Wikipedia talk:Reliable sources
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This is curious...
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The League of Women Voters recommends using this chart to determine bias in various media sources. Below, I have matched the most left-leaning and right-leaning sources listed, alongside their status as a reliable source on Wikipedia. STATUS:
When there are 20 shades of blue paint available, and just 5 shades of green...everything starts to look kind of...blue. --Magnolia677 (talk) 17:46, 23 December 2024 (UTC)
Additional information[edit]To demonstrate how selection bias affects the presentation of a situation, here is another selection of entries from the perennial sources list that tells a completely different story than the first table:
See also Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2020-11-29/Op-Ed. — Newslinger talk 05:31, 28 December 2024 (UTC)
The New York Post wrote a scathing editorial today which seems to mimic some of the points I tried to make in this post. Magnolia677 (talk) 23:15, 5 February 2025 (UTC)
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Machine learning
[edit]Under § Sources produced by machine learning, I removed the statement ML generation in itself does not necessarily disqualify a source that is properly checked by the person using it
(diff). What does "properly checked" mean? Does "the person using it" refer to the person submitting prompts to a chatbot or the Wikipedia editor using it as a source? Since it appears that most GenAI systems are trained using text scraped from the internet (including Wikipedia), I don't see any reason to treat large language models any differently to other § User-generated content. In other words, LLMs and other chatbots should be presumptively disqualified as sources until specifically verified by a human author with relevant expertise. —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 02:33, 12 January 2025 (UTC)
- I assume "properly checked" referred to published sources that are checked by a human author, but I do not think the sentence you removed is necessary or helpful to include in the guideline, and I support the removal. I would also support bolstering the language of this section to explicitly state that sources composed of LLM-generated content are generally unreliable/unacceptable. I do not see a problem with authors using LLMs to assist with research, but any source that directly publishes LLM-generated content does not meet the "reputation for fact-checking and accuracy" required by this guideline. — Newslinger talk 02:59, 12 January 2025 (UTC)
- OK, I added
LLM-generated content from tools such as ChatGPT and other chatbots is not generally reliable
etc. (diff). —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 04:41, 12 January 2025 (UTC)- It's not reliable at all! At best, and this is as permissive as people have proposed under the current tech, it is equivalent to our writing, that is, WP:OR. CMD (talk) 04:50, 12 January 2025 (UTC)
- I believe the idea here was something like:
- Rae Reporter interviews a dozen people plus gets hundreds of pages of information from a government agency. The interview transcripts and all the information gets dumped into a magical AI tool, with instructions to summarize it all in the style of a 600-word-long newspaper article. After several iterations, the journalist then decides that it sounds basically okay, re-writes part of it, and individually hand-checks each and every name, claim, and quote in the original documents, because journalists don't actually like misquoting people. This gets handed off to the editor for normal processing.
- and in particular, I think we want to avoid:
- A whistleblower leaks a massive amount of information to a journalist, who uses AI to summarize what's in the document trove. The journalist hand-writes a news article about the information in the documents, and it is published in a reputable newspaper. A POV pusher claims that the news article is unreliable because the journalist used AI as one tool among many.
- What we don't want is:
- Wikipedia editors to say "Dear LLM, here is a long list of people who sound like notable BLPs, so please write Wikipedia articles about each of them. They all need to have about 1,000 words and two inline citations to reliable sources per paragraph. The second sentence should say what they are best known for. Thank you."
- WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:33, 12 January 2025 (UTC)
- The first "Rae Reporter" example case sounds controversial. In their current state, I do not believe LLMs are able to process that volume of information into a 600-word article without significant inaccuracies or omissions that would compromise the quality of the output text. Additionally, LLMs are not yet sufficiently advanced to perform fact-checking on the original documents, which would result in incorrect and misleading claims being presented in the published article without appropriate context.
- As the section text currently states, "It may not be known or detectable that ML was used to produce a given piece of text", so LLM-generated content that undergoes extensive rewriting and an adequate editorial process should theoretically be indistinguishable from human-written content that passes the same editorial process – a situation that might be comparable to the Ship of Theseus paradox. However, in practice, published articles that directly incorporate LLM-generated content tend to be less accurate to the point of being considered questionable, regardless of what the website claims to do editorially, because the direct use of LLM-generated content is a cost-cutting measure. This aligns with the consensus view expressed in the 2024 Red Ventures RfC and a 2023 discussion on G/O Media websites.
