mention them. Their 40–160-ish range estimates have not been picked up by any reliable or scholarly source, and considering they said that they are going to add COVID-19 deaths to the body count, it is moot; it shows their unreliability, and went into fringe territory and misinformation. Davide King (talk) 12:08, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

@

GULAG

deaths is in between 1.6 and 1.8 million, and the amount of people who passed through the GULAG system is 18 million, although if we include broader categories, the number of deaths may increase to 2.7 million. Even such an old school anti-Communist as Conquest recognized that. These are consensus figures, and to say otherwise is tantamount to claiming that the Holocaust killed, e.g. 10 million Jews. Only freaks may claim that.

A consensus figure of Great Purge deaths (including executions and camp deaths) is 1.2 million. Rummel says it was 4.3 million.

A consensus figure of GULAG deaths is 1.7 at most (ok, let's say 2.7, which may include deportation deaths). Rummel says that only post-Stalin camp deaths amounted to 6.8 million (according to all respectable scholars there were no GULAG in that time, and mortality in prisons was quite moderate, which means those 6.8 million were taken from this air).

A consensus figure for Soviet civilian deaths as a result of the policy of Soviet authorities during WWII (GULAG mortality, execution, etc) is ~1 million. Rummel says 13 million: that is bigger that all military losses and comparable with all civilian losses.

And so on, and so forth.

Note, I know the real figures, because it was me who added all (or a significant part of) this information to Wikipedia. I can prove that with sources. I can take (again) Rummel's "Death by government" from the library, and analyze each reference at this (or any other) Wikipedia page, and I can show that each source that Rummel uses the USSR is an obsolete piece of trash that is not recognized seriously by most (or all) experts in Soviet Russia.

I can do that, because I am familiar with sources, I know the present state of knowledge of this subject, and I want Wikipedia to be seen as a respectable informational resource, not a collection of various gossips and fairy tales.

In contrast, you can respond just with vague speculations that "noone can know for sure", and this your baseless assertion is the only justification of your persistent pushing of obsolete figures that discredits Wikipedia. Why are you doing that? Why are you not going to your library? Paul Siebert (talk) 05:37, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

They are RS for their views, not for those views being facts.Slatersteven (talk) 12:16, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

Do I understand you correct that you said "VoC is a RS for the article about VoC, not about Communism"? If that is what you say, I, obviously, agree.--Paul Siebert (talk) 15:54, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

Not quite, what I meant is they are an RS for their views, not for those views being facts. So this would be more an issue of undue than RS. So we could say "according to...".Slatersteven (talk) 15:57, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

As I understand it, the 'views' they held regarding the specific issue being discussed are sourced to an archived webpage. Is there any reason to assume they still hold them? AndyTheGrump (talk) 16:02, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

Irrelevant, they were pushing a conspiracy theory, that (to my mind) raises questions about impartially and fact-checking. Indeed if anything it makes it worse, as it (to my mind) implies they belived it when told to by their political masters, and now it's not being pushed by their political masters are no longer pushing it. That makes them a propaganda outfit, and thus need to be treated as such.Slatersteven (talk) 16:05, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

Your argument is unclear. We can write "According to X, the Moon is made of blue cheese" only if there are serious reason to believe that the opinion of X is important and relevant to the article's topic. Therefore, we cannot put "According to VoC ... " at any article: we can do that only in a certain context, for example, in a context of anti-Communist propaganda, but not in a context of a neutral academic discourse.--Paul Siebert (talk) 16:14, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

Hence why I said "So this would be more an issue of undue than RS".Slatersteven (talk) 16:17, 15 December 2021 (UTC0

Clearly not a reliable source for the reasons given above. And if it isn't clear that they stand by a statement, we can't even use that with attribution. Doug Weller talk 17:03, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

In this one instance yes, I am talking about the wider issue of general reliability. I think it is clear they are far too biased to be used for statements of fact, about anything.Slatersteven (talk) 17:14, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

• Unreliable, and the previous discussion concluded as much:
  WP:FRINGE status. Should not be used in articles. --K.e.coffman (talk
  ) 06:28, 16 December 2021 (UTC)
• Unreliable Arguments that as this organisation is "bipartisan" it is neutral are rather amusing! World politics exists between the Democrats and the Republicans, therefore if they agree something is true, it must be. In reality this source exists only to advocate a point of view that Communism is terrible and so cherry picks data to fit that pov. Things appear and disappear off its website but then come back in other places, it is not clear who writes which parts of its content and their qualifications. Its website is not organised enough to use securely, its official publications might be usable if prefixed with "anti-Communist advocacy group. the Victims of Communism memorial foundation states", but I would be very careful to find specific papers which have been cited by academics. Incidentally, I wonder why there is no Victims of Capitalism memorial foundation" in the USA? Boynamedsue (talk) 07:20, 17 December 2021 (UTC)
• Unreliable, per Doug Weller and K.e.coffman. Ought not to be used in articles. Vanamonde (Talk) 21:56, 18 December 2021 (UTC)
• Unreliable, per more or less all the arguments presented above, and per the previous discussion. Nothing in this discussion actually amounts to a serious claim that the source is 'reliable' per Wikipedia norms - instead inclusion of a clearly questionable source is being presented as as a means to make the article 'neutral' according to some imagined standard. That isn't how WP:RS works, it isn't how WP:NPOV works, and is fundamentally opposed to core principles of the project. AndyTheGrump (talk) 22:10, 18 December 2021 (UTC)
• Unreliable. Putting aside the fact that they've pushed fringe views, there is no indication of any sort of fact-checking process or any degree of editorial controls on their website; they're not even purporting to make the basic effort that would let us start to consider whether a source is a
  WP:RS. It defines sources that meet RS to an extent, but only enough for opinion; it is not something that allows RS to be ignored entirely, so some degree of a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy is still required. Otherwise, we could cite opinion to Reddit threads and random YouTube channels! The default standard for RSOPINION is eg. labeled opinion pieces in an RS, not just "is an advocacy org and has a website" - this is nowhere near that and is therefore a bad source even for opinion. --Aquillion (talk
  ) 04:53, 19 December 2021 (UTC)
• Additional considerations apply. VoCom is an anti-communist think tank. Like the vast majority of think tanks, there are some things that it produces that should just be ignored when writing an encyclopedia: VoCom's numbers on the Communist Death Toll suffer significant methodological problems and should not be used in WikiVoice. That being said, that topline death toll number is a very small amount of what they actually do; I'd strongly caution users against trying to use this discussion as a proxy for how they feel about the current state of mass killings under communist regimes. Personally, I would recommend ignoring everything written by a think tank that isn't actually written in a report or academic style (random blog pages, even from the Council on Foreign Relations, are not generally good things to cite). However, it would be very sloppy to label the foundation writ large with one broad stroke.

