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Independent journalists

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

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Journalists like Glenn Greenwald and Bari Weiss worked for important news outlets and now they are independent. Is there a place to talk about the reliability of such journalists? Is this page the right place? Wikipedia talk:Reliable sources/Perennial sources ?

On a certain article Glenn Greenwald is not allowed as a source and he is accused of the following: carries water for the Russians, pushes ideas debunked by RS, and has forsaken good journalistic practices. Is that an editor opinion or there was a debate about Glenn Greenwald's reliability? I asked there but it I got no answer why is he not a reliable source. Barecode (talk) 09:08, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

Barecode, why didn't you ping me when you quoted me? That is generally good form here. Your question will be evaluated, at least partially, based on whether the quote is from a mainstream, very experienced, editor who bases his views on what RS say or a fringe editor who is known to generally push views from unreliable sources. There are many editors in both camps here at Wikipedia, and I am one of the former. -- Valjean (talk) 20:49, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

Of course, those of us who are experienced enough to know your (good) reputation will also be experienced enough to know how to find your original edit, too, so it's not necessarily a fatal error. ;-) WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:10, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

Valjean - I did ping you on Talk:Biden–Ukraine conspiracy theory#Glenn Greenwald when quoting the same thing and since you didn't answered there I assumed you are not interested in such a topic so I did not ping you again. I think it's ok for you or anyone else to accuse Glenn Greenwald or CNN of anything in a RFC and it expectable that such statements ("carries water for the Russians, pushes ideas debunked by RS") prevail as the conclusion of that RFC - biased opinions can prevail, that's a reality. What is not ok is for you or any other Wikipedia editor to unilaterally decide that Glenn Greenwald or CNN are like that. That's why a RFC exists for CNN. Considering that Glenn Greenwald is a top journalist and the impact on the world he had, I believe there is a need for a RFC for him. Nothing personal here but between you and Greenwald, I have to trust Greenwald more than I trust you. You made strong accusations against Glenn Greenwald - that's ok. But once your claims are used to make a decision about his reliability, anyone has the right to challenge those accusations and to ask you to provide proof. If you don't want to provide proof - that is also ok. You can keep your position - inside a RFC. I can't find any Wikipedia regulation that says or suggest that veteran editor can unilaterally decide that a source is absolutely unreliable. Especially for a high profile source like that. Such a rule would even be against the principles of Wikipedia. Therefore my actionable request is that high profile independent journalists need a RFC in such cases - because nobody should be in the position to unilaterally decide that such a source is absolutely unreliable. Barecode (talk) 06:25, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

After a bit of checking, I found your ping and comment. I generally appreciate relevant pings, but sometimes I see no point in replying. IIRC, such was the case then, when you wrote what was described as "Loaded questions overload?" I know when a reply will be fruitful or a waste of time. What I wrote about Greenwald is my opinion, not firm policy, although it's based in my understanding of policy and discussions about Greenwald's changing views over time. I am not the only editor here who has such views about him and where he should or should not be used. -- Valjean (talk) 06:47, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

BTW, your edit summary was "actionable request". What does that mean? -- Valjean (talk) 06:49, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

Barecode was proposing to have RFC for individual authors/journalists - to globally decide (like the RFCs at WP:RSP) if someone (a person) can be an RS. Mvbaron (talk) 07:00, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

Okay. Mvbaron, I look forward to such an RfC. I do believe that some people should be rated as unreliable sources based on their repeated denials of clearly proven facts and pushing of debunked views and conspiracy theories. In such cases, we are literally looking only at their (un)"reliability" in the sense of their having lost contact with certain important points of political reality. The views of such people should be isolated (with a notable exception) to their own biographies per WP:SPS and WP:ABOUTSELF. Their notability does not give them a free pass to push BS here.

Of course, by being cited in RS, even their most false and objectionable views can be given due weight enough for mention in other articles. Then we cite those sources, not their own websites or writings. This is an exception we always make, even for the worst blacklisted sources, and there are some people who should be blacklisted or deprecated. -- Valjean (talk) 16:37, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

Valjean can't (and isn't) deciding that unilaterally. Wikipedia editors in a discussion (be it an RFC or a normal talk page discussian) decide if a source gets to be included in an article (the specific RS RFCs just decide that more or less globally). Feel free to open an RFC at WP:RSN about Greenwald, but I'm pretty sure that the outcome (globally) would be not RS because of G's self-published nature.

Now back to Talk:Biden–Ukraine conspiracy theory#Glenn Greenwald: If Valejean cannot back up their claims about Greenwald with sources, then feel free to ignore their claims - as all editors should. However, note that G's reliability in context will be decided by all editors participating there. (from a quick glance, I can tell that there were more people arguing that Greenwald should not be used). But feel free to open another discussion (where you bring sources!) or an RFC at Talk:Biden–Ukraine conspiracy theory. Mvbaron (talk) 06:54, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

Who is fact-checking and editing his reporting? Is his work being vetted by reliable organizations such as the AP, BBC, or other major news organization before it is published? Or is it self-published? --Jayron32 13:03, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

Jayron32 - So I understand we can talk about individual journalists here?

His reporting must be fact-checked? Is that a Wikipedia requirement? Many publications considered reliable sources have opinion sections. The articles published in those sections are never referenced at Wikipedia?

I don't think his work is vetted by anyone. AFAIK, even when working at The Intercept, he had an agreement that his articles will not be edited. He left the publication when they tried to edit one of his articles. This topic is about independent journalists so no vetting.

But who decides that Glenn Greenwald carries water for the Russians and has forsaken good journalistic practices? And how is his journalism worse than say CNN who was spreading lies about Nicholas Sandman? Or about Kyle Rittenhouse? Or about Trump-Russia conspiracy hoax? Barecode (talk) 14:45, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

I think we need to flip the question in the other direction: Unless a source has evidence that it is a reliable source, we should hold no presumption that it is. A single person, especially out of context, is not a reliable source. However, it is hard to say in this case. Please read WP:RS to find out more. We first need to know what information at Wikipedia is being cited to what text outside of Wikipedia, and then we need to be able to assess that source against the standards of reliability we expect, as explained at WP:RS. Out of context, we can't say anything useful than vague generalities, and those are rarely helpful to address objections to a specific usage of a source. --Jayron32 14:52, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

Jayron32 - That's an interesting statement: Unless a source has evidence that it is a reliable source, we should hold no presumption that it is - I imagined Wikipedia to be a liberal space, where things like "Presumption of innocence" prevail. Sorry, can you point me to the Wikipedia regulation that states that? And what kind of evidence we have that CNN of MSNBC or NYT for example are reliable sources?

Also, Glenn Greenwald is not a random single person. Not even a random independent journalist. He is one of the most important and most influential journalists of our time. Greenwald has been placed on numerous "top 50" and "top 25" lists of columnists in the United States (Wikipedia). He sent a shockwave through the entire Western world with his revelation. He is an established name. His revelations pretty much increases his credibility somewhere above the credibility of the network news who disproportionately focused on pro-Iraq war sources and left out many anti-war sources.

Question How can an independent journalist become a reliable source for Wikipedia? Is there any independent journalist who reached this stage? Barecode (talk) 15:26, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

You've already been directed to Wikipedia:Reliable sources, which describes the expectations to what counts as a reliable source. CNN and MSNBC and NYT all meet the requirements listed there.--Jayron32 15:28, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

Yes, please follow Jayron's advice. RS must meet certain demands here, all depending on how they are used. You may not realize this, but even the very worst sources, even those that are blacklisted, can, in some situations, be used in their own biographies per WP:ABOUTSELF. Greenwald can be used in those situations at Glenn Greenwald, but generally not anywhere else, at least not anymore. If you find him being cited as a source, and it's from before about 2016, he was possibly a RS before that time, but he quickly degraded after that and became extremely partisan and running into opposition because he was advocating views contrary to facts and evidence published in mainstream RS. At that time, the misinformation and disinformation pushed by TFG literally forced sources and journalists to make important decisions about which path they would follow. Would they stick to facts or would they believe the lies? Read very carefully these articles and their sources: Veracity of statements by Donald Trump and Big lie#Trump's claim of a stolen election. Editors here also had to make such choices, and those who attack CNN and other mainstream RS raise eyebrows.

Greenwald is an interesting case where he was once considered a good journalist, but like some sources, we have to treat him differently now. Sources can change their status here, and so can journalists, so we say (for a source I can't remember right now) that they are reliable pre-date(?) and must be evaluated more carefully after that date. He no longer follows good journalistic practices, which is why he was forced to part ways with The Intercept. Read this: The Intercept#Resignation of Glenn Greenwald. He now pushes views that have been proven false, such as his pushing of the views described in this article about conspiracy theories that cover-up for the misdeeds of TFG and his campaign: Russia investigation origins counter-narrative#Claims made. He takes the wrong side on several of those issues, so he's not a RS for the WP:American politics 2 area. Per WP:ABOUTSELF, he can still be used for his own biography, but not in any manner that is unduly self-serving, IOW he can be cited there for simple facts and accurate quotes, but that's about it. He only publishes from his own personal Substack website now, and that's not a RS- Valjean (talk) 21:17, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

Valjean Thanks for coming with arguments to support your position towards Greenwald. To be honest, I find your arguments very unconvincing. Trump lies, I agree with that. Seriously, what else can you expect from a clown? Does that prove that CNN never lies? You somehow imply that if I believe that Trump lies then I have to believe CNN never lies and viceversa. That's a tribal view. Trump vs. us - Us vs. Biden - SJW against racists - and so on. This is not about lies and truth anymore, this is about who is scoring political points. Trump lies and CNN also lies that's a fact and there are plenty of evidence to prove that. But I think this is the wrong place to talk about Glenn Greenwald's reliability. Also the page Talk:Biden–Ukraine conspiracy theory#Glenn Greenwald is a wrong place. Ivan VA noticed the same: you and other editors want to ban Greenwald from Wikipedia. And I think he meant opening a RFC for that: As for the rest, if u want to dispute the credibility of Greenwald and ban his opinions from en.w as not credible, theres a procedure, and ill be very happy to see that claim!. This is not the right place for me or anyone else to challenge the statements you made above. This page is about reliable sources in general. And this section is about independent journalists in general - and not about Glenn Greenwald. I only mentioned Glenn Greenwald here because I was ignored at Talk:Biden–Ukraine conspiracy theory#Glenn Greenwald.

