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Deprecate sources repeating citogenetic claim (discovery of alcohol & sulfuric acid)

There are a number of sources out there which claim that the Persian physician and chemist Abu Bakr al-Razi (c. 865–925) discovered alcohol/ethanol, as well as sulfuric acid. There's for example this paper by Amr & Tbakhi 2007, this one by Modanlou 2008, and this entry in the New World Encyclopedia. As I will try to show below, these two last sources were copying from unreferenced claims in Wikipedia itself, while the first is also likely based on Wikipedia and in any case not reliable in context. Since every once in a while someone shows up at the Razi page to add these sources, insisting that they're reliable, I would like some input from other editors.

First note how our page on al-Razi looked c. 2004–2006:

10 March 2004: Inter alia he discovered alcohol, the use of alcohol in medicine, and he also discovered Sulfuric acid.

20 April 2005: He is credited with, among other things, the discovery of sulfuric acid, the "work horse" of modern chemistry and chemical engineering; and also of ethanol-alcohol (in addition to its refinement) and its use in medicine.

19 April 2006: As an alchemist, Razi is credited with the discovery of sulfuric acid, the "work horse" of modern chemistry and chemical engineering. He also discovered ethanol and its refinement and use in medicine.

Note that none of these revisions refer to a source to verify these claims. Then compare:

Modanlou 2008, p. 674: He discovered and purified alcohol (ethanol) and pioneered its use in medicine. Also, he is credited with the discovery of sulfuric acid, the “work horse” of modern chemistry and chemical engineering.

New World Encyclopedia: As an alchemist, Razi is credited with the studies of sulfuric acid, the "work horse" of modern chemistry and chemical engineering. He also wrote about ethanol and its refinement and use in medicine.

New World Encyclopedia is an internet encyclopedia produced by the Unification Church that selects and rewrites certain Wikipedia articles through a focus on Unification values, so the fact that they copy from Wikipedia is not a surprise. But Modanlou 2008, who is writing for an academic journal ("Archives of Iranian Medicine"), should not be literally copying from Wikipedia. Yet that's undoubtedly what he's doing, and since he does not even refer to Wikipedia, he is actually plagiarizing. He has in turn been cited for this on Wikipedia at least from 16 June 2017 until 15 February 2021 (the other source removed there, Schlosser 2011, actually does cite our Wikipedia article for the claim the discovery of alcohol, first to produce acids such as sulfuric acid on p. 4). Unless the 2005 Wikipedia article and Modanlou 2008 were somehow drawing from the same unnamed and unknown source, this must be a case of WP:CITOGENESIS.

That leaves us with Amr & Tbakhi 2007. They only mention Among his discoveries in alchemy, he is credited with the discovery of sulfuric acid and ethanol. Again no reference whatsoever. The "he is credited with ... the discovery" is literally the same as the 2005~2006 Wikipedia article, but more conspicuous is the way in which sulfuric acid and ethanol are mentioned together (these are very different substances with very different historical trajectories of discovery). It seems more likely than not that Amr & Tbakhi 2007 too were drawing on the Wikipedia article.

Given all this, I think that no source which just passingly mentions that al-Razi discovered sulfuric acid and alcohol/ethanol, without itself detailing these discoveries in primary sources or referring to some more specialized source, should be considered reliable for these claims. The fact of the matter is that the sources which do discuss the details of the historical developments which led to the discovery of ethanol and sulfuric acid, as described in Ethanol#History (e.g. al-Hassan 2009) and Sulfuric acid#History (e.g. Karpenko & Norris 2002), do not at all attribute the discovery of these things to al-Razi.

What I propose is to deprecate Amr & Tbakhi 2007, Modanlou 2008, and any other source passingly mentioning that al-Razi discovered sulfuric acid and alcohol/ethanol without itself giving primary evidence or references for this, as support for these claims on Wikipedia. Thanks for reading, any input is very welcome! ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 23:41, 4 March 2022 (UTC)

