Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard

Omniglot is a commercial website, published largely (entirely?) by one person, that provides tables of writing systems for numerous languages. It frequently comes up in Wikipedia's language articles as a citation for respective languages' orthographies, as well as for sample texts. At the time of writing, Special:LinkSearch/omniglot.com has 1877 entries.

However, Omniglot's sources that it derives from are often opaque and obscured; it appears to regularly use Wikipedia as one of its primary sources; many of the links it provides are deprecated and parked by phishing scams; and of course it is self-published site (WP:BLOG?) by an author who is certainly not a recognized or well-established linguist on this topic (writing systems).

The source has come up thrice before on this noticeboard:

1. Archive 148#omniglot.com
2. Archive 175#Omniglot online Encyclopedia
3. Archive 301#Omniglot

I am opening the RfC below, as I believe it is due time to have it listed on WP:RSPS. ~ oklopfer (💬) 01:09, 28 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

There are two questions regarding Omniglot.

Question 1: Is Omniglot a reliable source?

• Option Q1.1: Generally reliable for factual information
• Option Q1.2: Unclear or additional considerations apply
• Option Q1.3: Generally unreliable for factual information
• Option Q1.4: Unreliable to the point that it should be deprecated

Question 2: Should it be listed on WP:Reliable sources/Perennial sources? Per discussion below, this question may be irrelevant; conclusion of this RfC would warrant listing regardless.

• Option Q2.1: Yes, it should be listed in the table under whichever Q1 option has consensus
• Option Q2.2: No, it does not need to be listed in the table
• Option Q2.3: Defer, either unsure or should wait

~ oklopfer (💬) 01:09, 28 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

• Q1.4 & Q2.1: As nom, I believe it is unreliable to the point of needing deprecation, and should be listed in the table. It fails multiple aspects of what makes a reliable source. ~ oklopfer (💬) 01:09, 28 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
• Q1.3. or Q1.4. I have no comment on deprecation, as it is not a process I am familiar with. I have read the page for two languages I am familiar with (Irish, Sicilian). There are inaccuracies, which seem to stem from common misconceptions about the two languages rather than established academic consensus. It claims Sicilian has loanwords from pre-Roman languages we know next to nothinig about,^[1] and that the Irish standard (An Caighdeán Oifigiúil) has a pronunciatioin "based on the Connacht dialect".^[2] It is exclusively a written standard, so there is no standard pronunciation, but it is a commonly held belief that in its written form, the Caighdeán favours Co. Galway varieties (in Connacht). Teangacha 07:00, 28 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

  No comment on the second statement, but is the first statement not true? There is increasing academic consensus on substratum in the Western Indo-European languages, with much work being done on problematic Proto-Italic words for which no Indo-European etymology can be given. Pladica (talk) 22:24, 30 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

• Q1.3. Particularly concerning is the apparent lack of transparency of sources. I think this should be treated with care as an effectively self-published source. Sławomir Biały (talk) 09:46, 28 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
• Q1.3 and Q2.3 This looks like WP:UGC to me. However I don't want to bloat the RSP list with every single webpage we should not be using. Policy is pretty clear about use of UGC. Let's just assert that people follow extant policy and then, if that doesn't work, we can revisit an RSP list. Simonm223 (talk) 12:22, 28 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

  The site's appearance and high location in Google search results are extremely conducive to its use by unsuspecting editors. The site makes no immediate affirmation of UGC, and editors will probably not assume it is such until they get digging in the site. I think this warrants a blacklist and a listing on RS/P. 🪐Kepler-1229b | talk | contribs🪐 15:24, 28 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

  I think a reminder that blacklisting has a very specific meaning on Wikipedia might be in order, because I don't think you're saying this should go on the blacklist, right? ⹃Maltazarian ^{ᚾparley${\displaystyle \lor }$investigateᛅ} 18:08, 28 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

  I misspoke. I meant deprecating the source, not blacklisting it. 🪐Kepler-1229b | talk | contribs🪐 18:09, 28 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

  I thought so. Just had to make sure. ⹃Maltazarian ^{ᚾparley${\displaystyle \lor }$investigateᛅ} 18:10, 28 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

• Q1.4. I fully support deprecation for this source. I am currently researching the site and information about it, but far too many unsuspecting editors (including, admittedly myself) have used it to add orthography sections to language articles without knowing its unreliability. I will respond later when I have a clearer assessment of the site. 🪐Kepler-1229b | talk | contribs🪐 15:07, 28 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
  • I distinctly remember the site also hosts some WP:ONEDAY type content, such as Cyrillic-script writing for Latin-script languages. I think there was an entry on Cyrillicized Slovak, which made it into a Wikipedia article on one of the Cyrillic letters before it was removed. 🪐Kepler-1229b | talk | contribs🪐 15:10, 28 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

    A basic assessment of the site reveals a glaring WP:SELFPUB. Ager does not appear to be a subject-matter expert whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable, independent publications. I agree with Q2.1 as it is near the top of Google search results and therefore easy for an unknowing editor to use on Wikipedia. 🪐Kepler-1229b | talk | contribs🪐 15:15, 28 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

• Q1.4 I support deprecation. Self-published with issues as described by others. Much too easily used by well-meaning editors. PersusjCP (talk) 15:45, 28 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
• Q1.4 and Q2.1 I was going to go with Q1.3 because at the end of the day this website appears to be pretty much equivalent to just being some guys blog from a WP:RS standpoint. What's the big deal, right? Generally that's what I'd say about most of these kinds of sources, but I read what others said, freshened up my memory on what WP:DEPRECATE actually says deprecation is for and I've ended up thinking that this seems to be a valid deprecation. Deprecation doesn't mean it's impossible to use a source, it just means anyone trying to use one is warned about it. That is mainly to warn unsuspecting editors, and clearly there is some need for it considering searching for articles using it as a source gives you 938 results, including a lot of WP:VITAL articles, including ones going as far up the pyramid as level 3 (top 1,110 most vital articles). That's not good. If there actually ends up being some situation where the site happens to be reliable due to having adequate sourcing then you can just power through the deprecation. Obviously I'm going Q2.1 considering I'm going Q1.4. ⹃Maltazarian ^{ᚾparley${\displaystyle \lor }$investigateᛅ} 18:04, 28 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

  Going to change that to a Q1.3, after further consideration. Deprecation does seem harsh looking back at it, considering it's published in good faith and there are pages that have sourcing good enough to be used. ⹃Maltazarian ^{ᚾparley${\displaystyle \lor }$investigateᛅ} 08:21, 27 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

• Q1.3., not sure about the perennial sources list since I don’t know whether the site is notable enough (so Q2.3?). With regard to the writing system I know most about, J.R.R. Tolkien’s tengwar, Omniglot is a terribly unreliable source. I like the site as a curious collection, but it is useless as a reliable source. --mach 🙈🙉🙊 17:58, 28 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

The site is quite visible in Google search results. I believe this warrants a list on RS/P due to its promiscuity and attractiveness to possible editors. 🪐Kepler-1229b | talk | contribs🪐 18:06, 28 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

• Q1.4 and Q2.1 per nominator and other editors. High unreliability coupled with high visibility is a scary combo. I like octopuses^{talk to me, talk to me} 17:45, 29 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

• Q1.4 & Q2.1: I don't know the site well, but after skimming it for the RfC I have realized that it is maintained by a single person, and it uses Wikipedia and blog-style sites as sources and is not particularly transparent with sources overall. So definitely not a reliable primary or secondary source. I don't see any value in using this as a source. We can just use scholarly publications. Moreover I think inclusion in perennial sources is warranted as the site has been used as a source a lot on Wikipedia already. CVDX (talk) 03:11, 30 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

• Q1.2 or Q1.3 and Q2.1 While one should certainly keep in mind it is a self maintained and self published site, I would say it should at least be given some lenience in its articles on writing systems. One needs to keep in mind that writing systems are still being created each and every year, and omniglot contains some of the first info online on new scripts, especially in areas where little exists in the way of traditional media such as Africa and the 'Zomia' Region. Many of these scripts have gone on to become notable and get their own articles on the Wiki; Oduduwa for example first appearing on omniglot should one look back at the site's news posts. The site is commonly cited within Unicode documents, including by its advisory councils, perhaps the most important authority worldwide on writing systems. In addition, the author of the site, Simon Ager, holds a position on the advisory council on the endangered alphabets network, further giving him credence (at least in my eyes). At the very least I think deprecation is too extreme, given what I've said, but certainly a notice on the reliable sources would be well advised. Pladica (talk) 23:45, 30 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

  Most of your arguments are correct, but the sentence One needs to keep in mind that writing systems are still being created each and every year, and omniglot contains some of the first info online on new scripts, especially in areas where little exists in the way of traditional media such as Africa and the 'Zomia' Region is further evidence that Omniglot would be unreliable, as the information would not be verifiable. That would be a circular reasoning argument a la "Omniglot is a reliable source because the information contained in it comes from a reliable source (Omniglot)." I like octopuses^{talk to me, talk to me} 00:04, 1 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

  Are any earlier, locally produced documents for those scripts and local media covering them available and far more reliable than Omniglot? Were the Unicode documents rejected proposals for including certain new characters? 🪐Kepler-1229b | talk | contribs🪐 00:12, 1 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

  For the first question it depends, "those scripts" consist of dozens of scattered scripts each with their own histories, generally if there is documents and news coverage it would be offline only. Proposals including omniglot sources have generally been accepted (Old Uyghur, Sora Sempang, Kirk Miller's various proposals) and those that haven't were rejected for reasons outside of using Omniglot Pladica (talk) 01:47, 1 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

  Just because these sources use it doesn't make it reliable. Have you addressed the concerns brought up about its factual acuracy and apparent WP:CIRCULAR, WP:ONEDAY, etc. content and lack of citing sources? 🪐Kepler-1229b | talk | contribs🪐 02:34, 1 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

  WP:CIRCULAR doesn't really apply to minority scripts since they either do not have articles already or postdate their omniglot counterparts as I have mentioned, and yes, I would consider it to be factually reliable in this area. WP:ONEDAY is just an essay and not something I'd really consider even applying for something like minority writing systems. Pladica (talk) 05:16, 1 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

  I meant generally, not just restricted to minority scripts. 🪐Kepler-1229b | talk | contribs🪐 13:02, 1 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

  Perhaps you misunderstand my point, I'm not arguing about omniglot as a general source, I think generally for languages there is more than enough resources available in academia to cover them without ever needing to use omniglot as a source. Writing systems however are a different story, there is much less work available to editors, especially as many of these scripts are young and in areas beyond the reach of traditional media. On top of that, Simon Ager clearly is seen as respected and reliable within the larger community of writing system research as one can see from his work in Unicode and the Endangered Alphabets network, and so I think as a clause omniglot is fine to use in this subfield in lieu of better sources. Pladica (talk) 22:30, 1 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

  @Pladica Very late reply, but I think it should be used only to establish the existence of these scripts. Even this is tenuous, however, as it hosts obvious WP:ONEDAY content, where some random person can make up a writing system for any language and get it hosted, like this Cyrillicization of Slovak, which, if I rember correctly, was actually cited in Izhitsa. 🪐Kepler-1229b | talk | contribs🪐 17:59, 7 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

  Yes, but stuff like the modern creation of new orthographies for Western, well established languages occur in a very separate context than that of new advent writing systems for minority tongues; stuff like the Slovak Cyrillicization you linked is very explicitly the work of a few amateur language enthusiasts for nothing but simple fun, the page is very blatant about this its description. Minority writing systems however occur in a much more "natural" sense, largely being created in religious and/or communal contexts. These differences are clearly laid out enough in Glottolog's descriptions on each page, but yes, clearly you have occasional naive editors seemingly not reading thoroughly enough and making uninformed edits. This is why I think the reliable sources listing should make the distinction between these types clear, with articles on novel minority writing systems being Glottolog-okay while the other parts of the site are highly discouraged. Pladica (talk) 08:25, 10 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

  I'm asuming you're confusing Glottolog with Omniglot, but I suppose the latter could be used solely to prove the existence of a minority script when there is no other evidence, although the degree of reliablity in Omniglot prohibits the inclusion of more than a stub. 🪐Kepler-1229b | talk | contribs🪐 17:06, 10 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

  Yes, my mistake, very similarly named sites serving somewhat similar purposes. And correct, that is what I have been arguing; it is a suitable source for these topics. Pladica (talk) 06:01, 13 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

  How then, do you distinguish these scripts from something someone made up one day and had it posted on the website? 🪐Kepler-1229b | talk | contribs🪐 13:53, 13 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

  Because as I have already explained multiple times, the descriptions given by the website are very clear in what each script is and who created it. And again, these minority scripts develop differently than simple novelty scripts made for fun, I don't know why you keep conflating the two very separate categories. Pladica (talk) 03:38, 19 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

  Scoring big scoops isn't a priority of ours. We can afford to await until more reliably published info comes along. Largoplazo (talk) 00:18, 1 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

  Sure, but I think it's important to recognize the gap in literature on minority groups, scripts and languages compared to those of the mainstream and that we as an encyclopedia should recognize that and give some leniency to these communities as a result, many of these still have next to no work on them even when they widely catch on. Pladica (talk) 01:55, 1 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

• Bad RfC. I think WP:RSN should be about disputed use in a Wikipedia article, so I googled site:en.wikipedia.org omniglot and looked at the first 5 answers. First was Omniglot, and it should be okay to cite Omniglot re Omniglot. Second was List of constructed scripts, Omniglot was in the "External links" not a cite. Third was File:Quikscript alphabet with phonetic transcription of the characters.gif -- Omniglot was presumably being used because it explicitly allows non-commercial copying, so is convenient. Fourth was File:Universal Declaration of Human Rights - mlt - Art1.ogg -- again, convenient. FIfth was Old English Latin Alphabet, and again Omniglot was in "External links" not a cite. From this sample, I gather that there was no reason to start an RfC about banning -- and I use that word since I've seen references to sites destroyed solely because there had been an RfC mentioning deprecating. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 20:01, 11 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

  Plenty of sources cite Omniglot as an actual source for articles instead of linked in the external link section. 🪐Kepler-1229b | talk | contribs🪐 20:05, 11 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

  @Peter Gulutzan I wouldn't have brought this to RfC at all if there wasn't a significant problem with Omniglot being used as an inline citation on articles. You can see such examples quite clearly with Special:Search/insource:omniglot (rather than a Google search), where a plethora of search results show the website provided within <ref> tags. ~ oklopfer (💬) 20:24, 11 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I said "I think WP:RSN should be about disputed use in a Wikipedia article", you don't claim that my randomly-chosen examples are disputed or a significant problem. Even if you gave examples from your side showing that a cite was wrong, I'd wonder what the argument on the article's talk page was. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 21:30, 11 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Your examples are problematic, as many articles do use Omniglot as an actual citation to use to add content onto the page. The link above provides enough examples of this, 🪐Kepler-1229b | talk | contribs🪐 21:36, 11 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

In your initial comment you said they were the first five results from a Google search; if that is the case, then they are not randomly selected. This was brought to the board for the precise reasoning you are claiming it should be used for: usage of the source within articles (as a citation). Turning a blind eye to those numerous examples to maintain your original point does not make a good case, in my opinion.

As an aside, I find the argument that deprecation will destroy the site's integrity rather overblown, and should also not be a criteria for maintaining it. Should the RfC pass in favor of listing it on perennial sources, it will almost certainly be stated that it is a self-published site which has opaque sourcing for its claims, and is therefore not reliable for our uses. None of that would be inaccurate, nor necessarily damaging in my opinion, only informative and cautionary. If recognition of those qualities "destroys" the site, that should be glaring evidence that it is problematic and corroboration that it should not be used as a source here. ~ oklopfer (💬) 22:12, 11 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

The increased reliability of Wikipedia brought about by controlling the use of poor quality sources has been praised by external reporting, and the community seems quite happy with the process. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 13:29, 12 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

• 1.3 or 1.4: Omniglot is neat but is basically a self-published blog. The author is a linguist but the website is done to hobby project standards and isn't trying to be rigorous. Most uses appear to just be external links at the bottom of obscure articles anyway. Deprecation seems unnecessary. No opinion on question 2. -- LWG ^{talk (VOPOV)} 20:26, 11 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

  See above comment for why this source should absolutely be deprecated. 🪐Kepler-1229b | talk | contribs🪐 20:33, 11 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

  @LWG see the search results I just linked in my above comment, as the characterization Most uses appear to just be external links at the bottom of obscure articles anyway is certainly not the case. It has frequent uses as a direct citation (not an external link), and many are definitely not obscure articles. Even then, if they were only 'obscure' articles, usage as a citation within them should not be ignored because of their low visibility. ~ oklopfer (💬) 20:32, 11 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

  I see, yes the citations on the first two articles there Romani people and Benjamin Franklin both look problematic. Thanks for the link. -- LWG ^{talk (VOPOV)} 20:58, 11 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

• Q1.2, Q2.2: Clearly the work of an individual or small group, and we should seek specialized sources for individual languages. Many pages are heavily based on wiki itself. As a longtime editor of Semitic wiki pages, I can tell (for example) that the Aramaic page took its Imperial transcription from an old version of our Aramaic, which was unfortunately pure invention by an editor. GordonGlottal (talk) 15:17, 13 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
• Q1.4 and Q2.2 per above. Effectively appears to be a UGC, and the fact it directly sources from Wikipedia can make things circular, therefore it's not appropriate for use. As for Q2, it doesn't appear to be massively used, so no need to further bloat RSP. The Kip ^(contribs) 18:39, 23 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
• Q1.4 and Q2.2 SPS, but not rigorous enough to be up to our standards, as far as I can tell. No need to clog up the perennials; deprecating it will make it clear easily enough and it's not used enough. CoffeeCrumbs (talk) 01:31, 24 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
• Q1.2 and Q2.2: The success and general excellence of this website in fact shows the difficulties of applying hard-and-fast rules on Wikipedia against self-published sources over-strictly. It was edited by an M.A. linguist who has worked on it for 28 years. It was archived by the Library of Congress, listed as a reference resource by university libraries (UBC, McMaster, no doubt others), and reviewed in Technical Services Quarterly. Indeed, being a labor of love that has required decades to compile, it is the sort of body of work that could—yes, after some more editing—easily be made into a published work. That is, if it were not free. Generally, Wikipedia should not be in the business of second-guessing the on-the-ground decisions of editors. Sometimes, the Omniglot entry might be among the best available sources for some piece of information; we should not make it harder for it to be cited in that case, if the editors decide that is for the best. Sometimes, other sources might be better; in short, I agree with User:Peter Gulutzan on this. As User:Pladica argued, for some writing systems, Omniglot is sometimes the only available documentation, so that preventing use of Omniglot would actually harm small language groups. As to User:GordonGlottal's argument regarding Aramaic, if citogenesis errors were made grounds on which to block sources, consider the many, many greenlit sources that would have to be blocked. In short, it would be a terrible decision for Wikipedia to declare this resource as completely unusable. Larry Sanger (talk) 16:39, 26 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
  • Information from Richey, E. (2024). Omniglot: The Online Encyclopedia of Writing Systems & Languages. Technical Services Quarterly, 41(4), 393–394. https://doi.org/10.1080/07317131.2024.2396245: Professional library science journal addressing the precise question you are addressing in this thread, namely, the reliability of the resource. Rating, 5 out of 5. Said to be "a very useful resource for any cataloger wishing to identify the language or writing system of a text". As to writing systems pages, the reviewer notes: "Sources are cited for all information on the page, and each page ends with a list of links to keyboards, transliteration tools, and other language learning resources." Larry Sanger (talk) 16:39, 26 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

    the reviewer notes: "Sources are cited for all information on the page... Despite the reviewer's claims, I do not see such source attributions on an enormous number of pages. ~ oklopfer (💬) 03:04, 27 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

  Sometimes, the Omniglot entry might be among the best available sources for some piece of information; we should not make it harder for it to be cited in that case, if the editors decide that is for the best. This is a pure case of circular reasoning; this argument presupposes that Omniglot is in fact reliable, when that reliability is the exact thing being disputed. I kind of understand the angle you're going for, but the fact remains that Omniglot still has multiple issues (enumerated by oklopfer and others) that create original research and verifiability concerns. I like octopuses^{talk to me, talk to me} 03:47, 27 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

  No, it's not circular. Circular reasoning would be arguing that OMnigot is reliable because it's reliable. What I stipulate is not that it's reliable but that it might be among the best available sources for some piece of information. That's quite different from a reliability claim. I understand your point about it having issues, but all resources have issues (including many, many of the greenlit sources). That alone does not vitiate the points I raised, which you didn't address. Larry Sanger (talk) 02:27, 28 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

• Q1.4/Q2.1 - Quite literally the definition of a self-published work, stated to be a "one-man operation", and as others have mentioned it's a passion-project. Fair concerns raised about it basically using Wikipedia as a source (never a good sign personally). Given it's come up multiple times, probably worth having it as RSP. Rambling Rambler (talk) 17:00, 26 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
• Q1.2: As LarrySan says, this source is run by a man with a masters degree in linguistics from Bangor University and has academic WP:UseByOthers. I don't think this site is UGC as it states[1][2] every contribution is sent to this one man's email and reviewed. I don't think this falls under any of the WP:UGC categories.
  I also dispute that the site uses Wikipedia as a source. It clearly delineates between source links and {{further reading}} and every "citing Wikipedia as a source" example I've seen mentioned in this discussion is just a further reading link. Our own external links policy would allow a further reading link to Wikipedia as carved out under ELNO#12, as an open wiki with a history of stability and substantial amount of editors. I searched the site for citing Wikipedia and I only see examples like [3] for attributing the origin of sample text the man has presumably verified; again, as LarrySan mentioned, a Taylor & Francis journal trusts the site. In solidarity, Aaron Liu (talk) 02:42, 27 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

  Picking off one of the first listed examples on the site's index, Afaka syllabary: the only source listed is the Wikipedia article. Indeed as you say, it is only used for attribution of the sample text (despite the fact that Afaka syllabary § Sample text provides an apparent citation, so it is unclear why that is not instead used as the source), but it is a complete mystery where the rest of the page information is coming from.

