Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 255

Survey (Daily Mail)

*No. -Roxy, the dog. wooF 13:33, 4 December 2018 (UTC) Note : !Vote removed due to abuse of process, and subsequent mangling of thread. -Roxy, the dog. wooF 11:35, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

• Rude. Voting doesn't open until 11 December. You may request an absentee ballot if needed. Please provide documentation of personal hardship and at least seven forms of photo ID. GMG^talk 14:18, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

Will a note from my chemotherapy doc suffice? -Roxy, the dog. wooF 14:43, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

Only if submitted in quintuplicate. (Also best of luck on recovery assuming that's not a joke.) GMG^talk 15:01, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

The survey is due to open on 11 December. Edit: request to delay voting withdrawn by proposer. FeydHuxtable (talk) 13:44, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Can a proposer actually restrict voting in this way? I have never seen an attempt to do so here before, and find it odd, which is why I already voted. The chemo is real, and I'm going to be fine. -Roxy, the dog. wooF 16:04, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

The proposer has close to zero power to enforce anything, but editors generally abide by reasonable requests like "Please keep threaded discussion in the threaded discussion section and !votes in the !vote section" or "Voting is not due to open until Tuesday 11 Dec. This is to allow plenty of time for both sides to develop arguments". Then again, while dogs definitely have a strong sense of etiquette, their rules are not the same as our rules... :) --Guy Macon (talk) 17:07, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

True - but we also ignore unreasonable requests, like demanding an RfC sit for a week before anyone ventures an opinion either way. RfCs open when posted. Guy (Help!) 18:06, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

• Hell no. The Mail is still the archetype of lazy and biased journalism in supposedly serious media. Also we don't do "voting", Wikipedia is not a democracy. They have had a new editor for, what, two months? OK, no editor could be as bad as Dacre but it is way too soon to say if there is any improvement and I will stick my neck out and say we will know it has improved meaningfully on the day the "sidebar of shame" disappears from the Mail online. And not before. Guy (Help!) 18:04, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

I note that some people are treating this as a relitigation of the original RfC. It's not. The assertion is that the Mail has changed and that the guidance should therefore change. The original consensus that the Mail is unreliable stands, the opinions of a minority notwithstanding, this is about whether there has been meaningful change, and actually we should be reflecting the opinions of third party sources. I have not noticed any independent commentators saying that the Mail has become more reliable, the Mail's website is still packed with clickbait, soft porn papparazzi pics and press releases masquerading as stories,but the print edition may indeed be changing, early signs are that it is beginning to take a reality-based line on Brexit, for example. In time I think we could use the print edition again, though not web-only stories, ever. Guy (Help!) 16:16, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

The evidence can never show a change, because the evidence (you know, not anecdotes sourced from blogs, but actual evidence from the regulator and from surveys) never showed it was especially unreliable compared to other UK tabloids in the first place. FOARP (talk) 22:00, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

• No, but some of the opposers at the Sun RfC have valid concerns with how the restrictions are sometimes interpreted. These should be addressed. Editors should interpret the Daily Mail RfC in the context of the issues it intended to address, not as a ruling that justifies incivility and/or wholesale removal of non-contentious content and citations. The problem with this proposal is that it doesn't address the concerns raised in the Sun RfC. If some editors are harassing those who add the Daily Mail to articles (as Andy Dingley contended), this is not going to stop even if restrictions on Daily Mail usage were lifted. feminist (talk) 19:16, 4 December 2018 (UTC)
• Demur in several ways "Basically - if the item is "celebrity gossip" in nature, sourced in whole or in part to "anonymous sources" or to "press releases" or the like - we should disallow it. In the first case as being violative of BLP principles in the first place. In the second because press releases are generally not "fact checked" in any way at all, and are therefore "self-published sources" which should be ascribed to the writers of the press release material, not to the newspapers which run them substantially unedited." is my stated position, and one which, I suggest, has substantial merit. Collect (talk) 21:00, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

Churnalism should not be used, period. It is advertising copy and it routinely misrepresents the facts of the case (almost always, in fact, in the case of university press releases for research). Guy (Help!) 22:45, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

• No, and hell no - they need much more than two months with a new editor - they need a track record of not being a worse-than-useless source to overcome a long and extensively-documented history of literally making stuff up - David Gerard (talk) 00:04, 5 December 2018 (UTC)
• Yes, provided it is not retrospective. Most news outlets have published incorrect stories and false facts at some point but the problem as far as the DM went was the editorial collusion in those false accounts. The new editor Geordie Greig was editor of the Mail on Sunday which was not subject to the Daily Mail ban. It is reasonable to assume he will bring the same practices and code of ethics to his current appointment. To make this simple, we should permit DM articles published from January 1, 2019 to be used as a reliable source. Just for the record I supported the previous ban because of the erosion of trust between Wikipedia and the DM, but a large plank of the case against them has collapsed with the appointment of a new editor, especially one with a good track record. The benefit of the doubt has to be given here otherwise Wikipedia is going to look partisan, especially now it has banned Breitbart. Betty Logan (talk) 07:09, 5 December 2018 (UTC)
• Support removing the previous ban and replacing with new guidance - The statement that the Daily Mail was generally unreliable that came from the previous RfC had no grounding in evidence - it was based only on anecdotal evidence insufficient to sustain a general finding. Instead the evidence from IPSOS shows the Daily Mail to have been not substantially worse, in terms of complaints upheld, than sources generally thought reliable (e.g., in 2015 there were only 2 complaints upheld against Associated, owners of the Daily Mail, whilst 5 were upheld in that year against The Times - see here). New guidance should be produced covering tabloids in general, preferably on the basis that tabloids should be avoided for BLP or controversial statements unless there is a clear reason to use them falling within defined grounds (e.g., to quote someone's own opinions). The automatic filtering of the DM should be deactivated as the politically-motivated censorship it always clearly was, there was never any good reason (other than WP:IDONTLIKEIT) to pick on the Daily Mail in particular out of all tabloid publications. FOARP (talk) 08:07, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

  Without going into the details of this discussion, one should note that IPSO is probably not a good independent source for this since they were founded and are paid by the newspaper industry. Even our own article about them (Independent Press Standards Organisation) reads in parts like an advert. Any decision about the (un)reliability of the Daily Mail should probably be based on sources independent from the UK newspaper industry. Regards SoWhy 15:19, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

SoWhy But in that case it should be a good means to compare those papers that do adhere to its guidelines to try and decide if the DM is any worse than any other of the papers that would help support its ban. If IPSO is biased towards the papers that adhere then it should be biased towards all of them. Don't forget that reliable sources such as the Guardian cite its findings and reports. If we can't use an independent watchdog should we just continue to rely on our own bias and gutfeelings about anecdotal evidence? Dom from Paris (talk) 16:21, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

L we have not picked on the DM, we have also nominated other red tops. It is just that those who are defending these "news" organs have had more luck defending the others. I am sure that all of those who want this "ban" in place would like to see it extended to the Sun, The Daily Mirror and other similar scandal and OUTRAGE!!!!! rags. So not we are not singling it out.Slatersteven (talk) 14:25, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

L If so then the fact that you have failed to spread this ban to other publications indicates that the original ban itself was dubious and probably should never have passed. If people find a ban only palatable when it is directed at a particularly hated publication amongst left-wingers (who are possibly over-represented on Wiki), but not when it is directed at less-hated newspapers that are no better or worse in terms of content, that should surely trigger a re-think. FOARP (talk) 14:36, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

No, no more then if I charge someone with a crime and they got of it means the person before that was innocent. All it means is that this time the arguments were better (not more valid, just better put), or more support was rallied or... well any number of reasons.Slatersteven (talk) 14:53, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

If juries repeatedly refuse to convict, this is a sign that there is a problem with the law. Hey, there's even a name for this. FOARP (talk) 15:11, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

NO, it means that enough of the jury think the law is wrong in those cases (and no this was not been a universal finding, we have had at least one red tops RFC success). Now this is what this RFC is about, is the law still valid.Slatersteven (talk) 15:18, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

The one success was against a paper that is particularly hated by left-wingers, who may be over-represented on Wiki. The other red-tops were the real test, and it failed on them. Maintaining it now is just discriminatory. FOARP (talk) 15:24, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

AGF, I think you will find that most of us who voted yes in the first RFC (and are voting no now) have also supported the same treatment for all the red tops when it has been raised.Slatersteven (talk) 16:27, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

CDare to find one example of a user who has not done this?>Slatersteven (talk) 15:27, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

• The automatic filtering of the DM should be deactivated as the politically-motivated censorship it always ways. Please remember to assume good faith. If nothing else, it is counterproductive to throw around accusations like that when you are, more or less, asking the same people who decided to restrict the Daily Mail in 2017 to change their minds. The original RFC you're trying to overturn here was closed by a trio of experienced, highly-trusted admins who evaluated the strength of the arguments (not just the numerical !votes) before coming to their conclusion. --Aquillion (talk) 14:28, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

• Strong support. Reviewing the evidence for & against, the case to remove the ban seems over whelming. (Weak opinions: Id prefer a simple, retrospective lifting as banning even the Dacre DM seems unwarranted. But I can see the other side here, and if we were to have a cut off point, I agree Jan 2019 would make things nice and simple. Huh, if WP bans arguably questionable sources and reinstates them once they address concerns, this might encourage all sources make more effort to be reliable, which would be quite a pleasing side effect. As for a new guidline against tabloids, this seems rather non inclusive. Both the guideline and practice seem to already strongly discourage weak sourcing of controversial BLP statements, so theres a WP:Creep objection here. It's already ridiculously hard to save moderately notable BLPs from destruction without giving deletionists an excuse to dismiss any tabloid source. But only tentative about this view as I have relatively little experience with BLPs and may be misreading, maybe we really do need said guideline.) FeydHuxtable (talk) 13:44, 5 December 2018 (UTC)
• No In 2017 10 complaints were upheld against it. It continues to publish falsehoods and conjecture as if they are facts (even under its new regime, as shown below). It has had multiple complaints held up against it this year. I see nothing having changed since we had our last RFC. Until any figures are released we have no idea if the problems have been fixed.Slatersteven (talk) 13:51, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Simply balding stating that 10 complaints were upheld does not show general unreliability, not when other publishers, including publishers of RS newspapers with lower circulation, had even more. FOARP (talk) 14:13, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Err the fact we allow other "less reliable" publications is not a reason to allow this one, it is a reason to not allow them. The fact it that when we banned it the upheld complaints had increased, I see no evidence that trend has even peaked (let alone declined). The basis of this RFC is that the situation has changed, I see no evidence of that.Slatersteven (talk) 14:21, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

The fact that the DM is no worse that sources we believe to be reliable clearly is a reason to consider whether the reasoning under which it was found to be generally unreliable is flawed. The change in situation is not the only basis of the RfC. The lack of good evidence to support the result of the previous RfC is right there under no. 2 in the arguments. To my mind, it is the strongest point. FOARP (talk) 14:25, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

What the study of the publishers complaints rate?Slatersteven (talk) 16:35, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Yes, the study showing that the DM was no worse in terms of complaints upheld than other publications considered RS. That one. Associated only have one big publication (the Daily Mail) and they had half the number of complaints upheld in 2015 that The Times did. FOARP (talk) 20:04, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

• Yes I oppose such bans (as already noted on this page). I also see the current ban / restriction as deeply flawed, particularly because it's so unclear as to whether it's a ban or not. Even if there is no wish to overturn it, we should improve and clarify our restrictions around it.