These claims didn't originate in Wikipedia, here's an example from 1983 . I think it's likely that those better references that mention primary sources exist. Geogene (talk) 00:07, 5 March 2022 (UTC)
That's interesting. However, the blurbs shown from the 1983 source are also just making the claim in a rather grandiose way without providing any evidence, and the nature of the work (Islamic Scientific Thought and Muslim Achievements in Science, published by Ministry of Science and Technology, National Hijra Centenary Committee, and Organization of Islamic Conference) does not suggest that it's very likely to contain evidence of that sort. In any case, with regard to that source considerations of WP:DUE apply, given that its claims are not repeated and in fact contradicted by later reliable sources such as Karpenko & Norris 2002. Perhaps this thread, which is about reliability as affected by citogenesis (the loud reinforcement by Wikipedia of an unreferenced claim made on Wikipedia, regardless whether the claim was original to Wikipedia or not), should be restricted to sources published after c. 2005.
But more importantly, note that I only propose to deprecate sources that repeat this claim without giving primary evidence or references. If it can be shown for any source that it does give evidence of any sort, the proposal does not apply. Even only specifically deprecating Amr & Tbakhi 2007 and Modanlou 2008 would already be of help. ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 01:00, 5 March 2022 (UTC)
If the 1983 source is making the same claims, how are we sure that any of the sources were citing Wikipedia? Couldn’t it be that they just took it to be a well-accepted fact that didn’t need to be explicitly cited? It feels difficult to reduce it all to citogenesis. — Mhawk10 (talk) 03:02, 5 March 2022 (UTC)
I found this source which cites Islamic Technology, Ahmed al-Hassan and Donald Hill, 1987, Cambridge University Press. Also this source which is published in 2002 makes a similar claim but it doesn't cite any source, however judging from its publication year it is probably not from Wikipedia.Premitive (talk) 05:38, 5 March 2022 (UTC)
The attribution of these discoveries to Al-Razi is quite contentious, and the repeated use of this "workhorse" phrase is certainly a bit off with these particular sources. On a broader note, there is quite a lot of information that needs setting right on Wikipedia on the subject of medieval Arabic/Persian scientific discovery. Here alone, there is quite a lot to unpack. Really this subject is a bit of a Pandora's box. Some sources attribute the discovery of sulfuric acid to al-Razi, while others attribute it to the Geber (also known as pseudo-Geber, not to be confused with Jabir Ibn Hayyan). While encyclopedia.com is hardly authoritative, it is interesting to note that while it separately, actively attributes the discovery to Geber, there is no further mention of it on the dedicated page for al-Razi. The first distillation of an alcoholic beverage to produce something close to pure ethanol is quite firmly attributed to Al-Kindi, who wrote an entire work entitled The Book of the Chemistry of Perfume and Distillations, and who lived about two generations before Al-Razi. This is also noted in the Hassan 2009 source @Apaugasma mentioned on Ethanol#History, which itself refers back to an 1893 work. Iskandar323 (talk) 06:24, 5 March 2022 (UTC)
So at any rate not a case of citogenesis. --Andreas JN466 11:46, 5 March 2022 (UTC)
  • Some further comments and answers to the above. @Mhawk10: for Modanlou 2008 the the "work horse" of modern chemistry and chemical engineering phrase leaves no doubt he was copying from WP (phrase added to WP in 2004 here). Amr & Tbakhi 2007 also have the he is credited with ... the discovery phrasing. At the very least the fact that Modanlou 2008 was cited for c. 4 years on WP is a case of circular sourcing, if not citogenesis.
But yes, it's established now (thanks for all the input! ) that the claims are much older, per the evidence of Premitive, Iskandar323 and Andreas (Jayen466) above. Among the more serious sources, it occurs in this 1983 work and apparently in al-Hassan & Hill 1986 (for alcohol). However, it's important to note that these claims are not well-accepted facts. The attribution of sulfuric acid to al-Razi directly contradicts the authoritative account of Multhauf 1966 (The Origins of Chemistry, pp. 141–142) as accepted by, e.g., Karpenko & Norris 2002 or Newman 2006 (Atoms and Alchemy, p. 98) –for an account of the mainstream view of the historical development of the mineral acids, including al-Razi's role in it, see Hydrochloric acid#History. The attribution of alcohol to al-Razi contradicts the authoritative account of Forbes 1970 (A Short History of the Art of Distillation) as accepted, e.g., by Moran 2005 (Distilling knowledge, p. 12). Even one of the two authors of al-Hassan & Hill 1986 (pp. 133–149, which I fortunately don't have access to), al-Hassan 2001 (Science and Technology in Islam, vol. IV, part 2, p. 60) admits that al-Razi's works do not explicitly describe the production of sulfuric acid, pointing instead to two Arabic manuscripts which he says date from before the 13th century (which is significant because the mainstream view of Multhauf et al. is that mineral acids date from the 13th century). In his description of the history of alcohol, al-Hassan 2001 pp. 65–69 does not even mention al-Razi, nor does he in his 2009 recapitulation of this.
If one adds to this that even al-Hassan's views are not followed or accepted by any other scholar that I know of, one may get an idea of how fringe the unreferenced claims attributing these things to al-Razi really are. Some of the confusion undoubtedly stems from the fact that the production of some mineral acids is described in the 13th-/14th-century works of pseudo-Geber (who certainly also knew alcohol), which used to be attributed to the 8th/9th-century Jabir (al-Hassan is the only scholar still defending this latter view). Exaggerated claims based on religious or national pride is probably also part of the story.
In any case, these claims are circulating extraordinarily widely, ever without proper references, and have for a very long time been promoted on Wikipedia (c. 2004–2021). Perhaps 'deprecate' is not the right term (I only call for disallowing the use of evidence-less sources for these two specific claims), but it would really be nice to have consensus about that here which we can point to in the future. ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 12:26, 5 March 2022 (UTC)
Pinging User:Ajrocke, who notes on his user page that he is professional historian of chemistry, to this discussion. ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 12:41, 5 March 2022 (UTC)
Any sources claiming to be able to definitively attribute either of these discoveries to Al-Razi cast considerable suspicion upon themselves, as the evidence for all of these sorts of claims is pretty debatable. Declarative statements without the qualification of phrases like "may have" or is "widely though to have" are clearly doing any injustice to the inherent ambiguity of peering this far into the past. The strongest of all of these claims is that Al-Kindi was the first to distill wine into ethanol, as evidenced by information in his book which yields detailed diagrams of the equipment used (thanks @Apaugasma). There are also multiple sources asserting that Jabir Ibn Hayyan was also familiar with the process in principle and certainly carried out experiments to the point of producing an ethanol flame. We can therefore pretty much definitively ignore sources claiming that Al-Razi was the first to distil alcohol - though I believe part of the confusion here may be the fact that it is possible that he may have been the first to apply distilled ethanol to medical applications (TBC). The sulfuric acid claims appear to be murkier still, as the details are this are far from clear and the wildly varying origins stories for this range from Jabir Ibn Hayyan, to Al-Razi and on to Pseudo-Geber in the 12th-13th century. All in all, very ambiguous. As @Apaugasma notes, the sources mentioning the discoveries of 'sulfuric acid and alcohol' together in the same sentence as if both are an unambiguous fait accompli without explanation expose their own poverty. Iskandar323 (talk) 13:24, 5 March 2022 (UTC)

So, now that it has been positively established that the claim did not originate on Wikipedia so forget that. Forget deprecation also; that is a severe degradation of a source for most uses and no such case and can be found in this discussion. The way to deal with uncertainty and disagreement between sources is attribution. "AUTHOR1 attributes him with XYZ,[cite] but AUTHOR2 considers that unlikely.[cite] AUTHOR3 attributes the discovery to ABC.[cite]". Stuff like that, this is basic wikicraft. Zerotalk 13:19, 5 March 2022 (UTC)