  Looking at the sentence "Afaka claimed that he had a dream in which a spirit prophesied that a script would be revealed to him" on this page, we can see what appears to be a rather problematic plagiaristic copying: this 2013 blogpost appears to be the origin of the sentence, and yet it is never mentioned once on the Omniglot page. According to the Omniglot page, it was last edited 13 Oct 2024, and the first Wayback archive of it appeared on 11 Nov 2024, so it is rather safe to say this was indeed taken from that blog post.

  Next, the sentence "In 1915 a Catholic missionary in Suriname, Brother Bernard, saw a man, Afaka Atumisi's brother-in-law Abena, reading a book written in strange symbols" appears to be derived from a 1988 journal entry: JSTOR 41849333. Again, this journal is never attributed. The plagiarism, combined with the failure to reasonably cite origin sources, combined with the citing of Wikipedia for sample texts are compounding issues.

  It is an overstatement to say that a T&F journal trusts the site; the reviewer who published an article within that journal trusts the site, and the reviewer's claim that Sources are cited for all information on the page is easily demonstrably false as just shown, which brings up major concerns about the rest of the analysis. ~ oklopfer (💬) 03:33, 27 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

  The "Patili Molosi Buku" appears to be not the easiest to find, and even then, the transliteration and translation work was by whoever added it to Wikipedia. I don't see how using sample texts from Wikipedia is any issue.

  That is the only sentence that seems similar to the blogpost so I don't think it's a far cry to say it was a coincidence, like how we would AGF it if someone added it to Wikipedia. It is a clear and direct way to word the idea expressed by the sentence. The blogpost doesn't contain any information from the Omniglot page—beyond the first paragraph, which only has basic details—either.

  The JSTOR article just covers the same information; none of the language is similar. I don't see why you think it must have come from that source. I agree that the site isn't citing its sources but I don't think that's big enough an issue to make this less than MarginallyRELiable.

  That's the same thing: The author has to submit to the journal's editors for review, who then have to get the article peer-reviewed. I don't think 1.5% of a journal article being blatantly wrong invalidates it as it is clearly written as a small (though significant) detail. In solidarity, Aaron Liu (talk) 15:31, 27 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

  • It's not just similar to the blog post, it is verbatim the same sentence. Given how the sentence is worded, I think a coincidence is out of question.
  • If you do a web search for "Brother Bernard"+"1915"+"Afaka", there are 4 links that come up besides Omniglot and Grokipedia. It is possible that Omniglot's source is from one of the 3 that is not the 1988 journal article, but all of them presumably ultimately get their information from that journal given how much further back it dates.
  • I am not outright invalidating the review, but given how important of a detail the claim of citing sources is, it questions the reliability even of said review, nevermind the source that it is evaluating.
  • The lack of citing sources for a personal site such as Omniglot is more than enough of an issue in my view to make it less than marginally reliable, so we will have to disagree there.
  • I also want to return to another point you mentioned, as I missed it before: I don't think this site is UGC as it states[1][2] every contribution is sent to this one man's email and reviewed. People sending in info is essentially UGC, and a lone soul reviewing it all is not exactly a good look, especially when that person is not well established to be reliable. Linguistics is quite a large field; Ager having an MA in linguistics does not make him an expert (or even necessarily reliable) in every aspect of the field, and his dissertation had absolutely nothing to do with writing systems, the primary topic of Omniglot (it was on language revival of Manx Gaelic, FWIW). He even states in his bio on the website:

  So I know a lot about some languages, and a little about many others, but would not call myself an expert on any of them.

  ~ oklopfer (💬) 16:47, 27 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

• Yes, I'm saying that it was the only sentence in which anything remotely similar occurs. Afaka claimed that he had a dream in which a spirit prophesied that a script would be revealed to him. is also how I would word this, besides the use of passive instead of active voice, which is common in this kind of writing.
• I still don't see why this would be a problem if true.

I indeed wasn't saying that the degree made him ExpertSPS; it doesn't, for the reasons you mention. Sorry that's what it sounded like. However, it means that what most !voters are saying—that this is a know-nothing UGC circular blog, to exaggerate—is wrong. There is no evidence of errors failing to be corrected. In solidarity, Aaron Liu (talk) 12:49, 29 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

• No comment on the first question, but Q2.1 aligns with prior practice on WP:RSP. As this source is notable enough to be covered in a standalone Wikipedia article (Omniglot), is widely linked, and has been previously discussed multiple times, I do not see a reason to deviate from WP:RSPCRITERIA. — Newslinger talk 20:03, 30 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Use the § Survey: Omniglot section above to comment on preferred options. Discuss other aspects here. ~ oklopfer (💬) 01:09, 28 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

• Note that Simon Ager is has a Masters in Linguistics from Bangor University [4][5], so it is not true that he does not have credentials in the field. --Slp1 (talk) 01:37, 28 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

  @Slp1 ResearchGate only says September 2008 - September 2009; are you sure Ager completed the program?

  (I've struck the nor do they have such credentials line from my intro either way; even if Ager does have a linguistics degree, they are still certainly not well-established, and it is still a self-published site, which is the crux of that point; it also seems like Ager's studies did not focus on writing systems, per the dissertation on RG) ~ oklopfer (💬) 02:24, 28 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

  Why would you think he hadn’t completed it? Masters in the UK are often a year in length. Ager says he has an MA [6] The dissertation would be the final step and for what it is worth has been cited 21 times according to Google scholar [7] Slp1 (talk) 02:28, 28 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

  I am just more used to 2 year programs, so I wasn't sure based on the RG profile. Not questioning Ager's honesty in any way, if their personal profile on Omniglot says so I trust it (somewhat ironically, one of the cases where a self-published source is reliable!). Still, the dissertation has nothing to do with writing systems, it is about Manx language revival. ~ oklopfer (💬) 02:37, 28 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

  You should strike that Ager isn't a recognised linguist. While he has only ever published his dissertation, he has been cited, which is what recognition ultimately is. Cortador (talk) 06:18, 28 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

  No, not really… almost no one knows Ager's name or work outside of Omniglot. Recognition as a scholar is a prestige which Ager has far from achieved within linguistic circles, and likewise not gained from a singular dissertation with 21 cites. The primary source of recognition that Ager has is through Omniglot.

  Please use this RfC discussion section to talk about the actual questions being raised. Even if Ager had 500 cites on the dissertation, it once again had nothing to do with writing systems. It does not establish a reliable backing for a self published site to be considered usable. ~ oklopfer (💬) 06:31, 28 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

  That doesn't mean anything. You could ask people who won the Nobel Prize ten years ago and most people couldn’t give you can answer, even though those would obviously be recognised scientists.

  If you don't wish Ager's supposed lack of credentials to be talked about, you shouldn't have brought it up as an argument. Cortador (talk) 07:10, 28 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

  I briefly mentioned it in my lead summary. I'm going to collapse this as an obviously irrelevant pedantic tangent to the RfC questions. What "recognition" means does not amount to anything if it is not on the topic being claimed as expertise. ~ oklopfer (💬) 07:15, 28 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

  You considered it relevant enough to use it as a argument. Feel free to remove or strike it if it's so "irrelevant". Cortador (talk) 07:24, 28 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

  My choice of the word "recognized" was not an argument, it was simply a statement that Ager is not a well known linguistic scholar outside of Omniglot. There is nothing to strike. Edit warring on a noticeboard is incredibly poor WP etiquette. ~ oklopfer (💬) 07:37, 28 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

  And I challenged that, and you are not entitled to chose what part of your argument gets challenged and what doesn't. Cortador (talk) 07:44, 28 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

  You didn't challenge whether Ager is well known, you challenged that "recognized" is the wrong word for me to include in my introduction for bringing forward an RfC.

  My explanation for bringing it forward is not an argument being made as part of the RfC, which is why it is above the request. If that is what you are here to debate, you are in the wrong place. There is a reply button below that initial comment if that is what you are looking for.

  This is derailing discussion without engaging in the actual request. Such derailment is harmful to further productive discussion. ~ oklopfer (💬) 08:13, 28 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

  If you did not meant to bring that as an argument, you wouldn't have brought it. You are still free to strike it. Cortador (talk) 18:40, 17 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

  His work has been cited multiple times by other scholars, so yes, he is a recognized linguist. Maybe not on this topic but that is not what you have written. This is a BLP issue, actually, as Ager is alive and hopefully well. I also suggest you strike it or rephrase. I am also super concerned that you want to hat this and curtail the discussion of this topic. You brought this very serious decision to the community, making claims about a BLP's education/reputation that turn out to be unfounded, and very easily debunked from a simple google search. What other aspects need checking out before people decided? Slp1 (talk) 12:16, 28 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

  A simple google search reinforces my claim of being virtually unrecognized (as in, not well known) outside of Omniglot, contrary to your claim. 21 citations on a single dissertation does not establish recognition. Either way, I expect every aspect to be checked and decision be made independently. I'll add "on this topic" to avoid further confusion. ~ oklopfer (💬) 12:45, 28 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

• I would like to say that it seems like many pages just take info from wikipedia itself (even when wikipedia is wrong lolololol) 2007GabrielT (talk) 03:53, 28 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

  Do you have examples? -- Cdjp1 (talk) 09:43, 29 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

  Might be referring to the fact some pages link to Wikipedia at the bottom, in the area that is as close to a source list as the website gets. ⹃Maltazarian ^{ᚾparley${\displaystyle \lor }$investigateᛅ} 13:33, 29 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

• Just a note. Please do not trust Researchgate. It has a lot of incorrect info and they could not be bothered to fix it. I saw that it claimed that yours truly was associated with a place I had not even heard of. I emailed them 2 or 3 times but received no response. I do not trust them. Yesterday, all my dreams... (talk) 06:32, 28 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

  While I agree that Researchgate isn't a generally reliable source, I think it's unlikely that Ager got so far as finishing his dissertation (which later got cited a few times) but then also failed to complete his degree. Cortador (talk) 07:30, 28 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

  Yes, he probably got the degree. It would be hard not to get a degree from Bangor if you breath. But l have not looked at his site, so I cannot comment further. Yesterday, all my dreams... (talk) 09:27, 28 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

• Are there any projects that it would be worth notifying about this discussion? -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 15:17, 28 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

  Two: Wikipedia:WikiProject Languages and Wikipedia:WikiProject Linguistics. 🪐Kepler-1229b | talk | contribs🪐 15:18, 28 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

  oklopfer was well ahead of me on this thought, both have already been notified. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 15:22, 28 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

• Question 2 is an interesting question, as per the RSP criteria, this has been frequently discussed (three times) (i.e. perennial, adj. 1. frequently discussed) and can be included even without this RfC. Aaron Liu (talk) 23:01, 22 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

  WP:RSPCRITERIA is discussions or a RFC, so when this RFC is closed it would meet the criteria (regardless of the second question). The second question is a bit odd as the inclusion criteria of the list isn't having a RFC about whether to include something. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 16:30, 23 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

  I raised the question because the inclusion criteria was not entirely straightforward to me. When posting a new topic here, it states that an RfC can only be started after prior discussions, so it felt somewhat contradictory already that it could've been listed following either an RfC, or following the criteria to start an RfC. Given what felt like policy incongruence, I wanted to err on the safe side. Perhaps it is more a question of clarity for myself and confidence from other's survey replies. ~ oklopfer (💬) 16:51, 23 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

  Consensus doesn't need an RFC, so the RSP criteria are either multiple discussions on RSN or a RFC. Separately on RSN you shouldn't start a RFC on a source without it being previously discussed. Those two things are not related to each other. The RSP is a log of discussions on RSN, so there should never be discussions on "should this be added to the RSP?". That makes no sense when you think about it, as the RSP would become a log of discussions about whether discussions should be logged. Discussions on RSN should always be "is this source reliable", whether that source is logged on the RSP is a secondary matter. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 17:31, 23 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

  Consensus doesn't need an RFC, so the RSP criteria are either multiple discussions on RSN or a RFC. Separately on RSN you shouldn't start a RFC on a source without it being previously discussed. Those two things are not related to each other. This still confuses me and feels very much like they are related. Let's call "multiple RSN discussions" A, "an RfC" B, and "listing on RSP" C:

  If A or B, then C; however, B requires A, so really the existence of B seems irrelevant, since A is always required for C. But that obviously cannot be the case, as B is subject to higher standards and greater scrutiny. So it seems there is some unspoken understanding of which sets of A meet the criteria for C, and others which don't and instead encourage B before C.

  I understand your point about it being a log on the other hand, and why that would make Q2 mostly irrelevant. ~ oklopfer (💬) 17:53, 23 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

  The issue is that you're still mixing listing at RSP with starting a discussion there. A RFC requires prior discussion, Ian entirely unrelated many listing at RSP require a RFC or multiple discussions.
  It's not A, B, and C, rather it's A, B and μ. The criteria here have nothing to do with the criteria at RSP.

  1. If A is a discussion at RSN, and B is a RFC at RSN, then B requires A. On RSN you should start a discussion rather than just jumping to a RFC.
  2. If μ is listing at RSP it requires either multiple A or B. This has nothing to do with the discussion ongoing on RSN, only after discussions on RSN has finished is this relevant.

  The first set of requirements are separate from the second and can't be mixed together, and the purpose of a discussion (or RFC) on RSN should never be to add something to the RSP. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 20:52, 23 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

  This helped, thank you! ~ oklopfer (💬) 21:36, 23 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Please consider joining the feedback request service. An editor has requested comments from other editors for this discussion. This page has been added to the following list: Politics, government, and law When discussion has ended, remove this tag and it will be removed from the list. If this page is on additional lists, they will be noted below.

Should WP:DEMOCRACYNOW be changed from WP:MREL to WP:GENREL? Alexandraaaacs1989 (talk) 14:34, 15 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: Pinging editors from previous discussion:

Alexandraaaacs1989 (talk) 14:37, 15 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

• I do not recall it being established ther was any change in their reputation, so no change. Slatersteven (talk) 14:48, 15 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

  Just added sourcing supporting that there was a reputation change, let me know what you think. Alexandraaaacs1989 (talk) 14:59, 15 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

  As ElKevbo noted previously, it doesn't appear the WP:DEMOCRACYNOW accurately reflects the discussions it is supposed to be summarizing, with the last discussion in 2013. The premise for any change in their reputation is that the status quo is not flawed, which is an incorrect premise.

  As I've noted, this case isn't to be understood as one for an "upgrade"; it's one for the rectifying of a flawed downgrade. إيان (talk) 15:46, 15 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Support based on sources and arguments presented in the previous discussion which I will summarize here.

Bias and reliability are two separate things. A source can be biased but highly factual. Sources should always have opinions attributed, which accounts for bias. And I believe WP:DEMOCRACYNOW is a biased but highly-factual source, and therefore meets the threshold for being considered WP:GENREL. The previous analysis of this source deeming it WP:MREL was over a decade ago and a re-evaluation is WP:DUE.

Reliability checkers

• https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/democracy-now/
• MBFC (not reliable, removed this part of my comment)
• https://app.adfontesmedia.com/chart/interactive?utm_source=SourcePage&utm_medium=OnPageLink
• Adfontes (not reliable, removed this part of my comment)
• https://ground.news/interest/democracy-now
  • Media bias: Left
  • Factuality: This was paywalled, so I wrote a webscraping script to fetch factuality data. And it says High factuality.

Additional sources

• https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0163443712449500
• Journalistic field wars: defending and attacking the national narrative in a diversifying journalistic field
  • While this source does not explicitly say it is "generally reliable", it seems to praise its reporting.
  • Democracy Now! - In contrast to the established networks, alternative media focused their criticisms on U.S. foreign policy and establishment journalism’s reporting of WikiLeaks. The New York-based Democracy Now!, far from framing WikiLeaks as a threat to national security, employed the term ‘whistleblower’ to describe the organization in nearly every story. Amy Goodman, the program’s host, associated the WikiLeaks-released cables with the Pentagon Papers and Assange with Daniel Ellsberg, the man who released the Papers. The name of the program – Democracy Now! – suggests a radical belief in citizen access to information that facilitates self-governance as well as a demand for positive rights. Democracy Now!, consistent with its radically democratic principles, did not merely praise or condemn WikiLeaks but hosted a debate between Steven Afterwood of the Federation of American Scientists, who condemned WikiLeaks as irresponsible, and Glenn Greenwald of Salon, who framed WikiLeaks as a whistleblower.
• https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262514897/digital-media-and-democracy/
• Digital Media and Democracy
  • Again generally positive sentiment.
  • The strategies of practice that are studied or exemplified here include: (a) reform-changing media policy and legislation around ownership and concentration, in order to limit the monopolization of media and exclusion of diversity within public agenda setting; (b) establishment of grassroots, independent news channels and networks such as Pacifica, Democracy Now!, and Al Jazeera English...
  • Democracy Now! is a national, daily, independent, award-winning news program airing on over 500 stations in North America. Pioneering the largest public media collaboration in the United States, Democracy Now! is broadcast on community, Pacifica, and National Public Radio stations, public access cable television stations, satellite television (on Free Speech TV, channel 9415 of the DISH Network), shortwave radio, and the Internet.
• https://transformationsjournal.org/index.php/transformations/article/view/4239/2715
• Transformation (journal)
  • Caveat that this reads like an opinion piece and was written in 2008, but it argues Democracy Now! is free from corporate interests and is a better alternative to mainstream media outlets.
  • It is my contention that Democracy Now! is at the vanguard of an emerging independent media sector that is revitalising US news media at a decisive moment in American (journalism) history.

The reliability checkers are the strongest sources, but other sourcing seems to praise Democracy Now! for its status as a independent news organization that is free from harmful media practices (propaganda model, protest paradigm) that pervade most US mainstream news outlets.

Alexandraaaacs1989 (talk) 14:58, 15 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@Alexandraaaacs1989 I’ll hold off on voting for now pending further analysis, but WP:RSP already establishes that for our purposes, Ad Fontes/MBFC are not reliable sources, and I’m also not encouraged by the newest of the academic/journalistic sources you’ve provided being from 2012. The Kip ^(contribs) 15:07, 15 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

That's useful to know, thank you. I'll strike those parts of my comment, and if I don't get around to adding better sourcing soon, hopefully someone else does in the meantime. Alexandraaaacs1989 (talk) 15:11, 15 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

The same is true of ground news. The discussion is about whether the site is reliable for Wikipedia's purposes based on Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. These sites don't base their ratings on those policies and guidelines, so the ratings are worthless. Their left/right bias is even worse as bias has not part in discussions about reliability. They're useful for researching a source, as they report things that can be used here. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 16:51, 15 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Basically whenever "reliability" is used the context is always "reliable per Wikipedia's policy and guidelines for Wikipedia's purposes" not a general idea of reliability that other websites might be using. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 16:54, 15 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

They also have a long list of awards[8], some seem to be minor but others point to a reputation for reliable journalism. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 17:02, 15 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Here's some newer sources:

• Media, Culture, & Society

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0163443712449500

Whereas the networks had constructed WikiLeaks-as-criminal-and-threat, Democracy Now! reporters read through the cables to construct news that focused on U.S. crimes and imperial actions abroad: U.S. pressure on Germany to suppress arrest warrants for CIA officers who abducted an innocent man and held him in captivity for several months; Secretaries of State Hillary Clinton and Condoleezza Rice ordering embassies to collect foreign dignitaries’ ‘frequent flier numbers, credit card details, and even DNA material, like fingerprints, [and] iris scans’; pressure to halt Spanish investigations of U.S. torture at Guantanamo Bay, CIA rendition flights, U.S. troops killing of a Spanish journalist in Iraq; transfer of prisoners to countries where, in the words of U.N. Special Rapporteur Juan Mendez, U.S. officials ‘knew that these people were going to be tortured’; the storage of banned cluster bombs in Britain; ‘massive civilian casualties’, in Goodman’s words, following a U.S. attack on Yemen; American opposition to Afghani reconciliation talks with Taliban leaders; and neutralization, co-optation, and marginalization of states opposed to inadequate American plans to curb global warming. Unlike the networks, Democracy Now! correctly pointed out that Assange had reason to conceal his location because of assassination threats coming from talking heads on cable networks and U.S. House members. Fox News commentator Bob Beckel, for example, called for the murder of Assange because a ‘dead man can’t leak stuff’ and U.S. Representative Peter King called Assange a terrorist.

