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Revision as of 02:43, 12 November 2010

Before posting, check the archives and list of perennial sources for prior discussions. Context is important: supply the source, the article it is used in, and the claim it supports.

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Unreliable source and falsification of sources by User:Jrkso

User:Jrkso is inserting wrong information in the article Afghanistan. And to make his edits look "sourced", he is selectively quoting and linking unrelated sources. For example, he stubbornly sticks to the fabricated claim that in an alleged letter (which seems to be completely unknown to real scholars), Alexander called the inhabitants of modern Afghanistan "lions". To mislead the readers, he links this fabricated nonsese to another quote which has absolutely NOTHING to do with it. From that source, he selectively picks a few words which suite him, totally falsifying the message. Here is the original quote from the book:

• The importance of this particular route has always been minimal because of the harsh conditions along the way. Alexander the Great followed this rout in the opposite direction, thereby almost losing his life and his army. (The Afghans; Vogelsang, Willem; 2002; p. 11)

It is very obvious that the author is talking about the harsh geographic conditions, i.e. the hot and rough desert terrain south of the Hindu Kush in which Alexander and his army almost died on his way back to Iran from India (they had no water in the desert of Makran and Gedrosia). It is mentioned in the article Alexander the Great in the section Alexander_the_great#Indian_campaign. Jrkso, on the other hand, selectively picks the last part of the information, and turns it into this:

• Almost losing his life and his army, Alexander is believed to have described in a letter to his mother the inhabitants of what is now Afghanistan as lion-like brave people: "I am involved in the land of a 'Leonine' (lion-like) and brave people, where every foot of the ground is like a wall of steel, confronting my soldier. You have brought only one son into the world, but everyone in this land can be called an Alexander." —Interpretation of Alexander's words by contemporary writer, Abdul Sabahuddin

He falsifies the source, making it look like "lion-like Afghans almost killed Alexander and his army".

Despite being asked to provide reliable sources or prove that the author of that one book is a reliable expert, he has constantly rejected or fails to provide any information regarding the author Abdul Sabahuddin. Who is this guy?! What are his sources for this alleged letter?! Is this guy a scholar and expert on Afghanistan's history?! Does he know Greek and is he an expert on Greek history or language?! And why is Jrkso stubbornly claiming that this man is a reliable source, although the fabricated nonsense regarding that alleged letter cannot be found in any scholarly source?! And to make it worse: he believes that "because he is right", it is my job and that of the Misplaced Pages community to prove him wrong. In other words: it does not matter what sources he uses. If I have a problem with it, I have to prove it wrong. I did try to google the author and the message, but I was not able to find anything. The author does not have any other books, his name is not registered in any university, and the claim is not supported by any scholarly work. Yet, Jrkso still persists that he is right and all others are wrong. Now, he has even ordered me to write an email to the publishing house that published that book and ask them for information on the author. I refused, and now he is calling me "lazy", still persisting on his POV. Some admin help is needed. I have tagged the article, and I am once again asking Jrkso to provide RELIABLE; SCHOLARLY sources for this obvious nonsense. If there is such a mysterious letter, then it should be no problem to find 2 or 3 other sources. Tajik (talk) 11:24, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

Please follow the instructions at the top of the page regarding clear, full citations of the sources in question. If the source for the second statement is "Abdul Sabahuddin. . " Then the Abdul Sabahuddin text is unreliable as a source is not specified. Fifelfoo (talk) 11:53, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

It's palpable nonsense. There are no letters written by Alexander surviving, of course. Misrepresenting sources is a blockable offence, which could be taken to WP:ANI. Paul B (talk) 11:58, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

Thank you! It'S not just about the author, it's the nonsense propagated by that no-name author. I am removing it from the article. Tajik (talk) 12:06, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

All we have from Alexander is a letter to the people of Chios engraved on a stone. In fact, Alexander is noteworthy for the lack of contemporary written evidence. There are some well known forged documents, which perhaps the author is claiming to be genuine. Dougweller (talk) 12:39, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

User:Tajik's behaviour is very aggressive and annoying. He needs to chill out, be civil, and stop lying about me. The Alexander letter info was there in the article for months and when Tajik attempted to remove it the other day I reverted his edit. So now he's angry and is attacking me. He's asking me to show him the original letter written by Alexander in 330 BC. I believe this is a reliable source. Everything in the book is backed by these so many top scholars-professors-historians-contributors, the author has listed the sources in the references list. I picked one of these and you can read for yourself about what happened between Alexander and the local tribes in the Afghan area. It's between pages 68 to 88. So therefore, I didn't falsify anything. On a separate issue, Tajik is trying to falsify information at the Ethnic groups in Afghanistan. He's trying to put the result of an opinion poll about the security situation in Afghanistan as a census report. This is clearly misleading and he knows it too.--Jrkso (talk) 13:33, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

Jrkso, can you read the top of the page where it says, "A full citation of the source in question. For example Strickland, D.S. and Worth, B.S. (1980) "Books for the children" Early Childhood Education Journal 8 (2): 58--60."? We appreciate citations here. Abdul Sabbahudin, History of Afghanistan, New Delhi-2: N.K. Singh / Global Vision Publishing House, 2008. is not a reliable source. The bibliographic information page says, "Responsibility…for this title is entirely that of the author." which is the publisher disclaiming any review over the work. Fifelfoo (talk) 13:45, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

Fifelfoo, all books come with the same or similar "Responsibility…for this title is entirely that of the author." mentionings. And you forgot to explain what makes Abdul Sabbahudin, History of Afghanistan, New Delhi-2: N.K. Singh / Global Vision Publishing House, 2008. an unreliable source.--Jrkso (talk) 13:52, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

SELF makes it unreliable as the publisher takes no responsibility for the work.

Hill, Howard and Landsbury, Industrial relations: an Australian introduction Melbourne: Longman Cheshire, 1982 doesn't; nor does Pitt and Smith (eds), The Computer Revolution in public administration: the impact of information technology on government Brighton: Wheatsheaf, 1984; nor does Anderson and Zinsser, A history of their own: women in Europe from prehistory for the present Volume I, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1988. Is is very unusual for publishers to disclaim responsibility for the works they publish. So much so that this is the first instance I have ever seen of a non-vanity press disclaiming responsibility for a work they publish. Fifelfoo (talk) 14:03, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

I don't the have time to list million books here which all give these same warnings about not taking any responsibility, etc. You know there are many but believe what you want. Here is one I quickly found. What you have to say about this?--Jrkso (talk) 14:20, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

You linked to a report whose disclaimer states that the publisher's opinion is not the author's opinion. 1) Reports aren't books. 2) The Strategic Studies Institute didn't disclaim the factual content of the work, and remains responsible, in particular the report says, "Smith of SSI has carefully edited their works...". In the case of Sabbahudin, History of Afghanistan, the publisher disclaims any responsibility Fifelfoo (talk) 14:28, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

Fifelfoo is correct, the source is unreliable in comparison to the vast array of scholarly works published by university presses and peer reviewed journals. The claim of a letter is extraordinary, and requires extraordinary sourcing. --Nuujinn (talk) 14:10, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

In other words you're saying we can make anything reliable and anything unreliable. It's fine with me because these things are not worth arguing over. The fact is that Misplaced Pages is useless without these sources.--Jrkso (talk) 14:18, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

No, the problem is that no reputable scholar claims we have letters actually written by Alexander. What we do have are reports of such letters by Plutarch, some of which are considered to be forgeries, others taken more seriously. Your source doesn't make this clear, nor does it give any indication of where the letter might be found so that it can be attributed correctly. If you can find the first known copy of this letter, presumably in Plutarch, it might be possible to use it in some fashion depending upon how it is attributed, if it is considered to be a forgery, etc. Dougweller (talk) 15:14, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

The letter is not the issue. The issue is that Alexander and his army had very hard time with the eastern Iranian tribes in and around Arachosia, the ancestor's of Afghans. The letter confirms this and so does this book, pages 68-88. Fifelfoo and Nuujinn are saying that the book by Abdul Sabahuddin is unreliable and made up a very poor excuse, but you skipped that to saying the letter is the problem. They didn't take the time to read these books that I cited. A. Sabahuddin doesn't claim that Alexander himself wrote the letter with his hand. Someone wrote it for him but in it Alexander told his mom that the eastern Iranian tribes were determined fighters. These eastern Iranian tribes are the same people that the US-NATO forces are fighting with today.--Jrkso (talk) 16:37, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

Doug just a remark. There were more Greek historians who wrote about the campaign and whose work survives at least partially. Many were closer to the events than Plutarch. I can't remember off-hand what correspondence they report if any, but at least I'd say that editors do not need to think that the only near contemporary source would be Plutarch.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 16:33, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

Does anyone other than Jrkso consider Sabahuddin's book a reliable source? Also, Jrkso, looking at the book you mention, pages 68-88. I see no mention of Alexander. --Nuujinn (talk) 16:50, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

Are you sure you don't see Alexander mentioned in this book . Is this some kind of a joke?--Jrkso (talk) 17:07, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict):::::::I meant that it is Plutarch where we find reported letters from Alexander, 30 I believe, although as I've said, they are controversial. We can't use the letter to confirm anything. I don't know what this 'someone wrote it for him' is about. Dougweller (talk) 16:54, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

Jrkso, please cease refactoring your edits, it's making the conversation considerably more difficult than it need be. --Nuujinn (talk) 16:58, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

Dougweller, the 'someone wrote it for him' is a response to your "No, the problem is that no reputable scholar claims we have letters actually written by Alexander." Alexander almost losing his life and his army , is that also unreliable? This was removed from Afghanistan. The guy who reported me at the top (User:Tajik) is an Afghan but acting like someone who is anti-Afghan. I find it strange that he is removing all of this interesting information.--Jrkso (talk) 17:07, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

Nuujinn, I would appreciate it if you leave me alone.--Jrkso (talk) 17:11, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

Do you mean that you're assuming someone wrote it for him? And I can't think of any reason to use Sabadhuddin's book when we have so many books that are unquestionably reliable sources. Dougweller (talk) 17:44, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

It doesn't matter who wrote the letter, it is claimed "from Alexander to his mother". Read Misplaced Pages:Truth ("The threshold for inclusion in Misplaced Pages is verifiability, not truth—that is, whether readers are able to check that material added to Misplaced Pages has already been published by a reliable source, not whether we think it is true...") and Misplaced Pages:Verifiability, not truth. There are so many garbage sources cited in Misplaced Pages, I can't believe that this book is called unreliable here. Maybe before you guys start criticising it you should review the book and learn more about it and the author, "Professors, scholars, trainers, members of the publishing fraternity, and all those interested in the subject would find this book both interesting and informative." Sabahuddin has written a number of books , and everything he stated in his books are properly referenced. If anyone has doubts they can search and verify the info very easily like how I did it. The mention of Alexander's letter and calling the "eastern Iranian tribes as lion-like brave people" by Sabahuddin links to János Harmatta's this scholarly UNESCO work, which is a compilation by Asian-American-European professors (i.e. Ahmad Hasan Dani and many others). This János Harmatta's work obtained its info from the early historians such as Arrian, Strabo, and others. So, in order for someone to claim that A. Sabahuddin is an unreliable source, they must find a proven mistake in his book. We have to respect people from all over the world here, we can't be biased toward Muslims or Asians. We have to accept their work the same way we accept western scholars.--Jrkso (talk) 18:52, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

The guy who reported me here (User:Tajik) stated: "I have removed a dibious claim regarding an alleged letter by Alexander the Great in which he praises the present inhabitants of Afghanistan. That information is given by only one author (who happens to be Afghan) and cannot be found in any other sources..." That's how this whole issue began. Tajik himself is an Afghan but he calls the author A. Sabahuddin an Afghan, where does it mention that Sabahuddin is an Afghan? I like to know why is Tajik biased toward Afghans when he himself is Afghan?--Jrkso (talk) 19:16, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

