Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 297

User:Rupert loup removed the following as "primary" "Political scientist Antonia Grunenberg describes "anti-fascism" as a "strange term, that expresses opposition to something, but no political concept", and points out that while all democrats are against fascism, not everyone who is against fascism is a democrat; in this sense Grunenberg argues that the term obscures the difference between democrats and non-democrats.^[1] Tim Peters notes that the term is one of the most controversial terms in political discourse.^[2] Norman Davies notes that "anti-fascism" originated as an ideological construct of Soviet propaganda: "'anti-fascism' did not offer a coherent political ideology. In terms of ideas, it was an empty vessel, a mere political dance. It showed its adherents what to oppose, not what to believe in. It gave the false impression that principled democrats believing in the rule of law and freedom of speech could rub along fine with the dictators of the proletariat, or that democratic socialists had only minor differences with Communism."^[3] Michael Richter highlights the ideological use of the term in the Soviet Union and the Eastern bloc, in which the term fascism was applied to opponents of Communism regardless of any connection to historical fascism, and where the term anti-fascism served to legitimize communist rule.^[4]"

and this as "Primary opinion WP:PRIMARY"

"The diversity of political entities that share only their anti-fascism has prompted the historian Norman Davies to argue in his book Europe at War 1939–1945: No Simple Victory that anti-fascism does not offer a coherent political ideology, but rather that it is an "empty vessel". Davies further asserts that the concept of anti-fascism is a "mere political dance" created by Josef Stalin and spread by Soviet propaganda organs in an attempt to create the false impression that Western democrats by joining the USSR in the opposition to fascism could in general align themselves politically with communism. The motive would be to lend legitimacy to the dictatorship of the proletariat and was done at the time the USSR was pursuing a policy of collective security. Davies goes on to point out that with Winston Churchill as a notable exception, the concept of anti-fascism gained widespread support in the West, except that its credibility suffered a serious but temporary blow while the USSR and Nazi Germany coordinated their wars of aggression in Eastern Europe under their Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact.^[5]"

I don't see it. Doug Weller talk 12:27, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

• Er, really? On the face of it, all that is perfectly fine. In fact better sources than a lot of content we have. Guy (help!) 13:35, 4 June 2020 (UTC)
• Looks like a misunderstanding of WP:PRIMARY and a failure to clarify their objections to the content in your discussion. I would say that a series of attributions to random authors causes the text to read as a bibliographic narrative rather than a summary of the topic. Who are Grunenberg, Peters, Davies, and Richter that their views should be highlighted? Do other scholars look to them and their works as making important contributions on the topic? That's not an argument for outright removal tho, and i don't see any policy or guideline based objection to the content. fiveby(zero) 13:53, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

  Fiveby, well, Antonia Grunenberg and Norman Davies both have author links, and the other two are peer reviewed papers in respectable journals, so the answer appears to be that yes, others do look to them. In fact this looks like its pretty squarely the area of expertise of Grunenberg, especially.

  Maybe the argument is closer to WP:SYN, rather than WP:RS (clear pass) or WP:UNDUE (unlikely given the author credentials). Guy (help!) 15:05, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

  When reading outside WP, and an author mentions another's work i tend to assign some importance. Whether the author agrees or disagrees with the view he is calling attention to it for a reason. When i see another author quoted it's because he has either phrased something so well that it nicely summarizes a topic or perfectly illustrates what is so wrong about their view. When reading WP articles i must reverse that assumption and assign less weight. Maybe it's something that editors couldn't agree how to incorporate into summary test so by default it ends up as an attributed statement. Maybe it's just something an editor googled and inserted because it matches their POV and is only there because it is "RS". Compare the number of attributed statements in some articles to other works, much more than usual and much, much more that other encyclopedias. Anyway that argument probably goes far beyond what most editors would see as WP:UNDUE, but would readers agree? fiveby(zero) 18:09, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

• Yes, definitely - and there are many more scholarly publications. It is an inadequate term and has been throughout its history in Europe with no distinct definition. See journal article What Fascism Is Not: Thoughts on the Deflation of a Concept by Gilbert Allardyce, and Marcel H. Van Herpen's book Putinism pp 116-126, Defining Fascism: The “Thin” Method ...an ideology in which national revival (palingenesis) has a central place, and that it is populist and ultra-nationalist and thereby “precludes the nationalism of dynastic rulers and imperial powers before the rise of mass politics and democratic forces (…), as well as the populist (liberal) nationalism which overthrows a colonial power to institute representative democracy. There are countless books and articles by historians and academics that corroborate the term's inadequacy, and the inability of scholars and historians to succinctly define it because it takes on so many different forms. ^Atsme _Talk 📧 15:12, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

  Atsme, that's fascism, though, not anti-fascism. Much of the issue with defining fascism is people being overly careful not to violate Godwin's Law when describing white supremacists, as far as I can tell. Antifa doesn't seem to care about such philological niceties, as it defines white supremacy as a thing it opposes. Guy (help!) 15:42, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

  But Guy don't we first have to know what fascism is before we can say for certain what it isn't? ^Atsme _Talk 📧 16:01, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

  Atsme, we don't, no. There's a presumption that members of the Antifa movement should, but even then, their statements seem to imply a definition of what they oppose that does not require it (e.g. opposing white supremacism, which may or may not be fascism). Guy (help!) 21:51, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

  You mean the organization or individuals that define themselves as "Antifa"? Organizations or individuals don't need to have a single exclusive ideology, being ant-white supremacist doesn't cancel being anti-fascist. At least there is no such statement in the article. Rupert Loup (talk) 16:09, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

  Rupert loup, I suggest you report any antifa activists who do not apply the correct definition of fascism, to the Central Anti-Fascism Council.

  Which, as the sources make rather clear, doesn't exist.

  This is not unique of course. Not all white supremacists are neo-Nazis, for example. Guy (help!) 21:54, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

  Guy I don't understand what are you trying to say. I'm referring to how the sourced content in the article describes anti-fascism. The article describes anti-fascism as "opposition to fascist ideologies", the current Wikipedia consensus on what fascism is in its own article. You said "Antifa doesn't seem to care" as if there is an authoritative organization that defines what antifascism is. Now you say that there is no centralized Antifa authority, so how do you know that "Antifa doesn't seem to care about such philological niceties" if there is no such thing? Why an individual/organization is not antifascist because they say that is against white supremacy? Why individuals/organization being opposed to things that "not require" fascism exclude them of being antifascist? Did to be and antifascist you need to be only and exclusively against fascism and nothing else? Or maybe is the use of fascist as an insult toward someone that may no be a fascist that cancels being opposed to fascism? That's what are you talking about? Going back to the sources here, if the statements in the sources are not reported in reliable secondary sources then those theories are fringe. WP:FRINGE: "For writers and editors of Wikipedia articles to write about controversial ideas in a neutral manner, it is of vital importance that they simply restate what is said by independent secondary sources of reasonable reliability and quality." So in short, what is and what is not antifascism depends on those secondary sources. Rupert Loup (talk) 00:13, 5 June 2020 (UTC)

