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Discuss sources on the reliable sources noticeboard
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Misplaced Pages Library sources

There 63 sources on WIkipedia library . They seem to be very reliable looking (Oxford various, Journals various,) should they be added. Wakelamp db (talk) 21:59, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

Some of them are more reliable than others; we shouldn't paint them all with the same brush. Do you have a question about one source in particular? —Mx. Granger (talk · contribs) 07:03, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

Add a source?

Became aware recently of broadwayworld.com - this has been used as a source to establish notability, but I found this page which seems to indicate that anyone can just submit a press release to the site and have it put up as an "article". Should this be added to the list? Fred Zepelin (talk) 07:12, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

I found this discussion Misplaced Pages:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_203#BroadwayWorld.com? which agrees it should not be used for WP:N, but per WP:RSPCRITERIA you need a bit more. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 08:28, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

Joshua Project

Since there's unlikely to be more participation there and that the request seems uncontroversial, I'm pinging Alaexis and relaying the discussion here:

Thanks, —PaleoNeonate – 05:21, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, PaleoNeonate. If we don't get new feedback in a week or so I think I'll add it to the RSP list. If someone can help me with it, I'd greatly appreciate it. Alaexis¿question? 07:56, 13 November 2021 (UTC)
There are six discussions on it so I've added it to the list. Tell me if you think anything in the entry needs to be changed/added. Tayi Arajakate Talk 08:29, 14 November 2021 (UTC)
Thanks, perhaps worth adding would be that the sources it cites are themselves unreliable... —PaleoNeonate – 05:58, 22 November 2021 (UTC)
I took a glance at the discussions again and yes, it does seem to be worth adding so I've added a line mentioning that. Tayi Arajakate Talk 20:04, 24 November 2021 (UTC)

Pronews.gr (and other small Greek sites) should be excluded from Misplaced Pages, since they are not reliable.

Pronews.gr should be excluded from WP. It is not reliable, it is the exact opposite of it.

I think it should be included in the list at #Sources section. (with the advice not to be used, as in Deprecated) Cinadon36 12:20, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

Hm...I hadn't noticed the requirements for inclusion. WP:RSPCRITERIA Cinadon36 12:37, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

Cinadon36, seeing as pronews.gr HTTPS links HTTP links is used in only 20 articles at present, I'd suggest just removing them from the respective articles and bringing it to WP:RSN if anyone disputes the removal. Tayi Arajakate Talk 13:29, 18 November 2021 (UTC)
pentapostagma.gr HTTPS links HTTP links and defence-point.gr HTTPS links HTTP links are being used in 12 and 14 articles respectively, I'd suggest the same for them. Tayi Arajakate Talk 14:15, 18 November 2021 (UTC)
It would be good to establish the reliability of the master thesis referenced here before taking action. Alaexis¿question? 15:29, 18 November 2021 (UTC)
Master's theses aren't reliable for content in articles but it cites Ellinika Hoaxes which is the sole Greek fact-checking org listed on WP:IFCN's signatories list. When the use case is this low and someone reasonably thinks it's an unreliable source, then imo, it's alright if they just take action till there is a dispute over it. Tayi Arajakate Talk 16:23, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

Thanks both of you for your input. I removed the pronews from all articles in WP and added a {{cn}} template. Now, if I 'll get reverted, I will take it to RSN and discuss it further. If not, then, I guess, no action is needed. @Alaexis: I do not know if there are specific criteria for master theses but unless there are making an extraordinary claim I think of them as reliable. A search for the term pronews at Ellinika Hoaxes yields >750 results. Efimerida ton Syntakton has two articles mentioning pronews and linking them to antivax movement. This article cites (but gives no link) to Nikos Smyrnaios of Toulouze University. Other one (same storyline though) is this one. I also found an article in Lifo.gr, also based on Ellinika-Hoaxes, saying that Pronews, posted a news article, about a white woman, married to a white man, giving birth to a black baby and accusing her husband for drinking too much coffee! . El-hoaxes concluded it was a fault story. It was a story that appeared at satirical pages like thereisnews.com a year earlier. For me, if it smells like a duck, walks like a duck, looks like a duck and says quack-quack, it is not a RS. Cinadon36 06:34, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

I am sure you are right about it. Mine was a more general comment that a lot of supposed fact checkers and fake news researchers themselves often have an agenda and aren't always reliable, so major decisions should not be based on a single questionable source. However, Pronews do appear to be unreliable. Alaexis¿question? 12:21, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

update: I remove pronews and pentapostagma.gr from various articles, none of them has been contested as of now, as far as I know. Cinadon36 13:26, 24 November 2021 (UTC)