Jrkso, the issue is not about nationality, but about reliability. Unfortunately, like many other Pashtuns here (at least those I have met here), you somehow believe that "national interests" need to be defended on Misplaced Pages, while I believe that only scholarly and reliable information should be used. Of course, there is always some disagreement about what's reliable and what's not. But when it comes to Alexander, Alexander's campaigns and the occupation of Persia, there are many good sources. Of all those sources, you have picked a source that is totally unreliable. You are not even able to provide any information regarding the author, and as shown above, even the publishing house explicitly mentions that it is not taking responsibility for the book's message, i.e. it only reflects the author's personal view. So far, you have failed to come up with any good source, but you insist that the one book - written by an author who is a total mystery and very obviously neither an expert on Afghanistan nor on Greek history or language - is a reliable source. Well, it is NOT, and the only one who does not accept this FACT is you. Again: this is not about national interests. Yes, I am an Afghan. But that does not mean that I have to support all kinds of nonsense only because that nonsense is published and propagated by another Afghan. That Afghan author - as an individual - is an unreliable source. Period. As for János Harmatta: he is an expert on East Iranian languages (he is NOT a historian) and has published works on the language of the Xiongnu. He is a reliable scholar, but so far, we do not have any reliable work by him supporting your claim. Even the book you have posted above (History of Civilizations of Central Asia, p. 70ff, A.H. Dani/P. Bernard) does not make such a claim. On page 70, it is even mentioned that we do not even know why Alexander took this or that route. It's pure speculation. So: where does Abdul Sabahuddin have his information from? Only because an unreliable author makes a claim and uses the name of János Harmatta as a source, it does not mean that it is correct. If you are convinced that this mysterious letter was directly mentioned by Harmatta, then it should be absolutely no problem for you to find a better source. Until then, this alleged letter should not be mentioned. Not every published work is reliable. I could write a book, claiming that Alexander was a Chinese and then claim that my information is based on research by János Harmatta. Would it then be OK to use my book as a "reliable, published source"?! I do not think so! As for the quote from the book "The Afghans" (Vogelsang, Willem; 2002; p. 11), the author is referring to an incident that took place 500km further south, at the coast of the Arabian Sea in the desert of Makran, in what is now Pakistan. Jrkso selectively quoted a single part of the information, drew it into his own POV regarding that mysterious letter, falsifying the quote by Vogelsang. That "interesting information", as Jrkso describes it, should be quoted PROPERLY and NOT selectively. Tajik (talk) 19:29, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

First, not everyone can write a book. Most book writers that deal with history are qualified and they will never make any stupid or ridiculous claims such as calling worldly recognized Greek or Macedonian man a Chinese. Secondly, what do you have to say about Misplaced Pages:Truth ("The threshold for inclusion in Misplaced Pages is verifiability, not truth—that is, whether readers are able to check that material added to Misplaced Pages has already been published by a reliable source, not whether we think it is true...") and Misplaced Pages:Verifiability, not truth Can you tell me where do you find that A. Sabahuddin is Afghan?--Jrkso (talk) 20:49, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

I repeat, all we have about letters from Alexander is the inscription on a stone and much later reports of letters. If evena report of this letter exists, find a source which says where it originates. Even the best academics can make mistakes, and I've searched for such a letter and couldn't find it, although I haven't yet looked directly at Plutarch. Dougweller (talk) 20:06, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

Yes, and we are not short of sources published by university presses and peer reviewed journals covering Alexander's forays. I see no evidence being presented that Sabahuddin's work is a reliable source. --Nuujinn (talk) 20:21, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

As one writer has said, "Our sources often refer to the contents of letters of Olympias sent to Alexander and occasionally contain material taken from Alexander's replies or his verbal reactions to his mother's correspondence. These fragments do not inspire much confidence in their authenticity, particularly because the Alexander Romance probably began as an epistolary historical novel. Indeed, the credibility of the correspondence preserved in Plutarch and other Alexander historians is part of the wider issue of the dependability of all letters quoted or paraphrased in the text of ancient writers. Scholarly tradition about the treatment of Alexander's correspondence has been to evaluate each letter on its individual merits." Dougweller (talk) 20:36, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

What kind of evidence you want? I don't see any evidence being presented about Sabahuddin's book being unreliable. You guys are just trying to tell me to go away, don't edit Misplaced Pages. I'm just gonna leave it like that because this isn't going to end up in my favor and I know it. The reason is not because I'm wrong, it's because I don't like to focus too much arguing over unimportant issues such as this.--Jrkso (talk) 20:46, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

Jrkso, it can be difficult but take Doug's information as a good lead. There were second or third hand reports of letters by Alexander. As he says, they are questioned, but still anything from those old records is notable also. I have not looked at the content being discussed, but if you are just trying to say Alexander and his army had a tough time against the ancestors of the Afghans that should be sourceable. He did. But I doubt the reports of letters are the best way to do that. So there might be sources that could help you get across something of what you are aiming at. But you have to aim at something others will also accept. You can't just use any source and then twist it to fit what you think WP should say. Try to always ask yourself how others see it, or you'll get stuck in discussions like this.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 21:06, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

Jrkso, as I have already explained to you on Talk:Afghanistan: it is not - I repeat: it is not - the community's job to prove an author or his sources wrong. It is each author's job and duty - I repeat: it is each author's job and duty - to provide reliable sources. If it were the other way around, then Misplaced Pages would have been pure nonsense, from A to Z. It is part of the filter mechanism of Misplaced Pages to check each author and his sources. And if the author cannot provide proper and reliable sources, then his edits will be removed. That easy. Do you understand? Tajik (talk) 21:23, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

It was administrator User:DanielCD who in July 2004 added to Misplaced Pages the Alexander letter and calling Afghans as brave lion-like people. I'm not the author.--Jrkso (talk) 14:40, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

That doesn't matter. Administrators of this site don't have any special powers to determine if a source is reliable or not. And the source in question (Sabahuddin) appears quite unreliable compared to other historical works on Alexander. I have notified DanielCD of this discussion. Perhaps he used a different source back then, even though none was cited in the 2004 version of the article. Tijfo098 (talk) 02:33, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

I haven't read all of this, and I don't even remember this article. It was back from 2004?? It was a different world back then. But are you people trying to say I doctored a quote? Whatever. I can assure you I would never do something like that. That was a LONG time ago. Complain as you will, but if it's questionable, remove it and discuss it civilly. I have been around here long enough to have little patience for pointless accusation slinging. --DanielCD (talk) 14:14, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

I apologize for this mistake. When you've been around as long as I have, there are always little time bombs out there waiting to go off. I have looked, and will continue to look, for the source I used here. --DanielCD (talk) 15:52, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Tijfo098, you're comment about administrators is irrelevant. I was just leaving a note about where the info originated. Since DanielCD is an admin I had to mention that. Sabahudding being unreliable is a different issue and I don't feel like arguing over that.--Jrkso (talk) 13:50, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

Tijfo098, you're comment about administrators is irrelevant. I was just leaving a note about where the info originated. Since DanielCD is an admin I had to mention that. Sabahudding being unreliable is a different issue and I don't feel like arguing over that.--Jrkso (talk) 13:50, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

DanielCD, no need to apologize, and I didn't mean to get you involved here. Also, there's no need to get frustrated over this. It's well recorded in history that Alexander had a very tough time in the land of Afghanistan, it took him 3 years to cross the land from one end to the other. Some of these events are even shown in the 2004 Alexander film. He married a girl (Roxanna) in what is now Afghanistan. There are many books which mention his hard time in Afghanistan, this is well known but some of these editors are not aware of this. I'm very sure you didn't make this up because I've read it in several places in the past, and I know it's mentioned in some books, I'll look for it when I have more time. What I don't understand is why some of these editors are strongly rejecting this.--Jrkso (talk) 13:50, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

Jrkso I think people were objecting to very specific things, and not just the assertion that Alexander had a tough and long campaign in Afghanistan. If that is all you want to write then that should be very easy to source?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 14:05, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

I'm lost and confused. What very specific things were they objecting to? The "Unreliable source and falsification of sources by User:Jrkso" section name, which is very rude, is saying that I'm a vandal falsifying information in Misplaced Pages. If you follow my edits, they are totally the opposite of that. If someone doesn't trust a book I cite I shouldn't be criticised. If an error is found in the book I shouldn't be criticised. If I write something in Misplaced Pages my way others are free to re-write it but they shouldn't criticise me and my writing skill. I think someone just wanted me to get blocked and they succeeded.--Jrkso (talk) 14:23, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

Your edits and intentions may indeed have been described wrongly. You may also have described the edits and intentions of others wrongly. I'm mainly only mentioning this because I think it shows the way forward.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 14:26, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

Just to inform people commenting here that the discussion below about Global Vision Publishing House might be of interest. Cordless Larry (talk) 21:57, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

Jrkso's is trying to make a point in here (i.e. proving an obviously unreliable source "reliable") by using a Hollywood movie as a source. That's perhaps the most unreliable way to write an encyclopedia. And his claim that Alexander needed "3 years in Afghanistan" is a very popular myth in Afghanistan, but it's not the way Jrkso (who is not a historian) thinks. Alexander's harsh time in the east was mostly based on the harsh territory of the Hindu Kush and the fact that his army was slowly but surely becoming more and more exhausted. It was not because of the "great Afghan fighters" as is proclaimed in Afghanistan and by Jrkso. For some reasons, Alexander took the long and dangerous route through the mountains, and then had to face a military opposition in Sogdiana (Sogdian Rock; modern Uzbekistan). There, for political reasons, he married the Bactrian princess Roxana (and not in modern Afghanistan, as Jrkso claims). Alexander's marriages had mostly a political character and helped him to avoid direct military confrontation. That was also a major reason why he was able to conquer the western parts of Asia so quickly: he married Persian royals (2 daughters of Darius) and partially recruited Persian military personal. Jrkso's entire argumentation here is pointless and irrelevant. So is the source he is defending. Tajik (talk) 09:23, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

That's your own story. Let's get this straight, you're not a historian or a scholar here, you're just a Misplaced Pages editor with so many blocks. Instead of spending an hours writing all your thoughts just provide a reliable source so we can read for ourselves. Btw, I didn't use Hollywood movie as source. That shows your weak argument.--Jrkso (talk) 01:31, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

I strongly recommend that the people involved in this disagreement make a conscious effort to avoid exaggerating the position of their interlocutors. Ask yourself is there is any way you can interpret what they are saying which is not crazy. You might be amazed at the results.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 09:26, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

Why is this still going on? that bit was removed from the article more than a week ago and hasn't been stuck back in again and the discussion on the talk page ceased. I agreed it is probably nonsense and wrote my reasons on the talk page too. Agree with Andrew Lancaster, and on this particular topic how about just drawing a line underneath it all thanks. Dmcq (talk) 11:37, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

BNP

IS this RS ] for the BNP's 1992 manifesto.Slatersteven (talk) 12:26, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

no. There's no evidence Richard Kimber retransmits faithfully. Fifelfoo_m (talk) 09:54, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

Looking a bit harder, it seems that there is, actually. Kimber seems to be a retired lecturer from Keele University.

• http://www.psr.keele.ac.uk/area.htm is still a redirect to his site, so presumably Keele still endorses him. It certainly repeatedly refers to his site here: .
• The Guardian seems to be using his site as a reliable source here: "Home in on votes", S A Mathieson, The Guardian Thursday 3 March 2005.
• Intute seems to recommend his site here.
• Stanford University recommends it here.
• Palgrave Macmillan, highly reputable publishing house, recommends it here:
• Parliament of Australia Parliamentary Library.

I'd say that means it's regarded as authoritative in relation to the subject in question. --GRuban (talk) 00:15, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

I fully accept and endorse GRuban's argument from academic and professional indexation, and from relevant expertise, that this is a reliable faithful and intact transmission of sources. Could someone gently prod Richard Kimber to include a better description of the reliability of his resource on its own pages? Fifelfoo (talk) 00:33, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

Wow. I think this is the first time Fifelfoo has endorsed one of my arguments on RSN. This could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship. :-) --GRuban (talk) 01:39, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

Am I really that much of a hard case :) ? Excellent research to find those points of argument! Fifelfoo (talk) 01:44, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

Cheers.Slatersteven (talk) 15:43, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

Humanevents.com

Is humanevents.com a reliable source in general? Is it a reliable source on living persons?

The editors include such persons as Ann Coulter. Its About us main page alludes to theories of a conspiracy to hide the truth:

• " ...facts that mainstream reporters go to extraordinary lengths to keep you from ever learning about."
• "the real "endangered species" these days are truth and common sense."
• "In every issue, you will savor that rare moment in journalism when the thick fog of liberal bias is blown away to reveal... THE NAKED, BEDROCK TRUTH!"

