Syrenka V

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Sourcing issues in creating articles about current events

Hi GrammarFascist, and thanks for your willingness to help!

I've been taken aback by the speed with which policy and guideline issues on sources come to dominate attempts to create or rescue articles. In a couple of weeks I've accumulated a list of over 100 policies, guidelines, essays, help pages, information pages, and project pages that I need to read, or have just now had to read, in order to try to navigate the minefield of WP:PRIMARY, WP:ROUTINE, WP:RS, and similar, that deletionists use to try to disqualify the vast majority of available sources, especially on recent events. This isn't just a matter of "Don't spam the Wiki with autobiographies and promotional material"; that's easy to understand. But some of the most commonly applied rules from the policy and guideline documents make no sense to me at all. The article draft I'm currently working on, User:Syrenka V/Documenting Hate, short as it is, provides several examples.

My recent inquiry at the Teahouse (WP:Teahouse#Notability: "independent of subject" for large collaborative journalistic projects) is only the first example, and comparatively one of the milder ones. I see the point of source independence as a general rule, but it's not at all clear to me that the rule should be applied in such a draconian fashion as to rule out every participant in a large data-gathering collaboration among journalistic and academic organizations, especially when many of them joined after the fact, rather than being involved in its creation. Would every individual or corporate entity that has contributed to the United Way, or every journalist who belongs to PEN International, be disqualified as an independent source for writing about these organizations? Even the essay WP:IS, which I just discovered, seems to think of lack of independence as involving much more substantial relationships; ditto WP:COI. No doubt ProPublica, and maybe its original partners in founding the collaboration, should be considered to violate independence; but for example the Boulder Weekly, which joined less than a week ago, not so much.

But even without using anything produced by journalistic organizations that have joined the collaboration, there would be plenty of material for an article on Documenting Hate — if it weren't for the rules on primary sources, reliability, and opinion.

I recently discovered another essay, WP:USEPRIMARY, that states that all "Editorials, opinions, and op-eds" are "Defined as a primary source by policy." At first sight I literally didn't believe this. But I clicked through the essay's link to WP:NOR, and there it was: "Further examples of primary sources include ... editorials, columns, blogs, opinion pieces..." In a footnote, with no explanation or justification whatsoever, and no connection to the general discussion, in the policy's main text, of what makes a source primary! This makes no sense whatsoever to me. Why are the analyses and syntheses of evidence in an editorial or an op-ed any less "secondary" than those in a book review, or those in an academic review of literature? And primary sources are disqualified as support for notability.

As long as these reflections have been, they're just the beginning. But I have to go, and you may already have some responses.

—Syrenka V (talk) 04:26, 14 August 2017 (UTC)

Hello, Syrenka V, and thank you for initiating this dialogue. I understand your frustration; I'm fond of rescuing articles in danger of deletion (or of never passing AfC review), myself, so I'm familiar with how that can feel. In the case of op-ed pieces, there is no editorial oversight of them per se, which I think is why they are considered primary rather than secondary sources, and I suppose the argument goes that the editors who write editorials similarly face no, or at least less, scrutiny than factual articles would. In any case consensus is long since established regarding what counts as a primary vs. secondary source, and we are unlikely to change enough minds to change that policy.

But returning to the matter at hand: I believe that it should be possible to provide three sources similar to the one you already found on the Daily Caller. I'm not intimately familiar with that publication, but our article on it describes it as a conservative version of the Huffington Post, which I think makes it a reliable enough source for our purposes. (Technically it should only take two reliable sources with significant coverage to establish notability, but in practice everyone seems to expect the minimum to be three. And I almost forgot the Nieman Lab source, which is surely reliable by any standard... but it still might be better to have at least 3 other sources for notability.) My thought is that right-wing-leaning sources can be used to establish notability, and then you would be free to use as many other sources as you wanted to flesh out the rest of the article — sources only need to be independent of the subject to establish notability, though of course independent sources are preferable. Finally, once the article is ready for mainspace, you can create a ==Notability== heading on the article talk page and list exactly which sources go to notability, for the benefit of anyone who comes along later concerned about the topic's notability (or wanting to allay such concerns). I hope this helps you! It's a great draft about a great topic, and I'm sure it will be a great article soon. —GrammarFascist _contribs^talk 06:09, 14 August 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for your thoughtful and helpful response, GrammarFascist! As far as I can tell from a search for "daily caller" in the Reliable Sources Noticeboard, it appears that the Daily Caller would indeed be considered a reliable source (well, reliable enough). The problem is that my reference from the Daily Caller was one of two examples I had in mind in my above discussion of opinion pieces! The other was this thoughtful piece from the Center for Data Innovation. Both of these are opinion pieces, in that they argue for conclusions they cannot entirely prove, and can be dismissed as primary sources on that ground. The same is likely to be true of any story written by a right-wing journalistic organization that declines to join Documenting Hate.