• Social Movement Studies (2019)

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14742837.2019.1681954

Democracy Now! is the flagship program of the pacifist politically left Pacifica Radio Network, and research on activist media consumption suggests the program is an important source of information for movement participants (Rauch, 2007, 2015). The host and public face for Democracy Now!, Amy Goodman, has written and done speaking tours for several solo and co-authored New York Times best-selling books, her most recent titled, 20 years of covering the movements changing America (Goodman, Goodman, & Moynihan, 2016).

Describing themselves as ‘the largest public media collaboration in the country’ (Moynihan,2008), the program is targeted at a U.S. audience, is distributed online (http://democracynow.org), and is currently carried on over 1,400 stations around the world – mostly community and public radio stations, and public television stations in the U.S. As a daily news magazine broadcast from New York City, the journalistic practices of Democracy Now! staff interact with the political actions of activist movements, co-producing narrative resources that listeners/viewers can use to understand what movements ‘mean’. Democracy Now!’s position within the movement milieu makes it a valuable resource for understanding narrative connections among movement labels over time, and this paper draws on it to build a targeted diachronic multi-issue corpus of spoken-word texts that is structurally consistent in size and genre."

• Toft, A. (2018). Chapter 13. Cross-talk in political discourse: Strategies for bridging issue movements on Democracy Now!. In M. Kranert & G. Horan (Eds.) ‘Doing Politics’: Discursivity, performativity and mediation in political discourse (pp. 301-329).

https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1075/dapsac.80.13tof/html

Democracy Now! is one of the most widely distributed independent media programs in the United States. Started in 1996, this nationally syndicated hour-long daily news-magazine broadcast is currently syndicated on over 1400 public access TV stations, and public, community and low-power FM radio stations. Funded in large part by listener/viewer/reader contributions, Democracy Now! offers a well-resourced and professionally produced program that covers the national news for the day, and routinely sources high-profile activists, artists, authors, scholars, journalists, and politicians. The broad grassroots distribution, funding, and political reputation of Democracy Now! elevate the importance of who speaks and what they say, and guests on the program often appear to qualify as what Eyerman and Jamisen (1991) would call “movement intellectuals”: people who develop their expertise and source legitimacy through their leadership in uncovering injustice and working for social change.

• What’s the Point of News?, by Tony Harcup (2020)

https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-39947-4

Chapter 3 will apply the critical theoretical perspectives on journalism and news introduced in Chap. 2 to examine in detail the output from specific alternative media projects ranging from the Liverpool Free Press in the 1970s to Democracy Now! today. This chapter will draw on extant empirical studies where appropriate but will apply fresh thinking and critical reading to such material in an effort to explore the social and journalistic significance of such alternative forms of practice. It will argue that alternative news values are not merely desirable in principle, but that they can be found operating in practice in some forms of media. In their different ways, the approaches to news exemplified in these examples of alternative media all critique what it means to be a journalist, and what we might mean by news.1 Edittttor (talk) 21:40, 18 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I don’t find these compelling as evidence for reliability.

• Handley & Rutigliano 2012 in Media Culture & Society isn’t making a claim about reliability but about bias: that DN had the opposite (anti-US) bias to the “dominant” (mainstream) outlets and is therefore preferable from a (US) anti-nationalist perspective. It’s also quite old.
• Toft 2019 in Social Movement Studies isn’t making a claim about reliability but about usefulness to an activist audience. It’s saying DN’s embedded in a “pacifist politically left” movement. That doesn’t make it unreliable, but it doesn’t make it reliable either. It emphasises the outlet (and Goodman’s) reputation within this milieu so might suggest due weight when we discuss such movements.
• Toft 2018 (same author) in the book Doing Politics is making the same point again, but also emphasises that it is slick and well funded. I don’t think that’s a reliability data point.
• Harcup 2020: I don’t have access to this but the overview doesn’t seem to be making a claim about reliability. Might be worth getting access to see if it does.

BobFromBrockley (talk) 07:00, 24 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

(Moved under my !vote.) In solidarity, Aaron Liu (talk) 21:48, 25 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

• I'm not against us re-evaluating the source, as the RSP entry is old and may not perfectly represent our discussions, but I don't think the upgrade case has been made yet. As I noted in the preceeding discussion, the evidence presented above simply tells us that its bias is held in high regard by some left-wing media scholars, or was over a decade ago, not that it has a reputation for reliability today. My strong impression is that:

• its "Stories", as it calls them, showcase the opinions of various guests and are reliable primary sources for those opinions and beyond that we should at best see these as RSOPINION or possibly on a case by case basis depending on whether the guests are subject matter experts on the topic the WP article is about.
• its "Headlines" are generally accurate but often with a partisan spin but that they are effectively sourced from other sources such as wires and we'd be better to use the originals. I'd be curious to see what we would gain by using these instead of the legacy networks and wire services they depend on.
• When it does original reporting (e.g. the Tom Morello example report mentioned by Visviva below), these should generally be regarded as reliable.

My conclusion then is we should keep it as "additional considerations apply" to make these distinctions clear and treat it as weakly reliable. But I'm open to persuasion if there is better evidence coming. BobFromBrockley (talk) 16:50, 15 May 2026 (UTC) [edited 16.05 to add 3rd bullet point and fix indenting][reply]

Hi Bob. I agree with each of your three bullet points, but I'm not sure why "additional considerations apply" is the conclusion from your three bullet points (likely due to the lackluster strength of my original sourcing provided?). I think ActivelyDisinterested made a very strong case below that responds to some of the points in your argument, so I'm curious what your thoughts are. Paraphrasing where thing seem to be, guests saying something in "Stories" should be treated like RS opinion pieces by requiring attribution like in any other WP:GREL, WP:HEADLINES are not RS regardless, and DN original reporting is factual, which seems to leave no differences between DN and other sources we currently consider to be GREL. The awards list seems like the most compelling piece of evidence yet in favor of DN being GREL if we're making an inductive argument to supplement the other points I just mentioned. Hope to hear your response! Alexandraaaacs1989 (talk) 20:40, 18 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

+1 I also agree that Bob's conclusion of "additional considerations apply" doesn't follow from their 3 points. Even for GREL sources, WP:RSOPINION always applies (eg. NYT published an op-ed written by Vladimir Putin), so does WP:HEADLINE. VR 23:06, 19 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Not sure to be honest. I don’t think WP:HEADLINES applies to the posts that DN labels “Headlines”, which is the label it gives to its news bulletin rather than literal headlines. If we discount those, we’re left with opinion and occasional first hand reports. So maybe green flagging but with the kind of warning we give for the Atlantic, the Diplomat or the Hill. One reason I’m hesitant to consider its “Stories” as just RSOPINION is that is geared to written pieces that go through editorial before publication whereas the DN’s format means these are unfiltered oral comments where the speaker is talking off the cuff without the opportunity to check themselves, so I’d always want us to say something like “speaking to DN, X said” or “in an interview on DN, X said” BobFromBrockley (talk) 05:09, 20 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment (summoned by bot): As noted above it's difficult to imagine a situation in which the DN headline news items are a good source to cite. They are generally just a transcript of the host's summary of the news, and reliable or not, there should almost always be something better. But I would think that what we're really talking about here from an RS standpoint is the show's original reporting, such as its award-winning coverage of the Standing Rock protests, or more routine pieces like this one from today on the May 12 ICE protest in New York. For what it's worth, I have never heard anyone challenge the factuality of DN's reports such as these (or for that matter, the faithfulness with which its interviews are presented). Nor am I seeing any such challenges thus far in this discussion or the one immediately preceding. If we're going to say that there is no consensus that this is a reliable source, I think it would be helpful to see some arguments (or examples) for why it might not be reliable. -- Visviva (talk) 01:55, 16 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

• Support I consider Democracy Now! Reliable and oppose a downgrade of its reliability on Wikipedia—I have watched their news. It has its own point of view, but I have never seen a news report that was unreliable. I don’t consider the score given by Media Bias/Fact Check or Ground News. My vote is based on my personal experience and views. 🐈Cinaroot   04:14, 16 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

  To note there is no proposal to downgrade DM, it's currently considered a reliable source with additional considerations. The question is whether it shouldn't have those additional considerations. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 11:14, 16 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

  I slightly edited my vote to make it less confusing. 🐈Cinaroot   16:56, 16 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Generally reliable Their award page[9] is a laundry list but with that list are notable awards. They also have WP:USEBYOTHERS, mostly university presses but also works from Bloomsbury Academic and Springer. I can't find any reports of factually incorrect output. They are biased, but editors should deal with that by separating opinion from fact and if necessary using other sources to balance them. Bias isn't a reliability issue unless that bias effect factual accuracy WP:RSBIAS. There was mention of headlines in the discussion before this RFC, but headlines are always unreliable WP:HEADLINES. A lot of the criticism I see online is about what a guest has said about a situation or event. They do publish a lot of opinion and interviews, these shouldn't be used for statements of fact, per WP:RSOPINION, but should be fine for attributed statements. I don't see why they shouldn't just be handled like any other WP:NEWSORG, they are biased, they publish opinion that shouldn't be used to support statements of fact, that's just like any other news organisation. Unless someone can show they have issue with accuracy bornfact checking I think they should be considered reliable. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 11:49, 16 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Awards list stops at 2017. User:Bluethricecreamman (Talk·Contribs) 18:15, 16 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

That looks to be because it hasn't been updated fully. Amy Goodman won the Frederick Douglass 200 in 2018 and the William Sloane Coffin Jr. Peacemaker Award in 2023. Those are just the two that I could find within a few minutes, there could be more. Edittttor (talk) 15:56, 17 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

They have a more recent Izzy award too, but that seems to get given to multiple unreliable sources (Aaron Mate!) so I wouldn’t let it count for much.[10]

Very few of the awards are ones usually recognised actual solid reliable reporting but a couple of them are. BobFromBrockley (talk) 05:19, 20 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

• Status Quo The source is very biased and we should be careful about both what facts they cite as well as what they may have left out. For this reason we should always be careful about such sources. As a yellow source it's can be citied for statements of fact and to establish weight. It simply means people should be cautious with the source given they are typically writing not just to convey the facts but to support a POV. To be honest, we should always be careful with sources/articles that write to persuade vs simply provide the facts. Also, a note about the use of Adfontes and MBFC. Both sources are cited by scholars as expert sources. I previously found a source that actually compared the various rating cites and said despite different methods they were generally consistent. RSN/RSP discussions have generally said these sources shouldn't be cited in Wiki articles. They do not say they are unreliable or not useful for discussions such as this one. With that said, consider that Democracy Now's Adfontes bias rating of -16.15 makes them more biased than Breitbart (13.59) and near The Heratage Foundation (16.30). Their reliability score of 31.5 is almost the same as the Post Millennial.

Springee (talk) 13:22, 16 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Is news bias fueled by journalists supplying slanted views or readers’ demanding them? An economist weighs in

There are supply-driven and demand-driven biases. I think many reliable sources in the U.S. and around the world are biased. It all depends on one’s personal point of view. Bias is not a factor to consider when determining reliability. 🐈Cinaroot   17:29, 16 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

If you would like to change the reliability assessment of Adfontes or MBFC you are welcome to submit a new request, but for now we should not be using them as evidence due to their rating as generally unreliable. See WP:ADFONTES and WP:MBFC. Edittttor (talk) 15:36, 17 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Please read the discussions. The concern in those discussions was because editors were using the ratings in article space (The .... Times is rated as "left/right" by MBFC. The discussions did not say editors aren't allowed to make reliability arguments based on those sources. This is a bit like saying we can't use a SPS to point out issues with another source. As editors on a talk page yes we can. We are allowed to engage in OR and use sources that aren't acceptable for the article space. To be clear, I agree, we should not use those sources for material in article space. We should consider them when discussing topics like this. Springee (talk) 17:00, 17 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

This is just basically ignoring WP:BIASED, which makes it clear that bias doesn't relate to reliability. Katzrockso (talk) 05:16, 21 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

It even goes further and say Sometimes non-neutral sources are the best possible sources for supporting information about the different viewpoints held on a subject.

Everyone has bias. Seems like we are using our bias to say the source is biased. Times of Israel is biased. Yet it is a reliable source. Democracy now is no different. 🐈Cinaroot   05:24, 21 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

The problem with bias isn't that the raw facts are false. It's that the source may give excessive weight to facts that support their POV while ignoring ones that refute it. If they say it was a sunny day I would trust them. If they say a company was motivated (a subjective assessment) by X, we should be very cautious about using them if not avoid them as not reliable for such a claim (that would depend on the supporting evidence). This is why yellow makes sense - to the extent that our stupid 3 bucket scale makes any sense. Yellow means we can use them but editors who use them should be aware of their very strong bias and the issues that may come out of the bias. Springee (talk) 12:01, 21 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

It's that the source may give excessive weight to facts that support their POV while ignoring ones that refute it. Well that's the beauty of this website - that we get to decide how to present biased information in a neutral way ourselves (such as by omitting undue facts in an article), as opposed to being required to carbon copy an article's own decisions as to how to weigh and present information. Subjective assessments speculating about how "[company] was motivated by X" should be treated as attributed opinions regardless of whether Democracy Now! is updated to GREL.

Again, I'm getting the sense that the arguments being made against Democracy Now! being updated to GREL are not criticisms of Democracy Now!'s reliability, but are instead general critiques of bias in sourcing that just as easily apply to all GREL on WP:RSP as they do to Democracy Now!. Alexandraaaacs1989 (talk) 14:37, 21 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, indeed. Yesterday, all my dreams... (talk) 14:59, 21 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

If they say a company was motivated (a subjective assessment) by X, we should be very cautious about using them if not avoid them as not reliable for such a claim (that would depend on the supporting evidence) No, we should not conduct WP:OR, analyze evidence ourselves and check if we agree with what sources say. WP:NEWSORGs are given presumptive reliability and actual evidence needs to be presented to downgrade this presumption. Katzrockso (talk) 16:12, 21 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

An aside but "presumptive reliability" is not a thing, NEWSORG says they are "generally consider reliable". Editors still have to use their own good judgement when looking at sources, just because it came from a generally reliable source doesn't mean it will always be reliable in every given context. If a generally reliable source say "bill scored 10", but ever other sources says he scored 9 then maybe they just got it wrong that time. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 15:24, 22 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I didn't say that every article published by them is reliable, I said that the (rebuttable) presumption is that established WP:NEWSORGS are generally reliable. Generally reliable does not mean that every piece of information they publish is factual/correct. Katzrockso (talk) 21:24, 27 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry misunderstanding over language, I agree. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 13:00, 28 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

• MREL - As highlighted by many people, updating the discussion to include changes that have occurred in the past 13 years is a good idea, and I am particularly supportive of BobFromBrockley's suggestion in how we break down and consider output from DN. ActivelyDisinterested has highlighted their many awards, and while they seem to stop in 2017 (Edittttor found awards from 2018 and 2023), that is still four more years of awards since the last discussion linked in the Perennial Sources list. As multiple people have highlighted, DN's original reporting seems to meet what we expect of news outlets, so it may be possible to break that out into a separate entry of GREL, but we probably need more evidence to support such action than has currently been presented. -- Cdjp1 (talk) 18:57, 16 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
• Support The close of the previous discussion was incorrect and should have been challenged - the available evidence shows that this source is reliable. ElKevbo (talk) 21:15, 16 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
• Status quo. Per CJR, Goodman is often described as a progressive activist, but she denies that her work is partisan. So it can definitely be used but the weight and attribution should be decided by the editors in each case. Alaexis_¿question? 21:29, 16 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

  She is a host on the program. They have other hosts too. I would prefer if we vote based on the news they air rather than Goodman’s past or her reputation. 🐈Cinaroot   21:53, 16 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

  She is a co-founder, executive producer and basically the face of DN. Alaexis_¿question? 06:43, 17 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

  In addition to what Cinaroot said, are you conflating bias and reliability? There is a difference between the two. Edittttor (talk) 15:32, 17 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

  RS are supposed to be independent. You will notice that we deem very few advocacy organisations generally reliable. Alaexis_¿question? 18:54, 17 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

  Democracy Now! has held steadfast to our policy of not accepting government funding, corporate sponsorship, underwriting or advertising revenue. [11] I think this is one of the best things a RS can do to stay independent. 🐈Cinaroot   18:58, 17 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

  That's right but they are financed by various nonprofit foundations. Alaexis_¿question? 08:46, 18 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

  You are mixing up independent (politician) with WP:RSBIAS. From RSBIAS: Wikipedia articles are required to present a neutral point of view. However, reliable sources are not required to be neutral, unbiased, or objective. Sometimes non-neutral sources are the best possible sources for supporting information about the different viewpoints held on a subject.

  Common sources of bias include political, financial, religious, philosophical, or other beliefs. Although a source may be biased, it may be reliable in the specific context. When dealing with a potentially biased source, editors should consider whether the source meets the normal requirements for reliable sources, such as editorial control, a reputation for fact-checking, and the level of independence from the topic the source is covering.

  Of the perrinnial sources that are currently rated as generally reliable, WP:ALJAZEERA, WP:AXIOS, WP:BELLINGCAT, WP:CNN, WP:CODA, WP:CSM, WP:TELEGRAPH, WP:GLAAD, WP:GUARDIAN, WP:HAARETZ, Hope Not Hate, WP:HUFFPOST, The Intercept, WP:THEMARYSUE, WP:LEMONDEDIPLOMATIQUE, WP:MOTHERJONES, WP:NEWREPUBLIC, Newslaundry, WP:OKO, WP:POLITICO, WP:REASONNEWS, The Register, WP:SPLC, WP:TIMESOFISRAEL, and WP:VANITYFAIR are all listed in their description to have some bias, so clearly that is not a prerequisite.

  DN is also not an advocacy organization, but even if they were, several of the sources I listed above are advocacy organizations and are still rated as generally reliable, so that is not a prerequisite either. Edittttor (talk) 21:51, 17 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

  Independence is a separate requirement - see WP:REPUTABLE. This is related to but distinct from bias. Alaexis_¿question? 08:47, 18 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

  WP:REPUTABLE has a definition which mentions independence. Independence is a link to a definition, which includes An independent source is a source that has no vested interest in a given Wikipedia topic and therefore is commonly expected to cover the topic from a disinterested perspective. Independent sources have editorial independence (e.g., advertisers do not dictate content) and no conflicts of interest (i.e., there is no potential for personal, financial, or political gain to be made from the existence of the publication). and Independence does not imply even-handedness. An independent source may hold a strongly positive or negative view of a topic or an idea. For example, a scholar might write about literacy in developing countries, and they may personally strongly favor teaching all children how to read, regardless of gender or socioeconomic status. Yet if the author gains no personal benefit from the education of these children, then the publication is an independent source on the topic. What definition of independent are you using? Edittttor (talk) 21:44, 18 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

  I acknowledge that this is not a clearcut case. However, the explanatory essay you cited explains why an advocacy organisation may not be independent (Independent sources have ... no conflicts of interest (i.e., there is no potential for personal, financial, or political gain to be made from the existence of the publication).) Alaexis_¿question? 21:48, 21 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

• Support per ActivelyDisinterested. As this is a discussion about the reliability and not bias, I see a consensus forming for upgrading to generally reliable, as long as it is noted that their "Stories" should be treated like RSOPINION and require attribution (like in any other GREL of course).Edittttor (talk) 15:21, 17 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
• Support I wish they had a public editorial standards or ethics policy, but it's unfortunately common for news organizations not to, and I'm not finding evidence of unethical or deceptive reporting.  81567518  W  19:13, 17 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
• MREL/weak GREL Bobfrombrockley pretty much sums up my thoughts. Original reporting can probably be treated as biased but reliable (perhaps look for a supplemental source as well), but opinion pieces are governed by the policy on op-eds, and non-original reporting should probably be sourced from a more neutral/mainstream outlet. The Kip ^(contribs) 01:36, 18 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
• Additional considerations per Bobfrombrockley. Samuelshraga (talk) 12:19, 18 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
• Status quo per Bobfrombrockley. Case is not yet made for an upgrade. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 21:28, 18 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
• Support. It's generally reliable, but it leans left. It's not an neutral source, just a reliable one. Snokalok2 (talk) 21:50, 18 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
• Status quo per Bobfrombrockley.— Preceding unsigned comment added by NorthernWinds (talk • contribs) 23:06, 19 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