Standardly using attribution where multiple POVs are found in the sources is a perfect recipe for creating a false balance. Some POVs are repeated and repeated by poor sources without any evidence whatsoever. The relevant policy is RS/Context matters: Each source must be carefully weighed to judge whether it is reliable for the statement being made in the Wikipedia article and is an appropriate source for that content. So how do we weigh these sources? ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 14:00, 5 March 2022 (UTC)
WP:GOODRESEARCH and WP:TERTIARY. For instance "Alchemy" in The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Islamic World , and "Chemistry and Alchemy" in The Oxford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Science, and Technology in Islam and following the bibliographies. "...also managed to produce mineral acids, although it is doubtful whether he recognized them as isolated substances" looks like a good starting point for sulfuric acid. fiveby(zero) 16:34, 5 March 2022 (UTC)
For reference, here is a doc on the history of sulfuric acid from California State University, Los Angeles, saying,
  • 8th century c.e. - Jabir ibn Hayyan became the first recorded person to produce mineral acids including sulfuric acid
  • 9th century c.e. - Al Razi used iron sulfates and copper sulfates under distillation to produce small quantities of sulfuric acid.
  • 13th century c.e. - Albertus Magnus, perhaps the most widely read author of his time, wrote several influential books in medieval Europe describing Al Razi’s method of producing oil of vitriol [= sulfuric acid]
That document lists further references at the bottom of page 2 that may be helpful. Maybe it's more correct to say that al-Razi invented a method for manufacturing sulfuric acid. (That would tally with what Hunke says on p.170 of her work cited in The History of Anaesthesia, published by the Royal Society of Medicine.) --Andreas JN466 17:04, 5 March 2022 (UTC)
I am usually against this deprecation (or depreciation as some seem to think it is) system, but if nobody can prove this isn't citogenisis then it seems like the best move. Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 19:39, 5 March 2022 (UTC)
The sources produced above prove that the essential claims predate the existence of Wikipedia. Zerotalk 03:21, 6 March 2022 (UTC)
  • There is no need to formally deprecate. Sources that are based on (or, worse, copy) Wikipedia can simply be declared unreliable. Blueboar (talk) 20:09, 5 March 2022 (UTC)
  • Wow, thanks for all these sources! This combined heuristic power is really awesome, we should be asking each other for sources like this more often! Unfortunately, however, I'm not learning anything new from these sources about the history of alcohol/mineral acids, though I am gaining a deeper insight in the 20th-century history of tendentious claims about early Muslim chemists, so to speak.
See the problem is this: above I cited respected authorities in the field of the history of chemistry, like Multhauf 1966 and Karpenko & Norris 2002, whose primary source based-accounts (concluding that the discovery of sulfuric and other mineral acids dates to c. 1300) are accepted by top scholars like Newman 2006 (Atoms and Alchemy, p. 98). But apparently already in 1960 someone like Sigrid Hunke, a religious studies (!) scholar allegedly influenced by Nazism (!), published a work called Allahs Sonne über dem Abendland, "Allah's Sun over the West" (!), in which she already made these same seemingly omnipresent claims about al-Razi being responsible for the discovery of sulfuric acid and alcohol (p. 170), without referring to any primary source or to any other form of evidence whatsoever. This is a really problematic pattern: unqualified scholars repeating unevidenced attributions of alcohol and various mineral acids to early Islamic chemists, often with some apparent religious or national axe to grind, who are completely ignored by actual historians of chemistry who actually deal with the primary sources on the history of these things.
When Nomanul Haq in The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Islamic World writes that al-Razi managed to produce mineral acids, although it is doubtful whether he recognized them as isolated substances, he seems to be referring to the well attested fact that Jabir and al-Razi were experimenting with the heating of alums and salts, in which they must indeed have produced gaseous substances like hydrogen chloride and mercury(II) chloride, the study of which was in turn essential to the later discovery of mineral acid-based substances such as aqua regia (it's actually hydrogen chloride, itself not a mineral acid but forming fumes of hydrochloric acid upon contact with the water vapor in atmospheric air, that went unrecognized by al-Razi: see Multhauf 1966 pp. 141–142, 160–163; cf. al-Hassan 2001, Karpenko & Norris 2002). But how would we know what Nomanul Haq means, since he does not refer to any source for his claim? Abdul Mujeeb Khan in The Oxford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Science, and Technology in Islam is even worse, attributing the whole gamut of nitric acid, sulfuric acid, hydrochloric acid and other acids to both Jabir and al-Razi, giving us only the name of a Jabirian work and of the medieval historian al-Mas'udi (edition? page number? secondary source on this?). No, we don't need tertiary sources, quite the opposite: we need a secondary source that actually comes up with some hard evidence in primary sources for all of these claims.
I should perhaps emphasize that I personally would be very happy if someone here would find such a source. I want to learn, and to get it right. But in the meantime my request is actually much simpler. I was wrong to ask for deprecation, not fully understanding what it means. Despite the fact that Modanlou 2008 literally copied a whole sentence from WP and was later cited for that very sentence on WP for c. 4 years (I'm rather amazed at the lack of concern for that! ), citogenesis is not really the most relevant thing here either. Rather, there's a problem we've discovered goes all the way back to 1960 of unreferenced claims being ever again recycled, which despite the fact that there is no evidence in sight, have become almost part of the 'common wisdom' about the accomplishments of early Muslim chemists. To deal with this problem, I simply propose the following:

Can we agree that sources which merely claim that al-Razi discovered alcohol and sulfuric acid, without providing primary evidence or a full reference to a more specialized source, are unreliable in context for this specific claim?

I'm already seeing some support for this here and there above, but it would be nice to have a full-flung consensus. We have for almost twenty years been on the wrong side of this (cf. also the massive amounts of misinformation removed from the Jabir article here), so let's make it very sure we stay on the right side now! ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 23:33, 5 March 2022 (UTC)
I thought the Oxford works were helpful in not giving prominence of a discovery for balance. For tracking down the evidence i have been searching for H. E. Stapleton; M. Hidayat Husain (1927). "Chemistry in Iraq and Persia in the Tenth Century A.D". Memoirs of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. 8: 316–417. which i am led to believe may be helpful, but no luck so far. fiveby(zero) 03:52, 6 March 2022 (UTC)
Yes, Stapleton & Hidayat Husain 1927 (available here) is a very good source for early Islamicate chemistry (sad to say, it remains perhaps the best source for it today). The long and the short of it is that they explicitly state that al-Razi, though coming very close to it, did not discover sulfuric acid (pp. 333, 393; cf. p. 369, note 3). They do, however, suggest that he may have found a primitive way to produce another mineral acid, hydrochloric acid (p. 333), which I will be adding to our relevant articles. A longer explanation is found below.
More information Longer explanation with quotes from Stapleton & Hidayat Husain 1927 ...
Close
Though Nomanul Haq 2009 (one of the tertiary Oxford sources) is closer to the specialist secondary sources when saying that al-Razi produced mineral acids without recognizing them, he's still stretching it a bit since the specialist sources are very clear that for the most part any production of them was purely fortuitous. Anyway, though it's good that you made me look at Stapleton & Hidayat Husain 1927 again, there's still the matter of the dozens of sources out there plainly claiming that al-Razi discovered sulfuric acid and alcohol (the latter not even mentioned by Stapleton & Hidayat Husain 1927, Multhauf 1966, or al-Hassan 2001/2009) without offering any evidence or references for that. Given everything already said in this thread, perhaps it has now become clear that these claims are part of a myth rather than of a legitimate tradition of scholarly research? ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 17:10, 6 March 2022 (UTC)
@Apaugasma: Looking at this further in Google Scholar, I am inclined to agree with you that there is an awful lot of very superficial copying of the alcohol/sulfuric acid claims going on, with the Wikipedia article and then Modanlou apparently being a significant vector (neither claim is in Britannica). I also agree that reinserting anything on this topic should only be done if in-depth sources are found that clearly link this assertion back to Razi's own (voluminous and only partially extant and translated) writings. That is just a question of demanding good sourcing; I am not sure it is necessary to deprecate the bad ones. Here is a nice paper that actually does analyse Razi's laboratory records and provides some historical perspective; unfortunately, it doesn't answer the question we are concerned with here: --Andreas JN466 19:15, 6 March 2022 (UTC)
How about this UNESCO publication (Science and Technology in Islam: Technology and applied sciences, by Maqbul Ahmed, A. Z. Iskandar, 2001, pp. 58ff.)? This asserts that al-Razi's Kitab al-Asrar contained three recipes for making sulphuric acid, and quotes one of them (p. 60). (No claim is made that he was the first.) Also note the comments on page 59 which I think relate to what you were quoting above. Cheers, --Andreas JN466 19:44, 6 March 2022 (UTC)
Yes, that's Al-Hassan 2001, to whom I referred a number of times above. The three recipes are not from al-Razi's Kitāb al-Asrār but from an anonymous Karshuni manuscript containing a compilation taken from several authors (see Al-Hassan 2001 p. 63) and whose dating is uncertain (before 1100 according to its editors, Berthelot & Houdas 1893 vol. II p. xvii). As such, Al-Hassan 2001 is not repeating the claim that al-Razi discovered it, just that it occurs in early Arabic sources. On pp. 58-59, Al-Hassan 2001 makes an interesting argument that Jabir must have already known mineral acids because he was aware of the need to cool the distillate (which indeed addresses the concerns of Multhauf 1966 et al.). But note how he himself explicitly acknowledges that what he is proposing runs contrary to the prevailing notion that Islamic chemists did not produce mineral acids (citing authorities like Multhauf and Needham). It's because of this engagement with actual research that Al-Hassan is a reliable source, even though his views (which reviewers have noted are often polemical in nature, e.g., Ferrario 2010 p. 132 the tone of an open and fiery polemic against other scholars [...] the tone of the polemics tends to exceed the desirable boundaries of an academic disagreement; Brentjes 2011 The at times rather sharply ideological tone does not improve his arguments) have as of yet not been accepted by other scholars (meaning they should be accorded less weight than others). As I noted above, if even a polemical minority source like Al-Hassan does not attribute alcohol and sulfuric acid to al-Razi, the many sources which do this without any proper reference should be considered fringe.
You're right that this could equally well be accomplished by insisting on good sourcing. But it's hard when there are so many sources out there repeating the fringe view, and editors (most of them probably in good faith) keep coming up with these sources, in their turn insisting that they should be included. I don't want to spend three full days on it every time this happens: it would be much better to be able to point to a broader consensus saying that these are indeed bad sources. I think that a rough consensus in that direction, as well as a lot of useful extra information, has accrued here in this thread, for which I wish to thank everyone who participated. ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 22:44, 6 March 2022 (UTC)
Thanks for taking the time to explain and sorry for missing that this was the source you had previously referred to (I got confused by the author names vs. the editor name). Same for the Berthelot (thanks for the page reference) – you are quite right that this is not al-Razi. I thought at first the text was talking about a MS of al-Razi's book in that script ... As for the polemics, I believe it is good for people like Hassan who are at home in both cultures to be working in these fields. It would be surprising if they didn't complain about shortcomings or subconscious biases in Western scholarship, just as we would likely complain of shortcomings or subconscious biases in Japanese scholarship of European culture, say. That's just human nature. After a couple more centuries of scholarship it will probably work itself out ... Anyway, reiterating that I agree with the sourcing standard you propose. Happy editing. --Andreas JN466 01:09, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