• Richter and Peters are in the article, I don't know why are included here. This is a very controversial topic, and an argument from authority is not good enough. Primary sources are distinguished from secondary sources, which cite, comment on, or build upon primary sources. To be a secondary source it must be an analysis, evaluation, interpretation, or synthesis of the facts, evidence, concepts, and ideas taken from primary sources. Maybe I'm taking it wrong but Davies don't cite any secondary source there. I don't know where he gets that "the concept of anti-fascism" was created by Stalin? The article states "Organizations such as the Arditi del Popolo and the Italian Anarchist Union emerged between 1919–1921, to combat the nationalist and fascist surge of the post-World War I period." Davis already recieved criticism before. The same with Grunenberg, which primary source is referring when she said that anti-fascism is not a "political concept", and what has the "opposition to fascist ideologies, groups and individuals" to do with that falacy of "democrats are against fascism, not everyone who is against fascism is a democrat"? Rupert Loup (talk) 15:47, 4 June 2020 (UTC)
• Since they're notable scholars their primary opinions are probably due in the article, but we should also look for alternate scholarly views as to what anti-fascism is before assuming that the current article is neutral. buidhe 01:46, 5 June 2020 (UTC)
• I'm not understanding why they're viewed as primary sources. The passages quoted above are both fine. SarahSV ^(talk) 02:14, 5 June 2020 (UTC)
  • Because secondary sources are based on primary sources. In which primary sources are based there? Rupert Loup (talk) 15:01, 5 June 2020 (UTC)
• Yeah, those are reliable secondary sources. A primary source would be a propaganda pamphlet from the '30s, not scholarly works written seventy years later --RaiderAspect (talk) 05:22, 5 June 2020 (UTC)
  • If they are secondary sources then on what primary sources are based? Rupert Loup (talk) 15:01, 5 June 2020 (UTC)
    • That is irrelevant.Slatersteven (talk) 15:16, 5 June 2020 (UTC)
      • How is irrelevant? If they don't rely on primary sources they can't be secondary sources. WP:SECONDARY Rupert Loup (talk) 16:20, 5 June 2020 (UTC)
        • • Ohh I see, actually they could be using secondary sources themselves. But we do not dismiss an RS because we were not there at the editorial meeting. If it is RS we assume they can be trusted to have done their homework, we do not have to check it.Slatersteven (talk) 18:18, 5 June 2020 (UTC)
        • It is irrelevant because we don't need to know what primary sources they relied upon. Even if they don't tell us what they are, it doesn't mean they don't exist. Whether it's an essay based on the totality of the author's professional research, or an article based on some specific primary documents, it doesn't matter. Published books and articles written by academic experts in the field of political science specializing in anti-fascism are exactly the sort of sources we should be relying upon for this kind of content. Red Rock Canyon (talk) 01:34, 6 June 2020 (UTC)
          • Exceptional claims require exceptional sources. For verifiability in this controversial subject it needs well documented sources. Rupert Loup (talk) 12:02, 6 June 2020 (UTC)
            • Frankly, your demands go beyond exceptional, and you don't seem to even know the difference between primary and secondary sources. The only "documentation" necessary is the reputation of the authors and publishers. Red Rock Canyon (talk) 01:32, 7 June 2020 (UTC)
• These are reliable sources, but may not have been used appropriately in the article for different reasons. They are primary sources for the views of the authors, but secondary sources for dealing with anti-fascism. They are scholarly assessments of anti-fascism, but the question that should determine their inclusion is not an RS issue; it is a DUE issue. i.e.: are they typical of scholarly assessments of anti-fascism, or are they minority views? should they be balanced with other scholarly assessments, including ones that are more sympathetic to anti-fascism? are they talking about anti-fascism in general, or about a very specific moment in time in one country? I think Rupert Loup might be right to question their inclusion, but wrong to call them primary sources.BobFromBrockley (talk) 14:20, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

At the moment we have a user warning template set for unsourced material (e.g. {{uw-unsourced1}}) but nothing for problematic sourcing. This is a common enough problem that I think it might be worth either modifying the unsourced warnings or adding a bad sources warning to cover deprecated sources including predatory open access journals. In theory "unsourced or improperly cited" would cover it but the warning text is as below:

I think that unsourced and improperly sourced are two separate issues, but maybe others think differently?

There is {{Uw-unreliable}}, but it lacks incremental warnings. FDW777 (talk) 10:08, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

FDW777, missed that, thanks. It's not linked in Twinkle. I'd like RC patrollers to be empowered here, because the majority of additions of crap sources go unchallenged. Guy (help!) 10:19, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

It's not always clear which one to use for insistent re-adders of deprecated sources. Usually I go for {{uw-unsourced1}} with a note added - David Gerard (talk) 20:01, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

Hello, I noticed that The Washington Examiner, The Washington Times, and Newsmax are listed as marginally reliable, but that Slate, The Nation, and The Daily Beast are generally reliable. According to this chart <https://www.adfontesmedia.com/static-mbc/?v=402f03a963ba>, the former group of sources is placed at equal or greater reliability compared to the latter group. I believe that this is evidence of liberal bias here on Wikipedia that ought to be rectified. 70.122.40.201 (talk) 23:54, 5 June 2020 (UTC)

As Stephen Colbert once said: "Reality has a well known liberal bias". The "Media Bias Chart®" does not make its methodology clear either and is just as subjective as Media Bias Fact Check, which is also considered unreliable on this noticeboard. Hemiauchenia (talk) 00:01, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

Both of those websites have a methodology page. Media Bias/Fact Check uses a more simplified process, and they do not publish a chart, which is why I did not cite them. Ad Fontes Media has a more detailed methodology page including a statistically sound white paper and a rubric, and they claim to use a multi-partisan panel for evaluations. Could you please explain what, exactly, is not clear in Ad Fontes' Media Bias Chart? 70.122.40.201 (talk) 00:26, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

Their methodology was to study a total of 1800 articles, and that's across over 100 news sources... so that's fewer than 18 articles per source. That's really poor quality analysis of any one source. And the minimum they covered for any one source is 7 articles, hardly a good basis to capture the general reputation of an outlet, particularly not to a four digit exactitude. So yeah, it's a dubious chart we should not be reworking our methods around. --Nat Gertler (talk) 00:38, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

None of the sources I mentioned in the opening post have more than eight evaluations linked on WP:RS/P. Certainly, Ad Fontes is not perfect, but it's better than Wikipedia's way, where only a handful of the most contested articles are submitted for discussion on this noticeboard to inform community ratings, and where there are no controls among the population of evaluators for an even distribution of political leaning. 70.122.40.201 (talk) 01:22, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