The area of the foundation that is most reliable is the academic research produced through its study centers. They break down into three silos: China Studies, Latin America programs, and Poland Studies. Each silo appears to operate without much overlap in terms of staffing. The China Studies and Latin America programs seem to be well-run. I have some concerns regarding the Poland Studies staffing choices.

The foundation's China Studies fellows are both well-respected and well-accomplished.

abuses in Xinjiang and regularly publishes peer-reviewed works on the subject in respected journals, is a fellow at the foundation. Ethan Gutmann, whose work on Organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners in China has been incredibly detailed and influential, is also a fellow in China Studies at the foundation. Matthew Robertson, the third China Fellow, is also the author of multiple peer-reviewed works on organ harvesting, such as this one published in the BMJ and this one

in BMC Medical Ethics.

The director of Latin American Programs at the foundation, Carlos Ponce, is likewise a highly respected individual in the area of Latin American human rights work and has had significant experience at Freedom House before joining VoCom.

The Poland Studies fellows feel like a mixed bag. Chelsea Michta seems to be an expert on the Warsaw Uprising and memory politics following the fall of communism, and her thesis seems to be related to the topic area. Monika Brzozowska-Pasieka being in Poland Studies feels a bit odd; she appears to have most noted for suing Holocaust scholars for not being sufficiently pro-Pole. Anna Draniewicz seems to be an expert on the policial history of Polish-language films. seems like an expert on Polish history, while seems to be someone whose research on the Polish diaspora in the United States is respected. Maria Juczewska doesn't seem to have strong qualifications and her graduate research appears to largely have been biography writing on a notable Pole.

Many of the foundation's fellows are strong experts in their respective fields. This is particularly true for its China Studies programs, which are doing some of the most intensive research into the history of human rights abuses under the Chinese Communist Party's rule. That being said, there are definitely some odder characters in Poland studies and the methodology for its giant death toll figure is not rigorous.

Because of the above, I believe that there are some areas of the institution that are reliable and probably better than most

talk

) 07:08, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

Completely agree with your point about MKUCR. Regarding your points, I feel that if the academics are reliable experts and have published quality work in peer-reviewed journals, one could cite the work in the journals. Others above have mentioned concerns about the editorial process of the organization, and if this holds I don't see a strong argument for finding it reliable as there is no guarantee except trust in the authors that the work they publish is reliable, I think. Note this is a strong opinion weakly held, though.

Please ping me!

09:23, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

• Unreliable The site doesn't do any original research, it merely publishes information from other sources, without attribution. An obvious problem is that it presents a high estimate of victims of communism as fact. TFD (talk) 06:18, 23 December 2021 (UTC)
• Unreliable lack of reputation for fact-checking and accuracy. (t · c) buidhe 20:21, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

Is Arnold J. Toynbee reliable regarding the Greco-Turkish War and the Turkish War of Independence? I would've liked to add some of his stuff regarding Hellenic army atrocities during the war, but some user claimed that he wasn't because his "pro-Turkish stance". Beshogur (talk) 00:10, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

I'd recommend you notify relevant WPs of this discussion as well as active editors in the pages you wish to use him in,

Please ping me!

00:16, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

I'd prefer modern scholarship over someone who died in 1975, regardless of potential bias issues. Hemiauchenia (talk) 00:29, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

While I would say that there is much fine work in history from before 1975, our article on Toynbee indicates that he is no longer a respected source, except in classical history, so I would be hesitant in citing to him. John M Baker (talk) 06:05, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

I'd say it would depend on what "stuff" exactly, for that era and for the Middle East his views would still carry weight. Selfstudier (talk) 10:54, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

1. Source: Peakbagger.com (description page here, terms of service here)
2. Article: Crypt Peak (as a test-case, and maybe 5,104 other EN Wikipedia articles)
3. Content: Primarily the prominence and elevation of various mountain peaks, also appears to be relied on in some articles to substantiate a
   WP:GNG
   pass.

FOARP (talk) 14:21, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

Background (Peakbagger.com)

Peakbagger.com is used on a large number of articles regarding various peaks, primarily to substantiate the height of them above sea level and their prominence relative to the surrounding terrain, but also in at least some cases it appears to be only source that actually talks about the feature specifically (other sources being about the climate or geology of the area in which the peak is, but not about the peak specifically).

I have discussed the reliability of this source with Ron Clausen, who has created a number of articles using this source, in a discussion that can be seen here, and we both agree that it would be useful to get some feedback from the RSN community about it's reliability. FOARP (talk) 14:21, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

Survey (Peakbagger.com)

• Unreliable under any circumstance - Based on the contact page appears to be a
  WP:PRIMARY
  source. For GNIS or other gazetteer data, the original gazetteer should be referred to directly.