Comment Late to the party, only found this thread after having seen this edit summary from Premitive. We should go by what Zero said, retaining only the sources that cite primary sources would be tantamount leaving out many reliable sources for no legit reason, i think it's more than likely that there is a huge gap in the relevant litterature about these dicoveries, thus, all views should be included with due weight.---Wikaviani (talk) (contribs) 16:52, 6 March 2022 (UTC)

Agreed that all legitimate views should be represented according to their due weight. My argument here is that some views are not legitimate, because though often repeated they do not derive from any discernible historical research. ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 22:44, 6 March 2022 (UTC)
I understand, but any source that is deemed reliable should be able to be cited in the article, whether it cites primary sources or not.---Wikaviani (talk) (contribs) 09:37, 7 March 2022 (UTC)
I agree that there should not be a general requirement for any source in the article to cite primary sources. But I should perhaps clarify the underlying policy here. WP:No original research states that a secondary source contains an author's analysis, evaluation, interpretation, or synthesis of the facts, evidence, concepts, and ideas taken from primary sources. [...] Policy: [...] Articles may make an analytic, evaluative, interpretive, or synthetic claim only if that has been published by a reliable secondary source (emphasis in original). So yes, the article may cite a reliable source that does not itself cite a primary source, but that citation will not support any claim for which no reliable secondary source (i.e., a source that analyzes/evaluates/etc. the primary evidence) can be shown to exist. It's the standard verifiability criterion: at every level a published source needs to exist so as to be able to trace back any claim to the basic evidence for it. I have tried to show above that no secondary source (in the technical WP sense clarified above) exists for the attribution of alcohol and sulfuric acid to al-Razi. What I am asking for is an explicit consensus that as long as no such secondary source is found, the many non-secondary sources making these claims cannot support this attribution, and are thus unreliable in context. ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 19:43, 7 March 2022 (UTC)
@Apaugasma: What do you think of this one? This asserts that in his "great Licht der Lichter", i.e. Lumen Luminum (attributed to Razi, possibly incorrectly so, but listed as translated in the 12th century by Gerard of Cremona (1114 – 1187) on p. 38 of this Harvard tome), (Pseudo-)Razi speaks of "an oil won by distillation from iron vitriol". (It occurred to me that we might have to look for publications in other languages than English to find a link back to a primary source.) I might have a look for the Latin text later (unless you're aware of an English, German, French or Spanish translation ...) if you think it's worthwhile (do tell me if I've missed something and am barking up the wrong tree). --Andreas JN466 21:10, 7 March 2022 (UTC)
I'm normally the first to emphasize that the best research on Islamicate chemistry is very old, most of it dating to the first half of the 20th century, but Hager 1877 (!) really is a bit too old. In the 19th century, the authenticity of the many Latin alchemical writings attributed to Arabic authors was for the most part still taken for granted. However, this all changed with the work of Berthelot in the 1890s, and especially with the work of Stapleton and Ruska in the 1920s and 1930s. Nowadays most of these Latin writings are recognized as pseudepigraphs, though quite a few of them are likely translated from the Arabic. A good recent survey of this by a noted expert is Moureau 2020, Min al-Kīmiyā’ ad Alchimiam.
The "grossen Licht der Lichter" or Lumen luminum referred to by Hagen 1877 p. 420 may be any of three works discussed by Moureau 2020, the first (p. 114 no. 20) variously attributed to al-Razi or to Aristotle but in some manuscripts also anonymous (extracts edited by Ruska 1939, "Pseudepigraphe Rasis-Schriften", pp 56-65; whether it is a translation from the Arabic or not needs further investigation according to Moureau 2020), the second (p. 114 no. 22) attributed to al-Razi or anonymous (very likely a translation from the Arabic according Moureau 2020), the third (p. 107 no. 5) more often called De perfecto magisterio and variously attributed to Aristotle or al-Razi (likely originally written in Latin in the 13th century according to Ruska 1939 pp. 45-56, which Moureau 2020 finds convincing). All of these works need much further investigation, but their attribution to al-Razi in some manuscripts is not currently accepted as authentic.
Stapleton & Hidayat Husain 1927 in the quote I gave above (p. 333) mentioned that some earlier authors mistakenly ascribed the discovery of the mineral acids to al-Razi based on what are in fact later interpolations in a Latin Razi work (the Liber secretorum Bubacaris, Moureau 2020 p. 117 no. 18, the only Latin text attributed to al-Razi whose authenticity is currently accepted, though it also contains many interpolations). More generally it seems likely to me that the ultimate origin of the repeated claims that al-Razi discovered sulfuric acid lie precisely in this 19th-century literature, which took all Latin works attributed to al-Razi as authentic. But I think there really is a limit to the lengths we should go to here in the archaeology of this mistaken claim. If it was ever proposed by a serious secondary source detailing the evidence in primary source texts, then this source must be so antiquated as to be utterly useless. We've gone through a major part of the relevant 20th-century and 21th-century secondary literature, and the most recent source that even alludes to the claim (only to refute it) dates from 1927. I think it's time to finally put it to rest. ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 19:09, 8 March 2022 (UTC)
@Apaugasma: Thanks for the interesting sources. I do think that if we want to exclude something so widely stated as fact in academic sources that would ordinarily be deemed reliable, we should go the extra mile. Being new to this, I did not know there were (at least ...) three different texts ascribed to al-Razi titled "Lumen Luminum". But the description as the "große Licht der Lichter" in Hager now makes sense, as one of the three texts is known as the "Lumen Luminum Magnum" (there is also a Lumen Luminum Minus).
This means we have the primary source you asked for, which led to the widely repeated claim. It's also cited in Hoefer's Histoire de la Chimie (1866), which stated that (quoting an English summary from the 1920s) "in the book LUMEN LUMINUM MAGNUM, Rhases describes a preparation of Sulphuric Acid from Sulphate of Iron, in a way similar to the Nordhausen process" (note this is followed by a comment casting doubt on el-Razi's authorship, quoting Schmieder History of Alchemy p.95) (p. 341 of Hoefer). It is similarly cited in another 19th-century French work. Hoefer identifies the Lumen Luminum Magnum as the 14th-century manuscript 6514 beginning fol. 113r in the Bibliothèque nationale de France, which is different from the Pseudo-Aristotle Lumen Luminum that is mentioned on p. 107 of Moureau and which Huska thought was a much later original text written in Latin. (That text is part of the same BnF MS, but starts a few pages later.)