A Coordinate Graph

What would be useful here would be the addition of a 2-dimensional coordinate graph with a recognized metric of the sources on a left/right scale on the x-axis, and the source status from this article on an y-axis. Both variables are ordinal, but graphing is still possible. Not intended as original research, any more than this article itself is. Tachypaidia (talk) 22:22, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

You are perhaps assuming all entries are related to politics and also the USA; not so. Alternative media lists may be found at Alternative media (U.S. political left) and Alternative media (U.S. political right), and Category:Conservative media in the United States. There may well be more articles and categories. And would it really matter for RSP? The list is intended to advise whether you can, shouldn't, or shan't use a source in a citation. Platonk (talk) 23:37, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

Proto Thema

Proto Thema is not a reliable source in my opinion. It is used 205 times across en.WP There is sensationalism, lack of accuracy and their fact are not regularly checked.

  • A report for European Commission, posted by prof Anna Triandafyllidou (see also here) is devastating for ProtoThema. You can download the report from here
  • Media Bias Fact Check has a small essay on protothema.gr that supports the above view.
  • Fact checking site Ellinika hoaxes has 188 entries on protothema.gr. Ellinika Hoaxes is the sole Greek fact-checking org listed on WP:IFCN's signatories list
  • Another report (on greek media coverage of covid pandemic) shows the inadequate verifiability of protothema articles (see page 9 and esp page 14 use of links )

Worth noting that Protothema ranks among the biggest newsportals in greece in terms of articles posted per day and traffic. (see discussion here )

Poor fact checking plus sensationalism means does not stand against WP criteria for RS.Cinadon36 12:09, 24 November 2021 (UTC)

Can you not read the banner? WP:RSN is the place where sources are discussed, not here. Hemiauchenia (talk) 19:44, 24 November 2021 (UTC)
Yep, this should be moved to RSN. Tayi Arajakate Talk 19:48, 24 November 2021 (UTC)
Will move. Apologies. Cinadon36 20:21, 24 November 2021 (UTC)

CNBC

I was wondering - is CNBC considered a reliable source? Bob (talk) 11:05, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

If you cite straight news articles from cnbc.com, in most cases, facing challenges on CNBC's reliability alone would be unlikely and citing news articles for all purposes should be generally fine.If someone does challenge you, the dispute should primarily be resolved on the article's talk page. If that is not possible, you may ask WP:RSN whether a specific CNBC source is reliable for specific statement in specific Misplaced Pages article, but questions like "is CNBC generally reliable" are too trivial and generally fruitless.If nobody challenges you, there is no need for discussion. RSP should not be considered an exhaustive list. Politrukki (talk) 14:30, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

Evaluating sources

Editors should reconsider how they evaluate sources. We know what RS say about the following points, and we have articles, based on RS, which debunk these lies.

Any source that repeatedly sows doubt about these facts:

  1. that Russia interfered in the election,
  2. that their goal was to put Trump in power, and
  3. that Trump and his campaign lied about and cooperated with that interference, or

or makes claims:

  1. that Trump won the 2020 election and
  2. that it was stolen from him by Biden,
  3. that climate change isn't serious,
  4. that vaccines are unsafe,
  5. that Trump is truthful in any sense,

is not a RS. Those sources are the ones that should be removed and deprecated. We all know which sources do that, and that those sources are often defended here at Misplaced Pages. The Washington Post and the New York Times are not such sources. -- Valjean (talk) 02:02, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

Media Matters for America

WP:RSP currently says that "There is no consensus on the reliability of Media Matters for America. As a biased or opinionated source, their statements should be attributed." I agree with the second sentence, but not the first. The last RfC on this matter showed most !votes as "generally reliable" and "additional considerations apply", but I don't see anyone saying its "unreliable". But "no consensus" sounds ambiguous and could mean "some editors think it is reliable, while other editors think its unreliable". VR talk 08:19, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