Another conclusion that I got is that such an independent journalist has to be quoted in the liberal media (the media supporting president Biden) - otherwise he can't be quoted on Wikipedia. If he is quoted by the rest of the media (which is unfriendly to Biden) then he can't be quoted at Wikipedia. Because the Biden-unfriendly media is considered an unreliable source. And that situation applies not only to Greenwald, but in general with any claim. Like for example Talk:Hunter Biden#Libyan assets unfreezing. If you are not quoted by the Biden-friendly media, you do not exist at Wikipedia. I made that observation at Wikipedia talk:Reliable sources/Perennial sources#The bias of the liberal media and the debate was closed for being a "soap box" etc. This is a loophole. Wikipedia doesn't have to be neutral anymore because all the Biden-unfriendly media is declared as unreliable source. That means Wikipedia has a Biden-friendly and Trump-unfriendly bias. I am not a warrior, I am not trying to bring justice. I honestly believe Wikipedia is biased. Therefore as an editor my job is to bring this into the attention of the community in order to help fixing this issue. What's the best place to report this thing? I think most people can agree that Wikipedia is not completely error-free. Even if everyone disagree with my view, I think it's in the best interest of Wikipedia to allow reporting errors. Barecode (talk) 10:28, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

Barecode, that's a very naive and tribal view that assumes the worst about other editors; assumes they view you and Trump supporters in the worst light; and that other editors only believe in extreme leftist positions. You're taking single statements, assuming a lot (which only reveals your own thinking) and blowing them out of proportion. That's not AGF. You're creating and then attacking a straw man image of your perceived opponents and engaging in bothsiderism. These issues are far more nuanced and complex than your presentation. It's not an either/or matter, and I find it hard to agree with about 90% of what you say above, but if that's what you really think of many of us, then communication will be very difficult.

There are a few points I do agree with: This is not the right place; yes, Wikipedia is biased, and it should be biased toward the views found in RS because we are a fact-based, mainstream, encyclopedia. We are not Conservapedia; and Wikipedia is not completely error-free.

If we are ever going to communicate effectively, you'll need to understand how I understand NPOV. I have been here since 2003, before we had 500,000 articles, and my fingerprints are still in our most important policies, especially NPOV. I have done a deep dive into it, especially how it is to be understood in the context of dealing with biased sources (at least 95% of our sources). Study this essay of mine and you'll be able to communicate with me much better: NPOV means neutral editing, not neutral content. I've also lived in six different countries ranging from right-wing military dictatorships to left-wing, near communist ones, and lost a business to socialist nationalization. I was raised so conservative that our family didn't know any liberals. We were completely naive about politics. I'm old enough to know the nuances of many different political views and systems, largely because I have lived with them as an adult, so don't try to place me or others into a small box defined by your own preconceived views about us or "leftists". I don't assume that because you might be a "rightist"(?), that you are a Nazi or racist. Certainly not. Rather than openly assuming so much, why not ask about clarification of things we say, and do it on our talk pages? That's the "right place". We may or may not choose to engage, depending on time factors or whether we sense it's worth it. Needless to say, even though I say "we", I'm not speaking for all other editors, but just assuming that some here on this page might share a few of my views on these issues. Please do not respond to all this here. -- Valjean (talk) 16:11, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

Jayron32 Sorry the link you gave me does not answer to my questions. Please be kind and answer my questions. You said there needs to be evidence, please show the evidence that CNN meet the requirements. Barecode (talk) 16:08, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

WP:RS states "News reporting from well-established news outlets is generally considered to be reliable for statements of fact (though even the most reputable reporting sometimes contains errors)." CNN is a well-established news outlet. --Jayron32 16:12, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

Also, feel free to review WP:RSP#CNN and the 15 RFCs on the matter. But that will really get you nowhere. If you want to establish that source X is reliable, it doesn't matter what a different source Y is reliable or not. You must simply prove that source X has a reputation for fact checking, that there is editorial oversight, and that it confirms to WP:BLP, which requires that biographical claims and accusations do not come from self-published source. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 16:14, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

Jayron32 - Headbomb - Thanks. Ok so being a well-established news outlet is the evidence that the source is reliable.

The question remains: how can an independent journalist become a reliable source for Wikipedia? And of course subsequently: Is there any independent journalist that already reached this status? If not, that means that Wikipedia does not allow using independent journalists as sources, right?

If you ask me, Glenn Greenwald is a well-established news outlet by himself. He uncovered the illegal, world-wide governments conspiracies to spy on their own people. But, of course, your mileage might vary. Barecode (talk) 16:41, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

They generally can't be, because there is no editorial oversight. Luckily if someone is a "well-established news outlet," then what they cover and report will be picked up by reliable secondary sources, and we can use those. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 16:44, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

• I think this is a fair question but I can't see an easy path forward. As things currently stand Greenwald can't really be seen as a subject matter expert in the topics where his work might normally be cited. I don't see that his statements would qualify as expert opinion on things other than perhaps journalism itself. As a SPS, if I recall policy correctly, he can't be cited for statements of fact. Since he isn't publishing through a RS we can't treat his work as typical reporting. So even if his analysis and self published reporting is spot on (and I see no reason to assume it isn't) it's still runs into policy issues. If he is interviews and expresses his views I think that would be similar to self published sourcing. The interviewer and publisher aren't vouching for the accuracy of Greenwald's statements. However, if a RS cites him for statements of fact then we could as well. Basically this is our status quo. The next question is, should we change this for someone with a strong, clear and admirable history in this area. Odds are good that Greenwald's self published work is better than much of the stuff we get from sources like Vox, HuffPo, CNN etc. But how would we change policy to allow this? What slippery slopes would it open? I don't think anyone would support adding a list of specifically "allowable" RS journalists who would be treated as reliable even when they self publish. Trying to craft some sort of rule to decide which journalists are acceptable when self published would be really problematic. In the end, yes this does create a big Wikipedia blind spot. There are several examples where our typical RSs were later shown to have gotten things wrong while some of the independent self published sources were spot on. It would be nice to be able to use those smart, insightful independent sources. But I can't see how that would be done without opening a flood of crappy sources as well. In my view Wikipedia would be better if we could allow a very reputable source like Greenwald but, in my view, opening that door would ultimately do more harm that good as it would allow a flood of lesser self published reporters as well. Springee (talk) 16:43, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

Springee - Thanks. I don't see any potential problem. Any individual journalist can be discussed with a RFC just like WP:FOX - Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_303#RfC:_Fox_News. Those RFCs can be revised every year. You admit that Greenwald can be better than Huffington Post. So he deserves to be discussed separately, just like any news outlet. That was my point from the very beginning. If Greenwald is declared as "carrying water for Russia", that should be decided in such a RFC, and not by any Wikipedia editor. I don't believe there should be any discrimination against independent journalists - when comparing to other news outlets - they deserve RFCs just as much. If there will be too many RFCs for independent journalists, a basic filter can be applied (like his name/work must be mentioned by at least 5 established news outlets). As for the rest of the issues you raised, it can be discussed in general for this category of journalists and in particular in every RFC. -- Barecode (talk) 17:25, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

ScottishFinnishRadish - The current tribalism of the media is so intense that we got to a comical situation: the biggest part of the media refuse to publish his articles (he had to leave The Intercept because of that) and the rest of the media is considered unreliable. Therefore his articles will be published only by unreliable sources. And it's not his fault for this situation. Therefore his own work should matter by itself. The market is too polarized for him to get any chance to be published by reliable sources. It's not only him. Some stories that probably deserve attention are rejected by the liberal media - because those stories contradict the media views. So the stories can only be published in Fox, NYP etc who are considered unreliable. And not everything NYP publishes is false. I raised the issue here - Wikipedia talk:Reliable sources/Perennial sources#The bias of the liberal media -- Barecode (talk) 17:45, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

The whole situation is rather easy: Imagine you're writing an encyclopaedia. What kind of stories would you include in it? You can't include all, because then you would need to say "The earth is flat, and the earth is round, and the earth is banana-shaped". You can't include some random bloggers either, because then you would need to say "X said the earth is actually hollow inside" and "Y said that the earth doesn't exist!!".

-> So how do you decide what to include? Well, you include sources that are reliable, i.e. sources with a record of fact checking, editorial oversight etc. Sources that if they publish a falsehood, correct it. And just like that, we arrive at WP:RS - which excludes sources like The Daily Mail, not because of some grand conspiracy of "the liberals", but simple because it's a crappy source and you can't build an encyclopaedia with it. And similarly, we arrive at WP:SPS, the ban of self-published sources, because you can't build an encyclopaedia with that.