On the other hand, the three purely descriptive independent sources (from Nieman Lab, from Journalism.co.uk, and from Fast Company) are all likely to be dismissed as primary for two reasons:

1. They are all purely descriptive, and do no analysis or synthesis.
2. All three include material from interviews with the leadership of ProPublica.

It's very nearly a catch-22: if a news story, even a reputable one, argues for any speculative conclusions, it's an opinion piece, and therefore "by policy" a primary source; if it sticks to the facts, it is purely descriptive, and therefore again a primary source. The only way to escape the catch-22 and arrive in secondary-source Beulah Land appears to be the use of analytic or synthetic methods that are as unimpeachable as the facts themselves — as would be done in a textbook, or a scholarly review, or a meta-analysis. No wonder that editor at AfC thought I would need to wait years, until scholarly sources were available. (Well, even scholarly material doesn't always avoid speculation, but that's a fine point.)

If you think it's an exaggeration to say that the material from the Center for Data Innovation would be dismissed as an opinion piece, check out this AfD discussion, where an article in a peer-reviewed journal published by the Rutgers Graduate School of Education is airily dismissed as an "opinion essay, sort of an op-ed with footnotes".

The current Wikipedia policies on sources are so thoroughly unreasonable that they need to be challenged, repeatedly, no matter how firm the consensus behind them appears to be. Even if we can't change the policies that are actually operative in AfDs, maybe we can at least get them stated clearly and openly — not left to be inferred from a footnote here and a bullet point there, or imposed by a cliquish AfD flash mob that will not even condescend to explain them to outsiders. I think a clear statement of these policies would be such an embarrassment that it would be, in and of itself, a step toward their demise.

And maybe we can even get the occasional great article on a great topic to survive, despite them!

—Syrenka V (talk) 08:51, 14 August 2017 (UTC)

Hi GrammarFascist, an update: despite the above reflections, I've decided to go live with Documenting Hate! There have been some exciting developments in just the last week. Check it out; the involvement of Google News Lab and the creation of the Documenting Hate News Index have triggered another round of widespread news coverage—and another round of criticism from the Daily Caller. Also, participation in some successful rescue attempts has led me to believe that Wikipedians—even deletionists!—are on the whole more reasonable than a strict reading of the letter of some of the policies would suggest—and more reasonable than this particular AfD would suggest. That now looks like an aberration, rather than the norm.

—Syrenka V (talk) 02:17, 23 August 2017 (UTC)

Hello again, Syrenka V. I had a quick look at the article and I think it looks great! I have added it to my watchlist so I should be notified if it gets nominated for deletion again. It has been my experience that, in most areas, most Wikipedians are indeed quite reasonable (there have been some unfortunate exceptions, like the GamerGate debacle, but those are rare) and that that even applies to deletionists. I think that in an ideal world nobody would be a deletionist or an inclusionist, but simply evaluate each article on its merits; but Wikipedia editors are human, and humans are prone to bias.

Let me know if you need anything else! —GrammarFascist _contribs^talk 02:44, 23 August 2017 (UTC)

Apologies

I am sorry you viewed the question as a personal attack. It is only a question. It will probably come up again from someone else, and can be dealt with then. Best regards. Jytdog (talk) 22:40, 19 August 2017 (UTC)

Ah, you replied here, and I have responded there as well. Jytdog (talk) 22:49, 19 August 2017 (UTC)

No Wikipedia user should ever be suspected of COI or paid editing simply for an inclusionist pattern of editing. Please review the preceding section Sourcing issues in creating articles about current events on this talk page to get a better idea of what I'm really concerned about. Although possible COI does come up in that discussion, it's a very different kind of COI than paid editing of Wikipedia, and not on my own part but on that of certain sources I'd like to be able to use; it's really an issue of source independence. I worked far harder to save Trump effect on school bullying than I could ever imagine doing to save Medical Marijuana, Inc.

