Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 445

The article on St Joseph's Mission relies very heavily on Whitehead, Margaret (1982). The Cariboo Mission: A History of the Oblates. Victoria, British Columbia: Sono Nis Press.

The publisher's About page seems reasonable. The source is mainly used to source administrivia about who was the principal at the residential school when, which is somewhat important given the criminal convictions among the staff. The source doesn't seem to be listed at Google Books, however, although I see it in several bibliographies there.

My own impression is that it might be a rather uncritical history, based on some other search results, but I am not actually sure how much that matters for things like: The Oblate priests lived in the same building that the boys lived in, while the Sisters lived in the girls building.

However when you get into things like this: The priests of the Mission relied on grand church-opening ceremonies to replace Indigenous rituals such as the potlatch, which they had now banned. Bishop Pierre-Paul Durieu founded the Indian Total Abstinence Society of British Columbia in 1895 at Saint Joseph's Mission to encourage prohibition on all reserves. Band chiefs under the Durieu system were encouraged to publicly whip people in order to encourage members to follow church rules, a practice which was tacitly endorsed by the government. However, a court case in which a priest and chief were found guilty of assault after administering thirty lashes to a 17-year old Indigenous girl for promiscuity led Bishop Durieu to found the Total Abstinence Society instead. (The government overturned the sentence after an appeal by the church.) The Society would become responsible for holding new converts to their pledge to give up alcohol, and to punish people who fell short.^[1] I think it is a lot shakier. And am I the only one who finds the chronology there unclear? Normally I would try to clarify it based on the source, but since I haven't found the source online...Elinruby (talk) 20:33, 7 July 2024 (UTC)

I'd like some input; thinking of adding a refimprove tag to article given that it relies so heavily on this one source and the report of the Truth an Reconciliation Commission. Elinruby (talk) 20:33, 7 July 2024 (UTC)

Whitehead is a history professor, her area of study appears to be this specific issue, and the work appears to be used by others. So the work looks reliable. I can't say anything about the specific content, as I can't find the source online either. You could try making a request for pages 93–97 at Wikipedia:WikiProject Resource Exchange/Resource Request.

As to tagging the article you could use {{one source}} rather than refimprove. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 17:04, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

That is a good suggestion, thank you. And I missed the fact that she is a history professor. I will go ahead amd change the tag as you suggest. I feel a little better about using the source so heavily now, and will go ahead and address the repeated references. In some cases I would have questioned the notability of the staffing changes, but given the criminal convictions I think that in this case it is important to note who was in charge at a given time. Appreciate it. Elinruby (talk) 05:32, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

Curious if anyone has thoughts on the Solomon Islands Historical Encyclopaedia, specifically its article about Peter Kenilorea (https://www.solomonencyclopaedia.net/biogs/E000525b.htm). The entire website appears to be written by one person, Clive Moore, but he's an academic historian and has written about the country in other publications. My other immediate concern is that in this particular entry, it lists Kenilorea's date of birth as 19 May, but most other sources list it as 23 May, including government websites. Another consideration is that Moore worked personally with Kenilorea as his editor when Kenilorea wrote an autobiography. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 01:30, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

Practically, SIHE is Clive Moore's personal blog and not peer-reviewed; however, as you say, Moore is an academic historian and a highly regarded one. So, WP:EXPERTSPS applies, which means that we ought to report both the dates. TrangaBellam (talk) 09:06, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

I don't have access to the full work, but this snippet from Kenilorea autobiography could be useful "... 23 May 1943, a date I accepted as my official birthday until, only recently, I discovered, in July 2003, amongst Dad's old records, that "Kauona Keninaraiso ona Kenirorea was born on 19 May 1943". -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 09:22, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

https://barebonesez.blogspot.com/2011/12/robert-bloch-on-tv-part-four-alfred.html This ezine seems to be comprehensive in the material that it catalogues. It also has legitimate print issues. The issue is that it's hosted on blogger. Could anyone kindly take a look? — Your local Sink Cat (The Sink). 21:20, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

The bigger problem is that that article states that one of its sources is Wikipedia, this appears to be a WP:CIRCULAR issue. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 23:34, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

I have been trying to write an article on the Wilson-Kaplan direct-mapped (WKdm) virtual memory compression algorithm.

Its latest incarnation was declined (again) due to the reviewing editor stating that Github was not a reliable source and therefore causing the draft article to lose a secondary source which reduced the number of sources in most of the explanation of the algorithm to just one (primary) source, which is obviously not a sufficient number of sources.

The source code to which the secondary source in the draft article linked was on Github, but the specific repository was under Apple's official account and it was the official Apple mirror of the OSFMK / XNU source code repository available on opensource.apple.com .

The sources under question are links to specific source code files containing block comments in the OSFMK / XNU source code that provided a secondary explanation of the WKdm compression and decompression algorithm.

In summary, my question is whether source code in the repositories on opensource.apple.com and their direct mirrors (eg. on Github) can be linked to for secondary sources ( in my case eg. here ) -- opensource.apple.com is cited 117 times ( ) in the enwiki.

Jdbtwo (talk) 15:05, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

I'm confused these aren't secondary sources, they are (unless I'm missing something) implementations of the algorithm. They do not contain analysis or evaluation of the algorithm. They could be reliable in a primary sense that they could be used to show that the algorithm has been implemented into certain code, but they are not documentation of that code or secondary sources on the algorithm. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 16:18, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

I guess they aren't secondary sources then -- the draft article has sources that would definitely qualify as secondary sources, as in the analysis of the benefits, performance etc. of the algorithm. I am a little confused because I thought the the original 1999 research paper would qualify as a primary source and any other explanation of the algorithm at least once removed from said primary source would be a secondary source.

Anyway the complaint that the reviewing editor had with the latest incarnation of the draft article was that "Github is not a reliable source." This is why I posted my question regarding the reliability of opensource.apple.com as the sources under question are in a mirror on Github of an opensource.apple.com repo, but they could easily be changed to point to the repo on opensource.apple.com.

As I stated in my reply to Bluethricecreamman, maybe this is just a lost cause and I should give up.

Jdbtwo (talk) 14:26, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

source code is def not a useful source for wikipedia, I think. WP:NOTTEXTBOOK probs applies, more specifically we aren't a source of technical info or implementation details for algos, and even tho comments aren't implementation, they are in the sourcecode.

If that algo isn't notable enough except as technical implementation, the article probs wont be approved. Bluethricecreamman (talk) 19:19, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

Well, as I stated above in my reply to ActivelyDisinterested, the complaint that the reviewing editor had regarding the sources was not that they referred to large block comments in Apple's source code, but that "Github is not a reliable source." The repo that the sources reference was Apple's official mirror on Github of the corresponding repo on opensource.apple.com, hence my post here.

I know that source code itself is probably not reliable on Wikipedia, but what the sources in question in the draft article reference are large block comments near the beginning of the source code files which contain high-level descriptions of the algorithm.

The sources under question are used in the high-level explanation of the algorithm in the draft article -- the "Notable implementations" section of the draft article contain notable implementations of the algorithm, including Apple's OSX, the OLPC project, the Darwin-XNU kernel and others.

Maybe I am just beating a dead horse though.

Jdbtwo (talk) 14:45, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

I have no clue about the consensus, but in general, I think source code comments should not be a reliable source. It's WP:PRIMARY at the very least (also in software engineering, deceptive comments regularly lie about what the code is doing anyways)

Try to find someone who references the comments maybe? Like a wired.com or something article that talks about how "According to the source code, x happens" Bluethricecreamman (talk) 15:30, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

There have been earlier discussions on Idlebrain.com, as seen here. Additionally, articles here and here praise and mention the website as reliable.

The credibility of Idlebrain.com is well-documented with cited references on their wiki page. Highlighting some of them:

- In August 2002, Geetanath V. of *The Hindu* opined that Idlebrain.com was the most happening among the various film websites. - In April 2006, Y. Sunita Chowdhary of *The Hindu* called Idlebrain.com "a leading player in its segment." - In its October 2008 issue, the lifestyle magazine *Hyderabad Josh* noted that Idlebrain had a sizeable following among movie buffs in metropolitan cities of India like Hyderabad, Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, Pune, and Bangalore. - In August 2009, CNBC TV18 wrote, "Idlebrain is an online Telugu movie ready reckoner for film buffs who find themselves working in a distant land." They also noted, "While most film websites run on industry gossip, what strikes you about Idlebrain.com is information about overseas screenings for Telugu expats starved of their regular dose of popular movie stars." - The website won the Andhra Pradesh Cinegoers’ Association award for the Best Telugu Film website in 2008.

Moreover, Idlebrain.com is highly referred to and trusted by Telugu cinephiles and has built quite a reputation in Tollywood.

Given this extensive recognition and credibility, can we establish Idlebrain.com as a reliable source for Telugu cinema? Wiki Reader 997 (talk) 18:01, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

(Here after the discussions at Talk:List of highest-grossing Indian films) The points raised by the user are good and the praises by The Hindu and other sources are valid, it seems. However, on a surface level and after skimming a little bit in the website, I could hardly find it any different from a WP:BLOG. Nowhere in their about us section or disclaimer section have they disclosed their sources or any presence of an editorial team which can validate the reliability of their publishing. The layout and design of the page is very mediocre and doesn't look professional and reeks of self publishing. The lack of an editorial team is what concerns me the most. They are just another Sacnilk.com like cite for Tollywood it seems. Based on these observations, I'd place them in the unreliable category at WP:ICTFSOURCES table. The Herald (Benison) (talk) 18:08, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

Does anybody have any expertise or familiarity with AmoMama? I'm looking through a few of their articles from throughout the years:

• "Little Mix Star Perrie Edwards Shares Two IG Pics of Newborn Child with Soccer Player BF Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain" about Perrie Edwards and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain
• "Cher's Son Called 'Very Handsome' - His Transformation and Likeness to His Dad Stuns" about Elijah Blue Allman
• "Sofia Vergara without Makeup: The Actress Shared Some of Her Beauty Tips" about Sofia Vergara
• "Cillian Murphy Remains Faithful to His Very Private Wife of Nearly 2 Decades — What Does She Look Like?" about Yvonne McGuinness
• "Robin Williams Wanted His Children to Be Proud of Him — Meet His 3 Kids Who He Cherished" about Robin Williams
• "'Carrie' star Sissy Spacek, Who Turned 74, Ages Gracefully at Ranch After Leaving Hollywood at the Height of her Fame" about Sissy Spacek.
• "'Savannah Smiles' Star Bridgette Andersen Liked Making People Happy but Died Tragically in 1997 about Bridgette Andersen

These all come across as unreliable supermarket tabloid journalism at best, and I don't feel sanguine about using the source, but I would really appreciate the input of more well-versed editors. Thanks, — Fourthords | =Λ= | 17:10, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

This is a low quality internet tabloid. I would avoid citing it. Hemiauchenia (talk) 17:57, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the support, I thought the same, but didn't want to judge it unilaterally. — Fourthords | =Λ= | 20:34, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

As soon as I opened the site, I got a popup about blocking malware from one of my browser extensions, so that's never a good sign. Schazjmd (talk) 18:07, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

That's great to know and certainly indicative, thanks! — Fourthords | =Λ= | 20:34, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

Feels super clickbaity and there is a small team working on it but it appears to be used in a lot of articles. 48JCL 18:32, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

Per , I get a WP:BLOG-ish impression. In cases like Balearic Sea I don't expect them to be wrong, but a stronger ref couldn't hurt. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 18:49, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

They have a fact-checking policy and an editorial team, for what its worth. voorts (talk/contributions) 18:49, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

Specifically his work history, especially given the comments at - which I doubt is an RS we could use but informative. The article also uses a tweet and GB News. Doug Weller talk 16:27, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

Without looking at the article, I'd assume it's reliable to a WP:ABOUTSELF extent, "The material is neither unduly self-serving nor an exceptional claim;" etc. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 18:02, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

@Gråbergs Gråa Sång Seems as though it’s been edited out. But the article uses GBNews, not sure it should. Doug Weller talk 18:29, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

I don't know much about them, but it seems the intent was sourcing a video where he says something the article quotes. However, . Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 19:25, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

There are also a number of allegations flying around in relation to this MP. I attempted to add one of them, which if true was a matter of legitimate public concern, using thelondonecomic.com as a source, but I was told that this is a deprecated source. Maybe it should be, but would it be useful to have a discussion on this issue, since I don't see it mentioned at "perennial sources"? PatGallacher (talk) 17:59, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

While The London e-comic sounds a bit dubious, I don't find much on the London Economic in the RSN archives either. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 18:35, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

I think these articles attract a lot of new editors. Farage’s article is off, the section on Reform is more about him, eg his range of gins, nothing about the fact the party is a private company in which he owns the majority of shares. Doug Weller talk 18:45, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