I'd like to highlight that I think that most of Ron's work is OK and I like these articles about peaks, this is just about the sourcing in a lot of articles about peaks (not just his). FOARP (talk) 14:21, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

Instead of making assumptions by using the word "appears", why don't you contact the webmaster to get the facts on the sources. Assumptions = unreliable, which is worse than the argument you are making. Interesting that you now encourage using GNIS data, but on my talk page you didn't.Ron Clausen (talk) 22:16, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

We have the website managers own words telling us not to use it, seems enough, no? And it's worth remembering that once a source is challenged

WP:GNG pass because it is not significant coverage. FOARP (talk

) 08:17, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

• Where does the webmaster state not to use it (whatever you mean by "it")? Ron Clausen (talk) 04:35, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

• Unreliable By their own statements, this is a crowd-sourced, unchecked, and admits to having numerous unfixed factual errors. This source, as useful in general as it might be to hikers, is not an appropriate source for any information at Wikipedia. --Jayron32 14:45, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

• Peakbagger.com is frequently referenced by reliable books and magazines: [28] The data which I use from the site is not crowdsourced. Ron Clausen (talk) 00:55, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

• Unreliable for factual information - Appears to be the classic hobbyist/
  WP:SELFSOURCE with the usual disclaimers, but I'm not familiar enough with either the site or the general topic to say whether that's a realistic prospect. -Ljleppan (talk
  ) 15:04, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

• Peakbagger.com is frequently referenced by reliable books and magazines: [29] But thanks for declaring it unreliable when you state that you are not familiar with this subject. Ron Clausen (talk) 00:55, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

• Reliable when framed as "according to" etc.. it often receives notice in other reliable sources as being a significant source:
  • "Greg Slayden, founder of www.peakbagger.com, a national climbing registry where baggers can record their conquests." The Mercury News
  • "A website called Peakbagger.com, a major arbiter for the country’s “high pointers,” made the change to its database. As far as Peakbagger was concerned, Jackie Jones Mountain was now supreme."The Daily Beast
  • "He had read about Baker Mountain on peakbagger.com, a storehouse for people looking to summit prominent mountains. " The New York Times
  • "Before the advent of peakbagger.com, climber.org, and summitpost.com, climbers sought information about routes up peaks in guidebooks, in newsletter reports, and by word of mouth, still all good sources. "Sierra Club
  • "If you want more information and maps of these peaks, a good source is peakbagger.com." Elko Daily News

• Peakbgger.com is frequently referenced by reliable books and magazines: [30]

-- GreenC 17:17, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

These point to it being a useful source for Peak-bagging hobbyists, in a similar way to how Wookieepedia is a useful source for Star Wars fans and Memory Alpha is a useful source for Trekkers. It does not make it a reliable source for an encyclopaedia article. FOARP (talk) 08:30, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

You failed to take note of the last bullet: Peakbagger.com is frequently referenced by reliable books and magazines: [31] which is a Google search result showing all the reliable published books that reference Peakbagger.Ron Clausen (talk) 10:19, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

Just because a book appears in a Google Books search does not mean it's a reliable source. For example the very first search result for me is "Stargate SG1 Compendium" published by PediaPress. If you actually search for "peakbagger.com" with quotation marks, you'll see a significantly reduced amount of hits, less than 50 based on my quick count. Some of the hits, e.g. The Mountain Encyclopedia, appear to simply list it in a large list of general websites related to the topic, rather than using it as a source or even making any explicit claim about its reliability. Others, such as 'The Making of Modern Baseball, Sports Nation: Contemporary American Professional Organizations, Indiana Courthouses - Southeast Edition and Planning Support Systems and Smart Cities are in so wildly different domains that they really can't be used to establish reliability here. To establish that multiple highly reliable sources view peakbagger.com as a reliable source, you'd need to provide clear examples rather than just linking to a Google Books search. -Ljleppan (talk) 10:35, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

• Unreliable, at best its a group blog edited by Greg Slayden but you have to squint really really hard to see that... Its a high quality hobbyist site but even the best of those are generally not
  WP:RS, especially for obscure hobbies like peak bagging. Horse Eye's Back (talk
  ) 17:22, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
• Reliable There are no errors in the data for peaks. The peak data comes from USGS data. Anything related to user contributed climbing information is not used on Wikipedia.Ron Clausen (talk) 22:01, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
  • How did you determine that the peak data comes from USGS? I can't find any indication of that on the website. Does that source also extend to peaks not in US? If the data comes from USGS, why not cite the original source of the data? -Ljleppan (talk) 22:19, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
    • The webmaster states "I added peaks by hand, or from large public-domain databases like the GNIS and BGN gazetters." GNIS and BGN = USGS. https://www.peakbagger.com/Contact.aspx As for why? Convenience, and parameters such as Prominence and Isolation data are not provided directly by from USGS, but derivations thereof. Prominence and Isolation are not something found in "published" sources, but can be obtained at these websites. I don't use Peakbagger or LOJ for peaks outside the US.Ron Clausen (talk) 23:07, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

• That does say "by hand", though... not particularly reliable if you ask me. Surely there are reputable sources that would compile this information.
  Talk
  00:07, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

• Again with the assumptions. Please tell us your reputable sources that compile Prominence and Isolation. Ron Clausen (talk) 00:19, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

• The GNIS database is public domain and freely accessible. It also isn’t clear which data on Peakbagger comes from there and which doesn’t and instead comes from another source. And just to emphasise this: the website itself says not to trust it. If data cannot be reliably sourced, the answer is not to use an unreliable source, the answer is just not to include that data at all. FOARP (talk) 08:10, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

• No, it doesn't say "not to trust it". It says there are thousands of errors in the site, a site which he says has millions of data points. Every data base and reliable source is going to have errors. If Peakbagger's elevation value for a given peak matches what's on the USGS topographic map, we know where the information came from.Ron Clausen (talk) 09:00, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

• Sorry Ron, but it literally says right in the terms of service "The master Peakbagger.com database of peaks and associated content has thousands of errors in it ... there is no guarantee of accuracy". That's them right there telling you not to rely on their data, for the very good reason that it is not an authoritative source and is transcribed from other sources and/or provided by users (and it is not clear which is which). Now you're saying "don't worry, it's only thousands of error amongst millions", but how many thousands? This is a very useful source for hobbyists, but that doesn't make it a reliable source for an encyclopaedia article. As for it matching USGS data, if that's so then why don't you just refer to the USGS data directly? And if you can't access the USGS data then how do you know this?