• Is this a ban or not?
• There is no current clear distinction between the DM as newspaper (even when reproduced online) and the even more celeb-heavy DM-online.
• There is no statement of the precise problem with the DM, and thus the scope of the restriction. Is this factual inaccuracy or editorial political bias? It has been challenged for both, yet there are many uses where we would require accuracy but bias would not be an issue. We shouldn't conflate both for judging each and every use.
• What are the penalties for breaching it? At present, editors even discusssing it have been threatened with blocks. This is just bullying and needs to stop forthwith.
• Why single out the DM? If indeed (as claimed by some threats) it already goes further (the Mirror / Scottish papers for some). Why are Fox and RT, which are equally challenged, permissible?
• What are the exceptions to its permissible use?
• Should editors patrol new / changed articles and summarily strip any DM citations (the "crane case")?

Even if the ban stays, these points should be addressed. Andy Dingley (talk) 14:04, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Re: "There is no current clear distinction between the DM as newspaper (even when reproduced online) and the even more celeb-heavy DM-online", what part of "Consensus has determined that the Daily Mail (including its online version, dailymail.co.uk) is generally unreliable, and its use as a reference is to be generally prohibited" are you having trouble understanding? --Guy Macon (talk) 14:52, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

He's saying the 2017 RfC did't distinguish between the two publications, and you are merely reciting the part of the conclusion of the RfC that stated that this is true: it did not distinguish between the two. As such, it is indiscriminate. You are merely demonstrating the fact of what he said. FOARP (talk) 15:02, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Yes, thankyou. Andy Dingley (talk) 15:10, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Nonsense. The RfC clearly stated that both the print and online sources were unreliable -- because they are both unreliable. Andy Dingley, I have seen enough examples of you purposely misunderstanding clear wording to conclude that you are trolling us. --Guy Macon (talk) 16:00, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Guy, ANI is thataway. If you want to accuse editors personally of "trolling", then do it there, not here.

The restriction treats both paper and online equally. Now many people, including the DM's own staff, see the online platform as much less serious a form of news reporting, and it's certainly fuller of celebrities and their "peachy derrières". Given the ease of searching for and linking to an online platform, we have to be even more careful with it. Andy Dingley (talk) 16:39, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

• Yes The only proof that the DM is "generally unreliable" was anecdotal evidence. This is not supported by independent watchdog reports from IPSO. It is a trashy bit of newspaper with editorial opinions that can sometimes be outrageous but it is a newspaper that adheres to control by a watchdog, it was named National newspaper of the year 7 times in the last 23 years, and its journalists have won around 20 British Press Awards. I personally don't like it and would rather use other sources but I cannot support this continuation of this ban which makes Wikipedia editors seem biased. The Guardian article produced by User:FOARP is particularly pertinant and on that anecdotal basis we should see the Times banned as being unreliable too. Dom from Paris (talk) 14:10, 5 December 2018 (UTC)
• No Needs more than two months to be considered more reliable. ^Semi_Hypercube ✎ 16:55, 5 December 2018 (UTC)
• Yes I think it has changed sufficiently. I never supported the original ban in the first place because it did appear that the original decision was taken with a political view against right leaning sources rather than editorial concerns. Indeed we do still have GAs that are supported by DM sources and yet those ones were strangely untouched when the anti-DM purges were going around so clearly there is tacit acknowledgement of DM being reliable. The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 17:04, 5 December 2018 (UTC)
• No It's far too soon to assess any substantial lasting change in a large newspaper with many diverse and controversial topics. The listed character witnesses for this change so far are politicians and opinion pieces, with a limited short-time view that can only speculate about a possible lasting change. Secondly, I strongly object to the unfounded allegations of general political motivations behind the previous RfC. Such repeated personalizing allegations are a violation of WP:AGF and counterproductive. Lastly, anecdotal evidence - within reason - is a perfectly valid argument for community-internal discussions. Wikipedia is not a court of law. GermanJoe (talk) 17:27, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

The proposer of the 2017 RfC is on the record as comparing the Daily Mail to the Volkischer Beobachter, and there was repeated use of emotive language betraying anger at the publication during that RfC (e.g., "kill it with fire", "fake news", "right-wing propaganda"). It is hardly unfair to say that some of the editors were not voting objectively. Finally, the DM remains the only newspaper censored in this way despite being, according to IPSOS, no worse than any other UK tabloid in terms of complaints upheld. FOARP (talk) 19:59, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

I reject your assertion that you can diagnose a persons internat mental state over the internet. --Guy Macon (talk) 00:51, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

Which is odd, because below you are carrying on about my (imaginary) secret agenda, apparently diagnosed through the internet. FOARP (talk) 08:34, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

• Yes - Remove "the Ban" on the Daily Mail Reinstate the Daily Mail as Reliable Source. "The IPSO (Independent Press Standards Organization) is the independent regulator for the newspaper and magazine industry in the UK". As the UK regulator they "uphold high standards of journalism".
• The Daily Mail is one of IPSO's member newspapers and follows the IPSO Editors' Code, publishing corrections, and is subject to investigation and enforcement by IPSO.
• When any of IPSO's members is found violating their Rules and Regulations the members are subject to publishing corrections, paying fines, paying for the cost of the investigation, submitting quarterly statements, and ultimately termination of the newspaper's membership with IPSO.
• In identifying the most complained about publications in the UK in 2017, The Daily Mail had a complaint rate per circulated issue of about 0.32%. This compares to other UK newspapers that were also on the "Most Complained About Publications" list for 2017, including The Sun 0.35%, The Bristol Post 0.21%, The Times 0.14%, The Daily Telegraph 0.08% and The Telegraph 0.006% among others. The arguments put forth to maintain the ban are highly partisan and/or motivated by partisanship. Nearly every argument to continue or to initially propose a ban on the DM could easily be made about news sources considered mainstream such as the New York Daily News or even the so-called venerable New York Times.Wcmcdade (talk) 21:06, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

• Strong No The burden lies on the shoulders of those supporting lifting the ban, to provide evidence that DM is reliable. Being a member of various associations is not a criterion for reliability. Reliability is gained day by day, month by month and year by year. There is no evidence that the public considers DM a reliable source, no published articles in peer-reviewed journals consider DM reliable (at least I am not aware of any) hence we have no reason to do so. Cinadon36 (talk) 21:18, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

The 2014 BBC trusted sources survey had the Daily Mail at 4.7 - in the middle of the table and higher than every other tabloid (see slide 11 here). The 2017 IPSOS MORI BBC survey returned the same result - Daily Mail the most trusted of all the tabloids (see table 5 on page 14 here). In as much as it is possible to confirm, the British public has always considered the Daily Mail to be at least no worse than any other tabloid, and actually better than most/all of them. The perception prevalent on these pages that the DM is somehow the worst of the worst is simply that: a perception, with no basis in fact.

PS - I also note than no evidence of any kind, other than anecdotal evidence, was presented during the 2017 RfC. You are therefore asking for a higher standard of evidence for removing the ban than was asked for for implementing it. FOARP (talk) 22:24, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

• No - Nothing has changed, why should this? Beyond My Ken (talk) 22:59, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

• Yes - I support revoking the RFC. I will only engage in discussion on my talk page. power~enwiki (π, ν) 01:41, 6 December 2018 (UTC)
• Yes - the ban is ridiculous, not evidence-based and is discriminatory in how it singled out the Mail for censorship yet still allowed countless publications of the same (or worse) quality. The UK's strict libel laws combined with press regulation almost inevitably make the Mail a more reliable source than similar quality publications from countries such as the US. Either the ban is lifted or countless others need to be introduced (and I very strongly favour the former).Shakehandsman (talk) 04:46, 6 December 2018 (UTC)
• Yes - there is no news outlet that is flawless, each article needs to be considered on a case-by-case basis. I would go one step further than Shakehandsman and say that any US source is likely to be less reliable. Jack N. Stock (talk) 07:24, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

• No- It's too early to know whether the Daily Mail has genuinely stopped printing complete bollocks and far right propaganda dressed up as news. I'd be open to revisiting this in six months or so to evaluate whether anything really has changed. Then it might be possible to say that "DM articles from such and such a date onward are OK but anything before then is still likely to be mendacious crap". Reyk _YO! 08:50, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

Is "printing right wing propaganda" a justification for a ban of the kind that is - of all the newspapers in the world - applied only against the DM? Wiki even has a policy that explicitly states that "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". FOARP (talk) 10:33, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

I'm not going to engage with this badgering. Reyk _YO! 11:33, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

It was a fair question - simply being right wing, or even "right wing propaganda", is not a disqualification from being a reliable source per Wiki policy. Up to you whether you want to, or are able to, answer it. FOARP (talk) 12:50, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

• • Reyk, my google news alerts regularly advise me of Daily Mail articles on topics I am interested in, and have been doing so for well over a decade. Frankly I don't recall this right-wing bias you refer to. How about offering some examples? Geo Swan (talk) 17:51, 27 December 2018 (UTC)
• No - review in six months and we can see if it has changed -----Snowded ^TALK 10:39, 6 December 2018 (UTC)
• No. Nothing has substantially changed, and the prolix legal advocate-style brief below is, shall we say, less than convincing. The "partisan" bit is a particularly bogus argument. --Calton | Talk 10:46, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

• No - nothing has changed, and to say the are worse examples than the Daily Mail is not a very strong argument. (To say that are sources that are even less reliable than the DM, does not make the DM any more reliable, maybe we should seriously remove more poor sources.) ~ BOD ~ ^TALK 10:58, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

• No - Nothing's changed as far as I'm concerned, I also disagree with reviewing in 6 months - We as a community made a decision so that decision should stick ... we don't need to keep revisiting this every year. –Davey2010^Talk 11:04, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

• No far too soon to judge if anything's really changed --Dweller (talk) Become old fashioned! 11:16, 6 December 2018 (UTC)
• No – We shouldn't use tabloids as sources as a matter of course. If the only available source for a given claim is a tabloid, then it's almost certain the issue isn't of genuine encyclopedic value in the first place. I have no first-hand knowledge to what degree the DM stands out as particularly bad among the rest of the bunch, but what I've seen was quite bad enough. Fut.Perf. ☼ 11:20, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

No-one here is arguing that tabloids are a particularly good source. They are arguing that an automatically-enforced ban of one tabloid in particular (the Daily Mail), which is the only tabloid banned in this fashion, should be removed. FOARP (talk) 16:42, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