Individual exemptions need to be discussed for the individual cases. The ban on WP:SPS will never be lifted, and I believe Mr. Greenwald's opinions will need to be discussed at the specific article talk pages. All this complaining about the bias of the media has little to do with the basic question of how to write an encyclopaedia. Mvbaron (talk) 18:06, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

Greenwald and Weiss now fall under WP:RSSELF, so they are for the most part unusable for much of anything in the Wikipedia. If an event is notable enough, then there will be actual sources out there to make use of. ValarianB (talk) 18:04, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

Their views go in their respective BLPs, especially if discussed by independent reliable sources. If in relation to other topics RS widely discuss their views, it may be DUE on a case by case basis, while including the analysis of those sources. —PaleoNeonate – 18:51, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

Mvbaron - ValarianB - PaleoNeonate - Thanks for all the answers. I honestly (still) believe this debate is not a waste of time. Now the thing is more clear to me. The conclusions I got are the following (please correct me if I'm wrong):

• The fact that a journalist is independent make them generally an unreliable source.
• If in relation to other topics RS widely discuss their views, it may be DUE on a case by case basis, while including the analysis of those sources. Like for example Glenn Greenwald's view on the Biden–Ukraine_conspiracy_theory article.

Three question still remain:

• Who decides that Glenn Greenwald carries water for the Russians, pushes ideas debunked by RS, and has forsaken good journalistic practices. How can such unproven inflammatory accusations decide the alleged UNDUE weight of his views in that article (and in any other Wikipedia article)? For CNN, there is a RFC where the editors decide what kind of source CNN is. For Glenn Greenwald, the decision is taken by a single Wikipedia editor. Which doesn't make sense at all.
• As someone noted: Odds are good that Greenwald's self published work is better than much of the stuff we get from sources like Vox, HuffPo, CNN etc. Isn't that another reason for such independent journalists to have their own RFC where such things are mentioned? Like "Journalist X is independent and has a very good reputation and a good record". Along with accusations like "he works for Russia".
• What happens when a part of the media refuses to publish an independent journalist's views and their views are published only in the rest of the media, which is considered to be not Reliable Sources? Is it fair to ignore their views because they are rejected by the bigger part of the media? E.g. Glenn Greenwald's view was published by Fox News which is not RS.

I think a guide or an essay (or a sub-section in a guide) about independent journalists would be helpful for others who might have the same or similar questions. Barecode (talk) 20:01, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

Barecode, I think you are correct in that just because a journalist is independent doesn't make them not reliable (not referring to WP:RELIABLE). If I were writing my own encyclopedia I would be, in general, willing to cite claims from someone with Greenwald's history even if the source is self published. However, in that hypothetical I become the arbiter of reliability. Unfortunately for Wikipedia I just don't have enough time to answer every questions regarding source reliability ( :D ). Thus Wikipedia has to go with an inferior crowd sourced, rules based method (wp:RS). RS certainly isn't perfect since some "reliable" sources will have information that is plain wrong while many "non-reliable" sources actually have really good information. But without me ( :D ) to filter the good vs bad self published sites we are almost certainly going to have endless arguments regarding this SPS being OK while someone else's SPS is bad. I just can't see this changing even though I can't imagine any editor believing there is no "encyclopedic" information on those self published sources. And yes, that does mean that right and/or wrong Wikipedia will get things wrong if the mainstream press gets it wrong. It's just Wikipedia is likely to be wrong even more if we go in the other direction. Springee (talk) 20:23, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

There are multiple factors in determining whether a source is likely to be reliable or not – before you get to the all-important question of whether it is actually reliable for a given statement. There is a brief summary of those qualities at WP:NOTGOODSOURCE.

Two of these qualities cannot be achieved by any single human, even if he is widely recognized as having a towering intellect, perfect probity, and omniscience to boot. Another cannot be achieved by anyone who has to self-publish all of his content, no matter whether he has to self-publish his content because the usual publishing houses have decided he's a demented idiot or because they just don't think his articles will sell or for any other reason at all. Two other qualities can easily be achieved by any freelancer (=the traditional English-language word for an "independent" journalist).

So it is true that a freelancer who cannot get any reputable outlet to publish his work starts off in an awkward position in terms of reliability, but this alone does not technically amount to a complete ban. The reasons that we wouldn't want to use his articles are more complex, namely that they would be reliable for "He wrote that _____" kinds of statements (rather than "____ is true" claims), and unless the subject of the article is about him or very closely related to him, knowing what one freelancer wrote is generally WP:UNDUE and should simply be omitted from the article when editors are deciding how to go about WP:Balancing aspects of the subject to give a concise summary of the subject. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:24, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

• @Barecode:: Above, you write, "the decision is taken by a single Wikipedia editor". That's not true in any way. The reason why there isn't an RFC about these things is that you didn't start one. That's it. Now, my advice is to abandon any idea of establishing any greater principle at play. Instead, what YOU should do is start an RFC at the article talk page where YOU believe that Glenn Greenwald should be allowed as a source, very specifically over what statement you wish to write in the Wikipedia article, and what source you wish to use to cite it. Be very specific with the exact phrasing you wish to use and the exact source you think supports it. Where you fell down here is that you're trying to find some greater principle to act as a "trump card" that will mean you "win" some personal one-on-one conflict. Don't seek a greater rule that overrides the kind of granular consensus building that really gets work done here. If the conflict is over one statement in one article, and you think you're correct about that one statement, don't try to make it about some greater principle. Just work on that one statement. --Jayron32 12:18, 10 December 2021 (UTC)
  • Barecode, what Jayron32 is saying here is true. However, I personally wouldn't bother with a RfC since it would almost certainly end with "not a reliable source" for the reasons WhatamIdoing provided. I personally think Greenwald's views are worth considering if we were discussing this topic in person. However, per the rules of Wikipedia they can't be included. The same limitation occurs in areas where I personally know subject matter experts. If a RS written by a non-expert says X and the subject matter expert posts !X on a web forum... well we can't use it. I would liken this to stripping the legal system of jury trials. Juries don't always get it right and certainly can be swayed by deliberately misleading evidence etc. However, the alternatives are likely, on the whole, worse. Springee (talk) 13:04, 10 December 2021 (UTC)
    • Springee, that's actually not true, according to policy. WP:SPS states "Self-published expert sources may be considered reliable when produced by an established subject-matter expert, whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable, independent publications." I have no idea if Greenwald meets that threshhold, but if he does, and consensus is that he qualifies as a subject matter expert, than his self-published statements on a subject (especially if directly attributed with with a statement like "According to Glenn Greenwald..." then policy allows for the possibility of including it (it does not require it, and for contested statements, consensus-building and dispute resolution may be necessary). --Jayron32 13:25, 10 December 2021 (UTC)
      • Yeah, I was trying not to get too buried in the details here. Earlier I did say that, even though Greenwald has a strong history as a journalist, I wouldn't call him a subject matter expert on topics other than journalism itself. So his take on the various Biden stories, in my view, would be outside his area as a subject matter expert. In the case of my personal example, it was related to automotive tier design. It may be hard to convince editors that someone who hasn't been covered in the press is an expert since we typically use RSs to establish that vs the self reported views of others in the industry. Anyway, Greenwald's criticism of the journalism industry probably can be cited as expert opinion in that subject area. But in this case we are being asked to use his self published work for what are effectively statements of fact on which he is reporting. I'm not sure how to do that under SPS rules. Disclaimer, I do respect Greenwald's self published material. Springee (talk) 13:53, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

The only exception I can see to allow an independent journalist's blog posts to be used would be if they were such a widely acknowledged subject matter expert in a particular area that their opinions would constitute WP:DUE cites under WP:SPS as an expert. Even then, we vastly prefer published sources for any such claims. For this particular case, I'm unconvinced Greenwald or Weiss' independent work is at such a standard - David Gerard (talk) 13:23, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

Again, as I said above, Greenwald may not be an expert of the level required to meet the WP:SPS standard. He may be, or may not be. But there is no absolute ban on the use of self-published sources, especially where someone's work in a field has been established as an expert. Which is not to say that Greenwald is such an expert. Which is also to not say that he isn't. That will need to be established separately. But everyone insisting "sorry, unless a major news organization publishes the work, no one can ever use it at Wikipedia", that simply isn't true. --Jayron32 13:29, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

Usually, when we're talking about a previously published subject-matter expert, we're talking about using a self-published source about an academic subject, written by a person with multiple peer-reviewed academic journal articles. We're not talking about things written by freelancers that they couldn't sell to any media organization, so they posted it on their own website. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:37, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

I think we should be careful about how we think about the motivation to self publish vs publish through others as a freelance journalist. It appears that, at least in Greenwald's case, he makes more money with his current setup vs he would if he went through most media companies. It might be analogous to saying a singer who self publishes. They might be doing that because no record labels would pick them up (ie they suck) or it could be because the industry has changed and they get more control with no loss of income by choosing to self promote/publish. I don't think we should presume they are self published because no RS would choose to carry their work (though that may indeed be the case). Springee (talk) 18:26, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

Barecode wrote above that "the biggest part of the media refuse to publish his articles (he had to leave The Intercept because of that)". WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:22, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

I would support making this case for someone like Alan Dershowitz talking about how the laws are being applied. His take on some of the recent, high profile legal cases could be DUE as analysis. However, I wouldn't suggest his opinion on if the prosecution was say politically motivated would be DUE. For Greenwald I think the only exception would be his opinion on the state of journalism itself. Springee (talk) 13:53, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

Jayron32 - I apologize for stating that it was an unilateral decision. Valjean's statements got my attention and they looked to me decisive in drawing the conclusion. I just try to do my job in trying to help preserving the Neutrality principle of Wikipedia. In my view, at this moment Wikipedia is not neutral. IMO the editors created a loophole to circumvent neutrality. If you believe that Wikipedia is not error free then you can better understand my view (I'm just a guy (also not error-free) who notices an error at Wikipedia and I try to bring it into the attention of the others, in the hope it will be fixed), which has nothing to do with creating rules according to my fantasies or finding trump cards or winning debates. I am not trying to become a famous challenger and I don't even have much time for Wikipedia. I will probably talk about this loophole at WP:NPV talk page. When people think the debate is about scoring political points (e.g. let's help Trump look good in this article), then they will focus on winning the debate even at the cost of making errors. Once revealed, those errors can make them feel embarased and it's harder for them to admit their errors, because by admitting them they fear that they help the other side to score points. Which is very bad, considering that "President X (or former President Y) can destroy our country!". And then making errors is a necessary evil when you struggle for a higher cause. And that's how the debate about writing encyclopedia becomes something very different. I say that because you did bring into discussion the psychology of the debate, and I wanted to make it clear why it might look the way you described it. In short: trying to score political points at Wikipedia can be a trap.