Let me take the opportunity again to say that I like your articles on peaks, especially the photos, and I think they're a net value-add for Wiki. I just think this specific source (and LoJ, though that's much-less-used) shouldn't be used. FOARP (talk) 10:13, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

• Sorry, but you sliding down a slippery slope if you expect "guarantees of accuracy" from all reliable sources. Please provide a link to that Wikipedia policy requiring sources to guarantee their accuracy, and also a list of sources that you are aware of which do meet such a requirement. I can't recall ever seeing a publication which did. Ron Clausen (talk) 10:40, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

• I'm not requiring that they give such a guarantee, I'm requiring that they don't literally tell us that they can't give such a guarantee because of all the errors they have. FOARP (talk) 10:44, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

• Can you provide a link to the Wikipedia policy that requires that? Ron Clausen (talk) 11:08, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

• See
  WP:SOURCE: Articles should be based on reliable, independent, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy. (emph. added). Are you claiming that a source that literally states it contains thousands of mistakes has a "reputation for accuracy"? -11:28, 20 November 2021 (UTC)Ljleppan (talk
  )

• Thousands of errors in millions of data points. We don't know exact numbers, but for the sake of simplicity let's say 1000 errors for every one million data points. That works out to 99.9 percent accuracy. In my book, that's pretty accurate, reliable information. And that site is aware of the errors and fixes them (according Peakbagger, and my personal dealings with them when I pointed out an error. Ron Clausen (talk) 11:45, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

• So what you're telling us is that you've found errors on there (more than once?) and they corrected them when you told them. Which sounds an awful lot like
  user-generated content. "Thousands" can mean many more than 1,000, they clearly don't know how many errors there, just that there are a lot. FOARP (talk
  ) 12:04, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

• You're missing the context. Thousands of errors in millions of data points. He doesn't say tens of thousands of errors, nor tens of millions of data points, so the numbers must be between two and ten. Let's take the worst case example that favors your side: 9,999 errors in two million data points. That's 99.5 percent accuracy. On the other hand the math for the flip side has 2,000 errors in nine million data points. That's 99.98 percent accuracy. Ron Clausen (talk) 21:34, 20 November 2021 (UTC)
• Yes, over the last five years I found an error there. Coordinates for a peak were wrong, only because USGS had within the past year corrected a USGS error, and Peakbagger originally used that erroneous data from USGS, and the change was not caught by Peakbagger. All websites that I checked were still using the erroneous USGS data. Case in point: Pectols Pyramid. A quick search now and I found mapcarta.com and topozone.com and peakvisor.com all still using the erroneous location. Ron Clausen (talk) 12:49, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

• I don't understand: if USGS has more accurate data, and updates it more frequently, why aren't you just referring to USGS directly? Moreover you only know about this error because USGS is there as a reliable source. It seems that whilst the maths needed to calculate prominence/isolation are simple, determining what data to use is non-trivial and we shouldn't be relying on Peakbagger.com for it. FOARP (talk) 15:35, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

• Who claims USGS has more accurate data and updates it more frequently? If you don't understand, it's because you haven't paid attention. As I stated in my Talk page to you: "I have found plenty of stuff in "published" material that is flat out incorrect, and would not use. And stuff can be found in communities such as Summitpost that is excellent and correct (but I don't use). So the balancing act is to be accurate, which means using best data where it's found. GNIS is good for coordinates, but terrible at elevations, so that's where Peakbagger comes in." Ron Clausen (talk) 21:09, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

• Unreliable. It's probably fine for an external link but I don't see how we can use a source that is at least partially user-generated, otherwise curated by someone whose subject matter expertise has not been established (
  WP:SPS), and that by its own admission contains errors. I sympathize with Ron Clausen's position that 99.9 is pretty great accuracy, but the difference between this source and a reliable source is that we have no way to verify the reliability--we have no idea which data is accurate. I do have a question about "Prominence" and "Isolation"; I'm unfamiliar with those terms and their importance. Ron notes above that these are "derived", are they derived from the USGS data, and is this a mechanical calculation, or is something more involved? Mackensen (talk)
  12:22, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

• Topographic isolation and Topographic prominence simple calculation, based on USGS data. Ron Clausen (talk) 12:49, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

I would beg to differ about prominence: one has to identify the

WP:NOR. We have to rely on Peakbagger for prominence and isolation, or use an alternative site. There are not that many of them. — hike395 (talk

) 19:55, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

• Reliable as the person is an expert in his field so can be used in Wikipedia as per the guidelines on SPS and blogs. No significant problems with using this source have been put forward and carrying out simple calculations is fine for such an expert on the subject, in my view Atlantic306 (talk) 01:10, 23 November 2021 (UTC)
  • Could you expand a bit on how you determined that the editor behind the website is "an established subject-matter expert, whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable, independent publications", given that others below seem to have reached different conclusions? -Ljleppan (talk) 09:02, 23 November 2021 (UTC)
• Reliable for quantitative information: elevation, coordinates, location, prominence, isolation. Not reliable for ascent and travel accounts. To my mind, Peakbagger is the authoritative source for some of the quantitative information about mountains, and a secondary reliable source for other quantitative data. That doesn't mean there aren't errors on Peakbagger, but all "reliable sources" have errors and discrepancies.Smallchief (talk)
• Reliable per Smallchief and others for hard data such as prominence, isolation, elevation, coordinates and location. Likely to be more accurate and up to date than some official sources e.g. Ordnance Survey. Bermicourt (talk) 21:20, 23 November 2021 (UTC)
• Reliable While FOARP, Ljleppan, Jayron32, and A. C. Santacruz are correct that Peakbagger does not pass
  usage by other sources. In the small field of publications on orometry (e.g., elevation, topographic prominence and topographic isolation
  ), the following papers treat the data in Peakbagger as "gold standard" data to incorporate or compare against:

  Arundel, Samantha T; Sinha, Gaurav (2020). "Automated location correction and spot height generation for named summits in the coterminous United States" (PDF). International Journal of Digital Earth. 13 (12): 1570–1584.