Unfortunately, it is indeed likely that inclusionists will indeed be suspected repeatedly of COI or paid editing, simply for behaving as inclusionists. That is not OK, and it is a far bigger problem than the behavior or beliefs of any one editor. My impression has been that many if not most hardcore Wikipedians are deletionists, while casual users of Wikipedia are overwhelmingly inclusionists, often far more radical than myself in that regard. When a casual user tries to transition to active participation and takes their inclusionism with them into that role, the welcome isn't of the warmest.

—Syrenka V (talk) 23:17, 19 August 2017 (UTC)

FWIW, I've never been accused of COI based on my inclusionist bent. Then again, I didn't have any of my early work on WP nominated for deletion. You're absolutely right that accusations of COI are often made inappropriately, though. —GrammarFascist _contribs^talk 02:47, 23 August 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for the sympathy, GrammarFascist! Actually, none of the articles I've been recently defending against AfD have been my own creations; I've simply picked them out of the current AfD list, as advised by the WP:ARS project page. Any work I did on them was after they were already nominated for deletion. (Nothing is guaranteed, but I doubt seriously that Documenting Hate will ever be nominated for deletion, whatever the technicalities of the relevant policies and guidelines; it simply has too much momentum and critical mass at this point.) The problem was that one of the articles I picked was about a for-profit company, and I used The Motley Fool as one of my sources. The other party didn't think he was accusing me, merely asking a question. My perspective is that even implying that such a question has become relevant is an accusation, and thus a personal attack. It's like a police detective asking where you were at a certain time. Such a question is not just a question.

—Syrenka V (talk) 03:11, 23 August 2017 (UTC)

My personal policy when I think there's a good chance (not just a remote chance) that someone has a COI and/or falls under WP's paid-editing policy is to state clearly that I am not accusing them of anything, but I encourage them to read the COI and paid-editing policies; I also point out that being caught doing paid editing without disclosure can result in a block, and let them know that such blocks are generally readily lifted if the user was innocently unaware of the policy or has demonstrated plausible remorse if they had been deliberately violating the policy. I do this either on their talk page or (if they came to the Teahouse with a question and revealed there that they probably had COI and/or were engaging in paid editing) at the Teahouse, not on article talk pages or AfD discussions. Do you think that my approach would come across as an accusation or personal attack, or more as someone helpfully pointing out a hazard to someone navigating a new environment (as I intend)? —GrammarFascist _contribs^talk 03:26, 23 August 2017 (UTC)

Syrenka you are correct that such a question is not "just a question". There needs to be basis for it. It is good that you understand that your adding a bunch of poor sources trying to save an article about a for-profit company was questionable. What you perhaps don't understand because you are new here, is that it is common as dirt for article subjects to pay people to work on their articles, or to come and work on them directly. Sometimes these people do this in ignorance of our PAID policy and COI guideline; sometimes they do it knowingly and lying-ly. But it is common enough, where the combination of poor editing and trying to save an article about a company, prompts the question. Reasonably.

You may not be aware how deep this goes - there is an ongoing scam where people actually nominate an article for deletion under one SOCK account, approach the subject and tell them the article is up for deletion and arrange to get paid to save it, and then show up under a SOCK account and argue to keep it. (see Orangemoody).

There is a context here.

I asked you a question. I did not actually accuse you or say you had a COI. There is a huge difference.

There is nothing wrong, at all, with being an inclusionist. But you should know that if you continue to work to save articles about subject prone to paid/conflicted editing (companies, products, living people) using poor sources, people are likely to ask you if you have a COI. Less clueful and less tactful people might actually accuse you of having one. (they shouldn't, but they might). This is unlikely to happen if you use very strong sources and always edit neutrally. Jytdog (talk) 20:18, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

A well-deserved barnstar

		The Article Rescue Barnstar
		For going above and beyond to rescue a worthy article that was en route to deletion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Quadrafile. A Traintalk 19:19, 20 October 2017 (UTC)

