Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2023-01-01/In the media

← Back to In the media

Discuss this story

Russian troops

No doubt many Russian soldiers are suffering from poor or absent training, but the presence of a Wikipedia printout seems rather slim evidence that the carrier of the sniper rifle knew nothing else about the weapon. Alternatives include his being a competent practitioner, and merely curious about what information was publicly available about his equipment. Had similar evidence been found half a century ago on my body, then indeed, I was briefly a soldier of very little military value, but in other parts of life I have been interested in what laymen knew about my areas of competence. Jim.henderson (talk) 07:08, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

Meloni article

The Giorgia Meloni Daily Dot article [1] was interesting. "The difference is especially glaring when compared to the English, French, German and Spanish versions of the same articles." It's not the first time media has noticed similar things. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 19:38, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

Journalism Competition and Preservation Act

Odd that we don't have an article for the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act at the time of writing. We do have an article on the Australian version of the law, the News Media Bargaining Code – which unlike the US version was implemented. (The US bill was not taken forward at this time, but may make a comeback later this year.)

For what it's worth, The Intercept opined: Google and Meta are pouring money into two, seemingly contradictory messages in an effort to defeat it. The full-court strategy plays on left- and right-wing concerns about social media: According to the messaging, the JCPA is simultaneously a legislative proposal backed by liberals to “silence conservative voices” and a far-right effort that will fund pro-Trump voices that are the source of “dangerous misinformation.” The exaggerated rhetoric was part of a larger campaign to stop any proposal to share advertising revenue, the main source of income for social media and search engine tech companies. The message designed to orchestrate Republican opposition to JCPA is sponsored by NetChoice, and the message designed to whip up Democratic opposition to JCPA is sponsored by the Computer and Communications Industry Association. Both organizations are funded by Google and Meta, Facebook’s parent company, and serve to influence lawmakers and the public on behalf of shared concerns by the two megacorporations.

The Editor & Publisher (linked in our article above) took a similar view: The JCPA represented an acknowledgment that two of the world’s wealthiest companies have made billions of dollars off the work of journalists and their publications. It was a chance to offer an exemption to an antitrust law whose relevance is tied to a bygone era when profitable newspaper empires could threaten the flow of information. Today, the problem has shifted. A duopoly controls the flow of much of the free world’s information. Other countries are changing that. Why isn’t America? --Andreas JN466 20:15, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

Mandel story

Look ma, I made the Signpost! (I am "Wikipedian Hayden Schiff"). I didn't realize she had already attempted a COI request. I can see more clearly now how this one slipped through the cracks; the person responding to her request didn't know that they were talking to Mandel herself, so they couldn't know to provide the information that she could simply post a tweet or whatever. I'd sure like if we could somehow make this process better so a tough situation like this doesn't arise again (imagine if it had been a much less famous figure and/or one who didn't have a well-followed social media account), but I'm not sure what could have prevented this particular situation. –IagoQnsi (talk) 20:44, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

I've been thinking for a while that our instructions to BLPs looking to fix/update their articles leaves a ton to be desired. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 20:58, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

LPs ... articles do not ask to be improved, the people they are about do. Daniel Case (talk) 22:05, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

Speaking as a Wikipedian who has been active here longer than over 98% of the rest of you, I would have handled the matter differently than it had been: the request was reasonably presented & I would have added this information, invoking WP:IAR if needed to quash this stupid editorial decision. Sheesh, how else is the average person supposed to prove to us that they've been divorced? The entire reason use of primary sources is discouraged is to avoid original synthesis or opinion, not to prevent providing a source for falsifiable statements. Someone who does not understand that distinction harms this project more than helps it.

And I would also go further to state that concerning a few details of a person's life -- including date of birth, educational history, marriage status -- the subject should be presumed correct unless proven to be an unreliable source. (Thinking here of George Santos, who may not even be an American citizen.) -- llywrch (talk) 03:15, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

I don't think it was a stupid editorial decision/reply to edit request, since mine would have been much the same, though I like to think I would have mentioned a potentional WP:ABOUTSELF solution, since the requester hinted that they had (at least) some sort of contact with the subject. However, another editorial decision was soon made:[2]. Others followed. I don't know if a WP:VRT solution would have been possible, but the question became moot fairly quickly.