  Kirmse, Andrew; de Ferranti, Jonathan (2017). "Calculating the prominence and isolation of every mountain in the world". Progress in Physical Geography. 41 (6): 788–802.

  Kelso, Nathaniel Vaughn; Patterson, Tom (2010). "Introducing natural earth data-naturalearthdata.com" (PDF). Geographia Technica. 5 (82–89): 25.

  Wiens, John J; et al. (2019). "Climate change, extinction, and Sky Island biogeography in a montane lizard [sic]". Molecular ecology. 28 (10): 2610–2624.

Aside from

WP:UBO, the 10+ years of WP usage of quantitative data from Peakbagger has uncovered no systematic biases or serious accuracy problems. — hike395 (talk

) 02:35, 24 November 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for these references, I only had time to check the first this morning, but made some quick observations. Notably, the study clearly acknowledges that peakbagger.com is not a provider of high-quality data: "Ideally, results would be compared to a higher-accuracy dataset. Unfortunately, such reference data are unavailable. As a result, for a reality check, results were compared to the following: nearby National Geodetic Survey (NGS) control points, where they exist, spot elevations manually collected from historical 7.5-minute USGS topographic maps, values published by Peakbagger (peakbagger.com), a mountain climbing website, and values by Topozone (topozone.com), which offers value-added USGS topographic data." It later notes that "Many tested summits were missing from the Peakbagger lists" and "Topozone values corresponded more closely to snapped summits than did Peakbagger values, but the difference is unclear because both products use basically the same source data, although Peakbagger contains some values derived from amateur Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) devices." I'll check the other references later today. -Ljleppan (talk) 08:01, 24 November 2021 (UTC)

Continuing to check the references, Kimse and de Ferranti refer to peakbagger.com in a few ways. First, on page 790, they simply state that it exists as part of their description of previous works. Second, on pages 792-793, they refer to it for peak height data. They go on to note that the peakbagger.com height data seems to disagree with their other data in some cases, discussing in detail how their analysis/computation is affected by this disagreement. They present no argument why they hold the peakbagger.com data to be more accurate, only making a vague gesture at "accurate surveys". The third mention on page 798 is, in my view, the most notable a it suggest a conflict of interest between the authors and peakbagger.com, as the authors describe their own contributions to the database. Tangentially related, I found the following sentence on page 791 interesting: "Many voids were filled with samples from the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer global DEM (ASTER GDEM), although a review of its properties showed that it has too many artifacts near water bodies, clouds, and high mountains to make it suitable as the primary database for our analysis." This appears to be a tacit admission that they are not confident in their underlying data for the whole globe. It's not completely clear to me from the paper whether this statement applies only to "norther parts of Scandinavia and Russia" or to a wider area.

The third reference (Kelso & Patterson, 2010) simply states they use peak name and height data from peakbagger.com in a single sentence. I believe it's notable that despite stating their website is intended for a mountain cartographer audience, they do not use any other data from peakbagger.com.

The fourth reference (Wiens et al., 2019) similarly only uses peak height data from the peakbagger.com.

In total, the references appear to contain one that acknowledges that peakbagger.com is not of very high quality, and three that only employ peak heights. Of the three height-only papers, Kimse and de Ferranti have a potential conflict of interest and also acknowledges that the peakbagger.com data disagrees with other data available to them. Based on this analysis, I don't think the references support a

WP:UBO argument outside of peak heights, and even for peak heights it seems somewhat iffy. -Ljleppan (talk

) 10:53, 24 November 2021 (UTC)

Peakbagger is cited as a source on Wikipedia thousands of times. Let's look at just one article: List of the most prominent summits of the United States. Peakbagger is the source most cited for information about all 200 mountains on the list. Dozens of other articles about mountains use Peakbagger as their main source. Are we going to delete these articles not because they are inaccurate but because we have declared that Peakbagger -- often the only source or the best source -- is not up to Wikipedia's bureaucratic standards? Instead see: "Wikipedia has guidelines and policies -- not firm rules." To delete articles from Wikipedia sourced from Peakbagger would be counter-productive and destructive -- and would not make the encyclopedia one whit more authoritative. Our task is to compile and improve the encyclopedia not impose a rule that would do the opposite.Smallchief (talk) 13:32, 24 November 2021 (UTC)

The reliability of peakbagger.com has been questioned, and the comment I replied to acknowledged that it does not pass

the usual criteria for self-published primary sources. It was then suggested that it might be considered reliable through another criteria, and evidence for this position was presented. I argue above why I believe this evidence fails to establish reliability for all factual information, and at best establishes reliability for a minor subset of the data on the website. If you believe I have misread or mischaracterized the proposed evidence above, please let me know how and I'll happily reconsider my position and correct any mistakes I might have made. The fact that the source is currently referenced a lot in Wikipedia is immaterial for this discussion. -Ljleppan (talk

) 13:53, 24 November 2021 (UTC)

So, what is your remedy? Shall we delete all the articles that use Peakbagger as a principal source? This is not just an intellectual discussion. A problem should be in search of a solution.Smallchief (talk) 14:23, 24 November 2021 (UTC)

This is neither the time nor the place for those hypothetical discussions, the need for which is dependent on both the result of this still ongoing discussion and the content of each individual article. -Ljleppan (talk) 14:33, 24 November 2021 (UTC)

@Ljleppan: I believe your summary does not accurately reflect Peakbagger nor my UBO argument:

• Kirmse explains the details of his prominence analysis here. Kirmse clearly uses Peakbagger as a ground truth source of data to compare his output to. It is the best alternative.
• Kirmse uses DEM data which is contaminated with trees (DEMs find the height of object at scan time, rather than true ground level, a well-known problem in remote sensing). This causes Kirmse's height data to be less reliable than Peakbagger. Again, see Kirmse's explanation here.
• Quoting "many tested summits are missing from Peakbagger" is not a strike against Peakbagger. Because Peakbagger is curated, it cannot have as many summits as Kirme's system. The simple fact that Kirmse (a reliable source) used Peakbagger as gold-standard data should count in favor of Peakbagger.
• I cannot find any guidance in
  WP:UBO
  that specifies that specific data (e.g., prominence) be used, as far as I can tell. It just asks us to analyze whether the source is used by other reliable sources.
• I also cannot find any guidance about "conflict of interest" in
  The Daily Mail), Kirmse would be less likely to give it data, not more. — hike395 (talk
  ) 00:35, 25 November 2021 (UTC)