- An example of LLM usage in published media that would be appropriate for citation on Wikipedia is the Pew Research Center's 2024 report "America’s News Influencers", which discloses in its methodology that GPT-4 was used for data processing during the research and analysis process, although the finished report was written by named humans. This type of report is similar to your second "whistleblower" example case. — Newslinger talk 07:12, 12 January 2025 (UTC)
- I assumed the part I removed was referring to fully AI-generated content farms as potentially reliable sources in themselves, rather than LLMs as just another tool used by human authors of published, independent sources. I think it would be fine to add a caveat for things like the Pew report, making it clear that sources using LLMs for research need to separately have a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy. —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 09:35, 12 January 2025 (UTC)
- An explicit caveat in the guideline would help clarify this, but I am not sure if it is necessary. Authors regularly use unreliable sources that are not LLM-generated as sources of data, and the author's writing can still be considered reliable as long as the author uses the data in an appropriate way that satisfies the "fact-checking and accuracy" requirement. The same would apply to authors using unreliable LLM-generated material as sources of data. — Newslinger talk 09:11, 13 January 2025 (UTC)
- I assumed the part I removed was referring to fully AI-generated content farms as potentially reliable sources in themselves, rather than LLMs as just another tool used by human authors of published, independent sources. I think it would be fine to add a caveat for things like the Pew report, making it clear that sources using LLMs for research need to separately have a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy. —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 09:35, 12 January 2025 (UTC)
- OK, I added
Proposal: Let we the audience vote for what we consider left-leaning and right-leaning sources
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The discussion about Wikipedia's left-leaning bias 1 never goes anywhere in this page because there is a self-referencing loop involving Wikipedia Consensus -> aleggedly far-left, or very left-of-center and not-that-reliable sources -> someone brings up the perception of a left-wing bias -> Wikipedia editors point to a supposed "reliability" of a source without actually providing evidence for such reliability, except perhaps for academic articles on humanities, that don't prove objective facts either. What if both academic sources and media sources validate each other's "reliability" while not actually being reliable in the perception of the society? That's why democracy and suffrage exist. Are you guys scientifically minded? Rationally minded? Are you against absolutism? Allow me to present a point. Is it possible to reach an absolute truth about a government or a candidate? Can an administration or a candidacy be objectively qualified as "100% positive" or "100% negative"? Or course not. In any democratic system, an administration may reach an approval rate of, say, 70-90%, but there will be always people that perceive that administration as negative. The outcome of an election legitimates a consensus, not an objective truth. The same holds true for thoughts, for philosophy, and for subjective classification of things based in consensual taxonomy frameworks. So we come down to left-right and reliable-unreliable classification: Where did the reliable sources consensus come from? As far as I know, the bulk of it came arbitrarily from MrX's point of view in 07/28/2018. Who is he/she/they? Is this legitimate? Does the consensus of Wikipedia reflect the consensus of the general public? Who said so? Let's suppose a consensus exists among the general audience, that there is a leftist bias in Wikipedia. Not only we are failing to properly address this, by not measuring or acknowledging it, but also Wikipedia would be contributing negatively for a biased media environment. Let's suppose, for contrast, that there isn't a consensus among the general public that the leftist bias of Wikipedia is real. In this scenario Wikipedia would be luckier, but still negligent because it lacks a legitimate evidence for the perceived reliability and bias of its sources. What legitimates a president? There is a reason why he/she can't be elected by a special chaste of "specialists". The only legitimate means to claim power is through direct vote. Similarly, I propose that the only legitimate means to claim that a certain source is "reliable" and "has a certain political bias" is through vote. I noted that Fox News isn't considered reliable specifically for transgender topics. What if the consensus among the general public is that several sources aren't reliable specifically for politically-charged topics? And... If the perceived