I only have Gordon's atm, not much of a range I'm afraid (attempt at humour). Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 18:52, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

Kuffaar added some text with a source to the Divisions of the world in Islam and Kafir articles and upon his semi-protected edit request, Kowal2701 added the same to the Jihad article. Now, IntGrah has reverted those - see this and this asking Kuffaar to achieve consensus for adding that sentence. I don't know how to, "achieve consensus", so I request one of you to restore that sentence in both articles. For your information, https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Divisions_of_the_world_in_Islam#Quotes mentions that sentence (the last sentence).-Ganeemath (talk) 07:41, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

This, "jihad" is mentioned in the Wikipedia article Milestones (book) also.-Ganeemath (talk) 07:59, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

I’ve removed it from Jihad following CheeseDealers comment Kowal2701 (talk) 10:51, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

@The Cheesedealer and Kowal2701: The source says, "Offensive Jihad: Where the Kuffar are not gathering to fight the Muslims, the fighting becomes Fard Kifaya with the minimum requirement of appointing believers to guard the borders and the sending of an army at least once a year to terrorise the Enemies of Allah. It is the duty of the Imam to assemble and send out an Army unit into the land of War once or twice every year. Moreover, it is the responsibility of the Muslim population to assist him, and if he does not send an army he is in sin. And the Ulama have mentioned that this type of Jihad is for maintaining the payment of Jizya. The Scholars of the principles of religion have also said, "Jihad is Da'wah with a force and is obligatory to perform with all available capabilities, until the remains only Muslims or people who submit to Islam." Defensive Jihad: This is expelling the Kuffar from our land and it is Fard Ayn, a compulsory duty upon all.-Ganeemath (talk) 14:17, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

I'm very sorry, silly me did misread it. — 🧀The Cheesedealer ^talk 14:28, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

That content can be reliably verified doesn't mean it must be in the article. Rather all content that does appears in the article must be reliably verifiable. The discussion of what content should or shouldn't be part of the article should take place on the articles talk page. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 14:03, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

OK, I have started a discussion at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Divisions_of_the_world_in_Islam?searchToken=dgtqo0atw1slp3u345mionkcq#Removal_of_sourced_content -Ganeemath (talk) 14:29, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

We need some experienced editors to come and comment on the Talk page there.-Ganeemath (talk) 14:41, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

I've notified WP:WikiProject Islam, hopefully that will bring some additional input to the talk page discussion. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 15:19, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

Thanks!-Ganeemath (talk) 15:43, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

@ActivelyDisinterested: So many editors have responded above at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard#RfC:_Sources_for_Muhammad but nobody is bothered to respond on the Talk page I posted a link to above. What else can be done to draw the attention of other editors to come and take a look at the Talk page I posted a link to above (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Divisions_of_the_world_in_Islam?searchToken=dgtqo0atw1slp3u345mionkcq#Removal_of_sourced_content)?-Ganeemath (talk) 11:32, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

WP:Dispute resolution has advice on how to deal with content disputes. Also remember that other editors may not be able to respond immediately. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 11:43, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

The problem: There is a paucity of right-wing reliable sources that are trustworthy and usable. A few possibly good ones are mentioned in the hatted "Good and bad sources table" below.

Please name more right-wing sources that can be trusted. A test is their position on the myriad false or misleading statements by Donald Trump, especially his Big Lie of a stolen election. Are they honest about these things? If not, they are not RS and should be downgraded or deprecated.

If there is something in the hatted areas below you want to discuss, then please quote it and use that here. We need to keep the discussion up in this one thread. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 19:48, 29 June 2024 (UTC)

Personal opinion is that with Trump (and probably even earlier around 2013-2014, as the Gamergame situation brought more of this to light), the sources on the right have either closely tried to stay close to just being to the right (like WSJ), or allowed themselves to drift far to the right to fight the explicit left-leaning bias (and to back up the type of cult of personality that Trump exuded), whereas the left-leaning sources haven't really changed beyond small shifts either direction). Hence, why I think we are never going to see an equality of reliable right leaning sources compared to what's on the left, at least for several years from now.

I could argue a few sources on that table between the middle and leans left columns, but that's minor and doesn't affect your fundamental point here. Masem (t) 19:57, 29 June 2024 (UTC)

I largely agree. You mention the Gamergate situation and how that affected right-wing sources. I'm pretty sure you and others can provide even more information about that. I tend to focus on Trump's influence as the "great mover" for right-wing sources, as mentioned below. Look for "Trump's effect on the Overton window of media coverage." Until that time, no one with his type of influence had openly declared war on all media sources that didn't repeat his lies. I'd really like to hear your thoughts on specific sources mentioned below (or not). -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 20:05, 29 June 2024 (UTC)

I do now remember that even before GG, there was the basic Culture war in the early 2010s that was considered the trigger of GG, and of course laid the framework of misinformation to fight it. Fox News may have led the charge prior to that, but numerous factors gave way to the host of other sources.

The one thing that I do think might be unfair to use is labelling the two right-leaning columns as related to Russian disinfo. Could there be Russian disinfo at play with those? Personally, highly likely. However, until we have evidence from RSes, to back that, probably best not to label them that way. you can talk to how they do do misinfo (eg deny climate change, deny COVID, claim election interference, etc. in addition to presenting Russian disinfo) and hence why they will never be RSes until they distance themselves from it.

Also I would add the WSJ editorial board separate from the WSJ itself, and that would go into the "strong right" column. Masem (t) 20:12, 29 June 2024 (UTC)

Excellent points.  Done -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 20:37, 29 June 2024 (UTC)

Are you confusing "liberal-leaning" with "left-leaning"? Many in the left don't consider liberals to be left insofar as liberals are for capitalism and only support fiddling at the edges of the status quo on matters of individualism, which isn't a left or right issue per se. TarnishedPath^talk 00:12, 3 July 2024 (UTC)

@TarnishedPath: although you aren't asking me, I'll share my thoughts. I am a retired American who has lived in six countries with vastly different political systems, and lived in Europe most of my adult life. Liberals, and most of the left-wing in America, are capitalists. Only the most radical left-wingers are Social Democrats (who use mixed market capitalist economies), Socialists, or Communists.

I'll mention two different types of sources that back this view in different ways. Below you write: "occupyDemocrats are liberals, not left-wing." The "Media Bias Chart" from Ad Fontes Media rates Occupy Democrats as "Hyper-Partisan Left". Pew Research Center doesn't even use the terms "left-wing" or "right-wing" (although they occasionally say left or right). Instead, they substitute "liberal" and "conservative" for "left-wing" and "right-wing". See Political Polarization & Media Habits. That's a goldmine. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 17:41, 3 July 2024 (UTC)

Where I'm from Social Democracy isn't radical, in fact it's the stated ideology of the right faction of the Australian Labor Party (ALP). The right faction of that party is the controlling faction nationally. The ALP is the current party in power at a federal level and I wouldn't consider Australia to be a bunch of radicals. TarnishedPath^talk 03:51, 4 July 2024 (UTC)

My wording above isn't very clear. I'm describing the American POV. In Scandinavia, Social Democracy isn't radical either. In America, it's considered so, even though, seen from European and Australian eyes, it isn't. My understanding is that the progression toward the left end of the political scale is in the order I described. I'm personally a Social Democrat who thinks traditional socialism is too radical, and communism far too damaging to be used at all. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 04:47, 4 July 2024 (UTC)

I mostly agree with Masem. However, I have noticed a decline in the quality of left-wing sources since the start of the pandemic, but it is not comparable to that of right-wing sources yet. Scorpions1325 (talk) 09:13, 4 July 2024 (UTC)

Is there an actual paucity of right-wing reliable sources? Is there a lot more left-wing sources in comparison, such that it destroys wikipedia's credibility?

We easily filter out the worst left-wing sources, like occupyDemocrats, too.

Another possible test for right-wing sourcing is whether they acknowledge man-made climate change. User:Sawerchessread (talk) 20:58, 29 June 2024 (UTC)

occupyDemocrats are liberals, not left-wing. Liberals occupy a centrist to right-wing position insofar as that they support Capitalism and only propose fiddling at the edges of the status quo on matters of individualism. TarnishedPath^talk 00:18, 3 July 2024 (UTC)

I don't agree. See my response to you above. (This has to do with differences between American and European views on left and right.) -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 17:45, 3 July 2024 (UTC)

That is not the universal definition, nor the most accepted definition, nor the original definition, nor the sole definition, nor (and most importantly) a definition that is supported enough to be complaining every time people use a more attested one. XeCyranium (talk) 02:44, 7 July 2024 (UTC)

• Maybe The Bulwark (good news, they hate Trump!). Also, the Washington Examiner and The Washington Times are probably generally reliable for non-opinion reporting, even if a majority of Wikipedians don't like the tone or inconvenience of opposing emphasis (and LOL at the Daily Beast below). Predictably, both articles are top heavy with op-ed criticism from left-leaning sources. The Weekly Standard is full green at WP:RSPS, but it doesn't exist anymore. Reason is also generally reliable, and across the pond, the Daily Telegraph, even if they sometimes emphasizes facts or POV opponents would prefer not be emphasized (which is a bias held by liberal RS as well, not a sign of unreliability). --Animalparty! (talk) 22:25, 29 June 2024 (UTC)

  I have had positive experiences with the Washington Examiner, Reason, and the Telegraph. Can’t vouch for the others. RadioactiveBoulevardier (talk) 21:33, 3 July 2024 (UTC)

  I read the Washington Examiner, Washington Times, and Reason. I see no reason for them not to be regarded as "generally reliable". Pecopteris (talk) 05:52, 4 July 2024 (UTC)

Oppose the deprecation aka depreciation in this case. Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 19:43, 30 June 2024 (UTC)

A good addition would be the Washington Free Beacon. It was previously listed as unreliable due ~entirely to a discussion with two examples of 'false' claims, one of which is mostly true. They cite their sources and usually include links to evidence in their articles, all of their articles are attributed to a writer, and they're sometimes cited by reliable sources eg NYT as in . That's because they sometimes break important stories, as in that example. Hi! (talk) 22:52, 10 July 2024 (UTC)

This is a daft thread. It is not our job to try and find reliable right-wing sources. It is to assess what reliable sources say and relate it to our readers. It's not our problem if a lot of fairly popular right-wing sources are unreliable. A much bigger problem is the ongoing campaign to decree that sources which have right wing views on social issues are unreliable by default. In the long run this is going to kill our credibility.--Boynamedsue (talk) 08:09, 30 June 2024 (UTC)

What is going on here? This seems well off topic for the board, and to what end? It seems weird to be putting a "russian misinformation" lens over this, and exceptionally weird to claim that Gamergate was a significant influence on mainstream news media (I was "on leave" at the time, but as far as I can tell, it was an incredibly inside-baseball online troll war that largely passed mainstream news media by). And why is it only about newspapers? What about books and journals? And why is this thread orbiting American politics and Donald Trump, as if views on Trump were the sole determinant of what "right wing" means? I can't see a useful outcome here. Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 09:51, 30 June 2024 (UTC)

Gamergate had a significant influence on mainstream news media and mainstream politics. It was one of the pivitol moments in the rise of the contemporary Western right. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 17:50, 3 July 2024 (UTC)

^{[citation needed]} RadioactiveBoulevardier (talk) 21:35, 3 July 2024 (UTC)

• I don't think this is going about things the right way... Reliable sources do a decent job seperating news and opinion content, it shouldn't matter how far left, right, or center the WSJ and NYT's editorial boards go as long as the reporting stays solid and reputable. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 17:50, 3 July 2024 (UTC)
  • That isn't really the point. You are right that left, right, or center makes no difference "as long as the reporting stays solid and reputable". Source bias is okay, as long as it doesn't distort the facts. It's when we get into the far-right and far-left fringes that their bias is so strong that it affects their reporting. They start pushing narratives that please them, even if the facts are ignored or reported in a false light. My interest with this thread is more about learning of other right-wing sources that are generally reliable, IOW not radical. Please name some. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 18:01, 3 July 2024 (UTC)
    • That is the point as far as I am concerned. You are wecome to name some somewhere else, don't abuse this noticeboard and I will not be joining you. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 18:05, 3 July 2024 (UTC)
      • Sorry about offending you. That wasn't my intention. I thought I knew why I created this thread. The backstory, which isn't described, is that we always have driveby comments and vandalism with claims of left-wing bias and not using enough right-wing sources. I'm a lefty and fully understand why there are so few reliable right-wing sources, and why most left-wing sources are more reliable, but I wanted to talk to the experts here (This board is about sources, right?) about the topic and get some suggestions. That's all. I'm not pushing any particular agenda. Just seeking to pick the minds of experts here. I learned a lot from Masem.