@Hike395: Thanks for the link to Krimse's personal website/blog, I didn't see it linked from the peer-reviewed article. I'm afraid I'm still not too convinced by the way it's discussed on the page, see e.g. "In some areas, especially in Indonesia and Africa, Peakbagger's peak locations were very far off, enough to generate incorrect values even for ultra prominent peaks". In general, looking at all the various sources, I'm getting the impression that its data tends to be fairly accurate for the areas highly frequented by climbing enthusiast, but less so for elsewhere. Such data quality uniformity issues would be expected for a hobbyist source, and are one of the main reasons why I'm extremely wary of using these kinds references: it's going to appear accurate based on the things people will naturally check, but that deduction is not necessarily extensible to all data, nor is it possible to know for certain where that "uncertainty horizon" lies in the data.

Regarding the specific data aspect, I do concede might be reading the "for similar facts" part of

WP:UBO

rather closely (also, I'm not too familiar with how this has been interpreted historically), but I don't think my reading is unreasonable. I do find it notable that of the linked articles, the one that would have most expected to use e.g. the prominence data (the one providing a mapping service aimed at a mountain cartographer audience) does not do so. This might be simply resulting from the limited amount of prominence data available on the site prior to Krimse's contribution. Did the site contain prominence data in 2010s?

Regarding the conflict of interest, my point is that since the argument is about [[WP:UBO|use by others], does Krimse count as an other? In my understanding, the underlying UBO argument is essentially "there are verifiable reliable independent sources that hold peakbagger.com as a reliable independent source". I'm not convinced Krimse is "independent". -Ljleppan (talk) 07:10, 25 November 2021 (UTC)

@Ljleppan: I believe some of the assumptions you're making are incorrect:

• Wikipedia has been using Peakbagger as a source of prominence data at least since 2005, possibly before. See this diff, and the corresponding archive link. It has been a stable and durable source.
• The main editors of Peakbagger were Edward Earl (until 2015) and Greg Slayden (after). If you look at the history, Kirmse wanted to adapt their code to run at Google in 2014, and started to share his data back in 2015. Peakbagger had prominence data for at least 10 years before that.
• It seems to me that you cannot have it both ways. If Kirmse was a major participant in Peakbagger, then it would pass
  WP:UBO
  argument, which I believe still stands.
• It's well-known that the published topographic data for mountains in the Global South tends to be imprecise. See, e.g., the uncertainty expressed at Cordillera Paine, which took a fair amount of investigation by WP editors. Or this discussion about the highest point in Indonesia. The accuracy of Peakbagger is limited by the accuracy and precision of the topographic data that they use. Claiming that they are a hobbyist site based on this is not warranted.

Thanks for being so thorough! — hike395 (talk) 15:10, 25 November 2021 (UTC)

@

WP:UBO argument if the field of relevant "others" is very small. Its clear that you and others who are well-versed in the topic truly hold peakbagger.com to be a reputable site. But demonstrating that reputability is clearly an issue in this case. In general, given that the indicia of reliablity overall is so low, I'm still hesitant about any kind of blanket statement along the lines of "all factual data on peakbagger.com is reliable". On the other hand, I'm not sure what a suitable more limited statement would be. Frankly, I'm rather annoyed by the lack of citing sources on the site; if they attributed clearly where each peace of information came from, I would find this significantly easier. -Ljleppan (talk

) 19:48, 27 November 2021 (UTC)

• Reliable per Smallchief. That is to say, "for quantitative information: elevation, coordinates, location, prominence, isolation. Not reliable for ascent and travel accounts." The disclaimer for inaccuracy is very likely referring to ascent and travel accounts, and if not, it's a disclaimer highlighting the very very few errors in a very large dataset. Any dataset is prone to having a small percentage of errors, that doesn't make it unreliable. Being made by one person does not make it unreliable, it appears to be an authoritative resource, and wikipedia should treat it as such... except for the travel accounts, which are user provided and not reliable any more than some web forum post somewhere would be (that is to say, possibly useful as a primary source if the user commenting has some claim to notability). Fieari (talk) 02:24, 3 December 2021 (UTC)
• Comment @
  significant coverage in your view? FOARP (talk
  ) 17:11, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

I'd say it's a reliable source in terms of data, but obviously the blogs/comments are not. So it counts towards general notability. But we could also, by consensus, agree notability for mountains and hills based on a set of criteria such as height, prominence, etc, and only those that fall outside of that would need to pass the GNG test. Bermicourt (talk) 17:28, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

I would say that the relevant notability guideline is

WP:GEOLAND, which states "Named natural features are often notable, provided information beyond statistics and coordinates is known to exist." Peakbagger can only reliably provide statistics and coordinates: nothing else. Therefore Peakbagger cannot be used to establish notability of mountains, ranges, etc. — hike395 (talk

) 00:55, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

Agree. Peakbagger does not establish notability (nor, in my opinion, does a single source ever establish notability). However, Peakbagger, as stated many times here, is a reliable source for elevation, prominence, and other statistical information.Smallchief (talk) 01:18, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

Basically this. I have nothing to add, Hike395 said it right. Fieari (talk) 06:36, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

Different kinds of data in Peakbagger

FOARP is saying that Peakbagger is not reliable, because the terms of service says so. But peakbagger has multiple kinds of information in it. It has subjective trip reports, and it has quantitative data about the prominence and isolation. AFAICT, the terms of service are warning users that the subjective trip reports are filled with errors: people who climb mountains should take care not to overly rely on other climbing reports, because climbing is a risky activity. But Wikipedia editors are not using peakbagger for the subjective trip reports (which are clearly unreliable).

