Wikipedia talk:Reliable sources

This is curious...

WP:YWAB - nothing more to discuss here
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
The League of Women Voters recommends using this chart to determine bias in various media sources. Below, I have matched the most left-leaning and right-leaning sources listed, alongside their status as a reliable source on Wikipedia. STATUS: - generally reliable - no consensus - generally unreliable - deprecated - blacklisted NR - not rated Status of left and right leaning media sources LEFT Statue RIGHT Status AlterNet The American Conservative Associated Press The American Spectator NR The Atlantic Blaze Media The Daily Beast Breitbart News Democracy Now! Christian Broadcasting Network NR The Guardian The Daily Caller HuffPost Daily Mail The Intercept The Daily Wire Jacobin (magazine) NR Fox News (politics and science) Mother Jones (magazine) The Federalist (website) MSNBC Independent Journal Review The Nation National Review The New York Times New York Post The New Yorker Newsmax Slate (magazine) NR One America News Network Vox (website) The Post Millennial The Washington Free Beacon When there are 20 shades of blue paint available, and just 5 shades of green...everything starts to look kind of...blue. --Magnolia677 (talk) 17:46, 23 December 2024 (UTC) Maybe far-right media should start instituting stricter standards for accuracy and fact checking. But also most of the media on the "Left" column is not meaningfully left-wing anywhere outside of the United States. All in all I'd suggest this chart signifies nothing except that the US Overton Window has slid dangerously to the right and allowed a whole bunch of disinformation to be mistaken for news. Simonm223 (talk) 17:48, 23 December 2024 (UTC) Do we have an article in the mainspace about various ratings? WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:39, 23 December 2024 (UTC) I would have to agree. I have no desire to get into the politics of this, but Allsides is not a reliable source because it just reflects US opinions. Editors should judge sources based on the quality of those sources, without any regard of their supposed 'leaning'. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 22:25, 23 December 2024 (UTC) The main point here is that the sources in the table have been selected to make a point. The Guardian is an internationally respected newspaper and Breitbart is a bundle of crap. It's nothing to do with left or right - there's no equivalence. In the right column, the internationally respected media (the Guardian equivalents) are deliberately omitted. No Telegraph, The Times, WSJ, Financial Times etc etc. The two columns are not complete sets - just arbitrary selections. DeCausa (talk) 23:11, 23 December 2024 (UTC) The source rates the WSJ (for news) and FT as being centrist, and the OP did say that they included only left- and right-leaning sources. The Times (i.e., of London) does not appear to be rated by Allsides. So of your list, only the Telegraph, which is slightly right according to this source and which earns both (most) and (trans/GENSEX content) at WP:RSP, seems to have been overlooked. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:11, 24 December 2024 (UTC) Allsides is junk, and the other such websites are no better. That they rate the sources like that only shows they are repeating common US opinions, and this is an international project. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 01:24, 24 December 2024 (UTC) The "source" is nonsense. WSJ, the Times and FT are famously "right". If they're "centre" so is the Guardian. The "source" seems to only classify "far right" as right. DeCausa (talk) 08:36, 24 December 2024 (UTC) That source differentiates between news and opinion: They classify the WSJ as center for their news and right for their opinions. Our article on Financial Times says they have been called "centrist to centre-right liberal, neo-liberal, and conservative-liberal", but not "right". Our article on The Wall Street Journal similarly declines to simply call them "right", but provides a range of descriptions over time. I would think that if they are famously right-wing, then we'd have enough sources to just straight-up say that in the articles. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:15, 24 December 2024 (UTC) And if political leaning had been the cause for any of the consensus's in the original table it could be shown by diffs. Instead it's a table matched against an opinion source that is at best contentious in it's ratings. It has zero relevance to reliability on Wikipedia. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 10:46, 26 December 2024 (UTC) The relevance isn't really to the mainspace, but to the community. The perception that right-leaning sources are disproportionately banned results in sincere questions like this one from editors who are trying to understand our system. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:42, 27 December 2024 (UTC) So the system needs to be more transparent and easier to explain, as there is a false perception of events. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 11:46, 27 December 2024 (UTC) There are complaints every single day about this. At what point does it become unfair to refer to these complaints as "false perceptions"? Big Thumpus (talk) 13:53, 27 December 2024 (UTC) There are reliable right leaning sources, there are unreliable left leaning sources. That this isn't understood is a failure to explain the actual situation, the false perception (maybe poor wording) isn't a failure of those complaining but of the real story not being told well enough. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 14:41, 27 December 2024 (UTC) Since there seems to be some disagreement here as to what Wikipedia considers a "reliable right leaning source", can you give an example of what you're talking about? Big Thumpus (talk) 14:52, 27 December 2024 (UTC) Well as an example for UK news media the issue is that people see The Guardian is considered reliable (left) but The Daily Mail (right) is considered unreliable, and so think there isn't a balance. But that is a false perception, caused by not highlighting well enough that The Times or The Daily Telegraph both are right leaning media that is considered reliable. While there are left leaning media, such as Skwawkbox and The Canary (both probably the most left of UK sources), that are not considered reliable. None of those sources considered unreliable are unreliable because of their political leaning, reliable sources are defined as having "a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy" (see WP:V#What counts as a reliable source) and that is something that the DM, Canary or Skwawkbox all lack. Note also it's not an instance of failure in these areas that causes a source to be considered unreliable, but long term and ongoing failures. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 15:24, 27 December 2024 (UTC) I agree that this appears to be statistically ridiculous but formally reviewing and potentially reclassifying some or all of these sources per Wikipedia RS policy would be a huge undertaking. I think anyone who legitimately tries to take in the world from a neutral standpoint would acknowledge that every single source in the left column published sensational, misleading and at times outright false information during this last election cycle (at the very least), but since the same can be said for the sources in the right column that leaves us in a bit of a pickle. Big Thumpus (talk) 15:03, 26 December 2024 (UTC) Anyone wanting to show that any source in the ta or has fallen below acceptable standards can do so. It doesn't have to be a 'review all' kind of situation. Also there is nothing statistically ridiculous about anything, the changing media landscape has changed in different ways for different sources. That sources with a commonality have changed in a similar way is statistically normal. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 15:45, 26 December 2024 (UTC) What I'm saying is statistically ridiculous is that, on Wikipedia, a self-proclaimed neutral encyclopedia, practically all news sources that have an openly left political lean are classified as reliable while practically all news sources that have an openly right political lean are classified as unreliable. At face value, this appears to represent a one-sidedness among whoever reviews said sources, and when looking deeper into discussions on talk pages for articles having to do with American politics, it's easy to find many editors expressing concerns about left-leaning opinions outweighing right-leaning opinions, to a degree that affects accuracy and neutrality. As it stands, the concerns of these editors are brushed off and they are told to reference reliable sources to support their disagreements - the Catch 22 being that there are no right-leaning sources for them to reference that Wikipedia deems reliable. Big Thumpus (talk) 15:59, 26 December 2024 (UTC) Not all right leaning sources are considered unreliable and not all left leaning sources are considered reliable. That is just not true. Many things appear a certain way on face value if you make a list that doesn't include reliable rightwing sources, exclude unreliable leftwing sources, and include 'leftwing' sources in the reliable list that are not leftwing. It would be very helpful to have more reliable rightwing sources, but Wikipedia isn't the issue. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 20:21, 26 December 2024 (UTC) It might help dispel this complaint to make a similar chart of the right-wing sources that ARE considered reliable. Blueboar (talk) 20:25, 26 December 2024 (UTC) crickets :) — Masem (t) 20:27, 26 December 2024 (UTC) Some have already been mentioned in this thread. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 20:30, 26 December 2024 (UTC) The New York Times is a right-wing publication. Famously so. Simonm223 (talk) 21:22, 26 December 2024 (UTC) Which doubtless explains why we've gotten complaints from editors about our biased rules preferring the "liberal" or "left-wing" NYT getting preferred over the "centrist" Fox News. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:41, 27 December 2024 (UTC) Everything looks leftwing after a certain point. But pro-business, low taxation, and anti-regulation are rightwing positions, even if a source doesn't care if people use pronouns or isn't strongly anti-immigration. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 11:49, 27 December 2024 (UTC) The Spectator and Washington Examiner have no-consensus ratings at RSP. I didn't notice any others within two or three minutes. Mostly, I don't recognize the names of the non-featured news outlets, though a few, like Catholic News Agency, sound like the kind of niche subject matter that would probably be accepted within that subject matter. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:59, 27 December 2024 (UTC) Except they don't. The news sources in the left column don't have a meaningful left-wing bias with the possible exception of Jacobin. It's just that the American Overton window is so laughably skewed that anything to the left of Ronald Reagan gets called socialist. Simonm223 (talk) 20:37, 26 December 2024 (UTC) @Simonm223 It does seem pretty skewed. Doug Weller talk 14:10, 27 December 2024 (UTC) To reframe something mentioned by others above, the source table is one that's calling the Associated Press as far "left" as Jacobin. If a dataset is being skewed in this way that's a data sampling problem. CMD (talk) 14:47, 27 December 2024 (UTC) With respect, the Associated Press did run some blatantly partisan and misleading stories throughout this election cycle, like this one and this one for example. Of course there are farther-left leaning sources who ran even more with stories like this, but I think it's undeniable that AP platformed opinions-as-news that many would consider "far left" or at least directly serving the interests of politicians considered to be "far left". Big Thumpus (talk) 15:02, 27 December 2024 (UTC) The AP does not exist just to cover US politics, and if those are examples of their most "far-left" stories, that sort of makes the point. CMD (talk) 15:09, 27 December 2024 (UTC) Which point are you referring to, though? I linked to those stories because I think it's clear that their left-leaning bias crosses over the line of accuracy and renders them inappropriate for use as a source in a neutral encyclopedia. If the AP does not exist just to cover US politics then perhaps their US political reporting should carry a separate classification? Big Thumpus (talk) 15:18, 27 December 2024 (UTC) Generally the United Sfstes systematically treats media as considerably more left-wing than it is. For instance being a partisan supporter of the center-right Democrat political party would not be considered an indication of being left wing anywhere else in the world. The sample is, frankly, garbage. Simonm223 (talk) 15:44, 27 December 2024 (UTC) The United States as a whole? And are you saying that the Democrat party in the US is center-right? The stories I linked to above are inaccurate regardless of party affiliation, in that they misrepresent the factual realities of their subjects. Big Thumpus (talk) 15:51, 27 December 2024 (UTC) Yes. The United States, as a whole. Yes, the Democrats are center-right. There is no organized left wing in the USA and no mainstream left-wing media. The arbitrary sorting of right wing media like NYT into a left column is just that: arbitrary.Simonm223 (talk) 16:50, 27 December 2024 (UTC) Are you not from the United States? Big Thumpus (talk) 16:55, 27 December 2024 (UTC) That is entirely irrelevant. Simonm223 (talk) 16:56, 27 December 2024 (UTC) I ask out of genuine curiosity because I would find it at least a little bit odd for someone who lives in the US, especially a long-term resident, and who regularly consumes US media to say that there is "no mainstream left-wing media" or that Democrats are legitimately "center-right". That is not at all how it appears on the ground in everyday life. Big Thumpus (talk) 17:04, 27 December 2024 (UTC) That is that systematic bias that over-estimates how left-wing institutions are at play. Which is the same failure of judgment that led to the division above being treated as a left-right one rather than a mainstream-fringe division. Simonm223 (talk) 17:09, 27 December 2024 (UTC) I'm not talking about some sort of systematic bias right now, though - I'm talking about actually coexisting with people in the US who outwardly identify as Democrats and how it is not accurate to describe their personal political beliefs, or how they expect their party and media to represent them, as "center-right". Big Thumpus (talk) 17:23, 27 December 2024 (UTC) No offense but the thoughts and feelings of individual voters is entirely immaterial to the political position of the Democrats as an institution and is doubly immaterial to the actual topic - that list which shows only that Wikipedia allows mainstream media and deprecates fringe publications. Simonm223 (talk) 18:27, 27 December 2024 (UTC) Here's a story for you: A friend of mine was a sysadmin in the 1990s. At a time when ragged tie-dye T-shirts were the uniform of "dot com" coders, he wore a buttoned-down shirt to work. They all thought he was unusually formal. He moved to a different part of the country, doing similar work. Overnight, people's perception of him has transformed into "the wild Silicon Valley guy", because the local standards were so much more formal than him: He didn't wear a jacket or a necktie! Big Thumpus, I think something similar is going on here. My friend was the same person, wearing the same clothes, but getting interpreted according to two different local standards. The same thing happens with political parties. The US ideas about what constitutes left or right are different from the ideas in other places. Our "left" (e.g., single-payer healthcare) is the "center" in some places (e.g., Europe). Views endorsed by our "right" (e.g., free, healthful school lunches for poor kids) is a "leftist" view in other places (e.g., developing countries). WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:53, 27 December 2024 (UTC) Assuming by the "our" you mean American, that's one way to describe the view of the "right" on school meals, here is an apparently centrist coverage[1]. That said, even in the variety of US political local standards, I find it hard to believe Jacobin and AP fall into the same category. CMD (talk) 03:53, 28 December 2024 (UTC) The AP rating is "-3.1" and the Jacobin rating is "-4.0", so the AP is barely in the category. Until this year, the AP was rated as "center" or "lean left". It seems to be based on surveys, and I found that reading the featured survey comments that the ratings are based on was informative.