If there is a better venue to discuss this, please say so. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 18:45, 3 July 2024 (UTC)

I do not accept the single-issue litmus test that OP proposes for "right-wing" sources. I cannot imagine such a litmus test being proposed for "left-wing" sources. Pecopteris (talk) 05:54, 4 July 2024 (UTC)

@Pecopteris: I understand your initial reaction to my quick-and-easy litmus test for right-wing sources. I assume you're referring to this: "A test is their position on the myriad false or misleading statements by Donald Trump, especially his Big Lie of a stolen election. Are they honest about these things? If not, they are not RS and should be downgraded or deprecated."

That actually covers hundreds of issues, not one "single-issue", because Trump lies about literally everything, including things he doesn't need to lie about. It's just his instinct to always lie. See Trump’s false or misleading claims total 30,573 over 4 years in 2021. It's a really good test, because it establishes whether they have a connection to facts and the concept of truth in reporting. If they fail that test, they totally fail our most basic requirements for being considered a RS.

That's policy, not my idea. It's the idea behind this noticeboard. It starts with how competence is required to vet sources for reliability, very relevant at this noticeboard. Then how we judge whether sources use fact-checking and try to be accurate. These are central issues to the RS policy and this board, so we are very much on-topic in this discussion.

I also mentioned a huge one that controls the GOP and all MAGA, his Big Lie of a stolen election and his lies about (non-existent) voter fraud. You mention a "litmus test". Ironically, his Big Lie is often described as Trump's litmus test of loyalty. Not only did he make "shooting someone on 5th Avenue" a litmus test that has proven true, he has made acceptance of his big lie a litmus test. He is big on loyalty tests, especially fealty to his grotesque lies. See For Republicans, fealty to Trump’s election falsehood becomes defining loyalty test

I'd love to hear suggestions for quick-and-easy litmus tests for left-wing sources. Maybe best on my talk page. The same litmus test applies to them (they reject the lies), but maybe you can think of others, but they would be quite different and not related to believing a lie, but more about defending certain facts, like "vaccines are good", "climate change is real", etc. See some suggestions here: User:Guy Macon/Yes. We are biased. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 02:31, 5 July 2024 (UTC)

I disagree with the premise that the reason why we get accused of left-wing bias is because of some specific narrow issue with lacking right-wing sources. We have always been accused of bias (Conservipedia was created long before RSP was a thing.) The reason is simple - as an encyclopedia, we have an WP:ACADEMICBIAS. And large swaths of the right-wing movement in the US currently have an anti-intellectual strain to them. The things that make people on the right see us as biased aren't subtle nuances in our sourcing, they're the result of a conflict in our fundamental non-negotiable missions - things like a refusal to entertain creationism, or presenting anthropogenic climate change as fact, or dismissal of other positions that are clearly academically WP:FRINGE. More generally, while we should avoid articles that have lopsided sourcing, it's important to understand that many people will differ about how they categorize sourcing, and that the pop-culture / talking-head divisions in US politics don't necessarily reflect the divide in higher-quality academic sources. The balance we aim for should, when possible, be what you'd see in academia and similarly high-quality sources, which isn't necessarily the same as what people get on the evening news. Part of the reason why those pop-culture media-bias charts aren't very useful to us is because I think they tend to reflect that vibe-based pop-cultural divide, rather than a more rigorous understanding of what's academically mainstream and what is more exceptional, opinionated, or further towards the fringes.--Aquillion (talk) 18:48, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

But remember, currently it isn't only about wp:ver. Currently the wp:RS 'shorter list" is also used to determine wp:weight etc on political viewpoints. So that means that what you just said is that on political topics, Wikipedia is coverage is biased towards what academia says.  :-) North8000 (talk) 00:06, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

• The "Good and bad sources table" below only shows one less Right-leaning good source than it lists Left-leaning sources. So I wouldn't call that a paucity (which means scarcity/scarceness) at all. Softlavender (talk) 00:55, 14 July 2024 (UTC)
• Regarding the "Good and bad" table, Time Magazine skews left, not right, according to Ad Fontes, AllSides, and Media Bias/Fact Check. --Animalparty! (talk) 16:06, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

All claiming the recent shot's at Donald Trump was an assassination attempt before official confirmation. All well-established political and national news outlet's are not reporting this. They are just hyperbolic for clicks and should not be used on 2024 shooting at a Donald Trump rally or Donald Trump

, , , , , , & . SimplyLouis27 (talk) 23:44, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

Comment: There is an open RM in which these sources are being cited. voorts (talk/contributions) 00:51, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

Tampa Bay Times is a mainstream newspaper, associated with The Poynter Institute for Media Studies; presumably reliable. Canberra Daily is an Australian local newspaper, but the story byline is to the Australian Associated Press. The New Daily is an Australian newspaper, owned by, but editorially independent from, Trades Union-operated investment funds. These seem presumably reliable. Not certain why we would reach across the Pacific for sources, but if we did, the Australian Broadcasting Commission's ABC News is also supportive. The Spectator is a publisher of opinion content, and should attributed; to both the author and the publication.
I would, however, urge caution per WP:RSBREAKING and WP:NOTNEWS. Rotary Engine ^talk 03:43, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

As the page has now been moved and there was never a real question of the reliability of these sites, I don't think this needs any further input. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 12:10, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

FWIW, this is clearly a SPS, as it's an anonymous blog by a single writer. I also question the reliability of this site. voorts (talk/contributions) 16:24, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

The source that is being reintroduced in that diff quotes unnamed band official as "attesting" to a "paucity of excavation work and absence of bones", which is, I guess, *one* way of saying that the community is divided about whether to excavate any remains that are found, and therefore there have not been any excavations to date. The source's exquisite drive for accuracy and meticulous attention to detail is reflected in its quote from one of the foremost denialists of residential school deaths, whom it refers to as "she" even though his name is Jacques. This is not a mistake a Canadian publication would make, and indeed, it is owned by a corporation based in India. It is most certainly not an authority on indigenous affairs in British Columbia and by no means the only source available about the underground radar findings in Kamloops. 04:01, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

@Code Talker: reinserted the material, along with another uncited sentence to the same effect. Perhaps he has reasons he would like to share. Elinruby (talk) 04:01, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

I saw this when following a link to the page on WP:RPPI and I was also doubting that this was a proper source. It's extremely iffy as the lone source for this. LilianaUwU ^{(talk / contributions)} 04:29, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

It's extremely iffy as the lone source for this

Time Now wasn't the only source. Times Now was reporting on a Canadian news agency called Western Standard's coverage on the issue that made headlines.

There are other agency apart from Western Standard independently reporting the same issue such as Blacklock's Reporter.

See this , for the sources and lines അദ്വൈതൻ (talk) 22:56, 26 June 2024 (UTC)

As discussed elsewhere on this page, Western Standard and Blacklock's also appear to be unreliable sources. If the main sources reporting on this are all unreliable, mostly or entirely with similar editorial bias, that makes this look quite questionable indeed, and Times Now getting even basic details of the people they're quoting wrong doesn't instill confidence that they're reliable, either. (The overall effect of seeing so many unreliable biased sources being used is to suggest there's a POVPUSH going on.) -sche (talk) 23:27, 26 June 2024 (UTC)

Western Standard is not a RS, they are a biased source, similar to Rebel News, in that they push an agenda similar to what Trumpites in the US publish. Oaktree b (talk) 04:20, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

PS I have just noticed the Times of India RfC above. This website is owned by the same corporation as the Times of India. Elinruby (talk) NB - Daniel Case just now ec-protected the article but a good 40% of the issues are coming from editors with accounts, so this is not resolved. Elinruby (talk) 04:15, 20 June 2024 (UTC) @CodeTalker:

Well, if those edits are coming from autoconfirmed accounts, it is. For now. Daniel Case (talk) 04:17, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

Daniel Case Don't get me wrong. Because the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc were the first to announce underground radar findings, Kamloops Indian Residential School is the nexus of the denialism, and protecting it is huge. I have removed this sort of stuff from these articles...too many times. So what you did allows long-standing accounts but not new ones, is that what you are saying? I am not sure how many edits everyone has but this will definitely cut down on the Sandy Hook BS that's been going on. So thank you. Elinruby (talk) 05:26, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

EC is 50 days and 300 edits. We can also revoke it if it is abused. Daniel Case (talk) 05:33, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

@Daniel Case Not 30 days and 500 edits? I think you transposed the numbers. Doug Weller talk 19:28, 6 July 2024 (UTC)

Yes I did. Thank you (Although I think that ratio might not be a bad idea for some editors ...) Daniel Case (talk) 19:40, 6 July 2024 (UTC)

noting here that the source was previously reverted back in by Riposte97, who may wish to comment. Elinruby (talk) 07:33, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

@Elinruby claiming that editors who disagree with you are engaged in 'denialism' and 'Sandy Hook BS' is simply not productive.

Regarding the source, I think it should logically follow the Times of India RfC as a subsidiary thereof. Riposte97 (talk) 04:34, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

I agree, since the same corporation owns them. You do know, however, that the reliability of the Times of India is being questioned in an RfC just a few sections up? As for your objections to "denialism", huh. We go by sources and that is the word that they use to describe people who are convinced that there are no bodies in those graves Elinruby (talk) 07:49, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

RfC in parent companies do not necessarily follow to subsidiaries. One only needs to take a look at Murdoch's empire for why that isn't the case. TarnishedPath^talk 13:10, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

That's fine. But doesn't it suggest that it deserves some scrutiny? Not that it matters, since the thing about the pronoun indicates MT and and I mean, look at it. Meanwhile I got 64,000 hits on Scholar, some of which would have been American residential schools. Still shows there is no need for this sketchy source definitely-not-best source Elinruby (talk) 14:24, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

Of course scrutiny is warranted given everything presented above. TarnishedPath^talk 12:12, 25 June 2024 (UTC)

Not sure the pronoun should be a reason to question the source… has gender identity been checked? Someone named Jacques could actually be a “she” under Canadian law. Just saying. Blueboar (talk) 19:39, 29 June 2024 (UTC)

I don't think I can convey how impossible that seems to me as a French speaker, but I realize we are in English here, so look, returns from an image search. That is not a woman. Elinruby (talk) 20:21, 29 June 2024 (UTC)

note beard.Elinruby (talk) 20:23, 29 June 2024 (UTC)

@Elinruby, I think you didn't address the main issue in your post. Are there other sources whose reliability is not in dispute that contradict the claims added here (that no bodies were excavated and no evidence of graves was found)? Do you believe that they are false, and if yes, why? Alaexis_¿question? 06:34, 26 June 2024 (UTC)

So the question would be: How would they know and what is THEIR source? Did they dispatch reporters to BC or are they just repeating what has been told? Presumably British Columbia or Canadian sources would know more about this because it's a local story. The CBC covers stories like this all the time with a lot of depth and neutrality. So the simple question is: what do they have to say? They should have priority for sourcing over foreign media. Harizotoh9 (talk) 13:10, 25 June 2024 (UTC)

@Harizotoh9: No question the CBC is a reliable source. On a par with the BBC. I would put CTV a little lower than that but not much. The daily nearby (!) would be the Prince George's Sentinel, afaik a broadsheet, and a tabloid in Hope does come out with a print edition. The Hope Standard is one of several online news sources run by something called Black Box Media, but they do a pretty professional job of keeping track of road closures and the local emergency levels. Also stuff about elections and bylaws and what ever. There are about 10 to 12 of those in places like Williams Lake and Agassiz. The Vancouver Sun is a fine paper of course. Globe and Mail is equivalent to the New York Times. Toronto Star is kind of People Magazine. I assume people know the Washington Post and the New York Times. I put a sample of journal articles in the thread above titled Canadian House of Commons and the Pope. Elinruby (talk) 07:05, 26 June 2024 (UTC)

These are all other sources are or could be used in the article. What do you want a source for, exactly, Alaexis? Elinruby (talk) 07:19, 26 June 2024 (UTC)

I may be missing something, but I understand that the source was used to support this edit which added two claims to the article:

1. As of March 2024^[update], no remains have been excavated
2. As of May 2024, investigations into the reported mass graves at the site have ended with no conclusive evidence of such graves.

Do you believe that they are false? Are there sources whose reliability is not in doubt that contradict these two claims? If yes, the question would be a no-brainer. Alaexis_¿question? 20:20, 26 June 2024 (UTC)

1. As of when I was updating the article there had been two or possibly three excavations by archaeologists. Neither of them found bodies.
2. there are many sites. Investigation has not ended in the sense of closing the file at most of them. There are many sources for this at individual schools. At some locations they are unsure whether they want to excavate, and at others they are debating where. There are lots and lots of sources for that also. Think ANI: consensus has not been achieved in some places for an excavation. There is absolutely no reason to use this questionable source, not with so many RS available. Elinruby (talk) 18:16, 29 June 2024 (UTC)

1. Then there are the bones they found in Qu'Appelle , but that wasn't a body, see, and neither was the skeleton they found at Blue Quills . This is what we are dealing with here. At another school they kept accidentally digging up bodies while trying to fix the water supply, and there there is another where bodies were sliding into the river after a flood. So it is possible to define "body" and "excavation" in such a way that you can say no bodies have been found in an excavation as a result of this discovery.