But anyways, as I said in my previous message, I believe we need a separate RFC for Glen Greenwald, probably at WP:RSN. The page Talk:Biden–Ukraine conspiracy theory#Glenn Greenwald doesn't look like a good place since the discussion is about Glenn Greenwald being considered a completely unreliable source, not about Glenn Greenwald being unreliable source for that particular topic

Springee - I pretty much agree with most of the things you said in your previous message. In my view a separate RFC for Glenn Greenwald is very important. Just as it would look strange to build consensus about CNN's reliability in a random talk page. The consensus about CNN reliability belongs to a separate RFC. You said "Greenwald's views are worth considering if we were discussing this topic in person" - I'm not sure I understand you. Some Wikipedia editors want to ban Greenwald's opinions from EN.WP (Talk:Biden–Ukraine conspiracy theory#Glenn Greenwald). You mean you disagree with them?

I don't have the ambition to unban Greenwald's opinions from EN.WP - I think the ban is a very wrong decision and therefore what I want is a proper procedure for banning him. It doesn't matter how the debate ends. The debate about Greenwald at Talk:Biden–Ukraine conspiracy theory#Glenn Greenwald is an improper place for banning him, as Ivan VA also noticed. Once the procedure starts, everyone can bring their arguments, including me. I think I will start a RFC at WP:RSN as Valjean suggested.

I apologize if I created too much debate, now it is clear to me that independent journalists are treated like SPS - and that's all. I started this section because Glenn Greenwald's opinions were practically banned from Wikipedia in a way that I believe it was not the best procedure for doing that. And I didn't know how to point my finger at the problem. At this moment Greenwald's opinions are practically banned from EN.WP but officially there isn't a real ban, just a debate on one of the many Wikipedia talk pages. -- Barecode (talk) 14:02, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

@Barecode, if you do nothing, the odds are good that Greenwald's suitability will be debated a few times and mostly considering his suitability for the individual article – a case-by-case determination, and a decision that could change over time, as his career and other circumstances warrant. If you start that RFC, the odds are high (or, higher than it sounds like you'd prefer) that Greenwald will be formally and basically permanently listed as an unreliable source. Think about what you want to achieve. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:43, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

WhatamIdoing - The only thing I want to achieve is to have a proper procedure for banning Glenn Greenwald from Wikipedia. There is a de facto ban on him at this moment so I think it's important to make the ban also "official" for very good reasons. Just like the decision about NYP was made "official" using a RfC. Also any ban is temporary. Reliability of sources can be discussed annualy. I would not worry about that for a bit. If tomorrow Greenwald would become ProBidenAntiTrump, the media and Wikipedia will waste no time to embrace him. Barecode (talk) 18:12, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

• There isn't a de facto ban.
• I don't remember ever seeing a deprecated source removed from RSP. Granted, I don't follow that page, so it may have happened, but it would certainly be an unusual event.

WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:24, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

Barecode, you've worked yourself up inventing a situation that literally doesn't exist. No one said that Greenwald is "banned". Tell us what information you wish to cite to which writing of his, and to post evidence as to why his writing on that topic should be considered reliable. Stop trying to get him declared universally reliable, and stop trying to act persecuted or that we're being unfair. Instead, just create a narrowly-focused neutrally-worded RFC without all of the editorializing. Let me give you a a good RFC boilerplate that may work for you:

In the article <insert link to article here>, the text <insert text you want to write in that article> should be inserted <describe where you want to put it here> and cited to <insert source material here>, which is reliable because <provide evidence that Greenwald's writing on the subject should be considered reliable here>.

Then let other people discuss this. You've spent volumes of WP:TLDR-level text here poisoning the well and inventing "liberal media" conspiracy theories that don't exist. No one is going to care if you keep doing that. You're making yourself very ignorable, and I fear that if you do have good contributions to make to Wikipedia, you're not going to be able to do so because all of this silliness is just a distraction. This is my last try to help you accomplish your goals. Feel free to take my advice or not, I'm checking out at this point. For the second time in as many days: vaya con dios. --Jayron32 19:47, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

I agree except about inventing the conspiracy, "liberal media bias" is a common conservative narrative, albeit a flawed one (that some have reported to be a type of gospel preaching; blaming society to maintain segregation and avoid self-reflexion, compare to 1 John 5:19). —PaleoNeonate – 21:51, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

In the hypothetical case that an independent journalist "proves" to be exceptionally good and they are ignored by all the RS, then I think Wikipedia can decide to make an exception for that SPS (not the case with Greenwald). For the moment, only half the media is ignoring some SPS, so we are not there yet. I can imagine such cases can exist in extreme situations for example if all the media promotes a war in Iraq and ignore some respectable SPS who disagree. Or if all the media wants to invade Guatemala to kill the "communists" and to restore the Banana Republic (1960). Barecode (talk) 15:28, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

I posted Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard#RfC on Glenn Greenwald. -- Barecode (talk) 17:52, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

In this case it would likely not be WP:DUE except for uncontroversial information about themselves like WP:ABOUTSELF... —PaleoNeonate – 21:53, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

@Barecode: Since i've been pinged twice, and see this debate for the frist time...just wanna give my 2c. And that is basically a capture of a sorrow state in which, more and more over time, en.wiki finds itself in. Which is editing political articles according to your own views and the complete and utter lowering and abandoning of previous editorial standard which the bearers of such political opinions are ready to accept. En.wiki is being wrecked from the inside, and folks here are quite happy to see that. As a non-native to en.wiki (editing sr.wiki is my primary), i can say that i've already watched that movie on sr.wiki 10 years ago and i didn't like it, and now looking back i'm disgusted by it. So, for me, this is kinda a flashback situation. As an observer, pretending to be smart, it probably captures the inner life of american society, but, which is the most important part, without the sense that when u sit on your computer to edit wikipedia, u leave your own political opinions behind and stick to editing rules. And the rule says that Glenn Greenwald is a reliable and reputable source. If this community thinks otherwise u are outta your minds. How this affects your voting habits etc. is NOT, in any way, of interest for this discussion or editing articles, at all. --Ivan VA (talk) 23:31, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

And the rule says that Glenn Greenwald is a reliable and reputable source if the rules mean Wikipedia policy, it never was the case as far as I know. —PaleoNeonate – 23:44, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

@PaleoNeonate: Because of his credentials he is a reputable source. The editors of this wiki, on the quoted Hunter Biden page, have, by themselves, unilaterally, without any due process or respecting procedure, banned using him as a source on that article. B4 u can do that, there needs to be a legitimate 'paper trail as they call it. And there is none. All ive seen is some provocating political editors thinking writing pov articles is going to stop history from going to the wrong direction and this moment is beeing seen as critical i guess. That seems to be the mood here. --Ivan VA (talk) 23:53, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

To report an attributed opinion about journalism or an aspect of law practice when/if WP:DUE, perhaps. WP cares about editorial oversight and the reputation of publishers... It is a tertiary source that mostly relies on published secondary sources. WP cannot treat news reports of a single person like if they were published by a mainstream newspaper (one that is not considered unreliable, that is). I'll post these links for reference (some have already been mentioned above): WP:RS, WP:SPS, WP:PRIMARY, WP:ATTRIBUTE, WP:ABOUTSELF, WP:USERGEN, WP:BLOG —PaleoNeonate – 03:23, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

@PaleoNeonate:It is a tertiary source that mostly relies on published secondary sources. Most historians conclusions when they write about WWII are tertiary sources. The sentence XX historian is of the opinion about YY, so frequently found in thousands of good written wikipedia articles, is a tertiary source. Greenwalds opinion on the Hunter Biden topic corelates to that of Martin Heidegger on ontology or that of Hilberg on Holocaust. Simple as that. The 2nd problematic thing is that u ascribe 'the mainstream media' some privileged insight into reality (even if its so banal as judging the content and truthfulness of emails) to that of a reputable journalist like Greenwald. The editing rules on wp are very simple. If u have 2 reputable sources disagreeing on a matter, editing rules say u need to quote both. U remember the wp rule 'Wikipedia is not writing about reality but what reputable figures said about reality'. The 3rd problematic thing is what under the umbrella mainstream media is regarded as a reliable source here. --Ivan VA (talk) 13:01, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

It's not the same thing when writing about historical topics (that are old and widely covered by historians) and news events, of course. —PaleoNeonate – 03:12, 12 December 2021 (UTC)

@Barecode: If u, or someone else, opens a RfC on Greenwald, plx ping me, i'll be glad to participate. --Ivan VA (talk) 23:53, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

I think Ivan VA didn't consider the fact that there is no need for Greenwald to be considered a Reliable Source. Greenwald's own reputation, credibility and reliability makes the media to desire to publish his views. Then you can quote Greenwald from those media sources. The problem is not that Greenwald is considered unreliable. But the problem is that all the media that is ready to publish Greenwald's views are already considered to be not Reliable Sources. Greenwald is president-unfriendly therefore he will only be quoted by the president-friendly media, which - coincidence or not - is all considered not Reliable Sources. Wikipedia actually shuts down the whole president-unfriendly views and Greenwald is just one "victim" of that situation. I agree with Ivan VA when he says that some editors believe they stop the history to go the wrong direction and I believe they think it's acceptable to make errors or even to wreck Wikipedia "a little bit" because they believe they struggle for a greater cause.