Nomination of OpenBSD security features for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article OpenBSD security features is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/OpenBSD security features until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article. Tonystewart14 (talk) 06:32, 21 October 2017 (UTC)

Deletion discussion closed 2017-10-28 as keep. —Syrenka V (talk) 11:07, 1 November 2017 (UTC)

WP:CLEAN

	Hello Syrenka V: You are invited to join WikiProject Cleanup, a WikiProject and resource for Wikipedia cleanup listings, information and discussion. To join the project, just add your name to the member list. North America1000 09:27, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

Quadrafile

User: Syrenka V You listed at Article Rescue squad this article as being at AFD and said something about its being relisted. It doesn't seem to be. Please clarify. 7&6=thirteen (☎) 11:43, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

Hi 7&6=thirteen! Once an article is listed on the ARS rescue list, it remains there until it is eventually archived, even after any AfD has been closed. That's why I started entering information about the outcome of AfDs under the main entry for their articles. Check below the main entry for Quadrafile and the entry for its relisting—I've marked it as Kept. It was relisted, but was eventually kept. Actually, Quadrafile is my proudest success to date; check above on this talk page, and you'll see that I was awarded the Article Rescue Barnstar for my role in finding sources and saving the article! Here's a link to the memorable AfD for Quadrafile.

Similarly, The good doctor (phrase) (AfD) has been marked as deleted. Incidentally, I have no special official role in the Article Rescue Squadron—anyone can mark an article as kept or deleted once the outcome of the AfD is known.

It's also legitimate to add articles to the ARS rescue list even if they're not currently under AfD, if they're at risk of deletion (or, for example, redirection), and the risk can be reduced by improving the articles. In fact, the two most recent entries on the rescue list, Merry Maids and American Home Shield, are not presently under AfD.

—Syrenka V (talk) 20:05, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

Thanks. Glad to see you got recognition for your efforts. 7&6=thirteen (☎) 20:09, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

Hello, Syrenka V. Please check your email; you've got mail!
It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.

7&6=thirteen (☎) 20:18, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for the emailed info, 7&6=thirteen! I would love to add Hi-fi News & Record Review, Volume 23, Issues 7-12 (1978) and The Gramophone, Volume 55, Issue 1 (Mackenzie 1977) to the Quadrafile article, but I can't see enough of the text through Google's "snippet view" to incorporate the material effectively. If you can in any way get access to physical copies (or unrestricted electronic copies) of those magazine pieces, they would make wonderful additions to the article. Thanks again!

—Syrenka V (talk) 05:31, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

A barnstar for you

		The Article Rescue Barnstar
		Thanks for your work on saving Bring Back the Bees at AfD! The Bushranger One ping only 03:19, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

Greetings

Hi Syrenka V: Thanks for your work to expand, improve and rescue Wikipedia articles. As a side note, you may be interested in perusing WP:EAGER, an essay I created. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 16:59, 12 November 2017 (UTC)

Fantastic essay, Northamerica1000! As far as I can tell from a quick perusal, I'm 100% in agreement. I liked the essay so much that it inspired me to create a new section on Inclusionism on my userpage, with a list of instructive reading material on inclusionism and deletionism. Your essay is the first entry on the list.

—Syrenka V (talk) 21:16, 12 November 2017 (UTC)

Wow, thanks. I am neither an inclusionist nor a deletionist, but I understand that some have various leanings. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 06:52, 19 November 2017 (UTC)

Welcome, Northamerica1000! There seems to be a lot of variation in how the terms "inclusionist" and "deletionist" are understood. The essay definitely reads like inclusionist literature to my eyes, even though it's mostly about process rather than about the final conclusion. I do see the two issues as closely linked, however. With few exceptions, the actual policies and guidelines of Wikipedia appear to be far more inclusionist than most AfD discussions are. One of my principal aims when I participate in AfDs is to bring practice in line with publicly stated theory. If the common problems with process identified in WP:EAGER were fixed, I think many more AfDs would end in a keep.