Now do you understand? Elinruby (talk) 18:53, 29 June 2024 (UTC)

I'm not sure I follow your logic. If remains were found near other schools, then this information should be added to the articles about those schools. If you agree that nothing has been found at this particular school, what's this whole discussion about? Alaexis_¿question? 19:05, 29 June 2024 (UTC)

ok. (to self:this does not seem to have made the news outside of Canada.) They ran underground radar at Kamploops and got hits. Then some other First Nations ran underground radar and they got more hits. The various First Nations where this was the case (there are quite a few) are in various stages of deciding whether or not they want to do an archaeological excavation. Kamloops in particular is undecided. They already have whackos showing up with shovels to dig up the graves. So meanwhile, for reasons that are unclear to me, some bloggers and fringe sources have been pushing a narrative that there are no bodies, or there are no graves, or... pick your Alex Jones flavor of choice. At least three articles in the topic area have had people repeatedly adding that no bodies were found with the same tabloid sources. That is the issue. Why it is here at RSN at this moment is that apparently some of the fringe and Catholic sources are so fringe that they have never been discussed here. At least one of them is funded by some sort of Alberta oil tycoon; the details escae me but I can look them up if you are interested. Meanwhile I am trying to keep the Kamloops article, one of those involved, from from saying over and over again that no bodies have been found. The article already says that the community has not yet decided what to do. I do not know wny this stuff keeps being inserted. However I would like to establish that the publications in question are not very careful about accuracy and therefore should not be used as a source in this sensitive topic, where they have been pushing a hoax. Fluorescent Jellyfish made a long post to the Kamloops talk page about the hoax part. Does that help? Elinruby (talk) 19:54, 29 June 2024 (UTC)

TL;DR no bodies have been found in excavations at Kamloops because there have not been any excavations in Kamloops. Tt is unclear whether the community in Kamloops wants to excavate. People are not required to dig up their dead relatives if they don't want to. Elinruby (talk) 20:52, 29 June 2024 (UTC)

To me this just doesn't look like a reliability question. We could say "No excavations have been carried out" or "No excavations have been carried out and no bodies have been found". Both are true statements (based on what you wrote) and so it's up to Wikipedia editors to decide on the right wording.

To take a step back, one could argue that a given source is unreliable for a specific claim because it's contradicted by others (which is not the case here). Or one could argue that a source is in general has low standards and should not be used for a given topic. To make that argument you'd need to focus on Times Now and show that it's not a reliable source in general and I don't see any evidence of that in this thread. Alaexis_¿question? 07:20, 30 June 2024 (UTC)

Except for the fact that it is pushing disinformation, but what's a little thing like that between friends? Elinruby (talk) 19:44, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

What exactly are you referring to? Which claim constitutes disinformation and what RS prove it? I already understand the context, so could you be more specific? Alaexis_¿question? 20:34, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

Please see this diff to the OP of this thread Elinruby (talk) 20:47, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

Of course this is a garbage source for this material, if the only thing you can find is some news source a half a world away from what it is covering that should clue you into whether or not you should be including something. nableezy - 22:41, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

We should probably get that written into policy somewhere. Along with Elinruby's "People are not required to dig up their dead relatives if they don't want to" comment above. AndyTheGrump (talk) 22:45, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

It seems that the claim originated with this 'article' and was repeated by similar generally unreliable right wing sources like western standard (note this is cited in the article and is an WP:RSOPINION and coastal front . Work seems to be ongoing and there haven't been any digs so the conclusive tone of those articles is troubling. Further RS are warning about denialism [] [] which is likely at play here. Finally, it seems that the First nation has softened it's language and these crappy sources are taking that farther than they should []—blindlynx 22:06, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

Hello,

I am seeking help to get a domain whitelisted that is a reputable source for Nigerian music and cultural content. I tried to add a link to a Wikipedia article about Olamide’s latest music project, but the domain is currently blacklisted on the global spam blacklist.

The website contains relevant and valuable content about Olamide’s project that would enhance the Wikipedia article.

Could someone assist me with the process to have this domain (naijawide dot com) whitelisted?

Thank you for your help!

Best regards, Naijawide — Preceding unsigned comment added by 102.89.23.114 (talk) 09:11, 6 July 2024 (UTC)

Given the similarity of the website and how you've signed your post can I suggest you read WP: Conflict of interest and WP:Search engine optimization. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 11:05, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

Is this article on Lithub.com reliable for factual information? They have an masthead, but it's not clear what level of fact-checking they do. Also, the author of this story has an attenuated familial connection to the article subject, but she's also a retired professional genealogist and it would be weird for her to lie about her findings. voorts (talk/contributions) 21:18, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

Is there some particular point you're interested in? I can't see any worries with the site, but the article is written in a very flowery fashion. I wouldn't trust statements such as It was the expression of a man who sees everything but withholds comment or When he was amused his smile went wide, his eyes sparkled under bushy eyebrows, but I can't see why it wouldn't be reliable for factual details. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 12:06, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

Well, except for lax proofreading. Did the man really have "an eighth education"? -- Nat Gertler (talk) 17:19, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

We all make mistakes (and typos). That doesn't concern me. voorts (talk/contributions) 17:33, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

Please note, these are from my point of view. I would like to add a website, with a summary and name of the source:

OMGShay 92 (talk) 16:11, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

Sources are only added to WP:RSPS if they are discussed multiple times by the community. We also don't generally discuss sources in the abstract, without some context about what it's being used for. Also, I'm not sure how you came to the conclusion that there's "no consensus" about Roblox's reliability. I'm not even sure how a video game could be cited as a source for factual information. voorts (talk/contributions) 16:17, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

Also, zooey.pub is not cited by any articles, so there is no need to evaluate its reliability at this point. voorts (talk/contributions) 16:19, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

Based on some searches it doesn't seem to be cited anywhere, but just listed as a link in Roblox articles or with the URL as text for reasonable stuff. (And just removed from one article due to that being vandalism.) --Super Goku V (talk) 09:03, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

You've misunderstood the purpose of Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Perennial sources. It's only for documenting discussions that have occured. It is not, and it not meant to be, a complete list of sources.

Unless another editor is questioning the reliability of a source you want to use, and you want a third opinion on the matter, you are at the wrong noticeboard. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 16:29, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

Zaine Kennedy is nominated for AfD by myself. I question whether the sources such as https://britishspeedway.co.uk/championship/scorpions-bring-back-kennedy/ are non-independent to be used for establishing notability. A user has questioned this in Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Zaine Kennedy. LibStar (talk) 23:47, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

It's the website of the company that runs the races he takes part it, there is a direct financial link between the company and the subject. I don't see how it could be considered independent, reliable yes but not independent. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 11:59, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

I've looked at this source before and was dubious. But now I've found this discussion Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 338#Byline Times (bylinetimes.com, NOT byline.com) I'm convinced its not. We use sit for a lot of articles. On the other hand, our article Byline Times is full of praise. Doug Weller talk 07:55, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

They were still relatively new during the last discussion and didn't have any use by others, but from a quick search that is no longer the case. I don't think it's the best sources, their investigation tends to follow their bias, but I'd think it more 'marginal' than 'unreliable'. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 11:54, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

@ActivelyDisinterested does it matter if it's being used in a BLP? At McMurdock's page it's used for the 2nd sentence in "He worked in the banking sector for Barclays Capital, Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers – specialising in energy, infrastructure, and manufacturing. How long he worked for these banks is unclear."

I'm inclined to believe it, but it seems to be the only source. Doug Weller talk 12:40, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

If it's banal details I might use it, but WP:BLP does state Be very firm about the use of high-quality sources. Given the source that could be an issue with certain subjects. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 12:56, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

@ActivelyDisinterested And when there are no other decent sources, WP:UNDUE surely applies. Doug Weller talk 13:14, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

Yes, or possibly WP:BALASP. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 13:41, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

I reviewed about half of the 76 articles (excluding videos, opinion articles, and live updates) that Al Jazeera submitted under their Israel Palestine conflict tag during the past two weeks. I included every error I identified, regardless of significance:

1. Israel bombs Gaza school housing displaced Palestinians, kills at least 40 and US weapons parts used in Israeli attack on Gaza school: Al Jazeera analysis

   Claimed that fourteen children were killed, as well as nine women. While this matches the initial figures put out by the the al-Aqsa hospital, this is false. The hospital issued an update hours later, correcting the figures to nine children and three women.

   The first of these articles was likely published before the update was issued, but we would expect a reliable source to issue a correction. Further, the second was published after the correction was issued, and after other reliable sources were able to publish articles with the correct figure.

2. Israel occupying Palestine echoes France colonising Algeria: Analysts

   Claims the Second Intifada started off largely nonviolent. This is false. It began on 28 September 2000 when Ariel Sharon visited Temple Mount, and on the first day 25 Israeli police officers were wounded, and least three Palestinians. The second day it escalated further, with widespread rioting that left seven Palestinians dead and three hundred wounded, along with 70 Israeli police officers.

3. Nuseirat, anatomy of Israel’s massacre in Gaza

   Claims that before fighting begun while Israeli forces were still moving into position Israel started bombing the area, hitting the busy market the hardest. They also say that the intent was likely to spread as much panic as possible, as well as inflict maximum casualties. This is false: these air strikes began later, when Israeli forces who had rescued the hostages came under attack while trying to exfiltrate. The problematic nature of this falsehood is exacerbated by the partisan spin they put on the story in regards to the intent.

4. Wikipedia war: Fierce row erupts over Israel’s deadly Nuseirat assault

   Incorrectly claims that on Wikipedia edit wars are considered vandalism, along with other similar mistakes.

5. ‘Absolute priority’: UN agencies must work unhindered in Gaza, G7 says

   Claims the GDP of the G7 is $40.27 trillion, making up 40% of global GDP, with the source being www.g7italy.it. The site contains no claims about GDP, and the real figure appears to be $43.86 trillion, making up 43% of GDP. This contains two issues; publishing incorrect information, and making false claims about the source of the information - in this case, the latter is far more concerning.

6. Israel in Gaza, Palestinian fighters in Israel, what the UN accuses them of

   Claims the Palestinian Ministry of Health (aka Palestinian Ministry of Health - Gaza) says that 15,000 children have died. This is false; the health ministry says 8000. Few sources have reported the 15,000 figure, but it appears to have instead come from the Palestinian Authority Ministry of Education and Higher Education. (One, two)

7. US says Hamas is to blame for ceasefire delay – but is it Hamas or Israel?

   Claims Hamas accepted an Egyptian-Qatari proposal. However, after this was initially announced, and well before this article was published, it was revealed that Egyptian intelligence had altered the terms, and the proposal was not the one Qatar had approved.

8. Will South Africa’s new coalition gov’t change tack on Israel-Palestine?

   Claimed South Africa has condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. This is false; South Africa has repeatedly refused to condemn the invasion. The closest it came was a demand that Russia "immediately" withdraw issued at the start of the invasion, but that is not a condemnation, and even if it were it would mean that this statement is "merely" highly misleading.

9. Netanyahu slams US for ‘withholding’ weapons to Israel

   Claimed Israel closed the Palestinian side of the Rafah border crossing with Egypt. This is technically true, but it is highly misleading; Israel shut the crossing when they first took control of it but sought to reopen it. It remains shut due to Egypt.

10. Gaza fighting continues despite Israeli ‘pauses’ announcement: UNRWA

    Claimed Israel has sealed shut the vital Rafah border crossing with Egypt. This, unlike the similar statement above, is false; the border is "sealed shut" because of Egypt, not because of Israel.

This suggests that at least a third of Al Jazeera's articles on this topic have factual issues, although the total is likely to be much higher as I expect I missed most errors even within the articles I did review.

It is possible that some of these are included because of errors on my part rather than on Al Jazeera, but unless most are I don't believe we can't consider this source reliable in this topic area; there are too many errors, and too many significant errors. BilledMammal (talk) 12:04, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

• Regarding the last two, I can see multiple reliable sources claiming that the Rafah crossing is shut because of Israeli military activity there (i.e. WaPo), or at the very least report that this is what Egypt claims is the case, or that Israel and Egypt blame each other for the situation. So that one certainly isn't as cut and dried as "It remains shut because of Egypt".
• Also in the "Claims the Palestinian Ministry of Health (aka Palestinian Ministry of Health - Gaza) says that 15,000 children have died.", I can find no reference to that claim in the link provided.
• Also, are we really ragging on a source because they don't understand how Wikipedia bureaucracy works? Most RS don't, we've seen that repeatedly over the years. Black Kite (talk) 12:24, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

  Regarding the last two, outside of headlines (which, per WP:HEADLINES, are unreliable), the Washington Post source doesn't claim that Israel closed the crossing; it merely says it was closed, and that The United States, Egypt and Israel are in talks to reopen the crossing.