Can you specifically cite the methodology section? The chart doesn't even say that the "liberal" sources you mention are unreliable, it merely states that they are "Opinion/Fair persuasion", on the Perennial sources entry for Mother Jones it states that "Almost all editors consider Mother Jones a biased source, so its statements (particularly on political topics) may need to be attributed. Consider whether content from this publication constitutes due weight before citing it in an article." For Slate "Contrarian news articles may need to be attributed" and for The Nation "Most editors consider The Nation a partisan source whose statements should be attributed. The publication's opinion pieces should be handled with the appropriate guideline. Take care to ensure that content from The Nation constitutes due weight in the article and conforms to the biographies of living persons policy." These are not blanket statements of reliability, but stating that while the reporting is factualy accurate, you should use them with some caution. You have not presented any substantiative argument that Slate, The Nation, and The Daily Beast are unreliable. For a source to be unreliable, the questions you would want to ask are: Does it publish false or fabricated information like Sputnik news, Infowars or Opindia for instance? Does it publish misleading information? Does it have a reputation for fact checking and editorial control? I think all 3 of the "liberal" sources pass these guidelines. Reducing media bias to a number is essentially pointless, it is something that can only be measured heuristically. The last discussion on Newsmax was in 2013, so if you feel that there should be a new discussion on it, feel free to create a new entry on this noticeboard about it. If you look at the other two sources you mentioned (The Washington Examiner and The Washington Times) neither have had a proper, full discussion about their reliability, so feel free to open a RfC on them to settle the matter. Hemiauchenia (talk) 00:58, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

I believe you misunderstood my intentions. I do not mean to diminish the left-wing sources, but to elevate the right-wing sources. 70.122.40.201 (talk) 01:24, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

Again, you haven't presented an actual argument about why you think that The Washington Examiner, The Washington Times, and Newsmax are reliable. Source reliability is not some weighted scale of left and right-wing sources, and each outlet should be evaluated on individual merit, not some meaningless WP:SOAPBOX about "bias". Hemiauchenia (talk) 01:36, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

I could evaluate an individual article from each of those sources, but it would be best to do so within the context of a specific article, so that discussion is for another day. I am not here to convince people of conservatism, but this seems to be the best place on Wikipedia for a wide-ranging discussion on the neutrality of sources, if it exists at all. 70.122.40.201 (talk) 03:19, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

See WP:GEVAL. Ian.thomson (talk) 01:25, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

All of the sources I mentioned in the OP are in the business of political, not scientific, journalism. By linking there, you seem to equate mainstream American conservative journalism with conspiracy theorists such as InfoWars, which is not a fair characterization. 70.122.40.201 (talk) 03:18, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

It is fair to characterise "Trumpism" if you consider that to be mainstream conservatism, as similar to Infowars, as both, on an objective level, engage in disinformation and conspiracy theories, see Veracity of statements by Donald Trump, I'm certainly not comparing the sources you mention to OANN or the Epoch Times, but to be pro-Trump as an appeal to "balance" is a violation of WP:NPOV Hemiauchenia (talk)

Some of the sections in that article are about wrong predictions he made, differences of interpretation of complex data, or opinions that he changed his mind about. Yes, he has lied to the public, but lying is what politicians do. The media is trying to run up the score against Trump because it all started when he made a politically incorrect but true remark about illegal immigrants at his campaign announcement speech in 2015. "Respectable people" immediately disavowed him, the mainstream media rebuked him, Trump criticized them in return, and they've been going at it ever since. I only agree with what Trump does about half the time,^{[citation needed]} but to claim that he lies more than any other politician is misleading. 70.122.40.201 (talk) 20:42, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

There is a basic flaw in the argument at the very top of this section. It assumes without evidence that politically biased sources are unreliable and that politically unbiased sources are reliable. There are plenty of politically biased but reliable sources (we use them as reliable sources for facts while taking care when they offer up opinions or editorials) and pretty much 99% of the Internet is politically unbiased but unreliable. An example of the latter would be [ https://zapatopi.net/blackhelicopters/ ], a completely unreliable website with no political bias at all. Another politically unbiased but unreliable website is [ https://pokemonblog.com/ ]. BTW, Stephen Colbert is a comedian and should never be cited as if his comments have anything to do with reality. Quoting him as if he was an authority is about as valid as quoting Larry the Cable Guy. There is bullshit that is popular among conservatives (creationism) and bullshit that is popular among liberals (antivax). As for media bias, yes, the nightly news leans liberal, but talk radio leans conservative, and I don't see any conservative complaining about the latter. --Guy Macon (talk) 01:43, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

• (edit conflict)Looking more closely at the ratings, Newsmax is ~33, Washington Times ~31, Washington Examiner ~29. Meanwhile, Daily Beast ~34, Nation ~33, Slate ~31. The RSP entries for Newsmax, Washington Examiner, and Washington Times don't actually say they're unreliable but that they should be attributed and that more reliable sources should be used if available. The RSP entries for Daily Beast, Nation, and Slate all note some recommendation for attribution instead of saying "yeah, just state anything they report as a plain fact." Honestly, we need kind of a yellow-green for these entries (that or make most of the other yellow entries orange and the six sources being discussed yellow).
  Course, if we did go with Ad Fontes, since the scale is from 0 to 64, 32 (50%) would have to be the minimum threshold. That keeps the Daily Mail off the site, keeps barely keeps MSNBC on the site, raises the status of the Huffington Post and Vice News, and prompts us to boot Slate but also the Washington Examiner, the Washington times, The American Conservative, National Review, and Fox News. Ian.thomson (talk) 02:12, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

  Ian.thomson, you say that like it would be a bad thing ;-)

  Ad Fontes is a two-axis chart. My benchmark is that a source should be in the "green box of joy" (most reliable for news in their parlance). I do not use HuffPo, MSNBC, Mother Jones, The Intercept, The Daily beast, Think Progress, News & Guts and the rest. Occasional opinion pieces in The Nation, due to its long history, might be acceptable with attribution, but generally anything outside the green box is a problem in a highly polarised world.

  The problem for conservatives is that the green box of reliability contains virtually no right-leaning sources. WSJ and IJR is about it. Travel across the pond to the UK and you will find numerous reliable right-leaning sources. The Times and The Daily Telegraph are considered reliable. The Financial Times is probably the most reliable factual reporter in the UK. These are not left-wing sources. On the left, there is a continuum, with accuracy decreasing as partisanship increases, which is exactly what you'd expect. On the right there is a huge gap between Reason and the New York Post, and Newsmax, Washington Times, Washington Free Beacon and the like. Right-leaning media are also less accurate on average for a given degree of bias, but that is a small difference, the big problem is the cluster effect around Breitbart.

  You can also see how things have changed over time. Version 1 of the Ad Fontes chart had Fox and National Review much higher up on the accuracy scale and much less biased. That has changed in my view largely because conservative media is required by its audience to defend Donald Trump, and objective fact checkers rate him as far and away the most untruthful president on record, routinely repeating false claims long after they have been conclusively demonstrated to be false. So in order to defend his statements against "liberal" (i.e. factual) critique, you have to decide what matters more: factual accuracy or tribal loyalty. And it's tribal loyalty that wins, hence the cluster of the right wing bubble around Breitbart at the partisan right / least accurate corner.