consensus of left-right in the US is different from the rest of the world, we can address politics of each country separately. To be honest, I don't actually agree that the left-right division in the US is that much different from the rest of the world. What I see are left-friendly editors using very questionable and fragile statements ("the Democratic Party would be center-right in Europe"/"it doesn't matter if practically every self-identified leftist votes blue"/"source X follows the broader capitalist economic agenda, therefore it can't be called leftist") to pass far-left and verifiably flawed sources as flawless and reliable. And, by verifiably, I mean that it's verifiable through factual confrontation with other sources, suffrage, and intense civil scrutiny of what common citizens perceive, verify, think and say. Does anyone here value common citizens? There is a thing named afer this, it's "Communism" you know. Some people confuse it with free healthcare, but the historical consensus is that we were never capable of implementing it. I know I may sound harsh and pretentious, but the political bias debacle is really annoying and tiresome. In my perception, Wikipedia's credibility for politically-charged topics has deteriorated since its foundation. To wrap things up, in my point of view the current sources guidelines are a false consensus. They weren't built bottom-up from a consensus to begin with. They are illegitimate in the present moment, and have to be replaced by a proper consensus built from scratch. I propose that you all Wikipedia editors gather valid evidence - in the form of popular votes from the general audience - so you can legitimately claim that some source is "reliable" or "non-reliable", and "right-leaning" or "left-leaning" as well. Otherwise, the existing "reliable sources" and "center-right/center/left" labels are nothing but arbitrary and personal. And Wikipedia, once envisioned as a tool by the community, for the community, is just another voice of arbitrary "truths" as told by media oligarchs. JC Beltrano (talk) 07:49, 21 January 2025 (UTC)
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journals supplements -clarification needed
[edit]Subject: scientific conferences, a.k.a. symposia
TL;DR; they are unreliable primary sources, even when "peer-reviewed"
The current version says:
"Symposia and supplements to academic journals are often (but far from always¹) unacceptable sources. They are commonly sponsored by industry groups with a financial interest in the outcome of the research reported. They may lack independent editorial oversight and peer review, with no supervision of content by the parent journal. Such articles do not share the reliability of their parent journal, being essentially paid ads disguised as academic articles. Such supplements, and those that² do not clearly declare their editorial policy and conflicts of interest, should not be cited."
1: This "far from always" lost me. I need clarifications. Are supplements that clearly declare their editorial policy and COI acceptable? It think they often are not:
a)They are still primary sources, so not ideal.
b) They often include early stage results (not reliable; please see the paragraph about symposia on the Medicine page Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources (medicine)).
c) And if they don't include early stage results, we should then cite the original paper rather than the conference. Note: conferences are NOT an acceptable type of secondary sources, because they don't follow any scientific protocol; unlike secondary studies (a.k.a. reviews).
Anyway, I understand that some flexibility is needed. So how about simply deleting that "(but far from always)" parenthesis?
2: "and those that": it doesn't make grammatical sense. If we are to keep the ambiguity on whether such supplements are valid sources, let's insert "and especially those that". Okay? Galeop (talk) 04:04, 1 February 2025 (UTC)
- Supplements that are paid ads are a COI problem. Conference papers typically are not; they may lack peer review, but in many cases the authors would qualify as subject-matter experts. I think it would be helpful to more clearly differentiate between these cases, and more clearly point to SPS for the evaluation of the latter (and potentially introduce the MEDRS issue). Nikkimaria (talk) 06:07, 1 February 2025 (UTC)
- It depends on the field. Conference papers in computer science are good; conference papers in pharmaceutical drug development are not so good. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:59, 3 February 2025 (UTC)
- Just because of the COI issue (case 1), or are you thinking of another case-2 problem specific to that field? Nikkimaria (talk) 04:53, 3 February 2025 (UTC)
- No, it's not just COIs. Conference papers don't get peer reviewed, so it's easier to overstate your results, use the wrong statistical test, or whatever other problems might get flagged and corrected in the peer review process.