[2] For example, a survey respondent said that "Many transgender health bills came from a handful of far-right interest groups, AP finds" was evidence of bias, because even if the wording of the bills was practically word for word out of the model legislation published by Do No Harm (organization), about half of Americans support the overall goal in that legislation, so (according to the survey respondent) it's "misleading" to point out that the exact wording came from a special interest group. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:08, 28 December 2024 (UTC) Ah, American public surveys during an election year. That said, given that's the methodology, I'm surprised the Daily Mail entered consideration at all, although I suppose the somehow BBC made it too. CMD (talk) 04:29, 28 December 2024 (UTC) Additional information To demonstrate how selection bias affects the presentation of a situation, here is another selection of entries from the perennial sources list that tells a completely different story than the first table: Status of left and right leaning media sources LEFT Status RIGHT Status AlterNet The American Conservative The Canary Asian News International China Global Television Network The Australian Correo del Orinoco The Daily Telegraph (UK) (excluding transgender topics) CounterPunch Deseret News Daily Kos Financial Times Daily Star (UK) Forbes Global Times Fox News (news excluding politics and science) The Grayzone The Gateway Pundit HuffPost contributors The Globe and Mail Independent Media Center InfoWars MintPress News National Review Occupy Democrats New York Post (entertainment) An Phoblacht The New Zealand Herald Raw Story OpIndia Rolling Stone (politics and society, 2011–present) Reason Sixth Tone (politics) The Spectator The Skwawkbox The Times SourceWatch The Wall Street Journal Telesur Washington Examiner Venezuelanalysis The Washington Times Voltaire Network The Weekly Standard See also Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2020-11-29/Op-Ed. — Newslinger talk 05:31, 28 December 2024 (UTC) Thank you for compiling that. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:40, 28 December 2024 (UTC) @Newslinger: The original chart used this source. The was no "selection bias". It was a literal cut-and-paste! What inclusion criteria did you use? Or did you arbitrarily cherry pick? Magnolia677 (talk) 12:07, 28 December 2024 (UTC) Allsides' selection of what to include caused a bias, as it failed to include many sources that have been discussed on Wikipedia. This gives rise to a false impression of the situation, as what is or isn't in the table changes how it will be viewed. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 12:23, 28 December 2024 (UTC) AllSides didn't pick which media outlets to include knowing the one day some Wikipedia editor would include them in a chart. There are other media bias charts available, and they all demonstrate the same thing. This cherry-picked selection yields cherry-picked outcomes. Everyone knows that, and paradoxically, it supports the original point I was making. Magnolia677 (talk) 13:04, 28 December 2024 (UTC) No they didn't pick them in relation to Wikipedia, and that's part of the selection issue. They are not reporting sources that have been discussed on Wikipedia, which would be a better selection to look at. By limiting it to only those sources reported by Allsides you exclude many other sources. By looking at the selection of sources discussed on Wikipedia the situation isn't so clear. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 13:54, 28 December 2024 (UTC) Your linked AllSides page explicitly states: How Does AllSides Decide Which Media Outlets to Include on the Chart? Which outlets go on the chart is ultimately up to AllSides' editorial discretion. The second table was also made with "editorial discretion", using a global selection of sources specifically chosen to refute the point you are trying to make. AllSides says that they evaluate "online, U.S. political content only" and consider "Whether the source is relevant nationally", using the word nationally to refer solely to the United States. Despite Americentrism being a prominent form of systemic bias on Wikipedia, English Wikipedia editors are global and English Wikipedia represents the entire English-speaking world, which is not limited to the United States. Reshaping English Wikipedia to represent the midpoint of the two dominant sets of political philosophies of the United States (i.e. turning Wikipedia into Ameripedia) is not a goal I or many other editors consider desirable. It is strange that, despite this being a talk page for the reliable sources guideline, this conversation is focused only on political orientation and not source reliability. The AllSides chart you linked says, "Ratings do not reflect accuracy or credibility; they reflect perspective only." The reliable sources guideline states, "Articles should be based on reliable, independent, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy", so the AllSides chart is not particularly relevant to the reliable sources guideline. Ad Fontes Media's media bias chart, which covers both reliability and political bias, is much more relevant; perhaps you should consider creating a table using this two-dimensional chart, instead, as I did before. By the way, your table incorrectly lists  AllSides (RSP entry) as "left" and generally unreliable as its first entry. I believe you meant to refer to  AlterNet (RSP entry). — Newslinger talk 15:20, 28 December 2024 (UTC) Corrected "Anglosphere" to "English-speaking world" — Newslinger talk 16:52, 28 December 2024 (UTC) The point of the original post still stands: the most commonly consumed "left" sources [in America] are considered totally legitimate on the English Wikipedia, while the most commonly consumed "right" sources are not. This, at the very least, has created such an obvious apparent bias to enough editors that it is a daily conversation. Writing it off as "societal bias" or some sort of "Americentrism" does us absolutely no favors, since at the core of this discussion is whether or not these particular sources are factually accurate, i.e. "reliable". I've said it once in this thread already, but I believe that it's obvious to anyone trying to actually interpret the neutrality and accuracy of a source that most, if not all, of the "left" sources on the given list have published blatantly false and misleading material, recently enough and to a serious enough degree that they should not have their names in green on the perennial sources list if we're holding them to the same standards as "right" sources. Additionally, how is the global applicability of certain sources being determined? I find that very hard to do accurately when many international sources simply republish articles from American sources. Big Thumpus (talk) 16:10, 28 December 2024 (UTC) So here is the thing: most news media is garbage by the standards an encyclopedia should use. Newsmedia has, however, become entirely pervasive within Wikipedia because it rushes to publish first and there is a lot of it. It allows editors to keep Wikipedia timely. However this should help indicate just how bad a source has to become before Wikipedia deprecates. This entire discussion is just asking the question, "if fringe disinformation is popular shouldn't we use it?" This isn't changed by adding, "the mainstream sources also aren't good." Like we know that. We should be stricter with mainstream sources rather than more permissive of fringe sources.Simonm223 (talk) 16:21, 28 December 2024 (UTC) What are you referring to as "fringe disinformation"? And I'm agreeing with your last point: if we're being strict about our interpretation of the factual reliability of all news sources, then we should be holding the "left" sources to the same standards as the "right" sources, which would inevitably result in their reclassification if we're being honest. Big Thumpus (talk) 16:32, 28 December 2024 (UTC) As I mentioned before, what you are seeing "results from a feature of the American media landscape: among low-quality sources, the most popular websites are right-wing sources". The most popular far-left American news website is  The Grayzone (RSP entry), which is only the 123,160th most visited website in the US, according to SimilarWeb. Meanwhile, the most popular far-right American news website is   Breitbart News (RSP entry), which SimilarWeb ranks as the 352nd most visited in the US. Americans preferring to visit low-quality right-wing websites over low-quality left-wing websites is not a problem for Wikipedia editors to solve, because the reliable sources guideline applies to all sources regardless of political orientation. Claiming that "many international sources simply republish articles from American sources" overlooks the massive amount of independent research and reporting that non-US sources perform as well as the fact that reliable non-US sources are also afforded due weight on Wikipedia. Your proposal to reclassify the reliability of sources on the perennial sources list to fit the consumption habits of people in the United States, instead of their actual reliability, is both Americentric and inconsistent with the reliable sources guideline. On Wikipedia, there is strong consensus against your assertion that "most, if not all" of the sources AllSides labels "left" should not be considered generally reliable, and Wikipedia editors do apply the same reliable sources guideline to all sources. If you believe otherwise, you are welcome to provide evidence on the reliable sources noticeboard – much stronger evidence than what you used to incorrectly claim that the  Associated Press (RSP entry) publishes "far left" content. — Newslinger talk 16:51, 28 December 2024 (UTC) I said "most commonly consumed "left" sources" and "most commonly consumed "right" sources", which I think would be sources more like CNN and FOX News. I don't have an account on SimilarWeb but I can see that those networks are ranked 28th and 39th, respectively. Which one of those is green on the perennial sources list and which is red? I also think it's fair to say that a particular source doesn't need to be explicitly "far" left or right in order to find content on them that endorses what people may legitimately feel is "far" one direction or the other. Big Thumpus (talk) 17:27, 28 December 2024 (UTC) Whether a source is commonly consumed by Americans is irrelevant to whether the source is reliable. This page (the talk page of a guideline) is not the correct place to relitigate the extremely long 2023 Fox News RfC. If you have new evidence about any of the sources you mentioned, you are welcome to present it on the reliable sources noticeboard. — Newslinger talk 17:35, 28 December 2024 (UTC) You're continuing to confuse "left" according to AllSides (which explains "Our media bias rating scale is based on American politics," and "our bias ratings reveal the average judgment of all Americans") and "left" according to a global standard. WP editors are not limited to Americans, nor should we be. As Simonm223 already noted, most of the media on the "Left" column is not meaningfully left-wing anywhere outside of the United States. From a global (WP) perspective, that top comparison is mostly comparing centrist news sources (on the left) to right-wing news sources (on the right). FactOrOpinion (talk) 00:30, 29 December 2024 (UTC) Newslinger and FactOrOpinion with respect, we are simply not having the same conversation. If you regularly consume the sources in the "left" column and do not find the views they platform to be "left" then that is a matter of personal interpretation, and not an accurate indication of some sort of global political spectrum. It is a fact that Wikipedia fields criticisms of left-leaning bias every single day; to write these criticisms off as essentially a special brand of American Ignorance is not a great example of WP:AGF and, at the very least, contributes further to the appearance of bias that garners criticism in the first place. It's not enough to just point to discussions happening on obscure noticeboards and claim consensus - many of the complaints are coming from people who came to Wikipedia to read about a particular topic, and were genuinely surprised by what they found to be a very strong left-leaning bias. These are not just Americans. It should come as no surprise that a grand majority of these people don't ever show up at RSN to have a more involved discussion, either because they don't know these noticeboards even exist or because they end up blocked after getting into discussions one might reasonably refer to as "frustrating" or "circular". The grander point I'm trying to make is that while WP:RS does say that editors should not interpret primary sources for themselves, they are expected to use their judgment to draw the line between usable and inappropriate sources for each statement when it comes to secondary sources. In the specific context of articles about American politics or political figures, the Catch 22 is that editors can't even cite some of the most common "right" news sources - the ones most likely to even publish content on the given topics - while practically every common "left" source is permitted, even while they publish content that frequently matches the same levels of sensationalism and inaccuracy-due-to-bias as the "right" sources. Big Thumpus (talk) 15:14, 29 December 2024 (UTC) In other words, The Atlantic, which compared Trump to Hitler in the weeks before the election, gets a pass, while the third most popular newspaper in the United States, founded by Alexander Hamilton, and which broke the Russian disinformation Hunter Biden laptop story...what's that newspaper called?...is verboten. Magnolia677 (talk) 15:30, 29 December 2024 (UTC) What is now called The New York Post was founded 223 years ago. Some obvious questions that occur to me include: (a) why the long-dead founder's identity matters for anything about the present day, (b) why being founded by an ardent advocate of violent revolution against the traditional government is supposed to make us favor the paper, and (c) why we should assume that the paper's editorial perspective has stayed the same through all of these years. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:25, 29 December 2024 (UTC) Most of the major discussion that are relevant here had hundreds of different editors involved, they where hardly obscure. Unless there is going to be some reflectuon on the issues raised in this discussion then there is little more to say. The jist here is that something underhanded is going on, well if it has then prove it - otherwise AGF. If someone can show that any of these where based on politics, then there would be something to discuss. Otherwise that the US public consumes a lot of low quality right wing news sources is the common link between these sources. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 15:41, 29 December 2024 (UTC) "Low quality right wing news"...unlike MSNBC. Friend, one thing we agree on is that this discussion will change little. I just wanted have some holiday fun and say the quiet part out loud. I was born at night, but not last night. Magnolia677 (talk) 16:03, 29 December 2024 (UTC) Magnolia677, you made a table that included just 33 of the 457 entries (7.2%) listed on the perennial sources list and wrote, "When there are 20 shades of blue paint available, and just 5 shades of green...everything starts to look kind of...blue". In one of the replies, Blueboar said that "It might help dispel this complaint to make a similar chart of the right-wing sources that ARE considered reliable". I did just that with a 44-entry table showing there are not just "5 shades of green", and that "blue paint" is held to the same level of scrutiny as "green" paint across the world. Now, I am perplexed as to why you are crying foul. This discussion has already covered the main reason your selection of entries looks biased whereas a broader examination of the list does not: AllSides only lists a small number sources on its chart that it believes is relevant to the US and classifies them on a curve that is shaped to popular opinions in mainstream US politics, while excluding many other US and non-US sources that have a documented political orientation, all with no regard to source reliability. Meanwhile, on the reliable sources noticeboard, editors examine not only US-based sources that AllSides pays attention to, but also many other sources all around the world, because editors cite sources from many countries for all the topics Wikipedia covers, including but not limited to US politics. Insisting on narrowing the scope of the discussion to US-focused sources rated by a US organization on a scale oriented to mainstream US political opinions is a perfect example of Americentrism. Demanding that editors view the evaluation of source reliability – using nonpolitical criteria – through the lens of American politics is Americentrism. Using affirmative action to reshape the perennial sources list to fit American consumption patterns, instead of reliability, would also be Americentrism. I am not using that word as an insult; I am referencing the fact that Americentrism has been listed on the systemic bias page since January 2016. I described Americentrism as selection bias and systemic bias, but not "American Ignorance"; the latter words are your Big Thumpus's words and not mine. Magnolia677, your claim that you created the first table to "have some holiday fun and say the quiet part out loud" seems to indicate that you expected a controversial discussion. If you have problems with The Atlantic, MSNBC, or any other source, and you have the evidence to back it up, feel free to go to the reliable sources noticeboard and present that evidence to substantiate your point of view. That would be the most appropriate place to start a likely controversial discussion about the sources you mentioned, and it would be in accordance with the advice at WP:RSPIMPROVE. — Newslinger talk 19:04, 29 December 2024 (UTC) Corrected comment attribution — Newslinger talk 19:41, 29 December 2024 (UTC) (TLDR). All I did was cut-and-paste every far left and far right source listed here, then add their Wikipedia rating. It was a literal cut-and-paste!!!. And the result has editors madder than a mosquito in a mannequin factory...looking for excuses. Let's discredit the source; let's make up some other meaningless chart; let's denounce all the right-wing media. Did I miss any? Magnolia677 (talk) 19:34, 29 December 2024 (UTC) You preference for this source and the ratings it produces is clear. You appear to have missed every objection to them. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 19:39, 29 December 2024 (UTC) Yes, you overlooked all of the explanations of why your chart is not a representative sample of the perennial sources list, and you missed the numerous low-quality "left" sources and higher-quality "right" sources listed in the second table – which was designed as a rebuttal. (You also missed that AllSides does not have "far left" or "far right" classifications.) I am not "mad", and I am not sure why you believe that to be the case. — Newslinger talk 19:43, 29 December 2024 (UTC) Then use Ad Fontes Media chart. The results are the same. Magnolia677 (talk) 19:47, 29 December 2024 (UTC) I already did. The bottom line is: if there are any sources you would like to have the community re-evaluate, the reliable sources noticeboard is the right place to present your new evidence, and you may use comparisons of other sources as part of your evidence. This page is not the appropriate place to complain about sources. — Newslinger talk 19:55, 29 December 2024 (UTC) (TLDR) That says a great deal. If you're unwilling to read and seriously consider the responses to you, what's the point? FactOrOpinion (talk) 20:00, 29 December 2024 (UTC) Then use Ad Fontes Media chart. The results are the same. That's not true. For example, AllSides rates the Associated Press as Left, whereas Ad Fontes rates it as Middle. AllSides rates both the NYT and Jacobin as Left, whereas Ad Fontes rates the NYT as "skews left" and Jacobin as "hyper-partisan left" (which still isn't Ad Fontes's furthest left category). Ad Fontes rates accuracy as well as bias, whereas AllSides pointedly does not. Sometimes they don't even use the same subsets for a large news entity. For example, Ad Fontest breaks Fox into 10 subcategories, each of which is rated separately, whereas AllSides' breaks Fox into two subcategories. In neither case do their subcategories correspond to any of the three subcategories that WP uses for Fox. (BTW, in your original table using AllSides, you made a clear choice to ignore the main Fox News entry in RSP and instead use the Fox News (politics and science) entry.) Ad Fontes isn't explicit about whether they use American raters, but my guess is "yes." AllSides and Ad Fontes use different rating methodologies. FactOrOpinion (talk) 23:59, 29 December 2024 (UTC) My friend I don't disagree that MSNBC isn't a great source, take it to RSN and show that's the case. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 19:25, 29 December 2024 (UTC) No, I don't think "something underhanded is going on", I just think that discussions like this highlight that some editors have such deeply held personal political beliefs that they do not acknowledge the facts of the matter - which are that Wikipedia continues to receive daily criticism of a perceived left-leaning bias, and that this affects public perception of the encyclopedia's reliability. Broadly referring to some of the most widely consumed news sources in the country as "low quality" does us zero favors and gets the discussion nowhere. It's fair to say that there are millions of Americans, and even non-Americans, who might view the "left" sources as "low quality", especially after a lot of their reporting during this last election cycle apparently completely failed to capture the perspectives of a majority of the country. Big Thumpus (talk) 15:59, 29 December 2024 (UTC) Of course there are low-quality "left" sources; I have listed some of them in the second table. Popularity does not determine reliability, and the reliable sources guideline does not use popularity as a criterion for determining whether a source is reliable. Doing so would be like using a food's popularity to determine whether it is healthy. — Newslinger talk 19:04, 29 December 2024 (UTC) So their not being deliberately biased just fools, or again you could assume good faith. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 19:23, 29 December 2024 (UTC) Frankly I don't give a pair of dingo's kidneys worth of care to the opinions of Breitbart readers. If they want to think the encyclopedia is biased for not treating their disinformation website as a legitimate source they can go ahead and think that. They will be wrong. Simonm223 (talk) 19:59, 29 December 2024 (UTC) It is a fact that Wikipedia fields criticisms of left-leaning bias every single day; to write these criticisms off as essentially a special brand of American Ignorance is not a great example of WP:AGF... First, I don't see any evidence in this discussion of non-American sources suggesting that en.WP has a left-wing bias, much less about the potential bias of WPs in other languages. (Maybe I missed it. If so, please point it out.) From my reading, this discussion has focused on how AllSides — which very explicitly represents only an American perspective — characterizes a small subset of mostly American media, and how en.WP characterizes those same media. Second, I don't see any attempt to characterize the bias of most non-American media or even how en.WP characterizes the full spectrum of American sources, many of which aren't even listed in RSP. Third, I'm not sure what you mean by "American Ignorance." I don't think that it's ignorant for Americans to view things from an American perspective. I think it's normal for people in Country X to view things from the perspective of Country X. I'm simply noting that an American perspective need not be representative of a global perspective. That's not a failure to assume AGF. These are not just Americans. But you're not talking about a random sample, nor is there any reason to believe that it's a representative sample, so your sample isn't that informative. In the specific context of articles about American politics Most of en.WP is not about American politics. It sounds like your argument boils down to something like "I think en.WP's articles about American politics have a left-wing bias because they mostly rely on American sources, and editors from varied countries have concluded that many American right-wing sources aren't reliable, while also concluding that sources Americans consider left-wing (but that might not be characterized as left-wing by editors from varied countries) are reliable." If I'm misrepresenting your argument, please correct me, thanks. FactOrOpinion (talk) 18:00, 29 December 2024 (UTC) As this whole thread appears to have been a troll I suggest we just close it. Simonm223 (talk) 20:41, 29 December 2024 (UTC) @Simonm223: I'm going to take your Civility Barnstar away if you call me a troll again. Be nice. Magnolia677 (talk) 20:52, 29 December 2024 (UTC) I don't think it's fair to characterize it as Trolling, but I do think that there is not much else worth saying that hasn't already been said. People who measure Wikipedia against their own idea of "the middle" will often find that it differs. (Much of the world, for example, will disagree with our content on abortion. This could be because abortion is completely normal in their own culture, so they think it is weird that we spend so much time talking about moral opposition to it, or because it is abnormal in their culture, so they think it is terrible that we spend so much time talking about experts recommending that it be legal and destigmatized, but our attempt to encompass all the views will feel "off" by emphasizing the view that is less familiar or de-emphasizing the view that is most familiar.) That doesn't make Wikipedia wrong, and it doesn't make people wrong for wondering why their perception doesn't align with our articles and practices. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:56, 29 December 2024 (UTC) I also think that it's important to understand what an encyclopedia is. Wikipedia's goal is to reflect high-quality sources (which generally means academic ones, when possible, although the mainstream media is also a heavy factor), and to reflect a global perspective - an international one. Our desire to reflect a wide range of sources is also broadly incompatible with viewpoints that rely on a single source of truth. If you look at how American politics in particular breaks down at the moment, it's obvious that this mission is going to be unpopular with large swaths of the American right - if someone believes that academia and the mainstream media are biased, if they believe that their religious texts are a sole source of truth that should be prioritized over everything else, or if they reject the value of a global and international perspective, then they're never going to be satisfied with anything Wikipedia does. Our sourcing simply reflects those priorities. For instance, one of the main ways right-leaning sources get themselves in trouble is due to an extended rejection of academic consensus across multiple fields (especially climate change, but also COVID, the 2020 election, etc.) --Aquillion (talk) 19:21, 5 February 2025 (UTC) The New York Post wrote a scathing editorial today which seems to mimic some of the points I tried to make in this post. Magnolia677 (talk) 23:15, 5 February 2025 (UTC) With their record, I would take their criticism as a compliment. – Muboshgu (talk) 23:27, 5 February 2025 (UTC)