  There was a comment today on Breitbart, on an anti-Wikipedia rant written by The Devil's Advocate: "Wiki is about as reliable as the main stream media ...". Yes. Yes, we are. Guy (help!) 10:39, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

  Oh, I wouldn't mind that shift, but I figured OP would have a problem with that. Ian.thomson (talk) 11:11, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

See my 20:42 reply to Hemiauchenia. 70.122.40.201 (talk) 20:49, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

This here is a great idea that I hope to see more Wikipedians discuss. It makes no sense to have some sources in green and some in yellow when the summaries for them basically say the same things. It reminds me of King Solomon's (allegorical) proposal to halve the baby: instead of drawing a line on this chart, we need to distinguish between journalistic organizations that do hard reporting from publications that are mostly opinion. For example, National Review and The American Conservative belong in the third level, because they are opinion magazines for ideologues, but so do The Atlantic and The Economist. Organizations that "get the scoop" should be in the first level, including AP, Reuters, and the BBC. I would argue that the Wall Street Journal, and not the New York Times, should enjoy higher reliability, since the WSJ enjoys support from across the spectrum <https://www.journalism.org/2014/10/21/political-polarization-media-habits/>, while the NYT is more controversial. Did you see what just happened when they tried to host Sen. Tom Cotton? 70.122.40.201 (talk) 20:41, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

I could provide some examples of sources that are politically opinionated yet factual and sources that are merely centrist propaganda. However, I fear that to do so would further polarize this discussion. 70.122.40.201 (talk) 03:21, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

The problem seems to be that you don't understand what Wikipedia wants in a source, i.e. basic journalistic practice and not making stuff up.

You'd think this wasn't a high bar, and people could agree that this was a reasonable minimum requirement, but then I spend a bit much time answering the sort of WP:DAILYMAIL advocates who literally claim that the Times and the Daily Telegraph have left-wing bias, not like their lovely DM - David Gerard (talk) 09:17, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

The three American conservative news sources I listed publish a mix of factual reporting and opinion columns. I have endorsed User:Ian.thomson's "yellow-green" proposal, and I believe that those three sources would fit into that category. I don't know why you're bringing the Daily Mail into this, as I did not list any tabloids in the OP. 70.122.40.201 (talk) 20:43, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

• The issue is straightforward: some people think that mainstream, and conservative are antonyms. This is not so. The opposite of mainstream is fringe. The opposite of conservative is liberal. The fact that quite a large number of conservative sources also espouse fringe views, to the point of being deprecated as unreliable, is not a problem of Wikipedia, it is a problem of the conservative media bubble, whose feedback loop places ideological purity above factual accuracy (“THE CONSISTENT PATTERN that emerges from our data is that, both during the highly divisive election campaign and even more so during the first year of the Trump presidency, there is no left-right division, but rather a division between the right and the rest of the media ecosystem. The right wing of the media ecosystem behaves precisely as the echo-chamber models predict—exhibiting high insularity, susceptibility to information cascades, rumor and conspiracy theory, and drift toward more extreme versions of itself. The rest of the media ecosystem, however, operates as an interconnected network anchored by organizations, both for profit and nonprofit, that adhere to professional journalistic norms.” - Benkler, Yochai,. Network propaganda : manipulation, disinformation, and radicalization in American politics. New York, NY. ISBN 978-0-19-092362-4. OCLC 1045162158.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: extra punctuation (link) CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) Guy (help!) 10:12, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

Perhaps people think that because in journalism and comms. faculties, there are twenty registered Democrats for every Republican <https://www.natcom.org/sites/default/files/publications/NCA_C-Brief_2017_March.pdf>? And then the professional outlets hire their indoctrinated students? Go to Minneapolis and tell me that's not the result of a radicalized echo chamber. 70.122.40.201 (talk) 20:46, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

Guy Macon, I don't think Colbert is being cited as an authority, but the phrase has entered the popular lexicon due to its obvious truthiness. In short, "reality has a well known liberal bias" is perfectly cromulent in the context of an Overton window that positions the (globally) centre-right Democratic Party as "radical far-left". Guy (help!) 10:16, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

(For those who don't know. "The other Guy" is a self-described liberal UK Liberal democrat, whereas I hold both major US political in contempt and question whether they are actually different in any substantive way. But we manage to get along even though it is obvious to each of us that the other is wrong.)

Yes, the US conservatives do mislabel the US liberals. but the opposite is also true. I do not believe for a second that anyone who posts that Colbert quote does so for any reason other than it being (to them) "obviously true". There are quotes that US conservatives think are "obviously true", such as "Liberals claim to want to give a hearing to other views, but then are shocked and offended to discover that there are other views" by William F. Buckley or "Liberals are never capable of letting anyone else have a conviction of his own without at once meeting their opponent with abuse or even something worse." by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Note that I think those quotes are as full of crap as the Colbert quote.

So my question is this. Which major US political party is in favor of the US not being at war in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, and Niger? Which is in favor of a smaller government with fewer powers? Which one will close down Guantanamo bay? Which one will reign in asset forfeiture? At least the UK gets actual choices instead of two peas in a pod. --Guy Macon (talk) 14:59, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

Guy Macon, I think that the truthiness of the Colbert quote is situational and largely refers to the conservative shibboleths of the time when it was said, which was 2006 (gods, was it really that long ago?). CO₂ emissions are causing catastrophic climate change, tax cuts for the rich don't trickle down, the Earth is billions of years old, abortion is safe, guns do kill people, being gay isn't a choice.

Today it's also clearly the case that when fact-checkers show conservative voices to be incorrect, this is portrayed as liberal bias, and in that respect the phrase retains its value. The central message of the conservative media right now is that when the mainstream (i.e. as-opposed-to-fringe) media contradicts a conservative message, it's because the mainstream media is biased against conservatism. This echo-chamber effect is well documented in books and studies.

And I think people are aware of this, at least on a subconscious level. A 2007 AP poll found that 71 percent of Republicans said it was "extremely important" for a politician to be honest, compared to 70% of Democrats and 66% of independents. The same question in a Washington Post poll of 2018 showed only 49% of Republicans holding that view, with no change in Democrats and independents.

Incidentally, I largely agree with you about political parties. Organised politics is as toxic as organised religion these days. It's a vehicle for interest groups to gain power, and little more. And I'm a Liberal-Democrat, not a liberal. Guy (help!) 16:30, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

You won't find me defending the US conservative nutjobs, but Re:

"emissions are causing catastrophic climate change, tax cuts for the rich don't trickle down, the Earth is billions of years old, abortion is safe, guns do kill people, being gay isn't a choice",

Are not the following also true?

"Vaccines don't cause autism, peanuts and gluten are not harmful unless you have a specific medical condition, "Frankenfoods" and power lines do not cause cancer, denying that the only possible solution to climate change is an increase in the size and power of the federal government is not the same as climate change denial, new-age religion is not any more or less stupid than fundamentalist Christianity, Essential oils and crystals are not actual medicines, Berkley, California reducing carbon emissions while China increases them will not result in a significant reduction in global C02, Almond milk is not more "natural" than cow milk, and the homeopathic section at Whole Foods Market is not in any significant way different from a televangelist selling you a bottle of healing water."

I'm just saying. --Guy Macon (talk) 22:08, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

Guy Macon, yup, absolutely. And you'll find me on the front lines of all those things (don't get me started on glutenbollocks: I am coeliac).

The comparison is not entirely valid - for example, there's an obvious difference between the effect of gay marriage on those who are not gay, and the effect of banning it on those who are - but both sides do have blind spots. Historically they were as bad as each other. Right now? Not so sure.