Human Events may certainly have been a reliable source 50 or even 20 years ago. But that hardly seems the case today.VR _talk 05:32, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

• Is someone trying to cite a Human Events article here on Misplaced Pages in support of some statement? If so, which one, and what statement are they using Human Events to support? Human Events is undoubtedly an opinionated conservative source, but if you are looking for someone to say that it's not reliable for anything, I can't provide that for you. I mean, right now, HumanEvents.com's top headline says "Keith Olbermann Suspended Indefinitely By MSNBC". Which is true. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 22:21, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

Most unreliable sources are true the majority of times.

I specifically asked whether it is a reliable source on BLPs, which are sensitive. It has been used to make negative statements about living persons.VR _talk 03:51, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

But to properly evaluate those statements, it would be helpful to know what those statements are. Metropolitan90 (talk) 17:04, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

Just beacuse Ann Coulter is also a contibutor there, it does not make it a non RS, some of their articles are opinionated though.Chorlseton (talk) 06:58, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

VR is referring to this dispute I am involved with on the Newt Gingrich article. He has twice removed material quoting a Human Events writer stating that Gingrich was the first major US politician to speak out on sharia law, saying that it's not a reliable source. I have twiced placed it back, and explained why on the Talk page. I think he means it is a biased source, and it certainly is that. I would be wary of its use for many purposes. But Human Events is a recognized opinion leader in the American conservative movement, so its use here is appropriate. Stargat (talk) 18:58, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

I don't think that particular column is a reliable source about a living person. It seems to be an editorial, an opinion piece; and just the claim "the first major US politician to speak out on sharia law" seems very vague. What makes Gingrich "the first major US politician"? He certainly used to be major, but he's not currently holding or even running for any political office, so how major is "major"? And what's "speaking out on sharia law"? It's hundreds of years old, and rather important, surely in the history of the US, some US politician has said something about it. I'd argue we should leave the statement out, on grounds of both reliability and undue weight. There is plenty more to say about the former speaker of the house than something so vague. If you want to say he actively campaigned for a specific law, fine, we can surely cite that with more than just a line of editorial puffery. --GRuban (talk) 19:59, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

He is expected to be a presidential candidate for 2012, and he's very much in the public eye and on the public airwaves. There should be no serious disagreement that he is a major political figure in the US. Moreover, the state of Oklahoma voted this last week to pre-emptively ban sharia law from being used in state law, so that too is a significant issue on the political landscape. And that is exactly what Gingrich called for in the speech that the Human Events column describes. It's opinionated, yes, but it contains basic reporting. I would support another source being used for this, but I don't see anything wrong with using Human Events here. And deleting the material entirely, which is what VR did, is certainly not appropriate. Stargat (talk) 20:28, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

The article in question: "Gingrich Sounds the Alarm about the Stealth Jihad", by Robert Spencer, 08/03/2010. It's clearly an opinion piece. We don't use opinion pieces for anything except the opinions of the author. If it "contains basic reporting", that's overshadowed by the polemic. If the idea is to write that Gingrich campaigned for the Oklahoma law, that seems reasonable for the article, but we can find a better source that is actually news, not a polemic. Here, for example: NYTimes or CNN If the idea is to puff Gingrich for any hypothetical future presidential campaign, Misplaced Pages is not the place for it. --GRuban (talk) 01:14, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Well, I still disagree that a Human Events column is not useful for representing the opinions of conservatives, but the news articles you cite seem like fine sources, too. They also basically reinforce the point, so I'll find a way to work them in. Just for the record, I have no idea who added Human Events in the first place. I responded because VF was deleting apparently verified information. Stargat (talk) 17:32, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

And so I have updated the section now, using the CNN article. Stargat (talk) 20:02, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Germans and Franks

Is the quotation, "However, by a polite fiction, educated Catholics give them the name of Orthodox which they have usurped. The term Schismatic Greek Church is synonymous with the above; nearly everybody uses it, but it is at times inexpedient to do so, if one would avoid wounding the feelings of those whose conversion is aimed at", from an article in the Catholic Encyclopedia, a reliable source for the statement, "... the Germans and Franks used the teaching of the Filioque and Papal authority to distinguish an anti-Greek (anti-Eastern) character" (Filioque#Eastern Romans, Byzantines, Greeks)?

The quotation is not made by "Germans and Franks", and mentions neither Germans nor Franks; but the editor who inserted the quotation as verification of the statement insists that it be maintained, and has said: "Take it up with the noticeboard" (Talk:Filioque#Quotation from the 1909 Catholic Encyclopedia). Esoglou (talk) 06:07, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

I couldn't find Germans or Franks mentioned in that source, did I miss it somewhere? If its not there then this would seem to be a case of WP:SYNTH at best and the citation does not back up the statement. Heiro 06:27, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

I also can't see the relevance. So I am not sure how this can be a question for this board.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 16:06, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

Despite the persistence of an editor in denying what seems obvious to the commentators who have intervened above, can we perhaps already give him a negative response to his claim that the quotation is a reliable source for the statement in question? However, the matter is far from urgent. Esoglou (talk) 17:38, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

That type of question is always a bit problematic. You are asking people here to give a comment about context in a content discussion they are not involved in. You give a description which, if it is correct, does not sound like a valid RSN case, but what often happens when people come here with content disputes is that other people involved in the dispute actually disagree with the description of the dispute. Not sure if anyone else has a more useful answer.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 20:14, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

You seem to think that this is a content dispute. It is not. I am not asking for removal of the statement that this citation is supposed to support, one that has two other citations to support it. The question is only whether this particular citation is or is not a reliable source for the statement. It is doubtless a reliable source for other matters, but is it a reliable source for statements about actions of the Franks and Germans of a millennium ago? That seems to be a straightforward question to which surely almost anyone can give a straightforward answer. Esoglou (talk) 21:29, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

No, this particular citation is not a reliable source for the statement, for two reasons. (1) I can't find anything in the Catholic Encyclopedia article in question that matches the statement to be used here in Misplaced Pages. (2) This particular Catholic Encyclopedia article is primarily about the Eastern Orthodox Church and describes that church in a negative and hostile way. This particular encyclopedia article "Greek Church" reflects views from over 100 years ago (it was published in 1909) and is too biased to be used as a general source by Misplaced Pages. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 22:01, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

Esoglou, yes I think if you both agree that the source is reliable for related issues (which Metropolitan90 disagrees with it seems) but disagree how to use it exactly, then this is at least not purely a question of source reliability, but more concerning content decisions?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 09:32, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

I feel sure that nearly everyone, including Metropolitan90, agrees that it is a reliable source concerning one early-20th-century man's view of the Greek Orthodox Church of that time, but not a reliable source concerning the actual state of that Church either then or at any other time before or after. I don't know what are the related issues to which you refer (if you mean the Greek Orthodox Church - since you seem to disagree with Metropolitan90's judgement - I really think you must be alone in considering it a reliable source on that topic), and I presume in particular that, by now, not even you would defend it as a reliable source concerning actions of Franks and Germans towards the end of the first millennium. Esoglou (talk) 10:28, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

Metropolitan90 is correct here. Jayjg 17:28, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

So if the actual Pope says negative and hostile things about the Orthodox church we can't use that as a source because it's not unbiased or because it's hostile? Cause he did just like a week ago. I mean he just stated that the Orthodox church is defective. So how is it that people are to gain understanding when things that are considered negative and or in a hostile way can't be mentioned? The Catholic Encyclopedia opinion seems consistent with what the Pope just said. Is there any official Roman Catholic source that for the church says that the Catholic Encyclopedia's article on the Greek Orthodox church is wrong and not actually the opinion of the Catholic Encyclopedia about the Orthodox church? If its wrong where is the Roman Catholic churhc screaming for it's removal from the Web (where's William Donohue for example). I mean if its so obvious that should be pretty easy to find, right? Can anyone here provide that? I was asked to source what Roman Catholic sources made hostile and bias remarks against the Orthodox church. I posted that and now because it was made a hundred years ago (and hasn't been officially denied by Roman Catholic official sources) that it's not a reliable source? How so? And for the record another Roman Catholic editor deleted the entire section from the article Esoglou is here complaining about. Esoglou gave a big thumps up to that blanket deletion on the article talkpage . So it is is quite obvious that what is out there and what informs people is not really supposed to be included here at wikipedia since this all about attack the message or the messenger and not about what really has happened and how that causes people to see now. I mean it is pretty obvious that only one side of the issue is going to be allowed and that anything that might give the opposing view and or source why the view is in opposition is going to get hounded and banned, blocked etc etc. Please forgive my frustration in advance. LoveMonkey (talk) 20:38, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

You know what? Forget the issue of hostility and bias for the time being. Just point out to me which specific sentence(s), in which paragraph(s), of the Catholic Encyclopedia article at indicates that "the Germans and Franks used the teaching of the Filioque and Papal authority to distinguish an anti-Greek (anti-Eastern) character". I can't find anything in the article that says that. If you find something the article that clearly supports that claim, we can then discuss the issue of whether the article is too biased to use as a source. But if the article doesn't support the claim in the first place, there's no point in worrying about whether the article is biased. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 23:55, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

Global Vision Publishing House plagiarism and circular referencing problem

A while back, I found a book published by Global Vision Publishing House that was basically a compilation of Misplaced Pages articles, published without attribution. The book in question is listed here. What I didn't realise at the time was how big this problem could be, given the risk of circular referencing that it creates. I just did a search for Global Vision Publishing House and quite a lot of articles seem to reference their books. I picked one at random, Geography of New Caledonia, and followed the reference there to a Global Vision book called Foundation of Geology. Surprise, surprise, the book plagiarises Misplaced Pages and the material that is being used to support the Misplaced Pages article is from, you guessed it, Misplaced Pages. The whole section of the chapter is copied from Misplaced Pages's continent article. Any suggestions for what to do about this problem? Cordless Larry (talk) 21:43, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

OK, putting quotation marks around the search terms significantly reduces the number of results returned, so it seems that not many articles are affected. However, the potential for future circular referencing clearly remains. Cordless Larry (talk) 21:47, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

Another aspect of the same problem: I did an amazon search for "Eleftherios Venizelos" recently and found at least the first two pages almost full of "books" that appear to be Misplaced Pages mirrors. Not having examined these things, I don't know whether they acknowledge Misplaced Pages or simply plagiarise it. In this case the publishers are Books LLC and (same format, apparently mirroring the German Misplaced Pages) Bücher Gruppe; also, less prominent, Alphascript Publishing. How many others are there? Andrew Dalby 09:53, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

Unfortunately, more and more. Books LLC is one example, the Icon Group is another. They basically copy/repackage Misplaced Pages content and print books of that material at extremely high prices. Jayjg 17:26, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

Wow, I followed the Icon Group link and that's pretty depressing stuff. This makes for sad reading, if you ask me. Perhaps this merits inclusion in a second edition of your book on Misplaced Pages, Andrew! Cordless Larry (talk) 08:04, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

For better or worse, publishers without real fact checking have been around since printing began. I suppose they did not affect scientific subjects quite so much in the past though.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 12:21, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

They have always been with us, that's quite true, but we on Misplaced Pages are presenting a lot of raw material to such publishers -- at the very moment when their accountants are telling them they can't afford copy-editors or fact checkers any more. Andrew Dalby 12:50, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

Oh yes, it is depressing in that sense for sure. But then again it is also cheaper for other types of people to publish these days, not just these guys. I am a genealogist, and an over-whelming mass of self-published materials which copy off of each other was already building up before the internet took and now causes quiet a lot of confusion. One could argue it started in the 19th century. But I think it is a nett positive. What I was responding to was the problem for this board. I do not see that as overly depressing, because I think publications without fact checking will always be out there and always need to be discussed. (And for genealogists also there already basic practices that people should have been following concerning how to use and cite sources.)--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 14:00, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

OK, well in the meantime I've removed the reference from the Geography of New Caledonia article, and another from Patriotic and Democratic Front of the Great National Union of Kampuchea. These seemed to be the most obviously plagiarised of the Global Vision sources. Other references to their books seem to be to older ones, which perhaps predate this spell of plagiarism, although I would still treat them with suspicion given the disclaimer that the books feature saying that the publishers take no responsibility for the content. Cordless Larry (talk) 10:35, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Kurdish diaspora relying heavily on the Joshua Project

The article Kurdish diaspora relies heavily on Joshua Project for the Kurdish population which I consider to be extremley unreliable. The article also uses the Kurdish Institute of Paris which is probably much more reliable. I wish to remove the Joshua Project sources, is there any objections? Turco85 (Talk) 12:28, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

At a guess a website collecting demographic info for christian missionaries isn't going to be a reliable source, so here's one user agreeing with you.--Misarxist 12:31, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

Also without looking into it detail, this does not seem like an appropriate source.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 13:53, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

Twitter as a source

The article Toshiaki Imae uses this tweet by Jason Coskrey, who is a professional writer covering Japanese baseball for the Japan Times.