Once the conclusion of the debate was that Greenwald has no credibility (for being dishonest for carrying water for Russia and so on), he was practically banned from all Wikipedia, not only from that article. It's a de facto ban that applies for all Wikipedia and it should not be hidden somewhere in of one of the millions of Wikipedia articles' talk pages. Many people here still believe that Greenwald was only banned from that article, while in reality Greenwald was banned from all Wikipedia. The situation is ambiguous and it created confusion. Let's bring it to the light, let's remove the confusion and make a RfC about the credibility of Glenn Greenwald, to avoid any ambiguity. -- Barecode (talk) 09:31, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

stop complaining about grand wikipedia-wide conspiracies please, and stop making unfounded accusations. Wikipedia isn't shutting down president-unfriendly views. Greenwald is not banned from wikipedia - where did you even read that? But the problem is that all the media that is ready to publish Greenwald's views are already considered to be not Reliable Sources. If that's the case, don't you see that there might be a problem with Greenwald? Mvbaron (talk) 11:33, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

Mvbaron - As I said that's part of a bigger issue - In my view, the Wikipedia editors created this situation where all the president-unfriendly media is considered unreliable. This is a problem with Wikipedia, not with Greenwald. AFAIK I am entitled to have my own views and it doesn't mean I'm complaining. I have nothing to lose so I have no reason to complain.

Once the conclusion of that conversation (Talk:Biden–Ukraine conspiracy theory#Glenn Greenwald) was that Greenwald has no credibility, the practical effect of that is the same with the effects of a ban: he can't be quoted anymore in any article. How can you quote a person without credibility? This is a de facto ban. Check the latest conclusion about him: Greenwald "totally fails our requirements for reliability" (Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard#RfC_on_Glenn_Greenwald)

You yourself claim that there is a problem with Greenwald while claiming there is no ban for Greenwald. Don't you find your statements somehow contradictory? You say there is a problem with Greenwald, and the effect is that he can't be quoted on Wikipedia, which is equivalent with a ban - and - in the same time you claim there is no such ban. -- Barecode (talk) 12:15, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

No, he's only found to be unsuitable for one article (but ofc, once that happens, there's a good chance it will fail on other articles as well). there is a problem with Greenwald while claiming there is no ban for Greenwald Yes that's correct and not a contradiction. Mvbaron (talk) 14:49, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

Barcode, Ivan VA, I understand your frustration. A debate about the decline of main stream media, cozy relationships between many media sources and power brokers in DC etc is certainly a legitimate area of inquiry. The problem is, even if we could show that Greenwald has been 100% right since 2016 (and I suspect he has been far more correct than some editors are willing to credit), it doesn't matter. As was correctly mentioned above, Wikipedia generally cites publishers, not specific journalists. The reliability of a journalist's statements are taken to come from the sources of the publication, not the journalist themselves. So even if we all agree Greenwald is 100% correct in his claims, per WP:V policy and it's pointing towards WP:RS, we are limited in how those sources can be used. If we zoom out we can ask, does Wikipedia have a left leaning bias? Well there is research that says yes, my feeling is also yes... but how can you correct that without breaking things like WP:RS etc? This is like demanding that a person who is clearly guilty gets let go because, well the legal system is unfair. The latter may be true but the former isn't the way to fix it. Asking editors and the Wiki system to create what is, in effect, a HUGE exception to a very well established and accepted rule, is not a winning strategy to fix this problem. Springee (talk) 13:39, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

Springee - There is research that says Wikipedia has a left leaning bias? Can I have the link please? Regarding your question: If the system is unfair, then maybe you want to create a warning in order to show that the system is unfair. Then your concern is to be very careful so you don't make mistakes or wrong moves that can get you silenced before you can make that warning. You want to be calm, patient, respectful, articulate, competent, coherent, thoughtful and based on evidence. You want to make your warning as efficient as possible. Other than create a warning that can serve as a reference, there is not much more that you can do. Regarding Greenwald, at this moment the Wikipedia editors decided that Greenwald has zero credibility and zero reliability. You can't change their mind and then you might want to make that decision "official" so it doesn't allow space for finding excuses and for ambivalence. Barecode (talk) 14:28, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

There will be no warning "wikipedia has a left leaning basis because we quote only from sources that are reliable and have editorial control". I'll repeat myself again: Imagine you're writing an encyclopaedia. What kind of stories would you include in it? You can't include all, because then you would need to say "The earth is flat, and the earth is round, and the earth is banana-shaped". You can't include some random bloggers either, because then you would need to say "X said the earth is actually hollow inside" and "Y said that the earth doesn't exist!!".

So how do you decide what to include? Well, you include sources that are reliable, i.e. sources with a record of fact checking, editorial oversight etc. Sources that if they publish a falsehood, correct it. And just like that, we arrive at WP:RS - which excludes sources like The Daily Mail, not because of some grand conspiracy of "the liberals", but simple because it's a crappy source and you can't build an encyclopaedia with it. And similarly, we arrive at WP:SPS, the ban of self-published sources, because you can't build an encyclopaedia with that. Nothing here has to do with "a bigger picture", there's simply no other way to build a good encyclopaedia. Mvbaron (talk) 14:46, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

Mvbaron - Thanks for your input, really. Do you agree that Wikipedia editors can make bad regulations? If not, then then do you agree that the editors can push Wikipedia in the wrong direction even just a little bit? If not, then do you agree that Wikipedia editors can make errors? -- Barecode (talk) 15:32, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

@Mvbaron:stop complaining about grand wikipedia-wide conspiracies please, and stop making unfounded accusations. Wikipedia isn't shutting down president-unfriendly views. Greenwald is not banned from wikipedia - where did you even read that? But the problem is that all the media that is ready to publish Greenwald's views are already considered to be not Reliable Sources. If that's the case, don't you see that there might be a problem with Greenwald?

So how come he got banned by editor bullying from the Hunter Biden piece. Secondly a lot of media which used to be considered reliable 10 zears ago, now isn't. I don't think Greenwald has changed a bit over the last 10 years in his principle. --Ivan VA (talk) 19:11, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

Barecode proposed adding some contentious content to a BLP with three mediocre (or worse) sources:

• Business Insider: WP:RSP#Business Insider
• New York Post: WP:RSP#New York Post
• Fox News (specifically for political content): WP:RSP#Fox News (politics and science)

If he'd made the same suggestion with decent sources, he might have gotten a different answer. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:48, 12 December 2021 (UTC)

Independent journalists - exploring the issue from a different angle

To understand whether a policy needs amending, it is important to look at the issue in question from multiple angles. With this in mind, let me move the discussion away from Greenwald, and ask a slightly different question:

• Are their any independent journalists that we DO consider reliable? If so, why? Blueboar (talk) 19:08, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

Blueboar - I'm quite sure there isn't. No exception has been made yet for any independent journalist. -- Barecode (talk) 20:16, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

@Blueboar, do you mean specifically self-published works by freelancers? There are doubtless thousands of freelancers whose news articles are cited in Wikipedia – but almost always when they have had the specific article vetted and accepted for publication by a publication with a traditional editorial staff, and not when they post their work on their own website or e-mail it out to their own mailing list. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:54, 12 December 2021 (UTC)

Yes, Robert Christgau and Anthony Fantano (roughly), but limited to their reviews of music releases (arguably analogous to WP:ABOUTSELF) [1]. JBchrch talk 02:55, 12 December 2021 (UTC)

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

External links

Should we keep these two links[2] at the ext links section or should we drop them? I think they are not RS, hence not suitable to explain to readers what a RS is. It is quite the opposite of RS and could cause confusion. Cinadon36 13:13, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

It's a guideline page, not mainspace, so it doesn't really require reliable sources in external links. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 13:20, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

That would be an epistemic inconsistency. A guideline page should follow its own...guidelines. Ps- This looks like Boris's Christmas party! :p Cinadon36 15:08, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

The guideline does follow it's own guideline, since it's about using reliable sources in article space, not about reliable sourcing in the external links section of a project space guideline. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 15:10, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

But you didnt reply on the epistemic inconsistency. There is a reason we do not point to non RS at name space. This reason applies in here as well.Cinadon36 17:40, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

I'm not sure what "we do not point to non RS at name space" means. Missing a word, maybe? WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:54, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

• Bowdoin College is not a reliable source? How so? The author of those works, Patrick Rael, is a professional educator, historian and author, his comments on the matter are salient and consistent with numerous other sources that say similar things. These are rock-solid as external links, as far as I am concerned. --Jayron32 17:47, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

@Jayron32: would you agree if these two arent RS, they shouldnt be incuded in ext links section? Cinadon36 17:50, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

On the contrary, I would consider Bowdoin College (the university) and Patrick Rael (the author) to be perfectly reliable. I just said that. --Jayron32 18:28, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

@Cinadon36, even in regular Wikipedia articles, Wikipedia:External links are not required to be reliable sources. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:53, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for the replies everybody. @WhatamIdoing: your argument is convincing. I thought ext links were required to be reliable. Cinadon36 07:11, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

Should we create a new section "Evaluating sources" pointing to the steps someone should make to evaluate sources?

I think it would be really useful, esp to new editors who struggle with the idea of "reliable source". We could create an algorithm. A)Are there reviews of the source? If mostly positive -->Reliable. If mostly negative -->Unreliable. If no reviews (or few reviews) go to B B)Is the source used in scholarly articles as a source of information? If yes, it leans to reliable. if no, it leans to unreliable C)Has the source been identified as a source of fake news? No, it leans towards reliable, if yes, it leans towards, unreliable.