That said, the question here is one of reliability, and one of the reasons I consider HuffPo unreliable is that they gave a platform for years to Dana Ullman, one of America's leading homeopathy shills. So: absolutely on point :-)

Also, can I just say that I am really happy to see you back on form. I look forward to your comments, they are always insightful. Guy (help!) 22:37, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

By "globally", you mean some cherry-picked western European and Anglopshere democracies, don't you? There's no way that the Democratic Party is to the right of the governments of the United Kingdom, Poland, the Muslim world, China, Japan, Russia, India, and Thailand. No party that calls for giving free healthcare to illegal immigrants should ever be considered to be on the right. 70.122.40.201 (talk) 20:46, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

The Democratic Party is not to the right of the UK's Conservative Party, since that is dominated by the same right wing think tanks that infest US politics. But the Democratic platform is not dissimilar to that of Germany's CDU/CSU, for example. Actually that's quite apt as CDU/CSU is a coalition with CDU probably to the right of CSU. Sanders is centre-left, a Democratic Socialist like the Swedish and other Scandiwegian centre left parties, but he is not a member of the Democratic Party Guy (help!) 22:02, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

I agree that the Democratic Party is not to the right of the Tories. Did you mean to say "to the left of"? But by somehow citing Germany as a yardstick for political party ideology, you've only proved my point. I do not consider the CDU/CSU to be a socially right-wing party, since recently, they have allowed hundreds of thousands of migrants to enter every year. Although democratic socialism is already a century or two old, that does not make it any less radical, so they cannot be considered to be of the center-left. Center-left is the Whigs (British political party). 70.122.40.201 (talk) 23:14, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

The Democratic Party is centre-right, in my view. To interpret that as a claim that it would be to the right of the British government is odd since the British government is currently very right wing. The Democratic Party is quite a long way to the right of the Labour Party, the UK's centre-left party.

The comment about free healthcare for "illegal immigrants" is a red herring. Not only is "illegal immigrant" not a legally defined term, the position of the Democratic Party is to provide healthcare for all Americans, so this is wholly contingent on whether you consider people who live, work and pay taxes in the US to qualify as Americans. That's a matter on which reasonable people may differ, and it is a single part of their platform. Pretty much every mainstream party in the developed world appears to support universal healthcare, after all.

A centre-right party supports social market principles and qualified interventionism. The Democratic Party certainly contains centre left elements, and some who are outright left wing, but they were recently offered a choice between what in Europe would be a social-democratic candidate and a christian-democratic candidate (centre left v. centre right) and chose the christian-democrat.

But it's not a hill I'm going to die on. Reasonable people may differ on whether the Democratic Party is centre-right, centrist, or centre-left. The point is that the cherry-picking occurs when asserting that the political centre is the midpoint between the Republican Party and the Democratic Party. That's a US-centric view that ignores the historical position of US politics as centred to the right of the rest of the developed world, and of course ignores the fact that America's Overton window was fitted with warp drive technology recently. When Mitt Romney is the left wing of the Republican Party, you know something has changed.

And of course none of this is a reason for allowing sources given to conspiracy theory and fabrication in the name of "balance". Guy (help!) 10:43, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

I misunderstood what you meant to say about British politics in your prior reply. I was saying that the Democrats were not to the right of those governments, including the UK's. I knew that the Tories were to the right of the Democratic Party, but that was a point I was willing to concede, because the majority of the world's population does not live in Western European or Anglosphere developed countries under liberal or left-wing governments. Why do only the politics of developed countries matter to you?
Whether "illegal immigration" is in the dictionary is irrelevant, and it is, because we all know what it is: It's when people enter a country without the government's permission. Therefore, it can be thought of as a euphemism for invasion. There is only one represented party in Germany that opposes it, namely the AfD.
The Democratic Party satisfies all of the points offered on centre-left politics. The "progressive faction" tidbit seems to be one or two people's opinion, not a consensus. The Republican Party, however, cannot be considered to be too far to the right, because American political culture is formulated in the language of both liberty and equality. For example, many Republicans believe that the utility of the free market arises from the fact that it lifts people out of poverty, so they claim.
I have previously refuted the idea that the mainstream right is full of conspiracy theorists, see my previous exchange with User:Hemiauchenia. Please stop attempting to discredit a legitimate political movement.
The ideological posturing of political parties is only tangentially related to the purpose of this thread, which is to promote neutrality in Wikipedia's research. The problem is that you and a few others have engaged in name-calling. Let us focus on the solutions that have been proposed in this thread. 70.122.40.201 (talk) 21:00, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

I'll chime in now, no we should not. If a source is dodgy it is so for a reason and we should not create a false balance (in the name of neutrality).Slatersteven (talk) 16:32, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

This. WP:DUE does not mean "divide the issue into two sides according to the current split in American politics and crowbar in whatever terrible sources are necessary to keep them even." It means that reputable, high-quality sources are given weight in accordance to the prominence they lend a topic, with a goal towards having Wikipedia reflect the preponderance of reliable coverage, discussion, and analysis. In fact, WP:FALSEBALANCE specifically prohibits using lower-quality sources in an effort to "balance out" an article. Otherwise, people trying to crowbar articles into what they consider 'balanced' in an American political context would lead to results that would look severely unbalanced to most of the rest of the world; and someone who got most of their news from the types of sources listed above is obviously going to over-weight them. This shows the underlying problem of pushing for WP:FALSEBALANCE, in that in practice any particular weighting is going to reflect an editor's biases. We avoid that by weighing sources according to their reliability, expertise, prominence, and so on, not by trying to put a thumb on the scale to make it reflect our personal preconceived notions of what a 'balanced' presentation is. --Aquillion (talk) 19:40, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

Again, these are not "dodgy" sources. The opening post simply demonstrated a double standard between Wikipedia's reliability ratings for a set of right-wing sources and for a set of left-wing sources, which were placed at about equal reliability according to an independent and impartial research group (I eyeballed it). As Jimmy Wales was quoted in WP:DUE, if there is a significant minority of scholars who support a position, which is true of most conservative causes, then name prominent adherents (with attribution). Somebody already linked to WP:GEVAL, see above. 70.122.40.201 (talk) 21:12, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

The choice of sources and the placement of sources in that chart was pretty clearly chosen on order to get the inverted V shape they were looking for. I believe that the evidence shows that liberals and conservatives are equally stupid and equally vile, but that does not imply that liberal-leaning and conservative-leaning media are equally reliable. A lot of the sources that are reliable for facts lean liberal. --Guy Macon (talk) 22:14, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

Guy Macon, I have looked through their source data before now and I don't see it. I think actually that it's possibly an accident - their original presentation was different. And if you think about it, you'd probably expect something like that shape, because accuracy is likely to decline more or less as bias increases, right?

I mean, it could be true, but the placement of Guacamoley and National Enquirer would be anomalous on that basis.

That said, the closer we get to the green box of joy, the greater consensus there is likely to be that a site is reliable. If I thought I could carry it I would propose that we exclude Mother Jones, The Daily Beast, Vanity Fair, The Intercept, Think Progress and so on, at least for notionally factual content. Vanity fair is fine for film criticism I guess. I'm not even that sure about Axios and Politico. Guy (help!) 22:51, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

Sure, that's a good idea. I support this and User:Ian.thomson's "yellow-green" concept. 70.122.40.201 (talk) 23:20, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

AIDS Research and Human Retroviruses, Editor-in-Chief: Thomas Hope, PhD, ISSN: 0889-2229.