  Regarding the Palestinian Ministry of Health, look at the infographic in the section "What did Israel do in Gaza?"

  Regarding Wikipedia bureaucracy, I did consider that the least concerning, and was tempted to exclude it - I only didn't because I decided I should provide everything I found, and allow editors to decide for themselves what is and isn't significant. BilledMammal (talk) 12:33, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

  Moved to #Rafah Border Crossing

   – BilledMammal (talk) 13:42, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

  I'm getting a strong much-ado-about-nothing vibe from a lot of these examples that can easily be chalked up to the fog of war, the fast-paced news cycle and the fundamental fuzziness of some of the information. The first example appears incorrect. The first AJ piece attributes the casualty claim to its progenitor, which makes it a static claim in time. It is not in AJ's voice, so there is technically nothing to correct. That figure was put out at that time by its source. I have been seeing this confusion a lot lately: the idea that publications have some sort of onus to correct attributed statements that are subsequently amended or disproven. They can, but they don't have to. The next couple of examples involve debatable timelines. Then we have some minor slights involving attributed figures – one possibly outdated, the other presumably correct but misattributed. Then another debatable piece of narrative, and only one genuine oddity, which is the statement about South Africa. Iskandar323 (talk) 15:53, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

  The first item contains two AJ pieces; the first one I can understand how you see it as attributed, but the second one, US weapons parts used in Israeli attack on Gaza school: Al Jazeera analysis, indisputably puts the figure in Al Jazeera's own voice - and was published after the update was issued.

  Can you explain why you believe the timelines of the second and third are sufficiently debatable to make Al Jazeera's claims accurate? As far as I know, there is no dispute that the Second Intifada erupted with violence, and the timeline of the raid appears to be non-contentious and supported by Palestinian witnesses; the bombing began after the hostages were retrieved and the shooting started, not before. BilledMammal (talk) 16:53, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

  So the second Al Jazeera piece doesn't appear to have adjusted, no, although it is rather simultaneously published with the piece you present. As it has videography, it might also have been prepared some time in advance of its publication date. As to why no correction ... ? Has that hospital update been published widely? Al Jazeera explains the second intifada as beginning after the riot on the 28th, beginning with largely civil disobedience. On Nuseirat, why are we trusting the NYT (not a great source on the IP conflict since December) over AJ? Iskandar323 (talk) 18:14, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

  It was published thirteen hours later; seven hours after the Guardian article was published noting the correction. As for the wideness of publication, AP published it.

  Regarding the Second Intifada, that article published on September 28 2020, on what Al Jazeera called the twentieth anniversary of the uprising, said it began on the 28th: The second Intifada ... began after ... Ariel Sharon sparked the uprising ... on September 28, 2000. Even if you interpret that as meaning it began the next day, that still includes the riot that resulted in seven Palestinian deaths, three hundred Palestinians wounded, and 70 Israeli police officers wounded - that isn't anyone's definition of "started off largely nonviolent".

  Regarding Nuseirat, it's not only NYT. I included an AP source above, and others include the ABC, the Wall Street Journal, the Guardian, NBC News, and more. Sources and witnesses are clear that the bombing began after the hostages were retrieved, not before. BilledMammal (talk) 18:53, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

  I see a bunch of sources relying heavily on IDF testimony. Simply being an outlier doesn't make AJ demonstrably wrong – such events are often only properly pieced together weeks, months or even years later. Currently, all we have is competing narratives. Iskandar323 (talk) 19:33, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

  The Guardian, the New York Times, and AP all say in their own voice and with reference to Palestinian witnesses that the bombing began soon after the Israeli team entered the apartment building. BilledMammal (talk) 05:20, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

  The SA statement is not that odd, demanding a withdrawal > a condemnation. Selfstudier (talk) 17:02, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

A substantive and lengthy discussion, Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 434#Al Jazeera reliability, only a couple months ago, did not lead to any change in WP assessment of this source. It included this early comment from opener:

"We’ve seen this before with Al Jazeera; in the last discussion I presented evidence of them declining to retract false claims about the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital explosion after fresh information emerged.This isn’t the behaviour we expect of a reliable source; we don’t expect them to be perfect, but we do expect them to be transparent and own up to their mistakes. I think it’s past time to consider Al Jazeera as "additional considerations apply", at least on the topic of the Israeli-Arab conflict."

Given this background, it would seem desirable that opener set a formal RFC on the question. Selfstudier (talk) 12:36, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

Given that this is the first systematic review of the source in this topic area I felt informal initial discussion was better than jumping into an RfC, in line with WP:RFCBEFORE. It has also been suggested we should consider it on three topics:

1. Israel-Palestine conflict
2. Topics related to the Qatari government
3. General topics

Since only the first of these has had such a review I don't think we are ready for an RfC. BilledMammal (talk) 12:46, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

Well, I have taken a look at your examples and don't see anything appalling there at all, so may as well shut this down or move to an RFC on the question. Selfstudier (talk) 13:44, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

The second topic is important. AJ is state-run and most people don’t even know. The scope of what is considered “linked” definitely needs to be clarified too. RadioactiveBoulevardier (talk) 16:44, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

"State run"? Says who? Seems more like the BBC afaics. Selfstudier (talk) 16:53, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

See this. BilledMammal (talk) 16:54, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

That's a rather generic discussion about the issues that it may have, in exactly the same way as sources such as the BBC, presumably with an emphasis on domestic reporting. It's unclear what specific issues this translates into other than domestic favouritism. Iskandar323 (talk) 17:02, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

So run the RFC. Selfstudier (talk) 17:03, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

When was AJ last quoted on a topic related to Qatar where its input was questioned with regards to that in a dispute that turned otherwise intractable, thus warranting an RFC? Iskandar323 (talk) 16:56, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

• How is it the conversation about Al Jazeera and its worth as a RS goes round and round and round in circles when it is basically the propaganda arm of Hamas?? Because it's too important as a source of anti-Israel sentiment. This isn't to say that there shouldn't be anti-Israel sentiment - but there's criticism of Israeli and then there's Al Jazeera. Over the years, how many stories from Al Jazeera have there been praising Israel? How many have there been criticizing Hamas? Even if it went to any sort of vote to strike it down as such, I don't there would be much chance of it passing. All this while there's a parallel discussion about removing the ADL as a reliable source...

Neutrality and balance are important here and when it comes to adding content here, that should always be the priority. Difficult find either of these 2 things in an Al Jazeera article about Israel, especially if the Al Jazeera journalist is on the Hamas books. MaskedSinger (talk) 17:48, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

WP:NOTFORUM. Selfstudier (talk) 17:56, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

Why is it that you think a news source should be praising Israel or criticizing Hamas? nableezy - 18:45, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

All our major mainstream sources are defective. Most of them are Israeli or pro-Israeli. They may check better than al-Jazeera their facts, but as often as not they do not mentioning facts that al-Jazeera reports. Selectivity bias is more the problem here. To expect that by eliminating al-Jazeera, our key non-Western, Arab source for what happens in Gaza, esp. after the Israeli government shut it down, looks uncomfortably, eerily, like censoring anything that does not reflect a Western mainstream view. We are wasting time here, and NPOV should have told us that we cannot cover the I/P conflict by expurgating, with whatever itsybitsy technical pretext, all sources that don't reflect our Western/Israel perspective.Nishidani (talk) 21:39, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

Much of the list is nonsense reflecting the editor's POV and scarcely stands or warrant examination. I'll take just one piece apart.

• (2) Claims the Second Intifada started off largely nonviolent. This is false. It began on 28 September 2000 when Ariel Sharon visited Temple Mount, and on the first day 25 Israeli police officers were wounded, and least three Palestinians. The second day it escalated further, with widespread rioting that left seven Palestinians dead and three hundred wounded, along with 70 Israeli police officers.

In fact it did, unless one only scrapes up one's historical information from reading wikipedia's articles. 'Rioting' is the standard Israeli term for what everywhere else in democratic societies is called a 'protest' or a 'demonstration'. BM's POV is showing. 75 police weren't 'wounded', they suffered minor injuries. 3 Palestinians weren't injured, they were shot, and a furtherr two severely beaten up. All this is the second phase however. Sharon's hour-long visit, surrounded by 1,000 policemen in riot gear, went off without incident aside from a piddling incident when he tried to enter Solomon's Stables, which is a mosque. 20 Palestinians blocked their way, and a scuffle ensued. Through all of this over the following week apart from one incident) Palestinians protested en masse, and, with the expenditure of over 1,000,000 bullets within several days, missiles and machine-gunning from israeli helicopters, 47 were killed, and 1,885 wounded, 80% of whom were shot in demonstrations where no threat to security police was present. So Al Jazeera is quite within its rights to state that the Palestinian uprising in that first week was (more than) 'largely non-violent'. What was massively violent was the Israeli reaction, in fitting with Nathan Thrall's dictum that on each of the four occasions where Palestinians have gone on strike, demonstrated en masse, in an initially peaceful manner to protest the Mandatory or Israeli occupation, the response has been, rigorously, extremely violent repression by the authorities. Nishidani (talk) 20:28, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

I think it's a silly complaint too, as it's subjective what counts as primarily nonviolent, but the terms "were injured" and "suffered injuries" are usually understood as synonymous. XeCyranium (talk) 22:24, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

I've been hit quite often in stone fights, and was shot (with an airgun) several times. A source describes the Israeli police injuries from punches and stones as 'minor', rarely anywhere near as damaging or frightening as being shot with a bullet, live or rubber-capped. The Israeli tallying of injuries is often suspect. It can refer to people grazing their knees when they stumble as they run to an air-raid shelter.Nishidani (talk) 22:37, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

Peace and War, by Anthony H. Cordesman, has an excellent timeline of the start of the Second Intifada. In the first few days alone there are large scale riots, clashes between Israeli Arabs and Jews, Palestinian sniper fire, and dead on both sides. To claim that sniper fire and riots are peaceful is almost Orwellian, and not something any reliable source will do. BilledMammal (talk) 05:34, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

Your 'excellent' timeline comes from Anthony H. Cordesman, who, notoriously, got most of his 'history' of events by taking notes from Israeli briefings and quoting IDF spokespersons. Everytime I've read him, I've looked at his sources, and they are press handouts, extraordinary for a scholar of his standing (but then again he belonged to the upper echelons of the 'Security Establishment'). Don't take my word for it. Norman Finkelstein is one of the world’s foremost experts on both Gaza and the systematic disinformation in mainstream sources reporting on that endemic conflict. He made a close analysis of just one paper by Cordesman and concluded that Cordesman’s work ‘was based entirely on briefings in Israel’ (p.40) and repeatedly drew on comments by the IDF’s spokesman, incident per incident. He concluded that ‘Cordesman’s ‘strategic analysis’ consisted of reproducing verbatim the daily press releases of the Israeli airforce and army spokespersons,' and Cordesman 'obligingly dubbed them ‘chronologies’ of the war,’(p.41) Norman Finkelstein Gaza: An Inquest into Its Martyrdom, University of California Press, 2018 ISBN 978-0-520-29571-1 pp.39-42.

Though I have never removed Cordesman from articles, because he qualifies eminently as RS, he is not reliable on the IP conflict, also for many additional reasons, like his well known advice to Israel and the PA to adopt the same counterinsurgency policies against Palestinians that the British used in Northern Ireland, i.e., excessive force, disregard for human rights law, and torture. His views on this were so extreme Amnesty's Marty Rosenbluth called his blueprint 'bizarre'.

Your campaign against Al Jazeera expresses a 'sensitivity' to misreportage and yet, twice on just one example given, you yourself made a false claim, and justified it when criticized by citing (no page number, no awareness of later scholarship postdating Cordesman whose book 'War and peace' was written hastily in the thick of the early days of the conflict) a source that virtually plagiarized its content by relying on IDF press cuttings.