Or something like that. If we could create a graph, it would be nice. I think it would be helpful to new users. Cinadon36 10:19, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

I've been thinking of writing an essay on the evaluation of sources, along those lines. I don't think it works as a flowchart though, I think our practice is much closer to a list of indicators in favor of reliability, and a list of indicators against reliability, which all have to be judged pragmatically and in context. JBchrch talk 15:09, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

@JBchrch: Yes, a flowchart might not be the best way possible. Maybe a stepwise approach. Pls Ping me after you write that essay ti have a look! Cinadon36 19:33, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

• I've always found the CRAAP test to be useful, even outside of Wikipedia it has widespread adoption as a decent mnemonic for evaluating sources. --Jayron32 15:57, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

Yes, Craap is great. We could employ its reasoning if we ever suggest a way gor evaluating sources. Cinadon36 19:33, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

There's also this: Wikipedia:Reliable sources checklist. Could be useful for making something. Herostratus (talk) 04:19, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

@Herostratus, the essay you link claims "we don't like to use books as sources". That is basically wrong. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:03, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

Location of Sharada Peeth wrong

Sharada Peeth is located in Pok, India. Not in Azad Kashmir, Pakistan 2409:4063:220D:F52F:0:0:1A48:70B1 (talk) 14:59, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

How would WP:RS deal with opinion/analysis in cases where it is not clearly labelled as such?

As per WP:RSEDITORIAL, editorials, analyses and opinion articles "whether written by the editors of the publication (editorials) or outside authors (invited op-eds and letters to the editor from notable figures) are reliable primary sources for statements attributed to that editor or author, but are rarely reliable for statements of fact." However, there are instances where articles are billed as straight news or in-depth reporting but are also heavily infused with commentary, opinion and analysis from the writers that go beyond mere bias and are not clearly labelled. This also happens from time to time on some sources which are considered generally reliable. In such instances, how would this be addressed? Sega31098 (talk) 20:25, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

• Simple rule: in-text Attribution may not always be necessary, but it is never wrong… so when in doubt, attribute. Blueboar (talk) 21:02, 19 December 2021 (UTC)
  • Sure it can be wrong - statements of fact that could, and often should, be in wiki voice can have doubt cast upon them by phrasing them as opinion with "Bob X in the Y Times wrote" . Fringe POV pushers try this one a whole lot to make reality sound like a matter of partisan opinion - David Gerard (talk) 15:50, 20 December 2021 (UTC)
    • Except we should be aware of partisan issues and not take a side if there is not wide-spread acceptance by the majority of RSes for that, and that's a factor that might take time (on the order of years) to be developed. Just because lots of newspaper columnists claim something is true does not necessarily mean that has widespread, enduring consensus across all experts for that topic. I would totally agree it would be stupid of use to have to make attributed claims that say climate change is happening, that's a clear case where there's enduring consensus in the scientific community that we follow. But where I nearly always see this idea misused is taking the news media's assessment of something as Word of God. Particularly if we're still looking at the idea being "novel" and lacking enduring period, we should always be careful to make these as statements of fact and use attribution. That keeps WP neutral and dispassionate about controversial topics rather than taking a side. --Masem (t) 04:32, 29 December 2021 (UTC)
• There are two options. First, attribute, as mentioned above; just treat it like opinion, that's the easy answer. Second, if there's a dispute over it and someone argues that it isn't opinion (which is a valid argument, in the sense that WP:YESPOV says that we must avoid stating facts as opinions), search for additional sources for comparison. If other non-opinion, relatively neutral sources say the same thing, and there's no sources contesting it, then it can be presented as fact in the article voice using those sources; if other sources don't exist, or especially if there's serious direct dispute over it from other sources of equal weight, then it should probably be attributed. Don't get too tied down on using a single source - and if other sources can't be found, that's often a red flag. --Aquillion (talk) 22:48, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

  @Sega31098, it's good for a source to be "infused with commentary and analysis"; that means it's a secondary source. This is a good thing. You want a source that says, e.g., "Big Pharma reported earnings of a 1.2 zillion dollars this year [that's a fact], up from a 1.1 zillion dolllars last year [that's "analysis"] despite declining sales of their blockbuster cholesterol drug [that's more "analysis"]." This is an improvement over a source that strictly contains only facts without analysis.

  Actual opinions can sometimes be useful sources, but I find that editors who complain about opinion often are complaining about the source's POV instead of the presence of actual opinions. I have a favorite cartoon that is a mental touchstone for me about this. A panel of six experts are asked to evaluate a particular chocolate candy bar. As one, they all reply: "Noble presentation, hearty snap, chalky mouth feel.  Taste is acidic, somewhat chocolatey, with a husky bouquet (notes of cinnamon, cardboard).  Faintly presumptuous price." Then the same experts are asked to rate it on a scale of 1 to 10, and they do not agree at all. This is because "hearty snap" is a fact ("snap" is measurable), and "faintly presumptuous price" is the result of market analysis, but "____ out of 10" is mere personal preference (in this instance). WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:21, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

This is why I mentioned "heavily infused with commentary, opinion and analysis from the writers that go beyond mere bias" instead of just analytical content that doesn't depart too far from the source. I was not referring to typical secondary sources like literature reviews or the more dry stuff, but articles and news stories in which the author inserts commentary into sources to the point where some or all sections read more like a subtle opinion/editorial article. There is a big difference between statements like "In 2003, the population was reported to be 80,000 and statistics report it has grown 30,000 ever since. This indicates the population is now over 100,000." and "A poll indicates that 73% of [inhabitants] like pineapple on pizza. Therefore, it can be conclusively determined that [inhabitants] have little appreciation for Italian food." Although far from ubiquitous, there is a risk that material cited as fact may contain subtly-inserted commentary like the latter and therein lies the question on how WP:RSEDITORIAL should apply. Sega31098 (talk) 07:52, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

• I don't mean to be glib, but by reading the article and using one's best judgment. Most longform reported journalism -- i.e., the most in-depth, reliable, and (usually) heavily fact-checked -- contains analysis and framing; it's what sets it apart from routine news coverage. Usually, the analysis component is not going to provide much usable info anyway. The same questions apply as always. Is the article published in a reputable outlet? Is the author a subject matter expert? Does the article contain actual reporting, as opposed to aggregation? (Many otherwise "opinionated" publications will publish in-depth reported features alongside "bloggier" posts. These are virtually always subject to a higher standard of line editing and fact-checking as they are "prestige" pieces, and it's usually pretty obvious what they are.) Gnomingstuff (talk) 08:19, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

Attribute is the best solution. Add a super brief description before the name ie "prof of history at MIT says that...."Cinadon36 08:51, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

Sourcing books

Is a citation to Google Books (with an ISBN) good enough source that someone published a book, or do we have to use another reference outside of book aggregators? Howard the Duck (talk) 18:51, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

Videos

I get the impression that videos and video transcripts are almost never used as sources in top articles on Wikipedia. Is there a policy that says videos are discouraged as sources? Is this just an unwritten rule? Am I misreading the situation? Example: A PBS Frontline documentary. Thanks. –Novem Linguae (talk) 17:15, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

Videos without transcripts are harder to search than online text, so someone doing a web search for a fact likely won't find a video source as easily. But that's only a minor matter. A PBS documentary would probably be a perfectly reasonable source. --GRuban (talk) 19:35, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

Reliable sources

What kind of information does not require any reliable sources, TIA. –Ctrlwiki (talk) 08:13, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

We have an essay about that: Wikipedia:You don't need to cite that the sky is blue Vexations (talk) 13:33, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

Request for comment on Author-Publishers, Bibliographic Precision, Dismission without Research, Definition of "Expert", Amazon vs Google Books, Self-Citation vs Citation-Correction for Self

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

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Should Author-Publishers be distinguished from self-publishers; should we avoid dismissing scholarly texts with new ideas without first reading them; and should the definition of "expert" be specified with measurable parameters; and should self-citation be distinguished from citation-correction of a citation made by somebody else of one's own research? Faktorovich (talk) 04:57, 31 January 2022 (UTC)

In "Talk:List of Shakespeare authorship candidates", several issues were raised but unresolved in the discussion, which I hope will benefit from being addressed by the larger community of editors on Wikipedia. The following is a summary of the main points I hope Wikipedia's editors will consider re-wording in the relevant policies to help avoid these types uncertainties and unfairness in the future.