• Support per ActivelyDisinterested. Yesterday, all my dreams... (talk) 17:48, 19 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
• Support upgrading to generally reliable per ActivelyDisinterested and my own comments in this section.VR 23:06, 19 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
• Weak status quo I don't think we should be treating news sources, in general, as WP:GREL because this is often used to end discussion about whether or not said news source is appropriate in a specific context. That being said I don't think this is any worse than the New York Times or the BBC. Each has their biases. So, while my preference would be to vacate all news organizations from WP:GREL I'm not going to lose any sleep if this source is added to the ranks of news sources that are called generally reliable. Simonm223 (talk) 16:39, 20 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
• Status quo/MREL per BobFromBrockley. They are not great, and the case for an upgrade is very weak. PARAKANYAA (talk) 16:59, 20 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
• Support for upgrading to WP:GREL. I would agree that this should be done with the intention to rectify a flawed downgrade as إيان says since I believe that Alexandraaaacs1989 provided good evidence for it being WP:GREL and there isn't any source I've seen discussed that refutes that reliability. I believe that the fact-checking sources as well as its recognition among multiple academic sources for factual reporting shows that it is recognized by most to be factual and again, I haven't really seen any source call that into question. Like many others, I would also agree that they are fairly biased in their perspective and what is chosen to be included, but as for Wikipedia's purposes that doesn't seem to be an issue when using a segment in a DN publication to cite a fact. I think that their non-opinion based articles can regularly be relied upon and when looking at any opinion piece, WP:RSOPINION applies just as VR mentioned. Plus, when you consider that other publications like WP:CNN are WP:GREL due to their bias not being seen as affecting their reliability, there seems to be no reason to me that it can't be WP:GREL. ◀ Juniperol (bingus) ▶ --(talk) 00:45, 21 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
• Support. The initial case for MREL was poorly made and not compliant with currently existing policies and guidelines. The mistake here is treating the previous 2013 discussion as if it has a meaningfully durable consensus from 13 years ago. Wikipedia policies and guidelines have changed significantly since then, as has recognition that WP:BIASED sources can be perfectly reliable.Katzrockso (talk) 05:19, 21 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
• Status Quo MREL The organization does not appear to have sufficient structure to produce content that wouldn't be called self published. Most of the content appears to be advocacy journalism or human-interest reporting. The marketing structure implies that the purpose is to engage in advocacy journalism. So at best this source should be treated as RSOPINION. --Kyohyi (talk) 12:35, 21 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
• Weak Support and no-clear-delineation: I disagree with the Before's discussion framing this is as "rectifying of a flawed downgrade", because no consensus is the default state, not assuming all articles should generally be reliable. GRel is an upgrade from the default for sources that have a demonstratively good reputation for accuracy.
  That said, the UseByOthers cited is quite strong as it is academic praise for their writing without mentioning any doubt of their accuracy, so I am inclined to support saying that this source is stronger than default just by reading previous discussions (the discussions besides the one that preceded this RfC are... interesting...), even though I am unfamiliar with this source and a quick skim of their website gives me serious tabloid vibes.
  Also, regardless of what status we give this, we should have consensus that the source doesn't always clearly separate ("delineate" as many RSP entries say) opinion and factual content. Aaron Liu (talk) 20:53, 22 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

  Per WP:UseByOthers, widespread citation without comment for facts is evidence of a source's reputation, i.e. uncritical reference is endorsement. In solidarity, Aaron Liu (talk) 21:24, 24 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

  WP:NEWSORG does provide a baseline for news organizations; News reporting from well-established news outlets is generally considered to be reliable for statements of fact. Every time a news organization is brought to this noticeboard without a substantive reason, editors always point to this and note that news organizations are presumed generally reliable. So presumably existing consensus is that by default news organizations are WP:GREL. Katzrockso (talk) 02:29, 23 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

  I don't consider Democracy Now! a well-established news outlet by default, and I definitely wouldn't have at the time of our last discussion of Democracy Now! (2013). In solidarity, Aaron Liu (talk) 03:58, 23 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

• Status Quo MREL, partisan source. Use with attribution, maybe relevant in articles where the source has expertise, though as it is partisan, better to utilize non-partisan sources.--RightCowLeftCoast (Moo) 21:03, 22 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

  WP:PARTISAN says reliable sources are not required to be neutral, unbiased, or objective. Sometimes non-neutral sources are the best possible sources for supporting information about the different viewpoints held on a subject. Alexandraaaacs1989 (talk) 22:41, 22 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

• Support—If the low-quality journalism put out by uncritical commercial media outlets like CNN is considered GREL, there is no valid reason why Democracy Now! should be considered less valid. DN!, led by one of the most celebrated independent journalists of our time, provides vital critical reporting on stories corporate media deems unimportant, asks questions corporate media does not, and is used and praised by the academic community in a way that corporate media is not.

As for the claims that this independent media outlet is "partisan"—are we to believe that the corporate media outlets accorded GREL status are not? إيان (talk) 23:07, 22 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

This comment reads as much more based in personal feelings on the media landscape than in WP policy - I'd like to see some backing for statements such as uncritical commercial media outlets like CNN (which is also borderline WP:OTHERSTUFF), provides vital critical reporting on stories corporate media deems unimportant (what makes them "important?"), and led by one of the most celebrated independent journalists of our time. The Kip ^(contribs) 04:51, 23 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

The Kip, you shouldn't read my points as much more based in personal feelings on the media landscape than in WP policy; you should read them as enjoining the community to take a comparative approach that applies standard metrics in the evaluation of sources and not to accept or endorse a status quo prima facie for the sake of precedent when those precedents are flawed.

I will respond to your concerns above with supporting passages from RS soon.

In the meantime, regarding the characterization you made in your statement above expressing preference for a more neutral/mainstream outlet, could you explain why you believe that 'mainstream' is coterminous with or can be slashed with 'neutral'? Do you believe that the corporate media you describe as 'mainstream' doesn't have its own biases or partisanship? If so, why? إيان (talk) 06:58, 23 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

could you explain why you believe that 'mainstream' is coterminous with or can be slashed with 'neutral'? Do you believe that the corporate media you describe as 'mainstream' doesn't have its own biases or partisanship? If so, why?

I will not because doing so will derail this discussion into WP:FORUM territory. The Kip ^(contribs) 18:41, 23 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

• You implied mainstream media outlets are inherently more reliable / inherently less biased than non-mainstream sources
• You used this to inform your opinion on the RfC
• إيان challenged your reasoning, asking you to elaborate
• Your response is that doing so is WP:FORUM? That doesn't seem fair.

Alexandraaaacs1989 (talk) 21:18, 23 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

It would strengthen your case to provide evidence beyond "I personally hold the source in high regard". SuperPianoMan9167 (talk) 20:26, 25 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment: Many (but not all) of the !votes seem to be based on personal opinion/perceived reliability by editors as opposed to evidence suggesting (or not suggesting) consistent accuracy in factual reporting. This is undesirable. Descriptors of factual reliability by external sources should take preference over the opinions of editors. SuperPianoMan9167 (talk) 20:22, 25 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
• Support with the note that it is biased when it comes to politics and generally requires attribution. The secondary coverage I could find usually treats it as reliable.^[1][2][3][4] Most of these emphasize the awards it won, among other things. Most of the arguments above focus on their biases (which are obvious) and not their reliability; but there's no reason to think they're unreliable, and plenty of reason to think they're reliable. Also, as a particular note, someone above objected that they lack "structure"; this is flatly untrue. From one of the sources above: The program currently lists 22 staffers, and was reported in 2005 to have a $1.8 million budget (p. 30). The program reflects the prototypical hierarchical bureaucratic model of modern news routines, using Reuters video feeds, teleprompters, and the use of specialized personnel such as full-time directors, producers, and graphic designers. Goodman herself received mainstream professional recognition for her journalism, including the George Polk Award, Robert F. Kennedy Prize for International Reporting, and the Alfred I. DuPont-Columbia Award. She also received awards from the Associated Press and United Press International.^[2] --Aquillion (talk) 22:19, 25 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
• Support: I have used Democracy Now! in my edits relating to current events and have found it generally reliable and an important component of the media ecosystem used by Wikipedia editors to provide a comprehensive overview of world events. In particular, I think its interviews with experts who are not privileged by mainstream journalism and its attention to international affairs, which often exceeds other English language sources, is valuable to this encyclopedia. Monk of Monk Hall (talk) 19:51, 26 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
• Support having a bias, even if a very strong one, is not by itself reason to consider a source anything less than generally reliable (see WP:BIASED). They have a respected by left-wing scholars, which speaks for itself (see WP:USEBYOTHERS). TarnishedPath^talk 06:18, 29 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

• Status quo- I do not think the case for an upgrade to WP:GENREL has been established. Much of the outlet's content consists of interviews, commentary, and opinion-oriented material, which already requires additional editorial judgment under the existing policy - WP:RSOPINION. The current MREL assessment does not prohibit use of the source; it simply reminds editors that additional considerations apply depending on the context. I also find BobFromBrockley's distinction persuasive, original reporting may often be reliable, interviews are generally reliable for what participants said, and opinion/commentary content requires attribution and contextual evaluation. Given these differences, I think the current assessment is better than a blanket upgrade to WP:GENREL. King of Kings III (Dear Sir ...) 13:10, 30 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

  I'm not opposed to maintaining MRel status with a  Jacobin (RSP entry)–like summary (save the first sentence, of course). In solidarity, Aaron Liu (talk) 17:42, 30 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

• Status quo - The news stories are cherry-picked and show up on the website only when they support a progressive view; the opinion columns have a clear bias towards the left. It should remain as is. Their reporting of facts is usually fine, but the editorial lens is definitely leftist. Nothing has changed, except the missing weekly column by Goodman and Moynihan. Ar1201u1 (talk) 18:45, 30 May 2026 (UTC) User:Ar1201u1[reply]

  Per WP:BIASED, doesn't that mean it should be GenerallyRELiable then? In solidarity, Aaron Liu (talk) 02:53, 1 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

• Status Quo as Democracy Now is an opinion site with an extremely thin veneer of news reporting that reinforces the site's opinions. It has none of the characteristics of verifying information and fact checking that would be necessary to make it a reliable source in its own right. Material from the site should only be used with the needed precautions to attribute it to a biased source, and any opinions expressed on the site by individuals should be attributed directly to the individual who made the claim, both for statements from hosts and from interviewees. The requirements of WP:GENREL are not met here and no upgrade of reliability is appropriate. Alansohn (talk) 04:02, 31 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
• Status Quo, there is not enough new evidence to alter the existing consensus. It needs a clear, demonstrated reputation for fact-checking and accuracy, and not political orientation. Democracy Now! has editorial perspective, this does not by itself support an upgrade to WP:GREL. Reliability and viewpoint are separate considerations as per WP. In fact their unreliability has decreased since the last discussion. The existing WP:MREL designation is the correct reflection of the source.Dz5t 8O12 (talk) 15:54, 31 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
• Status Quo, MREL, clearly a partisan source. Ok to use, but with attribution. BBQboffin^{grill me} 03:58, 1 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

• Just to note that I've closed the previous discussion with a note directing editors to this RFC. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 19:01, 16 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
• How much of the content is made by Amy Goodman? Is the organization set up so that her content gets some sort of independent review prior to publication? She's the host and executive producer, and I don't see any sort of editor panel which could go/no-go stories. If she is making the content, and controls what gets published we have a self-publishing issue. --Kyohyi (talk) 16:31, 20 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

  [12] states Mike Burke is the editorial director. Katzrockso (talk) 13:45, 21 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

  That would be a good sign for people other than Amy Goodman, but everything I see on that site is done by, or co-done by her. And she is executive producer, and president of the non-profit that funds Democracy Now!. So I'm not seeing how an editorial director has functional veto power over any content she wants to publish. --Kyohyi (talk) 14:06, 21 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

  See the Democracy Now! staff list here. There's a lot of staff in the company, so it's definitely not unilaterally being run by Amy Goodman. If you're worried about higher-ups in a news company domineering, this is how most news companies work, with many run by a board of directors with absolute authority over everything the company reports, e.g. The New York Times run by the Sulzberger family. Alexandraaaacs1989 (talk) 16:03, 21 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

  I'm aware of the staff list, I'm also aware that the amount of content that doesn't have Amy Goodman's name attached is vanishingly small. I'm also aware that Amy Goodman sits at the top of democracy now productions as president. Content created by Arthur Ochs would have similar problems. But content isn't created by Arthur Ochs, it's done by Jeremy Scahil or Ryan Grim, or other writers. Amy Goodman's direct influence in the creation of the material, while also being president of the publishing organization, is the self publishing concern. --Kyohyi (talk) 16:25, 21 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

  Even if she is a self-publisher to a certain extent... if a self-publisher reports information factually, then why can't we consider it GENREL if it's a notable and prolific news source? Alexandraaaacs1989 (talk) 00:17, 24 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

  I personally don't believe this is selfpublished, but if it was selfpublished information is held to a different standard. See WP:SPS and WP:BLPSPS. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 11:48, 24 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

  WP:SPS says Self-published sources may be considered reliable if published by an established subject-matter expert, whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable, independent publications. So wouldn't this simply be an instance where Amy Goodman is an established subject-matter expert and we can simply deem it RS even if it is self-published, making the whole self-published distinction irrelevant? Alexandraaaacs1989 (talk) 07:55, 25 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

  That's not the relevant part of the sentence, the important part is "previously been published by reliable, independent publications". The point of the policy is that selfpublished work has to be from someone that other unrelated people have published as an expert. Just being an expert is not enough. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 14:27, 25 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

  selfpublished work has to be from someone that other unrelated people have published as an expert Yes, and we have shown this to be the case with sourcing in this discussion, no? Alexandraaaacs1989 (talk) 08:59, 26 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

  I don't see that anything to show she's published books or articles (in independent sources (not DM)) in the field of political analysis. Again this is an aside, as DM isn't selfpublished. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 20:33, 26 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

  Does it have to be books? She's received lots of awards for DM's indie reporting, five of which while it was under WBAI/PACIFICA Radio, an independent publisher. In solidarity, Aaron Liu (talk) 15:57, 27 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

  I would think that the more important part is the definition, in the paragraph above the one you cite: Self-published material, such as books, patents, newsletters, personal websites, open wikis, personal or group blogs (as distinguished from newsblogs, above), content farms, podcasts, Internet forum postings, and social media postings, are largely not acceptable as sources.

  I think it may be a better approach to interpret this prohibition as applying moreso to sources that can be published without the meaningful assistance of others, rather than sources produced with the nebulous approval of an imagined arbiter of reliability, which seems to be the main thing that is elusively argued around in countless reliability discussions.

  Anyone can start a blog and say whatever they want, but one person, even if they are extremely talented can't be the sole force behind decades of independent reporting and comprehensive daily news coverage. Democracy Now's work is thorough and established enough that it is necessarily the work of many talented people, in the same way that traditional news orgs are. That's what is supposed to be their marker of reliability: a form of peer review upstream of but not dissimilar to Wikipedia's own. Monk of Monk Hall (talk) 01:56, 27 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

  There is another section of WP: V that goes more in depth on what is self-published material, Self-published material is characterized by the lack of independent reviewers (those without a conflict of interest) validating the reliability of the content. Further examples of self-published sources include press releases, the material contained within company websites, advertising campaigns, material published in media by the owner(s)/publisher(s) of the media group, self-released music albums, and electoral manifestos And in this case the example of material published in media by the owner(s)/publisher(s) of the media group is the case example why Democracy Now! is largely self published. --Kyohyi (talk) 12:53, 27 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

  I think your assertion that DN falls into this category mischaracterizes the nature of the citeable material produced by DN. Material produced by DN that could be cited on Wikipedia would include excerpts of its headlines segment (I would say that in most cases, another source would be better if one is available, as these are relatively surface-level aggregations/reproductions of news broken elsewhere. However, in some cases DN is the best English-language source for international news.) and its interviews with subject matter experts and people on the ground in developing situations of national and international significance. If an editor cites such material, they would not be citing Amy Goodman's/DN's self-published original research, but rather DN's publication of an independent person's research or perspective on the relevant situation. As host and executive producer, Amy Goodman is setting up the interviews and asking the questions, but an independent source (the interviewee) is giving the answers, and the answer is what would typically be relevant to Wikipedia. Monk of Monk Hall (talk) 19:22, 28 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

  People on the ground type interviews are not particularly useful for encyclopedic content; it suffers from Primary and recentism issues. Regarding the interviews, there isn't much reason her interviews are any more reliable than those done by podcasts like Joe Rogan. Interview reliability is more dependent on the interviewee than the source so it doesn't really change it from MREL. --Kyohyi (talk) 15:02, 29 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

  Sounds like you're speculating about how much influence she has and how resistant she is to the editors. We can't know this. The fact that there are multiple editors employed at the company suggests that they probably do some editing though. Edittttor (talk) 20:45, 21 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

  She's president of democracy now productions, it doesn't matter if she were resistant to the editors or not. That means any internal editors and reviewers are functionally subordinate to her, and not independent. --Kyohyi (talk) 20:59, 21 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

That argument seems absurd. By that logic no source is reliable if anyone is ultimately in charge of it; we would have to declare the New York Times unreliable because all its editors are ultimately subordinate to A. G. Sulzberger; or that the Wall Street Journal is unreliable because it is ultimately owned by Rupert Murdoch; or that Washington Post is unreliable because it is owned by Jeff Bezos. What matters is whether there's structures in place that can give it a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy; and as I noted with a citation above, secondary sources say that does have them. WP:SPS is for sources that lack editorial controls (or ones where there is actual reason to believe the editorial controls are so insufficient as to be just window-dressing and functionally nonexistent); it's not for "someone ultimately owns this source and is in charge of publishing it." If the mere possibility that someone exists who could notionally override a source's editorial controls and fact checking exists were enough to render it a SPS, not a single source would be reliable. --Aquillion (talk) 22:27, 25 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Did you even read the argument? It's that the owner is actively and heavily engaged in content creation for the organization. Is Murdoch on the byline for all the articles on the Wall Street Journal? Is Bezos actively writing all the articles for the Washington Post? No, they obviously are not, so those comparisons have no basis in reality. It's not someone ultimately owns this, it's that the person who owns this is heavily involved in the creation of the content. It's that the person who can override any editorial control is also doing the content work is what makes it an SPS. --Kyohyi (talk) 03:50, 26 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, then let's assume for the sake of argument that Amy Goodman runs Democracy Now! with an iron fist. Let's even assume she commits human rights violations against employees who write things she does not like.

Even in this circumstance, WP:SELFPUBLISH explicitly says Self-published sources may be considered reliable if published by an established subject-matter expert, whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable, independent publications. We have demonstrated they have been published by reliable, independent publications. So DN! is RS, and whether Amy Goodman is pulling all the strings is irrelevant. Alexandraaaacs1989 (talk) 08:35, 26 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

For this to be a factor someone would have to show that DM is not editorially independent of Goodman. The have an editorial staff, so even if she has a lot of influence it appears doubtful that she can simply publish on her own. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 20:39, 26 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Democracy Now Productions LLC is the organization that owns Democracy Now! Amy Goodman is president of Democracy Now Productions. An example of self-published media from WP: V is material published in media by the owner(s)/publisher(s) of the media group which is an accurate description of Amy Goodman's relationship to Democracy Now!. So Amy's content in Democracy Now! would be self published. --Kyohyi (talk) 12:49, 27 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

An editor (@Bluethricecreamman) has reverted four of my edits at once on the International Association of Genocide Scholars page, claiming that Jewish insider is an "undue right leaning org for characterizing IAGS" but the All Sides Media rating for Jewish Insider is Center. Is this a reliable source? This editor deleted a basic fact about the organization in the body from this secondary source, then deleted it from the lead, claiming the lead follows the body (and to boot, they then accused me of edit warring, when I have done nothing but compromise with other editors and adjust my edits based on their criticism). If this is a valid source, I will put the info back in. Slava570 (talk) 10:55, 25 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

You threw this source [13] into the lede to characterize the org, which essentially exists to throw doubt on the IAGS as a scholarly org right after the resolution declaring Israel was committing a genocide. Entirely undue to describe org in lede using such a biased source. User:Bluethricecreamman (Talk·Contribs) 11:27, 25 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

The source is a former board member and longtime member of the organization itself stating a basic fact about the organization in (what I think is) a reliable secondary source. That's what I'm here to find out. I have no idea if this conversation is appropriate here (if not I won't mention it again), but is concealing objective information about an organization's structure in order to give it more credibility, as Bluethricecreamman has done, a form of POV pushing? Slava570 (talk) 11:37, 25 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I think you should review WP:1AM. There are several editors who have told you that your editing on International Association of Genocide Scholars is non-neutral. Perhaps, instead of assuming literally everybody else is a POV pusher hiding the WP:TRUTH, you should consider that, perhaps you need to address your editing pattern. Simonm223 (talk) 11:44, 25 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not the only editor who has said that one of your edits was non-neutral. See here This was in regard to your edit. Secondly, where did I say "literally everybody else is a POV pusher?" Never. I only am asking whether the above is evidence of POV pushing, and I've also said that your edit is clearly POV. Despite that, I have compromised with you by not reverting it and saying that we can continue to improve it in the future. I'm happy to take all of these actions to to be reviewed by an administrator. For now I just want to know about this source. Slava570 (talk) 11:52, 25 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

It seems like there's a lot of turbulence around the IGAS article; it keeps showing up in noticeboards. @Simonm223, @Slava570, I haven't investigated this but calling each other biased doesn't do much. Should probably chill with that... NorthernWinds ❄️ (talk) 11:27, 26 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Leaving aside for a moment the general reliability of JI, the interview with a former board member of IAGS is surely a good source for a fact about IAGS unless she makes an extraordinary claim. BobFromBrockley (talk) 14:41, 25 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Mischaracterization of the entirety of IAGS by one member in context of criticizing the Gaza resolution vote does not belong in lede. The attempted edit was to y IAGS resolutions at the very top of article.