Now you may say Hoefer is even more ancient than Hager, but this precise page is still being quoted today to say that Geber and el-Razi knew how to produce sulphuric acid in History of Analytical Chemistry, Elsevier, 2016, p. 13, p. 20, note 10. This is a recent work by a major publisher of reference works.
Of course this doesn't prove that Rhazes wrote the passage in question in the 9th or 10th century, and I'm not saying that – it is a 14th-century manuscript after all, according to Hoefer. But maybe we could look a little further into the Lumen Luminum Magnum, and whether there is an Arabic original for it? (Moureau unfortunately doesn't seem to cover it, but it used to be considered authentic.) Can you find out any more about it?
At the very least we might at the end of our research be able to add something about this manuscript and its role in this widespread claim to the article, because that in my view is the best way to forestall future editors coming along adding "And by the way, el-Razi invented sulfuric acid."
It's the absence of any mention of a popular claim (even if it is a partial debunking) that causes drive-by additions, as well as potential accusations of bias.
Speaking of citogenesis, which is how you started this section (and which is something I've always been interested in and have written about on- and off-wiki), the phenomenon clearly wasn't invented by Wikipedia. It occurs to me that this might be one of the cases where Wikipedia could actually mitigate citogenesis among conventional sources by providing enough background to dispel widespread but simplistic claims. Regards, Andreas JN466 12:50, 9 March 2022 (UTC)
@Jayen466: it's nothing short of fantastic that you managed to find in works as old as Bobierre 1852 and Hoefer 1866 (also present in the 1st ed. 1842–1843, vol. I, pp. 323–325 according to Ferrario 2009 p. 42 note 22; I checked Ferrario's refs to Kopp 1875 and Thorndike 1923, but these have no bearing upon our subject here) what may indeed be one of the origins of the repeated attributions of sulfuric acid to al-Razi (though the fact that al-Razi is known to have widely experimented with the dry distillation of vitriol may also be an independent driving factor: it's not for nothing that Stapleton & Hidayat Husain 1927 write on p. 393 that he came very close to discovering it, a fact which others may have interpreted more generously). I for my part have also done some additional digging, and came up with the following: the Lumen luminum magnum in which the passage on sulfuric acid occurs is attributed to al-Razi in ms. Paris BnF Lat. 6514 f. 113ra–120va, but the same work (incipit Cum de sublimiori atque precipuo) is attributed to Aristotle in ms. Florence Bibl. Riccardiana L. III. 13. 119 f. 19va–29rb, there carrying the title Liber Aristotilis (see Pattin 1972 pp. 93–94; its incipit and attribution to Aristotle is also noted by Halleux 1996 p. 892). It is in fact the Lumen Luminum discussed by Moureau 2020 p. 114 no. 20 (note the incipit), in some manuscripts anonymous but in other manuscripts attributed to al-Razi, to Aristotle, or (one time) to Avicenna (extracts edited by Ruska 1939, "Pseudepigraphe Rasis-Schriften", pp. 56–65).
As noted both by Pattin 1972 p. 93 and Halleux 1996 p. 892, the work refers multiple times to Jabir ibn Hayyan's Book of Seventy, one of the few Arabic Jabir works translated into Latin (by Gerard of Cremona, as Liber de Septuaginta). In fact, Ruska 1939 p. 58 notes that the author of the Lumen luminum magnum/Cum de sublimiori presents themselves (i.e., al-Razi) as the author of the Liber de Septuaginta, which would be an odd mistake for an Arabic author and quite impossible for al-Razi himself, but nothing out of the ordinary for a Latin author. Ruska 1939 pp. 58-61 further argues at some length that the work must be an original composition in Latin based on various works translated from the Arabic (as is the case for many Latin works of this type). If I may add a note from my own OR expertise, I would add that the authentic works by al-Razi never refer to the otherwise very influential Liber de Septuaginta, which would also speak against the attribution of the Lumen luminum magnum/Cum de sublimiori to al-Razi. As noted both by Halleux 1996 p. 892 and Moureau 2020 p. 114, one manuscript says it was translated by a certain Raymond of Marseilles. It may still be a translation from the Arabic, which Moureau 2020 says needs to be further investigated. Whether it is an authentic work by al-Razi, however, is not really a question: it would be very surprising if it were.
In fact, Moureau 2020 p. 117 states quite clearly that although many alchemical Latin texts are attributed to Rāzı̄, only one is, in the current state of research, known to be a translation of the famous physician and alchemist (i.e., the Liber secretorum Bubacaris, a heavily interpolated paraphrase of al-Razi's Kitāb al-asrār). As I wrote above, this has been the scholarly consensus since the very rigorous work done by Stapleton and Ruska in the 1920s and 1930s. Hoefer 1866 vol. I p. 343 may still have written with regard to the three Latin (pseudo-)Razi writings to which he had access (no Arabic Razi works had yet been edited or studied at the time) that rien n'indique que les trois écrits de Rhasès soient apocryphes. Il n'y a aucune preuve solide à faire valoir contre leur authenticité, but this is simply outdated. Critical comparison with the authentic Arabic material has completely changed the scholarly view, and as Ferrario 2009 pp. 42–43 says with regard to another of the three Latin works known to Hoefer 1866, Ruska's critique of the attribution to al-Razi still needs to be refuted.
You're absolutely right that making sure that an article contains much reliably-sourced information is the best way to protect it from bad drive-by additions. Currently the article in general, and the section on chemistry in particular, is a total mess. I think that ideally, all of the above should be incorporated in a section in the article dealing specifically with the Latin works attributed to al-Razi. We may also mention there that one of these, the Lumen luminum magnum, contains a recipe for sulfuric acid, if we also summarize Ruska 1939's arguments against the authenticity of its attribution to al-Razi, which given their acceptance by Ferrario 2009, Moureau 2020, et al., should be presented as authoritative. The De aluminibus et salibus, another pseudo-Razi work but one of much greater historical importance (see, e.g., Hydrochloric acid#History), should also be covered there. I will not be working on this in the foreseeable future (real-life priorities mean that I won't be editing much), but a lot of the relevant material has already been collected in this thread, so perhaps someone else will take a stab on it. ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 00:17, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