Is this journal any good? Topic of interest is a COVID-19 related article in the current issue. The contents are interesting but I feel a bit triggered by the style. It throws a lot of shade at someone who has apparently been spreading conspiracy theories about the virus, after having done something similar with CFS some years back. The article is doi: 10.1089/aid.2020.0095 (person's name is in the article title so I won't post it here) and Wikipedia also has a biography of the person, which is similarly unfavorable. I'm asking mostly about the journal as a whole (since it published something like that), rather than about that particular article. Thanks. 2602:24A:DE47:BB20:50DE:F402:42A6:A17D (talk) 11:50, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

As it seems to be a peer reviewed and professionally edited scientific journal, yes I would say it is an RS. Not do I undersatnd why you are being so coy about who this is about its Judy Mikovits.Slatersteven (talk) 11:55, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

See AIDS Research and Human Retroviruses. Published by Liebert, a respectable publisher. Not a huge IF though. What content is it supporting? It's clearly fine for the articles on Mikovits or Plandemic. Guy (help!) 20:46, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

Thanks. I didn't want to use the name of a living person in connection with a journal whose quality I wasn't sure of, that had content like that. That said, the article in the journal has details/citations about the Mikovits saga that aren't currently in the Wikipedia articles, so someone might want to add it. The Mikovits biography is currently protected so I can't edit it myself. I hadn't looked at the Plandemic article since that movie sounds terrible. I'm not aware of the journal being cited elsewhere in Wikipedia, though I haven't checked. I came across that journal article externally and decided to ask about it here, before wanting to use anything else from the journal. 2602:24A:DE47:BB20:50DE:F402:42A6:A17D (talk) 21:12, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

Flix Patrol has been spammed on The King: Eternal Monarch by fans that claim it is an achievement to be ranking #15 on Netflix by Flix Patrol. Flix Patrol is a website that lists VOD charts and it was removed multiple time from the article by other editors claiming it is unreliable, but fans keep adding it again. Personally, I see Flix Patrol as not an official chart for Netflix and it is unreliable as the data fluctuates based on what is being watched now. So, what do you think? Is it reliable and should be used as a source? CherryPie94 🍒🥧 (talk) 21:18, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

• Hi, can't see any evidence that it is reliable such as a list of staff or information on who runs the site - it seems to be faceless. It claims the data is supplied by The Movie Database. I'd say its unreliable, plus it's also problematic as it updates its lists every day which could be mirrored on Wikipedia by fans of the site, imv Atlantic306 (talk)

Here I am, again, because it seems the virus lab leak/handling incident theory is being brought up in what seems to be reliable sources. But it has been relegated to WP:FRINGE so often now that I'm probably better to start here.

• People that need to be notified of this: @Swood100:, @Thucydides411:, @JoelleJay:. If you don't want to be included in further discussions about this please state it here.
• My question is: Are these articles in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists considered a reliable source for inclusion in Wuhan Institute of Virology or COVID-19 pandemic-like pages?
• Article 1 (most recent): https://thebulletin.org/2020/06/did-the-sars-cov-2-virus-arise-from-a-bat-coronavirus-research-program-in-a-chinese-laboratory-very-possibly/
• Article 2 : https://thebulletin.org/2020/05/natural-spillover-or-research-lab-leak-why-a-credible-investigation-in-needed-to-determine-the-origin-of-the-coronavirus-pandemic/

• Not seeing how the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists passes WP:MEDRS. Without that it's not really useful as a source in this context. It doesn't help that it is, ultimately, an advocacy organization - it's a reasonably well-thought-of one, definitely, and might be citable for uncontroversial statements about its area of expertise, but for a claim this WP:EXCEPTIONAL, on a topic that falls under WP:MEDRS, which falls into an area where its advocacy makes it comparatively biased (ie. the dangers of WMD), it's basically useless. --Aquillion (talk) 02:13, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

• @Aquillion: Is the origin of the virus really bound to WP:MEDRS? I find the example in here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Status_quo_stonewalling#Unreasonable_sourcing_demands to be a pretty good summary of why it shouldn't. I am not implying that there is stonewalling, I just think the example is good. Is there any place (consensus) that I am not aware of that says that talks about the origin must follow WP:MEDRS? I find the origin of the virus could belong in some of those categories: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Biomedical_information#What_is_not_biomedical_information?. Thank you for your input. PhysiqueUL09 (talk) 03:00, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

• We are talking about the origin of a virus that, within six months, has infected almost seven million people, and killed nearly 400,000 people. And the official numbers may well be low. Of course, any content about the origin of this virus must summarize published sources that fully comply with WP:MEDRS, except in articles explicitly about conspiracy theories or fringe explanations. Should the research as described in MEDRS sources change, then so too should the articles. As for the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, it is an excellent advocacy publication to read to help understand nuclear weapons issues. But it has no established reputation for accuracy about the origin of viruses. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 05:43, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

• PhysiqueUL09, put simply: yes. Guy (help!)22:54, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

• @JzG: Yes? Like it's reliable but can't be added? Or Yes, it can't be added? I know I won't be adding it anyway. I hope you read the thing, it's one of the most comprehensive piece of work about it. And it also expresses the fact that Trump and Pompeo basically shot the credibility of it by doing what they did. PhysiqueUL09 (talk) 23:15, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

  PhysiqueUL09, yes like MEDRS is required, and this doesn't meet it. Guy (help!) 10:17, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

• Not WP:MEDRS, and no evidence of any expertise in this field. Since this is a contentious claim (to put it mildly), this source seems inappropriate to me. Guy (help!) 10:06, 6 June 2020 (UTC)
• I don't see how MEDRS would apply to this since it's not a medical claim. It's hard to see how MEDRS could even comment on such a question. Is Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists regular RS for something like this? Don't know. Maybe. I don't think anyone claims it is MEDRS. 2602:24A:DE47:BB20:50DE:F402:42A6:A17D (talk) 22:49, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

See academicroom.com/users/vikalpprinters (raw url to get around blacklist) which gives details about him. Trained in electronic engineering and business management, he's taught and written several books on the latter. He's also written books such as Ācārya Kundakunda’s Pravacanasāra – Essence of the Doctrine and Ācārya Samantabhadra’s Āptamīmāmsā (Devāgamastotra) – Deep Reflection On The Omniscient Lord published by Vikalp printers of which he's the CEO (all in the link). We use him in a very large number of articles mainly relating to Jainism. Doug Weller talk 11:17, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

• gnews.org  

See Guo Wengui#GNews. Basically it seems to be a mouthpiece for Guo (as "Miles Guo) and Steve Bannon (and friends). At the moment, besides a link in Guo's article, it's used in 4 articles and a draft. Doug Weller talk 14:56, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

• Not sure about a deprecation RfC, given the limited use, but I see no indication at all that this is a reliable source. Guy (help!) 10:50, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

For information, the .xyz domain is now blacklisted due to spamming (it's not unprecedented, .guru is also blacklisted). A review of current links showed no other domains of any obvious merit. Alphabet's domain abc.xyz is whitelisted. Guy (help!) 15:07, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

"iHarare Media" (Harare is the capital of Zimbabwe) is Zimbabwe's newspaper - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_of_Zimbabwe

There is a misunderstanding between users and admins - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:George_Floyd#George_Floyd_a_film_actor . Particularly about this article - about "George Floyd" - https://iharare.com/george-floyd-was-a-porn-star/

The newspaper clearly is a 3rd party (not interested in the USA's politics etc...). The newspaper gives enough evidence to prove their facts.