There is no simple way of ascertaining reliable source material for a conflict whose reportage hallmark is stamped by bias on all sides. A blanket ban on the only daily Arab source that provides a perspective sensitive to Palestinians, together with reliance on known decidedly pro-Israeli sources, is a recipé for laziness. And please note that you repeat the word 'riots', as all pro-Israeli sources do, to describe mass protests, on Palestinian soil, against the Israeli army which invariably spins popular outrage at an occupation as 'clashes' between 'Jews' and Palestinians, when they are mostly parades of protest against an army that shoots at 'disturbances' of the kind you can see in any Western street most weeks. Nishidani (talk) 09:10, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

you yourself made a false claim Only according to you. Personally, I think any source that claims riots and sniper fire is peaceful is almost Orwellian, and evidently unreliable. I would also recommend against relying on authors like Finkelstein who frequently publish on sites like The Unz Review - known for its publication of far-right, conspiracy theory, white nationalist, antisemitic writings and pro-Russia propaganda. However, I won't get too focused on Finkelstein, as even if we accept his rejection of Cordesman there are thousands of sources that demonstrate that the Second Intifada did not begin peacefully. Since this discussion is unlikely to be productive I'll just provide a small sampling of those that are easily accessible and leave the discussion; I'm sure you'll find issues with all of them, but I'm confident my point has been made.

1. Arab Uprising Spreads to Israel, published October 1, 2000

   The rioting and gunfire seemed to spread everywhere today--to Arab towns and cities in northern Israel's Galilee region; to Jaffa, the scenic old port town just south of Tel Aviv; to Rafah on Gaza's border with Egypt, where a pitched gun battle was punctuated by Israeli missile fire; even to Ramat Rachel, an upscale kibbutz on Jerusalem's southern outskirts where molotov cocktails exploded this evening.

   Israeli forces and Palestinian police and gunmen traded fire in nearly every major West Bank town and city, from Jenin in the north to Hebron in the south.

2. "Between Humanitarian Logic and Operational Effectiveness: How the Israeli Army Faced the Second Intifada":

   But unlike the first Intifada, which was basically a civil uprising against the symbols of an occupation that had lasted since June 1967, it very quickly lapsed into an armed struggle between Palestinian activists and the Israeli armed forces. Almost from the very start, armed men took to hiding among crowds of Palestinians, using them as cover to shoot from. The IDF retaliated forcefully, each time resulting in several deaths

3. The Current Palestinian Uprising: Al-Aqsa Intifadah

   On October 1, Israeli helicopter gun ships fired on Palestinian sniper locations in apartment buildings near the Netzarim junction after Palestinian snipers started shooting at the Israeli military post.

4. Rioting as Sharon visits Islam holy site, published September 29, 2000

   Young Palestinians heaved chairs, stones, rubbish bins, and whatever missiles came to hand at the Israeli forces. Riot police retaliated with tear gas and rubber bullets, shooting one protester in the face.

5. Al-Aqsa Intifada timeline

   30 September: In one of the enduring images of the conflict 12-year-old Muhammad Durrah is killed during a gunbattle between Israeli troops and Palestinians in the Gaza strip

6. Broken lives – a year of intifada

   The Netzarim junction, where Muhammad al-Dura was killed on 30 September 2000, was the scene of many riots involving demonstrators throwing stones or Molotov cocktails in the first days of the intifada.

7. Chapter 4 The Second Palestinian Intifada

   The Palestinian uprising, soon termed the al-Aqsa intifada, began with groups of Palestinian teenagers throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails at Israeli soldiers manning checkpoints at border crossings, but it quickly escalated. There were increasingly fierce clashes between armed security forces of the Palestinian Authority and the IDF. Palestinian snipers directed fire against Israeli civilian neighborhoods on the outskirts of Jerusalem.

8. Violence escalates between Palestinians, Israeli troops, published September 30, 2000

   At least seven Palestinians and one Israeli soldier have died and hundreds of demonstrators have been injured in three days of fighting, according to Palestinian and Israeli officials.

9. Sharon Touches a Nerve, and Jerusalem Explodes, published September 29, 2000

   Tightly guarded by an Israeli security cordon, Ariel Sharon, the right-wing Israeli opposition leader, led a group of Israeli legislators onto the bitterly contested Temple Mount today to assert Jewish claims there, setting off a stone-throwing clash that left several Palestinians and more than two dozen policemen injured.
   The violence spread later to the streets of East Jerusalem and to the West Bank town of Ramallah, where six Palestinians were reportedly hurt as Israeli soldiers fired rubber-coated bullets and protesters hurled rocks and firebombs.

Even Al Jazeera previously recognized that the Second Intifada started with violence, demonstrating how their quality has declined:

28-29 September 2000
Former Israeli army general and then opposition leader Ariel Sharon visits al-Aqsa mosque with his entourage, sparking a violent reaction from Palestinians.
Israel reoccupies the Palestinian territories amid fighting between the Palestinian resistance and Israeli army.

BilledMammal (talk) 19:39, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

2. "Young Palestinians heaved chairs, stones, rubbish bins ..." – sounds like it was a slighty rocky student protest on 29 September ... followed by a massively disproportionate response. Oh how history rings and echoes! Iskandar323 (talk) 19:54, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

This newspaper snippet approach to history is inane. The point in the original al-Jazeera post was that the Palestinian intifada (mark 2) began with (1) an Israeli assertion the status quo would be broken on Al-Aqsa by allowing Jewish prayer on the 3rd most sacred site to Muslims, and the one remaining symbol Palestinians have for their fragmented warred down sense of identity. Sharon's walk itself caused no violence (2) The provocation some time later caused student reactions, and as the news spread through the West Bank, Israel's usual hyperoverreaction - shooting protesters kicked it. The statistics for Israeli shootings all over Jerusalem and the West Bank in the ensuing week underline that the 'violence' BM is attributing to the Palestinians (this is the standard Israeli POV) was overwhelmingly one of the use of massive shootings of Palestinians, for several days, causing close to 2,000 casualties with one Israeli killed. He refers to Muhammad al-Durrah without a link. The images of that atrocity were shown everywhere, and inflamed not only Palestinian but world opinion. I noted on the Al-Aqsa intifada page years ago, Jacques Chirac's comment to Ehud Barak, outrage at the Israeli use of helicopters missiles and machine guns to put down the widespread protests which followed al-Durrah's death (the suspicions seeded years later against the French video are not relevant). Violence quickly became a hallmark of the Palestinians' uprising, no one disputes that. The intifada became violent after a million bullets were shot by the Israeli army, and not, as BM would have it, from the outset from Palestinian 'rioters'. BM in citing a notoriously lousy source (Cordesman), to defend his reading of al-Jazeera's remark, only tends to confirm one's impression that his benchmark for true/falsenees here is apparently based on an assumption an official Israeli POV is reliable, and any source contradicting it false. Newspaper evidence dating from those days is absolutely immaterial, useless, because as always they are enmeshed in a frantic pursuit of partial reports, which necessity obliges us to use, but which, if these articles are to assume an encyclopedic dimension, must be edged out whenever secondary academic historical sources become available. In the meantime, getting at the one Arab source that has been accepted, would leave us with only Haaretz, Jerusalem Post, Times of Israel, Ynet and the New York Times, as the default mainstream papers, a recipé for making structural the subfusc Palestinophobic tenor which characterizes most of them the basis for I/P articles.Nishidani (talk) 21:54, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

As I said to another editor, arguments about lessening our criteria for reliability with the intent of "expanding" the number of sources from a particular point of the world/viewpoint/etc should not even begin to be discussed. Wikipedia policy does not care if every source from a region is unreliable. In such a case, other sources from other regions can be used to cover the subject, or failing that, with consensus for individual points and solid reasoning other sourcing cannot be found, the less-than-reliable sources from the region can be used with attribution. In fact, there are already regions of the world that don't have any "generally reliable on all topics" sources - North Korea, Russia, Myanmar... to name a few. Wikipedia is not in the business of accepting sources without attribution just to "cover all sides". If your only argument is that we must keep the source because of their POV, that's not a valid argument and in fact flies in the face of our actual policies on reliability which do not reduce or lessen the requirements just because a source has a different POV. -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez (User/say hi!) 22:04, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

And I would add that in writing, in response to a close 3 page scholarly analysis of Cordesman's amateurish fudging of the Al- Aqsa Intifada, you cannot come up with anything other than a cheap, tawdry and offensive ad hominem attack on its author, Norman Finkelstein, drawing on the standard POV pushing smear recycled for low brow consumption by the usual suspects. I.e.

authors like Finkelstein who frequently publish on sites like The Unz Review- known for its publication of far-right, conspiracy theory, white nationalist, antisemitic writings and pro-Russia propaganda.

Is close to a BLP violation, apart from the laziness of responding to a serious analysis by implying Finkelstein supports a white racist antisemitic rag. It's shameful but says something about the intolerance of dissonance to any source that might dare advance a different perspective than that customarily trotted out in the name of defending Israel.Nishidani (talk) 22:03, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

• @BilledMammal: I disagree.
  • Regarding your 1st claim Al-Jazeera's article with the outdated casualties looks like it was published at 02:22 on 6 June (not sure which time zone, maybe UTC?). That was published before Guardian got the correct figures, not after. And Al-Jazeera did update the new figures when they came in: right here.
  • 2nd claim responded by Nishidani above.
  • 3rd claim. Firstly, Al-Jazeera doesn't explicitly say bombing began before IDF moved into position as their article isn't necessarily in chronological order. Assuming the AP article is in chronological order (because if it isn't, then nothing about the chronology can be inferred), it quotes a witness saying "Clashes and explosions broke out" before the IDF team got stuck. Finally, the AP News doesn't make any assertions in its voice, but simply quotes witnesses and the IDF. It is entirely reasonable for them to come up with different stories (either by mistake or by design) without it being AJ's fault.
  • 4th claim. Agreed, clearly AJ hasn't read WP:Vandalism carefully.
  • 5th and 6th claims only make sense if we consider the list of references below their infographics to be exhaustive. It doesn't seem like they are strict with citing all their sources, but that's still better than newspapers who sometimes (often?) don't list references at all.
  • 7th claim. The allegation of Egypt altering the terms is based on an unnamed sources. While the refutation of that allegation was based on named sources (Diaa Rashwan) willing to stand behind their statements. So I wouldn't blame AJ for not giving much weight to anonymous hearsay.
  • 8th claim. Politico says "South Africa and much of the rest of the continent have experienced a different evolution — shifting from initial, tepid condemnation of Russia, to being non-aligned to — at times — seeming supportive of Russia’s war.". I think both Politico and that particular article of Al-Jazeera made a mistake (actually its possible the AJ article has a typo because if you consider the paragraph they likely meant to say SA has not condemned the invasion). An earlier AJ article said "Pretoria has refused to condemn Moscow’s invasion". VR _{(Please ping on reply)} 22:41, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

    1. I provided two articles, and as I said the first was probably published before the correction; the second was published after.

    3. The source is quite clearly chronological - and even if it wasn't, it does say Israeli special forces began the operation at 11am under heavy air bombardment on the camp.

    5 and 6. While publications don't need to cite their sources, when they choose to do so they need to get it right - and failing to get it right is a reliability issue. 5 also has factual issues, which makes misattributing the claim worse - they're effectively saying their source got it wrong. BilledMammal (talk) 05:06, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

    1. At what time do you think the articles were published?

    3. I'm not seeing where the AJ article says "Israeli special forces began the operation at 11am under heavy air bombardment on the camp". Instead it says "It began around 11am, with what witnesses say were several civilian trucks and cars entering a neighbourhood near the camp’s market."

    5 and 6. Again nowhere did AJ said they had published a comprehensive list of sources. They could have published some sources but not others.VR _{(Please ping on reply)} 23:51, 22 June 2024 (UTC)

  On 1st claim, updating the figures on a live article that is fast-moving and will bury them is not the type of retraction/correction we expect from reliable sources. Reliable sources would've gone back and added a footnote explaining that initial figures were revised and are now corrected, or at a minimum edited the article to fix the figures. -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez (User/say hi!) 18:46, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

  on 8th claim, al jazeera has already published an infographic talking about South Africa's policy of strategic nonalignment here.

  It can be explained that South Africa's position on the war is intentionally confusing, as their foreign office has previously called for russia to withdraw from Ukrainian territories before.

  I think if the position is meant to be strategically confusing to the point that Politico, a well known and well regarded newssite, has stated South Africa has provided support for Ukraine that Al Jazeera probably should not be judged for similar sort of mistake when doing the news race, especially when they are publishing much more in depth analyses about South Africa's position that are correctly explaining the full position of the government. User:Sawerchessread (talk) 00:21, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

  Agreed.VR _{(Please ping on reply)} 23:38, 22 June 2024 (UTC)

This topic was opened right after ADL was declared WP:ADLPIA in the 2024 RFC, after editor lost his POV. Its clearly some tit for tat exchange in a POV war. User:Sawerchessread (talk) 04:07, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

I agree that this appears to be entirely civil POV pushing. Combined with the fact that the last discussion on Al-Jazeera was started only 2.5 months ago, and VR's debunking of the specific claims of error above, I am not convinced that this thread should stay open because I'm not convinced there's anything productive to say here. Loki (talk) 05:01, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

Please drop the WP:Personal attacks and WP:ASPERSIONS, both of you. You're incorrect, and even if you weren't your concerns are inappropriate to raise here. BilledMammal (talk) 05:06, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

We are clearly correct. This is a waste of time and a repeat of an earlier forum around Al Jazeera's reliability regarding the Israel-Palestine conflict, and the timing after the ADL decision is obviously clear.