I'm just wondering if twitter can be used to source articles in this way, and, if so, how do we properly cite twitter. If not, do we just wait until the author publishes it in their regular story? XinJeisan (talk) 22:23, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

There is no editorial oversight of JCoskrey on twitter; it is not a reliable source. Fifelfoo (talk) 22:49, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

Here's a better source: "Marines fight off Dragons for Japan Series title", Jim Allen Daily Yomiuri "Toshiaki Imae, who won his second Series MVP Award, ..." --GRuban (talk) 19:36, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

www.kayecorbett.com/Counterfeit%20Hero.html

Is this RS for purposes of stating in Linda McMahon "Linda became President of the WWF as a legal maneuver to save the company in 1993. At the time, Vince had been indicted on charges he distributed steroids to his wrestlers." ? Collect (talk) 02:13, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

No. That's a pretty controversial claim about a living person, that we want good sources on. The source seems dubious - it's not clear, but it seems to be a book that didn't make it to publication, so is being put up as a web page. Kaybe Corbett may or may not be an expert about wrestling, but for a controversial statement about a living person, we want a non-self published source. Finally, even the source doesn't say that. It merely says:

So even the source doesn't come right out and say it was a legal maneuver, merely that there were snickers and speculation. No. We need a better source, and we need it to actually say what we say it does.--GRuban (talk) 17:13, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

Not true. It is in the reference more explicitly at Chapter 9, Section 1.--Screwball23 talk 01:59, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

And in any case, there is nothing wrong with stating that Linda was made president during the trial, and there was speculation that she was made president for purposes of bringing positive publicity to the company. I also want to make it clear that she advanced at that point, making a more visible presence in the public eye from that position, becoming a spokesperson for the company. The reference itself is a book reference, and it is valid. I see no reason why it should be challenged by Collect simply because it does not serve his agenda.--Screwball23 talk 02:04, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

This is a self-published book. That means we can't use it for statements, especially controversial statements, regarding other living people. That's called WP:BLPSPS. Stating that she became president "as a legal maneuver" is a pretty controversial statement, you need a much better source. Find a published book from a reputable publisher, or a mainstream news article, that ties her becoming president to the trial. It shouldn't be that hard: the trial got some coverage at the time, and she got a lot of coverage just recently. If you can't find it, then, maybe, the world thinks she became president because she could be a good president. --GRuban (talk) 03:56, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

Gospel of Luke

An editor named Leadwind is deleting a lot of cited material off of Gospel of Luke and with it pushing a heavily skewed POV. He is deleting material because he says the publishers are "sectarian" even though they are some of the largest and most recognzied publishers in the world. Unfortunately I am outnumbered and cannot do a whole lot, but his reasons for deleting "sectarian" material certainly go against wikipedia policy. Will some editors go over there and look at some of his edits as well as the talk page?RomanHistorian (talk) 15:31, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

Looking at the most recent discussion at first sight I see nothing wrong with the question Leadwind is asking. He is asking for more information about a publishing concern which he thinks is being used a lot, and you are not denying it is used a lot. So why not get some more information about the source and state the case for it? Is that the discussion you mean? Of course whether you are right or he is right is not the point for this noticeboard to discuss.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 15:58, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

I have and he just ignores what I say. I restored some of Leadwind's POV pushing here. I am sure he will restore it, but just look at his methodology. He completely discounts the legitimacy of non-skeptical schoalars, even when they comment on the views of scholarship at large. I really can't say much to him.RomanHistorian (talk) 17:06, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

At least you've given a diff now, but I do not see you answering his question yet. In any case, a quick google books search seems to show the work you want to use is being cited by various reliable looking publications. I see no good reason yet to be deleting citations from it.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 17:57, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

If you wouldn't mind, please leave a comment on this on the Gospel of Luke talk page. The editor who is deleting this material has no regard for what is reliable, just for what he regards as "apologetic".RomanHistorian (talk) 20:24, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

Maybe someone reading here will have time to participate more fully. The problem I have for now is that I have only looked quickly and you have not yet given a full explanation of what is really being argued in terms of the purpose of this noticeboard. I do know that on articles like this there does always tend to be tension about how to interpret WP:NEUTRALity when it comes to religions. Can believers really give a good over-view of their own faith (or of a faith they consider a heresy)? Perhaps this is such a case? So maybe your sources are good for some purposes but what is being debated is whether they are neutral? I am not taking a side, just asking if that is what it is about. These can sometimes be "no easy answer" cases. Having said that my first impression was indeed that your source was reasonable and not sectarian in any strong sense. But that is a first impression.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 20:44, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

This is not a forum for airing your grievances against another editor. Please refrain from such comments. Dlabtot (talk) 18:52, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

I am not trying to air grievances, but get some other editors to comment on the talk page on this issue.RomanHistorian (talk) 20:24, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

Your commments consist almost entirely of criticisms of Leadwind. Perhaps it was your intention to do something else, but I can only comment on your actions, not your intentions. Please do not use this Noticeboard as a platform to attack other editors. Dlabtot (talk) 15:53, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Hold on, Dlabton... having looked at the page in question, I think you are being a bit harsh on RH. He is faced with a POV warring editor who is removing sourced information inappropriately, and RH is asking for help with that. That is what this noticeboard is for. Granted, RH could have referred to "the editor who is removing the sourced information" rather than referring to that editor by name... but in the long run that is a nit-pick. The fact is, there is a dispute at the article that could use our assistance. Blueboar (talk) 16:20, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

I don't agree with even the smallest part of your comment. "An editor named Leadwind is deleting a lot of cited material off of Gospel of Luke and with it pushing a heavily skewed POV. He is deleting material because he says the publishers are "sectarian" even though they are some of the largest and most recognzied publishers in the world." is not a reliable source question, it is an attack on Leadwind and an attempt to recruit editors into a dispute. Nor do I agree with your assessment of the dispute. Dlabtot (talk) 16:46, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

This noticeboard is not just a place to ask sourcing questions. It is also a place to ask for outside help in disputes over sourcing issues. Complaining about someone removing sourced material falls within "disputes over sourcing issues". The fact is, I think RH is right to come here and ask for assistance. Furthermore RH isn't "attacking" anyone (commenting on another editor's actions and edits is not an "attack") ... he is calling our attention to a problem at an article. As for my assessment of the dispute... you are free to disagree, but that is how I see it. Blueboar (talk) 16:54, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Again, I completely disagree with the idea that this noticeboard should be used for canvassing or documenting the alleged faults of rival editors. It is, by design, and in practice, "just a place to ask sourcing questions". Dlabtot (talk) 01:19, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

Because I have made remarks indicating that this might not be purely an RS case above I'll comment that I agree with Blueboar that there was nothing wrong with coming to this board. It is sometimes very difficult to know where to go on WP. As I remarked above, it is just difficult to handle it here, because while the source seems reasonable a quick look at the argument shows it might be a difficult case. The best solution is probably to try to get more people on the article talk page, but that is sometimes easier said than done as we all know.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 17:51, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Religion

This related discussion moved over from Misplaced Pages talk:Verifiability. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 18:42, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

A dispute has come up on various articles, most recently Gospel of Luke and Historicity of Jesus where some editors have been deleting sources from religion articles because the biblical scholars quoted are personally religious, and their publishers are what some editors define as "minority sectarian" or "apologetic". One publisher these editors want to exclude is Thomas Nelson (publisher), even though it is the 6th largest publisher in the world. I think we need some kind of RS policy on religious sources. From what the current policy is, I would think there would be no question about these sources. But this dispute has come up again and again, so I think we need to put together a policy that is a bit more explicit. Any suggestions?RomanHistorian (talk) 16:44, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

RH... this isn't really the place to raise this (this page is to talk about edits to the policy itself, not violations of it). You have already raised this at WP:RSN which doubles as a sort of WP:V noticeboard. That said... underneath your dispute over verifiability and sourcing is a basic POV dispute. I suggest you raise your concerns at the Misplaced Pages:Neutral point of view/Noticeboard. Blueboar (talk) 17:44, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Agree with moving this to RS/N, but since the question there is less specific, let me address it here (I'm fine if we move all this over, of curse): From our article: "Its former US division is currently the sixth largest American trade publisher and the world's largest Christian publisher." - nothing about 6th largest publisher in the world. Moreover, it also publishes WND, which absolutely is not a reliable source. I don't know if some of its imprints have a better reputation, but just being published by TN does not seem to imply scholarly weight or reliability. Note also TN has a self-publishing arm, so check carefully where something comes from. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 18:40, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Stephan, I don't quite see a rationale for deleting material from the source here? Can you explain? As I mentioned above the one article I checked seems reasonably widely cited by various publishers, so this certainly does not seem like a self-publication job?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 18:47, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

What? ;-) Seriously, can you explain what you think I said? All I point out that the claim about Thomas Nelson (publisher) made by RH are in conflict with our article on them, and that Thomas Nelson publishes some very questionable stuff. I do not know enough about them to reject everything they publish outright, and I don't think I've advocated deleting anything (also, I'm confused about "from the source" - do you mean from a particular document used as a source, or from the publisher seen as the source of its publication)? --Stephan Schulz (talk) 18:53, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Stephan, apparently you think I've gone out and researched all recent discussion first before responding to you, but unfortunately I did not. I suppose that goes goes for most likely to look at this board. I therefore just answered as if your post connected to the discussion above. If not, sorry.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 18:55, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Aha. See above. The part under the subheader is an independently started discussion moved from WP:V. No harm... --Stephan Schulz (talk) 18:58, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Translation from Hiragana?

I need to know what this page says to see if it is a good source or not. I have already found a site that has a semi-translation for the diary entries at the end (though it is paraphrased badly), but if anyone can do the paragraphs before that that would be great Mew Mitsuki (talk) 19:46, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

List of living supercentenarians#Verified living supercentenarians

This chart relies almost exclusively on this list. But I don't think it's in any way a reliable source, as that term is defined on en.wikipedia. How does one know who contributes to the list and how much editorial control anyone has over it? So it may be unreliable. On the other hand, if it's very reliable, it's a primary source. Using it for citations on WP is thus prohibited original research or prohibited synthesis.

There are battles going on all over the wiki right now over longevity, centenarians and supercentanarians. But if the list at www.grg.org is not a wiki-kosher reliable source, either because its contribution and editorial control policies are too opaque, or, conversely, because it is a primary source, a whole lotta articles and lists fall of their own weight.

The topic requires an influx of nuetral, uninvolved editors to look things over. The disputants have become too entrenched and incivil, and could all do with a reality-check or three from the uninvolved. — David in DC — continues after insertion below

Second David's request as a sympathetic involved editor, although there are several more articles like this. For instance List of disputed supercentenarian claimants relies heavily on, IIRC, grg.org/Adams/G2.htm. That article and longevity claims rely heavily on inaccessible posts to the "World's Oldest People" Yahoo group. And Minnie Moore. Recommendations for overall community involvement are solicited. JJB 20:28, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

If you can bear to look, check out:

1. Jan Goossenaerts,
   
2. WP:Articles for deletion/Jan Goossenaerts,
   
3. Misplaced Pages talk:WikiProject World's Oldest People#Might wanna Wake Up!,
   
4. Misplaced Pages talk:WikiProject World's Oldest People#Deletion recommendations,
   
5. WP:FTN#Misplaced Pages:Mediation Cabal/Cases/2010-01-04/Longevity myths, and
   
6. assorted editor's contribution histories and talk pages, including my own. I'm not without blame here, although I think mine are some of the lesser offenses against civil discourse.