RfC: Behind the Voice Actors

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
There is consensus for option 1. Namely, "Generally reliable for the voice or actor of a character/entertainment news". However, it is important to note that due to the statistical nature of the website, there is consensus that coverage in this source does not contribute to significant coverage. A. C. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 16:07, 10 March 2022 (UTC)


What is the reliability of Behind the Voice Actors (BTVA)? They are not user-generated content and they try to distinguish themselves from websites like IMDB and it also looks like they fact-check/verify their information with the primary source with a green tick. Past discussions here look like there is no clear consensus on BTVA. After this RfC, I think we should consider putting it on WP:RSP. Here are the past discussions [1], [2], [3], and [4].

  • Option 1: Generally reliable for the voice or actor of a character/entertainment news
  • Option 2: Unclear or additional considerations apply
  • Option 3: Generally unreliable for factual news
  • Option 4: Publishes false or fabricated information and should be deprecated

― Kaleeb18TalkCaleb 16:17, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

  • I have No opinion on the reliability of the source… but 4 discussions over nine years is hardly perennial. Blueboar (talk) 02:36, 5 February 2022 (UTC)
  • While it’s not as bad as IMDb, I’ve still seen the site be unreliable on a few different occasions, so I personally wouldn’t think it would be a great idea when using it as a reference or a source to back up anything because it isn’t always reputable. Unfortunately because of this, I would have to go with Option 3. SlySabre (talk) 04:59, 5 February 2022 (UTC)
  • Option 3 I scrolled down and read "This is an unofficial site", which is somehow weird. Also too many advertisements and banners and there are no authors, we do not know who says what. I 'd suggest it 's better to avoid. Cinadon36 08:29, 5 February 2022 (UTC)
  • I reject such over generalizations. (invited by the bot) But on average, weaker than a typical RS. So e.g. generally strong enough to retain an uncontested contested fact, not strong enough to retain a contested one. North8000 (talk) 10:49, 5 February 2022 (UTC)
  • Option 3: Immediately visible is a paragraph describing itself as a "community database", which means it likely is not as reliable as a page with a stated author(s) and preferably some kind of editorial team. Also as per Cinadon36, the bottom states that it is an "unofficial website" which is concerning and raises questions over its reliability. Liamyangll (talk to me! | My contribs!) 02:30, 6 February 2022 (UTC) At second glance, it appears my brief, superficial scan of the general website was not accurate. The thorough points specified by Compassionate727 seem to address the points made by Cinadon36 which I originally supported. After doing a little more digging, I'm inclined to lean towards Option 1, but I'm overall still undecided as I don't believe the reliability could span the entire website. I'll replace my past opinion with Option 2. Liamyangll (talk to me! | My contribs!) 12:11, 11 February 2022 (UTC)
  • Option 2 they claim to fact check and there are no examples specified of errors so it could be used for uncontroversial information in my virw, Atlantic306 (talk) 18:50, 6 February 2022 (UTC)
    This is how I also feel about it. ― Kaleeb18TalkCaleb 18:52, 6 February 2022 (UTC)
  • Option 1. As already noted, the website describes itself as "unofficial" in the footer alongside a note about copyrights and trademarks, which I interpret to be their attempt to make some kind of fair use claim. The home page describes it as a "community database"; I believe this means community-maintained, because when I navigate to the content guidelines, there is a note that: The BTVA site is run by a handful of volunteers who contribute content in their spare time as a hobby; the FAQ notes that: all the site staff either have jobs or are still in school. It is clear that not everyone can be a volunteer, because site visitors are instructed to request additions or changes to content via forum post, unless they are a voice actor making requests concerning their own content, in which case they are instructed to contact the site admin directly. There is a note in the FAQ that: If you prove yourself a reliable and trustworthy contributor who works well with others, then you may be invited to become a team member. Currently there are only 13 such individuals.
Their FAQ suggests an extensive fact-checking process, and they claim: Our site is not perfect and we do make some mistakes, but unlike user submitted sites like imdb and wikipedia our sources come from official voice actor websites, voice actor resumes, DVD/Blu-ray ending credits and from conversations with the voice actors & voice directors who actually worked on the titles. If you notice any green checkmarks those are confirmed credits. Click the greencheck mark to see the source. Our goal is to have a green checkmark for every single role on the site so fans will know these credits are confirmed. Then you won't have to rely on other sites that don't list any sources at all. I found some pages that have these green checkmarks and clicked on them, which brought up screenshots of the show's credits, either taken directly from the animation or on the websites of distributors like Funimation. The FAQ notes, in the context of someone claiming that their credits lists for particular actors may be incomplete, that: Other sites might claim to be up-to-date but anybody can write words; gathering pictures and verifying credits takes a lot of time and effort. Listing another site isn't as helpful as you think it is. It's not going to make the work go any faster and chances are the site staff already know what hasn't been added yet. They note elsewhere that they sometimes receive conflicting information and conduct some kind of investigation when that happens.
My overall assessment is that for a website run by a dozen volunteers, they seem shockingly professional. I would say that any credits with a green checkmark are clearly reliable. Content without a checkmark should be treated with a little more skepticism, but even then I would say it is probably generally reliable unless we have specific reason to doubt its accuracy in a particular situation. Despite their unpolished presentation, they seem generally high-quality, certainly better than somewhere like IMDb or Wikipedia. —Compassionate727 (T·C) 20:48, 6 February 2022 (UTC)
Wow thanks for the detailed review! ― Kaleeb18TalkCaleb 20:53, 6 February 2022 (UTC)
  • Option 1 per Compassionate727's detailed review. I may change my mind if SlySabre gives the examples of unreliable occasions. Pious Brother (talk) 23:21, 10 February 2022 (UTC)
  • Option 1 (summoned by bot) very good report by Compassionate727. IAmChaos 23:27, 12 February 2022 (UTC)
  • Option 1 per Compassionate727's detailed review. This seems to be relatively reliable in the subject matter it has expertise it. Iamreallygoodatcheckers (talk) 04:01, 7 March 2022 (UTC)
  • Comment Similar to Blueboar, but I would add that I don't consider the site to contribute to notability - it appears to be an effort to document all voice actors, and as such any content they produce should be considered routine. BilledMammal (talk) 04:22, 7 March 2022 (UTC)
Agreed, coverage on this website is inherently statistical/routine and does not constitute significant coverage. —Compassionate727 (T·C) 15:33, 7 March 2022 (UTC)
I would also agree. Iamreallygoodatcheckers (talk) 03:34, 8 March 2022 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Ruptly, subsidiary of RT (Russia Today)