—Syrenka V (talk) 07:46, 19 November 2017 (UTC)

Part of the essay's thesis is to point out how deletion in general can be applied arbitrarily, or without due consideration. For me, anyway, it's not about AfD results, but the essay does point out some arbitrary occurrences that occasionally occur in AfD discussions. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 07:50, 19 November 2017 (UTC)

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User history

Tendentious question about user history
Are you a sock I have the sense that you were not a new editor when you joined. Please can you declare the previous accounts you edited under. If you do not wish to do this publicly, you can either email me or contact arbcom, who keep a list of fresh starts. Thanks Spartaz Humbug! 07:35, 9 December 2017 (UTC)}}

@Spartaz: I have had one (and only one) other account, years ago, whose last edit was in 2012, and with which I made well under 600 edits, total, over the entire period when it was being used. (By comparison, I have made over 2000 edits since registering this account less than six months ago.) The other account was not subject to any sanctions, or pending sanctions, at any time; the decision to leave was entirely mine, as were the reasons for the low participation of the old account. Both were due to the same issues with deletionism that I currently address on my userpage:

For years, while I used Wikipedia as an information resource, I was deterred from active participation as an editor by concern about wasted work from wanton deletion—and I was from time to time outraged by deletion, or attempted deletion, of information that I had relied upon purely as a reader. Contrary to popular deletionist opinion, personal participation in the creation of the deleted material is not a necessary precondition to feeling this outrage—simply having relied upon the material as a reader/user, and then one day seeing it gone, is enough all by itself.

In essence, I made an abortive effort to become seriously involved in Wikipedia years ago. My current emphasis on article rescue is directly related to the reasons why I left in exasperation years ago, and remained inactive for years. This kind of reaction is common in those who would like to participate, but are more inclusionist than most frequent AfD participants. See the references in my draft essay Protection not deletion for examples.

—Syrenka V (talk) 09:39, 9 December 2017 (UTC)

@Spartaz: Another point: I can see why you (or anyone else) might have thought I was more highly experienced at Wikipedia than I am, but the real reasons why I might give that impression have little if anything to do with my old account that I last used in 2012. I'm an academic, and I'm used to mastering a new topic area by intensive immersion in the literature. When I saw one {{notability}} tag too many on an article I was reading, and decided to become active despite rampant deletionism (and not to let it chase me away as happened years ago), it was entirely natural to me to read up intensively on Wikipedia's policies and procedures, and quote them extensively from the start. I would have done this whether I had ever had a prior account or not; it's what I do. It's a matter of academic experience, not Wikipedia experience. The same goes for my ready adoption of academic-style list-defined references.

—Syrenka V (talk) 09:56, 9 December 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Long face syndrome

You didn't !vote in a form that the bot can pick up. Cheers. 7&6=thirteen (☎) 21:20, 18 December 2017 (UTC)

Hi 7&6=thirteen! Thanks for the reminder—and kudos for finding so many sources for the article! My preliminary WP:BEFORE for adding this article to the ARS rescue list indicated that the article was probably salvageable, but I had no idea there were so many sources. I also didn't realize there was a bot that counted !votes. Can you explain more about how the bot works?

—Syrenka V (talk) 01:28, 19 December 2017 (UTC)

I told you everything that I know about the bot. I know that the information (and your vote) is compiled somewhere. I've seen these things cited at RFAs.

I am confident that the article will be rescued. I used Google books a lot. Gets a lot of sources that are hard to argue with. And bing.com. Gets some stuff that is otherwise missed. WP:Snowball does apply. 7&6=thirteen (☎) 01:58, 19 December 2017 (UTC)

Hi 7&6=thirteen: Indeed, it's looking more and more like WP:SNOWBALL. I've added to my remarks in the AfD to reflect that. I thought from my first preliminary source searches that the article would be kept and that the nominator had been negligent in WP:BEFORE, but I didn't realize quite how much he had missed. —Syrenka V (talk) 06:26, 19 December 2017 (UTC)

Thanks also for the tips on searching. I too use Google Books (and Google Scholar), and occasionally DuckDuckGo, but I haven't tried Bing; I'll have to keep that one in mind. —Syrenka V (talk) 06:28, 19 December 2017 (UTC)

I also used the search link for high beam research. I should get a subscription from the Wikimedia foundation. 13:17, 19 December 2017 (UTC)

A barnstar for you

	Holiday barnstar
	You deserve a holiday barnstar, but this barn flake was as close as I could come. And best holiday wishes to you. Thank you for making Wikipedia a better place. 7&6=thirteen (☎) 13:36, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

Advice on recently deleted article?