The admins refuse to add this information to the page about George Floyd because in their opinion the source is not reliable.

I don't see any problem with the source because it's provided videos, footage, screens, etc.

Please, give your opinion - do you agree or not. Thank you.

iharare.com describes itself as "Zimbabwe's Loudest Internet Newspaper" The story has no byline, only "guest editor". The photographic evidence and links do seem to back up that he at least appeared on an episode of thehabibshow.com, which describes itself as "the wildest ghetto hood porn reality site on the net", but there is no definitive evidence in the article that George Floyd actually worked as a pornographic actor. The two questions I have are: Is iharare.com reliable for claims about living or recently deceased persons (Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons policy). Does the claims made in Iharare.com constitute due weight (See Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view#Due_and_undue_weight for guidance). I think the answer to both questions is no. The claim has not been covered by other more reliable sources and therefore should not be included at all. Hemiauchenia (talk) 19:19, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

Per @El C: on the relevant talk page unless it receives widespread mention by reliable sources, I am deeming this addition to be a BLP violation. Since a mention in "Zimbabwe's Loudest Internet Newspaper" does not constitute "widespread mention by reliable sources", the answer to the question about whether iharare.com is reliable or not would appear to be largely irrelevant. FDW777 (talk) 19:35, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

I agree that it is not relevant and not covered widely by reliable sources, and therefore should not be included. I simply wanted to give a proper explanation to the Maksimiuk, who is obviously a new user who is unfamiliar with our rigorous sourcing guidelines. There's no need to WP:BITE newscomers who seem to be engaging in good faith. Hemiauchenia (talk) 19:40, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

One man's newcomer engaging in good faith is another man's single purpose account who is seemingly fixated on adding a single piece of information to the George Floyd article. FDW777 (talk) 19:44, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

Fair enough, I probably didn't check their edit history closely enough. I find that all new editors including ones that turn out to be great editors tend to act in ways that seem irrational to experienced editors. Hemiauchenia (talk) 19:47, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

iharare.com   has been cited 16 times on Wikipedia, mostly about Zimbabwe related topics, is it worth systematically removing them? Hemiauchenia (talk) 19:57, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

• Not a reliability question. It is fairly easy to verify the information in question. The question here is whether it is relevant when most media ignore this aspect. Wikipedia is not in the business of shock news.--Eostrix (talk) 06:22, 10 June 2020 (UTC)

• Catechism of the Catholic Church (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) (fulltext online here)
• Oct13 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• NightHeron (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• WT:CATHOLIC#AfD discussion: Miraculous plague cure of 1522
• Is the Catechism of the Catholic Church a secondary or primary source? I answer that, the CCC is a secondary source, because it summaries primary sources, such as: the Bible, Church documents, the writings of theologians. All these primary sources are footnoted and referenced in the Catechism, which is a compilation of beliefs in one place.
• Primary sources are original materials that are close to an event, and are often accounts written by people who are directly involved. They offer an insider's view of an event, a period of history, a work of art, a political decision, and so on. There is no possibility that this description, in WP:PRIMARY, can apply to the Catechism. Elizium23 (talk) 23:22, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

  Elizium23, for what? It's a primary source for the beliefs of the Catholic church, and it's written from an in-universe perspective so can't be used to state that any particular Biblical narrative is true, as such. Guy (help!) 23:34, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

  JzG, actually no. The CCC is a collection of magisterial statements expressed in summary style. From an in-universe perspective, it is not a teaching document but a summary of other teaching documents that have been issued before it. See this random selection, and note how all but the lead paragraphs have one or more citations to something else. From a primary->secondary->tertiary source hierarchy it is much closer to a tertiary source than a primary source since theoretically it is written in the same style as Wikipedia and is summarizing both primary and secondary sourcing, albeit under a committee headed by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger. It doesn't really provide analysis of anything or critical commentary, so I wouldn't call it secondary in a true sense either. Anyway, we should not be citing tertiary sources if we can help it. If the CCC is citing a primary source where directly quoting the position of the Catholic Church, Bible, or saint who said it is ideal, then just directly quote the primary. If it is citing a commentary or academic work, cite the commentary or academic work.

  The worst part about Catholic articles on Wikipedia is that the CCC and Catholic Encyclopedia of 1901 are both free and online. Both can be good resources, but really aren't ideal to cite if you have something better. That is to say, CCC and CE aren't written by nutjobs but they also aren't an academic book or paper, and in the case of CE, it is very outdated. The rest of the free and online stuff is even worse (read, written by nutjobs.)

  There is substantial academic work on Catholic theology and history and if it all possible, that should be cited. CCC can be used as a resource to find actual primary sources if a direct quote is desirable, and sometimes as a resource to find secondary sources, but unless there is a good reason to cite it, it doesn't make much sense to use in an encyclopedia. It is the theological equivalent of an encyclopedia. It isn't the source, it is the summary of sourcing. You shouldn't be citing the summary of sourcing. TonyBallioni (talk) 00:57, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

  TonyBallioni, my view is that we should be sticking with independent scholarship for all religious articles. It's not just catholicism where editors introduce their own beliefs based on bible passages or church proclamations. There is a mountain of decent scholarship on virtually every facet of most religions, and where that scholarship does not exist I would question whether it's encyclopaedic anyway.

  Example: can you trust a catholic source to be objective about Joseph Ratzinger and his role in covering up sexual abuse? You get sedevacantists who hate everything the Vatican has done from Vatican II onwards, and defenders. Very little else from the in-universe sources. With Francis you get militant trads who hate his tolerance, and adoration, and not much in between (I think he will go down in history as a great Pope, but what do I know). Guy (help!) 08:19, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

  Well, the CCC wouldn’t be particularly useful at discussing that. It’d be useful for clarifying what the Catholic Church views as it’s position on some theology when properly attributed and cited and where secondary sources disagree, but overall there are much better sources even for that. Like I said, it wasn’t written for nuance and the authors wrote it as a tertiary source, not primary or secondary, so what it gives you isn’t really much. I’d agree with ElKevbo below and you that people use it as primary. Also agree on the rest of the online Catholic crap, we have way too much of it on here and I try to clean it when I see it. Disagree that “Catholic sourcing” can’t be objective if you’re talking about academic journal articles and the like. For those depending on the context you’d want attribution, but if they’re from a respected academic institution (i.e. Fordham, Georgetown, etc.) it should be fine. TonyBallioni (talk) 13:53, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