There is no reason to post this except that you are upset to have lost the ADL povwar. (I don't even know if this is that much of a change, we can still cite ADL, just use attribution as always?) User:Sawerchessread (talk) 00:32, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

Come on Sawer, this is inappropriate and aspersive. BM raised a bunch of factual errors—even if you think they don't constitute a reason to change how we regard AJ, or indeed that they aren't even errors, there's a conversation to be had here about facts, and "the initiator of this conversation has a secret plan" is not how that conversation starts. ꧁Zanahary꧂ 00:37, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

And yet, VR has a bunch of arguments that these aren't factual errors, as do the rest of us.

Much of the non-Israel-Palestine factual errors are due to WP:AGEMATTERS or are small errors that we could identify in other articles, and are a function of a fast moving news cycle forcing quick prints that are quickly corrected. Other reliable sources make the same sorts of errors. For example, the issue with Al Jazeera covering wikipedia is cringeworthy, but so were any of the others talking about the ADL "ban" (its not banned, just use attribution)

The rest are POV issues due to Al Jazeera clearly having an opinion and POV on the Israel-Palestine conflict, a position we have decided in many forum posts before hand.

I'll cast aspersions when the reputation is clearly rotten, the pattern repeats. And you will no doubt argue I need to be banned because this time is somehow unique. And so goes the cycle of internet debates. User:Sawerchessread (talk) 00:49, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

you will no doubt argue I need to be banned If you can’t participate in this discussion without casting aspersions and getting mad imagining a hypothetical attempt to ban you, maybe you’d better just abstain. But certainly don’t lob weird accusations at me. ꧁Zanahary꧂ 19:16, 6 July 2024 (UTC)

I don't see anything that would be considered a "factual error" here. If they are using attribution, and that attribution later changes, it is not their fault, as is the case with any other RS. AJ is not an encyclopaedia, it is a news source that reports on live-time events, whose interpretation differs on a day-to-day basis. Makeandtoss (talk) 15:54, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

They don't use attribution in this source, which was published after the corrections were issued. BilledMammal (talk) 19:39, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

Unlike User:Makeandtoss above, I think that there are definitely some factual errors presented. Attributing a claim does not absolve you of responsibility to issue a timely correction (whether by editing/altering the article, or by posting a new article) when the attributed-to source changes their story. The first example also shows quite clearly that AJ has continued using inaccurate information well after other reliable sources have ceased publishing (and in some cases issued explicit corrections/retractions of old stories) such information. The second example clearly states Both Intifadas started off largely nonviolent. Our own article on the First Intifada states that by the second day, protestors were throwing petrol bombs, rocks, and other violent activities. Second Intifada also shows that it didn't "start off largely nonviolent". AJ is free to have its opinion on whether people intended to remain nonviolent. But stating that as a fact when it flies in the face of historically confirmed instances of violence within 24-48 hours of the months-to-years-long intifadas. Example 3 was quite clearly shown by BilledMammal - falsehoods by omission or by "misleading" timelines are not what we expect of a reliable source. To put it another way, if they weren't presenting the article as a timeline, they could say the information in whatever order they want. But since the article is purported to be a timeline, it's a factual error to say To provide air cover, Israeli forces started bombing from above right after talking about the cars just entering the area, and before discussing any further activities. That's intentionally misleading in a timeline. Example 4 is a non-issue, many reliable sources display a lack of knowledge of WP policies/procedures/terminology. Example 5 is barely an issue - it appears there is discussion hidden in the documents of the GDPs, and the 40% (well, rounded to 40%) is actually present in official documents from that conference. GDP is inherently a subjective measure, since different authors/politicians can include or exclude various "borderline" things, or calculate them in different ways. The World Bank site hasn't been updated for any country since 2022 (most recent data) - it's perfectly reasonable for AJ to assume that the G7 meeting that occurred within the last couple months has more recent/up to date information. Example 6 - AJ cites Al Jazeera, Palestinian Ministry of Health, Palestine Red Crescent Society, Israeli Army, Israel's social security agency. Ultimately, I doubt it's possible to verify that none of the other sources (including their own investigation) have come up with 15,000 as a number, and there are a handful of other sources (including the UN) that have published numbers over 10,000 that, if extrapolated, would be near 15,000 in mid June. Example 7 - misleading, but not outright false. Incomplete does not equal intentionally false. Example 8 - more research is needed - the article doesn't state that South Africa condemned it, but that the ANC government did. It's possible for political parties to act independently of official government foreign policy. Example 9 - again, incomplete is not misleading. Example 10 - not even sure this is misleading. Israeli army maintains operational control over the land of the checkpoint, and thus it's not really misleading to say they've sealed it shut. Whether they've expressed an intent to open it or not, that doesn't make it open.

So, where does that leave us? I count 3 examples of intentional falsehoods (or information presented in such a way to lead the reader to assume an intentional falsehood), 1-3 that are misleading, 2 that are incomplete information, and a few non-issues. That all said, 3 clear examples of intentional falsehoods or presenting information in a way that any reasonable reader will make inaccurate inferences - all of which have had ample opportunity to be corrected, retracted, or edited to present the information in a clear manner? To me that's clear that they cannot be trusted to publish factual information only on this topic at least. This is different than the ADL discussion above - in that discussion, many editors made claims of bias and how that bias means they can't be factually accurate. In this case, we not only have strong evidence of bias, but strong evidence of intentional factual inaccuracies. An RfC is the next step. -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez (User/say hi!) 18:44, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

On the intifada stuff, as highlighted by Nishidani, it's both subjective and a matter of perspective. If there are nationwide protests and violent incidents at only one or two locations, those protests could still be termed "largely nonviolent". Highly debatable. Timeline stuff ... also unclear. There was bombing before and after for sure. As for during, I'm not convinced that there is a single, authoritative chronology anywhere to benchmark this against. Iskandar323 (talk) 19:46, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

It wasn't only one or two locations, it was nearly every major West Bank town and city. That can't be termed "largely nonviolent", and reliable sources don't term it "largely nonviolent". BilledMammal (talk) 19:51, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

This isn't a matter of perspective, nor is it subjective. If protests erupted in multiple places simultaneously, then sure, "started nonviolently" may be acceptable. But our own articles on the topic, as well as reporting from many sources that BilledMammal identified, all agree that both intifadas started with violence, or if they didn't 'start' with violence, erupted into violence so quickly after to make "started nonviolently" deliberately misleading.

I also feel it's very, very telling that Al Jazeera themselves used to continuously call the intifadas violent from the start - they only stopped doing so once the term "intifada" started being actually viewed as a call for violence. So basically, they've began starting to try to "rewrite history" just because it doesn't fit their bias/narrative now. And that's textbook inappropriate behavior for a reliable source. -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez (User/say hi!) 19:54, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

On a purely procedural note, we really shouldn't use our articles as a measuring stick here. Articles with timelines are particularly susceptible to selective sourcing and chronicling. More generally, bad news speaks louder, so there is a media bias tendency to fixate on violent incidents over non-violent protest, which is generally dull. Take for example the 2018 Great March of Return, which began as an almost overwhelmingly non-violent action, and yet this is something that you would almost struggle to determine from the current Wikipedia page. Iskandar323 (talk) 20:20, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

The violence started within 24 hours in both cases according to reliable sources. This is in comparison to months-to-years-long protests in each intifada. That's akin to saying that "I started as a bundle of a few thousand cells" - well, sure, I guess that's technically true, but it's irrelevant and misleading because I have been alive for decades. And that's if we accept your claim that they were nonviolent at the start - which multiple reliable sources present in our articles (which are a good place to start to look for sources, as you probably know) already refute.

It's ironic though, because I was explicitly calling out the source in question (Al Jazeera) has engaged in selective sourcing and chronicling in response to another point - to the point that they are deliberately misleading people. -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez (User/say hi!) 20:49, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

Largely non-violent does not mean there was no violence. That is a tendentious reading of that report, and their reporting is backed by other reliable sources. See for example Hallward, M.C. (2011). Struggling for a Just Peace: Israeli and Palestinian Activism in the Second Intifada. University Press of Florida. ISBN 978-0-8130-4071-4. Retrieved June 20, 2024. The first weeks of the second intifada consisted of "an unarmed popular revolt," and it was only after heavily armed Israeli soldiers killed several dozen young demonstrators that Palestinian soldiers joined the confrontation. Palestinian suicide bombings inside Israel did not begin until three months later. nableezy - 21:45, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

Something need not be an armed conflict, or include "soldiers", to be violent. The fact the quote you give pulls out "soldiers" and "suicide bombings" as its definition of when it becomes "violent", ignoring the rest of the violence that didn't have professional soldiers or suicide bombings. That's what's actually tendentious - trying to redefine the word "violence" to be "only violence that I think is bad enough to be called violence". -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez (User/say hi!) 22:19, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

The source: an unarmed popular revolt. Berchanhimez: trying to redefine the word "violence" to be "only violence that I think is bad enough to be called violence" Who is it being tendentious again? nableezy - 22:25, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

Someone need not be armed to be violent. You are trying to redefine violence to mean armed violence. -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez (User/say hi!) 22:43, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

Ill let that stand on its own. nableezy - 22:59, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

The First intifada is widely regarded to have been largely non-violent. The idea that "all agree that both intifadas started with violence" is total nonsense. If you are relying on an unreliable source, such as Wikipedia, to prove otherwise, Id be happy to provide you with reading material to correct that misimpression. nableezy - 21:49, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

Example 5 is barely an issue

Well done on finding that - I spent a lot of time trying but was unable to. I've struck that issue. BilledMammal (talk) 19:49, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

I conducted additional research on Example 8 - more research is needed - the article doesn't state that South Africa condemned it, but that the ANC government did:

• South Africa confronts cascading fallout of Russia’s war, from July 2022, says The ruling ANC in South Africa is isolated in its failure to condemn Russia. It also says that South Africa withdrew their demand that Russia withdraws from Ukraine, which rebuts any arguments that "demands withdrawal" are sufficiently similar to "condemned".
• New South African party hopes to capitalise on discontent with ANC, from April 2023, says The ANC has refused to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
• South African President’s Allies Want Democratic Alliance Deal, from May 2024, says Under Ramaphosa, South Africa’s government resisted US pressure to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine

The Bloomberg article isn't an exact match, while the earlier two are a little out of date, but I think this is sufficient to establish that neither the ANC nor South Africa has condemned the Russian invasion? BilledMammal (talk) 20:33, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

I can't access the FT article, and I'm not sure I like the first one - since before the quote you pulled, it says Pretoria faces mounting criticism for failing to condemn Russia - making it more likely that "The ruling ANC" is being used to refer to the government in its official capacity - at least in my view. Obviously it's still unclear. Ultimately, I appreciate that it's an issue - and that you did the more research - but I'd say the disagreement over how to word the nuances of the ANC's party opinion, the ANC's member opinion(s), and the official government opinion makes this something not important to focus on. In other words, you've provided what I see as at least 3 much stronger true factual inaccuracies/deliberately misleading/omission of information/etc - those would be best to focus on as reason for unreliability. -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez (User/say hi!) 20:45, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

As a helpful trick, if you're unable to access an article because of a paywall adding "archive.li" to the start of the URL usually provides the content, including with that article: https://archive.li/https://www.ft.com/content/a14b6cc9-a709-4b0f-a027-6839fb7505bd

However, I think you're right that we should forget about these less significant/more ambiguous issues and focus on the three strongest examples. BilledMammal (talk) 21:02, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

I removed "frequent" from the section header. Selfstudier (talk) 21:15, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

First off, this is nothing to do with AI/IP, which is what you claimed this was all about when you opened this discussion. Secondly, On 1 February AJ reported "Since the beginning of the Ukraine war, South Africa has been careful not to condemn Russia’s invasion including declining to support a UN resolution on the matter." Perhaps this needs more looking into yet. Selfstudier (talk) 21:05, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

As someone else suggested somewhere here, it's actually pretty plausible that it's simply an unnoticed typo. Iskandar323 (talk) 21:34, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

That Al Jazeera has a feature about the neutrality of South Africa regarding Russian aggression suggests that they agree with the consensus that SA is pursuing strategic non-alignment, which necessarily has confusion built in.