- See also Wikipedia talk:Reliable sources/Archive 72#Conference proceedings from two months ago. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:57, 3 February 2025 (UTC)
- Just because of the COI issue (case 1), or are you thinking of another case-2 problem specific to that field? Nikkimaria (talk) 04:53, 3 February 2025 (UTC)
- Ah, okay. I'd think "could have problems that would be caught by peer review" would be the case for any field, which is why it makes sense to treat these as SPS. Nikkimaria (talk) 05:17, 3 February 2025 (UTC)
- I certainly can't speak to all research areas but every conference I presented at was peer reviewed. However, the review process typically wasn't as stringent as a conference paper review. At the same time we discouraged citing a conference paper if the same authors had a more in-depth journal article on the same subject. In my field a conference paper was typically a smaller chunk of research. For example, a conference paper might present the results of a new test method or control algorithm. The combination of that new method with others to show a new capability might result in a journal article. Often if you found a journal article it would contain work that was previously presented at a conference. This is why, in my area, it was fine to cite a conference paper but it typically had less depth, or substance vs the journal paper. Springee (talk) 05:32, 3 February 2025 (UTC)
- https://ncu.libanswers.com/faq/364411 says that IEEE requires all conference papers to undergo peer review before publication, but that appears to be an outlier. It may be more/less frequent in some fields, and of course individual publishers will set their own standards. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:37, 3 February 2025 (UTC)
Independent or alternative media
[edit]In Wikipedia, for a long time we have considered legacy media (and their corporate offshoots) as usually "reliable", whereas we've considered independent journalists as self-published. With the massive shifts in the media landscape in recent years, as well as the politicizing of particular media outlets causing experienced journalists to "go independent", has this changed for us Wikipedia editors when evaluating whether a source is a reliable source or not? If so, have we updated any of our policies or guidelines to reflect changes? ▶ I am Grorp ◀ 23:20, 2 February 2025 (UTC)
- Has this changed? No. Will this change? Probably. Eventually.
- Have we updated any policies or guidelines? Not yet. AFAIK we don't even have any essays explaining it. We could use a good pair of Wikipedia:You don't need to cite that the sky is blue vs Wikipedia:You do need to cite that the sky is blue to describe the challenges (e.g., figuring out which ones are good) and opportunities (e.g., greater voice for the previously voiceless). WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:01, 3 February 2025 (UTC)
- Although I've become increasingly critical of traditional media I don'tthink that means we should shift to substack. While I have accepted that, at least for now, Wikipedia is stuck using news media in some circumstances I think the better response to the hollowing out of legacy news media is to pivot toward greater emphasis on academic journals and monographs rather than independent journos. WP:EXPERTSPS is a good policy for dealing with those who have relevant expertise and works correctly. Simonm223 (talk) 03:11, 3 February 2025 (UTC)
- When it comes to commentary and analysis I suspect that the independent media may already be better than the legacy media if you can sift through the trash to find the good ones. The problem is how to do that and how do we decide which independents are the good ones. As an example, I suspect when it comes to analysis of an aviation incident, some of the YouTube channels run by current/former pilots provide much better analysis vs traditional media. However, how can we agree (and test) which of these alternative commentators really are the good ones? If they were publishing in academic journals we could use those articles but these topics often aren't of academic interest. I do think "alternative sources" is a struggle point for Wikipedia as the internet continues to allow independent voices to be heard (kind of like how Wikipedia allowed an alternative to mainstream encyclopedias). However, absent some clear way to filter the good from the bad I don't know how one would decide which sources are the good ones. Springee (talk) 04:19, 3 February 2025 (UTC)
- Comment: Yeah, academic and monographs don't cover "events" in the same way that "news" does (both legacy and independent), so we cannot rely on academics to fill in the gap from the loss of news coverage by legacy media. ▶ I am Grorp ◀ 04:46, 3 February 2025 (UTC)
- In practice, confirmation bias rules, and that means that people decide which sources are the good ones by determining which sources reinforce their (i.e., the humans') prior/existing beliefs. If you believe the world is round, you will reject a source that says it is flat – and vice versa. If most editors disagree with you, then they will accuse you of "POV pushing" even if you are correct, because "POV pushing" is a label we give to people who want Wikipedia to represent more of the view they believe in and less of the view(s) that other editors believe in.