Personally I'm a bit unflexible about WP:BLP, and a suggestion to use WP:BLPPRIMARY is by default probably bad in my head. Others have mentioned that the request in itself made it reasonable to remove the marriage-info at least for the time being. That didn't occur to me, but I wouldn't have opposed it. I think WP:ABOUTSELF sources can be fine for DOB and marriage status, but I'm not at all sure about education. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 11:11, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

@Gråbergs Gråa Sång and Llywrch: Date of birth is occasionally fraught. As it happens, just last week there was an article in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reporting that a lady claimed she was born in 1969, not 1964, and even had a lawyer send Wikimedia a letter saying so, claiming the "wrong" date infringed her personality rights. However, some years back, the FAZ says, she had stated in a CV appended to her dissertation—which in parts allegedly plagiarised Wikipedia—that she was born in 1964, completed school in 1982, and so on.

Still, sources can be wrong. I was reminded the other day of the discussion at User_talk:Jimbo_Wales/Archive_86#"Verifiability_and_truth", which in due course led to the phrase "verifiability, not truth" being removed from the WP:Verifiability policy. As in that case, one possible solution is often to just omit content that is questionable. Jimmy talked a lot of sense there, as he usually does on BLP issues.

"Everything you read in newspapers is absolutely true, except for that rare story of which you happen to have first-hand knowledge." —Erwin Knoll

"What people outside do not appreciate is that a newspaper is like a soufflé, prepared in a hurry for immediate consumption. This of course is why whenever you read a newspaper account of some event of which you have personal knowledge it is nearly always inadequate or inaccurate. Journalists are as aware as anyone of this defect; it is simply that if the information is to reach as many readers as possible, something less than perfection has often to be accepted." —David E. H. Jones, in New Scientist, Vol. 26 Andreas JN466 15:08, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

Sure DOB/whatever can be wrong in sources, WP:ABOUTSELF or not. But per Wikipedia_talk:Biographies_of_living_persons/Archive_48#Tweets_announcing_"Happy_birthday_to_me!_I'm_21_today!", it's not my default assumption that it's wrong. When you show me an article from Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung saying that it's wrong, I'll probably change my assumption. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 15:35, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

I note that the German YOB-thing is mentioned in the German WP-article. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 15:51, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

The whole de.WP talk page reads like some sort of thriller novel. A source showing the 1964 birth date disappeared from the Internet Archive: "This URL has been excluded from the Wayback Machine." Another is still available here: [3] Tsk, tsk. Andreas JN466 16:18, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

@Gråbergs Gråa Sång:, the three items I mentioned almost always come ultimately from the subject, & in the vast majority of cases the subject has no reason to lie about those facts. An interviewer will ask the subject for these details, if relevant, or ask the subject's PR person -- who will receive the information from the subject. The same for a resume or CV: the subject will have generated the information. As for educational history, maybe an interviewer or researcher will verify the information. Or maybe they won't. And going beyond this source -- say investigating birth & marriage records -- is original research; so we are forced to trust the subject until a third party shows they should not be trusted on this subject. Nevertheless, you can be assured that for academics & politicians, their backgrounds are usually verified before they enter an election -- George Santos (whom I mentioned above) being an exception to this rule, & the truth of his background came out soon after his election. Some celebrities & businesspeople may get away with falsifying their past, but again that is beyond our scope to determine.

In short, unless a secondary source has shown the subject to be unreliable on those details, a person should be trusted on those details.

PS, I read the section Jayen466 linked to above in Jimmy Wales' talk archive, & I'm pleased to find his opinion is close to mine on this matter. The entire "Veracity not truth" slogan arose as a means to quash the objections of cranks who claim "Your published sources are not reliable. I want to include the truth!" As is the case with most, if not all, Wikipedia slogans it is an oversimplification that if followed literally leads to disastrous results. -- llywrch (talk) 07:04, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

If I then approach the education point from another angle. If you are writing a BLP, and come across the subject's education history at their official website (or an uploaded CV etc), would you then think it a good idea to include that history in the WP-article per WP:NPOV? Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 10:32, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

I personally would accept anybody's statement of their own birthday, unless there is a reason that it seems suspicious (e.g. some actors or, with at least some evidence, that the person has misled the public before on any matter). In that case, I'd want to state in the body of the text that, "according to xyz they were born on DATE". But in general, as above, birthdays, education etc, are sourced by journalists to the person themself, with a thorough investigation seldom made. In some cases I'd say "according to xyz's official website (or CV) they earned the following degrees." Many journalist have some sense of when they are being lied to and may check in that case, that's part of the reason we consider their employers to be reliable sources. Or maybe an experienced editor will catch something that a newby journalist wouldn't. The old saying is "If your mother tells you she loves you, check it out." But in practice most journalists just wouldn't have the time for that. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 16:05, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

I have been quick to correct reports of incorrect birthdates from the Olympians and Paralympians, as they can take this as Wikipedia accusing them of cheating. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 01:39, 10 January 2023 (UTC)