• User-generated content: The wording of this rule should specify "exceptions for data-sharing sites such as GitHub, or any platforms where researchers share raw data". Nearly all modern textbooks that touch on computational-linguistics cite GitHub links to the raw data; in fact, many journals require the sharing of data on these platforms for an article to be considered to publication. Without a specific exception for scientists/ researchers posting their findings on their own websites, or on a range of sharing platforms, Wikipedia editors might not understand what a "GitHub" link is, or that there can be overwhelming evidence to support a theory that is being publicly distributed, instead of being only shared through a journal or a book publication.
• Author-Publishers: The rule regarding "Self-published sources (online and paper)" has to include a specific exception such as the following: "One exception to consider is when a work is published by an author-publisher who operates a publishing company that also publishes many books by various other authors, as in this case the work cannot be dismissed based solely on the byline matching the publisher's name". There has to be a clear distinction in Wikipedia's policies between author-publishers and self-publishers. Dickens, Scott, Woolf and most of the world's best writers across the history of publishing operated publishing companies of their own (Woolf's "Room of One's Own" is not merely about having space to write, but also having the means to publish one's own work without censorship from outsiders). An author-publisher publishes works by dozens or hundreds of different authors, as well as publishing themselves; whereas a self-published author only publishes their own work. While some projects benefit from being published by somebody other than the author, any publication by somebody other than yourself involves a process of selection that can be biased by commercial or political interests that are not in the interest of the majority of a society. For example, a publisher can be sponsored by a political party, or by a food-manufacturing company, and these sponsorships might bar them from publishing books that argue against this party or corporation. Galileo self-published his ideas on the position of the earth in relationship to the sun (and was also imprisoned for this publication by the Inquisition), and many other history-changing ideas required self-publication as well as prosecution. Cambridge and Oxford University Presses published the first editions of some of the Renaissance texts under discussion in terms of "Shakespeare" candidacy, so they are the most biased publishers imaginable on this subject, so trusting them as "reliable", while dismissing independent newly-founded publishers as unreliable is irrational. There are a lot of bad self-published books out there, but also a lot of bad publisher-published books; each text has to be judged on the merit of its interior and not merely on the name of its publisher.
• Bibliographic Precision: At the onset of the "Shakespeare Candidates" discussion, I proposed very simple and logically necessary bibliographic adjustments that if viewed without bias should not have generated any objections. What about these edit-areas can possibly be debatable? 1. The scholarly book/ article where the research is fully explained should be cited first, and not either the website where this book is summarized, or an article in a newspaper where it is mentioned (websites, and newspaper coverage are only meant as supplementary citations to be made if there is room for additional info). This is how scholarship must be cited in scholarly research, as the point is to give the publication details of the original source so that future researchers can look up to read the full study. 2. If a new study gives credit, for example, to 4 new "Shakespeare" candidates, all 4 should be listed if any 1 of them has been chosen to be listed with a citation to this study. Biased exclusion of some findings is a falsehood in scientific terms. The broader rule here is that excluding any major chunk of the findings and presenting only a fragment leads to the public's misunderstanding of the research. For example, if it was a study that discovered 4 new species of birds, but only 1 of these species was cited on a list of "New Bird Species", this would be irrational; an attempt by the original author to correct this error by adding the other 3 species he/she named should not generated an editorial reversal on Wikipedia.
• Dismission without Research: Wikipedia's editors should have an innate interest in furthering their own and others' knowledge. While it is fine to cite some books without reading them closely, when a new book overturns the conclusions of a specific Wikipedia article. At least somebody editing this article should actually read the inside of the book in question before dismissing it as unable to meet the "extraordinary"-claims standard. The only way to determine if a claim is proven is by reading the evidence, and not by guessing what the evidence is, and dismissing it based on one's own assumptions.
• Definition of the term "Expert": The current Wikipedia rule states: "established subject-matter expert, whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable, independent publications." This wording is insufficient to explain to Wikipedia editors what type of credentials would automatically fit this description. I would recommend adding qualifiers that would apply the same rules to all who claim to be experts such as: "A subject-matter expert is somebody with a terminal degree, with at least one published book with a publisher mentioned in academic publishing rankings, and at least 5 citations of their research according to sources such as Google Scholar". There have to be some broadly accepted on Wikipedia definition of the ingredients it takes to be a "subject-expert". These ingredients can be: PhD/another terminal degree, number/type of books/articles published, h-index, Google Scholar # of citations of one's research. The ingredients should not include if a researcher is famous or has been puffed in the "Guardian" or on the Food Network; mass-media press coverage and even a lot of pufferies of one's research in scholarly publications is a sign of a writer who has spent a lot of money on a public relations firm, and not of a higher quality of the research. All sorts of bad ideas are popular, or heavily discussed in the press. If other researchers rely on any researchers work by citing it in their own research, this is a true measure that the research is helping the progress of knowledge.
• Amazon vs Google Books: There seems to be a pattern of preferring Google Books links over Amazon links on this "Shakespeare Candidates" page, and so perhaps across Wikipedia. Why? Amazon and Google Books both have book publishing/printing branches (KDP/ Google Play), and they both are also booksellers not only for their own books, but also for other publishers. The availability of an Amazon link, but the absence of a Google Books link therefore cannot be used to exclude a book from being cited, or from being linked to the place where more information and a purchase link to it can be found.
• Self-Citation vs Citation-Correction for Self: This point asks for an edit to the rule regarding "Citing yourself"; this rule should include the exception, "One exception is when a researcher has already been cited by another Wikipedia editor, and merely corrects misunderstandings or clarifies a citation to reflect the precise nature of the findings." And "self-publication" cannot be a firm reason for all self-citation rejections; because there are many cases where author-publication or self-publication results in superior research; so the phrase "including WP:SELFPUB," should be taken out. There obviously need to be rules against researchers running through Wikipedia to add citations only for their own books to all sorts of articles. But if a study has already been cited by another editor, but in a manner that misunderstands the findings, there cannot be any rule against the cited researcher stepping in to correct the citation that refers to themselves. Academic journals call this redaction, or correction, or responses. If the edits are bibliographic or simple corrections of typos or major points being misunderstood, these should not trigger automatic reversals on Wikipedia. If a subject-expert can make corrections regarding books he/she and others wrote in their field; then, any researcher who has already been cited (though incorrectly) is by this very citation a subject-expert and should be able to correct any misunderstandings of their research.
• "Exceptional claims require exceptional sources": It is impossible to meet this standard if Wikipedia's editors refuse to allow even minor edits that adjust inaccurate citations. There has to be a place on Wikipedia for somebody who has come up with an entirely new interpretation of a scientific concept, or a literary theory, or any other ground-breaking conclusion to present the "exceptional sources" or the overwhelming evidence they have for a conclusion, without being told that they are creating a "Wall-of-Text", which can be ignored simply because it is attempting to reach this required standard of "exceptional" evidence. Faktorovich (talk) 04:57, 31 January 2022 (UTC)

Survey

Oppose to points (1), (3) and (4) malformed to point (2).

Ad (1) Should Author-Publishers be distinguished from self-publishers; No - this seems to be an attempt to circumvent WP:SPS. "exceptions for data-sharing sites such as GitHub, or any platforms where researchers share raw data" Absolutely not - anyone can put all sorts of crap on GitHub (I have done it).

Ad (2) should we avoid dismissing scholarly texts with new ideas without first reading them; rhetorical question, malformed, pointy.

Ad (3) and should the definition of "expert" be specified with measurable parameters; No, unfeasible, that is up for discussion and local consenus.

Ad (4) and should self-citation be distinguished from citation-correction of a citation made by somebody else of one's own research? No, attempt to circumvent WP:SPS and our rules on self-citation. Amazon vs Google Books Ban Amazon of course it's promotional to put amazon links up on wikipedia.

In general, our rules on self-citation, promotion and SPS are clear, no proposed adjustments have merit. --Mvbaron (talk) 08:29, 31 January 2022 (UTC)

• Oppose all four. This is an effort by a self-published fringe theory buff with a strong COI to circumvent or terminally weaken our standards, on their own behalf. (And to sell more books by posting links to Amazon, of course.) --Orange Mike | Talk 17:45, 31 January 2022 (UTC)

  My theory regarding alternative candidates for "Shakespeare" is not on the "fringe", as your own Wikipedia lists over 80 other candidates that have been proposed by mainstream publishers and academics. While the mainstream publishers have not changed the "Shakespeare"-byline, it has been part of literary criticism for over 400 years to question the authorship and to propose new credits to the Renaissance texts that were mostly anonymous when they were first published. At least half of canonical texts from the British Renaissance would be anonymous instead of having the firm bylines they have today, if such "fringe" theories of their authorship had not been accepted by textbook writers as indisputably true attributions. Sure, I have a conflict-of-interest, but so does everybody on the other side of this debate. Weaken standards? I am trying to help you raise your standards by defining firmly the parameters for worthy scholarship. Sell books? I have not seen J. K. Rowling's name in Wikipedia policy discussion boards, perhaps complaining about improper citations for Potter Volume 5's character-credits. Do you seriously imagine that engaging in policy debate is a method that could be of any use to a book marketing strategy? Faktorovich (talk) 19:27, 31 January 2022 (UTC)

• In order:
  1. Should Author-Publishers be distinguished from self-publishers? No. Also, I know a Wikipedian who is a published author and who also runs his own legitimate, award-winning, very small publishing house. That doesn't change the fact that his little book was written by him and published by him without anyone else involved. Distinguishing "author–publishers" from "self-publishers" would define this editor's own book as a legitimate, non-self-published source, and I am certain that he would tell you the opposite. (His own book is not the one that won the award, just in case anyone thinks that should matter [I don't].)
  2. Should we avoid dismissing scholarly texts with new ideas without first reading them? No. Editors are volunteers, and they should be free to decide whether a new idea is worth reading. Editors probably shouldn't be reading scholarly texts that present new ideas (i.e., the primary source for the new idea); they should probably be reading some other scholar's secondary analysis and evaluation of the new idea.
  3. Should the definition of "expert" be specified with measurable parameters? No, or, it already is. For the purpose of deciding whether you could cite, e.g., a hypothetical blog post on physics written and self-published by Einstein himself, the definition of "expert" is someone whose primary area of knowledge is about the subject matter in question (e.g., a physicist on physics; most importantly, not a journalist) and whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable, independent publications. This is already defined in measurable terms ("Einstein is writing about physics, and he's a physicist" plus "A bunch of journals have published articles from Einstein").
  4. Should self-citation be distinguished from citation-correction of a citation made by somebody else of one's own research? Maybe but I think you (and others) might be confused about the relevant process. First, we begin with an understanding of human fallibility: Wikipedia:Nobody reads the directions. Second, a limited amount of citing your own research is explicitly permitted in WP:SELFCITE. Third, WP:SPS is mostly about editors trying to cite someone else's Facebook post or a vanity press book, not about scholars trying to cite their own work for what the work actually says, and not for something different from what it says.
• Faktorovich, if you're having a problem with people misrepresenting the contents of your publications, then first of all, we're sorry, and second of all, you don't need the rules changed. You just need some help. I see that you asked at Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2022 January 26#Edits to Errors in Citations of My "Shakespeare" Research = Deletion of All Mentions of My Research, and that there is ongoing discussion at Talk:List of Shakespeare authorship candidates#Recent WP:SPS additions. It's not usually difficult to get editors to remove incorrect information. Maybe wait until that discussion gets settled? WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:59, 31 January 2022 (UTC)

  Dear WhatamIdoing, Thank you for your measured opinions. I have some corrections to add.