- Research shows that people find sources credible when they match other sources, and discard outliers as incorrect. See also the famous Oil drop experiment#Millikan's experiment as an example of psychological effects in scientific methodology, in which the correct answer was repeatedly rejected because it didn't match the other sources. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:47, 3 February 2025 (UTC)
- My questions on this subject aren't because of conflicts or edit wars, but are more about selecting an independent media source that covers something that isn't being covered by legacy (because, you know, doesn't get them clicks anymore, or they're walking on eggshells or have limited resources and your esoteric topic just isn't in their "mainstream" coverage anymore). ▶ I am Grorp ◀ 04:50, 3 February 2025 (UTC)
- If:
- it's uncontroversial content on an uncontroversial subject,
- it's a fairly niche subject (e.g., construction techniques for train stations in Victorian England), and
- it is used as a way of adding (e.g.,) colorful details to the article – not something you're trying to base the whole article upon or prove notability with,
- then I'd try to find something that passes WP:EXPERTSPS and not worry too much beyond that. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:02, 3 February 2025 (UTC)
- If:
- My questions on this subject aren't because of conflicts or edit wars, but are more about selecting an independent media source that covers something that isn't being covered by legacy (because, you know, doesn't get them clicks anymore, or they're walking on eggshells or have limited resources and your esoteric topic just isn't in their "mainstream" coverage anymore). ▶ I am Grorp ◀ 04:50, 3 February 2025 (UTC)
Updating RSSELF
[edit]We are talking about changing the wording in WP:SPS to be clearer (specifically, to remove the idea "third-party source" language). The current draft is in this comment at WT:V. Please join us if you're interested.
Please also see Wikipedia talk:Verifiability/SPS RfC for the larger conversation. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:00, 3 February 2025 (UTC)
Potential RS overhaul incoming
[edit]- The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
- WP:1AM - nothing more to discuss here
I know we're still in the very early stages of whatever DOGE is doing, but it's starting to look like mainstream media outlets, in the US and around the world, were being funded by USAID specifically to defend and push the interests of one American political party over another.
This is just to put this on everyone's radar. If information continues to emerge that proves this was happening, the only right thing to do as an encyclopedia using these media outlets as sources is to seriously reevaluate their reliability. I trust that we can approach this from an academic perspective and put any personal political feelings aside. Big Thumpus (talk) 15:58, 5 February 2025 (UTC)
- Reports from other government agencies should also be considered carefully given the replacement of many career positions with more political appointments. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 16:28, 5 February 2025 (UTC)
- Would it help if we made a list of all the times editors have posted worries about this since Trump's re-election?
- I think there's been a distinct upturn in both worries that US federal websites (e.g., cdc.gov) will post garbage and in complaints that "conservative news sources" (e.g., Fox News) are discouraged at WP:RSP. The people posting the worries don't seem to have been aware of any of the prior conversations. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:35, 5 February 2025 (UTC)
- Putting on my four-cornered academic hat, with tassle, I think it'd be the height of foolishness to take any statement emerging from the department of childish acronyms at face value.
- In all seriousness, you will find few people on Wikipedia who like the use of news media sources less than I do. However just a brief perusal of the news has shown that the leaders of the so-called Department of Governmental Efficiency have taken in for political grandstanding over anything resembling rigor with their chaotic preliminary efforts. I would hesitate to make any Wikipedia policy decision on the basis of things they said. Simonm223 (talk) 18:40, 5 February 2025 (UTC)
- Reports from government agencies are usually considered WP:PRIMARY sources for the opinions of the government in any case, so we haven't really been using them for controversial stuff to begin with - but it does seem like Trump and Musk's aggressive push to politicize the civil service could reduce the reliability of some government data sources that we previously considered independent and reliable, at least while Trump is in office. What I'd be more concerned about, though, is their push to censor government-funded academic research, which seems to take the form of an overt list of no-no words. Depending on how the impacts of that push shake out, we might have to be cautious about US government-funded academic research that comes out while Trump is in office - especially about drawing inferences from the lack of the listed words, since they're being overtly censored. --Aquillion (talk) 18:56, 5 February 2025 (UTC)
- Perhaps we'll even learn that we need to Wikipedia:Use our own words when we're writing articles. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:05, 5 February 2025 (UTC)
- Just because a newspaper takes money from a specific source does not mean it is biased in favor of that source. anikom15 (talk) 20:19, 5 February 2025 (UTC)
- I think the concern here is more like "If the owner of the newspaper is publicly giving large sums of money to a politician/political campaign, should we be suspicious of the owner's newspaper be biased about that politician/political campaign?"