Machine learning

Under § Sources produced by machine learning, I removed the statement ML generation in itself does not necessarily disqualify a source that is properly checked by the person using it (diff). What does "properly checked" mean? Does "the person using it" refer to the person submitting prompts to a chatbot or the Wikipedia editor using it as a source? Since it appears that most GenAI systems are trained using text scraped from the internet (including Wikipedia), I don't see any reason to treat large language models any differently to other § User-generated content. In other words, LLMs and other chatbots should be presumptively disqualified as sources until specifically verified by a human author with relevant expertise. —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 02:33, 12 January 2025 (UTC)

I assume "properly checked" referred to published sources that are checked by a human author, but I do not think the sentence you removed is necessary or helpful to include in the guideline, and I support the removal. I would also support bolstering the language of this section to explicitly state that sources composed of LLM-generated content are generally unreliable/unacceptable. I do not see a problem with authors using LLMs to assist with research, but any source that directly publishes LLM-generated content does not meet the "reputation for fact-checking and accuracy" required by this guideline. — Newslinger talk 02:59, 12 January 2025 (UTC)

OK, I added LLM-generated content from tools such as ChatGPT and other chatbots is not generally reliable etc. (diff). —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 04:41, 12 January 2025 (UTC)

It's not reliable at all! At best, and this is as permissive as people have proposed under the current tech, it is equivalent to our writing, that is, WP:OR. CMD (talk) 04:50, 12 January 2025 (UTC)

I believe the idea here was something like:

• Rae Reporter interviews a dozen people plus gets hundreds of pages of information from a government agency. The interview transcripts and all the information gets dumped into a magical AI tool, with instructions to summarize it all in the style of a 600-word-long newspaper article. After several iterations, the journalist then decides that it sounds basically okay, re-writes part of it, and individually hand-checks each and every name, claim, and quote in the original documents, because journalists don't actually like misquoting people. This gets handed off to the editor for normal processing.

and in particular, I think we want to avoid:

• A whistleblower leaks a massive amount of information to a journalist, who uses AI to summarize what's in the document trove. The journalist hand-writes a news article about the information in the documents, and it is published in a reputable newspaper. A POV pusher claims that the news article is unreliable because the journalist used AI as one tool among many.

What we don't want is:

• Wikipedia editors to say "Dear LLM, here is a long list of people who sound like notable BLPs, so please write Wikipedia articles about each of them. They all need to have about 1,000 words and two inline citations to reliable sources per paragraph. The second sentence should say what they are best known for. Thank you."

WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:33, 12 January 2025 (UTC)

The first "Rae Reporter" example case sounds controversial. In their current state, I do not believe LLMs are able to process that volume of information into a 600-word article without significant inaccuracies or omissions that would compromise the quality of the output text. Additionally, LLMs are not yet sufficiently advanced to perform fact-checking on the original documents, which would result in incorrect and misleading claims being presented in the published article without appropriate context.

As the section text currently states, "It may not be known or detectable that ML was used to produce a given piece of text", so LLM-generated content that undergoes extensive rewriting and an adequate editorial process should theoretically be indistinguishable from human-written content that passes the same editorial process – a situation that might be comparable to the Ship of Theseus paradox. However, in practice, published articles that directly incorporate LLM-generated content tend to be less accurate to the point of being considered questionable, regardless of what the website claims to do editorially, because the direct use of LLM-generated content is a cost-cutting measure. This aligns with the consensus view expressed in the 2024 Red Ventures RfC and a 2023 discussion on G/O Media websites.

An example of LLM usage in published media that would be appropriate for citation on Wikipedia is the Pew Research Center's 2024 report "America’s News Influencers", which discloses in its methodology that GPT-4 was used for data processing during the research and analysis process, although the finished report was written by named humans. This type of report is similar to your second "whistleblower" example case. — Newslinger talk 07:12, 12 January 2025 (UTC)

I assumed the part I removed was referring to fully AI-generated content farms as potentially reliable sources in themselves, rather than LLMs as just another tool used by human authors of published, independent sources. I think it would be fine to add a caveat for things like the Pew report, making it clear that sources using LLMs for research need to separately have a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy. —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 09:35, 12 January 2025 (UTC)

An explicit caveat in the guideline would help clarify this, but I am not sure if it is necessary. Authors regularly use unreliable sources that are not LLM-generated as sources of data, and the author's writing can still be considered reliable as long as the author uses the data in an appropriate way that satisfies the "fact-checking and accuracy" requirement. The same would apply to authors using unreliable LLM-generated material as sources of data. — Newslinger talk 09:11, 13 January 2025 (UTC)

Proposal: Let we the audience vote for what we consider left-leaning and right-leaning sources