• No - it may have a new editor but it's still a tabloid, and tabloids make for very poor sources because of the amount of exaggeration and outright making things up that tabloids engage in. No tabloid should be used as a source on Wikipedia and most editors abide by that guidance; the difference with DM is that for some reason editors weren't seeing it as the unreliable source that it is. I think this discussion should be closed and not revisited for at least a year. Ca2james (talk) 16:02, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

But we don't have "a ban on tabloids". So why single out just one? Andy Dingley (talk) 16:18, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

• Of course. I checked the RfC and most of the older discussions, and I found zero (zero!) evidence that the Daily Mail is known for publishing false information. I'm very amused by the fact that we have a total of around 40 discussions here at RSN, and every discussion consists of pointing to a previous discussion and using actual gossip blogs like Gawker as "evidence" that the Daily Mail is unreliable. This is beyond me. wumbolo ^^^ 5:42 pm, Today (UTC+1)

Unfortunately this is the case. A list of blog-article anecdotes counts as sufficient "evidence" to ban a publication published daily for 122 years, but surveys and regulatory evidence counts for nothing. FOARP (talk) 19:39, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

We can do this with reliable sources, too. Here's a couple of anecdotes for the Southern Poverty Law Center: . Here's for The New York Times: . For Fox News, see Fox News controversies, and for CNN, see CNN controversies and Fake News Awards. Winning a Pulitzer Prize is not enough anymore . These anecdotal arguments really are slippery slopes to ban all sources in existence. I can only point to WP:NOTCENSORED to show that Wikipedia is not a tool for the censorship of the press, and that makes us no better than those who compromise the freedom of the press – one of the sources I cited above is Donald Trump, whose anecdotal story about CNN was awarded the "Overall Achievement in Undermining Global Press Freedom" by the Committee to Protect Journalists. Do we really want to be the next target of journalist advocacy organizations? We will lose all our credibility. wumbolo ^^^ 09:22, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

• Kill it. Kill it with fire. The preceding sentence is based 100% on the demonstrated unreliability of The Daily Mail. Anyone who reads anything else into it other than a strongly-worded expression of the strong evidence that The Daily mail is an unreliable source is simply wrong, and is trying to stuff words in my mouth. I would also note that so far nobody has documented any other UK tabloid repeatedly fabricating direct quotes or repeatedly stealing work from lesser-known publications, changing a few things to make the story more salacious, and publishing the resulting copyright violation under its own byline. If anyone ever posts evidence of another newspaper that does that, I will be happy to post an RfC asking that we don't allow it as a source either. --Guy Macon (talk) 17:35, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

• Examples:

1. The Daily Mail has 'mastered the art of running stories that aren't true', Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales says
2. 10 Egregiously False Stories In The 'Daily Mail'
3. Daily Mail 'spits dummy' after Paul Barry calls out plagiarism
4. Plagiarism at the Daily Mail
5. A Sincere Apology From Cracked to the Daily Mail

--Guy Macon (talk) 18:13, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

Anecdotes sourced in all instances but one from blogs (the one non-blog source is an interview on CNBC, not the views of CNBC itself). Not evidence that supports "general unreliability". And if you want to disprove the accusation of political bias talking about "killing it with fire" is unlikely to have that effect. FOARP (talk) 19:27, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

Every one of those "anecdotes" contains links where you can personally verify the claims made. Any reasonable person who read, say, the Cracked claims would look at the original Cracked article and at the Daily Mail article published a day later You don't have to trust Cracked as a source. You can look at the evidence yourself and draw your own concision. You aren't fooling anyone, you know. We have all figured out what you are on about and why. --Guy Macon (talk) 00:51, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

"You aren't fooling anyone, you know. We have all figured out what you are on about and why" - and what, pray tell, is that? Let me guess, I'm a mole planted by Dacre on Wiki back in 2007 just for this very purpose?

Conspiratorial accusations, swearing, and insults (see below for examples) are not conducive of informed debate and will not help arrive at a consensus. If anything they merely undermine the arguments you make and provide further evidence for the argument that the ban is politically motivated.

Finally, I mean, Cracked.com as a source? Look, I love their lists but you really need to do better than a comedy website. If the supporters of removing the ban had used blog articles as evidence for their position you would have been all over it - but somehow it doesn't matter that all you have here is non-RS-sourced anecdotes? Whilst the statistical data from IPSOS complaints upheld, and the surveys of the general public, show the Daily Mail to be unremarkable in terms of accuracy? Every newspaper has had problems with accuracy and faked stories. The Mirror famously published fabricated photos of British soldiers supposedly abusing Iraqi detainees as a front-page exclusive - an incident that is about as serious as it gets in terms of fabricating a story - yet The Mirror is not subject to this ban. The Times hacked into an anonymous blogger's email account, doxxed him, and then lied about it - but The Times is (correctly) considered an RS. FOARP (talk) 08:32, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

You are comparing sources that fire people when they discover plagiarism with a source that fires people if they refuse to plagiarize. And Cracked is a fine source for a claim about what was and was not published by Cracked. --Guy Macon (talk) 19:33, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

• No I see nothing that was raised in the prior RFC that has changed. There is no worthwhile story the Daily Mail has ever covered that another, more reliable source hasn't covered without the taint of the awful problems. If it's only in the Daily Mail, and nowhere else, I wouldn't trust it being worthwhile to cover. --Jayron32 18:20, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

• And even if if appears to be worthwhile to cover, if it is only in the Daily Mail and nowhere else the odds are extremely high that The Daily Mail plagiarized it, added a few lies to make it more clickbaity, then posted it under their byline as if it was their work. --Guy Macon (talk) 00:56, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

• No Changing the editor is not enough evidence that the DM has changed its ways.-- Pawnkingthree (talk) 18:24, 6 December 2018 (UTC)
• No – Two months simply isn't enough time to know whether the source in question has had a long-term change in its status, one way or the other. I hate to sound like an RFA voter telling the candidate to come back next year, but I think that would be for the best here, as we would at least have more of a sample size to go off of. Giants2008 (Talk) 23:44, 6 December 2018 (UTC)
• Yes Singling out one newspaper, which happens to be in the mid-range in terms of general reputation, is arbitrary. Mainstream media routinely report its investigative reporting. There are no policy or guideline based reasons for the ban. TFD (talk) 01:10, 7 December 2018 (UTC)
• Yes As it is subject to review by IPSO, and false stories will presumably be corrected. It is a problem with certain outlets that they will headline the lie and bury the correction, but this is not so much of a problem for Wikipedia as long as the correction is made. Looking at WP:DAILYMAIL, it is currently treated the same as InfoWars (excluding the global blacklist). I have not cited the DM while editing so the "ban" has not had much effect personally, but it does seem excessive. Hrodvarsson (talk) 01:42, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

• Yes, but the problem here is that the "correction" is often posted a long time after the false story. For example in the case of this one, the story was published in December, and the correction in July. Black Kite (talk) 02:16, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

• No, or at least not yet It is too early to evaluate whether the change of editorship of the Mail is going to make any difference to the causes for the ban in the first place. There are signs that this may be the case - it had 50 IPSO rulings against it in 2017 (though not all of these were for accuracy}, by far the worst of any national UK newspaper, but the stats show that there have only been 11 in the period Jan-Aug 2018 (which is as far as the stats go at the moment). Black Kite (talk) 02:13, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

Not sure which 2017 stat you're looking at. The 2017 annual report shows only ten complaints being upheld against Associated (owners of the Daily Mail - see p. 22-23 here). Where does the "50 IPSOS rulings against it" stat come from? FOARP (talk) 11:25, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

Actually out of 63 complaints only 24 were "Not upheld".Slatersteven (talk) 12:28, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

Which 1) Doesn't add up to anything like 50 and 2) is meaningless as to the number that were actually upheld (AKA "rulings against it") of which there were only 10. The cases which were settled by the parties are simply that - cases which were settled by the parties, with no finding of wrong-doing on either side.

TL;DR - taking Black Kite at face value, he should flip his vote to yes, as he appears to have believed that 11 complaints upheld in 9 months (and I don't know where that stat came from either) was low enough to consider removing the ban, and the real figure for 2017 was 10 complaints upheld during the entire year. If, however, he can substantiate the claim that 50 complaints were upheld against the DM in 2017, then I promise you I will switch my vote to "not yet". FOARP (talk) 12:49, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

You are confusing IPSO rulings with sanctions (I make it 11, but 10 is close enough). However, since you are here for this reason "The one success was against a paper that is particularly hated by left-wingers, who may be over-represented on Wiki" I don't think it's worth engaging with you any further. Black Kite (talk) 00:01, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

So, you're not even going to try to justify that "50 rulings against it" stat which was your entire reason given for voting no? Just hide behind faux-outrage about a comment I made saying people on here hate the DM (which they clearly do)? Well yeah, very convincing. FOARP (talk) 22:24, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

• No - Of the thousands of newspapers that cover world news, this one stands out for its sensationalistic and false reporting. Supporters of lifting the ban have not made the case for why we would need a source like this when so many better ones are available.- MrX 🖋 13:26, 7 December 2018 (UTC)
• No. Nothing significant has changed. Also, I will reiterate what I said at the time - banning a source like this is an unusual step for when a source is in the weird place where they are unequivocally unreliable for virtually anything nontrivial that we'd want to cite them for (barring the few WP:RS exceptions where the reliability of the source doesn't matter, like WP:ABOUTSELF), yet a small but persistent minority stubbornly insists it is reliable and repeatedly tries to cite it excessively, far out of proportion to its terrible quality. The comments above (several of which seem to want to unban it not for policy reasons or because they think the formal ban is unnecessary, but because they are actually trying to claim it is generally reliable) show why the somewhat drastic step of a formal ban and edit filter are needed. --Aquillion (talk) 14:28, 7 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Also, I suggest a speedy close of this and future discussions on the topic unless they have some indication that things have changed, either externally (in the world or the Daily Mail itself) or internally (within Wikipedia, its practices, or policies). The whole point of the massive, extensively-covered, carefully-closed WP:RFC last time was that the Daily Mail was a point of constant contention that needed to be firmly settled once and for all; raising it again (with some people suggesting another pointless RFC in just a few months' time) would defeat the purpose of that. By this point it is pretty clear that this RFC is going down in well-deserved flames; I can sympathize with people who oppose this sort of measure as a matter of policy, but I urge the people who somehow think the Mail is a reliable source to accept the consensus of the community, WP:DROPTHESTICK, and move on. While the Daily Mail has been a constant point of contention, at no point in Wikipedia history (as far as I'm aware) has there ever been remotely approaching a consensus that it is generally reliable. It is almost the standard example of a low-quality source. The RFC that saw it banned was the endpoint of years of discussions; this RFC has accomplished nothing but rehashing them and wasting everyone's time to reach, inevitably, the same result as every past discussion on the topic. Whether we should be formally banning sources and using edit-filters, in an abstract sense, might be a productive discussion. Whether the Daily Mail in particular is reliable is not (unless you have something really amazing to bring to the table; but, spoiler, one or two polls of dubious quality and some hand-waving about other sources is not it. All of this sort of thing came up in the last RFC and is not going to change anything here.) --Aquillion (talk) 14:59, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