It may be due as a reaction to the vote. (Since thats what it was) User:Bluethricecreamman (Talk·Contribs) 14:52, 25 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

What’s your evidence this is a mischaracterisation? If there are other reliable secondary sources we can triangulate. BobFromBrockley (talk) 15:22, 25 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

• I mean obviously they would be both WP:BIASED and WP:INVOLVED; there's absolutely no chance that we could cite them for anything without attribution, as the diff above was attempting to do. Beyond that it's just a question of WP:DUE; I don't think every former member is automatically due, so I'd just look at the amount of coverage. If the only coverage is a single BIASED source then that lowers the due weight significantly; certainly dropping it in the lead seems inappropriate. --Aquillion (talk) 14:55, 26 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

  All Sides rates media bias, and they give this source a rating of center. They say Sources with an AllSides Media Bias Rating of Center either do not show much predictable media bias, display a balance of articles with left and right biases, or equally balance left and right perspectives. So far the only evidence we've seen of bias is one article, and the issue is very much gray area. Slava570 (talk) 15:04, 26 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Not this crap again. Slava570, you need to stop pushing this nonsense, before you are obliged to by sanctions against you. We've already been through it at the Wikipedia:No original research/Noticeboard, [14] where it was made quite clear to you that you can't cherry-pick sources to suit your preferred spin. Clearly the Jewish insider is going to attempt to cast the Association in a poor light. We don't expect all sources to be unbiased (that would be absurd), but what we do aim for is that articles aren't deliberately constructed to follow the bias of selected sources, which is what is going on here. Wikipedia's reflection of the credibility of the Association (which is what this obsession with membership, voting rights etc is clearly about) needs to be based around what sources in general have to say on the organisation, and not on what the sources you prefer have to say. AndyTheGrump (talk) 12:31, 25 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I'm happy to have an administrator scrutinize all our actions on the talk page and the article. If I have done something wrong, I will listen and try to course correct if that's warranted. Other editors need to do the same. This is moving now into bring me a rock territory. In the previous discussion, I wanted to put in information about the organization directly from its website. For all intents and purposes, that was disallowed for being a primary source. I then wanted to put the information in from a secondary source, and now that is also not being allowed. There are no sources that you will find that will dispute the information I want to add, which is objetive information about the structure of the organization. The article is about 99% positive, and any perceived criticism is being disallowed. Wikipedia should not be publishing puff pieces that quash any mildly negative information (and what is being considered "negative" here is the fact that it's a dues paying organization and that you don't have to be an academic to join it.) Slava570 (talk) 12:56, 25 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Your 'objective information' has specifically been selected by you to cast doubt on the credibility of the Association. Since it doesn't reflect any general consensus (or even widely-held opinion) about the credibility of Association, it would be undue, per WP:NPOV, to include it in the article in the manner you are doing. Stop. Just stop. AndyTheGrump (talk) 13:03, 25 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Even if the editor uses a source because it confirms their political perspective I don’t think that is in itself a reason to remove it, rather than balance it. It’s either due or it isn’t. To persuade us this isn’t due, you need a stronger case than that it confirms what you presume is Slava’s political viewpoint. Nobody has yet made a convincing case for it being unreliable. BobFromBrockley (talk) 15:08, 25 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

The very first article I looked at on the site has some pretty serious issues, namely editorial conflation of antizionism and antisemitism, as well as exclusion of key context from the story. At minimum, claims should be attributed.  81567518  W  13:04, 25 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I just read this article and I see no conflation of antisemitism and antizionism. They are talking about candidates who are "staking out differing views" on [issues including] "the intersection between anti-Zionism and antisemitism." They are reporting on candidates' views, not their own (and even then, there's no conflation there) Slava570 (talk) 13:11, 25 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Headline: "In America’s largest Jewish district, Democratic candidates split over Israel, antisemitic protests"

Eighth paragraph: "The forum, which took place a day after anti-Israel demonstrators had chanted antisemitic slogans"  81567518  W  13:39, 25 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

The first one is a list, as in ...split over Israel (thing one), [and] antisemitic protests (thing two that there is a split about)

The second thing is also not conflation. Anti-Israel demonstrators [in addition to being anti-Israel] chanted antisemitic slogans. Slava570 (talk) 13:44, 25 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

No antisemitic protests or slogans are cited in the article. That's the whole issue here.  81567518  W  18:17, 25 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

That's factually wrong. Here's a quote from the article: The forum, which took place a day after anti-Israel demonstrators had chanted antisemitic slogans near Park East Synagogue to oppose an Israeli real estate event featuring some advertising for settlements in the West Bank, drew other distinct contrasts among the candidates. Schlossberg, for instance, condemned what he called the “antisemitic rhetoric” used by demonstrators who had shouted slogans such as, “We don’t want no Zionists here,” “Death to the IDF” and “We don’t want no two-state, we want ‘48.” Slava570 (talk) 18:44, 25 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Those slogans are clearly anti-Zionist. إيان (talk) 19:25, 25 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

What about the defacing of images of the Lubavitcher rebbe? BobFromBrockley (talk) 06:14, 26 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

If that's in the article I must have missed it. Even if we were to agree that tearing down a poster of Schneerson from public property were antisemitic (quite a stretch), it wouldn't justify smearing several separate protests as such.  81567518  W  14:11, 26 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I think what's happening is that we are inserting our personal opinions here, and personal opinions don't matter. There are a range of valid views on what constitutes antisemtism, antizionism, or both. Whether or not a source agrees with your own view has no bearing on whether the source is reliable. You have the right to call it "smearing" but that doesn't mean there aren't other ways of looking at it. Slava570 (talk) 14:17, 26 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

It is not in the article that you brought to our attention but in another article hyperlinked from it where it talks about the protest, singular. There is no smearing of several protests in that article. What it says about antisemitism and protests: The forum, which took place a day after anti-Israel demonstrators[15] had chanted antisemitic slogans near Park East Synagogue to oppose an Israeli real estate event featuring some advertising for settlements in the West Bank... Schlossberg, for instance, condemned what he called the “antisemitic rhetoric” used by demonstrators

The hyperlinked article is illustrated by a Getty image of placards many antisemitism scholars would say contain antisemitic tropes, and includes this quote from Mamdani's office: Some of the rhetoric and conduct outside Park East Synagogue — including displays of support for terrorist organizations and antisemitic acts — was unacceptable. BobFromBrockley (talk) 11:33, 27 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Im trying to look thru i dont see what this defacing is? Is this tearing down a poster?

i also dont like how the article then goes to lump in politicians who are trying to stop military funding to israel as part of a “antisemitic” movement User:Bluethricecreamman (Talk·Contribs) 11:52, 27 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

This doesn't speak to the reliability of the source, but to the fact that you have a disagreement with it. There are a range of valid views on the level of overlap between antisemitism and antizionism. This range of views is reflected in scholarship, the media and public perceptions.

This is also not related to the information I am trying to add to the article, which is basic factual information about the organization as well as information about what the board member said. Slava570 (talk) 12:05, 27 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

It speaks to the fact that they are so biased as to be difficult to utilize for describing IAGS in the lede. User:Bluethricecreamman (Talk·Contribs) 15:23, 27 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

So is this all the evidence you have for this supposed extreme bias? The fact that they called a rally antisemitic and you didn't think it was? How do you explain all the other news outlets that described it the same way? See this comment from BobfromBrockley. Do they all also exhibit extreme bias? Slava570 (talk) 15:37, 27 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

The Forward: “Menin is expected to celebrate the bill’s passage with Jewish leaders Friday morning at Park East Synagogue, which was the site of a November protest that included antisemitic slogans and helped spur this action.”

CNN: “A pro-Palestinian protest outside a New York City synagogue last week has sparked accusations of antisemitism and underscored the balancing act Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani faces on Israel.”

NYT: “A rowdy protest descended last Wednesday on Park East Synagogue… Mr. Mamdani, the mayor-elect, responded the next day, saying through a spokeswoman that he ‘discouraged the language’ used at the protest… though Mr. Mamdani has said he will protect Jewish institutions amid heightened levels of antisemitism and hate crimes, his initial response to the protest did little to quell that unease and was widely criticized by some Jewish leaders.”

AMNY: “Mayor Adams decried the antisemitic language voiced during Wednesday’s demonstration as ‘unacceptable’.”

Are we really saying all these sources are too biased to use on any I/P topic because they all agree some antisemitism occurred at this protest? Or can we just accept JI isn’t so biased actually? BobFromBrockley (talk) 23:07, 27 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

You'll notice that none of these sources characterized the protest(s) as antisemitic, which is the entire discussion being had here, and virtually all only use the word when attributed to a third party. Do you understand why that is an important distinction?  81567518  W  17:08, 29 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

We’re not going to persuade each other. If other editors feel this one article is critical to determining reliability, they can form their own views. The BobFromBrockley (talk) 23:36, 29 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

The "antisemitic rhetoric" claim is attributed to Schlossberg and placed in quotation marks. إيان (talk) 19:27, 25 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Given that the article is about candidates in a primary, and Schlossberg is one of those candidates, it makes perfect sense to tell readers what this candidate thinks. This speaks to Jewish Insider being a reliable source. Slava570 (talk) 19:37, 25 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

What is the missing context? Your claim about editorial conflation is right if and only if we say that defacing images of defaced images of the late Chabad-Lubavitch Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson (an anti-Zionist, I believe) and shouting “we don’t want no Zionists here” are not antisemitic. BobFromBrockley (talk) 14:50, 25 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

The missing context is the subject of the multiple protests that are falsely being labeled as antisemitic in the headline.  81567518  W  18:14, 25 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

But, while I’m not sure about this particular protest, it’s clearly the case that there have been multiple protests where antisemitism has been present, so it’s totally normal to observe that different Dem candidates have different takes on this, which is the main take home of the article. I see no missing context BobFromBrockley (talk) 22:01, 25 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

If it's clearly the case then why isn't any evidence presented in the article?  81567518  W  14:16, 26 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Other reporting on this also uses the term antisemitism.[16][17][18][19] If you compare them, there’s no context the other supply that JI don’t. Again, I don’t see why this particular source is being held to such an impossibly high standard. BobFromBrockley (talk) 02:54, 27 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Only one of the articles you've linked, the Forward piece, characterizes anything relating to the protests as antisemitic and does not provide any specific acts or language to back up its claim. It's not an 'impossibly high standard' to refrain from using inflammatory language when it doesn't apply.  81567518  W  15:44, 27 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

This is getting rather distant from whether to use the Jewish Insider piece for the IAGS article but what I will say is that Forward is a far better source for the discussion of antisemitism than Jewish Insider and I'd hate to see Forward, which is a very high-quality publication by journalistic standards, tarred with the ideology-warrior brush just because one time it happened to agree with JI. Simonm223 (talk) 15:48, 27 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

There's nothing inherently inflammatory about calling something antisemitic or racist or xenophobic, etc. Your opinion is that it doesn't apply. Others, including many that are quoted in the articles, think it does apply. Both are valid opinions and are not evidence of bias. Otherwise we need to start discounting all sources that have different standards for what constitutes bigotry. Slava570 (talk) 15:53, 27 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Nothing you've said here addresses the basic reliability concern about the use of editorial language which is not backed up by the reporting itself.  81567518  W  21:37, 27 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Only one of the articles you've linked, the Forward piece, characterizes anything relating to the protests as antisemitic and does not provide any specific acts or language to back up its claim. This is simply not true. ALL of the sources characterise some aspect of the protests as such. My pedantic side is keen to quote this to you, but I feel we are already far away from the topic and that you move goalpost every time, so it would be pointless. If your criterion for an acceptable level of neutrality and accuracy in an article on Jewish experience of antisemitism is that it needs to effectively accuse Mayor Mamdani of smearing Palestine solidarity activists, then we are never going to find common ground. I hope other editors will recognise that this thread has been a red herring, and that JI's level of bias is well within the range of normal reliable sources, even though it is not as good as The Forward or JTA. BobFromBrockley (talk) 14:38, 28 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

How does the New York Times work as a source?

Some Jewish leaders have criticized his responses as slow and insufficiently vigorous. After the protests in Midwood on Monday, the mayor did not comment publicly until Tuesday afternoon, when he sent a statement to the news media. In the statement, he condemned the “antisemitic, anti-Muslim and racist rhetoric” of the dueling protests, as well as their use of “racial slurs, displays of support for terrorist organizations and calls for the death of others.”

A wave of antisemitic incidents across the city has created a sense of escalating crisis for many Jewish New Yorkers. Mr. Mamdani, a progressive Democrat and longtime pro-Palestinian activist who is also New York’s first Muslim mayor, has responded to incidents as they have occurred. But he has struggled to connect with many Jewish leaders, who are overwhelmingly pro-Israel.[20]

Many of those leaders critical of the mayor acknowledged that recent antisemitic incidents — the thwarted terror plot, swastika graffiti in Queens and Brooklyn and expressions of open support for Hamas and Hezbollah at some chaotic protests of Israeli land sales — had been outside the mayor’s control.[21]

Later, a pro-Palestinian group marched through the neighborhood behind a man waving the flag of Hezbollah, calling for the death of Israeli soldiers as families watched from their porches.[22]

Pro-Palestinian demonstrators chanted “Long live the intifada” and “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” slogans that many pro-Israel groups view as calls for violence.[23]

Other elected officials saw it differently. Micah Lasher, an assemblyman who is running in the Democratic congressional primary for the district that includes Park East, said the protest was “intended to create fear in the hearts of Jewish New Yorkers and stigmatize our community.”[24]

But the issue of buffer zones, sparked after a protest outside a synagogue last fall, highlights one of their central points of disagreement: How to handle criticism of Israel that some people believe bleeds into antisemitism but others see as legitimate concerns about the military actions of a government that some experts have likened to genocide.

Their campaigns come as most Jewish New Yorkers have expressed concerns about rising antisemitism in the city. Many have coalesced behind City Council legislation that would require law enforcement to present plans to the mayor and City Council speaker to establish a security perimeter at houses of worship amid increased protests at synagogues. The measure will go into effect in June. [25]

But the issue of buffer zones, sparked after a protest outside a synagogue last fall, highlights one of their central points of disagreement: How to handle criticism of Israel that some people believe bleeds into antisemitism but others see as legitimate concerns about the military actions of a government that some experts have likened to genocide. [26] EaglesFan37 (talk) 18:04, 27 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

The article says itself How to handle criticism of Israel that some people believe bleeds into antisemitism but others see as legitimate concerns about the military actions of a government that some experts have likened to genocide. User:Bluethricecreamman (Talk·Contribs) 21:08, 27 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

The point is the Some people believe bleeds into antisemitism is being acknowledged as a real viewpoint and not WP:FRINGE. A lot of this stuff ends up boiling down into an individual's interpretation of whether something is antisemitic or not. The fact that Mamdani, who does not support Israel, condemned some of the rhetoric at the protest in question as antisemitism should be enough evidence that antisemitic rhetoric was chanted by some protestors, and that Jewish Insider isn't unreliable for deeming it as such. EaglesFan37 (talk) 22:44, 27 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

The fact that Mamdani, who does not support Israel, condemned some of the rhetoric at the protest in question as antisemitism should be enough evidence that antisemitic rhetoric was chanted by some protestors

This is certainly not a journalistic practice that I'm familiar with.

The Times piece is a great counterpoint, showing that even a biased source can exercise care in its use of editorial language. They note a specific act that they lump in with "antisemitic incidents" but don't make the leap of characterizing the entire protest, much less a handful of separate protests, as antisemitic.  81567518  W  13:41, 29 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@81567518W

Here's how Jewish Insider described the protests.

punctuated by an anti-Israel protest

which took place a day after anti-Israel demonstrators had chanted antisemitic slogans near Park East Synagogue

Schlossberg, for instance, condemned what he called the “antisemitic rhetoric” used by demonstrators who had shouted slogans such as, “We don’t want no Zionists here,” “Death to the IDF” and “We don’t want no two-state, we want ‘48.”

The protest was described as anti-Israel, rhetoric chanted by protestors was described by other sources asides from JI as "antisemitic", and the Schlossberg quote does emphasize that it about the protestors who shouted specific slogans, not necessarily the entire protest.

I know that @Bluethricecreamman expressed concern over the the intersection between anti-Zionism and antisemitism remark, so I'll say this: the relationship between anti-Zionist and antisemites is a Venn diagram. Not every anti-zionist is an antisemite. Not every antisemite is an anti-zionist. However, being anti-zionist and being antisemitic are not mutually exclusive things, and there is some overlap between the two groups. How much one believes that overlap is depends on the person. EaglesFan37 (talk) 15:17, 29 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Agree, and if a belief that JI “make the leap of characterizing the entire protest, much less a handful of separate protests, as antisemitic” is the grounds for judging it as less than reliable than we can discount that. BobFromBrockley (talk) 15:24, 29 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Why ignore the headline?  81567518  W  17:04, 29 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@81567518W I didn't realize that we cited headlines in Wikipedia articles. The headlines described the protests as antisemitic, and the article later talked about antisemitic rhetoric that was chanted at the protests. EaglesFan37 (talk) 17:32, 29 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

See WP:HEADLINE BobFromBrockley (talk) 20:15, 29 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

This is getting tedious. We're talking about the reliability of the source, not debating the merits of citing particular passages of an article. That said, we're clearly not getting anywhere here. This source should be used with attribution and that's all there is to say about it.  81567518  W  20:27, 29 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Arguments about what is antisemitic are meritless since editors' opinion does not matter. A source is allowed to use a disputed definition and it does not make it any less reliable and does not require us to always attribute. As to headlines, they're not reliable regardless so this is also not an argument. NorthernWinds ❄️ (talk) 20:36, 29 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, a Democratic state lawmaker, and some news agencies are falsely claiming that U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib said Nessel’s office only filed charges against pro-Palestinian activists at the University of Michigan because she’s Jewish.

[...]

Tlaib never once mentioned Nessel’s religion or Judaism. But Metro Times pointed out in the story that Nessel is Jewish, and that appears to be the spark that led to the false claims.

[...]

Jewish Insider followed up with an article on Sunday that repeated the false claims, saying “Tlaib claimed that Nessel is only charging the protesters because she’s Jewish.”
— "Fact-check: Tlaib did not say Nessel charged pro-Palestinian protesters because she's Jewish". Detroit Metro Times.