  Anaphora's books have won awards. Anaphora is not a "small" publisher, since with over 300 published titles, it has published over 10 titles per year across the 13 years it has been in operation. I don't know why your friend does not want to receive credit for a book he published with his own publishing company. The quality of the research or the contents of the interior of the book should decide what type of credit it receives by Wikipedia, academia etc., and not merely if it was self- or other-published.

  It would only be a good idea for a Wikipedia editor to only read secondary sources about a new idea, if there was a firm reason to trust the authors of secondary sources to be entirely unbiased. In reality, secondary and primary source authors are regularly sponsored with grants from tobacco/ fast food corporations that pay them to get the results for studies and for literature-reviews that match the conclusions that match their corporate interests. This reasoning is why nobody read studies that found cigarettes to cause cancer, and so tobacco companies did not acknowledge smoking causes cancer until 1997 (https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-03-21-mn-40672-story.html), when the first studies made this claim back in the 1940s.

  It would be great if Wikipedia's editors had a consistent and fair application of the term "expert"; but I just don't think Einstein would be granted this term until after he became "famous" over helping with the nuclear bomb etc., and not back in his middle-age when he was writing the bulk of his theoretical ground-breaking research.

  I am awaiting the settling of the "discussion" to see your hopeful concept of a spontaneous recognition that I was right all along in my simple bibliographic edits. But over the decades I have been conducting research, I have never seen an editor reverse a decision, after being proven to be wrong (I was shocked when the reversal of the entire retaliatory ban of my Percy credit was reversed). I hope that you will also be less hopeful about the possibilities for spontaneous change, and will recognize that a policy-change is the only way to help all researchers facing these types of problems. Faktorovich (talk) 19:49, 31 January 2022 (UTC)

  Perhaps my friend is more modest than most authors.  ;-)

  I don't know anything about Anaphora's internal set up or anyone's role in it. However, I do know that one thing that matters to Wikipedia editors is the amount of independence. The people who run a publishing company are entitled to publish whatever they want. While their employees might attempt to persuade them otherwise, nobody can actually stop them. Therefore, no matter how excellent the specific publication might be, Wikipedia editors should be cognizant that these authors could be publishing a book just as easily, and with just as little real oversight, as most people can publish a blog post. Having an independent editorial process involved in the publication of a source (e.g., peer review or news editors) is one (of several) factors that editors should consider, because on average, it leads to more trustworthy information.

  The reason that we are looking at "external" things, such as editorial independence, professional fact-checking, independence from the subject matter, etc., instead of the quality of the research itself is because we don't actually trust each other to properly evaluate the quality of the research ourselves. We have decided to trust the publishers for that. This is the encyclopedia that anyone can edit, including kids. Most editors are not sufficiently versed in any subject matter to fairly and completely evaluate all of the underlying scholarly research.

  I should probably add here that part of the problem is not merely whether your book is a reliable source for a statement like "She claimed there were five ghost authors" (even though a self-published tweet could be reliable for a claim that merely says someone said something). Part of the problem is that it's unclear why should a Wikipedia article should mention ideas that the other experts in the field apparently don't care enough about to even mention that the idea exists. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:15, 31 January 2022 (UTC)

Dear Mvbaron, Thanks for your comments. The modern Wikipedia just like academia-at-large has a bias in favor of "peer-review" and publisher/editorial-censorship, over recognizing that new ideas are more likely to be published for the first time by those who present them and not by the establishment. If you read Volumes 1-2, Re-Attribution of the British Renaissance Corpus, of my BRRAM series, you would realize why this bias is not in the interest of the masses, but rather of publishing oligopolies. At the dawn of print in England, Elizabeth I granted monopoly patents to a handful of publisher-censors (including William Byrd to whom I attempted to give credit in my initial edit for "Shakespeare's" Sonnets and Passionate Pilgrim), who used multiple pseudonyms to make it seem as if they were licensing multiple printers and writers to publish in fields such as music/poetry when they were instead profiting from nearly all published books as authors, printers and booksellers by being able to refuse-publication to all who did not pay them a portion of the profits. Richard Verstegan specialized in non-fiction, and his authorship and printing of both pro- and anti-Catholic pamphlets led to his exile from England in 1581, forcing him to rely entirely on pseudonyms as an author and publisher for the rest of his successful publishing career. The findings in my BRRAM series explain how common it was for those seeking government jobs, grants and favors to pay a ghostwriter to create a book under their byline, and thus seemingly becoming an "expert" in a subject, without actually needing to even become literate. The problems that were thus designed-by-necessity during this birth-of-print have continued into our present (i.e. Trump's ghostwriter has done interviews about being dissatisfied with the perception of Trump as a business-genius for the writer that he did for Trump). It is not an exception that the most intelligent and most complex books that have made progress in science and literature were self-published by Galileo/ Dickens etc., but rather it is very rare for any truly field-changing findings to be published by insider-publishers. After publishing thousands of articles and books proposing over 80 different alternative "Shakespeare" candidates, while keeping the "Shakespeare"-byline unaltered, the Giant Five international publishers nor the Giant Academic publishers like Oxford/Cambridge, cannot change their positions. This is why you guys at Wikipedia cannot easily alter your policies, as there are previous cases you have been disputing that might have to be reversed if any detail in your policy is changed; similarly these publishers would have to change the bylines on thousands of their books, if my re-attributions of 284 texts from the Renaissance to six ghostwriters is accepted as accurate. If editors at the mega publishers/journals were saintly beings who were only driven by the desire to find the truth, it would make sense to exclude all self-published materials as not being evaluated by a fair process that accepts good science and rejects bad science. However, there would not be hundreds of drugs approved by the FDA only to be banned due-to-harm later, if reviewers were incorruptible. By merely using pseudonyms Byrd and Verstegan mostly wrote, printed and published only themselves, but history has celebrated their work (including Verstegan's "King James Bible") as if it was created by hundreds of different scholars who were not self-published. Today, it is much easier to use a pseudonym and to create a publishing company for the purpose of self-publishing without putting one's authentic name on a book. There is indeed a lot of bad self-published books, blogs, social media posts, etc. published at extraordinary rates, but Wikipedia editors should not be hesitant to dive into this sea of information to find uniquely useful for human progress findings. There certainly should not be a rule that specifically prevents Wikipedia editors from citing all self-published books; and if you have this rule, you have to immediately remove the pages for Dickens, Woolf, Defoe, and pretty much all of the best writers, as they were all self-published. The way your current policies are worded fails to specify the cases where editors should not automatically disregard such texts, including author-publishers, as I explained.

Yes, it is possible that "crap" can be shared on GitHub; but it is also possible that a journal will accept "crap"-articles that use "crap"-data on GitHub because an author pays for editorial services to sponsor the publication. The resulting "peer-reviewed" article (especially when the peer-reviewer has been paid to edit the article before it can be accepted) is not uniquely more trust worthy than the raw data on GitHub of a researcher who refused to pay such fees in exchange for publication, and thus is only providing their research-findings' data on GitHub without an article in a journal, or only a self-published article.

The definition of an "expert" also cannot be left entirely to consensus of the editors or experts in a field, as it is too easy to corrupt this process by an expert stepping in to favor their own earlier findings, over a new rival "expert's"; and this might lead previous editors to gang up to vote a new "expert" does not have sufficient credentials to be an expert, despite this expert indeed having the same quantitative academic metrics as the rivals voting him/her as unqualified. Specific rules regarding this term would avoid such bias.

I explained how Amazon and Google Books are both promotional platforms (KDP publishes books just like Google Play), and they are both equally informative platforms that give book-summaries/author bios and free LookInside features to allow researchers to preview a text or to do light research in it without paying anything. Just ignoring everything I said on this point is counter-productive. Faktorovich (talk) 19:08, 31 January 2022 (UTC)

Amazon is not an informative platform, it is a tool for a gigantic, unscrupulous predatory corporation to sell books (at the expense of other booksellers) by any means they find lucrative. --Orange Mike | Talk 00:02, 1 February 2022 (UTC)

• Oppose per Mvbarron and Orange Mike. Transparent and self-serving effort to get round same basic WP principles such as WP:SPS and WP:FRINGE. Seems like WP:WALLOFTEXT and WP:BLUDGEON also applies. Someone should speeedy close. DeCausa (talk) 19:54, 31 January 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose all. Point 1 is covered by WP:SPS, point 2 by WP:NOR (and, in the specific case, by WP:FRINGE), point 3 by, well, by common sense really, and as far as point 4 is concerned, there is a mechanism for that: any COI editor may submit an edit request, which may or may not be accepted. --bonadea contributions talk 20:48, 31 January 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose all per above. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 22:17, 31 January 2022 (UTC)

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

Is outsidergaming.com a reliable source

I want to add a citation to Five Nights at Freddy's: Security Breach but I wanted to check if it was reliable first. Can someone tell me if this site is reliable or not? Rzzor (talk) 23:59, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

@Rzzor: it would be helpful to know what you intend to cite. I'd be careful on qualitative matters, for example, product comparisons and broad claims about a game, as opposed to quantitative ones, such as its features and history. The website's appearance and scope seem first-rate; the content is objective enough, though subjectivity has to come into play or the interest level would be zilch; and the limited number of contributors is of some concern. So generally speaking, safest is to stick to straightforward reporting, theirs and yours, and if you intend to go beyond that, it would be best to dig deeper into the opinions of the gaming community, of which I am not a member. One item of note, as you probably know, outsidergaming.com is not included on WP's List of video game websites, not a deal breaker but not encouraging either. Allreet (talk) 19:51, 2 February 2022 (UTC)