    Opposing the motion to reinstate the DM as a reliable source is an entirely valid opinion, but it is simply not correct to state "nothing significant has changed". The Daily Mail has appointed a new editor for the first time in 26 years. Considering that all the problems occurred under the previous editor, then a change of editor is "significant". It is entirely reasonable to try and ascertain how much of the problem was attributable to the previous editor and how far the appointment of a new editor will go to rectifying those problems. Even if the discussion results in retaining the ban it should not be shut down prematurely. Betty Logan (talk) 15:27, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

There's something suspiciously-Brexit-like about trying to get something banned for years in multiple RfCs, finally succeeding at the 20-somethingth attempt, and then declaring that that decision can never, ever be re-opened. FOARP (talk) 17:45, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

Bexit will never happen anyhow, so don't worry about either that or this. Walter Görlitz (talk) 17:57, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

• To be clear (since what you're saying here is unambiguously untrue), the Daily Mail has always failed WP:RS, and as far as I'm aware WP:RSN has always reached a clear consensus on this every time the topic came up. It was discussed repeatedly because the small number of people who incorrectly thought it passed WP:RS kept bringing it here, but it has never come close to passing WP:RS at any point; you can find references to the constant recurring topic of its unreliability (and it being used as a benchmark of unreliable sourcing) going back years in this page's history. The formal ban was an unusual step taken because of the situation of a source that kept coming up despite being unambiguously unreliable, causing repeated, circular discussions that consistently rejected any arguments for using it as a source outside of the most trivial of cases. The formal ban it passed the very first time it was proposed (with a good part, though not all, of the opposition being procedural in nature, ie. people acknowledged that it was not generally a reliable source but were unsure about taking the step of a formal ban and edit filter.) Also, I advise you to read and consider WP:BLUDGEON; the purpose of an RFC is to get broad responses in order to resolve an intractable dispute, not to have one editor trying to argue with the entire room. --Aquillion (talk) 03:51, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

I am aware that it has a different editor, but I don't see how that alone changes anything. WP:RS is based on a source's extended reputation for fact-checking and accuracy; obviously a source's reliability doesn't change with every single staff rotation. --Aquillion (talk) 03:51, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

• No Throwing out the consensus is not an improvement. We invite people to edit who have no idea what a good source is, thus we provide guidance that is developed in long experience with sources and through consensus. So, sure, improve on past consensus and refine it but there is no point in going backwards for a source that has long been deprecated (often by editors analyzing it as tabloid crap) even before the 2017 RfC. Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:44, 7 December 2018 (UTC)
• No – it's far too soon to conclude that the Daily Mail is now a reliable source, given the considerable evidence above and at the last RfC. We can revisit this in a year, but for now we have to continue to safeguard against false information and tabloid journalism. Bradv🍁 20:04, 7 December 2018 (UTC)
• No, non, nyet, buxin The Daily Mail is not now nor has it ever been a reliable source. Simonm223 (talk) 20:09, 7 December 2018 (UTC)
• Spoiled Ballot due to censorship by two no-voters in both RfC eliminating transparent links to other Wikipedia pages bearing directly on the discussion. 1 2
  • Yes. This was one of the more embarrassing en.wp moments in recent memory. I'll add evidence of what I perceive to be its continuing disruptive effect on the sausage-sewing floor (e.g. ). — 🍣 SashiRolls ^{t · c} 20:53, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

Quite. The only evidence ever cited in support of this ban has been a hand-full of anecdotes such as could have been given for any newspaper. The actual evidence all points to the Daily Mail being just average for a UK tabloid in terms of reliability and trustworthiness. FOARP (talk) 21:57, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

• No Too soon, and it’s not as if we have a shortage of reliable sources that we can use. O3000 (talk) 21:04, 7 December 2018 (UTC)
• Yes I opposed the original ban and still think it is bizarre that we have singled out a single publication (and one that is somewhere near the top of the tabloid pile) in this way. To me it seems hard not to conclude that many editors advocating a ban are motivated by the paper's editorial position, and comments above regarding the change of position re Brexit only reinforce this perception. GoldenRing (talk) 17:52, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

You claim it's 'top of the tabloids', so the worst then. Actually Brexit and change of editorship was first argued in this discussion by someone who is arguing to overturn the consensus guidance, which means your argument is that you and others in your position only have your position because you support the paper's editorial position. Neither is it the case the source has been singled out, we have multiple restrictions on sources per the perennial sources list that's linked in guidelines. Alanscottwalker (talk) 18:24, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

• No, probably never. The Daily Mail, as of today, looks horribly untrustworthy as a source for encyclopedic articles to me. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 22:14, 8 December 2018 (UTC)
• No it's gutter tripe, and should be closed down. If anything, we should be looking to do this kind of thing more often, disallowing utter shite sources which purport to have some level of gravitas just because they've been around a bit. Nonsense source, usually hysterical and always motivated by POV, not an iota of neutrality, kill it. The Rambling Man (talk) 22:54, 8 December 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose. Invalid RFC as the proposer presents no rationale or evidence for overturning a site-wide consensus. Gamaliel (talk) 14:48, 9 December 2018 (UTC)
• No Tabloids are not suitable sources here. A leopard doesn't change its colors overnight. If there is no better source than the content in question does not belong in Wikipedia. In medical publishing it takes a good 5 years to build a reputation. Maybe we can revisit this in another 4 years. We still have a lot of work to do cleaning up the current DM refs.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 17:03, 9 December 2018 (UTC)
• No, I see no reason to believe that The Daily Mail has improved its editorial standards to the point where it could be considered a RS. GAB^gab 17:48, 9 December 2018 (UTC)
• No I don't see any reason why we should reconsider this. The major reason seems to be that they appointed a new editor in September, which doesn't mean anything. The discussion below suggests that we should reverse the decision because of perceived bias, numbers of official complaints made and perceptions outside Wikipedia, none of which has any effect on the Daily Mail's reliability at all. There's also a suggestion that the Daily Mail would be a great source to use for a BLP, which is a really bad idea. I'd be quite happy to see similar restrictions on comparable publications. There are very few situations in which it is OK to cite tabloid newspapers, particularly for consequential statements. Hut 8.5 19:39, 9 December 2018 (UTC)
• No per above. Still a tabloid -FASTILY 20:59, 9 December 2018 (UTC)
• No Revisit in ONE year. --QEDK (後 ☕ 桜) 21:04, 9 December 2018 (UTC)
• No "In case of tabloid emergency, break glass to release an emergency application reference from the Daily Mail. Caution: DM should only be applied as a reference in cases of real tabloid emergencies." (Yeah, I think we're good here.)  Spintendo  03:02, 10 December 2018 (UTC)
• Strong oppose. I rarely see Daily Mail in the articles I tend to edit. Nevertheless, on more than one occasion I've removed text cited to Daily Mail's years-old legitimate-looking repost of a dubious statistic cited to a dubious and probably non-existing organisation. There's no doubt that a lot of what's written in Daily Mail is true and factual, but that's not the crux of WP:RS. Daß Wölf 06:25, 10 December 2018 (UTC)

  To clarify my position: I'm aware of the changes to Daily Mail and I don't think they're anything more than cosmetic. There's a lot more to a newspaper than editorial discretion. In any case, with the kind of crap DM has posted on occasion, I'd like to see at least a couple of years of good behaviour before reconsidering. Daß Wölf 23:05, 27 December 2018 (UTC)

• No, Hell No, and Strong oppose (use all that apply, suggested daily dose of any of these approximately once every minute). This is still a tabloid. This should simply not be used, with a near-zero number of exceptions. Blacklist/AbuseFilter, remove all. Any specific use only after a consensus-reaching discussion on WP:RS/N for that specific case. That the site has changed will then be shown after a good number of such discussions, after which this may be a discussion that needs to be held. (and let this be a precedent for other, similar sites). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 06:43, 10 December 2018 (UTC)

  So are you proposing banning all tabloids? Because at present only one of them is banned - the DM. FOARP (talk) 09:39, 10 December 2018 (UTC)

  According to WP:RSP, there are many tabloids that the Wikipedia community consider unreliable. Of course, most of those didn't need a sitewide RfC to decide that. --AntiCompositeNumber (talk) 17:51, 10 December 2018 (UTC)

• No If that's all the OP wanted was a yes/no reply. Unless there's some massive change to the DM since the RfC, then it's not going to change anytime soon. Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 12:40, 10 December 2018 (UTC)
• No, do not overturn the RfC: Guy Macon and Aquillion make excellent points above. The bottom line is: the Daily Mail is not reliable. It should not be used as a reliable source. Some people in this argument bring up public trust or distrust; this is not relevant because facts are not the same as public opinion. The Daily Mail has done a good job of hoodwinking its audience into believing its crackpot hoaxes are good journalism. This doesn't make crackpot hoaxes true. Others point out the change in leadership; this isn't a reason to pre-emptively allow a source just in case it improves. WP:BLP is one of the most important policies we have and the Daily Mail's lackadaisical attitude to fact-checking and sources makes it unusable. — Bilorv_(c)(talk) 14:19, 10 December 2018 (UTC)
• No — nothing substantial has changed. XOR'easter (talk) 17:29, 10 December 2018 (UTC)
• No To consider a source reliable, the source must have a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy. The Daily Mail has no such reputation, even if the masthead has changed a bit. Give it at least a year before reconsidering. --AntiCompositeNumber (talk) 17:48, 10 December 2018 (UTC)
• Yes, we have neutrality issues here as the two main right-wing UK newspapers are behind pay walls and their left-wing rivals aren't. I've seen no evidence the Mail is worse than similar newspapers with different views, we can't just ban on a "I don't like" basis which is what we are doing here. Which UK newspapers check their facts better? I can't think of any. ♫ RichardWeiss talk contribs 17:57, 10 December 2018 (UTC)
• No. (EC) Still a big bag of shite. Oh and to address the above, sources are not required to be online, let alone not be behind paywalls - accessibility of sources is irrelevant to questions of reliability and has no bearing on neutrality at all. Secondly, 'Which UK newspapers check their facts better?' - pretty much every single one except for possibly the Sunday Sport, and thats only because it prints obviously made up stories like planes on the moon, compared to slyly fabricating quotes/interviews like the Mail. Granted when you knowingly print lies there is little need to fact check it... So they have that in common. Only in death does duty end (talk) 18:34, 10 December 2018 (UTC)
• No; why would we want to allow a shitty tabloid with a reputation for falsehood to be used as a source here? --MarchOrDie (talk) 18:29, 10 December 2018 (UTC)
• No way - Burden of proof is to show that it has changed and has become reliable. I see no such evidence and must assume it remains a dumpster fire unreliable. EvergreenFir (talk) 18:34, 10 December 2018 (UTC)
• No because we owe more to our subjects than to let their names be ruined forever because the first Google result that appears when someone searches for them is an unverified claim from the Daily Mail that otherwise would get lost in the results. If it is truly important, another source will report on it. TonyBallioni (talk) 23:55, 10 December 2018 (UTC)
• No and please use some common sense - no falsehoods or prolific publisher of such can belong to Wikipedia at any given time. Tsumikiria (T/C) 02:01, 11 December 2018 (UTC)
• Absolutely not. Rome wasn't built in a day, and the Daily Mail's reputation isn't going to be repaired within two months of having a new editor either. We decided to ban them as a reliable source not simply because they publish celebrity gossip and sensationalized headlines, but because they have a history of literally making things up. A news organization that is known for making things up cannot be trusted. Maybe if they make a long-term effort to not make things up, we can revisit their ban in several years time – but right now? Hell to the no. Kurtis ^(talk) 02:45, 11 December 2018 (UTC)
• Not yet - The new editor may have a reforming influence on the paper, but right now it's too early to tell. Kaldari (talk) 05:57, 11 December 2018 (UTC)
• Yes Britain is full of tabloids that have a sensationalistic approach, many with a left-wing perspective like Daily Mirror or Daily Record, which is not to say OTHERSTUFFEXISTS but that it is arbitrary or biased to single out just one source so that it couldn't be used at all even with care. It isn't a great source when it comes to some subjects and should be treated as such, but there's no reason to prohibit it completely. And there are subjects it is a decent or a good source. As mentioned in the older RFC, the Daily Mail for instance has had universally acclaimed theater and musical reviews, which may be surprising to some. --Pudeo (talk) 08:03, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