The main question, I think, is whether the quantitative data is reliable and accurate. There are very few sources for mountain

Given this restricted question of reliability about prominence and isolation, what do other editors think? — hike395 (talk) 19:48, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

We are still fundamentally discussing a

WP:SPS. Where does the data, for, say this page come from? What is the editorial policy that ensures it is correct? How about this page which states "this peak was submitted to the Peakbagger.com database by <name>"? I've seen nothing in this discussion that would have made me reconsider my original assessment of unreliable for factual information. If the result is that that Wikipedia needs to re-reference a lot of stuff, that is unfortunate, but that amount of potential work is completely immaterial for the reliability question. -Ljleppan (talk

) 20:12, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

• "this peak was submitted to the Peakbagger.com database by <name>" was merely a suggestion/request by a user that the peak be added to the database, not that the user added the data. The webmaster is always the only one to add the data. The user generally wants the peak added to they can add it to their list of personal ascents.Ron Clausen (talk) 20:42, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

Ron is correct: there is an editorial process from turning a user-submitted "provisional" peak into a peak in the full database, see here.

My issue here is: checked how? Checked against USGS information? And if that's the case, again, why don't we refer to the USGS directly? I'm not sure prominence and isolation really are so trivial to calculate that we can safely leave this in the hands of what appears to be an amateur website: the maths involved are relatively simple, but the choice of input data to use does not appear to be. FOARP (talk) 09:06, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

@FOARP: USGS does not provide prominence or isolation, so we cannot refer to USGS. As I've said below, there's no governmental source for prominence or isolation anywhere.

You're right, the computation is not trivial. I've found a peer-reviewed paper about running the computation at scale,^[1] by Andrew Kirmse, previously a Distinguished Engineer at Google who managed Google Earth. The results from the paper are provided in a website. Kirmse provides more details about the computation here. That detailed web page is worth reading. A few things to note:

• Kirmse refers back to both Peakbagger and ListsOfJohn as tests for his computation
• Kirmse's computation matches Peakbagger within 5% error 90% of the time. Kirmse seems to attribute the errors to problems in his own data.
• Kirmse based his algorithm on WinProm code by Edward Earl, published in Helman's book. Earl ran Peakbagger until 2015, when he died in a mountaineering accident. Peakbagger has the original (although less scalable) WinProm code. Because Earl came up with the prominence algorithm, I would not characterize Peakbagger as a "amateur website", but as a primary source for prominence and isolation data.
• Kirme's data is innately less accurate than Peakbagger. Kirmse (like GNIS) bases his computation on
  digital elevation maps
  , which are less accurate than Peakbagger, which bases the computation on the best point elevations provided by governments. In mountains where there are high spatial gradients, DEMs are definitely inferior.

Here's my conclusion. Peakbagger is a

secondary source

for Peakbagger.

I don't want to propose any major changes to 5,000+ mountain articles without having other mountain editors participate in the discussion. @Droll, RedWolf, Volcanoguy, Buaidh, and Jo-Jo Eumerus: The reliability of Peakbagger has been called into question (see above). What is the best way to reliably source prominence and isolation data? — hike395 (talk) 15:40, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

I entirely sympathise with not wanting to make changes to lots of articles. Indeed, I'm OK with leaving these articles generally as-is and filling them out slowly with information from e.g., newspapers to make them full notability passes. What I will say is we have a general problem with many thousands of GEO articles being written solely on not-very-reliable database data (primarily GNIS and GNS) and it is more important to make sure that we don't generate thousands more problematic articles and make the problem worse. FOARP (talk) 09:38, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

It strikes me as a bizarre thought that once a prominence figure has been published in a newspaper (a reliable one, I hope) we can give it a full notability pass[es]. First, surely we are not discussing notability (are we?) but verifiability. Second, where do we suppose the newspaper reporter obtained their data? Is our increased reliance because we believe that if what they publish is wrong they may be criticised, sued or forced to a retraction? Thincat (talk) 12:03, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

WP:GEOLAND

says that if only basic statistics about a natural feature are known (as in a database), then the subject is not notable. We should not start articles purely based on Peakbagger and/or ListsOfJohn and/or GNIS.

By determining that Peakbagger is not a reliable source, we have to either throw out prominences and isolation on 5,000+ articles, or figure out an alternative reliable source. It's frustrating that Kirmse's prominence data is more "reliable" (according to

WP:IAR shouldn't apply to this large number of articles, but I believe deprecating Peakbagger will make Wikipedia worse. I predict other editors at WikiProject Mountains will agree with that. — hike395 (talk

) 13:03, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

From where does Peakbagger get its information? --Jayron32 13:13, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

As far as I can tell from Kirmse: Greg Slayden (the editor at Peakbagger) uses the WinProm program to determine the key col and nearest higher point based on a digital elevation map. He then uses USGS benchmark data (if available) or topo map data (if not) to compute the prominence, verifying that any benchmark corresponds to the named feature. Slayden does not appear to be a published subject-matter expert (by WP's definition). — hike395 (talk) 13:23, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

If that is the case, then his information is not reliable under

WP:RS definitions. He is not an expert, his work is not checked by experts, and there's no review or editorial process for the information he posts. The information from the website should not be used at Wikipedia, and should not have been used at all. The "5000+ articles" issue is a problem caused by using an obviously unreliable source to begin with; if someone had been following the rules years ago those 5000+ articles would already be in compliance. --Jayron32

13:47, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

hike395 - I agree with you that it should be possible to address the problem of the creation of large numbers of GEO articles based on dubious sourcing at AFD. This is, however, not my experience at AFD. AFD is always far too late (often by a decade+ given how many articles were created circa 2008) to actually address the problem of article-creation based on purely statistical data. The many thousands of GEO articles sourced purely to GNIS/GNS, and created at a rate of 2-3 a minute in article creation campaigns, being the most obvious example.

Nobody said that these 5,000 articles would have to edited at once. We already have so much more dubiously sourced information, in such a large quantity on Wikipedia, that those 5,000 articles will not be a priority. What we need to stop is adding any more dubiously-sourced information. Ultimately, we do not have to have such data - hobbyists (who are the ones that this data is of interest to) can always just refer to Peakbagger directly. We can instead have more encyclopaedic information about the topic (e.g., it's history).