• An interesting case... For statements as to the beliefs of the Catholic Church, it is primary... yet also highly reliable. For statements as to the historical accuracy of a biblical story, it would be secondary (or perhaps even tertiary)... yet highly unreliable. Blueboar (talk) 23:46, 8 June 2020 (UTC)
• Primary for the churches beliefs. It doesn't summarize or analyze the underlying documents, but instead uses them to evidence a belief system. The "event" is creating a book for the catholic belief system and authors are directly doing that. Its a bit like an appellate decision. Sure they cite prior work but the decision itself is a primary source on the proper reasoning for the case. Apepllate decisions are also questionably fact checked, as well :)AlmostFrancis (talk) 00:35, 9 June 2020 (UTC)
  • Using prior documents as evidence = secondary source. That's what a meta-analysis does. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:27, 10 June 2020 (UTC)
• See my long comment to guy above. The CCC doesn't really fit neatly into any of the categories we usually have on Wikipedia, but it is closest to a tertiary source. WP:TERTIARY would apply here. It summarizes primary and secondary sourcing without giving critical analysis and without adding additional primary source material on beliefs. The best use of it would honestly be finding primary sources to give full quotes from if those are needed (ex. a biography of a saint where you want to directly quote the saint, and the CCC has a listing of important doctrinal statements; directly quoting Lumen gentium not to analyze it, but giving an idea of the style of writing and other appropriate uses of direct quotation of a primary source document.)
  The other potential use per TERTIARY would be when you have two secondary sources disagreeing on what the Catholic Church believes. It would be a useful summary in those cases in that it is the official summary of how the Catholic Church reads its own teaching documents, so it could be used in combination with secondary source authors in due weight. Maybe a sentence. It must always be cited in text if used in these cases, though, so the reader knows the source and can give it proper weight according to their own judgement.
  Finally, please use something else if at all possible. The Catholic Church, probably more than any other religious institution, has many academic faculties of theology and history of theology if you want to cite secondary sources on Catholic theology. There are also many atheists and non-Catholics who work at these schools who publish in the field, as well as scholars at secular universities that have written substantial amounts. There really is no reason to use the easily available free source if you can get access to a database like JSTOR or go to a research library. If you can't, let me know and I'll try to see if I can find sourcing. TonyBallioni (talk) 01:09, 9 June 2020 (UTC)
• The context for User:Elizium23's opening of this thread is that at WP:AN I raised the question of how best to handle a series of articles created by User:Oct13 (most recently Hell in Catholicism and Catholic theodicy) that are sourced not to secondary sources but only to the Catechism and other official documents of the Church. Elizium23 disagreed with my characterization of the Catechism as not a secondary source, and we've been debating this at the WP:WikiProject Catholicism talk page. I argued that writing an article using only the Catechism and other Church documents as sources would be like writing an article on Brown v Board of Education using only the actual decision and related US Supreme Court decisions with no use of the secondary literature. NightHeron (talk) 01:23, 9 June 2020 (UTC)
  • Well, in that context, it'd likely be best to cite some of Hans Urs von Balthasar's work on conceptions of Hell (Dare We Hope [...] is largely considered the definitive Catholic work on soteriology of the 20th century even if he is arguing his own point of view as well. He gives fairly substantial analysis of the history of belief in Hell as well. All subject to DUE, of course.) There's also the many historians of Catholic theology that you can cite. The CCC is probably not the best thing to cite on such a complex subject... it doesn't really do complexity, and wasn't designed to do so. Not so much relevant to this discussion, but pointing out my fact that for virtually anything, there is a better source than the CCC. TonyBallioni (talk) 01:33, 9 June 2020 (UTC)
• In many contexts, this document is a primary source for the church's theological opinions, beliefs, and practices. Like many documents, whether it is primary, secondary, or even tertiary depends closely on how it's being used but I think that it would most often be used like a primary source as described above by TonyBallioni, NightHeron, and others. It definitely meets our criteria for reliability but should be used with caution as it often requires or begs for interpretation and context. ElKevbo (talk) 01:34, 9 June 2020 (UTC)
  • ElKevbo, I think this is probably a good way of explaining it. The explanation I gave above (that it is tertiary) is probably the way it was intended by its authors and what it is from a purely technical perspective. Because most of the people who edit Wikipedia don't have any formal training in Catholic theology or history, they use it as primary often not realizing that all it is intending to do is summarize what the committee that compiled it saw as the relevant doctrinal texts, and that if you need nuance you need to look at the text i.e. people use it as primary, even if they really should be using it as tertiary to get the value the compilers intended. TonyBallioni (talk) 01:49, 9 June 2020 (UTC)
    • I understand that but I stand by what I wrote above. Regardless of how it is developed, the manner in which it is used by the Catholic Church makes it a primary source for the church's beliefs and practices. I would state the same thing about other similar documents written and approved by other organizations that are official statements about the organization e.g., corporate strategic plans, organizational manuals. It's how the document is used, not how it's written, that determines whether it's primary, secondary, etc. ElKevbo (talk) 01:56, 9 June 2020 (UTC)
      • I was actually agreeing for the most part. I think you discount the nature of the actual source itself more than I do, but people here and in other places do use it as primary. I'd dispute that the Catholic Church uses it in such a way at the episcopal and academic levels, but you'd probably be right amongst many lay organizations and even priests. TonyBallioni (talk) 02:26, 9 June 2020 (UTC)
• It would depend on the context, but note that primary sources are not forbidden; they merely require appropriate caution with use. Certainly any danger of bias being introduced by using the Catechism as a source can be cured by pointing out wherever it is used as a source that it reflects the views of the Catholic Church. BD2412 T 02:03, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

  BD2412, yes, the issue of primary sources is usually one of NPOV / UNDUE not RS. There is an ongoing problem with editors assuming that CPOV (Catholic point of view) and NPOV are the same thing. Guy (help!) 10:14, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

  We also have an ongoing problem with editors assuming the opposite (i.e., that citing nothing produced by any religious group is NPOV). This is a difficult area for editors who identify deeply with their religious/atheistic POVs. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:37, 10 June 2020 (UTC)

• Primary and should be treated per WP:RSPSCRIPTURE. The idea that it qualifies as some discursive scholarly enterprise is ludicrous. No different to any other religion's fatwahs. GPinkerton (talk) 07:00, 9 June 2020 (UTC)
• I agree with Tony above. It is primary for the opinions of the church and secondary/tertiary for summaries of existing mainstream Catholic theology. --Guerillero | Parlez Moi 14:07, 9 June 2020 (UTC)
• It is Primary, per TonyB and JzG -Roxy the elfin dog . wooF 14:17, 9 June 2020 (UTC)
• I think TonyBallioni has it exactly right: Quit worrying about how to shoehorn it into a historiography classification (that is much more complicated than it sounds) and start thinking about how to (not) use it to write a good article. Historiography has as much to do with how you use it as it does with the document's inherent characteristics. There may be some point that's reasonable to cite, and there may be some phrase that's worth quoting, but please worry more about writing a good article than about following the rules for once. That set of rules is not going to help you very much in this instance. If you can get a better source – BTW, Jstor's available for free to experienced editors in Wikipedia:The Wikipedia Library – then please use that instead. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:35, 10 June 2020 (UTC)