Regarding UK Tabloids & Newspapers ~ politics of the Mirror or the Daily Mail is totally irrelevant ~ but the Mirror is not Left Wing it is as center-left tabloid that supports Labour, the only other center-left paper is the Guardian, the only national left wing paper is the Morning Star, see List of newspapers in the United Kingdom. If you have solid evidence that any other so called news source has a dodgy reputation like the Daily Mail, Daily Star, Sun etc. please start a RfC Here ~> Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard. I totally agree with Insertcleverphrasehere below, just because another paper might be bad, has no bearing on the whether we should use such an unreliable source as the Daily Mail. People rely on Wikipedia we owe it to them to use the best sources always. ~ BOD ~ ^TALK 17:16, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

• No "Other publications are also bad or worse" is not a reason to overturn this ban. I originally voted for the ban due to entirely fabricated interviews that they published, and it hasn't been long enough to verify that this sort of behaviour has ceased. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)}_{(click me!)} 13:48, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

• No. It is too soon to determine if this has become a reliable source. ZettaComposer (talk) 14:33, 11 December 2018 (UTC)
• There's a cultural difference here between US and UK newspapers. Some of the UK newspapers are happy to print nonsense, and the ban should probably be either extended to include other papers, or modified so that multiple independent UK papers could be used, or modified so that UK papers can only be used if a direct quote is used. DanBCDanBC (talk) 16:56, 11 December 2018 (UTC)
• No. Martinevans123 makes good points below. Deb (talk) 17:01, 11 December 2018 (UTC)
• No. While the Daily Mail ban was unknown to me, I support keeping it. I cannot think when we might ever need to rely on this newspaper for verification of facts that need including in an encyclopedia article. Most of its content is garbage with no place in our articles. For the slim amount of its content containing facts that warrant inclusion, we inevitably can look to others on Fleet Street for the same content. And we can do so without needing to guess at whether the journalists, who rarely warrant the title, have done their job. It isn't nice to "ban" so prolific a source, and I agree it appears partisan, but reliability precedes our community's public relations. AGK ■ 19:10, 11 December 2018 (UTC)
• Yes. I am overall uncomfortable with outright bans on all but the most egregious of sources (and no, I do not think the DM falls into that category...that is reserved for InfoWars and the like). I would prefer to leave it up to the editors themselves to determine whether or not the DM is appropriate on an instance by instance basis. Certainly there will be many who will be vigilant about double-checking anything DM-related, and that’s fine. But that should be happening anyway. CThomas³ (talk) 22:52, 11 December 2018 (UTC)
• No. A change of editor has not created substantial change within the newspaper. talk to !dave 11:39, 12 December 2018 (UTC)
• NOOOOOPE. The Daily Mail is still unreliable. Kirbanzo (talk) 17:43, 12 December 2018 (UTC)
• No they've made far too many dubious claims for such an overturn to have merit, regardless of who the editor is. SNUGGUMS (talk / edits) 00:19, 13 December 2018 (UTC)
• No. I'm having trouble seeing why we would need to use it as a source. As things are, Wikipedia is already at its weakest when covering current events, and we should try particularly hard to avoid sourcing that is questionable when we do not yet have historical perspective. Add those considerations to the history of unreliability, and the threshold for changing the previous consensus has not been met. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:54, 13 December 2018 (UTC)
• Yes, at least partially. The comparison above with Infowars is relevant--Infowars is dedicated to the pursuit of disinformation, while the Mail is better characterized as often reckless. That it contains junk does not invalidate the part that is not junk. It therefore has to be used with extreme caution, and the understanding that it needs additional verification in most cases, but it is totally unacceptable to ban it completely, or to make it exceptionally more difficult to use than other newspapers. DGG ( talk ) 02:14, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

That is, consult a working timepiece to see if the broken one happens to be right? I keep a box of broken watches for sentimental reasons, I don't much see the point in comparing them to a functional one. Comparing the DM's article to the Cracked version is more informative, in this case it is the latter that is fulfilling its function: satirical exposure of populist nonsense. cygnis insignis 09:23, 30 December 2018 (UTC)

• Yes, lift the ban - The UK has amongst the world’s strictest libel laws and the Daily Mail also is required to follow the IPSO Editors' Code of conduct with risk of enforcements actions for breaches. Really, there is very little good evidence that the Daily Mail is any less reliable than other sources. The current general ban on use of Daily Mail is, I believe, seriously biasing certain articles - particularly U.K. based ones - because the other two major right leaning newspapers are behind a paywall while left leaning ones are not, which almost guarantees that we are introducing major WP:NPOV issues to our U.K. political articles by this ban. It also makes Wikipedia less credible and look biased rather than NPOV. Finally, the Daily Mail is soon to be under a new editor (in Jan. 2019) who has a good track record of honest professionalism; the concerns of the previous RFC largely surrounded editorial behaviour of the outgoing editor are no longer an issue, so I think the ban should allow sources from Jan. 2019 onwards, for the sake of a NPOV at least. I do fear people are voting largely on political biases with a disregard for NPOV, we can do better than that, surely.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 03:10, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

@Literaturegeek: Not any more. That changed with the Defamation Act 2013. Guy (Help!) 12:32, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

@Literaturegeek: The are 8 Right of Center daily national newpapers in the UK, 3 (2 really as the Morning Star has limited circulation) Left of Center and 2 non political/centerist papers. However, political leanings of newspapers are *irrelevent*. The only thing that is important about a source is its reliability. Having reliable sources makes wikipedia credible.

(Paywalls are unfortunate, they do not stop a source being used, but simply weakens paper's usefulness as a source because it limits other editors ability to check what the source says....but this a separate matter...we are not looking at other papers ....we are looking at the Daily Mail...it does not matter if every other paper is behind a paywall ...we are discussing the Daily Mail). ~ BOD ~ ^TALK 11:21, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

1) The 2013 act did not change the main thing that makes UK defamation laws so strict - that is the requirement that it is the person who makes the allegedly defamatory statement that has to show the truth of it in order to rely on the defence that the statement was true. In, e.g., the US it is typically the other way round - it is the claimant that has to a show that the allegedly defamatory statement is untrue.

2) Pay walls do matter, since Editors almost never wish to pay to use a source.

3) The DM is the ONLY newspaper anywhere in the world that is banned by Wiki in this fashion. This cannot be justified simply by it being a tabloid as other tabloids remain unbanned. There is no need for a ban on the DM alone whilst there is general guidance not to use tabloid sources for BLP/controversial subjects.

The error is not the fact that the Daily Mail is the only bad news source that has this useful filter guiding editors, but that we as editors have failed to add similar guidance on the use of other Tabloids and other Media Sources found to be poor unreliable sources. Useful guidance is rarely bad. ~ BOD ~ ^TALK 19:57, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

4) The only high-quality evidence cited on this thread - the IPSOS decisions statistics and the surveys of the British public - show the DM to unremarkable in terms of trustworthiness. They are no worse than any other tabloid source. The belief that it is "the worst of the worst" is purely the result of ideologically biased analysis. FOARP (talk) 13:37, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

1. The statement was that "The UK has amongst the world’s strictest libel laws". That statement is incorrect. English libel law is now broadly comparable with other countries. Northern Ireland still has bad libel law, but the statement that the UK has the strictest laws is simply not true anymore.

2. Paywalls don't matter, most of our medical content uses paywalled sources. They do lead to FUTON bias - and in fcat deprecating the Mail is a good thing from that point of view as it pushes towards a reliable-but-paywalled source instead of a crappy but free one.

3. The DM is not the only source we deprecate. It is the only one which has a print edition, but most of the DM's content is on the internet not print. And that would not be a reason anyway: I think there is reasonably strong consensus that National Inquirer, the Washington Times and sundry other print sources should also be deprecated. It is not only but first.

4. IPSO is an industry body, nonetheless, its figures clearly show that the Daily Mail and Mail Online have, between them, nearly 50% more complaints as the Sun and Sun Online, the next most complained-about - and most of those Sun complaints were, as far as I can ascertain, related to Hillsborough. So yes, the Mail is, by the objective measure you appear to prefer, worse than other UK tabloids.