As far as I can see, there has been no correction published by the Jewish Insider. superzodiac (T · C) 14:45, 25 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Whether sources are rightwing or leftwing, or whatever AllSides has gleaned from US public opinion is completely irrelevant. Also if anyone wants an admin to review an editors behaviour they need to go to WP:ANI, this noticeboard isn't for user behaviour or who reverted who. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 14:48, 25 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

ActivelyDisinterested is entirely correct that left-right bias is not how we ascertain reliability. However @Superzodiac points directly to something that is used to ascertain reliability: the publication of falsehoods that are not subsequently corrected. Simonm223 (talk) 14:56, 25 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

My comment is a reply to OP, not superzodiac. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 15:03, 25 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

As to what should or shouldn't be in an article, it should be based on what is stated in reliable sources. So the group should be described as they are described in those sources, not a single source. Just because something can be reliably sourced doesn't mean that it must be included. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 14:57, 25 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed. If something is described in multiple sources, and only one source (one with a clear interest in promoting a particular perspective) choses to take note of one specific detail that otherwise doesn't attract comment, that in of itself is good grounds to suggest that we shouldn't be citing it. AndyTheGrump (talk) 15:02, 25 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Sure but surely the views of a former board member and how its democratic structures work are due in the article about the association. BobFromBrockley (talk) 15:15, 25 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

How about no? Cherry-picking is cherry-picking, regardless of who you've cherry-picked from. This source has clearly and unambiguously been selected to promote a perspective that the many other sources who have commented on the Association haven't seem worthy of comment. Any organisation of any size will have internal critics. It's external commentary (in multiple reliable sources, to provide balance) that justifies inclusion of such criticism, as I'm sure you are very well aware. AndyTheGrump (talk) 15:32, 25 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

It’s external, reliable reporting of an important internal critic. That unambiguously due. The cherry picking accusation doesn’t make sense for something that’s obviously due. BobFromBrockley (talk) 16:05, 25 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I see nothing 'obvious'. If it was, other sources would be commenting. AndyTheGrump (talk) 16:28, 25 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

It’s prima facie the case that a former board member’s opinion is likely to be relevant in an article about an organisation. (We have quite a bit of detail on other leaders’ views, eg Zimmerer.) If it’s reported by a reliable external source the default is that it’s due. So unless we determine this source isn’t reliable, I don’t see an issue. BobFromBrockley (talk) 22:04, 25 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

If it was, other sources would be commenting. Well, indeed they are. Most authoritatively, NPR feature her heavily in their discussion of IAGS. The Times of Israel discussed Brown’s take extensively, using her as a source for how the organisation works, its membership and the Gaza vote. Jewish News also reports Brown’s views on these questions. As did i24 News. I don’t know what MediaLine is, so may not be a good source, but they use Brown along with genocide scholar Norman Goda as a source on IAGS. I think it’s also mentioned in this Project Syndicate op ed, implying due weight, but that’s paywalled so not sure. Lastly, presumably not reliable, but perhaps suggesting that this is pretty noteworthy, the Free Press quoted Brown in their news round up on the IAGS resolution. So, it seems as if due weight concerns are very misplaced, and it seems like other reliable sources confirm that JI’s account is not a skewed one. Maybe we want to add citations to some of these to the material previously citing only JI to strengthen it if concerns about JI linger. BobFromBrockley (talk) 12:27, 27 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

The controversial edit added the text all paid members have voting rights, using the Jewish Insider article about Sara Brown as a source, specifically the quote all paid members have the right to vote, and membership is not restricted to academics; its ranks include artists, activists and others interested in the field of genocide studies. But that quote is written in the Jewish Insider's voice, it's not a quote of Brown[27]. So JI's reliability is very much the issue. In other words, maybe IAGS members go through a vetting process before being allowed to vote, maybe they don't, but I wouldn't take JI's word for it. superzodiac (T · C) 16:52, 25 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

If you read the article, the other basic information about the structure of the organization is taken from a primary source--the organization itself. This was precisely what I was not allowed to do. Now that I've found a secondary source, that's apparently not allowed either. You say that quote is written in the Jewish Insider's voice. My question is, what is wrong with Jewish Insider's voice, when it's considered a reliable secondary source? And isn't that preferable to a primary source? Slava570 (talk) 17:22, 25 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Please see my replies here and here as to why they are not reliable. Implying a member of congress is racist and then not issuing a formal correction, or even an informal one, is a serious infraction, in my view. I have no affiliation with the IAGS and it does look probable that they have sloppy or non-existent vetting processes, but a better secondary source should be found to support the claim. superzodiac (T · C) 17:40, 25 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

The differences in the diff supplied are how to describe the workings of that democratic structure, that's something that can be stated in different ways highlighting different facets. A source can be reliable for a certain way of framing those details, but still out of step with how those details are generally described. I don't see why a former board member has any more say on how things should be described than other independent sources. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 15:34, 25 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

A former board member is just obviously a good witness. What’s the discrepancy you are seeing? BobFromBrockley (talk) 16:32, 25 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

It would depend on why they are a former board member, and they're not independent of the subject. Why should their description on a subject they're involved in be more important than the descriptions given by independent sources? -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 20:52, 26 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

She’s not wholly independent so we’d be wise to attribute. But an independent source has deemed it noteworthy; that makes it due. I feel it’s obvious that her opinion is more relevant than a random one, and at the moment the alternative we have for this stuff is the interested statements of the organisation itself so her perspective adds quite a bit. I don’t understand why this is seen as problematic. BobFromBrockley (talk) 21:54, 26 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I’ve looked at the article now and it lacks secondary sources. If there was a huge wealth of secondary sources you’d have a stronger point about cherry picking. BobFromBrockley (talk) 15:43, 25 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Listed as a trusted source.[28][29] Examples of use by others.[30][31][32][33][34][35] One failed fact check that I could find (the one already mentioned by superzodiac), corrected without a formal retraction.[36] Apart from that, I can’t find any problems. Unless there’s evidence of the un publicised correction being a part of a pattern, seems like a decent source. BobFromBrockley (talk) 15:12, 25 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

This isn't about reliability, this is about cherry-picking a single source to promote a particular perspective not reflected by the balance of other sources. I'm sure you've read WP:DUE at some point... AndyTheGrump (talk) 15:32, 25 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

But the only case for it being undue is the source is unreliable (as “right-wing” doesn’t make it undue, contra the editor who removed it). I’m responding because this has been brought to the reliable source noticeboard for that reason. If everyone is satisfied it’s reliable, you can move this discussion to the NPOV noticeboard to get additional views on if it’s due, but nobody has explained why it might be yet. BobFromBrockley (talk) 22:08, 25 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

There was no correction, formal or informal. The word "claimed"[37] was changed to "suggested"[38]. Tlaib suggested no such thing. superzodiac (T · C) 15:30, 25 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I note that the word “suggested” links to their actual report on Tlaib, which seems to be completely accurate. But you’re right that this is a data point against general reliability. However, it seems this is the single data point anyone’s found (and the source seems to say that CNN made the same error?) so to me, balanced against extensive use by others and positive reputation, this alone is not enough to call it an unreliable source. BobFromBrockley (talk) 08:22, 26 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I am sorry to persist on the same point but I don't understand what you mean by seems to be completely accurate. The link on the word "suggested" links to the Metro Times' article (not JI's) about which the Metro Times themselves later clarified that Tlaib never once mentioned Nessel’s religion or Judaism. So there is zero accuracy in using the word "suggested" and it is a huge journalistic failure to not retract such a false accusation of racism. The fact that JI changed "claimed" to "suggested" implies that they were aware of the mistake which makes the lack of a retraction even worse.

Is it enough to call JI an unreliable source? I don't know. Is it inspiring trust? I don't think so. superzodiac (T · C) 09:24, 26 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry you are correct: The word "suggested" in the archived page you linked to is hyperlinked to the original Metro Times article where the mistaken criticism of Tlaib comes from: my error. But I'd say linking to the Metro Times account is a small point in JI's favour. Anyway, agree it doesn't inspire trust, but I don't think we can infer a lack of reliability from one single error. If this was a pattern, someone would have brought evidence of that here by now. Until they do, I don't think we can say we're dealing with a problematic source. BobFromBrockley (talk) 09:38, 26 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Part of the issue here is that treating this purely as a source reliability issue simplifies the situation. JI isn't great as a source but probably isn't necessarily WP:GUNREL however, in this context, it's being used specifically to create an implication that the IAGS cannot be trusted as a source itself. Ultimately this conflict is more about the use of the IAGS as a source at Gaza Genocide than about the quality of the IAGS page itself and the editor who brought this thread open has made it a pet cause to discredit this specific source. This edit and the evidence of a slow edit-war at that page should probably be treated as context to the question. Frankly, and very unfortunately, this is becoming a behavioural problem where there's an editor who seems to edit to minimize Wikipedia discussing genocide as a unique category of crime. Simonm223 (talk) 10:46, 26 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

The edit you are linking at genocide definitions has absolutely nothing to do with IAGS. It's about the relationship between crimes against humanity and genocide. There was no edit war at that page. @anythingyouwant. I've been accused of edit warring with you at the Genocide Definitions page. Do you think that there is a problem with my behavior at that page? Simonm223, you are totally in left field here. And another thing, you have it backwards. Go back and read through the edits. My edits made it clear that genocide is a separate category of crime, the exact opposite of what you are claiming.Slava570 (talk) 11:15, 26 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

While this is not a good indicator, it is one single instance, and so at this point would not justify viewing the outlet as not GREL. -- Cdjp1 (talk) 13:44, 26 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Making a break here, what do we need to do to find consensus at this point? User:Bluethricecreamman (Talk·Contribs) 14:37, 26 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

• At the absolute bare minimum it is a WP:BIASED source and should never be used without attribution in the I/P topic area. I would also generally argue that when only a single biased source says something, that lowers its weight; there is intrinsically less significance to sources saying things that are in line with their strongly-held priors, ie. it is natural to expect that the threshold for one team to cover something negative about the other team is lower. That doesn't necessarily mean it needs to be totally excluded but it definitely doesn't belong in the lead without additional sourcing (and, again, even if it gets a brief sentence in the body, it would have to be clearly attributed.) I'd also be cautious about citing the same source multiple times in a situation like that, again for due weight reasons. I feel it's hard to argue that one brief clearly attributed sentence in the body is undue, but if people want more than that then they need to find additional sourcing (and if they want it unattributed, they need to find non-WP:BIASED sourcing.) --Aquillion (talk) 14:55, 26 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

  Sorry I should've replied here.... But here's a second media bias rating, which rates them as right-center bias. This one also states Overall, we rate the Jewish Insider Right-Center biased based on editorial perspectives, which slightly favor the right. We also rate them High for factual reporting due to strong sourcing practices and a clean fact-check record. Slava570 (talk) 15:16, 26 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

  Characterizations such as "left", "right" and "center" are oversimplifications. Center with which frame of reference? These terms mean very different things in the US and Europe, for example. Also, a source might be on one side of the left-right spectrum on one issue and at the opposite end of the spectrum on another.

  
  

  Secondly, center according to whom? Basing our evaluations of sources on such media bias checkers introduces the new problem of which of those sites is itself a reliable source. Media Bias/Fact Check is GUNREL for example, per WP:MBFC. superzodiac (T · C) 18:03, 26 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

• We don't usually rely on MBFC for reasons detailed at WP:MBFC, but beyond that, what we care about, in this case, is whether they are biased for the I/P topic area specifically. Are you actually arguing that they're an unbiased source in that context? Bias is separate from reliability; biased sources can be used (hence why I said we can have an attributed sentence in the body, even if they're the only source saying this), but they generally require attribution, and when only one biased source covers something there are sometimes weight concerns, as I explained. The issue isn't "is what they're saying false", it is "are they giving this the attention they did because it aligns with their views, rather than because it would be significant otherwise?" The possibility of the latter reduces the weight we'd give them. If you want to avoid this and put it in the lead, the logical thing to do is to find additional sources. --Aquillion (talk) 18:19, 26 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

  superzodiac, I appreciate you letting me know about that. The AllSides source I gave above has a slightly better rating. In any case, yes, we need to separate left/right/center (which as others have said, shouldn't matter at all anyway) from reliability.

  This is clearly a reliable source for factual information. What I am trying to add to the article is 1. information about the structure and membership of the org, which is also easily verified on the website of the org itself (despite the fact that earlier I was not allowed to use the info from org itself, others on this page have used this same primary source extensively without attribution, including in the lead).

  2. I would like to add information about a former board member attributed to that board member. I think it would be very unwieldy and unecessary to have to attribute to both the newspaper and the board member (according to the board member as quoted in the newspaper... it's just overkill). Slava570 (talk) 18:34, 26 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I mean, in this context, I would say that it is a fairly WP:EXCEPTIONAL claim, especially given the implication they're attempting to make. Clearly the argument that Jewish Insider is suggesting is that, because non-scholars voted and because members pay a fee, the results or meaning of the vote are somehow invalidated or cast into question. The problem is that the organization (and the particular vote that that piece takes issue with) has had substantial mainstream coverage, which broadly treats it as reliable and the vote as significant; if the concern that they raise is real (in the sense that, it's reasonable to suggest that it materially affected the outcome, and is therefore relevant and WP:DUE), we should find more reliable sources talking about that aspect; and if we want to give it substantial weight, then ideally we'd find more than just BIASED sources talking about it. The fact that Jewish Insider is a biased source means that concerns about the vote that nobody else has aren't very weighty, because of course they're going to raise every objection they can; we can still cover it briefly in the body with attribution, but to actually give that argument the sort of weight your edits are trying to do, we'd want to ideally see that it has "broken through", or at least that more sources are covering it. --Aquillion (talk) 20:08, 26 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

To clarify, I would like to use the source for a statement by the board member herself. This is the statement: In response, the former IAGS Board member and genocide scholar Sara Brown said the process of passing the resolution was not transparent, and that when she attempted to publish a dissent, it was censored.

What you are talking about is the petition. That is a separate sentence with completely separate sources including Haaretz and Inside Higher Ed.

I also want to use this source in a completely different section, which does not mention this resolution at all. This section is the structure and membership section, so people understand what the membership requirements are. Slava570 (talk) 20:27, 26 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

It is wrong to suggest the WP:MBFC means we shouldn't use the source for discussions here. If one reads the discussions about MBFC, Ad Fontes etc, the discussions were originally related to editors objecting to inserting claims like "According to MBFC, [source] is left leaning and the reporting is mostly factual." Basically editors said such assessments shouldn't be reported in the article space. While some editors might object to methods etc, that certainly wasn't a consensus view. Ad Fontes is one that a number of editors do think is worth consulting. Additionally, if we do a literature search there are many examples of these rating sites being used for reference by peer reviewed papers. Additionally, apaper out of MIT found the various rating methods had good agreement (Lin, Hause, Jana Lasser, Stephan Lewandowsky, Rocky Cole, Andrew Gully, David Rand, and Gordon Pennycook. "High level of agreement across different news domain quality ratings." (2022)). It seems to go against our used by others (especially peer reviewed sources) to discount the rating sites. I still oppose citing them for the article space. Springee (talk) 03:06, 27 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for this as well. I don't see a rating for Ground News but they also say [39] Jewish Insider’s factuality rating is High. Ground News calculates this rating using a combination of the fact and reliability ratings from Ad Fontes Media and Media Bias/Fact Check. (I wasn't able to get Ad Fontes directly). I am only trying to add factual information as well as information attributed to the board member. Slava570 (talk) 11:50, 27 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Another source who's bias rating is ultimately based on US public opinions and irrelevant, and who's reliability rating isn't based on Wikipedia's policies or guidelines. No better or worse than AllSides, just equally irrelevant. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 20:46, 26 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Aquillion, is there a source that is wholly unbiased about I/P? if not, are we saying that we should never say anything on any I/P topic without triangulating biases? For example, no citations of al-Jazeera unless we can also cite Jerusalem Post, something like that? BobFromBrockley (talk) 22:01, 26 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Bias is a spectrum, and I think dueness concerns matter for a source as biased as this. I dont think id want al jazeera to be in the lede for the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance to describe them either User:Bluethricecreamman (Talk·Contribs) 22:38, 26 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

This is sometimes a tough call. For example, when it comes to the public debate about gun laws, the NRA and other gun rights organizations are clearly biased and likely not aligned with the average uninformed citizen. However, they are also likely very motivated to understand and study the issue and are probably some of the best sources for some of the arguments against various gun control laws because the topic is so important to them. The same is likely true of some of the sources associated with Israel in this case. Most sources are likely to accept a claim at face value. Some are likely to support is because it aligns with their own beliefs (presumably al Jazeera). Others, because they are very interested in the topic are digging in because they have their own strong views. That said, I don't think I have a good basis on which to answer the question of weight on this topic. Springee (talk) 03:14, 27 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Ok legit, how do we find consensus? What are next steps? Time for an rfc, and if so what question? User:Bluethricecreamman (Talk·Contribs) 16:54, 27 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, I think an RfC is probably the best way forward. Simonm223 (talk) 16:20, 28 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

My instinct is that our normal 4 options won’t be that helpful as pretty much everyone here has agreed they’re not totally GUNREL and they’re not gold standard so we’ll be probably finely balanced between a borderline green flag or a yellow flag, and not give an answer helpful for the IAGS article. So are there more specific questions, like what level of attribution is appropriate to its bias, or what sort of uses are appropriate in the I/P topic area, or even just if the two very specific citations Slava wanted to use it for are OK? BobFromBrockley (talk) 17:20, 28 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I would agree that the specific citations should be the scope fore a prospective RfC with the CONLEVEL being specific to that page. Simonm223 (talk) 17:23, 28 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I was going to suggest something like this, as there has been a lot of discussion and obviously no consensus. I'm concerned that any RFC on reliability alone doesn't answer the question of what should be included in the article, while if the question is tailored to specifically about the article this might not be the appropriate forum. Nothing is stopping editors from having a RFC about Jewish Insiders' general reliability if their is a desire for that, but it doesn't seem to be the central issue here. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 19:40, 28 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

The first thing it says in the good faith article: good faith is a sincere intention to be fair... An editor replaced my secondary source citation (Jewish Insider) with a primary source (the organization) in the lead. A second editor later reverted to this primary source. Previously on this noticeboard I was told that primary sources in this article had to be attributed. The same sentence in the body of the article is attributed, but it's now in the lead without attribution. I don't understand why I am being held to a different standard than other editors.

Secondly, are we not all reading the same noticeboard discussions? What I am seeing is that no one is saying Jewish insider is not reliable. It seems to me there is clear consensus that it is reliable. What a handful of people are saying is that JI is biased. But the evidence to the contrary has been overwhelming. If JI is biased, so is the New York Times, NPR and Mamdami. But unfortunately, most people are not big enough to admit when they've made a mistake. Either people need to bring forward new evidence for why it's biased, or they have to admit that the evidence they've provided so far has been very weak.

Editors have said they don't want constant RFCs, and I don't think we need one here. From what I understand, this is not majority rules, and a closer should be able to tell us how to move forward. However, if I am wrong, and a closer says there really is no consensus here, then we can start an RfC. But first let's try the easy way. Slava570 (talk) 12:06, 29 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

If you think there is bad faith user conduct on my part, report to ani. This is not the forum for user conduct.

WP:PRIMARY sources can be used if they are due, and im happy to replace the description with what other reliable due secondary sourcing suggests. Rfc seems best way to find consensus at this point User:Bluethricecreamman (Talk·Contribs) 14:14, 29 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

To be fair a lot of contributions in this thread have been ad hominem complaints about the OP, including some impolite language ("crap", "nonsense") or presumptions about motivation, and quite a small part of it has actually addressed reliability. With a little bit of inference, I'd say editors fell something like this:

• Green flag:
  • Generally reliable: Slava570, EaglesFan37?
  • Generally reliable but where bias and minor editorial concerns might lead to some caution: me, Cdjp1
• Yellow flag:
  • Biased enough to only use with attribution and triangulation in I/P area, no comment on reliability: Aquillion
  • Biased enough to not use in lead without triangulation, no comment on reliability: ActivelyDisinterested, AndyTheGrump?, Bluethricecreamman?
• Red flag:
  • Generally unreliable or so biased as to be treated as such: 81567518W (based on an article about antisemitism at New York protests), superzodiac?

So (although I may have missed or misinterpreted someone) we have more or less the whole spectrum, with the centre of gravity on the border of the green and yellow flag zones, so it might be hard to close now, although maybe we could with a couple more editors pitching in decisively? BobFromBrockley (talk) 14:49, 29 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@Bobfrombrockley I personally lean in the same boat as you and @Cdjp1. I don't have an issue using it as a source and it's generally reliable, but it also has a clear POV as well. EaglesFan37 (talk) 15:00, 29 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I've been eyeing this conversation for a while waiting for someone to change my mind but so far this hasn't happened. The discussion around the protests in particular struck me as utterly irrelevant. There is a definition of antisemitism under which these events fall. An organization's usage of a certain definition does not make it any less reliable. I find this source to be generally reliable. NorthernWinds ❄️ (talk) 15:45, 29 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think this source should be considered generally unreliable, but it should be used with attribution.  81567518  W  16:52, 29 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

To be clear my comments shouldn't be seen as saying Jewish Insider isn't generally reliable. Rather I was saying what is included in an article doesn't come down to one source, and the disagreement appear to be about inclusion not necessarily reliability. Verification isn't about inclusion rather all included content must be verifiable. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 20:16, 29 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Bluethricecreamman, we may be accidentally acting in ways that are unfair. What I have identified is an unfair standard being applied to my edit as to others. In the previous noticeboard discussion, people said primary sources need to be attributed, so I'll just add the attribution for now pending the outcome here. Also BobfromBrockley, you didn't add yourself to the list above... Slava570 (talk) 14:57, 29 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

They said they cant be used for synth in WP:NORN, attribution is for what cannot be stated in WP:Wikivoice. I think i agree it is generally weird to use a missions self described mission statement in wikivoice and agree it could be attributed, i think an attribution would be appropriate User:Bluethricecreamman (Talk·Contribs) 15:12, 29 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@Slava570

@Bobfrombrockley did mention themselves Generally reliable but where bias and minor editorial concerns might lead to some caution: me, Cdjp1. EaglesFan37 (talk) 15:18, 29 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, sorry about that! Slava570 (talk) 15:28, 29 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Also, I want to add, I'm fine with being alone in the "generally reliable" line. I'm not saying Jewish Insider doesn't have a POV. But people have said that left/right/center is not the defining feature of bias, and I think Jewish Insider is being held to standards that other media outlets are not being held to. I also think that these POV concerns are especially unwarranted in this case, given that they are reporting basic factual information about the org, plus comments about the resolution that I already want to attribute to the board member. Slava570 (talk) 15:35, 29 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

roostweather.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • blacklist hits • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com

This site is used as a climate reference in a large number of UK settlement articles. However, if you look at it, you'll see it is largely self-published with statements like "This site contains a plethora of content relating to my home weather station, located in mid-Devon, the UK weather and climate..." and "These pages are under continuous development, and as such there will be areas that aren't finished, or don't quite work properly yet". It's an interesting site create by a clearly enthusiastic amateur, supported by other contributors. However it is the very epitome of a self-published source. 10mmsocket (talk) 11:37, 27 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that the user-contributed nature of the site can lead to gaps in data, but the problem is the lack of other sources for UK temperature records.

KNMI used to be, but they no longer publish UK weather records and it's no longer shown on their site.