As a final point, if Kirmse's calculations don't match Slayden's, that points to these calculations being non-trivial to do given that if Slayden is a subject-matter expert then so surely is Kirmse. (EDIT: also entirely second what Jayron32 says - the 5,000 articles thing is an

WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS argument) FOARP (talk

) 13:40, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

I agree with FOARP and Jayron32 above, especially the point about hobbyists.

Please tag me!

13:58, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

Subsection questions

I am going to add subsection questions below. It would be helpful, I think if those 'in the know' answer them with cites or links if possible Alanscottwalker (talk) 20:29, 21 November 2021 (UTC) : Alanscottwalker (talk) 20:29, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

Why does prominence matter?

Topographic prominence is an objective measure of the "peakiness" of a peak. Many mountains are massifs, with many subpeaks. Prominence is a measure of how far down you need to walk from a subpeak before you go back up to the next main peak. Subpeaks with low prominence (e.g., 100 feet (30 m) are not considered significant peaks, and don't make it onto peak lists. See USGS link — hike395 (talk) 20:59, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

Topographic prominence is related to how much climbing is required to reach a peak from a point that is higher, specifically from its line parent. In Colorado, 4352 meter Grays Peak has prominence of about 844 meters from its line parent Mount Lincoln. On the other hand, the only slightly lower 4349 meter Torreys Peak has a prominence of only about 171 meters from its line parent which is nearby Grays Peak.  Buaidh  talk e-mail 23:51, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

Who does prominence matter to?

Readers of mountain articles may wish to know prominence, in order to tell whether the peak is a true peak, or simply a bump on a larger mountain. — hike395 (talk) 21:00, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

Since prominence is somewhat related to the difficulty of a climb, it often matters more than elevation itself to climbers and mountain nerds like myself.  Buaidh  talk e-mail 00:06, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

Are there national or international organizations, who deal with it?

I've been editing mountain articles for >18 years now, and I know of no governmental or international or standards bodies that compute either prominence or isolation. — hike395 (talk) 21:01, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

Government agencies are not concerned with topographic prominence, although they provide the elevation and topographic data required to calculate topographic prominence. Most mountain climbing organizations rely on other sources (e.g, peakbagger.com and Wikipedia) to calculate topographic prominence for them. The Sierra Club and the Colorado Mountain Club have historically only been concerned with summit elevation, although topographic prominence has more recently become a concern. If a climber or organization finds a discrepancy with a calculated topographic prominence, hopefully they will let us know.  Buaidh  talk e-mail 00:53, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

Why does isolation matter?

@Buaidh: you have added isolation data and lists to many articles, do you wish to answer this? — hike395 (talk) 21:27, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

radius of dominance, an apt description. Isolation is the minimum distance you would need to travel to reach a point of equal or greater elevation. In mountainous regions, isolation may be short for any but the highest summit. In relatively flat regions, the highest summit may have a very long isolation.  Buaidh  talk e-mail

00:02, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

@Buaidh: Why is topographic isolation something an encyclopedia needs to cover? Not seeing the argument for this being important without dedicated coverage. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 16:31, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

An encyclopedia doesn't need to provide any statistical information about a mountain, but topographic elevation, prominence, and isolation are considered the three most significant measures of a summit.

Topographic isolation is discussed at the following:

• Topographic isolation on Wikipedia
• World Peaks with 1000 km of Isolation on peakbagger.com
• 25 Most Isolated Peaks In The World on mountainjourney.com
• Calculating the prominence and isolation of every mountain in the world at sagepub.com
• Visualize Prominence and Isolation of Mountain Peaks at wolfram.com
• Oregon's Most Prominent and Isolated Peaks at glassmountains.com
• Topographic Prominence-Isolation Concepts at cohp.com

Yours aye,  Buaidh  talk e-mail 20:22, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

Who does isolation matter to?

High isolation summits present a wonderful challenge to climbers in regions that are not overrun with folks who try to collect as many high peaks as they can in as short a period of time as possible (e.g., the Southern Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Nevada.)  Buaidh  talk e-mail 00:16, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

Are there national or international organizations, who deal with it?

Government agencies are not concerned with topographic isolation, although they provide the elevation and horizontal position data required to calculate topographic isolation. Most mountain climbing organizations rely on other sources (e.g, peakbagger.com and Wikipedia) to calculate topographic isolation for them. If a climber or organization finds a discrepancy with a calculated topographic isolation, hopefully they will let us know.  Buaidh  talk e-mail 00:54, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

Is there documented custom in the relevant off wiki community for reliance on educated amateurs for this?

I think "educated amateurs" may be a biased way of describing it. As far as I can tell, there is a small community of GIS people who compute prominence. A history of the term is described here: [33] The USGS acknowledges the term, but does not offer its own computation. Mathworks (the company that makes Matlab) offers a library to compute prominence (and isolation, too).

One of the main people in the community is Alan Dawson, who published^[2], and participated in creating Peaklist.com. An important book on the topic is by Adam Helman^[3] About the community, Helman states, "The community of prominence theoreticians, list builders, and climbers have reached a critical mass --- one that finally suggested the elaboration and publication of a book dedicated exclusively to the subject."

As far as I can tell, here is a list of websites that actually use the software and publish the results:

• Peakbagger.com
• Peaklist.com
• The Database of British and Irish Hills (http://www.hills-database.co.uk/)
• ListsOfJohn
• County Highpointers Association (www.cohp.com)

Trafford Publishing (Helman's publisher) is a well-known self/vanity-publishing imprint. I can't find any information that would substantiate TACit Press (Dawson's publisher) as an established imprint or not (EDIT: based on this, it looks to have been an amateur operation EDIT2: though based on this they were able at least to give ISBNs and the sourcing/editing/checking doesn't appear bad, though the book is essentially just a pamphlet for hobbyists). FOARP (talk) 09:06, 22 November 2021 (UTC)