Saw you are part of the Article Rescue Squadron and wondered if you might be able to offer advice and or help. I'm an inexperienced editor who wrote a few articles in 2014 (I'm a professor and wanted to understand wikipedia better and be able to help my students with it). Two of my articles were created, but one was deleted today (Ty Morse) after a discussion that hinged on whether or not the subject was actually notable, which did not seem to reach consensus. I don't know who to reach out to or if this is even appropriate, but I'm looking for some guidance on what to do now or how to resolve it. Any ideas? Jemima1418 (talk) 18:35, 3 January 2018 (UTC)

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Cadmium and POV

Undoing my edit to Cadmium because you characterize Dr. Mullenix as an anti-fluoridationist is inserting your POV into a factual conversation. Dr. Mullenix is a board certified toxicologist and legal expert on this topic. She only reported the results of laboratory tests on samples of fluoridation products used in multiple communities. I'm re-entering my edit as originally posted and copied below Seabreezes1 (talk) 17:20, 12 February 2019 (UTC)

Cadmium is a common contaminant of fluoridation chemicals used as water additives. Fluoride additives are sourced from both the phosphate fertilizer industry and metal industry.

@Seabreezes1: I stand by my edit summary for my undo:

unreliable source, Mullenix is a notorious anti-fluoridation crusader

In view of Phyllis Mullenix's known history as an anti-fluoridationist crusader, her formal qualifications do not make her a reliable source on the topic, any more than Linus Pauling's Nobel and other eminent qualifications as a biochemist make him a reliable source on Vitamin C as a treatment for cancer. Even by the standards of a radical inclusionist like myself, representing notorious POV advocates as neutral authorities is not acceptable. The inclusionist standard is conservata veritate—with conservation of truth. Trying to use Phyllis Mullenix as a neutral authority on the science of fluoride does not meet that standard.

I have noticed that you have also inserted anti-fluoride POV material into a number of other articles with no obvious connection to fluoride or dentistry, including:

• Fredrick J. Stare (diff)
• Hives (diff)
• Osteitis fibrosa cystica (diff)
• Paresthesia (diff)

As far as I can tell, none of these insertions was accompanied by discussion on the talk page of the article in question.

I have some suggestions for you, for more constructive interaction:

• When inserting material related to alleged adverse effects of fluoride into any article, discuss the material you are adding on the article's talk page as well, so that others who may disagree will be aware of what you are doing. This will facilitate the development of consensus.
• When someone reverts your additions to an article, and you wish to discuss the matter, do so on the article's talk page—not on the talk page of the user who reverted your additions. In my own case, this is more than a suggestion. You are not welcome to comment further on my talk page, on this or any other topic; any such comments, including replies to my comments, will be removed. I am not interested in debating an anti-fluoridationist on my own talk page, any more than an anti-vaxer. Any further discussion can be done on article talk pages, in full view of others interested in those articles. I intend to comment further on the talk page for Cadmium.
• Create an article on Phyllis Mullenix; at this writing, no such page exists. As a radical inclusionist, I would strongly support creation of such an article, provided neutral and reliable sources for it could be found. It might be a challenge for so polarizing a figure—most of what I found was very pro or con—but Mullenix is sufficiently well-known and widely discussed that it should be possible to meet this challenge.

—Syrenka V (talk) 05:37, 14 February 2019 (UTC)

Clarification on the above: on reflection, "neutral" was a poor choice of words for what I meant. I'm aware that reliable sources by the standards of WP:RS and WP:V need not be neutral by the standards of WP:NPOV. But that was not the standard of neutrality I had in mind when I pointed out that Phyllis Mullenix's academic qualifications no more made her a reliable source on the effects of fluoride than Linus Pauling's eminence as a biochemist made him a reliable source on the effects of vitamin C. Although bias and non-neutrality in general may not exclude a source as reliable, extreme advocacy of a WP:FRINGE theory can still invalidate the reliability of even so eminent a source as Pauling—let alone Mullenix—at least for questions directly related to the fringe theory. WP:RS points out that the creator of a work, as well as the venue of publication, can be relevant to its reliability. Also see the comments on promoters of fringe theories as sources in the section WP:PROFRINGE within WP:FRINGE.

—Syrenka V (talk) 12:13, 14 February 2019 (UTC)

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