Help! David in DC (talk) 20:01, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

For #1-2, the RS question is whether a couple Belgian-only and a couple this-week mirrors confer an unrebuttable presumption of notability, or whether the coverage is sufficiently nontrivial and independent. #3 is my attempt to ask the relevant Wikiproject WP:WOP, which overlaps the Yahoo WOP and the GRG e-group significantly, to start taking sourcing and core policy more seriously. The others are backup: #4 is a log of deletion discussions and #5 is the (messy) ongoing mediation. But the more involved editors and the better consensus on how to present the topic-area issues to the larger community, the better. JJB 20:28, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

grg.org seems to be the Gerontology Research Group. According to our article on that, it is considered an authority on the subject of "World's Oldest Living People" by the Guinness Book of World Records and the New York Times ("the Gerontology Research Group, an authority on the matter."). That seems to meet Misplaced Pages:Reliable sources "authors who are regarded as authoritative in relation to the subject in question". --GRuban (talk) 00:14, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Sadly, both Guinness and GRG present an insurmountable COI problem. Please check this out. You wind up in a Mobius strip. Robert Young co-founds GRG. On the stregth of that, he's employed by Guinness. According to the World's Oldest People WikiProject page, he also leads that group. So GRG is a reliable source, because it's recognized by Guinness. A Guinness expert in longevity and gerontology, who co-founded GRG, is identified on the World's Oldest People WikiProject page as leading that project. A WikiProject is supposed to be aimed at developing policy for its special area of interest, here longevity and gerontology.

I feel like I'm walking the ever-uphill stairs of an M.C. Escher drawing, but I can fight the vertigo long enough to identify a checks and balances problem wide enough to drive a COI-laden 16-wheel lorry through. David in DC (talk) 01:17, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I don't see the problem. You say Guinness uses GRG as an authority, then hires someone from GRG; so he now works both for Guinness and GRG. Why does that make him less credible than if he only worked for one of them? After all, it's not as if he's a reporter also working for a political campaign and against another one, Guinness is an amalgamator of trivia, it's not endorsing GRG against any competitors. --GRuban (talk) 04:35, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

GRuban, there are several problems, though it's a bit of a digression to say them all. One big one is that user Ryoung122, aka gerontologist Robert Young, has been found to be editing under massive COI, which you seem not to notice. WP:WOP is a group of editors who regard Ryoung122 as a leader and who see no conflict with the overlap between WP:WOP and a Yahoo mail list also called WOP. Ryoung122 has outed some among the workgroup as teens. You quote the GRG article as proof of its reliability, but the article was heavily edited by Ryoung122 and WP:WOP.

When we come to RS, I have no problem saying GWR is a reliable source, but to say GRG is reliable because GWR contracts with them does not logically follow. Ryoung122 has created drama by prematurely announcing a death of a living supercentenarian who, with her family, was mighty offended and came on here saying so. When you actually look at the GRG links they are pitiful spreadsheets, often outdated, and we are reproducing them relatively verbatim. GRG does not quote its sources, nor are Yahoo WOP articles accessible. GRG often accuses living people of lying about their ages, and often changes its own opinion. Given all that, do you propose to say that whatever GRG says about anyone should be accepted without question and without backup source as a reliable statement and as a contributor to notability? Do you propose to say that, when GRG uses faulty and wholly inventive methodologies in counting and cataloguing supercentenarians, they do not count as original research to import them here? An awful lot of articles ride on these egregious and uncorrected violations. If you think the whole case can be thrown in favor of Ryoung122, I must respectfully ask how David and I should bring the matter before the larger community. JJB 07:01, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Yes, it definitely needs a concerted effort from people who are currently uninvolved and can stay uninvolved. I was in that category but it is difficult to remain so. GWR is reliable, but GRG perhaps much less so. Robert Young, on behalf of the group, seems determined to make the copious WP pages a mirror of the records held by GRG which, as JJB says, sometimes have a work-in-progress character. Robert Young has a conflict of interest if ever there were one, yet a post on WP:COIN yielded nothing helpful. He was once indeffed, and has a sock puppeteering record. To complicate matters further, JJB himself is admittedly editing from a biblical literalist standpoint, which allows Robert Young to set himself up as the defender of scientific rationality. IMHO the priorities are to remove the walls from the garden, get the WikiProject either properly functioning or disbanded, and get the COI addressed. After that, checking that various Christian and Jewish perspectives (on the ages of Biblical patriarchs) are given appropriate weight should be pretty straightforward. Itsmejudith (talk) 08:07, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Excellent summary, IMJ; just one correction, I am not via this WP account "admittedly editing from a biblical literalist standpoint", I am only ensuring the biblical literalist POV is properly weighted when appropriate. If you have any admissions of mine to the contrary I'd appreciate knowing that at my talk or at the mediation. However, you may have simply been affected by Ryoung122's ubiquitous chorus claiming with monotonous regularity that I believe Noah was 950 years old and the like; a long time ago I stopped telling him to cease his OR about my POV and to stop making personal attacks, but if anything it's gotten worse. JJB 08:27, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I don't disagree with that. I hope that "via this WP account" doesn't imply there's another WP account??? Itsmejudith (talk) 08:45, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

It's just that I reserve the right not to speak one way or another about real life, beyond the statements on my user page. JJB 16:09, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Wow this has digressed; from gerontology to biblical literalism? Editor behavior issues are not for the reliable sources noticeboard. The fact that a specific person may or may not behave properly does not necessarily damn his reference work. I give you The Oxford English Dictionary, one of the main contributors to which was a murderer and insane (see The Surgeon of Crowthorne). Presumably you aren't claiming Mr.Young goes that far? And yet the OED is one of the definitive hallmarks of reliability in its field. If you want to address an editor's behavior, that's more for WP:ANI than WP:RSN. --GRuban (talk) 16:28, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Yes, it all gets a bit weird. I am seriously considering taking the conduct issues to ANI. In the meantime, views about the discrete question of whether Gerontology Research Group documents are RS for articles on long-lived persons would be very welcome. Itsmejudith (talk) 00:08, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

<Since you asked, we're not talking about the reliability of the OED, we're talking about the reliability of a couple of inscrutable wordlists found in Dr. Minor's asylum cell with arcane notations all over them, and we have Dr. Minor yelling at us repeatedly that WP does not incorporate his wordlists correctly whenever we lift a finger. That would be the parallel here, Ruban. And according to the WP articles, Minor at least was able to cough up his sources on demand when asked, which Mr. Young has failed to do on many occasions. Let's try this one instead, more up your alley. In the article List of disputed supercentenarian claimants, the site health.groups.yahoo.com/group/Worlds_Oldest_People is used as a source currently 66 times. Is this a reliable source? And how should we handle the verifiability and accessibility issue other than 66 "request quotation" tags? Do you not understand our frustration yet? JJB 04:35, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

To cut to the chase: three RS questions. 1) Does the GRG website have a reputation for fact-checking before information from it is/isn't taken into Guinness World Records? 2) Is the GRG Yahoo! group reliable in any way? 3) What about the journal Rejuvenation Research? Itsmejudith (talk) 09:40, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

1) That's a little like asking "Does Barack Obama have an influence on world politics not considering that he's the President of the United States?" A reputation for reliability specifically comes from the fact that other reliable sources tend to rely on it, so not considering that is silly. It seems to be relied on by Guinness and the NYTimes, so I'd say yes; that's only 2 data points, of course, but they're pretty good data points.

2) Can you give a link to it, and a diff for how it is used? In general, discussion groups aren't reliable, unless there are strict control on who posts.

3) Apparently yes, within bounds, and with a grain of salt. Our article Rejuvenation Research says "peer reviewed" and "scientific" but also "somewhat fringy". So it's not the New England Journal of Medicine, but neither is it the National Enquirer. It does seem that numerous reliable sources pay attention to it, for example: The Guardian, (the first one also seems to treat the GRG as reliable), USA Today: Ear Nose & Throat Journal , MSNBC: , Daily Telegraph: i. In general, I'd say it's worth citing; where it seems dubious, we can add the qualifier "According to Rejuvenation Research...". --GRuban (talk) 20:06, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks very much. Some explanations/further questions: 1. Agreed that the research is used by Guinness and was praised by NYT. Is all data posted on the GRG website to be treated as equally reliable? Might some of it not have a work-in-progress character? Before incorporation in Guinness, it presumably goes through a further fact-check. 2. Referenced in about 25 articles. List of German supercentenarians uses it on multiple occasions, for example. 3. Anxious about "a bit fringy", but will refer any problematic cases to FTN. Itsmejudith (talk) 20:51, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

Ruban, the point of #1 is that GWR does not use the sprawling, inconsistent GRG spreadsheets cold like we have been subjected to doing. I just found evidence on WP that the spreadsheets are mostly maintained only by Coles and that Young does not even consider them fully reliable himself! Please actually tell me you looked at the sheets E.htm and G2.htm and that they're fully reliable. #2 is the same as my question above, where I provided you the link to the Yahoo group you asked about. What should be done about the use of unreliable sources defended by one or more editors: just delete? JJB 21:07, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

I see your point. Looking at http://www.grg.org/Adams/G2.HTM and http://www.grg.org/Adams/E.HTM, they look like data dumps... or, as Judith writes, works-in-progress. I think treating them like primary sources is reasonable: in other words, we can use them as backup, but without basing articles entirely on them. If a secondary source, like a newspaper or a book, decides one of those people is one of the world's oldest based on that list, that's one thing - apparently they do just that often enough - but we shouldn't be doing it. I especially don't like their use List of disputed supercentenarian claimants: since by definition each entry there is a controversial statement about a living person, so we shouldn't be relying just on one line in a data dump. --GRuban (talk) 21:45, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

Thank you! I think we have no problem treating them as primary-source data dumps. Just wanted to add that [Ryoung122 himself doesn't regard the GRG sheets as reliable unless he has personally double-checked them. @David, I'd thought the "down" Escher staircase was much easier than the "up", but I was wrong, it turns out they go to the same place. JJB 02:43, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

reliable sources for legal issues

Hi, in the Climategate article there remains a question mark over whether a release of emails was illegal or whether it was hypothetically protected under UK whistleblower laws.

Many (most?) reliable sources have preferred to describe the email release factually as simply 'unauthorised', e.g. Revkin/NYT, Yale University study, BAMS study.

It is noteworthy that Legal News Online also prefers 'unauthorised' release, the only source of a legal nature I have been able to find.