Met Office only if the location has broken a UK record, such as -27.2 recorded in Braemar. Otherwise, they don't publish temperature records for each individual station. GN10Gaming (talk) 11:44, 27 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

If no other sources exist, and consensus is reached that this not a reliable source, then those records will need to be removed as unsourced. 10mmsocket (talk) 11:50, 27 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

No worries. The Kew Gardens weatherbox template uses Starlings Roost weather as a source, feel free to remove it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Kew_Gardens_weatherbox

Oh, and this one too.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Northolt_weatherbox GN10Gaming (talk) 11:55, 27 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Look at the "insource" link above and you'll see it's used on many articles. Nothing to remove while there is no consensus. 10mmsocket (talk) 12:01, 27 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

In haste, I just want to add my complete agreement with the comments of 10mmsocket. The other mentioned "source" is larglely self-published -as detailed. David J Johnson (talk) 12:37, 27 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Is this article in the The Baylor Lariat (a college newspaper): https://baylorlariat.com/2019/05/02/buzzfeed-article-gains-backlash/

which says in part: "Colorado Springs junior Megan Peck, who works for Waco Tours, [said] “Often I feel like there is a white savior mentality here in Waco. This idea that a neighborhood is struggling until the white comes with big business and makes the place oh so much better,” Peck said."

reliable for this proposed statement in an article about a specific church: "Baylor Lariat noted some residents and Baylor staff defended the church. Others, including an employee of Waco Tours, expressed concern over a "white savior mentality" arguing that the church’s development efforts enabled racism."

WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:30, 27 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I think the source is probably reliable, but I would have concerns on undue weight with it being a student newspaper. --Kyohyi (talk) 19:52, 27 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I'd soften that a bit, by changing the final sentence to Others, includingAn employee of Waco Tours expressed concern... since only one person expressed that sentiment. Schazjmd (talk) 19:53, 27 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Is it more pointful to identify the speaker as a part-time "employee" or as "a student at the university"? WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:50, 27 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

That's a great question. If I may add, identifying her as "an employee of Waco Tours" is much more contextually relevant to the article because of how deeply embedded the company is with the church. According to the Buzzfeed News source Waco Tours is co-owned by Antioch's college pastor and explicitly mentions employing another Antioch Waco pastor as a guide to shape the city's developing narrative around the church.

Because the source explicitly identifies Peck as an employee working for a company that has close ties to the church, her perspective on a "white savior mentality" carries a direct insider context that a random student opinion wouldn't have. Framing it as "an employee of Waco Tours" makes the encyclopedic weight clear to the reader. HonestHarbor (talk) 06:09, 28 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

For precision, could word it as "A student who works for Waco Tours expressed..." That said, I agree with Shinealittlelight below that the current version (A response in The Baylor Lariat, Baylor University's student newspaper, reported mixed reactions to the BuzzFeed News article, including mixed reactions to whether Antioch Waco has promoted diversity enough) is sufficient. Schazjmd (talk) 14:17, 28 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I can accept that. @HonestHarbor, can you accept that? WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:17, 28 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I can accept either option, or better yet a blend of the two. Leaning toward precision, Schazjmd's precise phrasing ("A student who works for Waco Tours expressed...") is excellent. If the community prefers the current, I can be on board with that. Alternatively for this section, a best of both worlds blend could capture both elements cleanly: In response, The Baylor Lariat reported mixed reactions to the article, noting while some defended the church, a student working for Waco Tours expressed concern over a "white savior mentality" suggesting church development efforts enabled racism. HonestHarbor (talk) 16:13, 28 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

If this random student Megan Peck's opinion is due, then so are the opinions of the Baylor Baptist student ministries director, Charles Ramsey, and that of the other student, Dareen Habashy. We shouldn't cherry pick Megan's opinion, since that looks POV. But it would be unencyclopedic and undue to include the opinions of all these random people. So we're better off to stick with what we already have, which summarizes the source at a general and appropriately brief level. Shinealittlelight (talk) 17:26, 28 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

HonestHarbor, are you trying to find a way to get the words "white savior mentality" into the article? WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:27, 28 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I’m trying to find a way to include wording that accurately reflects the core substance of the source. The relevance of Peck’s perspective and Waco Tours’ association with the church has already been firmly established. The BuzzFeed News investigation focuses heavily on gentrification and how the church's commercial and missionary activities impact Waco's racial development. The Baylor Lariat chose to highlight Peck’s specific critique because, as an employee of a church-affiliated business, it directly captured that intersecting theme of church and the community.

The specific "white savior" phrasing captured the actual substance of the local tension reported. However, if the consensus weighs against that specific quote, I am entirely open to omitting it, or to propose another alternate, replacing it with "The Baylor Lariat noted some residents and Baylor staff defended the church. Others expressed concern over a lack of diversity within the church, suggesting church development efforts enabled racism." Which alternate do you think works best? HonestHarbor (talk) 19:12, 28 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

About The Baylor Lariat chose to highlight Peck’s specific critique because, as an employee of a church-affiliated business...: That's a nice theory, but if it's a typical student newspapers, that student could easily have been quoted because she's friends with the author. In fact, the piece could exist because the author had a conversation with this student and then thought it would make a good article. Or it could have just been copied from a student social media chat. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with this, but you've got to be a little wary of student newspapers publishing about hot-button topics.

I'm not sure that the phrase "enabled racism" is entirely supported by the sources. Maybe "contributed to systemic racism"? But maybe that's actually redundant with "contributed to gentrification".

There's also the WP:DUE question of whether we should be citing the student newspaper article at all. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:25, 28 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for that perspective. You make a very fair point about student journalism. To resolve the weight issue while still capturing the actual substance of the local friction, we can use a summary that captures broader themes: In response, The Baylor Lariat reported mixed reactions, noting that while some staff and students defended the church, concerns were raised regarding local segregation and a lack of diversity in the church and community. HonestHarbor (talk) 15:37, 29 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

About "local segregation and a lack of diversity in the church and community": The sources point out that the church is more racially diverse than average. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:25, 29 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

You're completely right that Dr. Ramsey says the pastoral staff seems to have more blending than most. However, it's unclear whether that diversity actually extends to the broader congregation.

In fact, the source explicitly documents friction on this exact point. Student Dareen Habashy, who actually defended the church against the article's overall tone, explicitly notes that she has "many friends who anguish over the issue of diversity within Antioch." To capture both Ramsey's point, Peck's point, and Habashy's point we can word it like this: In response, The Baylor Lariat reported mixed reactions, noting that while the diversity of the church's leadership was defended, concerns and anguish were raised regarding local segregation and a lack of diversity in the church and community. HonestHarbor (talk) 20:25, 29 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

(Minor edit polish)

In response, The Baylor Lariat reported mixed reactions, noting that while the diversity of the church's leadership was defended, concerns were raised regarding local segregation in the community and "anguish" over a lack of diversity in the church. HonestHarbor (talk) 21:08, 29 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, I know these are good faith efforts, but this is just honestly not well written. The awkward, passive construction is just unpleasant, and it's not clear what the proposed text is adding that is of any value. What we have already is clearly better than this. Shinealittlelight (talk) 01:15, 30 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I see your only issue remaining is a passive construction, so here's an active construction: ​In response, The Baylor Lariat reported mixed reactions; while defenders supported the church, critics raised concerns regarding local segregation in the community and expressed "anguish" over a lack of diversity in the church.

This eliminates the passive voice completely, streamlines the prose, and remains perfectly faithful to the collective local viewpoints documented in the source. HonestHarbor (talk) 03:47, 30 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

No please don’t put words in my mouth, that was not my “only issue”. There were three people quoted in the article. This new version obscures that. The current text is not in need of revision. Shinealittlelight (talk) 07:29, 30 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I apologize for any mischaracterization. My goal was simply to directly address the issue you mentioned in your reply: a stylistic concern regarding passive construction.

Collective terms like "defenders" and "critics" precisely satisfies the board's earlier feedback regarding WP:WEIGHT. If we explicitly spell out that this represents "one faculty member and two students," it inadvertently gives the impression of an unweighted, isolated debate rather than a faithful encyclopedic overview of the campus reaction that the Lariat reports.

Let's step back here and let @WhatamIdoing:, @Schazjmd:, and others weigh in on whether this active-voice thematic summary more accurately balances weight and prose. HonestHarbor (talk) 08:47, 30 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Possible undue weight with it being a student newspaper, is this an oped as well? Generally reliable for school and university town news User:Bluethricecreamman (Talk·Contribs) 21:09, 27 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for taking a look at this everyone. It is the University's official student newspaper but not an op-ed or an editorial; it is a standard news article written by a Lariat staff reporter. The article was written in direct response to a major national BuzzFeed News investigation on Antioch Waco, Baylor University, and the Gaines family. Rather than an opinion piece, the reporter provides straight news coverage on how the campus and local community reacted to that national feature.

The Lariat article summarizes key elements of the national report, including quotes from a Waco City Council member, Andrea Barefield, who explicitly addresses the local development through a "lens that acknowledges the layers of systemic racism that led us to this moment," noting historical government control over housing and business access. The Lariat article is balanced with fresh interviews with local students and Baylor staff who either defended the church, alongisde Peck's concerns over a "white savior mentality."

We could certainly adjust that sentence to: "In response, the Baylor Lariat noted some students and Baylor staff defended the church, while an employee of Waco Tours expressed concern over a "white savior mentality," arguing that the church’s development efforts enabled racism." HonestHarbor (talk) 21:56, 27 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I feel like an encyclopedia should probably not cite a student paper for what one student thinks about racism. The current version of the article cites the Lariat piece for this text: A response in The Baylor Lariat, Baylor University's student newspaper, reported mixed reactions to the BuzzFeed News article, including mixed reactions to whether Antioch Waco has promoted diversity enough. This seems better to me in terms of encyclopedic tone and due weight. Shinealittlelight (talk) 02:51, 28 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

The connection between her quote and the church itself seems a bit tenuous to me as her statement never mentions the church and the source does not state she is explicitly referring to it and I don't believe the source is due for the church as a whole, perhaps a local parish but not the entire church. Traumnovelle (talk) 23:47, 30 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

This concerns citations in this part at Airbourne (band)#Airbourne (2025–present).

The way I understand it, [40] and [41] are clearly fan recordings, and [42] and [43] are Instagram and producer's Spotify podcast. The middle paragraph doesn't have any citations at all. Since large paragraphs shouldn't wholly rely on primary sources, it is reasonable to remove them. But the other editor disagrees, so I'm bringing it here to ask opinions. Emiya Mulzomdao (talk) 12:45, 28 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

The first two are copyright violations, and probably shouldn't be linked to at all. The band own the copyright to their songs, someone recording and up loading them is a violation unless the band allow them to do so. As to the rest primary sources are allowed, along with WP:ABOUTSELF statements (the band saying what the name of a son is for instance). To me the issue isn't inclusion but what is included, discussion amongst the fans on Reddit or YouTube comments isn't due unless independent sources comment on it. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 13:19, 28 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I noticed that the article on Conway's Game of Life frequently cites LifeWiki and the related ConwayLife forums. I asked @LaundryPizza03, who also contributes to them, about how reliable they may be, and he pointed me here. My main point was that despite these two sources being user-generated, they are essentially the experts on cellular automata. I pointed out that the two authors of the Game of Life textbook are active on the forums and that several others have been cited in this Quanta article. Would this be sufficient to establish these specific individuals as subject-matter experts? Would it be acceptable to cite individual forum posts by them? LaundryPizza told me that the forums are at least as reliable as Stack Exchange, which isn't actually saying very much according to the perennial sources list. I would guess that the wiki is less reliable than the forums because it is also edited by individuals who are less qualified. Wreaderick (talk) 14:23, 28 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Unless I seeing this wrong anyone can create an account on LifeWiki and edit the website, that would make it WP:USERGENERATED and generally unreliable. Anyone could edit there and then post here using there additions as a reference, or a host of other problematic actions. Maybe LaundryPizza03 could clarify if there is any account control or editorial process.
No forum is reliable, but the selfpublished work of people who are WP:EXPERTSPS can be. So although the majority of forum posts wouldn't be reliable, the post made by accounts confirmed to be authors of the Game of Life textbook might be. I say might be as they would only be reliable for details within their expertise, not for everything they might post. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 19:57, 28 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

It is quite easy to confirm the identities of those whose real names are publicly available. That was actually one of the points LaundryPizza made to me earlier. I think we can trust the forum and wiki moderators (two of whom are the authors of the textbook I mentioned earlier) that the individuals' associated usernames, such as the one here (who is also listed as an author of this paper) are accurate. I can't really think of a more rigorous approach, we could ask LaundryPizza as you said. Wreaderick (talk) 20:25, 28 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Yes the same would be true of any forum post by a named individual, if it can be confirmed the post is by them and they meat the requirements of WP:EXPERTSPS then they could also be considered generally reliable. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 20:32, 28 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Hello! I have gotten into what one may consider a bit of a dispute with a user on the page ''White nationalism'', so basically, the article stated ''Many of its proponents identify with the concept of a white ethnostate.'' with a tag on it, which I have noted to be per its own reference text in Wikipedia ''Rothì, Despina M.; Lyons, Evanthia; Chryssochoou, Xenia (February 2005). "National attachment and patriotism in a European nation: a British study". Political Psychology. 26 (1): 135–55. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9221.2005.00412.x. In this paper, nationalism is termed "identity content" and patriotism "relational orientation".'', So, I decided to check up the pages of the said document, where I found the citation does not support the claim, a user named ''Adakiko'' reverted my edit, and added another citation, an article from ''The Conversation'', I analyzed the article they added, and found that it also does not verify the claim in question. So I took it to their talk page, where they told me to take it the talk page of the article, which I did, and I received no reply. I did not revert their undo since I do not wish to get into an edit war, but notably, they in their argument, stated ''The sources would appear to support that content'' despite them not supporting the content, they also made an appeal to tradition, stating that the text has been there for three years, as if that makes it correct or verifiable. They also asked me if I had access to the Political Psychology Article, the citation I had originally removed after noting that the article did not match the text, but then did not reply back to me, despite me tagging them about their question.

The specific text in question was: ''Many of its proponents identify with the concept of a white ethnostate'' in the page of White nationalism.

Article Involved: White Nationalism

User Involved: @Adakiko MarkAthers863 (talk) 22:15, 28 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

The content has been revised. I already removed the source that did not mention the concept. If you have any more concerns, you can raise them on the article's talk page. This board is for discussing the reliability of sources. StephenMacky1 (talk) 22:17, 28 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! I raised both issues in one place because I am new to Wikipedia's rules. I have already raised my other concern, which does not involve source reliability, on the article's Talk page. MarkAthers863 (talk) 22:34, 28 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Strange, I'm unable to find your comments on the white nationalism talk page, or in the revision history. Are you using a different name there? Cheers. DN (talk) 22:40, 28 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

That is something I've thought to raise to be honest, because I cannot find it not using my account either, I typed this

''

Citation concerns on "White Nationalism" — ethnostate content

I am raising concerns about the citation used to support the claim that "many proponents identify with the concept of a white ethnostate." The current citation (Rothì, Despina M.; Lyons, Evanthia; Chryssochoou, Xenia (February 2005). "National attachment and patriotism in a European nation: a British study". Political Psychology. 26 (1): 135–55.) is a British psychology study on national attachment and patriotism, which does not appear to be relevant to white nationalism or ethnostates. I have gone over the source and it does not support the statement.

Additionally, the secondary citation, an article by Paul J. Becker on The Conversation, does not verifiably establish that "many" proponents support the concept. "Many" is a weasel word per WP:WEASEL and requires strong sourcing to justify.

Per WP:VERIFY, the burden of evidence lies with editors wishing to retain content. I would welcome other editors reviewing these citations.

On your question @Adakiko, I have accessed the Political Psychology article and can confirm it does not support the statement in question. MarkAthers863 (talk) 20:48, 24 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

The Political Psychology article is a 2005 psychological study of 102 London university students examining forms of national attachment and patriotism among British citizens. It contains no mention of white nationalism, ethnostates, or related ideology and cannot support the claim in question MarkAthers863 (talk) 20:50, 24 May 2026 (UTC)'' but It can only be found for me in ''https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:White_Nationalism&oldid=1355940807'', not on ''Talk:White Nationalism'', perhaps I've done something wrong.[reply]

The talk page may have some broken anchors, perhaps that's the issue. Your contribution history did show your posts, but, it looks like something is wrong, see the links listed on Talk at White nationalism.

Tip: Anchors are case-sensitive in most browsers. This article contains broken links to one or more target anchors: {{{links}}} The anchors may have been removed, renamed, or are no longer valid. Please fix them by following the link above, checking the page history of the target pages, or updating the links. Remove this template after the problem is fixed | Report an error

DN (talk) 23:05, 28 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I've decided to repost it, though I did remove most of my complaints, since one of the two issues I've raised at that post have been addressed in this conversation. MarkAthers863 (talk) 23:11, 28 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

This issue was you posted your comments on Talk:White Nationalism not Talk:White nationalism. -- Cdjp1 (talk) 15:51, 29 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I have also begun trying resolve this request. See my most recent [44]. I am looking over the dispute regarding the Political Psychology source now, and I'm not sure that it should be removed, as it is possibly a WP:BETTERSOURCES. Cheers. DN (talk) 22:20, 28 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I checked the whole Political Psychology source and it indeed does not mention the concept. Editors can freely cite other sources though. StephenMacky1 (talk) 22:22, 28 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

In a few otherwise reliable news organization pieces, I have encountered close paraphrasing of my work onwiki. In one case, this went as far as to copy basically the entire plot section (I assume the journalist did not want to read the book; I understand why, it was very tedious, but his description was very obvious CLOP of my article, and went on for multiple paragraphs). There was another article from a different organization recently that copied, word for word, the extremely specific, kind of weird description of a book plot in an article that I wrote (that had never appeared elsewhere on the Internet before).

I have avoided using these pieces, but I noticed one piece in question is currently being cited by an article onwiki. I also doubt an editor besides me would notice. Per WP:CIRCULAR I would assume it to be unreliable, right? However, I've noticed a lot more sourcing do something a bit more vague, where a piece is written in a way that really mirrors the framing of the Wikipedia article/echoes its language and organization, to where I would consider it a WP:CLOP issue onwiki, but there is no one "smoking gun" where you can prove it is circular. This is hard to prove, but it can be obvious when you've looked at the material. I see this in tons of news articles and even a scholarly article - a few weeks ago, I saw a reliable scholarly article published last year cite a source that we cited onwiki to include a quote - but the source did not actually have the quote, Wikipedia was wrong, so they just grabbed the quote from Wikipedia and included the source for it without checking the source actually had that information.

I'm not interested in these specific cases, I'm more considering the limits of WP:CIRCULAR. If I notice a piece is pretty obviously echoing the Wikipedia article, should I avoid citing it? It seems hard to prove. Or, only more obvious cases? I avoid citing anything I think is echoing Wikipedia but other editors often do not and I struggle with how to bring it up. PARAKANYAA (talk) 01:36, 29 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

The biggest concern I have with these incidents is citogensis. There have been several incidents in the past, and these kinds of publications run the risk of being fed right back into the articles they copy to validate an editors OR. GeogSage ^{(⚔Chat?⚔)} 01:45, 29 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, but when you get into stuff like news articles that don't provide sources, or academic journals where the stuff in their sources isn't 1-1, how do you prove it? I know when to not cite it, but other users don't. I see so many news articles and even scholarly articles that do this. PARAKANYAA (talk) 01:51, 29 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

It depends how much of the article it makes up, and how peripheral the lifted content is to what you'd want to cite the source for. For example, there was recently a dispute about whether Jay Bhattacharya should be called a "physician scientist" based on news media using the descriptor, which it turned out had likely been copied from Wikipedia which had been modified to use the description shortly before he had been appointed to the Trump administration, despite it not being technically accurate. If there's reasonable suspicion that's enough for me. Hemiauchenia (talk) 01:54, 29 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

How much would you say is a problem?

I do think that this happens a lot more often with topics that are peripheral to the main subject of a journal article (though that was not the case for any of my examples above). PARAKANYAA (talk) 01:56, 29 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

It's basically entirely dependent on context. Sources are less reliable when covering topics that are peripheral to their subject matter anyway. Hemiauchenia (talk) 02:24, 29 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

+1 - This is a salient point imo. Cheers. DN (talk) 21:41, 31 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

And reasonable suspicion is enough for me, but it's hard to discuss arguments onwiki on that kind of thing. PARAKANYAA (talk) 02:03, 29 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I might have recently come across an academic journal entry where the research might have involved the Wikipedia article I brought up to featured status, but it's not copied and a summary of the previous research might render similar content. So I genuinely don't know with that one whether it could be cited or not. The reference eludes me at the moment but if I find it again I'll link it.----3family6 (Talk to me|See what I have done) 12:36, 29 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Personally, not much. The problem is that if we know they have copied some material we don't know how much else of the source is potentially copied or based on Wikipedia's content. Basically everything comes under suspicion , and the point of a reliable source is that we can trust it. If we can no longer trust that the sources content isn't circular then it's no longer a reliable source. If a source is copying Wikipedia you can't be certain you won't create citogensis by using it. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 08:48, 29 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

• Honestly, when a source is straight-up copying from wikipedia, the underlying issue is their reliability - flat copies of Wikipedia indicate that they may not have performed proper fact-checking or exerted proper editorial controls; they are effectively user-generated. WP:CIRCULAR is ultimately about WP:V. This carries the implication that if we are confident that a source has done proper fact-checking and verification, it becomes usable even if it heavily cites Wikipedia - a highly-cited academic paper that cites Wikipedia, say, is usable because we can trust that the fact-checking processes it went through confirmed the things it cited. Normally I would expect such a source to only really be citing Wikipedia to talk about Wikipedia anyway. But it's an important point; when functioning properly, a secondary source with a proper system for fact-checking and editorial controls has the ability to combine information from unreliable sources, verify it, and turn it into something we can cite - to a certain extent this is in fact the purpose of a reliable source. So what I would do is zoom out and consider the reliability of the source as a whole - do we trust that their fact-checking process and editorial controls verified the things they printed? Or is this an indication that those processes aren't as stringent as we thought? --Aquillion (talk) 17:19, 31 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

  @Aquillion To illustrate my point, here is another example of what is apparently CITOGENESIS, this time from the Journal of Right-Wing Studies, which is published by UC Berkley. About as good an editorial policy as any non-predatory standard peer-reviewed academic journal, as far as I can tell (I am not an academic and could be wrong). It is this article [45], "God’s Soldiers: Clerico-Fascism and the Deep History of Christian Nationalism" by Alex McPhee-Browne, published 23 December 2025.