WP:1AM - nothing more to discuss here
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
The discussion about Wikipedia's left-leaning bias 1 never goes anywhere in this page because there is a self-referencing loop involving Wikipedia Consensus -> aleggedly far-left, or very left-of-center and not-that-reliable sources -> someone brings up the perception of a left-wing bias -> Wikipedia editors point to a supposed "reliability" of a source without actually providing evidence for such reliability, except perhaps for academic articles on humanities, that don't prove objective facts either. What if both academic sources and media sources validate each other's "reliability" while not actually being reliable in the perception of the society? That's why democracy and suffrage exist. Are you guys scientifically minded? Rationally minded? Are you against absolutism? Allow me to present a point. Is it possible to reach an absolute truth about a government or a candidate? Can an administration or a candidacy be objectively qualified as "100% positive" or "100% negative"? Or course not. In any democratic system, an administration may reach an approval rate of, say, 70-90%, but there will be always people that perceive that administration as negative. The outcome of an election legitimates a consensus, not an objective truth. The same holds true for thoughts, for philosophy, and for subjective classification of things based in consensual taxonomy frameworks. So we come down to left-right and reliable-unreliable classification: Where did the reliable sources consensus come from? As far as I know, the bulk of it came arbitrarily from MrX's point of view in 07/28/2018. Who is he/she/they? Is this legitimate? Does the consensus of Wikipedia reflect the consensus of the general public? Who said so? Let's suppose a consensus exists among the general audience, that there is a leftist bias in Wikipedia. Not only we are failing to properly address this, by not measuring or acknowledging it, but also Wikipedia would be contributing negatively for a biased media environment. Let's suppose, for contrast, that there isn't a consensus among the general public that the leftist bias of Wikipedia is real. In this scenario Wikipedia would be luckier, but still negligent because it lacks a legitimate evidence for the perceived reliability and bias of its sources. What legitimates a president? There is a reason why he/she can't be elected by a special chaste of "specialists". The only legitimate means to claim power is through direct vote. Similarly, I propose that the only legitimate means to claim that a certain source is "reliable" and "has a certain political bias" is through vote. I noted that Fox News isn't considered reliable specifically for transgender topics. What if the consensus among the general public is that several sources aren't reliable specifically for politically-charged topics? And... If the perceived consensus of left-right in the US is different from the rest of the world, we can address politics of each country separately. To be honest, I don't actually agree that the left-right division in the US is that much different from the rest of the world. What I see are left-friendly editors using very questionable and fragile statements ("the Democratic Party would be center-right in Europe"/"it doesn't matter if practically every self-identified leftist votes blue"/"source X follows the broader capitalist economic agenda, therefore it can't be called leftist") to pass far-left and verifiably flawed sources as flawless and reliable. And, by verifiably, I mean that it's verifiable through factual confrontation with other sources, suffrage, and intense civil scrutiny of what common citizens perceive, verify, think and say. Does anyone here value common citizens? There is a thing named afer this, it's "Communism" you know. Some people confuse it with free healthcare, but the historical consensus is that we were never capable of implementing it. I know I may sound harsh and pretentious, but the political bias debacle is really annoying and tiresome. In my perception, Wikipedia's credibility for politically-charged topics has deteriorated since its foundation. To wrap things up, in my point of view the current sources guidelines are a false consensus. They weren't built bottom-up from a consensus to begin with. They are illegitimate in the present moment, and have to be replaced by a proper consensus built from scratch. I propose that you all Wikipedia editors gather valid evidence - in the form of popular votes from the general audience - so you can legitimately claim that some source is "reliable" or "non-reliable", and "right-leaning" or "left-leaning" as well. Otherwise, the existing "reliable sources" and "center-right/center/left" labels are nothing but arbitrary and personal. And Wikipedia, once envisioned as a tool by the community, for the community, is just another voice of arbitrary "truths" as told by media oligarchs. JC Beltrano (talk) 07:49, 21 January 2025 (UTC) @JC Beltrano, you are in the top 20% of contributors to Wikipedia. Congratulations. But this means that you stopped being part of "we the audience" several years ago. Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Perennial sources ("WP:RSP") came from hundreds of prior discussions, mostly at Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard. Most of those discussions are linked on the page. If you want to influence RSP's contents in the future, then keep an eye on that noticeboard. At the moment, I notice a discussion in which an editor proposes slightly loosening the RSP classification on a left-wing source, and the proposal is being soundly rejected. Another left-wing source looks like it might get downgraded. Something that you might want to think about is that what's "left" in US politics is "center" in European politics, so if we open it to a popular vote, you might get outvoted. Personally, I think it'd be best if we evaluated sources based on whether they get the facts right, rather than whether they're left or right or center. Good Wikipedia editors can build a neutral article even if the sources have the "wrong" political slant. WhatamIdoing (talk) 09:14, 21 January 2025 (UTC) Wikipedia is not a forum. So let's stop this silliness. Simonm223 (talk) 12:36, 21 January 2025 (UTC) "But this means that you stopped being part of "we the audience" several years ago." The categories aren't mutually exclusive. Also, this is irrelevant. "If you want to influence RSP's contents in the future, then keep an eye on that noticeboard." From that noticeboard, I gather that Wikipedia is now a purple place: several reconsiderations and revisions denied. But it's pointless anyways, because something happened in this site in the last years so that discussions end with 10-20 votes favorable to non-consensual left-wing views that don't reflect society, thus should have no place in an encyclopedia that claims to be neutral. I actually found zero evidence to support the claim that HuffPost deserves to be treated better than Breitbart in a neutral encyclopedia. This isn't too different from a solo work of a random MrX - that also happens quite frequently. I mean... Drawing an analogy between Wikipedia and a printed encyclopedia, a chief editor is free to editorialize it to reflect only left-wing POV, but the problem is to claim neutrality. All the people involved in the typical RfC and editing of project pages won't consider for a second that they maybe, just maybe, are throwing the neutrality of their own project on the mud for not acknowledging that they are basing an entire encyclopedia on anecdotal samples of a dozen left-sympathetic people. Now, how this anecdotal leftist sample took over and is granted to win all critical decisions in the wiki, is beyond my research. You will keep editorializing this with a left bias until the worse happens (some right-leaning tech oligarch takes this project over) and it's not like my complaints will make any difference. I'm doing this mostly for the sake of historical record. The irony is that if a right-leaning "fascist" technocrat takes over this (very politically strategic) website, he/she probably will appoint an admin team more balanced and diverse than the current one. "Something that you might want to think about is that what's "left" in US politics is "center" in European politics, so if we open it to a popular vote, you might get outvoted. If this is true at all, let's open to popular community vote then. JC Beltrano (talk) 01:30, 22 January 2025 (UTC) Re: consensus of the general public. The general public is an idiot. What matters is the consensus of expert reliable sources. The general public may believe that earth is 6000 years old. Their view is irrelevant. What matters is the view of planetary scientists, geologists, and other qualified experts, who all agree that Earth's about 4.5 billion years old. If the general public has a problem with this, too bad. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 12:51, 21 January 2025 (UTC) "The general public is an idiot." Great! Wow, this is seriously some of the most reactionary statements I've read in a while. Let's raise the minimum voting age to 25 then. Let's restrict voting to only real estate-owner men. Why not change the main page from "Welcome" to "Welcome, idiot. We hope Wikipedia makes you less idiot"? "What matters is the consensus of expert reliable sources." What experts? Galileo was dismissed by the most credible board of experts of his time. Jordan Peterson is an expert, Alexandr Dugin is an expert, and taking the word literally, even Steve Bannon is an expert. But some experts are, somehow, being called by other experts "fascist" of "far-right". Joseph Goebbels was an expert, too. The Wiki is treating some experts as more expert than the others. Every "expert" association have their own set of oligarchs and trillionaire assets management funds behind them enough to raise conflict-of-interest questions. The best a free and neutral encyclopedia can do is to treat all oligarchs and billionaires equally, with the same degree of untrustworthiness. "What matters is the view of planetary scientists, geologists, and other qualified experts, who all agree that Earth's about 4.5 billion years old." This is a false equivalence. You are comparing apples to oranges. The approximate age of planet Earth is an objective datum that has been estimated using best evidence. So, what is the best evidence to estimate the political alignment of a media vehicle or a party? Well, reach to the civil society itself. The best political scientist gives more importance to the self-identification of voters of that party, and the perception of the audience of the media, than what his academic colleagues have to say individually, or to what the party declares officially. If you do a poll and the evidence shows that practically all the self-identified left-wing voters choose the Democratic Party, you, as a good political scientist, don't blindly conform to the self-designation of that party as "centrist", "big-tent" or "center-right". The best current evidence points to the Democratic Party being a center-left party, the same way it showed a center-right party until 1996. The people's perception and political action has greater relevance than whatever bullshit the party says about itself. Adolf Hitler put the -socialist suffix in his party, for instance. And the Republican Party doesn't self-identify officially as fascist. JC Beltrano (talk) 01:30, 22 January 2025 (UTC) Wikipedia is not a democracy and our original research cannot be used in Wikipedia articles. Wikipedia editors are indeed "scientifically minded"; see User:Guy Macon/Yes. We are biased. — Newslinger talk 14:22, 21 January 2025 (UTC) So the policy of the site is to just ignore problems. Fine, I guess? Just apathetically point to links. No arguments, no evidence for decisions. This deadpan attitude is making Wiki go downhill. No comment on Larry Singer's statements? He is an expert, you see. No shock for the current impossibility of referencing right-leaning sources on political topics while left-leaning sources aren't banned? No one here provided valid evidence that MSNBC is more reliable for politics (thus, presumably less biased) than Fox News and New York Post. Anyways, this section is ready for purple. JC Beltrano (talk) 01:30, 22 January 2025 (UTC) The policy of the site is that failing to kowtow to popular opinion, including but not limited to the popular opinion in the US, is not actually a problem. An argumentum ad Larryem sounds pretty irrelevant. I can agree that he's an expert on his own opinions, though. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:17, 22 January 2025 (UTC) Your very long comment has not actually identified a problem, especially because your premises are wrong. While MrX started the perennial sources list, it is incorrect to claim that "the bulk of it came arbitrarily from MrX's point of view in 07/28/2018". That list is a summary of discussions on the reliable sources noticeboard, a venue that has received contributions from thousands of editors representing a wide variety of views. There are plenty of right-leaning sources that are cited on Wikipedia, of which the ones listed here are a very small selection. If you have new evidence concerning MSNBC, Fox News, the New York Post, or any other source that you would like to start a discussion about, you are free to present that evidence on the noticeboard. Reading, understanding, and applying the policies and guidelines is a fundamental part of being a Wikipedia editor. I recommend reading the policy on consensus to learn about how editors make decisions on Wikipedia. Soliciting votes from readers to determine article content is not how Wikipedia is written, but you are welcome to create your own online encyclopedia on your personal website if you would like to engage in that experiment. And no, Larry Sanger is not an expert in politics, because experts in politics do not make statements like this. — Newslinger talk 03:01, 22 January 2025 (UTC) The key to political labeling (far-right, right, center, left, far-left) is INTEXT attribution. Wikipedia should not label things ourselves, we should inform our readers of the labels applied by our sources. Blueboar (talk) 14:39, 21 January 2025 (UTC) In an article, I completely agree with you. But the OP's concern appears to be that Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Perennial sources#New York Post does not endorse the newspaper's (lack of) fact checking and corrections. He'd probably be upset about the facts reported (and cited) in New York Post#Content, coverage and criticism, too, but the complaint itself is about our internal notes at WP:RSP. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:15, 21 January 2025 (UTC) What we consider a WP:RS depends on what the highest-quality sources available say (see WP:ACADEMICBIAS for some details about this, although WP:GLOBAL also explains why we can't just put our thumb on the scale and "balance" things for what an American audience considers balanced.) How we handle things like global warming, or COVID-19 treatments and its origins, or the efficacy of vaccines, or who won the 2020 US election, or the effectiveness of faith-healing, or how we cover the history of the Civil War, or how we describe fascism as an ideology - all of these things have clear-cut answers within the highest-quality academic sources. Individual editors might have strong opinions on them, and the public as a whole might not agree with those academic conclusions, but as an encyclopedia our job is to summarize those high-quality sources, not the random opinions of the public. So a vote is inappropriate; it's why we decide things based on a consensus-building process that places the most weight on policy-based arguments and high-quality sources, rather than just editors' gut feelings. In short, the leaning of a source is best determined the same way we determine everything else - by looking at high-quality (ideally academic) coverage of it. This may sometimes differ wildly from the perception of the public, but we're an encyclopedia, not a polling firm, so that means nothing to us. --Aquillion (talk) 19:06, 5 February 2025 (UTC)

journals supplements -clarification needed

Subject: scientific conferences, a.k.a. symposia

TL;DR; they are unreliable primary sources, even when "peer-reviewed"

The current version says:

"Symposia and supplements to academic journals are often (but far from always¹) unacceptable sources. They are commonly sponsored by industry groups with a financial interest in the outcome of the research reported. They may lack independent editorial oversight and peer review, with no supervision of content by the parent journal. Such articles do not share the reliability of their parent journal, being essentially paid ads disguised as academic articles. Such supplements, and those that² do not clearly declare their editorial policy and conflicts of interest, should not be cited."

1: This "far from always" lost me. I need clarifications. Are supplements that clearly declare their editorial policy and COI acceptable? It think they often are not:

a)They are still primary sources, so not ideal.

b) They often include early stage results (not reliable; please see the paragraph about symposia on the Medicine page Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources (medicine)).

c) And if they don't include early stage results, we should then cite the original paper rather than the conference. Note: conferences are NOT an acceptable type of secondary sources, because they don't follow any scientific protocol; unlike secondary studies (a.k.a. reviews).

Anyway, I understand that some flexibility is needed. So how about simply deleting that "(but far from always)" parenthesis?

2: "and those that": it doesn't make grammatical sense. If we are to keep the ambiguity on whether such supplements are valid sources, let's insert "and especially those that". Okay? Galeop (talk) 04:04, 1 February 2025 (UTC)

Supplements that are paid ads are a COI problem. Conference papers typically are not; they may lack peer review, but in many cases the authors would qualify as subject-matter experts. I think it would be helpful to more clearly differentiate between these cases, and more clearly point to SPS for the evaluation of the latter (and potentially introduce the MEDRS issue). Nikkimaria (talk) 06:07, 1 February 2025 (UTC)

It depends on the field. Conference papers in computer science are good; conference papers in pharmaceutical drug development are not so good. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:59, 3 February 2025 (UTC)

Just because of the COI issue (case 1), or are you thinking of another case-2 problem specific to that field? Nikkimaria (talk) 04:53, 3 February 2025 (UTC)

No, it's not just COIs. Conference papers don't get peer reviewed, so it's easier to overstate your results, use the wrong statistical test, or whatever other problems might get flagged and corrected in the peer review process.

