Hello,

For a long time, I really liked editing Wikipedia. However, the last few years, there has been a shift in the general editing, that made me think that the WP:NPOV-policy has weakened in favor of partisan editing.

In January 2007, this was how editor User:Esurnir described the NPOV-policy here:

Karada offered the following advice in the context of the Saddam Hussein article:

You won't even need to say he was evil. That is why the article on Hitler does not start with "Hitler was a bad man" — we don't need to, his deeds convict him a thousand times over. We just list the facts of the Holocaust dispassionately, and the voices of the dead cry out afresh in a way that makes name-calling both pointless and unnecessary. Please do the same: list Saddam's crimes, and cite your sources.

Remember that readers will probably not take kindly to moralising. If you do not allow the facts to speak for themselves you may alienate readers and turn them against your position.

I fully agree that this advice is very sound for making a good encyclopedia. However, if I compare articles from 2016 with the present ones, my conclusion is that editors do not work according it anymore. Please, for example, look at these intros:

It does not matter what you think of these persons, film and organisations. What matters is that the User:Esurnir was right: the pointless name-calling does alienate readers and turn them against you, ie. against Wikipedia as a reliable encyclopedia. I already see examples of this hostility in social media. And, what is worse for me personally, it demotivates me from editing.

Now, I do believe this problem is a serious threat for the image and future of Wikipedia. Do others think that too? And if so: does anybody has an idea for a solution? And, as a final question: is this the right place to show my concerns? Regards,Jeff5102 (talk) 13:33, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

Discussion (NPOV)

I don't need to repeat my soapbox but this hits the nail on the head. Too many articles editors are far too keen to rush to characterize the topic (as per what RSes may say) rather than explain what the topic is first in a neutral and impartial tone first (per the collapsed examples). We still can including that characterization, and often must include that per WEIGHT as that is usually why a topic is notable in most of these cases, but we have to present that in a dispassionate way, and that starts by first introducing the objective details of the topic, then moving into the subjective. For 99% of these articles, this doesn't change what content we have, just the order of how its presented. --Masem (t) 15:05, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

Masem, the core question always is: why is someone looking this up? Normally it's because they want to know if they should trust this source. Example: someone looking for the Cato Institute will be coming here because they have heard a statement by them. So the first and most important thing to know is that they are a libertarian free-market think tank funded by polluters. That colours everything they say. They don't say anything at all unless it's to serve their masters. Don't trust think-tanks. Ever. Guy (help! - typo?) 22:10, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

That is absolutely the wrong approach. Take Encyclopedia Britannica - do you think think they lead off with what the "reader" expects? No. We have a lede section to eventually address this and certainly burying the lede by not mentioning what somebody is notable for until the last para of the lede is bad, and this is not what anyone is suggesting. But there is a need to keep characterizations from any source secondary to the key purposes of presenting factual information first and foremost. WP is not here to be the mouthpiece to criticize people that have been criticized by the media or others, and that's exactly what the OP post is pointing out has been abused over the last several yeras. --Masem (t) 00:51, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

And that example of the Cato Institute is absolutely the last thing that we want people using Wikipedia for, or at least for WP to be as explicit about. It's the "Hilter is evil" comment mentioned above. We can explain what objectively the Cato Institute is, we can list who are their known backers and wikilinks to them, and if there's recognized commentary on that, mention those backers are known polluters, but it is absolutely not our place to even suggest in wikivoice that Cato is backed known polluters, much less promote that as the first thing the reader sees, per RIGHTGREATWRONGS. We are amoral to these things, we can't take sides at all. Pushing these points earlier make is doing exactly that. --Masem (t) 00:58, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

THIS. 1,000 x this. Especially in the AP2 area, articles have moral judgments in the lead. In my experience, if you try to "neutralize" the article by removing just judgments from the lead, you will be accused of POV pushing, etc. The belief is, to paraphrase, starting the article on Hitler with anything other than "Hitler is a bad man" is considered pro-Hitler. This approach is not only contrary to NPOV, it's just bad writing. It's "telling" rather than "showing". I've tried to fix these sorts of things in the past and always been outnumbered and chased away. To be blunt, since Trump was elected, Wikipedia took a hard turn towards moralism in the AP2 area. It's an understandable reaction, but re-balancing is needed. Lev!vich 18:27, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