  On page 184 of this article, it contains this quote (allegedly from white supremacist preacher Kenneth Goff): "As Goff remarked in a radio interview in 1965, “Jesus could not be a Jew because Jesus was human and Jews aren’t.”19" This is cited to: "Mary Wood, “Joe Pyne’s ‘Guests’ Get Acid Treatment,” Cincinnati Post, September 21, 1966, 44." However, this is that article [46]. The quote is not there, the article merely says he appeared on the Joe Pyne show. Also, it is from the wrong year, so I don't know how that supports that statement at all. So why did McPhee-Browne think he said this?

  Well, our own article said at the time, and currently says, this: "On The Joe Pyne Show Episode #12 1965, Joe Pyne asked Kenneth Goff if he was antisemitic. He dodged the question by saying Arabs are included in the term Semitic. Pyne stated: "Jesus was a Jew", to which Goff responded, "Jesus could not be a Jew because Jesus was human and Jews aren't." This quote was originally added on April 15, 2021, by an IP, with no source [47]. @Butlerblog added a CN tag in August 2025 [48].

  A month after the journal article was released, in January 2026, a source was added by @YourContrition [49], the same one used by that journal article (where the quote does not appear), presumably to verify the fact that he appeared on the Joe Pyne show - which is verified by that article, but not the date or the quote (this illustrates the importance of making sure the whole sentence is cited before adding a citation, or at least adding a note...), or thinking that it did verify the quote because of the journal article but not checking it. As far as I am aware, the quote has never appeared anywhere else besides Wikipedia and this journal article, and the Joe Pyne Show is famously inaccessible to watch and perhaps even lost. IMO it is entirely plausible that Goff said this, it is in line with what he believed, but I have been unable to find this quote in any RS anywhere, and you can't just watch it. It could very well be made up, we don't know. Unless there is a source with this quote that I totally missed, the only conceivable option is that the article took the quote from the Wikipedia article and then added a source that didn't verify the quote to back up the quote, which to me seems seriously problematic from an academic honesty standpoint. The duplication of the year mistake that was on Wikipedia only also lends credence to this. Goff appeared on the Joe Pyne show a few times, but as far as I can tell the first time was in 1966, and the Joe Pyne show was only nationally syndicated starting in March 1966. I don't know where they got the radio thing because neither the source they cited nor our article have ever said that.

  Similar circumstances happen a lot in many RS, a lot of even the most reliable sources are wrong; the problem we face is the unique circumstances of Wikipedia's influence. Would I now discount this entire article as unreliable? I am inclined to because this is effectively source misrepresentation, far more even than a source that cites Wikipedia and admits it and is clear about it and where it is citing it and how (because at least you can not cite the parts that are cited to Wikipedia, avoiding the problem). PARAKANYAA (talk) 21:08, 31 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

  I can somewhat empathize with your reasoning. I would still note that.

  • a lot of even the most reliable sources are wrong^{[weasel words]}

  Cheers. DN (talk) 21:44, 31 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

  A lot of even (what we consider to be) the most reliable (types of) sources are wrong. Like peer reviewed academic articles, reputable university press books, the like. Hence my example. And weasel words is an article writing guideline not for project pages and personal communication. PARAKANYAA (talk) 21:46, 31 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

  Many thanks for specifying, it helps tremendously with the interpretation. Cheers. DN (talk) 21:50, 31 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

For the source assessment of the YouTube puppet show SuperMarioLogan (SML) / Logan Thirtyacre, which will determine whether the source satisfies WP:GNG criteria or whether current source protection is needed, I have already found several obvious sources that might satisfy the criteria. However, for some sources I need an objective opinion about whether they are reliable or constitute SIGCOV (significant coverage).

1. Pensacola News Journal (link) and Bleacher Report (link)

• Question: Do these provide SIGCOV for the subject, or are they considered routine/passing coverage of a single stunt?
• Context: Both articles cover the creator winning an $800k charity auction to dine with Tom Brady. The PNJ is a Gannett-owned regional newspaper, so its reliability is solid, but does this event-based coverage count toward the subject's baseline notability?

2. Hollywood in Toto (link)

• Question: Is this site considered a reliable secondary source for pop culture/web series analysis?
• Context: Written by Christian Toto (a Rotten Tomatoes-certified critic), but the site is a self-owned right-of-center entertainment blog. Does it carry enough editorial oversight to be reliable for a web series profile?

3. Teesside Live (link) & MPR News/NewsCut (link)

• Question: Reliability and SIGCOV check.
• Context: Local news coverage regarding school and parental warnings over the Jeffy character. Are these local interest stories enough to establish broader encyclopedic notability, or are they too localized/routine?

4. Legit.ng (link)

• Question: Is this Legit.ng biographies reliable, or does it fall under WP:RSLLM / low-quality clickbait?

Monkegamer123 (talk) 02:02, 29 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

In my opinion:

• 1) Yes, though short, an author and presumably an editor went out of their way to write an article specifically about the subject, and they are the direct and primary topic of both articles with more than just passing mentions. That's SIGCOV regardless of the fact that the articles are not long-form content.
• 2) No. There are no published editorial standards other than a pledge to label any sponsored posts, and the "About" page all but screams "we are biased to the degree of lacking any semblance of objectivity" -- but also highlights the site owner's long history of working for outlets that fail WP:RS specifically due to their lack of credibility and reliability (for instance, The Daily Wire, which "is generally unreliable for factual reporting. Detractors note the site's tendency to share stories that are taken out of context or are improperly verified" or The Blaze, which "is considered generally unreliable for facts. In some cases, it may be usable for attributed opinions"; or Newsbusters, which "There is consensus that the Media Research Center and its subdivisions (e.g. CNSNews.com, MRCTV, and NewsBusters) are generally unreliable for factual reporting. Some editors believe these sources publish false or fabricated information."). So even if it were an edge case, I couldn't possibly trust that there aren't editorial shenanigans happening at his new site too.
• 3) Both reliable. Neither SIGCOV. Both are reliable sources; however their coverage is of the character, not the creator. The Minnesota Public Radio source does not mention SML at all; the Teesside Gazette one only in one offhand sentence, but the primary subject and coverage is about the creation and its effect, not the creator.
• 4) No. Zero indication of reliability from the source. ⇒SWATJester ^{Shoot Blues, Tell VileRat!} 01:08, 30 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Restarting this as the last thread was archived.

Ukhrul Times is cited in 80 articles mostly related to Northeast India and Manipur. Recently, the Indian fact-checking website, AltNews, published an exposé on a suspected disinformation network; this alleged network revolves around content related to the Myanmar Civil War and rare earth minerals.^[1] AltNews noted that Ukhrul Times published an article on December 14, 2025 about the Kachin Independence Army and India supposedly signing a rare earth deal where the primary source is a November 24, 2025 article from the questionable at best Silicon Valley Times.^{[2] [3]} This articles started coming out two months after Reuters reported on rumors of the Indian Ministry of Mines exploring possibilities of obtaining rare earth metals from territory controlled by the KIA.^[4]

Eleven Media Group is cited in almost 500 articles related to Myanmar. CNI Myanmar is cited in 23 articles. While both appear more neutral than the Global New Light of Myanmar, they publish mostly positive articles about the Tatmadaw. Both publications also cited the Silicon Valley Times "article." in stories covering the KIA and India.^{[5] [6]} Worth noting that the pro-Tatmadaw NP News covered these allegations and noted a purported denial by the Indian Embassy of Myanmar.^[7]

Considering this information, should the articles that use these publications as citations have new sources, or can all 3 still be used in more narrow contexts? Battlesnake1 (talk) 03:04, 29 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

The investigation, which is pretty comprehensive, also implicates Digital Journal and Big News Network  81567518  W  21:34, 29 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Considering that BNN has a history of posting inauthentic content as described by AltNews, it's likely a sign that the affected articles need more reliable alternatives. Battlesnake1 (talk) 03:46, 30 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

It doesn't look like a very good source but there is Reuters and The Diplomat reporting on the same thing [50] [51]

So I don't see any reason to consider it unreliable in the sense of publishing fake news. Traumnovelle (talk) 20:40, 31 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

The altnews investigation actually mentions the Reuters piece, which simply states that there were discussions about a deal, not that anything was signed nor anything about a "report" that alleges the systematic undermining of Myanmar's sovereignty. So, not the same thing.  81567518  W  02:14, 1 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

This article in particular, titled Three Decades After the Brady Bill, Some Gun Buyers Still Don’t Undergo Background Checks, written in 2024 by Jennifer Mascia, seems to cover the topic of the gun show loophole quite extensively. Is there any past or present consensus for whether or not the reliability of their reporting on this topic/article, is considered acceptable for the gun show loophole article, or Wiki in general? According to it's article page it says it's...

• "an American non-profit journalism outlet devoted to gun-related news in the United States. It was established in 2015 with seed money from the largest gun control advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety, which was founded by former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, and went live on 19 June of that year. The site's editor in chief is Tali Woodward, and it shares its president, John Feinblatt, with Everytown for Gun Safety."

Cheers. DN (talk) 22:59, 29 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

The problem is The Trace is an activist media site, not an unbiased source. This means the raw facts are not likely to be false but they are writing to persuade, not simply inform. The choice of language will include appeals to emotion and the use of politically charged terms or terms that allow the reader to reach a conclusion that isn't what was literally stated. Additionally, the source may discount or not cover opposing views or report on information that undermines their gun control objectives. It's useful to get one side of a debate rather than a complete story. In this case caution is also warranted because there is a dispute on the page regarding the scope of the article. Is the article about the political term "Gun Show Loophole" vs about the lack of universal background checks or other related laws in the US. Springee (talk) 00:41, 30 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

"[R]eliable sources are not required to be neutral, unbiased, or objective." So please don't tell other editors that being biased is a problem as far as being considered reliable. ElKevbo (talk) 00:47, 30 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

They aren't required to be but when the objective is advocacy we need to use caution. Like I said, the raw facts are unlikely to be wrong but the interpretation, framing or exclusion of information which doesn't fit an objective warrants caution. Hence, use with care. Springee (talk) 00:57, 30 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. We aren’t assessing this source in a vacuum, and in circumstances where this (or indeed, any biased source) is being used to influence ann article’s scope, extra care is required. Framing is one area where bias is directly relevant to how we use factually reliable sources. Riposte97 (talk) 01:06, 30 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I would agree that extra care should be given in order to leave out any editorial opinions. There's also attribution if it's appropriate. I'm more interested on their accuracy and reputation for providing facts that are verifiable. Obviously it's not a BLOG. I'm not sure if there are preferred 3rd party methods of review, or tools that might shed some light on their work over the years. There is a score system used by Ad Fontes Media. Any other suggestions? DN (talk) 04:18, 30 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Just a note of caution vis a vis WP:ADFONTES.  81567518  W  12:43, 30 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, I took a shot in the dark on that one. What would you suggest for determining reliability? Cheers. DN (talk) 20:38, 30 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

The Ad Fontes scoring system isn't based on Wikipedia's policies or guidelines.

They appear to be an established and respected organisation, with some use by others I can find, but as an advocacy organisation it would usually be best to attribute their statements. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 15:16, 30 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

The article has a few references sourced to them already, but I think they leave out any editorial opinion, critique or analysis, just events and information as they relate to GSL. Would we need to attribute those? Thanks. Cheers. DN (talk) 20:43, 30 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

For me it would depend on how contentious the material was. If it's basic information bit should be fine, but if it's likely to be challenged I would attribute. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 18:14, 31 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

It is a CTOP, so contentious material is par for the course. Now, would you say that the Trace is reliable as long as it's used with care? Cheers. DN (talk) 19:23, 31 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

The Trace is a non-profit journalism outlet devoted to gun-related news. It has an editorial independence policy.[52] It is rated left-center with high factual reporting by Media Bias Fact Check. [53] It is a reliable source. Lightbreather (talk) 00:56, 1 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

TeenAngels1234 and I have been discussing ways to get Rei Ayanami's article to featured article status. One criterion of WP:FACR is that the article "is a thorough and representative survey of the relevant literature; claims are verifiable against high-quality reliable sources". In December 2025, he asked if certain sources used in the article should be brought up here. You can find this conversation at User talk:Z. Patterson/Archive 4#Re:Permission to nominate Rei Ayanami for featured article candidacy(2). Below are the sources in question that appear in Rei Ayanami's article. At the time these sources were put in the article, they were believed to be reliable, but we are wondering if their quality is appropriate for a future WP:FAC. For example, an unofficial guide published through a reputable publisher appears to be an independent secondary source, but I am not sure if it meets the quality requirement for FACs.

• Morikawa, Kaichiro (1997). エヴァンゲリオン・スタイル [The Evangelion Style] (in Japanese). Daisan Shokan. ISBN 978-4-8074-9718-8. OCLC 57458815. OL 19284024W.
• Ghilardi, Marcello (2010). Filosofia nei manga: Estetica e immaginario nel Giappone contemporaneo [Philosophy in Manga: Aesthetics and Imagery in Contemporary Japan] (in Italian). Mimesis Edizioni. pp. 119–120. ISBN 978-88-5750-237-3. LCCN 2010468104. OCLC 671867793. OL 30475920M.
• Bartoli, Fabio (2008). "Neon Genesis Evangelion e la Kabbalah: dal Tempo di dolore al Tempo Benedetto" [Neon Genesis Evangelion and the Kabbalah: The Time of Sorrow to the Blessed Time] (PDF). Antrocom (in Italian). 4 (1): 29–30. Archived (PDF) from the original on April 22, 2018. Retrieved April 18, 2020.
• Cordella, Claudio (2020). "Cyborg e altri simulacri" [Cyborgs and Other Simulacra]. Il volto di Ayanami. Simulacri e macchine pensanti tra Oriente e Occidente [The Face of Ayanami. Simulacra and Mechanical Thinking from East to West] (in Italian). Delos Digital. ISBN 978-88-254-1217-8. OCLC 1420587771.
• Fujie, Kazuhisa; Foster, Martin (2004). Neon Genesis Evangelion: The Unofficial Guide. DH Publishing, Inc. Location=United States. ISBN 978-0-9745961-4-3. OCLC 56326204. OL 8583035M.
• Ishikawa, Satomi (2007). Seeking the Self: Individualism and Popular Culture in Japan. Peter Lang. p. 75. ISBN 978-3-03910-874-9. OCLC 140103062. OL 12660552M.
• Miller, Gerald Alva Jr. (2012). Exploring the Limits of the Human Through Science Fiction. Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 87–88. doi:10.1057/9781137330796. ISBN 978-1-137-26285-1. LCCN 2012024025. OCLC 795759266. OL 25361856M.
• Tsuribe, Manabu (February 1999). "Prison of Self-Consciousness: an Essay on Evangelion". www001.upp.so-net.ne.jp. Archived from the original on July 21, 2017. Retrieved August 23, 2017.
• Struckmann, Chris (2018). "Neon Genesis Evangelion". Anime Impact: The Movies and Shows that Changed the World of Japanese Animation. Mango Media. ISBN 978-1-63353-733-0. LCCN 2018937911. OCLC 1031852224. OL 33630230M.

Z. Patterson (talk) 15:22, 30 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Satomi is published by Peter Lang, which is an academic publisher with a peer review process that looks reasonably rigorous (1). Miller is published by Palgrave Macmillan, a subsidiary of Springer Nature, an academic publishing company with several high-impact journals, so it seems to be a high-quality source as well. The Struckmann source seems appropriate for its use in the article, which is to discuss general reception. Crestfalling (talk/contribs) 01:17, 31 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@Crestfalling: Thank you. Now I am wondering about the other sources on the list. I thought some of the sources TeenAngels1234 was asking me about looked suitable for an FA-quality article. Z. Patterson (talk) 18:27, 31 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. I personally think Bartoli is suitable for a FA-quality since he writes for Antrocom, which is a respectable academic journal; Bartoli himself is mentioned by other academics analyzing NGE, like De Lucas and Hernández-Pérez. Ghilardi in his Filosofia nei manga worked with Marco Pellittieri, who is also published by Palgrave Macmillian. Morikawa is mentioned by Thomas Lamarre in his The Anime Machine, while Tsuribe is mentioned in Mechademia (Evangelion as Second Impact essay in volume 9), another RS according to WP:A&M/ORS. I don't think there's a particular problem with these ones.

Just two sources remain: Fujie and Cordella, waiting for an approval.

I think Fujie is the most complex case. I personally think his Unofficial Encyclopedia is not exactly the best: many informations are vague or simply wrong - while not a source for Wikipedia, you can find a review on EvaMonkey website in which he explains all the mistakes in the book and the reason why it's kinda disappointing. Judge by yourself: he confuses episodes, terminology (like Terminal Dogma or Central Dogma), Eva unit numbers etc. But Fujie is used as a source by The Otaku Encyclopedia writer Patrick W. Galbraith, who worked with Lamarre on Mechademia (volume 5, in which he also wrote the Akihabara: Conditioning a Public "Otaku" Image essay), among other things. Fujie is also mentioned by The Artifice article on Rei: The Artifice itself is a via media between a blog and an academic essay, and it's peer-reviewed. So, I used Fujie as situational in other GA-class article on NGE. TeenAngels1234 (talk) 19:18, 31 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

(pinging @Z. Patterson as well). Looking at the above analysis, I'm inclined to agree that all except Fujie and Cordella appear straightforwardly reliable. In regards to Cordella, its publisher, Delos Digital, seems to be a reputable publishing house. It's not an academic publisher, but the manuscripts go through a review process and they do reject ones that fall below standards (1). It's only used for one claim in the article, so it's probably fine regardless. For Fujie, I agree that some of the inaccuracies are a bit worrying. I wonder if perhaps some of the citations to it can be replaced?

• The quote from Anno could cite the original interview or article it was from.
• The mention of her name's origin can be cited to another source.
• For the sales of Rei's action figures, there are probably some other sources describing their popularity, if they were that widespread.
• The mention of a plot detail can be cited to another source.

So, at the very least, 3 out of 4 statements can be cited elsewhere, and the 4th one isn't related to the series itself, but rather its real-world context, so it's more defendable. I hope this helps; please feel free to ping me when the article gets taken to FAC and I'll be happy to review it. Crestfalling (talk/contribs) 21:13, 31 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Yup, I think we can easily remove or replace them. But I would keep the human figures sales (note 236, p. 98) and the Premium Girl (note 80, p. 39) notes just because they are the statements quoted by The Artifice and Galbraith, since Fujie is still the first source. I think a double notation, like Fujie-Artifice and Fujie-Galbraith, can be enough for a FAN. My only concern is the Anno quote. I can't find the original interview, or where and by who exactly Rei was called the Premium Girl the first time. To be fair, after almost 15 years studying Evangelion and as a long-time Wikipedia editor of NGE articles, Fujie seems actually and surprisingly reliable on Anno's interviews and NGE Japanese reception at least: he mentions, for example, a quote of Anno saying there is no originality in his generation, which I personally found years later in Schizo Parano Evangelion books after many years into NGE sources lore. I also found other Fujie statements, like his NGE franchise sales report (p. 142), in Japanese reliable sources like Nikkei Entertainment. I guess since he's Japanese he can easily find these sources. The problem is that he doesn't say where his quotes come from, ugh. It's so frustrating. I also guess he read Premium Girl - or the Japanese equivalent - in a magazine or something like that and Foster translated it, but I can't figure out where. TeenAngels1234 (talk) 00:04, 1 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, if they've been quoted in other sources, I think it's reasonable to accept those statements as reliable. For the interview quote, it seems that other-language Wikipedias also include the same cite to Fujie, so I doubt it's going to be found anywhere else; a direct quote seems particularly unlikely to be subject to inaccuracy, unlike a plot detail, so it's probably fine. Crestfalling (talk/contribs) 00:31, 1 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@Crestfalling and TeenAngels1234: Thank you most sincerely. Z. Patterson (talk) 01:03, 1 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]