See also Wikipedia talk:Reliable sources/Archive 72#Conference proceedings from two months ago. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:57, 3 February 2025 (UTC)

Ah, okay. I'd think "could have problems that would be caught by peer review" would be the case for any field, which is why it makes sense to treat these as SPS. Nikkimaria (talk) 05:17, 3 February 2025 (UTC)

I certainly can't speak to all research areas but every conference I presented at was peer reviewed. However, the review process typically wasn't as stringent as a conference paper review. At the same time we discouraged citing a conference paper if the same authors had a more in-depth journal article on the same subject. In my field a conference paper was typically a smaller chunk of research. For example, a conference paper might present the results of a new test method or control algorithm. The combination of that new method with others to show a new capability might result in a journal article. Often if you found a journal article it would contain work that was previously presented at a conference. This is why, in my area, it was fine to cite a conference paper but it typically had less depth, or substance vs the journal paper. Springee (talk) 05:32, 3 February 2025 (UTC)

https://ncu.libanswers.com/faq/364411 says that IEEE requires all conference papers to undergo peer review before publication, but that appears to be an outlier. It may be more/less frequent in some fields, and of course individual publishers will set their own standards. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:37, 3 February 2025 (UTC)

Independent or alternative media

In Wikipedia, for a long time we have considered legacy media (and their corporate offshoots) as usually "reliable", whereas we've considered independent journalists as self-published. With the massive shifts in the media landscape in recent years, as well as the politicizing of particular media outlets causing experienced journalists to "go independent", has this changed for us Wikipedia editors when evaluating whether a source is a reliable source or not? If so, have we updated any of our policies or guidelines to reflect changes?   ▶ I am Grorp ◀ 23:20, 2 February 2025 (UTC)

Has this changed? No. Will this change? Probably. Eventually.

Have we updated any policies or guidelines? Not yet. AFAIK we don't even have any essays explaining it. We could use a good pair of Wikipedia:You don't need to cite that the sky is blue vs Wikipedia:You do need to cite that the sky is blue to describe the challenges (e.g., figuring out which ones are good) and opportunities (e.g., greater voice for the previously voiceless). WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:01, 3 February 2025 (UTC)

Although I've become increasingly critical of traditional media I don'tthink that means we should shift to substack. While I have accepted that, at least for now, Wikipedia is stuck using news media in some circumstances I think the better response to the hollowing out of legacy news media is to pivot toward greater emphasis on academic journals and monographs rather than independent journos. WP:EXPERTSPS is a good policy for dealing with those who have relevant expertise and works correctly. Simonm223 (talk) 03:11, 3 February 2025 (UTC)

When it comes to commentary and analysis I suspect that the independent media may already be better than the legacy media if you can sift through the trash to find the good ones. The problem is how to do that and how do we decide which independents are the good ones. As an example, I suspect when it comes to analysis of an aviation incident, some of the YouTube channels run by current/former pilots provide much better analysis vs traditional media. However, how can we agree (and test) which of these alternative commentators really are the good ones? If they were publishing in academic journals we could use those articles but these topics often aren't of academic interest. I do think "alternative sources" is a struggle point for Wikipedia as the internet continues to allow independent voices to be heard (kind of like how Wikipedia allowed an alternative to mainstream encyclopedias). However, absent some clear way to filter the good from the bad I don't know how one would decide which sources are the good ones. Springee (talk) 04:19, 3 February 2025 (UTC)

Comment: Yeah, academic and monographs don't cover "events" in the same way that "news" does (both legacy and independent), so we cannot rely on academics to fill in the gap from the loss of news coverage by legacy media.   ▶ I am Grorp ◀ 04:46, 3 February 2025 (UTC)

In practice, confirmation bias rules, and that means that people decide which sources are the good ones by determining which sources reinforce their (i.e., the humans') prior/existing beliefs. If you believe the world is round, you will reject a source that says it is flat – and vice versa. If most editors disagree with you, then they will accuse you of "POV pushing" even if you are correct, because "POV pushing" is a label we give to people who want Wikipedia to represent more of the view they believe in and less of the view(s) that other editors believe in.

Research shows that people find sources credible when they match other sources, and discard outliers as incorrect. See also the famous Oil drop experiment#Millikan's experiment as an example of psychological effects in scientific methodology, in which the correct answer was repeatedly rejected because it didn't match the other sources. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:47, 3 February 2025 (UTC)

My questions on this subject aren't because of conflicts or edit wars, but are more about selecting an independent media source that covers something that isn't being covered by legacy (because, you know, doesn't get them clicks anymore, or they're walking on eggshells or have limited resources and your esoteric topic just isn't in their "mainstream" coverage anymore).   ▶ I am Grorp ◀ 04:50, 3 February 2025 (UTC)

If:

• it's uncontroversial content on an uncontroversial subject,
• it's a fairly niche subject (e.g., construction techniques for train stations in Victorian England), and
• it is used as a way of adding (e.g.,) colorful details to the article – not something you're trying to base the whole article upon or prove notability with,

then I'd try to find something that passes WP:EXPERTSPS and not worry too much beyond that. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:02, 3 February 2025 (UTC)

Updating RSSELF

We are talking about changing the wording in WP:SPS to be clearer (specifically, to remove the idea "third-party source" language). The current draft is in this comment at WT:V. Please join us if you're interested.

Please also see Wikipedia talk:Verifiability/SPS RfC for the larger conversation. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:00, 3 February 2025 (UTC)

Potential RS overhaul incoming

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

WP:1AM - nothing more to discuss here

---

I know we're still in the very early stages of whatever DOGE is doing, but it's starting to look like mainstream media outlets, in the US and around the world, were being funded by USAID specifically to defend and push the interests of one American political party over another.

This is just to put this on everyone's radar. If information continues to emerge that proves this was happening, the only right thing to do as an encyclopedia using these media outlets as sources is to seriously reevaluate their reliability. I trust that we can approach this from an academic perspective and put any personal political feelings aside. Big Thumpus (talk) 15:58, 5 February 2025 (UTC)

Reports from other government agencies should also be considered carefully given the replacement of many career positions with more political appointments. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 16:28, 5 February 2025 (UTC)

Would it help if we made a list of all the times editors have posted worries about this since Trump's re-election?

I think there's been a distinct upturn in both worries that US federal websites (e.g., cdc.gov) will post garbage and in complaints that "conservative news sources" (e.g., Fox News) are discouraged at WP:RSP. The people posting the worries don't seem to have been aware of any of the prior conversations. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:35, 5 February 2025 (UTC)

Putting on my four-cornered academic hat, with tassle, I think it'd be the height of foolishness to take any statement emerging from the department of childish acronyms at face value.

In all seriousness, you will find few people on Wikipedia who like the use of news media sources less than I do. However just a brief perusal of the news has shown that the leaders of the so-called Department of Governmental Efficiency have taken in for political grandstanding over anything resembling rigor with their chaotic preliminary efforts. I would hesitate to make any Wikipedia policy decision on the basis of things they said. Simonm223 (talk) 18:40, 5 February 2025 (UTC)

Reports from government agencies are usually considered WP:PRIMARY sources for the opinions of the government in any case, so we haven't really been using them for controversial stuff to begin with - but it does seem like Trump and Musk's aggressive push to politicize the civil service could reduce the reliability of some government data sources that we previously considered independent and reliable, at least while Trump is in office. What I'd be more concerned about, though, is their push to censor government-funded academic research, which seems to take the form of an overt list of no-no words. Depending on how the impacts of that push shake out, we might have to be cautious about US government-funded academic research that comes out while Trump is in office - especially about drawing inferences from the lack of the listed words, since they're being overtly censored. --Aquillion (talk) 18:56, 5 February 2025 (UTC)

Perhaps we'll even learn that we need to Wikipedia:Use our own words when we're writing articles. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:05, 5 February 2025 (UTC)

Just because a newspaper takes money from a specific source does not mean it is biased in favor of that source. anikom15 (talk) 20:19, 5 February 2025 (UTC)

I think the concern here is more like "If the owner of the newspaper is publicly giving large sums of money to a politician/political campaign, should we be suspicious of the owner's newspaper be biased about that politician/political campaign?"

The answer is probably yes, but the thing for editors to remember is that this is not a new problem. This problem existed a century before Wikipedia was created, and we've been dealing with it all along. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:07, 5 February 2025 (UTC)

The answer is no. It’s not our job to research the integrity of sources. If a reliable source is deemed reliable by consensus, it is reliable, regardless of where their money comes from or who they are politically affiliated with.

Consider NPR. It is an entirely liberal organization. They only hire liberals. They only write positively about liberals. They are reliable not because they are political neutral but because they are a reliable source of information. Reality isn’t neutral on the continuum of American politics. anikom15 (talk) 23:22, 5 February 2025 (UTC)

How can consensus about the reliability of a source be determined without researching the integrity of the source? Big Thumpus (talk) 23:40, 5 February 2025 (UTC)

Do you think that we aren't scrutinizing sources? – Muboshgu (talk) 00:02, 6 February 2025 (UTC)

Anikom, I doubt you even believe what you've written. Of course we have to figure out whether a source is outright lying. We need to figure out if they're biased (e.g., Russian vs Ukrainian news are going to have different viewpoints on their military conflict), and we need to understand how those biases might affect the sources ("According to a newspaper from that country..."). But that's a separate consideration from Integrity. The opposite of integrity is dishonesty or hypocrisy, not bias.