You seem very determined to allow one of the worst published sources in the UK to be used on Wikipedia. A much better approach would be to deprecate other, equally crappy sources, including The Sun. The number of facts which are genuinely significant and where the Daily Mail is the best available source is, it is safe to say, very small, and already handled under the existing guidance. Guy (Help!) 14:48, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

User:JzG, you wrote: You seem very determined to allow one of the worst published sources in the UK to be used on Wikipedia. There is no evidence it is the worst out of tabloids and newspapers; it is the largest, most popular newspaper in the U.K. so it will be more complained about and to ban it is madness. Why not also ban the BBC, New York Times or The Guardian who are well known for their biases and twisting of facts? Or is that unthinkable because of their political leanings? This ban is POV pushing, it is obvious. I edit almost exclusively medical content and all newspapers, including tabloids, are quite rightly banned, so lifting or maintaining the ban will have zero effect on articles I edit. I genuinely think I have never used the Daily Mail as a source in the ten plus years I have been an editor on this site. And I have no aspirations to start using the DM personally on Wikipedia. I have no horse in this race, as you implied. My concerns are about NPOV re. the general encyclopedia. Take BREXIT, for example; how can we cover that neutrally when we bias editors into choosing sources that are REMAIN? We want a diverse range of sources to cite all viewpoints, per NPOV. If you don’t or can’t realise the damage this ban does to NPOV, well... good grief chief. This is a largely partisan ban that damages the encyclopedia for agenda driven reasons primarily and needs lifted.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 19:40, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

Are you hinting that the BBC is leftist!? (see https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/bbc-bias-jeremy-corbyn-labour-centre-right-robbie-gibb-theresa-may-laura-keunssberg-andrew-marr-a7844826.html) Lets ignore the fact the clear majority of the press in UK are Right of Center, it is irrelevant. Here we are ONLY concerned with RELIABILITY of the source, NOT its political leanings, political leanings are irrelevant here _{(side note re POV claim: the was a clear leaning in the UK press towards BREXIT e.g. http://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2016-05-23-uk-newspapers-positions-brexit)}. ... It is fallacious to say that it is wrong that the Daily Mail is the only bad news source that has this useful filter guiding editors, so we should lift the ban .... the error is more that we as editors have failed to add similar guidance on the use of other Tabloids and other Media Sources found to be equally poor unreliable sources. ~ BOD ~ ^TALK 22:33, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

The idea that the BBC is leftist is quite funny, but even more "we bias editors into choosing sources that are REMAIN?". Every mass market newspaper in the UK apart from the Mirror and Guardian supports Leave. Even more than that, the Mirror is very careful not to press the point, as it knows a lot of its readership voted to leave, and the Mail has changed course away from its very pro-Brexit stance under its new leadership. Black Kite (talk) 22:52, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

BOD, I do agree with the idea that guidance on the use of newspapers, tabloids in particular, should be authored by the community. I do agree, believe it or not, that the Daily Mail alongside other tabloids have their limitations and shortfalls and often other more reliable sources should be favoured. It is just this almost blanket ban on Daily Mail is really silly. The Daily Mail runs many articles which are nonpartisan and thus not at risk of sensationalism or bias, but if an editor wants to add a non controversial factoid to a wiki article sourced to the Daily Mail it is going to get reverted for no good reason other than this irritating blanket ban. Surely the sensible thing to do is write guidance discouraging tabloids but not outright banning them and not singling out the Daily Mail? I mean for medical articles sources in low impact journals are not outright banned but often discouraged in favour of sources in higher quality medical journals.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 23:21, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

I understand what you say. Sometimes editors can be trigger happy. My own bias is influenced by the fact a close friend took a complaint about the Daily Mail, in regards to an abusive article about her (concerning a court case which she won) to the old Press Complaints Commission 10 years ago, and only received a very weak personal apology rather than a public one. I think the failing to enact on the Leveson Inquiry etc was a bad thing. ~ BOD ~ ^TALK 00:28, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

• Yes, lift the ban. People cite a number of inaccuracies by the DM. But all media have inaccuracies. For example, The New York Times, considered by some the newspaper of record of the United States, engaged in a major conspiracy to hide, dissimulate, and spin the Holomodor genocide that killed 7.5 million people in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The New York Times 60 years later conceded that it is "some of the worst reporting to appear in this newspaper."^[1]. The New York Times own investigator in 2003, concluded the NYT gave voice to Stalinist propaganda.^[2] Even the owner of the NYT, Sulzberger Jr., said it "should have been recognized for what it was by his editors" (meaning, in his case, "my editors"). Now, some will argue the NYT's "introspection" proves the difference between it and the DM, but, what is easier than to show contrition for the actions of one's forebears? On the contrary, does the NYT face up to its daily sins, omissions, spin, partisanship and peccadilloes of today? How easily it will be admitting it sins two generations from now when all the principals are dead! (assuming it survives that long). Well, the same principle should apply to the Daily Mail, and it is extremely hypocritical to uniquely single it out from among all journals in the world when all journals and journalists have their own POV and spin and sensationalize ceaselessly. Besides, as cited by others, the DM has to content with Britain's extremely demanding libel laws and regulations: it cannot possibly be any worse than any other British media! End the ban already. XavierItzm (talk) 10:19, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

• Could you give us some clear examples of the NYT's "daily sins, omissions, spin, partisanship and peccadilloes of today" that it hasn't owned up to? Many thanks. Martinevans123 (talk) 10:26, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

The request that one bring up demonstrated evidence of its current problems is as outlandish as it would have been, in the 1930's, to bring you manifest sources that the New York Times was able to, in fact, win a Pulitzer Prize for being the mouthpiece of Stalin, the leader of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Not a realistic proposition.

But the real issue is that all media has its own implicit bias and errors. Unless you believe, of course, that journalists are angels above all human concerns. XavierItzm (talk) 13:09, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

• Yes - bans are a supremely bad idea and are always misused. There are always other, better sources that can be added to contrast what publications like The Daily Mail say. Also there was poor evidence for this ban in the original RfC. Wikipedia is becoming more punitive and less welcoming. If we want to stop loosing editors we need to make it a more positive experience for editors and putting warning boxes in front of them in ever increasing numbers is antithetical to this goal. Morgan Leigh | Talk 10:38, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

@Morgan Leigh:The is zero harm in providing good guidance to new, inexperienced and other editors ~ that some sources are well known to be unreliable. ~ BOD ~ ^TALK 11:08, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

@Morgan Leigh: Bans don't exist. The Mail is deprecated, not banned. We do the same with predatory journals, self-published books and multiple other classes of source that have a reputation for inaccuracy, bias, and lack of adequate editorial control. The handling of the Mail is fully consistent with this. Guy (Help!) 12:32, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

It's a ban. Please stop pretending that it is anything else. Per WP:DUCK - if it acts like a ban (and it does), if people treat it like a ban (and they do), and if everyone calls it a ban (and even the Guardian did) then let's not kid ourselves that it is not a ban. Post a reference to the DM anywhere on this site and it is highly likely that an editor will come into delete the ban with an edit summary reading "RM non-RS", without bothering to look at the article or at the reference being used. Re-post the reference and some helpful soul may post a DS notice on your talk page.

And let's also stop saying that this is about guidance! We already have guidance about using tabloid sources on BLP/controversial articles and do not need a ban to add to it. This ban is not about guidance - it is the opposite of guidance, it is compulsion. FOARP (talk) 13:13, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

I see. So now we rely on The Guardian to inform us on how we conduct ourselves. You're essentially saying "if editors routinely misuse a measure, that was agreed by means of a RfC, that's the way it has to stay - the misuse is self-justifed"? Martinevans123 (talk) 13:23, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

@FOARP: If it IS inevitable that another editor (and maybe other editors) has to waste time removing stuff, why not provide guidance to halt the inclusion of questionable stuff in the first place. The DM maybe great in a minority of subjects, its overall reliability has damned its usefullness. The are plenty of other sources. ~ BOD ~ ^TALK 13:31, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

• No. The Daily Mail transgressed the press regulator rules no fewer than 50 times in 2017, making it by far the biggest offender of the year out of the publications monitored by IPSO.--Moxy (talk) 12:48, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

Wow. You're literally relying on a ludicrously incorrect blog source to substantiate a point. On an RfC about reliable sources. On Wiki.

The real figure for rulings upheld against them was 10 (see the figure for Associated - owners of the DM - on p. 22-23 here). Counting the total rulings is completely bizarre methodology because it includes the rulings that were in the DM's favour and where no wrong doing was found on their part. Only the rulings against them are evidence of wrong-doing, and in that area the DM is unremarkable, especially when measured against circulation (more copies sold will always mean more complaints, even for publications that are identical).

Here's a tip - if a blog post cites all sorts of "facts" that cannot be found in the original, then they may well be lying through their teeth. FOARP (talk) 13:21, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

Let me hold your hand ...pls review the attached sources reports. --Moxy (talk) 13:38, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

Um, that's a 404 page. Not very good at this whole internet lark, right?

I include a link to IPSOS's 2017 annual report - the one in which they listed only 10 decision upheld against the DM's publishers - in my comment above, BTW, so why not just click on that? FOARP (talk) 13:42, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

Paul Dacre still had a leading role at IPSO until July that year. IPSO is not an independent body in anything but name.

But yes, let's look at that report. The five most complained about publications were, in descending order: The Sun; The Daily Mail; Mail Online; Metro; the Mail on Sunday. Four out of five were Associated Newspapers titles. The three Mail titles received twice as many complaints as any other single news brand. They received an order of magnitude more complaints than anyone else in the list of most complained about publications, other than The Sun, which, to be absolutely clear, I would also consider a never-use source. Guy (Help!) 14:27, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

1) Number of complaints has to been assessed against circulation - it is inevitable that higher circulation papers receive higher numbers of complaints, since they have more eyes on them, you will note that the top five print publications (i.e., non-website) for complaints are also the top five print publications in terms of circulation.

2) The number of complaints includes multiple complaints about the same issue, as well as wrong and baseless complaints - only the ones upheld actually matter as these have been assessed and wrongdoing found, and for these the DM is not remarkable.

3) Dacre is on a committee at IPSOS, but the actual committee that adjudicates cases is completely separate and of a different make-up.

4) The idea that "IPSOS is not independent" has no real basis, IPSOS regularly makes decisions against the Mail and other newspapers, it's decision are open to judicial review and as yet no JR has found against them. FOARP (talk) 16:20, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

Circulation is listed alongside each source in the IPSO report. The Sun and the Mail are comparable. The Sun's website has half the reach and got fewer than one tenth the complaints. Your fervour to reinstate links to this crappy tabloid is causing you to make bad arguments. Guy (Help!) 17:06, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

@FOARP:_{Fun Note: IPSOS, meaning "themselves", is the magical formula of the Aeon of Ma'at as transmitted by Nema in her inspired magical work, Liber Pennae Praenumbra. :)} ... However the UK Newspaper regulator IPSO is not really independent, it is a self regulator paid for by its member publishers, including the Daily Mail itself. ~ BOD ~ ^TALK 19:28, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

• Yes - lift the ban - however, Replace it with much stronger guidance limiting the use of news media sources (in general). Reliability depends on context. No source is ever 100% reliable or 100% unreliable. What is needed is clearer guidance to help editors understand when and how to use news sources appropriately... instructing them on the distinctions between news reporting and news analysis/opinion. We need clearer guidance on when information taken from a news source can be accepted as unattributed fact, and when it must be attributed. We need to instruct editors to look for subsequent reporting and retractions. We need to make it clear that a specific news story may contain errors or omissions that make it unreliable, while other news stories from the same outlet are fine. Do this, and there will no longer be a need to single out any specific outlet. Flawed reporting will be still be deemed unreliable (on an individual story level), while the reliable reporting can be accepted... regardless of outlet. Blueboar (talk) 18:37, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

• [EC] How would such "stronger guidance" handle the problem -- a daily occurrence with this source, not much of a problem with other tabloids -- of an item appearing in The Daily Mail which is extremely reliable because TDM stole it from a reliable but obscure source, changed a few words here and there, added a paragraph of shit they made up which looks exactly like what a reliable source would report (except it didn't happen), and slapped their byline on the resulting unattributed plagiarism? Here is one such plagiarized story: Imagine you are thinking of using that page as a source. Try to find where TDM stole it from in a reasonable amount of time. Can't find the original even though you know to look for plagiarism? Now explain how "much stronger guidance" would have helped you avoid linking to a clear copyright violation. --Guy Macon (talk) 19:23, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