- The answer is probably yes, but the thing for editors to remember is that this is not a new problem. This problem existed a century before Wikipedia was created, and we've been dealing with it all along. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:07, 5 February 2025 (UTC)
- The answer is no. It’s not our job to research the integrity of sources. If a reliable source is deemed reliable by consensus, it is reliable, regardless of where their money comes from or who they are politically affiliated with.
- Consider NPR. It is an entirely liberal organization. They only hire liberals. They only write positively about liberals. They are reliable not because they are political neutral but because they are a reliable source of information. Reality isn’t neutral on the continuum of American politics. anikom15 (talk) 23:22, 5 February 2025 (UTC)
- How can consensus about the reliability of a source be determined without researching the integrity of the source? Big Thumpus (talk) 23:40, 5 February 2025 (UTC)
- Do you think that we aren't scrutinizing sources? – Muboshgu (talk) 00:02, 6 February 2025 (UTC)
- Anikom, I doubt you even believe what you've written. Of course we have to figure out whether a source is outright lying. We need to figure out if they're biased (e.g., Russian vs Ukrainian news are going to have different viewpoints on their military conflict), and we need to understand how those biases might affect the sources ("According to a newspaper from that country..."). But that's a separate consideration from Integrity. The opposite of integrity is dishonesty or hypocrisy, not bias.
- When Randolph Hearst told his newspapers to push for Cuba to revolt against their Spanish colonizers, that's a "bias" issue. When Fox News's staff said privately that they knew that Joe Biden won the 2020 election but told their viewers on air that Trump won, that's an "integrity" problem. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:19, 6 February 2025 (UTC)
- I think that what they mean is essentially WP:NOTTRUTH. It's not our job to research whether sources are accurate ourselves (ie. not in the sense of personally verifying what they say, or judging sources based on whether we personally think that their reporting is right or wrong); it's our job to determine what other high-quality sources say about their accuracy. WP:RS is about a source having a
reputation for fact-checking and accuracy
, not about whether an editor personally believes they are accurate. This is necessary because otherwise an editor could eg. say "I think X is false, so we can't say it in the article voice"; and, when presented with ten high-quality sources saying X is true, they could dismiss them by saying "well, X is false, so those sources are all wrong and therefore unreliable." We ultimately have to judge things (including the reliability of sources) based on secondary coverage. --Aquillion (talk) 04:43, 6 February 2025 (UTC)- I'm trying to understand what you're saying here -
it's our job to determine what other high-quality sources say about their accuracy.