When Randolph Hearst told his newspapers to push for Cuba to revolt against their Spanish colonizers, that's a "bias" issue. When Fox News's staff said privately that they knew that Joe Biden won the 2020 election but told their viewers on air that Trump won, that's an "integrity" problem. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:19, 6 February 2025 (UTC)

I think that what they mean is essentially WP:NOTTRUTH. It's not our job to research whether sources are accurate ourselves (ie. not in the sense of personally verifying what they say, or judging sources based on whether we personally think that their reporting is right or wrong); it's our job to determine what other high-quality sources say about their accuracy. WP:RS is about a source having a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy, not about whether an editor personally believes they are accurate. This is necessary because otherwise an editor could eg. say "I think X is false, so we can't say it in the article voice"; and, when presented with ten high-quality sources saying X is true, they could dismiss them by saying "well, X is false, so those sources are all wrong and therefore unreliable." We ultimately have to judge things (including the reliability of sources) based on secondary coverage. --Aquillion (talk) 04:43, 6 February 2025 (UTC)

I'm trying to understand what you're saying here - it's our job to determine what other high-quality sources say about their accuracy. So if CNN says Axios is accurate that's good enough for Wikipedia? Just as an example. Big Thumpus (talk) 13:11, 6 February 2025 (UTC)

If Team MAGA thinks the Wikipedia is going to adapt reliable source determination based on "evidence" (if I could make those quotes 84-point font, I would) presented by an unelected, unappointed technocrat, they are sorely, sorely, sorely mistaken. Zaathras (talk) 22:03, 5 February 2025 (UTC)

Are you calling me "Team MAGA"? Big Thumpus (talk) 22:11, 5 February 2025 (UTC)

I am addressing potential new users who may have the mistaken notion that the declarations of a government employee (of a sort) empowers them with a mandate to affect change here. Zaathras (talk) 01:56, 6 February 2025 (UTC)

I see, today right-wing twitter is all atwitter about the idea that USAID funded Politico. This is nonsense. I recommend the OP take better care when following right-wing accounts that engage in conspiracy theories. – Muboshgu (talk) 23:14, 5 February 2025 (UTC)

Yeah, I agree. $8 million is a drop in the bucket compared to the billions of dollars spent elsewhere. And Politico is an organization that writes high-quality articles based on facts. anikom15 (talk) 23:25, 5 February 2025 (UTC)

I think part of what it comes down to is that Elon Musk does not have a history of being a reliable source of information. Remember that time he falsely accused a diver in Thailand of being a nonce on Twitter? Or the many other times that Musk has shared conspiracy theories, disinformation and just plain silly comments. So, even if Elon Musk makes claims about news outlets that have criticized him having a financial relationship with a US agency that was investigating his contracts in Ukraine, I don't see any good reason why Wikipedia should treat said claims as being at all reliable. Simonm223 (talk) 13:24, 6 February 2025 (UTC)

Are we just going to act like DOGE is not a legitimate US Government organization? This information is not coming from "Elon Musk", it's coming from DOGE which he happens to be in charge of. Yes, I understand that a government organization is a primary source, but when the entire conversation is centered on whether or not mainstream media outlets received sweetheart funding from a presidential administration that was politically opposed to the current one, should we not cautiously consider the mainstream media response to it?

The obvious Catch 22 here is that, of course, none of these mainstream outlets are going to report on a potential scandal that involves them, at least not in a way that aligns with what DOGE is reporting, so the encyclopedia will have "no reliable sources" to rely on.

I get that lots of people don't like Elon Musk, for myriad reasons, but letting our personal feelings about these people and organizations affect the accuracy of the encyclopedia is plainly inappropriate. Big Thumpus (talk) 13:36, 6 February 2025 (UTC)

I don't care whether the department of silly acronyms is a US government organization. That being said, I can tell you it is not a budgeted part of the US government but that's largely irrelevant. I'm saying its spokesperson is unreliable and we should not be making policy decisions based on the misinformation that he tends to spout. Simonm223 (talk) 13:41, 6 February 2025 (UTC)

DOGE is not a federal department/U.S. government organization. It's a misleadingly named private "initiative" funded by Musk. Space4TCatHerder🖖 14:06, 6 February 2025 (UTC)

A renamed federal organization formed by presidential executive order is "not a US government organization"??? [3]https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IN/IN12493 Big Thumpus (talk) 14:16, 6 February 2025 (UTC)

Big Thumpus: The answer to your initial proposal is no. There will not be a major overhaul of what we consider a reliable source on the basis of what the agency of stale memes says. I think nothing more needs to be said at this time. Simonm223 (talk) 14:19, 6 February 2025 (UTC)

I'm genuinely discouraged by the response to this. Our personal political beliefs should not get in the way of ensuring the integrity of the encyclopedia. Big Thumpus (talk) 14:22, 6 February 2025 (UTC)

Leavitt was producing "alternative facts". According to the Washington Post, USAID paid a total of $44,000 for Politico Pro subscriptions during fiscal years 2023 and 2024 (also lower amounts to other news outlets because their subscriptions are cheaper than Pro). In 2023, Republicans paid a whole lot more for their Politico Pro subscriptions: Speaker of the House $9,060, House Committee on Agriculture $84,000, House Committed on Energy $58,000. And in the first nine months of 2024, "38 Republicans in the House spent over $300,000 on Politico subscriptions ... and committees led by Republicans expensed almost $500,000 of Politico subscriptions". Space4TCatHerder🖖 13:29, 6 February 2025 (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.

New FAQ suggestion

Can we add to the FAQ

Q: "Does this (whichever) election change source reliability guidelines?" A: "No." Simonm223 (talk) 19:09, 5 February 2025 (UTC)

Preprints bullet, take 2

I'd previously suggested modifying the text of the Preprints bullet, but the discussion didn't get much participation, so I'm checking again. That bullet currently says in part:

Preprints, such as those available on repositories like arXiv, medRxiv, bioRxiv, or Zenodo are not reliable sources. Research that has not been peer-reviewed is akin to a blog, as anybody can post it online. Their use is generally discouraged, unless they meet the criteria for acceptable use of self-published sources, and will always fail higher sourcing requirements like WP:MEDRS.

I propose replacing that with:

Preprints, such as those available on repositories like arXiv, medRxiv, bioRxiv, or Zenodo, have not undergone peer-review and therefore are not reliable sources of scholarship. They are self-published sources, as anyone can post a preprint online. Their use is generally discouraged, and they will always fail higher sourcing requirements like WP:MEDRS.

Reasons for changing it: "Research that has not been peer-reviewed is akin to a blog" simply isn't accurate. Not only do blogs seldom cite existing literature, but chapters in edited academic volumes may not be peer-reviewed per se, yet edited volumes are nonetheless often RSs (e.g., with edited volumes, chapters may be reviewed by the volume's editor(s) instead of sending them to outside reviewers and the editor making a decision on the basis of those outside reviews). The purpose for comparing them to blogs was to note that they're self-published, and it's better just to say that. I also removed the phrase about the criteria for acceptable use of self-published sources, as preprints generally come from "expert" sources, which is an exception for using SPS, and it's contradictory to say that they "are not reliable sources" in the first sentence and then say "unless they meet the criteria for acceptable use of self-published sources" in the third sentence. Notwithstanding that preprints generally come from expert sources, their use is discouraged because we don't want readers to confuse them with peer-reviewed research, they're primary sources for the novel claims (whereas my guess is that other expert SPS are less likely to be primary sources), and editors should use reliable non-self-published sources when available, which often exist in the peer-reviewed literature. Does anyone object to the change or have improvements to suggest? FactOrOpinion (talk) 17:40, 9 February 2025 (UTC)

Just to note the expection for self-published sources is not that the author is an expert but is that the author has also been previously published by other reliable sources. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 18:43, 9 February 2025 (UTC)

So the Their use is generally discouraged... part is saying they are discouraged unless they authors expertise has been independently recognised by others sources. Maybe if your version just wikilinked the policy "They are self-published..." -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 18:44, 9 February 2025 (UTC)

Academic preprints are frequently published by people whose "expertise has been independently recognised by others sources" (e.g., via other academics citing their publications). The WP:RS advice on peer-reviewed articles is that they're "primary sources, extreme caution is advised." Preprints are less reliable, since they haven't been peer-reviewed. And yes, appropriate wikilinks would be included, as they are currently; sorry for not having copied the wikilinks into my quotes. FactOrOpinion (talk) 19:31, 9 February 2025 (UTC)

Could we shorten it to:

"Preprints, such as those available on repositories like arXiv, medRxiv, bioRxiv, or Zenodo, are non-peer-reviewed self-published sources. Their use is generally discouraged. They are not permitted for medical content." WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:42, 10 February 2025 (UTC)

I'm OK with the first alternative, though I don't really see the point. I don't like WhatamIdoing's shortened version. Also, AD's unless they authors expertise has been independently recognised by others sources is bunk, see WP:SPSPREPRINT for why. Preprints of previous published authors are not any more reliable than any other preprints, at least for novel claims. These are worse than say, self-hosted course notes from a recognized expert. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 06:34, 10 February 2025 (UTC)

It's probably time to point out again that Grigori Perelman's work on the Poincaré conjecture and the geometrization conjecture exists only as a set of arXiv preprints, has been thoroughly vetted, and is widely accepted. They not only can be cited as sources in those two articles, they must be cited. And they are reliable, not merely because Perelman is a recognized expert, but because they have gone through a review process that is less conventional but more strenuous than most journal peer review. The attitude that a preprint can never be a reliable source is bunk. Preprints are usually not reliable sources, and we should say that, but we should not write our guidelines in a way that forbids us from citing sources that in certain cases must be cited. Both the current and the proposed wording make blanket statements that preprints are not reliable, without exception, and such blanket statements are wrong. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:43, 10 February 2025 (UTC)

This rule was mostly shaped by COVID, and I'm not sure that it's been fully considered in any other field (apparently not in math, for example). WhatamIdoing (talk) 09:14, 10 February 2025 (UTC)

Arguably, Perelmen's papers aren't preprints, since (AFAIK) there was no intention of submitting them for publication in a journal. arXiv publications aren't limited to preprints. Re: the wording, would it be sufficient to change "are not reliable sources of scholarship" to "generally are not reliable sources of scholarship"? FactOrOpinion (talk) 13:54, 10 February 2025 (UTC)

I question whether we need to be making a statement about whether certain sources are "reliable sources of scholarship", since what we care about is "reliable sources for article content". Today's newspaper is not a reliable source of scholarship, but it's still a reliable source. A preprint could be a reliable source (e.g., for the fact that he posted it) without being a reliable source of scholarship. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:59, 10 February 2025 (UTC)

Point taken, but the preprints section is listed under WP:SCHOLARSHIP. A preprint can certainly be used for a statement that the person posted it and where they work. Assuming that the person is a recognized expert, it could easily be a reliable secondary source for statements about others' peer-reviewed scholarship (discussed in order to situate their novel claims), though if they serve as secondary sources in that way, odds are that there are non-SPS that do so as well. As David notes, they're sometimes reliable sources for novel ideas, though in general that's determined by seeing how those ideas are subsequently treated by other scholars. (I'm actually curious whether Perelman's papers were cited by WP before they were discussed in some other RS.) I actually wouldn't call Perelman's papers preprints. In a previous discussion, @XOR'easter pointed out that scholars sometimes post other kinds of work to repositories like arXiv. So I'm no longer sure what this section should say, though I think it can be improved relative to what's there now. FactOrOpinion (talk) 20:38, 10 February 2025 (UTC)

Perelman's papers aren't preprints, because they were never submitted, but that's a bit of a technicallity. Normally they would be uncitable as an unreviewed publication, but because they've attracted attention, and got positively reviewed by experts (though not in the traditionally preprint -> journal manner), they've become citable. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 20:56, 10 February 2025 (UTC)

Headbomb, if there's something specific that is missing/you dislike in my shorter version, I'd love to know more about it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 09:13, 10 February 2025 (UTC)

My claim was only that the guidance in WP:SPS isn't that someone needs to be an expert, but rather that they need to be a previously recognised expert. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 12:46, 10 February 2025 (UTC)

I think the problem here is that of the quality of the source matching the content it wants to support. I suspect everyone would be ok with a marginally reliable source bring used to support the release date of an album, but not a preprint for the morbidity rate of a novel disease. Even though a preprint from a qualified and recognised expert is a higher quality source than some semi-random website, the semi-random website would obviously never be reliable in the context that preprints are going to be used. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 12:52, 10 February 2025 (UTC)

Hatting discussions

I've noticed that there are a few editors who seem to follow this page and close discussions that they deem to be over. I would kindly ask that they stop. This is a pretty obscure region of Wikipedia so we shouldn't be surprised when a dozen people don't show up to endorse or even discuss a particular viewpoint. Closing/archiving these discussions prematurely does no one any favors, and can even appear as a group of editors closing ranks and trying to remove the discussions from public view. I've seen talk page discussions that are a decade old remain open; why should discussions about foundational aspects of the encyclopedia be closed after just several days have passed?