I almost would support this, it if was in place before any ban was lifted. But I think we will still have the problem, too many news sources now make it almost impossible to tell news from opinion. What we need is stronger restrictions on the use of news media. I suppose one answer is if a news story contains one error it is not RS, regardless of the source.Slatersteven (talk) 19:05, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

Pretty much everything of any significant length ever written by anyone ever contained at least one error. Not sure that would work. For myself I'm happy just saying that tabloid sources should be avoided for BLP/controversial subjects and leaving it there for editors to make their own decisions. The present automated ban is unnecessary and unhelpful. FOARP (talk) 20:54, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

• Strong no The Daily Mail is not reliable - examples: The Guardian, USAToday, The Guardian. The Daily Mail has had a new editor for only two months and the burden of proof is on those claiming that it has changed. Autarch (talk) 22:47, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

The two Guardian links above both cover stories that a whole list of papers got wrong (including online Guardian in the first case). What the DM is uniquely accused of is 'dressing up' the wrong story with a great deal of emotive 'soap opera' detail - despicable, but why would WP be including that kind of tosh anyway? I didn't check out USAToday. Pincrete (talk) 20:24, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

Details like "Following the verdict, Knox and Sollecito were taken out of court escorted by prison guards and into a waiting van which took her back to her cell at Capanne jail near Perugia and him to Terni jail, 60 miles away. Both will be put on a suicide watch for the next few days" are hardly "tosh". They are exactly the sort of thing Wikipedia editors use to make sure they get details like what jail someone was sent to right. --Guy Macon (talk) 20:32, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

So getting the verdict wrong (caused by an early poor/partial translation and the wish to be 'first'), which several outlets did, inc Gdn online, is OK, - but getting the prison wrong that they were supposedly, subsequently sent to is an unpardonable offence! Makes perfect (non) sense to me. It sounds like an argument for us not following the general press tendency to want to be first to publish - rather than indicating a particular problem with this source. Pincrete (talk) 13:49, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

Whether is makes sense to you is your problem. It makes perfect sense to any reasonable person. The first kind of accidental error (getting it wrong and quickly correcting it) is, as you yourself admit, pretty normal. It usually doesn't lead to errors in any Wikipedia article unless someone is sitting their waiting for the first report so they can be first on Wikipedia -- and even then it is quickly fixed. The second kind of purposeful error (making up details and fabricating direct quotes) only gets corrected in the rare cases where they made the first kind of accidental error along with their usual second kind of purposeful error. Normally, the error just sits there and gets repeated by other major media outlets. I don't know whether you are doing this on purpose (I strongly WP:IDHT suspect that you are) but you are cluelessly acting as if there is no difference between a real journalist who does his best, gets something wrong and then corrects it -- and who would be fired if he purposely fabricated a direct quote -- and a hack who makes shit up, fabricates direct quotes and sometimes publishes entire interviews that never happened, and maybe issues a correction if he gets caught -- and even then the correction is often months later. The Wikipedia community has spoken in one RfC and it looks like the current RfC will go the same way; we have examined what The Daily Mail does, determined that it is unreliable on a whole new level compared to other tabloids, and decided not to use it as a source. --Guy Macon (talk) 17:16, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

• No. I do not see what is supposed to have changed, either among the editorial community of Wikipedia or in the editorial practices of the paper. Drmies (talk) 17:32, 14 December 2018 (UTC)
• Yes, lift the ban The Mail is a major daily in a country famed for its feisty and free press, a country, I hasten to add, that is also famed for (like Wikipedia) for the highly partisan nature of its editors. The charge is that the Mail's editing process published a lot of erroneous info. But I know of no newspaper that has not published untruths, not even the New Yorker. But singling out a major, national daily is highly problematic. A better approach is for editors to be more discrimination about which sources they choose to rely on.E.M.Gregory (talk) 18:05, 14 December 2018 (UTC)
• Fix. It is okay to cite an opinion published in The Daily Mail, according to three of the WP:DAILYMAIL closers, see the NPOVN archive of a May 2017 discussion and look for the words "Attributed opinions of the author were not considered in the RFC, and a reasonable exception from the ban appears correct here." -- but that is not in WP:DAILYMAIL itself so it's been missed sometimes. And the edit filter for The Daily Mail does not represent what the closers said. Of course I voted against the ban last time but see the way the wind is blowing so I'm just pleading for a close now that clarifies: WP:DAILYMAIL should be updated, misuse shouldn't be tolerated, edit filters should say exactly what RfC closers say. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 01:18, 15 December 2018 (UTC)
• Yes no evidence exists that the DM is especially wrong about facts that are within our remit anyway. We should be able to find a better way to discourage the use of tabloids. We should be willing to acknowledge that 'better sources' means not only sources that are more likely to be accurate, but also ones that give fuller, less contentiously phrased, less trivialised accounts of the subject covered. I cannot imagine any situation in which I would prefer to cite the DM (or any UK tabloids), but I am not persuaded that the de facto ban achieves anything. Pincrete (talk) 20:24, 16 December 2018 (UTC)
• No. per WP:CLUE. Allowing this junk source would in no way help our Project. Alexbrn (talk) 20:38, 16 December 2018 (UTC)
• No Lacks a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy as required by our longstanding policy. This is an encyclopedia. If the only possible source for a statement is the Daily Mail that is a strong indication that the material does not belong. Neutrality^talk 17:32, 17 December 2018 (UTC)
• No. It's written by individuals who aren't experts in their subject areas, and their writings aren't reviewed by subject experts. Potentially useful for basic facts that are indisputable and that obviously get mentioned in solid secondary sources (e.g. "Joe Bloggs died yesterday, 16 December 2018"), but not more, just like any other newspaper. Treat it like any other primary source, and don't advocate the fringe theory that news reports about current events are secondary sources. Nyttend (talk) 22:38, 17 December 2018 (UTC)
• Yea As if the backslash wasn't enough. Saturnalia0 (talk) 03:41, 18 December 2018 (UTC)
• No - reading recent articles makes it clear that WP:V/WP:RS is not the mission of this source. Just looking at one or two days of their articles, one finds a lot of articles (even excluding the celeb stuff) that would be rejected as good source material for an encyclopedia. If the Daily Mail had undergone a transformation in its fact checking, this would not be so. I found: a health/medical article that didn't exaggerate, it outright fabricated claims that the underlying studies did not claim. (Claimed the study proved ME is real and caused by the immune system, after decades of baffling experts , but the study simply showed that in HepC patients, certain immune responses may cause CFS like symptoms. ) An article containing extremely dangerous BLP material. (Quoting the unnamed boyfriend of an ex-girlfriend of a man "has has not been ruled out" in the disappearance of his wife, saying the potential suspect cheated on her while she was in hospital, with no discernible fact checking.) Multiple articles on sensational subjects that other sources do not find notable. (A woman owns a dumb horse . A woman claims her boyfriend is cheating on her during her birthday toast . A woman has such a washboard stomach she didn't notice she was pregnant, until a midwife moved the baby and instantly revealed a baby bump.) If new management had whipped the Daily Mail into WP:RS shape, I wouldn't find two downright dangerous stories and several non-encyclopedic ones (even generously ignoring all the celeb gossip articles), in less than 36 hours of their coverage. Chris vLS (talk) 06:19, 18 December 2018 (UTC)

If we leave aide the fact that even the best newspaper is never going to align fully with the values of an encyclopaedia, then taking this post at face value, its by far the most persuasive pro ban post. So I checked carefully - and most of the above claims are wrong. For example, DM is not saying the baby wasn’t discovered until the midwife moved it. It said the mother took a pregnancy test on her Mum’s suggestion. Afterwards she was looked at by Doctors, and obviously the midwife came on the scene later still. (Granted, it may have been clearer if the DM had used a '.' rather than a '–' in the subheading.) That said, thank you for engaging substantially in an evidence based way and raising the quality of this discussion. FeydHuxtable (talk) 08:26, 18 December 2018 (UTC)

Thanks. In that same spirit, I'll double check my work! Cheers. Chris vLS (talk) 17:55, 18 December 2018 (UTC)

Ok, I have double checked my work. Details below.

1. ME Article. The TDM article states "Chronic fatigue syndrome is a real condition caused by an over-active immune system, a study claims. " I stand by my claim that a responsible editor, with even a moderate commitment to WP:V/WP:RS would not publish this sentence or much of this article. ME/CFS is a complex disease, one study doesn't ever suddenly come out and say "it's caused by x". A WP:V/WP:RS editor would catch this at a glance. And indeed, no other sources said this about this study. So, I stand by the claim that this article is evidence of non-RS behavior, and my description of the article above is still pretty ok.
2. Missing person article. The TDM article states "A former girlfriend who dated (subject) more than six years ago declined to speak to DailyMail.com but her current partner said: 'He cheated on her while she was in the hospital, take that for what it's worth.' " Again, a WP:V editor would not run an unattributed statement about presumably indirect knowledge of an alleged event six years ago about a limited-purpose public figure from a source with such an obvious source of non-objectivity. This does not appear in other sources. So, I stand by my claim that this is evidence of non-RS, even dangerous, BLP behavior. That said, my summary misstated the relationship between the article’s subject and the missing person, they were engaged, not married. And I used too many pronouns. A better summary would be: The article quoted the unnamed current partner of an ex-girlfriend, from six years ago, of a man who "has not been ruled out" in the disappearance of his fiancée. The current boyfriend of the man’s ex-girlfriend claims that the man cheated on said ex-girlfriend while she was in hospital. The article hinted at no discernible fact checking of this statement.”
3. Dumb horse article. The TDM article lede is “A story online about an incredibly stupid and lazy horse named Tango has gone viral on Twitter as people enjoy the animal's funny anecdotes.” This is an article about tweets about a horse that is too dumb to go into the barn when it snows, among other pretty amusing behavior. Honestly, it’s seriously funny. That said, we would not take this article as RS evidence of notability. Other RS did not cover it. I stand by my claim that this is evidence of non-RS behavior and I stand by my description.
4. Birthday breakup article. This is an article about a woman who breaks up with her boyfriend during her birthday toast. It received five million views. It did, in fact, get one or two mentions in WP:RS sources, . So this is not evidence of a change of behavior, nor is it evidence of unequivocally non-RS behavior. While I don’t think that we would accept this coverage to support an encyclopedia article, that would be because of other policies, so I withdraw this example.
5. Surprise pregnancy article. This is an article about a woman who didn’t know she was pregnant. You are correct that the sequence was that, after the development of a pigmentation line, she took a pregnancy test, then the midwife re-positioned the baby, then the bump was visible. That said, this article is still not in line with general RS notions of reporting and notability. Even the Mirror, which apparently has no consensus on its reliability here, thinks to say that the woman “claims” that she didn’t know about the baby, as opposed to putting the claim in the reported voice, as TDM did.[ https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/teenager-stunned-find-shes-nine-13744400] The only other major source was the Metro, for which there is a consensus that it is non-RS.[ https://metro.co.uk/2018/12/17/teenager-didnt-know-pregnant-eight-months-8256178/]. I stand by my claim that this is evidence of TDM not being a good RS source, especially for notability. I accept your correction to my summary of the baby bump discovery.