Good points. The wording should be changed to:
There is consensus that Media Matters for America is generally reliable. As a biased or opinionated source, their statements should be attributed.
The last RfC should be linked. -- Valjean (talk) 21:44, 2 December 2021 (UTC)
The last RfC explicitly reaffirmed the "No consensus" status. I don't think we should second-guess the closer here. Alaexis¿question? 21:51, 2 December 2021 (UTC)
That's not quite what the closer said (they said "the current reliability status of Media Matters for America is generally reaffirmed"). But its clear even from the closer's statement that the two predominant choices were "reliable" and "uncertain", not "reliable" and "unreliable".VR talk 22:00, 2 December 2021 (UTC)
The "current reliability status" before the December 2019 RfC was "No consensus." The closer wrote that it was reaffirmed. Alaexis¿question? 22:07, 2 December 2021 (UTC)
Maybe what they meant by "current reliability status" was the color, and I agree that the color was reaffirmed by the RfC. Your interpretation of the closer's first sentence appears to contradict the closer's second sentence. If the closer truly meant that consensus is split between reliable and unreliable (I don't think they meant that), then that RfC should be re-closed, as I don't see a single !vote that considered MMfA unreliable during the RfC.VR talk 22:17, 2 December 2021 (UTC)
No, the closer didn't mean that consensus was split between reliable and unreliable. The closer meant that consensus was split between "reliable" and "uncertain" but "a lot of the arguments in general default to "uncertain."" By "uncertain," I am quite confident that was simply the closer's shorthand for a marginally reliable source, which is defined as a No consensus, unclear, or additional considerations apply: The source is marginally reliable (i.e. neither generally reliable nor generally unreliable), and may be usable depending on context. Editors may not have been able to agree on whether the source is appropriate, or may have agreed that it is only reliable in certain circumstances. It may be necessary to evaluate each use of the source on a case-by-case basis while accounting for specific factors unique to the source in question. This makes sense since a great deal of editors !voted "additional considerations apply." Even many of the editors who !voted generally reliable stated that the source should be used on a "case-by-case basis" or is "context dependent." These types of qualifiers are more in line with a marginal source than a generally reliable source, and the closer accurately reflected this in their closing. Dr. Swag Lord (talk) 22:46, 2 December 2021 (UTC)
Yes, I agree. But I feel this is not accurately reflected in the simplistic sentence "There is no consensus on the reliability of Media Matters for America" and it should be worded differently.VR talk 23:13, 2 December 2021 (UTC)
Okay. We can write something to the degree of: There is consensus that Media Matters is marginally reliable and that its articles should be evaluated for reliability on a case-by-case basis. As a partisan advocacy group, their statements should be be attributed. But I'm open to other suggestions. Dr. Swag Lord (talk) 01:36, 3 December 2021 (UTC)
That sounds pretty good. -- Valjean (talk) 02:31, 3 December 2021 (UTC)
I think its an improvement over the current wording, so I'd support replacing it.VR talk 02:43, 3 December 2021 (UTC)
Agreed. Why are we splitting hairs here what the closer may have meant two years ago when it's possible to hold a new RfC at the RSN. Alaexis¿question? 11:56, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

Jacobin (magazine)

In the latest RfC about Jacobin, I am not sure that "ditors achieved a strong consensus that Jacobin is no better than marginally reliable. , and in general did not seem to account for Option 1 and/or Option 1/2 comments when stating that "there is strong consensus that Jacobin is no better than marginally reliable" — e.g. it appears to be there was no clear or strong consensus on whether it was 1 or 2, with a minority supporting 3. The rest of the closure and yellow rating, however, was fine; the current (RSP entry) also appears to be too wordy and could be improved. Davide King (talk) 08:21, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

Pinging Hemiauchenia and Tayi Arajakate, since they worked on entries, but anyone's thought would be helpful — is it just me? Davide King (talk) 08:15, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

Davide King, I would rather not touch that entry since I had made a comment in the discussion itself but yeah, looking at the discussion, I think you might be correct that the entry does not reflect it. The wording in the entry is directly copied from the close summary though, so a close review at WP:AN would be needed if you want to modify it. Tayi Arajakate Talk 01:33, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

Legacy.com

Any objection to adding legacy.com to the list? This site hosts the generally family-written obituaries (without regard to newsworthiness or noteworthiness). It's been previously discussed here and here, and the consensus is that it really should not be cited for much more than death dates.

We generally do a good job of scrubbing articles where it's used (currently, discounting for non-article space, it's only used in a couple dozen articles, but new articles, especially biographies of borderline notables, citing it continue to crop up; it is a textbook perennial source. A recent example is Eleanor Foraker.

I propose to add it with the notation "legacy.com is discouraged as a source and should be cited, if at all, only for the date of death of the subject."; with pointers to the two discussions linked above.

Any objections? TJRC (talk) 17:55, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

I take back the point of how well we scrub articles: when you include the "www." prefix, there are several thousand uses. TJRC (talk) 18:09, 7 December 2021 (UTC)
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