In general, if Misplaced Pages is explicitly citing/footnoting the word 'illegal', as is the case here, is it not common sense that the footnote should lead the reader to a source which actually contains legal advice (i.e. the opinion of a solicitor, lawyer, judge) or evidence of an actual court ruling? Alex Harvey (talk) 03:52, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Or would a cite to the first line of the introduction to the UK Government's Response to the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee's Report be good enough? (That's what the article currently has). Of course, several other uses of this word in this context also exist. --Nigelj (talk) 11:30, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

It looks like the government of the UK called the release "illegal" multiple times in the first (substantive) page of its report (). I don't see an issue here. Is someone seriously arguing that a government is not a reliable authority on its own laws? MastCell  23:58, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Yes. The reliable authority on a parliament's laws, or an executive's actions, is generally the court of final review in common law societies. Fifelfoo (talk) 00:03, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

Fifelfoo, thank you. Could you elaborate on this point for those who don't seem to understand it, with a view to also clarifying Misplaced Pages's policies? Alex Harvey (talk) 00:10, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

In most common law societies, courts determine the legality of specific individual actions after they have occurred. Courts are generally the only body empowered to do this, and, a matter is not settled until it has been rejected by the review process of superior courts, possibly leading to the final court of review. As in many common law countries it is libel to claim someone is a criminal unless they have been demonstrated to be a criminal in a court of law, we ought to avoid this. Documents may be prohibited to import, possess, distribute or create, but the illegal action inheres in a human being. You can state, "According to the Parliament / Government of , the possession of documents of type is illegal, and the Parliament / Government has claimed this in relation to documents ." And the P/G could be an authority for their own opinion. Whether this is true or not is a matter for the courts. Given the extreme difficulty in determining the central point of a ruling, a court document, wikipedia ought to rely on reliable second hand reports, for instance in the press, academic papers, or by jurisprudence opinion leaders. In particular, unless a legal matter has resolved, or been reported, we ought to avoid claims about legality in relation to people's actions. Even in general cases, "Under British statute law, x is illegal" is far preferable to "x is illegal in Britain". The first can be documented: the statute exists until overturned by a court. The second is a universal claim. In the case of "Government Response to the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee 8th Report of Session 2009-10: The disclosure of climate data from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia" we ought to state, The Government of the United Kingdom concurred with the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee's opinion that the release of documents was illegal. The rest is a matter for the courts; and, subsequent to any action being reported reliably, we can revisit wording as the reliably sourced information changes. Fifelfoo (talk) 00:21, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

OK. It would be fine to write that according to the government of the UK, the document release was illegal. I think this is excessive hairsplitting, and we're clearly talking past each other on a basic level, but it's not worth arguing further about. These arguments seem faintly pedantic and ridiculous: after all, if witnesses observe men in a car drive up and shoot an innocent bystander, one may confidently say right away that the act was illegal, even though the courts will have nothing to say on the subject until a suspect is apprehended, arraigned, and tried. Courts deal with the guilt or innocence of individuals, but an action may be obviously illegal before any individual is tried for it. The question, to me, is simply whether a UK government report is a suitable encyclopedic source, according to Misplaced Pages's guidelines and policies. That seems like a no-brainer to me, but I've continually underestimated the ability of Wikipedians to complicate simple matters, particularly where there's an ideological subtext. MastCell  05:37, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

I guess that hair splitting is somewhat more justified in cases which involve calling the actions of living people illegal.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 15:30, 10 November 2010 (UTC) PS. No sarcasm intended, because I do also understand the point of MastCell to some extent.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 15:31, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

Even when that involves completely unknown living people? Does BLP apply to utterly unnamed individuals (without even speculating as to what continent they may be on)? I understand the fuss necessary around unconvicted suspects, but is it true that we can't concur with a government report that begins "In November 2009, data including emails were illegally released from a computer server"? Must we note that that is only a national government's possibly biased and hastily expressed opinion? Our BLP rules are really that much stricter than the UK government's human rights policies? This view raises more questions than it answers, I think. --Nigelj (talk) 17:13, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

Nigelj, yes I said I said I do see MastCell's point also. I was just pointing to another way of seeing it. BTW I don't know if the people who spread this information are completely unknown?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 17:45, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

Viriditas is claiming that the advice here given at RS/N was prejudiced by my reference to UK whistleblower legislation. He says, I suppose I better quote it, You misrepresented this issue on the RS board. There is no "question" of whether or not there is a whistleblower, and the illegal release of data is just that. Of course, plenty of skeptical commentators, e.g. the MIT climate scientist Richard Lindzen, have indeed raised the question of whether or not the release of emails would have been protected under the said whistleblower legislation. Anyhow, Fifelfoo, Andrew, did I confuse you with my question? Alex Harvey (talk) 04:09, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

Speaking only for myself, I felt quite capable of clicking through the links provided and reaching my own conclusion. My only concern, having seen your representation of this discussion at the article talk page, is with your selective cherry-picking of only those comments which agree with your position. MastCell  04:25, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

• It's been suggested that the official Government Response might have been "hasty" – it's the government's position after about 10 months of investigations and three official inquiries in this country, as well as another three in the U.S.. The government would have had plenty of time to take legal advice in preparing this document, and would be expected to do that. It may be noted that there's been a change of government since the report this responds to, and far from being partisan, this is a report by a Conservative government.
  The question of possible protection under the Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998 (the "whistleblower act") relates to protection of employment rights under specified conditions, not whether or not the act was illegal. The specified conditions require ‘qualifying disclosure’ about malpractices, the examples listed being more serious than anything found in the emails. The disclosures have to be made by a worker to to the right person, and in the right way (making it a 'protected disclosure'). The worker is not protected if they "break the law when making a disclosure", hacking into someone else's server to plant unauthorised information is likely to be breaking the law. If the person or people who disclosed the documents suffer discrimination at work for making the disclosure, they can take their case to an Employment Tribunal. That doesn't make their actions legal. . dave souza, talk 09:27, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

If there are two widespread ways of describing something, and the difference between them is agreed to be meaningful, I suppose the logical way to handle that would be to report both wordings on WP, with attribution of some kind?

Is this a reliable source for the Transcendental Meditation technique article

This ref John H. K. Vogel, Mitchell W. Krucoff (2007). Integrative Cardiology: Complementary and Alternative Medicine for the Heart (1st ed.). McGraw Hill. p. 81. is being used to support this text.

According to a medical textbook on integrative cardiology, double blinding isn't usually possible in mind/body studies, but it is important to blind assessors and study coordinators. The book examined two studies that involved TM and found them to be carefully blinded, in that the technicians and physicians involved in assessing the outcome didn't know whether the subjects were in the TM group or control group. The textbook said the studies had many other essential design features, including contact time with instructors, structure of the intervention, level of expectation for positive results, and assessment of adherence.

I do not have access to verify it. However it seems like an alt med book not a medical textbook. Comments? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 05:17, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

It's partially accessible on Google Books.   Will Beback  talk  05:23, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Source pages:

• Page 81

• Page 73 Will Beback  talk

Note: Conclusion of the segment on "Transcendental Meditation", see Page 82: "the effects of conventional diet and exercise were controlled in one group, but the addition of only a standard care control group does not allow the researchers to tease apart the independent effects of social support or attention, nor of any of the components of the intervention, on cardiovascular risk factors." -- in other words, the studies did not allow for the likelihood that effects were influenced by "social support or attention", or other "components of the intervention", other than the "Transcendental Meditation" techniques. Does not seem like an adequate or rigorous study method. -- Cirt (talk) 05:41, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

The publisher is actually McGraw-Hill Medical. The citation wasn't completely correct. TimidGuy (talk) 13:01, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

There is no separate, "McGraw-Hill Medical" company, to my knowledge, it is just a trade name. Unless "McGraw-Hill Medical" has some, separate and independent, form of editorial review? -- Cirt (talk) 13:04, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Medical is one of the McGraw Hill Professional Companies..(olive (talk) 13:20, 9 November 2010 (UTC))

Wrong. The link says it is a "publishing program". -- Cirt (talk) 13:21, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Yup. It also says, "McGraw-Hill Medical, publisher of Harrison's, the world's #1 medical textbook, and a leading provider of digital solutions for medical students and practitioners." Companies is simply a way of naming the Company ... branding. I'm not sure what your point is though. (olive (talk) 13:31, 9 November 2010 (UTC))

More on Publishing

See above. -- Cirt (talk) 13:33, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

I was referring to your comment about the publishing company. (olive (talk) 13:44, 9 November 2010 (UTC))

Right. There is only the one main one. No separate sub-company, just a slightly different name. -- Cirt (talk) 13:54, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

The text in question is unduly promoting a perspective that is trying to circumvent normal peer-review. True-believing authors of an alternative medicine text book are not reliable determiners of when studies have properly control or blinding. ScienceApologist (talk) 15:34, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Agree with this analysis by ScienceApologist (talk · contribs), regarding assessment of the source in question. -- Cirt (talk) 16:23, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Circumventing peer-review is right on point. This source is being used to argue that some TM research is actually being done rigorously. Actually, it is being misused, because it concluded that (i) what these studies got "right" from a procedural standpoints implies that all the prior TM studies should be questioned and (ii) they continue to get things "wrong" from a procedural standpoint, making it impossible to draw any conclusions. Per WP:MEDRS, we should be looking to independent, third party, peer-reviewed reviews and meta-analyses of medical research as sources. There is no peer review of any kind here, and so this doesn't qualify as a RS. Fladrif (talk) 17:13, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

The point of view of the authors is that medicine should be evidence-based. This book from an academic publisher takes an evidence-based approach. It qualifies as a reliable source. You can't disallow a source based on its supposed point of view. This book isn't being used to argue anything. It's being used to identify what medical researchers feel are the proper design characteristics for non-pharmaceutical medical studies, and it examines the design of selected studies. The two studies it examines were published in major medical journals and funded by the National Institutes of Health. They were both identified by an AHRQ review as being high quality. TimidGuy (talk) 17:41, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Those points should be made by a non POV source. -- Cirt (talk) 17:52, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

What POV does this source have.(olive (talk) 17:59, 9 November 2010 (UTC))

Promoting so-called "Complementary and Alternative Medicine". -- Cirt (talk) 17:59, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

And the McGraw Hill books in allopathic medicine, are they promotional as well? Do they have a POV? The publisher is highly reputable in textbooks /books in medicine. Theres' no reason to isolate this book because it isn't based on allopathic medicine which would be a POV of the editors excluding the source seems to me.(olive (talk) 18:17, 9 November 2010 (UTC))

Great, so maybe you can find an allopathic medicine book to use that describes these purported Transcendental Meditation studies, instead. -- Cirt (talk) 18:20, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Regardless of the kind of textbook, the opinions of the textbook writers should not be used as sources for determining whether experiments are well-designed because there is no review process in place at textbook publishing companies as to whether such determinations are properly made. Textbook editors are simply not peer-reviewers. The appropriate place to look for such opinions is in the respected journals of the relevant scientific fields. ScienceApologist (talk) 18:26, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Yes, ScienceApologist (talk · contribs) is correct, there is not appropriate peer review. -- Cirt (talk) 18:28, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

We don't know that it's not peer reviewed. I have some medical textbooks that list the peer reviewers. My impression is that it's common for textbooks to be peer reviewed. Note that this section of the article that discusses quality cites many sources that aren't peer reviewed, including newspapers, a magazine, a debunking book from a popular press, and the Encyclopedia of Occultism and the Paranormal. Should all these be deleted? TimidGuy (talk) 18:34, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

When dealing with a science subject, and a medicine subject within science, yes, they should be peer reviewed sources. -- Cirt (talk) 18:38, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Yes, we do know that it is not peer reviewed. A peer-reviewed publication will, without exception, state that it was peer-reviewed. This does not. Also, this is not a textbook by any stretch of the imagination....well, let me correct that, I actully imagine where it might be used as a textbook, but that still doesn't make it a textbook. Fladrif (talk) 20:01, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

• Not reliable The book is a collection of articles by alternative medicine practitioners and the book has not been reviewed by mainstream medical experts. TFD (talk) 18:39, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Exactly. -- Cirt (talk) 18:45, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

The book was "Written by the leading experts in cardiology and integrative medicine, this practical resource delivers a critical and balanced assessment of the evidence for complementary alternative medicine (CAM) approaches and their use in conjunction with traditional therapies." And the editor is an alternative medicine practitioner? He's not an expert in allopathic medicine?, and Krucoff's (editor) credentials in allopathic medicine.. Many of the comments above seem to be based on a lack of information.(olive (talk) 21:30, 9 November 2010 (UTC))_

• Query: What are the two studies that are mentioned in the paragraph? Have they been published, or is the only reference to them their existence? NW (Talk) 21:53, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Per TG above, Yes published, "The two studies it examines were published in major medical journals and funded by the National Institutes of Health. They were both identified by an AHRQ review as being high quality. "(olive (talk) 22:08, 9 November 2010 (UTC))`

Schneider 2005, American Journal of Hypertension and Fields 2002, American Journal of Cardiology TimidGuy (talk) 22:21, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Hilariously, the hypertension study quotes p values as high as p=0.2 and has no control (it only compares to another stress-reduction technique that doesn't claim magical basis). Their conclusion is about as biased in favor of their preferred technique as they could muster. The other study is multimodal so is not really indicative as to whether relaxation techniques actually helped or not since a variety of other lifestyle modifications were involved. To say that either of these studies is worthy of inclusion as WP:MEDRS for the TM article is POV-pushing, obviously. Rather sad. ScienceApologist (talk) 22:46, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

And both are from the Maharishi University of Management.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:50, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Well as long as peer review and the journals' editorial processes are being ignored as ignorant and biased your statements, both of you, might make sense. Maybe that's the case. Its always easiest I guess to turn a discussion into a POV attack than deal with the issues. I've asked for more input from WP:MEDRS, but maybe that's POV pushing too.(olive (talk) 23:06, 9 November 2010 (UTC))