All in all, I should have to dig a lot deeper than one or two days to find this many examples of non-encyclopedic RS source behavior – especially of the kind seen in the first two examples. For most of these, I have no problem that the Daily Mail is doing what they are doing, it’s just that we’re doing something different here. Sorting out when their methods align with ours is too hard if they are not doing it consistently. This is one reason why reputation -- a surrogate for consistency -- is a good test to have for use as WP:RS. Thanks for taking my bit seriously. Cheers. Chris vLS (talk) 23:43, 18 December 2018 (UTC)

• Surely there are better sources that would render the drivel that is the Daily Mail unneeded in most circumstances? Esquivalience (talk) 03:39, 19 December 2018 (UTC)
  • If something is in The Daily Mail and another source, use the other source, making sure that they aren't just slightly rewording something they read in The Daily Mail. If something (anything from an entire article to a small detail in an article) is found only in The Daily Mail, we should assume that it was fabricated. See 'My year ripping off the web for the Daily Mail', by ex-employee: "The Mail’s editorial model depends on little more than dishonesty, theft of copyrighted material and sensationalism so absurd that it crosses into fabrication." --Guy Macon (talk) 10:28, 19 December 2018 (UTC)
    • So what about all those "exclusive interviews", such as Mark Lester's sperm donations for Michael Jackson? Fabricated? (whether or not such material is "encyclopaedic" is another question, of course). Martinevans123 (talk) 10:52, 19 December 2018 (UTC)
      • To be honest we should be verifying basically every 'breaking news' source, not just the DM. If it's not corroborated, we probably shouldn't be including it. CThomas³ (talk) 23:26, 21 December 2018 (UTC)
        • That would mean that "exclusives", whatever their source, can't be used (although they are possibly a journalistic device more used by tabloids, anyway). That's a point much wider than just Daily Mail. Martinevans123 (talk) 23:37, 21 December 2018 (UTC)
          • Yep, it definitely would mean that. And for the purpose of Wikipedia I think that's appropriate; if another source hasn't picked up on it, we probably should at the very least think twice about adding it. Either it ended up not being important, or it wasn't true in the first place. But I agree that it is an issue much wider than the DM. CThomas³ (talk) 00:12, 22 December 2018 (UTC)
• Support This was always an ill-worded sledgehammer to crack an ill-defined nut. Much as I loathe the politics of the DM, and the behaviour of some of its staff, its coverage of the arts, for example, is often very good, and has material which is not available elsewhere. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 17:04, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

• I'd have to admit that the Daily Mail often has excellent pictures. For example, their coverage of the death of Ravi Shankar was very good indeed. A shame we can't just link to images. Martinevans123 (talk) 23:42, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

• If we lifted the ban, we could. :) I actually find that a compelling reason to lift it. If there really is some good content there, let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Nothing says we can't continue to be vigilant about keeping the inappropriate references cleaned up, even if there is no ban. CThomas³ (talk) 00:17, 22 December 2018 (UTC)

^Maybe so. Even then, however, I think it was impossible to avoid the somewhat repulsive "sidebar of shame". Martinevans123 (talk) 12:16, 28 December 2018 (UTC)

• No, and let's not revisit this in six months, but when there's some actual evidence to suggest the DM has changed. Perhaps some articles about cancer research that bear some relationship to the truth? Pinkbeast (talk) 02:56, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

• No. No compelling reasons to vacate the first RfC. --K.e.coffman (talk) 03:11, 21 December 2018 (UTC)
• Yes, the restrictions should never have been put in place in the first case. Let editors use judgement about whether to use the reference in individual articles, don't blanket ban it and throw out useful and reliable references in some topics because of some unreliable ones in other topics. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 06:36, 21 December 2018 (UTC)
• No The Daily Mail is systematically unreliable. Its Australian edition also routinely steals the work of other journalists (). Nick-D (talk) 03:48, 22 December 2018 (UTC)

This is worth reading / viewing. It's a bit of bait-&-switch because the headline suggests the Daily Mail breaks the law, which they admit is not true in the body. Still, this does seem like treacherous poaching, worse then en.wp even for the press, given the google juice they get. Thanks for posting this article, Nick-D. ~ 🐝 ~ SashiRolls ^{t · c} 21:54, 25 December 2018 (UTC)

This practice raises issues about whether the Daily Mail meets WP:COPYVIOEL. While the site may be complying with the law, stealing the work of other journalists is highly unethical. It also means that the DM is frequently not engaging in collecting news itself, and is at best a tertiary source. Nick-D (talk) 04:36, 27 December 2018 (UTC)

• Yes - allow each article to stand on its own merit, rather than assume all articles are bad -- Whats new?^(talk) 05:36, 23 December 2018 (UTC)
• No. We should not consider changing our stance on this until there is evidence that it has transformed itself into a systematically reliable source and has remained so for a significant period of time (at least 12 months, ideally longer). Thryduulf (talk) 01:00, 24 December 2018 (UTC)
• No. No significant change to their operations since the last RfC. Dreamy Jazz 🎷 ^{talk to me | my contributions} 21:51, 24 December 2018 (UTC)
• YesI know many articles in the Daily Mail are very questionable (the infamous health section for a start). However, they are bound by press regulations which restrict them from publishing things that are blatently untrue. This sets them apart from other unreliable sources, such as blogs. All media outlets occasionally publish inaccurate information, but because the British press is regulated by the Independent Press Complaints Commission, they are obliged to retract innacurate information. This is why I think the Daily Mail is a reliable source. Also, it is widely read, and so influences public opinion. I have cited Mail articles to show this.(along the lines of, The Daily Mail said X, the Sun said Y and the Guardian said Z). Also, other papers similar to the Mail are not restricted. The Express is very similar to the Mail in terms of its content, but it is not banned from wikipedia.CircleGirl (talk) 18:02, 26 December 2018 (UTC)

• Really? Please post a link where The Daily Mail published a retraction of their fabricated interview with Footballer Paul Pogba. --Guy Macon (talk) 21:02, 26 December 2018 (UTC)

• Really. Nowhere did CircleGirl claim that The Daily Mail "publishes retractions" of inaccurate information. Many highly reputable newspapers don't. What the Mail did do was remove the story from their website – yes, the verb retract doesn't mean the same thing as "publish a retraction". In fact, that's even better than the BBC publishing a doubling-down after being caught fabricating a report on Band Aid or Live Aid charity. wumbolo ^^^ 15:39, 31 December 2018 (UTC)

• Yes, overturn, and restore the ten thousand or so references to it.

1. While lots of people during the first discussion pointed to the Daily Mail's coverage of celebrities. I don't recall contributors offering long lists of instances where article's had been damaged because reckless contributors had made reckless use of the Daily Mail's coverage of trivial or unreliable reporting on celebrities.
2. As other people pointed out in the initial discussion, the Daily Mail had a long tradition of very solid reporting. It is absurd to trash the references to articles written during this period.
3. As others out, in addition to the Daily Mail's vapid and trivial coverage of celebrities, it continues to have a large number of solid, hard-working reporters, who write high-quality articles.
4. The explanation from the troika of administrators who closed the first discussion contained a naive, facile and deeply wrong passage. Paraphrasing from memory ... they wrote that any references to articles from the Daily Mail that were solid reporting should be able to be trivially recreated by finding equally solid replacement references from its competitors.
   1. This was bullshit, because searching for alternate references becomes more and more difficult the more time has passed. Google's algorithm's keep being tweaked. This tweaking makes google searches more likely to be of value to their average user, but less and less useful to wikipedia contirbutors searching for a replacement for a reference from several years ago.
   2. This was bullshit, because some of the very solid Daily Mail reporting was of the deep investigative kind, where you don't expect their competitors to publish articles competing with the Daily Mail's original. The Daily Mail published article on Diego Garcia, a tiny scrap of UK territory thousands of kilometres from scrutiny, in the Indian Ocean. Half a century ago the UK agreed to kick off all the original occupants, and let the USA use the Island as a military base. In the post-011 world there were rumors that the CIA and US military had established a secret torture centre on Diego Garcia.

      Well, the very solid reporters, working for the solid side of the Daily Mail, published solid articles on this aspect of Diego Garcia. These weren't puff pieces, full of speculation, or innuendo. These weren't anti American opinion pieces. The solid reporters doing this work stuck to the facts, only published updates when their were genuine new facts to report.

      The Diego Garcia reporting is just one instance that suggests the closing administrators, first time around, failed to make a well-informed closure, because they just didn't think things through. They blithely asserted it should be trivial to find alternate references to any solid Daily Mail references, that were just as good. Well, at the time I used those Daily Mail references I searched for alternates. There either weren't any, or they were briefer, less detailed, less authoritative "Yesterday, the Daily Mail reported on new sources that Diego Garcia had been used as a torture centre.

      I've used dozens of solid references to Daily Mail reporting. None of those references were easily replaceable.

At the time of the initial discussion there were tens of thousands of references to articles from the Daily Mail. And yet I don't remember those arguing for blacklisting the Daily Mail offering a long list of instances were those existing references had proven a problem.

One thing the closing administrators overlooked was the incredible amount of work implied by blacklisting this very widely used source. If, for the sake of argument, equally valid alternate references could be found for each solid Daily Mail reference, how long would it take to search for replacements?

To do an effective job, at least ten minutes, more like half an hour, each. (for a total of over ten thousand personhours) Chance of success? Less than fifty-fifty.

So the second half of their closure, which the closing administrators didn't bother setting up, was finding volunteers to spend well over ten thousand hours, on the thankless task of searching for alternate articles to reference, to replace the Daily Mail references.

IMO, not only should the blacklist be lifted from the Daily Mail, but a robot should be set to the task of re-inserting every Daily Mail reference that an earlier robot replaced.

To the many contributors here, who voiced a "no" -- please understand that the initial discussion was not based wikipedia contributor's misusing unreliable Daily Mail articles reporting on trivial aspects of the lives of celebrities, rather it was based on a naive prejudice against the Daily Mail providing that kind of reporting, while ignoring the salid reporting coming from that publication. That those who initially argued that the Daily Mail should be blacklisted weren't able to, or weren't interested in, providing examples of wikipedia contributors mis-using the Daily Mail suggests to me it by and large wasn't being mis-used.

As I noted above, the blacklisting should have been followed by a ten thousand hour campaign to look for alternate references to all the Daily Mail references which were solid and reliable. If the occasional inexperienced wikipedia contributor misused the occasional trivial celebrity article from the Daily Mail, that should, IMO, continued to be dealt with through regular editing, on the relevant article's talk pages. Geo Swan (talk) 12:21, 27 December 2018 (UTC)

• Oppose any vacation for the original RfC; on the matter of a new editor in Derry Street, Zhou Enlai speaks for me. Also, suggest a moratorium on re-running this RfC at any point in the near future. ——SerialNumber54129 18:01, 27 December 2018 (UTC)

Discussion (Daily Mail)