So if CNN says Axios is accurate that's good enough for Wikipedia? Just as an example. Big Thumpus (talk) 13:11, 6 February 2025 (UTC)
- I'm trying to understand what you're saying here -
- I think that what they mean is essentially WP:NOTTRUTH. It's not our job to research whether sources are accurate ourselves (ie. not in the sense of personally verifying what they say, or judging sources based on whether we personally think that their reporting is right or wrong); it's our job to determine what other high-quality sources say about their accuracy. WP:RS is about a source having a
- How can consensus about the reliability of a source be determined without researching the integrity of the source? Big Thumpus (talk) 23:40, 5 February 2025 (UTC)
- If Team MAGA thinks the Wikipedia is going to adapt reliable source determination based on "evidence" (if I could make those quotes 84-point font, I would) presented by an unelected, unappointed technocrat, they are sorely, sorely, sorely mistaken. Zaathras (talk) 22:03, 5 February 2025 (UTC)
- Are you calling me "Team MAGA"? Big Thumpus (talk) 22:11, 5 February 2025 (UTC)
- I am addressing potential new users who may have the mistaken notion that the declarations of a government employee (of a sort) empowers them with a mandate to affect change here. Zaathras (talk) 01:56, 6 February 2025 (UTC)
- Are you calling me "Team MAGA"? Big Thumpus (talk) 22:11, 5 February 2025 (UTC)
- I see, today right-wing twitter is all atwitter about the idea that USAID funded Politico. This is nonsense. I recommend the OP take better care when following right-wing accounts that engage in conspiracy theories. – Muboshgu (talk) 23:14, 5 February 2025 (UTC)
- Yeah, I agree. $8 million is a drop in the bucket compared to the billions of dollars spent elsewhere. And Politico is an organization that writes high-quality articles based on facts. anikom15 (talk) 23:25, 5 February 2025 (UTC)
- I think part of what it comes down to is that Elon Musk does not have a history of being a reliable source of information. Remember that time he falsely accused a diver in Thailand of being a nonce on Twitter? Or the many other times that Musk has shared conspiracy theories, disinformation and just plain silly comments. So, even if Elon Musk makes claims about news outlets that have criticized him having a financial relationship with a US agency that was investigating his contracts in Ukraine, I don't see any good reason why Wikipedia should treat said claims as being at all reliable. Simonm223 (talk) 13:24, 6 February 2025 (UTC)
- Are we just going to act like DOGE is not a legitimate US Government organization? This information is not coming from "Elon Musk", it's coming from DOGE which he happens to be in charge of. Yes, I understand that a government organization is a primary source, but when the entire conversation is centered on whether or not mainstream media outlets received sweetheart funding from a presidential administration that was politically opposed to the current one, should we not cautiously consider the mainstream media response to it?
- The obvious Catch 22 here is that, of course, none of these mainstream outlets are going to report on a potential scandal that involves them, at least not in a way that aligns with what DOGE is reporting, so the encyclopedia will have "no reliable sources" to rely on.
- I get that lots of people don't like Elon Musk, for myriad reasons, but letting our personal feelings about these people and organizations affect the accuracy of the encyclopedia is plainly inappropriate. Big Thumpus (talk) 13:36, 6 February 2025 (UTC)
- I don't care whether the department of silly acronyms is a US government organization. That being said, I can tell you it is not a budgeted part of the US government but that's largely irrelevant. I'm saying its spokesperson is unreliable and we should not be making policy decisions based on the misinformation that he tends to spout. Simonm223 (talk) 13:41, 6 February 2025 (UTC)
- DOGE is not a federal department/U.S. government organization. It's a misleadingly named private "initiative" funded by Musk. Space4TCatHerder🖖 14:06, 6 February 2025 (UTC)
- A renamed federal organization formed by presidential executive order is "not a US government organization"??? [3]https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IN/IN12493 Big Thumpus (talk) 14:16, 6 February 2025 (UTC)
- Big Thumpus: The answer to your initial proposal is no. There will not be a major overhaul of what we consider a reliable source on the basis of what the agency of stale memes says. I think nothing more needs to be said at this time. Simonm223 (talk) 14:19, 6 February 2025 (UTC)
- I'm genuinely discouraged by the response to this. Our personal political beliefs should not get in the way of ensuring the integrity of the encyclopedia. Big Thumpus (talk) 14:22, 6 February 2025 (UTC)
- Big Thumpus: The answer to your initial proposal is no. There will not be a major overhaul of what we consider a reliable source on the basis of what the agency of stale memes says. I think nothing more needs to be said at this time. Simonm223 (talk) 14:19, 6 February 2025 (UTC)
- A renamed federal organization formed by presidential executive order is "not a US government organization"??? [3]https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IN/IN12493 Big Thumpus (talk) 14:16, 6 February 2025 (UTC)