There's nothing wrong in particular with these papers. They just don't convincingly show any medical benefit to TM. That's the null hypothesis they've yet to disconfirm (and generally, such null hypotheses are very hard to disconfirm because the scientific method has skepticism built right into it). Small studies are important steps in the research process, but they should not be used on Misplaced Pages to claim anything more than the fact that they exist. ScienceApologist (talk) 23:32, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

There is also the problem that the findings of the studies, published by the researchers who undertook them, are primary sources and not secondary sources. As such we are to use them with extreme caution if at all. The secondary source that discusses them is of dubious reliability since it is an alternative medicine textbook.Griswaldo (talk) 23:43, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

To clarify: The studies were published by American Journal of Hypertension and American Journal of Cardiology not by the researchers. They are primary sources. They are published in a book/textbook with editors who are highly trained and active in the allopathic area. Both studies were funded by NIH grants.(olive (talk) 00:36, 10 November 2010 (UTC))

Are you able to provide a link to where AHRQ says these two studies were high quality? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:33, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Yes. On page 108 it discusses the quality of the 27 studies on TM, Yoga, Tai Chi, etc. that were considered in the cardiovascular section of AHRQ. And it says this: "Only two trials220,221 obtained 3 points and were considered of high quality." Those two studies are Schneider 1995 and Schneider 2005. And page G-5 of Appendix G has a table that lists the 40 studies in AHRQ that scored good or better on the Jadad scale. Fields 2002 (#282) is among them. TimidGuy (talk) 01:26, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

On the theory that every source is reliable for something (even if only for verifying that it contains a particular word), here's what I think about this one:

• The publisher (a respectable division/imprint of a major publishing house) and the chapter author are reasonable indicators of basic reliability, although it's a little odd for a psychiatrist to write a cardiology text. Berman wouldn't clear SPS, as this is the only thing he's published on this subject.
• I don't think the detailed text at the top of this thread is DUE. Really: who cares if two unnamed studies got something right?
• These individual facts could probably be supported:
  • Double blinding isn't usually possible in mind/body studies (because the participants naturally know whether or not they're meditating).
  • It is possible and important to single-blind staff.
  • Single-blinding has been done in two TM studies.
  • Well-designed studies control for as many variables as possible, including things like the amount of time spent with staff and the level of expectation communicated to participants. (Earlier pages more relevant, and many less-contestable sources available for this point.)

So I'm not sure that I'd necessarily use this source, and I don't think I'd try to support this particular text, but it's not a completely unreliable source. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:09, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for these points. The first, third, and fourth authors are with the National Institutes of Health. The editor of the book is a former president of the American Heart Association. The reason why this was added to the article is because there are multiple points of view regarding double blinding. The article cites an AHRQ review and an article in The Canadian (a newspaper) criticizing the research for not being double blinded. But most sources say that double blinding isn't possible. This source is good not only for again making the point that double blinding isn't usually possible, but that it's possible to blind assessors (usually referred to as single blinding), and that TM research has done this. (All of the NIH-funded studies on TM use single blinding.) Otherwise the article just criticizes TM research for not being double blinded, and cites a number of reviews that say it may not be possible, but doesn't show the serious efforts made to single blind. This book draws attention to the careful blinding in these studies.TimidGuy (talk) 11:58, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

Doc James has now deleted this material from the article. Above I noted that the discussion of the scientific merit of TM research also cites the newspapers (The Jerusalem Post, The Canadian), a magazine (Newsweek), and the Encyclopedia of Occultism and the Paranormal. I pointed out that these also aren't peer reviewed, and Cirt said that when dealing with science topics, and medical topics within science, the sources should be reviewed. Can we conclude that these popular media sources aren't reliable and also should be removed from the article?TimidGuy (talk) 11:58, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

TimidGuy, the specific pages that are being cited were written by a single person (a psychiatrist named Josh Berman). If you're citing Berman's pages, it doesn't really matter who wrote the other pages in the book. It's like saying, 'This museum contains a masterpiece by Ms Famous, so I conclude that the painting by Mr Nobody at the other end of the room is a masterpiece, too.' WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:16, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

The book has a pretty reputable editor, though. No decent curator would include total crap along with Picasso, and neither would any decent editor. --JN466 05:01, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

• It's a book by a major academic publisher. Of course it meets WP:RS. --JN466 04:37, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
• Actually, some of the discussion above is absurd. The assertion that an academic book should be "peer-reviewed", and that only peer-reviewed sources are reliable sources, is particularly odd. An academic publisher will have an expert check a book manuscript before taking such a publishing project on. I can't imagine this being any different in this case. Peer-reviewed journal articles are often primary sources, and precisely the sorts of sources we should not be using in articles on medicine. We should be using meta-analyses and literature reviews. And an academic book is certainly one rung up from a newspaper ... NPOV, anyone? --JN466 04:56, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

The book appears generally reliable, but the paragraph presented substantially over-reaches, doing a deep-dive into the text to twist it into saying what it dosen't say. Hipocrite (talk) 08:24, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

@Whatamidoing: I don't understand why you're singling out Berman as the author. This chapter has four authors: Nahin, Berman, Stoney, and Wong. The other three are with the National Institutes of Health, and Berman is an assistant professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University Medical Center. TimidGuy (talk) 12:01, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

@Hipocrate: It would be great if you could explain what is being twisted. Here's what the source says:

"Double blinding is not usually possible in mind-body and procedure-based intervention trials, as well as trials of special diets." (p 73) "These studies had in place many of the design features and implementation strategies outlined in our discussion of CAM clinical trial design. For example, these researchers implemented careful blinding strategies where possible, particularly in regard to key outcome variables. In the study of transcendental meditation alone , both the technicians who monitored blood pressure changes in participants, as well as the physicians assessing meditation usage, were blinded to participant treatment allocation. In addition, participants randomized to each arm were matched with regard to time spent with instructions, basic structure of the intervention, and level of expectation conveyed for positive results." (p. 81)

The paragraph goes on to talk about dosage and says that the researchers should test to find the most appropriate dose. And it includes assessment of adherence as another positive design feature, and suggests that the outcome in this study and previous studies could be due to greater adherence. And it notes some of the design challenges of doing a multimodal study . The overall point is that these two studies had in place important design features. I'd like to include this point in the article, especially regarding being carefully blinded. Maybe just a sentence. TimidGuy (talk) 12:01, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

So all the text really says was "here's some studies that attempted blinding to get better results". No indication that this is at all relevant to TM technique. Maybe relevant to our article on Complementary and alternative medicine. ScienceApologist (talk) 14:05, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

It's relevant to TM in the sense that TM studies are one type of study discussed in the chapter. The issue of blinding subjects (i.e. that it's not possible) is also mentioned in the chapter's conclusion, on page 83, which follows the discussion of the various types of studies (of which TM is one). --JN466 16:34, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

That's just an accident of the fact that teaching TM was one of the differences between the groups in the studies that had a good design. It says nothing about TM itself. It says something about the researchers who published the paper and the techniques of their research. The results of the studies are inconclusive and not mentioned in the textbook. At best, this could be used as a source for a statement such as, "There have been two published studies involving TM where forms of blinding were attempted." And that's about it. ScienceApologist (talk) 18:53, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

Lulu.com and Academic Associations

Just a heads up for our records, Though my university professors I have learned that at least one Academic Association (in this case Society for Historical Archaeology) has started publishing through with Lulu.com with Editorial oversight on the Association's part. Apparently This could be the start being a trend with second string Academic Association. (First String being orgs like American Anthropological Association and American Academy of Religion) as apparently Lulu.com is offering a bigger cut than typical Academic Publishers. Just a note to have in the Archives. No one has tried to use one of these sources to my knowledge yet nor do I know wether any other Orgs have signed on as well. The Resident Anthropologist (talk) 23:19, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Dear ResidentAnthropologist. In this case it appears that SHA is still the publisher for wikipedia purposes and lulu is merely the printer. Is the case different? Fifelfoo (talk) 00:28, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

Yes, for all intents and purposes. A copy one of these in my school Library book still says its published by Lulu.com. Depending on how its cited here and whether Or not some one tries to challenge it becuase its assumed to be a Lulu.com- WP:SPS. This it merely to have record of it for future use. The Resident Anthropologist (talk) 03:29, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

Having no source as a reliable source

I'm in the strange situation of having an editor(two in fact) claim that no reliable source meets the requirement of WP:BURDEN, so I ask is having no source a reliable source. The content is on Logarithm#Logarithmic_identities, I've tagged it twice as Template:Unreferenced section and twice been reverted(see article history) without any sources and one editor has suggested I raise the objection here. Regards, SunCreator 00:57, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

The point is that it has not been challenged nor is it even liable to be challenged. It has simply been tagged along with a whole pile of other things the editor was going round challenging. I believe the editor misunderstands verifiability as meaning citations are always required. Dmcq (talk) 01:02, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

No, citations are not always required. Tagging it has challenging it, and when it's challenged a reference is required. So from my perspective I've challenged it, I'm asking for references and quoting WP:BURDEN. Regards, SunCreator 01:07, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

No you've put on a tag in what's called drive-by tagging. You're not actually challenging it. If you have just put on a citation needed tag because you wanted to find a good text on the subject that would be one thing. But it is obvious that you just were doing semi automated tagging of sections without citations. Dmcq (talk) 01:11, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

I understand where your coming from but I did a random selection of current GA candidate articles with poor sourcing, Logarithm was one such article and the tag is clear and unambiguous(tags that are vague are a pain). I'm helping this article and now that it's challenged a reliable source is required. Regards, SunCreator 01:25, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

If something is challenged, then it must be cited. Drive-by tagging for NPOV or NOR templates is discouraged, because editors must explain the nature of the concern. But anyone can add a citation-request template to an unsourced statement, as the nature of the concern is obvious. Jayjg 04:18, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

The point at issue here (the logarithm of a product is the sum of the logarithms of the multiplicands) was not challenged as either being dubious or being unverifiable, but merely as being unreferenced. I think there is a risk that inserting individual citations for such basic mathematical points is that (a) it gives too much importance to the particular reference used (in this case now from 1845, which is neither the origin of the point nor the use of current material) and (b) it actually weakens the credibility of the point being made by suggesting that it needs to be referenced before being believed. How many of the next 15 identities also need individual references? --Rumping (talk) 07:57, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

On the contrary it's been challenged twice as requiring verifiable. Regards, SunCreator 20:35, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

If you challenged it because you doubted it could be verified, or you thought it was not neutral or original research then you might have made a comment with your edits. But I find it difficult to believe that is what you thought at the time --Rumping (talk) 22:55, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

• I think I am not the only one on WP to believe that citing WP:BURDEN but not have any rationale for concern (drive by tagging etc) is exactly what is intended by the term WP:wikilawyering. i.e. It very obviously is a case of putting rules before article quality or consensus building.
• I wish WP:BURDEN would be written in a less legalistic way. It is exceptional on WP in the way that it seems to some people to encourage citing rules instead of rational discussion. Other policies make it clear where the limits should lie, but these are more vague and tend to be ignored. For example, article quality should be the highest priority (WP:IAR), and just because defining article quality is not simple it should not be ignored or given a lower priority than some lesser priority.
• Therefore I think drive-by tagging (or deleting or any other similar action) should be more strongly discouraged by the community. The burden rule, by my understanding, is not meant to be used unless there is a real sourcing concern. I do not think it the intention that you can just cite burden instead of having a rationale.
• And if I understand this particular case, it seems like WP:BURDEN is being cited even when there is a source, i.e. just to question whether a source is good enough. I don't think Burden even nominally covers cases where there is a source, and there is reasonable debate about how good the source is. What do others think?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 09:09, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

• WP:BURDEN is being cited because there is a NO source. Regards, SunCreator 20:35, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

Editors are entitled to ignore bad-faith challenges and very large-scale drive-by tagging, including "I spammed {{fact}} after every paragraph without an inline citation". It is not necessary to provide an inline citation for facts widely accepted in the field merely because someone thought that identifying the absence of inline citations was a way to be helpful.

In short, no: You don't need to provide an inline citation for "The human hand usually has four fingers and a thumb,", even if someone fact-tagged it.