We should welcome civil disagreement and discussion. Constantly dismissing editors' concerns about NPOV and RS is completely counter-productive to the mission of the encyclopedia. Big Thumpus (talk) 15:57, 10 February 2025 (UTC)

This is not a forum. Off-topic asides like suggesting throwing away WP:NPOV in favour of voting on ideology is entirely inappropriate for this page. So it was closed as an off-topic digression. Your proposal that we redefine reliable sources on the basis of the US government was archived as WP:1AM - IE: only you were carrying on an argument that was seen as settled by everyone else.

So, no, people will not stop clerking this page just because you want to keep arguing. Simonm223 (talk) 16:07, 10 February 2025 (UTC)

Where did anyone ever suggest that NPOV should be thrown away??? And like I said, the fact that one person brought a topic to an obscure noticeboard and didn't immediately find a dozen other editors who agreed should surprise precisely no one. If you don't like the discussion, that's fine - don't join in. But closing RS discussions on the RS board within a few days is a terrible look when topics remain open for months or years otherwise. Big Thumpus (talk) 16:20, 10 February 2025 (UTC)

The only reason I haven't hatted this off-topic thread is it might be too pointed. So instead I'll recommend you read WP:DROPTHESTICK and take on its suggestions. Nearly all you've done since you joined Wikipedia is complain that sources, Wikipedia as a whole and other specific editors are biased against the US Republican party, Elon Musk and Donald Trump. This has been undertaken with effectively 0 demonstration of an understanding of WP:NPOV, WP:AGF or WP:RS say. I strongly suggest that you should stop editing contentious topics until such time as you develop a basic understanding of Wikipedia policy. Because these continuous complaints are becoming tendentious. Simonm223 (talk) 16:25, 10 February 2025 (UTC)

Wow that's a lot of aspersions cast in a single post. What a shame. Big Thumpus (talk) 16:33, 10 February 2025 (UTC)

I would also suggest you read WP:RGW and take on its advice. Simonm223 (talk) 16:36, 10 February 2025 (UTC)

Kindly don't assume that my motivations involve anything other than helping to write an accurate, neutral encyclopedia. I still believe that a world exists where you and I can find common ground on what I'm bringing up. Big Thumpus (talk) 16:42, 10 February 2025 (UTC)

In re "Nearly all you've done...": Does anyone know whether there's a tool being developed to track Wikipedia:Arbitration/Index/Palestine-Israel articles#Balanced editing restriction? If it's successful (e.g., in reminding the restricted individuals that there is a world outside the hot-button topic that has been consuming their attention), I could imagine it being extended to WP:AP2 and other Wikipedia:Contentious topics. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:05, 10 February 2025 (UTC)

Why should we actively limit an editor's participation in talk page or noticeboard discussions? Main article pages, sure, go for it. But I don't see a reason why there should be a nominal cap on "edits" that are simply part of discussions behind-the-scenes. Big Thumpus (talk) 17:09, 10 February 2025 (UTC)

Because they can be disruptive, as shown by a long history of topic bans that include talk pages, plus what is covered in that ARBPIA case. CMD (talk) 17:20, 10 February 2025 (UTC)

But there is already a Wikipedia policy regarding disruptive editing. Saying outright that someone can only have 30% of their edits in a particular topic per month ignores the basic aspect of discussions requiring a certain amount of back and forth - or, you know, "discussion". Directing administrative efforts towards "hard" discussion filtering like this seems counterproductive when those energies could perhaps be better applied towards more stringently enforcing the already existing disruptive editing policy. Big Thumpus (talk) 17:30, 10 February 2025 (UTC)

This is the wrong venue for this discussion as it has literally nothing to do with source reliability. Simonm223 (talk) 17:33, 10 February 2025 (UTC)

I'm going to answer this question in a generic fashion, because someone else will have the same question in the future, and they might stumble across this discussion.

"Hatting" (hiding/collapsing) and "closing" (boxing up) discussions is done to signal that the discussion does not need to be continued. In particular, "hatting" usually means that the discussion isn't even worth non-participants reading (e.g., a rant from a sockpuppet, a completely off-topic discussion, a minor fight between two participants). "Closing" usually means only that further comments are unwanted or unnecessary.

One of the problems with an online communication environment is that it's hard to read the room when the rest of the room is just typing words on a screen. Different people can have different ideas about whether there's a point to continuing a discussion, and the template serves as a way for participants to signal that they're done.

The process we expect works like this:

• First, don't do this at all if you're an inexperienced editor, and don't use it very often no matter who you are. Outside of Wikipedia:Closure requests, experienced editors should think of this as something they can do a couple of times a year, not as an everyday thing.
• Add it only if you think that continuing the discussion will be a complete waste of time (or have other harmful effects). Avoid doing this if you're feeling flustered or irritated. It's better to silently WP:SHUN a discussion than to be on the wrong end of a behavioral complaint, and if you get a reputation for shutting down conversations that others want to continue, or that others thing you're 'losing', then you could end up with a TBAN.
• If you started a discussion that someone else closed, be wary of re-opening it. Wait for someone else do it, or ask if people would like to continue discussing it.
• If you didn't start the discussion, but you disagree with ending it, then you can remove the tags. Be careful that, even if you didn't start the discussion, you aren't re-opening the discussion because you feel a burning desire to keep arguing. Yes, someone is wrong on the internet again, but the addition of these tags is a signal that someone believes those people are going to keep being wrong no matter how clear, forceful, or intelligent your arguments are. If you have something particularly important to say (e.g., highly relevant diffs or sources), then one alternative is to get the WP:LASTWORD by posting a final comment underneath the box. That last comment should sound something like Here are the diffs I promised you two days ago or Please see related discussion at WT:UPPERCASE and not even remotely like I'm right and you're wrong, so I still disagree.
• Do not edit war over these tags. If you add or remove the tags, and someone reverts your change, then let someone else decide whether to re-add or re-remove them. In particular, note that if you remove them, it's not unusual for people to silently WP:SHUN further discussion.

One way to interpret the recent closure is as if it were a mostly silent conversation from everyone who looked at the page:

• A: Hey, I think this is pointless. We're not making progress towards a resolution. How about we just stop? [adds tags]
• B: Yeah, you're probably right. People are just repeating the same things, without anyone's mind being changed. [silently leaves tags in place]
• C: This is probably a waste of time, but there's no need to hide the discussion. [changes tags]
• D: That looks about right. [silently leaves tags in place]
• E: That might be overkill, but I don't feel like disagreeing. [silently leaves tags in place]

Which takes me back to the first point: It's hard to read the room online. So if your discussion gets boxed up, then you should wait to see whether someone will engage in meatball:DefendEachOther. If nobody does, then the odds are high that they all agree that further discussion is not helpful. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:15, 10 February 2025 (UTC)

All I'm trying to point out is something I think should be obvious to experienced editors - that the various noticeboards are a niche area of the project, and while there may be a handful of editors who choose to frequent them, those editors are naturally not representative of the attitudes of editors as a whole and therefore should not act as the adjudicators of the topic of whatever noticeboard they're on.

To bring it back around to RS, I've noticed a pattern on Wikipedia and I'm sure I'm not the first to notice it. Someone brings an NPOV concern to a talk page, they're told "the POV is actually neutral because it's written about this way in many RS", the original complainant says "okay but maybe the RS aren't appropriately neutral themselves", they're told "take it to RS", it's taken to RS, and then this happens. The discussion is brushed off and hatted by RS Frequenters who dismiss it as Yet Another Annoying Discussion. Surely we can break out of this cycle somehow. Big Thumpus (talk) 18:42, 10 February 2025 (UTC)

If it should be obvious, then perhaps the experienced editors are already aware of all this, and do not need it pointed out to them? Perhaps the various issues you think are obvious have been considered before? CMD (talk) 19:44, 10 February 2025 (UTC)

Very explicitly the interaction between WP:NPOV and WP:RS is rather intentional. Our definition of neutrality is to refer to reliable sources. Source reliability guides what we see as neutral and not the other way around.

I think this is where you're facing your frustrating cycle. Because what Wikipedia describes as neutral is driven by source, you are rightly told at WP:NPOV/N that a reliably sourced statement is sufficiently neutral and that if you think there's a question of reliability you should take it to WP:RS/N. That's correct. The problem is that source reliability does not have an ideological test and is instead determined by things like reputation for accuracy, clear and transparent corrections policy, academic credential, editorial control, etc. Unreliable right-wing outlets like Breitbart and the Daily Mail aren't unreliable because they're right-wing. They're unreliable because they fail most of those other reliability guidelines. They publish disinformation, have opaque editorial control, rarely correct mistakes, don't have appropriate academic credentials, have a compromised editorial setup, etc. And so, yeah, you won't be successful complaining that we shouldn't treat Politico as reliable on the basis of their assumed political alignment. Because that's not how any of this works here.

And, yes, it gets really annoying for the regulars. Because you might make one or two complaints about your fears about the ideological commitments of sources. But the people who watch these noticeboards see one or two complaints of this nature daily. And it gets deeply tedious to have to tell people over and over that whatever Elon Musk says about USAID has absolutely nothing to do with how we adjudicate the source reliability of American mainstream news magazines. Simonm223 (talk) 21:06, 10 February 2025 (UTC)

Simonm223 (talk) 21:06, 10 February 2025 (UTC)

"okay but maybe the RS aren't appropriately neutral themselves", they're told "take it to RS" I don't know who said that but it's wrong, sources absolutely do not have to be neutral (see WP:RSBIAS). There is no need to bring that question anywhere. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 21:02, 10 February 2025 (UTC)

@Big Thumpus, it sounds like you're confusing this page (WT:RS), which is a place to discuss the WP:RS guideline, including whether the text of WP:RS should be adjusted in some way, and the Reliable Sources Noticeboard (WP:RSN), which is a place to ask whether a specific source is a reliable source for specific content in a WP article (and sometimes for other discussion, such as whether a source is more generally reliable, or whether a source is self-published). If someone told you to "take it to RS," they were almost certainly referring to the RSN, not this page. This page is not a noticeboard. ActivelyDisinterested is correct that a source does not need to be neutral. FactOrOpinion (talk) 21:05, 10 February 2025 (UTC)