- Leavitt was producing "alternative facts". According to the Washington Post, USAID paid a total of $44,000 for Politico Pro subscriptions during fiscal years 2023 and 2024 (also lower amounts to other news outlets because their subscriptions are cheaper than Pro). In 2023, Republicans paid a whole lot more for their Politico Pro subscriptions: Speaker of the House $9,060, House Committee on Agriculture $84,000, House Committed on Energy $58,000. And in the first nine months of 2024, "38 Republicans in the House spent over $300,000 on Politico subscriptions ... and committees led by Republicans expensed almost $500,000 of Politico subscriptions". Space4TCatHerder🖖 13:29, 6 February 2025 (UTC)
- I think part of what it comes down to is that Elon Musk does not have a history of being a reliable source of information. Remember that time he falsely accused a diver in Thailand of being a nonce on Twitter? Or the many other times that Musk has shared conspiracy theories, disinformation and just plain silly comments. So, even if Elon Musk makes claims about news outlets that have criticized him having a financial relationship with a US agency that was investigating his contracts in Ukraine, I don't see any good reason why Wikipedia should treat said claims as being at all reliable. Simonm223 (talk) 13:24, 6 February 2025 (UTC)
- Yeah, I agree. $8 million is a drop in the bucket compared to the billions of dollars spent elsewhere. And Politico is an organization that writes high-quality articles based on facts. anikom15 (talk) 23:25, 5 February 2025 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
New FAQ suggestion
[edit]Can we add to the FAQ
Q: "Does this (whichever) election change source reliability guidelines?" A: "No." Simonm223 (talk) 19:09, 5 February 2025 (UTC)
Preprints bullet, take 2
[edit]I'd previously suggested modifying the text of the Preprints bullet, but the discussion didn't get much participation, so I'm checking again. That bullet currently says in part:
Preprints, such as those available on repositories like arXiv, medRxiv, bioRxiv, or Zenodo are not reliable sources. Research that has not been peer-reviewed is akin to a blog, as anybody can post it online. Their use is generally discouraged, unless they meet the criteria for acceptable use of self-published sources, and will always fail higher sourcing requirements like WP:MEDRS.
I propose replacing that with:
Preprints, such as those available on repositories like arXiv, medRxiv, bioRxiv, or Zenodo, have not undergone peer-review and therefore are not reliable sources of scholarship. They are self-published sources, as anyone can post a preprint online. Their use is generally discouraged, and they will always fail higher sourcing requirements like WP:MEDRS.
Reasons for changing it: "Research that has not been peer-reviewed is akin to a blog" simply isn't accurate. Not only do blogs seldom cite existing literature, but chapters in edited academic volumes may not be peer-reviewed per se, yet edited volumes are nonetheless often RSs (e.g., with edited volumes, chapters may be reviewed by the volume's editor(s) instead of sending them to outside reviewers and the editor making a decision on the basis of those outside reviews). The purpose for comparing them to blogs was to note that they're self-published, and it's better just to say that. I also removed the phrase about the criteria for acceptable use of self-published sources, as preprints generally come from "expert" sources, which is an exception for using SPS, and it's contradictory to say that they "are not reliable sources" in the first sentence and then say "unless they meet the criteria for acceptable use of self-published sources" in the third sentence. Notwithstanding that preprints generally come from expert sources, their use is discouraged because we don't want readers to confuse them with peer-reviewed research, they're primary sources for the novel claims (whereas my guess is that other expert SPS are less likely to be primary sources), and editors should use reliable non-self-published sources when available, which often exist in the peer-reviewed literature. Does anyone object to the change or have improvements to suggest? FactOrOpinion (talk) 17:40, 9 February 2025 (UTC)
- Just to note the expection for self-published sources is not that the author is an expert but is that the author has also been previously published by other reliable sources. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 18:43, 9 February 2025 (UTC)
- So the
Their use is generally discouraged...
part is saying they are discouraged unless they authors expertise has been independently recognised by others sources. Maybe if your version just wikilinked the policy"They are self-published..."
-- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 18:44, 9 February 2025 (UTC)- Academic preprints are frequently published by people whose "expertise has been independently recognised by others sources" (e.g., via other academics citing their publications). The WP:RS advice on peer-reviewed articles is that they're "primary sources, extreme caution is advised." Preprints are less reliable, since they haven't been peer-reviewed. And yes, appropriate wikilinks would be included, as they are currently; sorry for not having copied the wikilinks into my quotes. FactOrOpinion (talk) 19:31, 9 February 2025 (UTC)
- So the