Having said that, for small-scale tagging, it's usually much faster to provide the citation than to argue about it. (See WP:LIKELY and WP:SKY.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:23, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

To be fair, logarithmic identities aren't like human hands and it's not unreasonable for a reader to expect an encyclopedia to give them a reason to believe its contents. Sean.hoyland - talk 18:36, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

Drops jaws, Whoever would think that 'Logarithm of a power' or that 'x = blogb(x) yields logk(x) = logk(blogb(x))' is as obvious on 'fingers on a hand' is in a different world. Regards, SunCreator 20:35, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

This is indeed one of the problems in many such cases. The practical problem involved in this rhetorical question is addressed by WP:CLUE which, because it sounds personal and offensive, is one of the less citeable pages we have, as opposed to the wonderfully legalistic "burden" where "it's not me you are arguing with, but the rules" so nothing is personal, or so people say.

But here is what I think. I totally disagree with you. I think that if you take every sentence of this level of obviousness and allow drive-by tagging all over Misplaced Pages, Misplaced Pages ends the next day as a serious project. Misplaced Pages has never had sourcing on every sentence and if it ever does it will be unreadable. I try to write on subjects I know about, and I hope that other editors who look at my work will know something at least about the subject and that they will not start wikilawyering, but I also know that if they do I can do what is happening increasingly, and that is start the silly job of adding footnotes to every sentence and turning all paraphrases that people don't have google books links for into exact quotations. Is this where we are headed?

If you think a reference to something in high school maths needs a source, I have no problem with you going out and getting a source. But I think saying you "challenge" the sourcing when you clearly have absolutely no real challenge is just not on. What is your aim and how does it relate to making better articles? No community can survive long when its citizens start playing cynically with its good faith traditions like this. This is the invocation of a rule for no reason other than to see what you can make people do. I object.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 21:41, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

Addendum. Many of the things that are common knowledge and learnt at relatively low levels of schooling in our times are actually quite complex. Take for example some long words that many people know the meaning of. And almost nothing which is common knowledge is known by literally everyone anymore. So, in exact parallel to the above case, if there is an unusual long word being used in an article, does the community here think it is OK to tag that long word asking for a source to prove what it means? Is that a valid "challenge"? There are long words that most people misunderstand, but we still treat word definitions as common knowledge, don't we?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 09:57, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

For me, the problem with this approach is the implicit assumption that the obligation to ensure that readers are able to verify information is a function of the level of expertise of an editor on a given topic and/or the nature of the topic. This seems problematic in many cases particularly on technical topics, things that are not common knowledge. It's a view that isn't really supported by policy. I consider myself a bit of an expert on a few things. I deliberately don't write about them in Misplaced Pages. It would be rather foolish for a reader to simply accept Misplaced Pages content on faith no matter what the topic is or who the editors are. Providing verifiability under the appropriate circumstances is a bit of difficult thing to get right. Still, if we get it wrong sometimes nobody dies. Sean.hoyland - talk 10:28, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

I, on the other hand, consider it unavoidable that we have different levels of sourcing and common knowledge. It's simply not plausible to source complex topics to the level accessible to an average high school student. In particular, I'd claim that nearly every scientific paper needs a good degree of secondary education (or equivalent other experience) to understand. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 11:53, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

I agree and I'll emphasize those words "simply not possible". There is no point even considering any norm for Misplaced Pages which it would be impossible to allow consistently. Ask yourself how editors are supposed to edit in order to avoid drive-by demands like this. There is no way. If people are allowed to pretend there might be a problem even though they know of no problem then there is no logical limit to how far this can be taken.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 13:09, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

There should be a policy saying that there is a BURDEN of proof to show that there is a rationale for demands made by editors upon other editors, at least in cases where there is no obvious problem - and it should be stated somewhere that not having a footnote on every sentence is not a prima facie case for saying that there might be a problem.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 13:13, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

If somebody tags a statement, that statement should be sourced. If an editor makes a habit of tagging statements whose truth is not actually in any reasonable doubt, that probably needs to be dealt with as a 'disruptive editing' issue (and the statements still need to be sourced). There are more than enough genuinely dubious statements scattered through Misplaced Pages; tagging willy-nilly just wastes people's time and distracts them from fixing real problems. (PS - WhatamIdoing, did you mean WP:BLUE rather than WP:SKY?) --GenericBob (talk) 21:30, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

Can't we all just get along? Here. Andrew Lancaster, above, wrote he wouldn't object if someone else cited one of these. Done. User:Dicklyon cited one of the three subsections, I cited the next, the third specifically says its derivable from the second, and even performs the derivation. Good enough? --GRuban (talk) 20:53, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

I entirely agree with Andrew Lancaster. There are far too many tags saying "this section is unreferenced" added by people who simply find a section with no footnotes and add the tag, without any knowledge of the topic or any explanation about disputed content. Editors who add these tags may well believe they are helping to draw attention to potential problems, but I don't think that the mere addition of ugly tags improves or helps anything. I had a dispute about this some while ago over the article Brittany. An editor added a tag which claimed that the whole article needed additional references and may not be 'neutral'. No explanation was offered. I argued on the editor's talk page that the topic was largely uncontroversial. The editor replied that "most un-sourced material tends to be non-NPOV". At the time (Sept 2009) I argued that the opposite is the truth: "It is entirely untrue that "most un-sourced material tends to be non-NPOV". In fact a great many articles on uncontroversial subjects are poorly sourced precisely because the content is not in dispute, and does not attract tag-adders, who are usually motivated by a desire to reject some assertion or another. It is often difficult and tiresome to find footnotes for uncontroversial facts. Aribitrarily, I will mention Carl Nielsen as an example . In contrast controversial subjects also attract deceptive and disingenuous use of references as anyone who regularly reads the Reliable Sources Noticeboard may see. It is inappropriate to imply POV if you have no reason to do so." My point was that the most heavily footnoted articles are often the most disputed ones, and that footnotes are often misused to bolster controversial claims. I could give many examples of articles in which footnotes are cleverly deployed as smokescreen for OR or POV warfare. Since the advent of Google Books it has been easy to trawl sources to find footnotes to bolster a pre-existing POV, or at least obscure it. It is rapidly becoming the case that the absence of citation is a better sign of reliability than a profusion of it. Paul B (talk) 21:31, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

PC Mech and TechNewsWorld

Is PC Mec considered a reliable source? Would this review be considered a reliable source? Is TechNewsWorld a reliable source? Is this review a reliable source? I'm asking following a contention raised at Misplaced Pages:Help_desk#Vandal_Recently_Changed_our_Company.27s_Wikipedia_Page_Repeatedly.Smallman12q (talk) 02:01, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

Scholastic text replaced by a non-scholastic source

Article: Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines
Source: Elmer, Greg; Gasher, Mike (2005). Contracting Out Hollywood: Runaway Productions and Foreign Location Shooting (Critical Media Studies: Institutions, Politics, and Culture). Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. p. 4. ISBN 9780742536951.
Excerpt on Google books:
edit:

The above source is a scholastic text that was used to source the budget on the Terminator 3 article. This has been removed from the article and replaced with Box Office Mojo as a reference. The book in question is a published collection of academic writings on the film industry. The two authors are respected academics, both holding PhDs and are associate professors. Here are their profiles: Greg Elmer: , Mike Gasher: .

Since this source was removed by an administrator who didn't say why he didn't consider it a reliable source, I would be grateful if someone would check my source and tell me if they consider it reliable or not. I've looked into this and WP:RS states "When available, academic and peer-reviewed publications, scholarly monographs, and textbooks are usually the most reliable sources." It seems to me that a published scholastic work should be considered more reliable than Box Office Mojo. I don't see any credible reason for removing it. Any comments, suggestions, advice would be welcome. Thankyou. Betty Logan (talk) 05:06, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

• please also supply the other citation. Fifelfoo_m (talk) 05:17, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

I linked "Box Office Mojo" to it above. Sorry if it wasn't clear. Here it is again: http://boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=terminator3.htm Betty Logan (talk) 05:21, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

Note The site - Box Office Mojo - is regarded as reliable with regard to movie information. To quote IllaZilla, another editor who restored the BOM reference prior to me, "BOM's #ss are more reliable as they come from financial reports while these others are from cast interviews". Note also that the referenced text in the book does not directly focus on T3's budget, but mentions the value as an aside when discussing the book's real subject, films moving out of California. That aside, I'm still looking for better sources to resolve this. I'd note that I wish Betty had expressed her concerns to me prior to (or even concurrently with) coming to this forum, as I was not informed of this posting despite being a party to it. It is also important to note that two other editors (one relatively new, one with years of experience) had disagreed with the budget value prior to my revert. --Ckatz_spy 05:39, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

The view that "Box Office Mojo is more reliable" is a personal opinion though, there is no evidence to substantiate that view. The only mechanism we have for gauging reliability is through the various fact checking policies various sources employ. I'm not actually challenging your action (although I was disappointed that you gave no reason for rejecting the source after I went to the trouble of finding what I thought was a good quality source). My main reason for coming here was to get an independent opinion as to the reliability of the source—there is no point me pushing the issue on the article if it is not considered a reliable source so I wanted to get that cleared up first. Betty Logan (talk) 06:02, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

It's also worth noting that the two editors objected to sourcing the figure using Forbes and Variety references, not to the scholastic source under discussion. Betty Logan (talk) 06:12, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

Both sources are reliable for Box office revenues. Box Office Mojo is an edited magazine / database. Elmer and Gasher is a chapter in a scholarly book or collection. Fifelfoo (talk) 00:09, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

insideworldsoccer.com

I noticed that almost every single edit by Denkyu (talk · contribs) uses insidesoccer.com articles as source. The site is relatively slick for a Wordpress blog, but there's no "about us" that tells us about the site's editorial policies (or whether it's a content farm). It seems better to replace these cites with more established sources or remove these edits altogether. Thoughts? Mosmof (talk) 15:12, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

Unless the website it attributable to a reliable source, it doesn't meet the criteria. --HighKing (talk) 18:37, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

Coanda-1910 sources ( part 2)

(The unclosed part 1 of the discussion is currently in archive)

Non-Coanda related references

Binksternet is using in the Coanda 1910 assessment after the death of the inventor sources which have not a single entry about Henri Coanda or Coanda-1910 in a personal synthesis to demonstrate that Coanda does not belong to aviation history books. What are the correct actions to be taken in this case?--Lsorin (talk) 12:21, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

Los Angeles Times Blog

Is the LA Times Blog a reliable source for the statement "According to the Los Angeles Times, The organization provides a map that shows where books were officially banned or challenged?"

• Article: Banned Books Week
• Source: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/jacketcopy/2009/09/banned-books-week.html
• Quote from Source: "This year, they've launched an interactive map that shows which books were officially banned or challenged, and where, in 2008."
• Contested diff: http://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=Banned_Books_Week&diff=396134351&oldid=396127207

Thanks for any assistance. Hipocrite (talk) 19:48, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

It depends on the publication, but blogs of major newspapers tend to fall under the same editorial policies as the main paper. That said, I would avoid the "According to the LA Times" construct unless it's an unsigned piece that represents the whole editorial department. Especially since these blogs tend to reflect the voices of the writers more than a standard news article. Mosmof (talk) 19:57, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

So you would think it's a valid source for "The organization provides a map that shows where books were officially banned or challenged?" Hipocrite (talk) 20:02, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

Or do you mean it should read ""According to Carolyn Kellogg of the Los Angeles Times, The organization provides a map that shows where books were officially banned or challenged?" Hipocrite (talk) 20:03, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

I don't think you need to mention the source, since the existence of the map is presented as an uncontroversial fact, not opinion. And it might be best to describe the map as being provided by Banned Books Week organizers using user submitted data - that should resolve any attribution issue, I think. Mosmof (talk) 22:26, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

Pave the Way Foundation website, Ronald J. Rychlak paper reliable for Communist plots?

Is this source by Ronald J. Rychlak on the www.ptwf.org (Pave the Way Foundation) website reliable to support a section in an article stating that the play The Deputy was actually a Communist plot to undermine the Vatican's authority? Jayjg 02:29, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

Pave the Way Foundation is a political religious lobby group. It is not in the business of publishing and fact checking, but in stating particular opinions. An opinion is insufficient to reliably support the extraordinary claim that a play was a Communist plot to undermine the Vatican's authority. Not Reliable for Claim listed. Fifelfoo (talk) 02:32, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

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