Should Ruptly, a state-owned subsidiary of Deprecated RT (Russia Today) (RSP entry), be treated as part of RT and be considered to inherit the reliability status of RT? There are approximately 41 citations of ruptly.tv Links Spamcheck across Wikipedia article space at the moment.

As concluded in the 2020 RfC and affirmed by academic consensus, RT is a propaganda outlet (sources) with a reputation for publishing disinformation (sources) and conspiracy theories (sources), especially about geopolitical matters. Many of the 41 citations of Ruptly are for geopolitical or military claims (e.g. in the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership article), and should be reviewed. — Newslinger talk 11:15, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

Yes.Slatersteven (talk) 11:47, 2 March 2022 (UTC)
Yes. Renat 12:33, 2 March 2022 (UTC)
Yes. It's a bad source for a few reasons. The fact it is a Russian propaganda outlet which publishes fake news is clear in our article. But also its footage is mostly essentially user-generated content that it uploads without any real checks, so is almost a SPS platform like YouTube (example here) so not the sort of source we should use even if it weren't biased. At best, we should handle it as we do primary sources like YouTube videos. BobFromBrockley (talk) 12:37, 2 March 2022 (UTC)
Yes. Iskandar323 (talk) 12:53, 2 March 2022 (UTC)
Yes. I would say that it's even less reliable than RT because of the reasons Bobfrombrockley outlines. —AFreshStart (talk) 13:07, 2 March 2022 (UTC)
Yes. Pretty straightforward conclusion. oknazevad (talk) 13:22, 2 March 2022 (UTC)
Note Added Ruptly and Redfish to WP:UPSD as deprecated, same as RT. Will change the classification if this discussion closes differently. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 13:32, 2 March 2022 (UTC)
Yes, even without the RT ownership it still wouldn't be a reliable source. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 14:27, 2 March 2022 (UTC)
Comment. What untruths are being aired? Only what Reuters says? Seems like a rush to Russian Xenophobia over what a small section of government did. Welcome to the revived Cold War. When I look at the 41 citations they're things like "A protest against COVID happened in Russia. Or Russian troops were involved in a Syria war. Is that untrue? CaribDigita (talk) 17:32, 2 March 2022 (UTC)
It is not "Xenophobia" to recognize that the subsidiary of a disinformation outfit is unreliable; as you can see on the perennial sources list, questionable sources based in many other countries have also been designated as unreliable. I can't find any evidence that Ruptly is somehow more reliable than its parent organization, RT. Also, see this excerpt from the peer-reviewed Politology journal that explains how RT, Sputnik (RSP entry), and Ruptly share the same objective of disinformation:

Today, disinformation and propaganda are a component of Russia’s “soft power” and a part of its security policy, including hybrid warfare. In 2012–2013, after being elected for his third term, Putin began using cyberattacks and disinformation to counter the “soft power” of the West and to compensate for the weakness of Russia’s own conventional strategy. Russia’s disinformation and propaganda strategy works on a trial-and-error basis and is clearly developed separately for each country or group, focusing on those narratives and unfortunate news that work best in a particular environment. The main goal is to discredit politicians, experts, institutions, and media of the target countries and to create a one-sided pro-Russian reality. Tools of such influence involve the media outlets RT, Sputnik, Ruptly, TASS.