That Politico and other MSM has stated that South Africa has some degree of condemnation/disapproval suggests that strategic ambiguity regarding the conflict exists, similar to how US both sometimes acknowledges China's claim to Taiwan and refuses to have an embassy to Taiwan and vehemently opposes China's aggression on Taiwan at the same time as part of some strategic ambiguity plan they maintain. User:Sawerchessread (talk) 00:35, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

the wikipedia page of the second intifada gives off the impression that initial uprising and rioting by palestinians followed the pattern of a general strike, and that the lionshare of initial violence was perpetrated against palestinians, especially with regards to the post visit riot section indicating 7 palestinian deaths and hundreds of injuries for only 70 israeli injuries... Much of the phrasing indicates that it was protests and riots that turn violent

but arguing semantics won't go anywhere, this is clearly a matter of viewpoint and arguing that Al Jazeera is biased for having the viewpoint that the intifadas started off peaceful is rehashing the whole conflict. User:Sawerchessread (talk) 21:00, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

Like many others who have commented, I find that almost all the claimed cases of "factual error" aren't cases of fact or error, just situations where OP would prefer something be characterized differently than AJ characterized it. The few cases that are questions of fact, like citing the figure a source was providing at the time the report was made (at or shortly before the time it was published), are also underwhelming. The claim above that this story says the Palestinian Ministry of Health [says] 15,000 children have died also seems to be wrong: AFAICT the "15,000 children" number only(? am I missing something?) occurs in an infographic which is sourced to a multitude of sources including not only the PMH but Al Jazeera itself (their own investigations or prior reporting); since it seems the issue is not with the number—which is also reported in some other places—but with its supposed attribution to the PMH, but AJ does not actually attribute it to the PMH, this supposed error too seems upon investigation to be another non-issue. -sche (talk) 22:40, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

I think Al Jazeera is generally unreliable for certain areas including I-P, for a few reasons

• General factual errors, per BilledMammal.
• Failures to properly retract errors, e.g. in the Jamila al-Hissi case
• Framing questionable statements as (unattributed) statements of fact, e.g. in the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital explosion, which they referred to as "Israel’s attack on Al-Ahli Arab Hospital", "the deadly Israeli air attack on al-Ahli Arab Hospital", etc. well after that assumption became dubious.
• Overall lack of scrutiny against certain narratives, e.g. often quoting unsubstantiated speculation.

— xDanielx ^T/_C\^R 01:14, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

The questions we need to ask here are "Does Al Jazeera ..."

• • 1. frequently make factual errors relative to its overall output?
  • 2. fail to promptly issue corrections to errors?
  • 3. double down on errors?
  • 4. publish under a censorship regime?
• If #1 is true where a source is publishing factual and avoidable errors in every third story, then the editorial staff are inept and the source isn't reliable.
• If #2 is true and corrections are not published, then the source isn't reliable in that it lacks self-correction expected in journalism.
• If #3 is true and the source peddles in conspiracy theories or hoaxes, then it tabloid and is not usable.
• If #4 is true, all publications are suspect when covering any POV counter to its censor's interests.

I'm not convinced the at Al Jazeera hits any of these points based on my (light) reading of the discussion so far. We cannot expect a source to always be correct, only that they correct themselves when they are and that errors are kept to a minimum. EvergreenFir (talk) 17:21, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

Regarding #4, its important to note that Qatar was among the first Arab countries to establish relations with Israel. Qatar hosts the largest US base in the Middle East. A recent Israeli article notes that Qatar would readily agree to a US demand to expel Hamas leaders, and that article goes onto note that Qatar only allowed Hamas leaders in at "Washington's behest". There appears to be no reason here why the Qatari government would force Al-Jazeera to be pro-Palestinian. VR _{(Please ping on reply)} 00:06, 23 June 2024 (UTC)

Even enemy states often have some kind of (informal) relations and negotiations, such as the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks. Qatar is one of 28 (UN) states to not officially recognize Israel, and of course provides funding to Hamas. — xDanielx ^T/_C\^R 18:33, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

I've read most of this long discussion and my take is as follows. (a) At least a significant number of the inaccuracies that Billed Mammal raises are not insignificant. However, they are not significant enough that we should move away from a generally reliable status. Generally reliable is not synonymous with always reliable, and there is no reason to sacrifice an existing good source for a non-existing perfect source. All reliable sources make mistakes of this order. Yes, AJ is biased, which leads it to be slow in reporting or correcting some things and hasty in reporting others - but this is a reminder that we should always be triangulating anything contentious in this contentious topic area, and carefully attribute anything that has been challenged. (b) I am disappointed by the conduct of some editors in this discussion. The use of phrases like "inane" and "nonsense" and attributing nefarious motives or as revenge for other decisions - let alone effectively making an accusation of being an agent of Israel, as below - do not serve this project well. If a case is being made that really is "inane" or "nonsense", then simply refuting the logic or providing the contradictory evidence is enough to secure consensus; ad hominem attacks undermine that. BobFromBrockley (talk) 13:59, 27 June 2024 (UTC)

Discussion of specific examples

• Are there significant examples outside of the two contexts which at this point we've more or less beat to death (Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Qatari domestic politics) or are the alledged issues limited in scope? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 20:34, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

  How many contexts would be enough to be a problem? Side note, holy shit this page is huge. Arkon (talk) 20:57, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

  The claim was made that the factual errors are freuqent, if that is the case I'd expect to find them in all of the topic area. We don't seem to be able to reach a conclusion on whether the coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is an issue and we already note the Qatari domestic politics... So this is the time for those who think that AJ is widely unreliable to demonstrate that. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 15:56, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

  Just from this review there are some suggestions that the issues will extend beyond IP as some of the issues, while in articles tagged as IP, aren't themselves related to IP. I'll try to conduct a review within the next week, hopefully before any RfC is opened.

  I'll also try to conduct a review of topics that Qatar has a COI on - perhaps the World Cup - as while we have sources saying that in this area Al Jazeera can function as an arm of the Qatari state we haven't yet determined if it makes factual errors while doing so. BilledMammal (talk) 19:44, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

  My understanding of the critical coverage is that the critiscism is less about non-factual coverage but about selective coverage... Non-factual coverage is a big deal for us here, selective coverage is not just because of how we operate (plenty of reliable RS present their POV/bias through selective coverage, overall they cancel out). Horse Eye's Back (talk) 21:20, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

• I do wish people wouldn't treat only those whose identities have been confirmed as dead. The OCHA figures are for those whose identities are known. People can be dead and noted as fatalities without their names and id numbers being known The Health ministry figure of 7,797 dead children being compared to 15,000 from Al Jazeera was for those childremn whose identities were known. And if you look at the citation to the Eeducation ministry they point to thie https://www.palestinechronicle.com/horrors-of-war-unicef-says-70-children-injured-every-day-in-gaza/ which cites the health ministry. NadVolum (talk) 22:23, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

Rafah Border Crossing

Moved from #General discussion

 – BilledMammal (talk) 13:42, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

• Yes, the literal headline of the WaPo article is "With Rafah crossing closed by Israel...", but the article doesn't contradict that. I still can't see a figure 15,000 in the infographic, though I am behind a heavy firewall so something might be getting blocked. Black Kite (talk) 12:39, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

  If it helps you find it; the figure is in small text, beneath large text saying "37,202".

  The article also doesn't support it, and if you look at articles like this Reuters one Egypt makes it clear it is refusing to open it; The Rafah border crossing critical to aid deliveries into Gaza from Egypt cannot operate again unless Israel relinquishes control and hands it back to Palestinians on the Gaza side, Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry said on Monday. BilledMammal (talk) 12:46, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

  F24 today "The Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt has been shut since Israeli troops seized its Palestinian side in early May". Selfstudier (talk) 12:56, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

  That's true; it was closed after Israeli troops seized the Palestinian side. The coverage in that article is limited to that; it makes no claim about who closed it or why it is still closed. The issue with Al Jazeera is that it does make such a claim, blaming Israel, but sources make it clear that the reason it can't reopen under the current circumstances is because Egypt won't let it.

  However, the entire discussion seems to be getting bogged down over this one example; even if I am incorrect about it and it is a genuine matter of dispute, there are many others. BilledMammal (talk) 13:01, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

  WAPO June 15 With Rafah crossing closed by Israel, Gazans have no way out It then says that there are talks between US, Israel and Egypt to reopen with no progress.

  Seems like a simple cause effect, if Israel had not taken the crossing, it would be open now. Selfstudier (talk) 13:17, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

  That's the article provided by Black Kite. And yes, that's true, although reductionist and misleading - but Al Jazeera didn't make the claim, it made the claim that Israel had sealed shut the vital Rafah border crossing with Egypt.

  Regardless, I'm going to step back from discussing that specific example now; I don't think we're making progress, and I don't want us to get too bogged down in that one that we forget about the others. BilledMammal (talk) 13:21, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

  Do you have a source that says Israel has not sealed shut the border crossing? You said it was false and that it was Egypt but provided no source. Selfstudier (talk) 13:25, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

  So much for stepping back. I've split this out so that at least it shouldn't be too distracting.

  Including the two I've already provided:

  1. "Egypt rejected on May 16 an Israeli proposal to coordinate the reopening of the Rafah border crossing, according to two unspecified Egyptian security sources"
  2. "The Rafah border crossing critical to aid deliveries into Gaza from Egypt cannot operate again unless Israel relinquishes control and hands it back to Palestinians on the Gaza side, Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry said on Monday."
  3. "Egypt has rejected an Israeli proposal for the two countries to coordinate to re-open the Rafah crossing between Egypt's Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip, and to manage its future operation, two Egyptian security sources said."
  4. "Egypt has rejected Israel's control of the Gaza side of the Rafah crossing, saying it can't reopen as long as it remains under occupation."
  5. "The US official said that Egypt is unwilling to reopen the crossing so long as it is the IDF that is the IDF that is securing the other side, not wanting to be seen as complicit with Israel’s occupation of the gate."
  6. "Egypt stuck to its position that Israel must withdraw from the Gazan side of the Rafah crossing for it to operate again."

  Now I will step back, regardless of your opinion of these sources. BilledMammal (talk) 13:42, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

  There are two ways of reading this:

  • The Rafah crossing is shut because Israel refuses to return it to Palestinians, as Egypt demands
  • The Rafah crossing is shut because Egypt refuses to work with the occupation, as Israel demands

  Clearly, AJ takes the first view, and its not unreasonable.VR _{(Please ping on reply)} 23:04, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

  There are any number of sources for Israel having sealed the Rafah crossing, NPR: Israel's takeover and closure of the vital Rafah crossing for Gaza cuts off a key aid route into the territory for example. That it has not been re-opened since is, according to Israel and only Israel, on Egypt. That does not in any way make what al-Jazeera reported false, and this repeated effort to claim so through a tendentious accounting of what happened is only evidence of the bias of this request, not of al-Jazeera's. nableezy - 21:39, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

What a waste of editors time. Reading https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-69012303 I suppose there is a row over who is to blame at the Rafah crossing. But honestly considering what has happened at the other crossings controlled by Israel are we actually supposed to believe Israel isn't effectively blocking this one as well? In that BBC article it talks about a full blown famine in northern Gaza. NadVolum (talk) 12:38, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

My call - all of this is WP:RECENTISM. It’s a war zone. That certain crossings or areas are currently inaccessible isn’t surprising or noteworthy. Next week it will be some other crossing or some other area. NOT NEWS! Blueboar (talk) 12:52, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

Reasonable call on the face of it but...this is all linked to the aid/starvation issue -> no crossings = no aid = starvation. Selfstudier (talk) 13:01, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

I would still say too RECENT. Blueboar (talk) 16:57, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

Then the entire war is too recent on that basis. We should all stop editing immediately. Selfstudier (talk) 17:09, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

I agree that it's recent. But if anything, a news organization (such as AJ) has a responsibility to either (or both) identify their information as preliminary, estimated, etc., and/or engage[] in fact-checking and ha[ve] a reputation for accuracy [as signaled by the] publication of corrections - quote is from that section of NEWSORG with minor edits bracketed to make it fit the sentence. AJ has done neither in some cases - they've deliberately said Israel bombed at a time that they didn't (as verified by other news organizations outside the region), they've stated that a certain number of people died without identifying it as an initial report, and even worse, even after the information was corrected by the hospital not only did they not publish a correction, but they published another new article with the now-known incorrect information...

A news organization has an even higher editorial responsibility with the accuracy of its "breaking news" or similar reports. Al Jazeera doesn't routinely publish corrections and has been shown to continue parroting incorrect information even in articles they write and publish well after the information is corrected. That is not the responsible editorial practice we expect - well, we don't even know, because they don't even publish a corrections policy, and there is no method to contact them to ask for a story to be corrected. -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez (User/say hi!) 23:48, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

You replied to a bit about the Rafah crossing completely ignoring it. But anyway are you going to engage your corrections policy after having reading "Evidence of retractions and corrections" below? NadVolum (talk) 14:46, 21 June 2024 (UTC)