— Newslinger talk 18:19, 2 March 2022 (UTC)
Comment:I hear you what's an example that source gives? I always hear the accusation but never see anything ever quoted as a clear-cut example of the "propaganda". Like with CGTN from China, they give as an example the forced confession. CaribDigita (talk) 22:20, 2 March 2022 (UTC)
Here's an example. Since Ruptly is a service offered by RT, a source that the community has already determined to be unreliable in almost all cases, the burden of proof is really on those who want to use Ruptly to show that it is reliable despite the limitations of its parent company. — Newslinger talk 23:09, 2 March 2022 (UTC)
Comment: So that New York Times said the "Bible burning" occurred at the protest and says CBS showed it too but their problem was Ruptly didn't show that someone came thereafter to put the Bible out? And that's their claim of misinformation. CaribDigita (talk) 06:37, 3 March 2022 (UTC)
Deceptively editing a video to manufacture a scandal, as Ruptly did in this example, is a negative indicator of reliability. The US-based disinformation operation Project Veritas (RSP entry) uses a similar strategy, and is also considered unreliable for this reason.
Responding to your comment about CBS, the article states that the local CBS affiliate (unlike Ruptly) presented the information in a non-deceptive way: "Apart from the Ruptly videographer, only one other journalist — a local television reporter — heard about the Bible burning, and noted it with a single sentence in a lengthy report on that night’s protests. The story, by KOIN, the local CBS News affiliate, also reported that a group of women calling themselves Moms United for Black Lives Matter attempted to put out the fire — a detail not included in the Ruptly video, which was edited to string together a number of clips from the night." — Newslinger talk 10:52, 4 March 2022 (UTC)
Yes. I don’t know that there is evidence to suggest editorial independence from RT. For completeness sake, I would also support deprecating Redfish <redfish.media>, which is owned by Russia as a subsidiary of RT. — Mhawk10 (talk) 16:40, 2 March 2022 (UTC)
I also support assigning Redfish the same classification as RT and Ruptly. Georgetown University's Gnovis Journal published an article confirming that many Redfish staff members migrated from RT, Ruptly, and other Russian state media outlets. Combined with the fact that Ruptly owns Redfish, it is undeniable that Redfish is repackaging the same questionable propaganda of RT/Ruptly in a different format under a different brand. — Newslinger talk 17:12, 2 March 2022 (UTC) Edited 17:28, 2 March 2022 (UTC)
Also, I want to note that ANO TV-Novosti is a shell organization founded by the Russian state-owned RIA Novosti (RSP entry) that holds the assets of RT, RT's subsidiaries, and other organizations that are closely associated with RT. Organizations that operate under ANO TV-Novosti have shared resources (including employees and office space) and objectives, and should be treated similarly since the dividing lines between these organizations are minimal. ANO TV-Novosti organizations include RT, Ruptly, Redfish, Maffick, and any other brands that are launched in association with ANO TV-Novosti. — Newslinger talk 10:13, 4 March 2022 (UTC)
Agree. Slatersteven (talk) 17:16, 2 March 2022 (UTC)
Surely there's no need for a separate depreciation discussion given that these are literal subsidiaries? Just need to be added to the RT rsp entry and added to the edit filter. Hemiauchenia (talk) 18:05, 2 March 2022 (UTC)
Since these sources are politically sensitive, and because these sources have previously claimed to be editorially independent of each other (a dubious claim), I thought it would be better to err on the side of caution and get community consensus first. — Newslinger talk 18:26, 2 March 2022 (UTC)
Ruptly denies that their organization is a subsididary of RT. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 19:07, 2 March 2022 (UTC)
RT, Ruptly, et. al. sometimes deny connections to each other, but both primary sources and reliable secondary sources contradict Ruptly's denial. Please see Talk:RT (TV network)/Archive 11 § Ruptly and, in particular:
— Newslinger talk 19:36, 2 March 2022 (UTC)
RT including Ruptly in their network broadcasting would be consistent with Ruptly being a sister company as they claim. The US government puts it thus: "RT was established by TV-Novosti, which was founded by RIA Novosti. RT’s network also includes a sister news agency Ruptly ..." So the title of this thread, which presents "subsidiary" as if it's an undisputed fact, doesn't appear to be consistent with WP:TALKHEADPOV. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 16:02, 3 March 2022 (UTC)
The heading is consistent with the content in the RT (TV network) and Ruptly articles, consistent with the consensus that determined that content in those articles, and consistent with the reliable sources that the consensus is based on. Therefore, the heading of this discussion is consistent with WP:TALKHEADPOV; feel free to obtain consensus for your view on the respective article talk pages if you disagree.
Additionally, the United States Department of State report linked in your comment explains that the ownership claims made by RT, Ruptly, Redfish, and Maffick are logically inconsistent:

Redfish claims Ruptly is its parent company and officially it is registered as belonging to Ruptly, however RT has also called Redfish an RT “digital content project.” Both Ruptly and Redfish are located in Berlin, and until 2021 when Maffick closed its Berlin office, Ruptly, Redfish, and Maffick shared the same address. Ruptly’s website states it was founded “to act as an independent commercially funded organization and sister agency to RT,” while Redfish’s website states that Ruptly is “a news agency owned by RT.” On RT’s website, Ruptly is described as “RT’s video agency.” This discrepancy could be an indicator of a lack of organizational independence.

Thank you for sharing this report, which shows the lack of transparency among these media outlets and supports the understanding that Ruptly, Redfish, and Maffick inherit the unreliability of RT. — Newslinger talk 16:32, 3 March 2022 (UTC)
If Wikipedia were a reliable source then its statement that "ANO TV Novosti ... is the principal shareholder in both Ruptly and RT" would further reinforce the idea that Ruptly is a sister company, and of course your further quote of the US government doesn't say otherwise, it says sister. My !vote is that the question is bad. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 17:06, 3 March 2022 (UTC)
The source that was cited for the statement doesn't mention Ruptly at all, so I've amended the Ruptly article to remove the unverifiable content in Special:Diff/1075062354. Please see the citations at Ruptly#cite_note-subsidiary-1 that establish that Ruptly is a subsidiary of RT. And finally, RT (the company) marketing Ruptly (the channel) as a sister channel to RT (the channel) does not preclude Ruptly (the company) from being a subsidiary of RT (the company). — Newslinger talk 18:11, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

What about TASS? Is that one better, or still hot garbage? It has a much longer history. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 22:06, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

There was consensus to designate TASS (RSP entry) as a situational source because it is the flagship news agency of the Russian government, and it is considered usable for the government view when appropriate and accompanied with in-text attribution. Because it is a major news agency, content from TASS is heavily reused by other domestic publications.
This is different from RT, which is a TV network that primarily targets non-domestic audiences and has a reputation for propagating disinformation. RT adapts its message for each market it operates in to most effectively "encourage conspiracy theories about media institutions in the West in order to discredit and delegitimize them". RT, Ruptly, and Redfish also have a pattern of misleadingly portraying themselves as "independent" of each other and of the Russian government, when reliable sources confirm otherwise.
As an analogy, TASS is like Xinhua News Agency (RSP entry), while RT is like China Global Television Network (RSP entry). (In fact, CGTN was modeled after RT.) — Newslinger talk 22:47, 2 March 2022 (UTC)
Missed the TASS entry in the list, thanks. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 22:57, 2 March 2022 (UTC)
That is apparently its WP:RSP entry. My personal opinion is that all sources owned by or otherwise under the effective control of the Russian Government should be treated together. Therefore, since RT is deprecated, TASS should be too. But that's just my opinion. Adoring nanny (talk) 23:51, 2 March 2022 (UTC)
The difference is that TASS is a reliable source for the position of the Russian government (i.e. if TASS says the Russian government believes "X", we can be sure that the Russian government does indeed believe X) which is due in some situations (e.g. in disputes to which Russia is a party). It might also be reliable for facts relating to situations the Russian government has no political position regarding (this is true of at least some state-owned media, I've not looked to see if applies to TASS). RT is not reliable even for those limited uses. Thryduulf (talk) 21:02, 5 March 2022 (UTC)
  • Yes to considering both Ruptly and Redfish as equivalent to RT in terms of reliability. Not to mention, its UGC aspect makes it unusable even if one disregards the Russian disinformation operation. Tayi Arajakate Talk 10:37, 3 March 2022 (UTC)
Yes. The source contains nothing but Russia propoganda and misinformation. It should not be trusted at all, especially with the situation with Ukraine, a lot of misinformation and fake news is going around. ArsenalGhanaPartey (talk) 19:05, 3 March 2022 (UTC)
Yes. Elinruby (talk) 09:01, 6 March 2022 (UTC)
Yes to deprecating both Ruptly and Redfish, as subsidiaries of RT. Ruptly acts as the video arm of RT, and Redfish as the left-wing "outlet" of RT. All are known for peddling debunked conspiracy theories and for their unequivocal parroting of official Russian governmental positions. Pilaz (talk) 01:18, 11 March 2022 (UTC)
Yes, and every other subsidiary, due to lack of independence. BilledMammal (talk) 03:04, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

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