Levivich, I disagree. I have a serious problem with think-tanks, for example. We should not treat them as neutral scholarly institutions because they are not. They exist to conduct policy based evidence making. A think tank funded by polluter money is not an honest broker. Carl Benjamin certainly isn't an honest broker: he's a grifter. And - amazingly - he is virtually unknown in his home country. He was humiliated the one time he tried for elected office, I guarantee you that most Brits have never heard of him, same as Paul Joseph Watson. Guy (help! - typo?) 22:06, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

Taking Carl Benjamin for example, I think if the word "anti-feminist" were removed from the lead, nothing would be lost. The second paragraph communicates the same thought, and it does so by "showing" rather than "telling" (or labelling). Gatestone Institute is another example, it has "anti-Muslim" twice in the lead. It's like we're beating our readers over the head with it. Lev!vich 22:23, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

Levivich, really? He's a MRA. He is known as an advocate of misogyny. I think that would lose something. Guy (help! - typo?) 22:44, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

"He's a MRA" says a lot more than "He's an anti-feminist". "Anti-feminist" is a meaningless label, like "anti-communist" or (drumroll) "anti-fascist". Labeling or categorizing something isn't really the best an encyclopedia can do; describing and explaining is better. Lev!vich 03:51, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

In this case, maybe we would need more references that explicitly use the term "anti-feminist" to refer to him in order to justify using it as the first term to describe him in the lede. They could either be all next to the first appearance of the term in the lede itself or further down in the body article. El Millo (talk) 03:56, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

"He is known as an advocate of misogyny"? Thanks. That shows the problem. I am pretty sure Mr. Benjamin never published a statement in favour of more mysogyny. I would also think he would deny such a statement. Nor do I know of any news about him abusing women. It are only others who call him a mysogynist. So, if Wikipedia is supposed to be a neutral source, why then putting such a statement in the lead? It would fit better in a sourced "Reception/criticism"-section. Meanwhile, his viewpoints can be explained in a "Viewpoints"-section, with the proper links that show Benjamin explaining his worldviews . That is how an encyclopedia should be made: neutral, without the use of the Poisoning the well-fallacy in the lead. Regards, Jeff5102 (talk) 07:26, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

Of course it's only others who call him a mysogynist and not himself. What he has to say on the term itself being applied to him is not important as long as there are enough reliable sources that define him as a mysognynist (or an advocate of it, for that matter) based on things he has said and done. Now, you might argue that we don't have enough sources to justify defining him as a mysogynist—which isn't even what's actually being discussed here, this is about the "anti-feminist" label, which is not only reliably sourced but self-evident by hashtags promoted by him like "#FeminismIsCancer", which is mentioned in the article—but his opinion on whether this label applies to him doesn't have nearly as much weight as what reliable sources have to say on the matter. El Millo (talk) 07:47, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

Hate to fall back on the example of Hitler again, but Hitler was publicly very adamant to citizens and to journalists that he espoused socialism, although the Nazi brand of socialism is most certainly not the kind that historians would accept as socialism. In fact, he made it a point to privately emphasize to large business owners and to wealthy patrons that he was not advocating for any sort of policies that favored workers over businesses. It's an example of why we favor reliable secondary sourcing over primary sourcing at Wikipedia. There are people and sources we trust in this area of politics for a reason. If we can't trust them, we trust nobody.--WaltCip-(talk) 13:23, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

It's also why we should wait a sufficiently reasonable time before getting too into the characterization of any topic, using sources that have "time-removed" aspects from the events rather than from any sources reporting in the midst of the events. From a purely academic interest, it is going to be interesting to see how Trump's presidency is going to be qualified a decade from now, for example, and that is the type of characterization we want to include in WP, not what the mass media is saying today about it, nor what Trump is saying about himself today as well. Yes, sometimes how a topic is characterized in the now is the only reason why they are notable, but we can still carefully approach that to avoid the aggressive and hostile tone that the various given examples show. --Masem (t) 13:41, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

Over-reliance on news and other less than scholarly sources has gotten us here. Easy to find a source that paints someone poorly these days. The other is the overall attitude of experienced editors is "X viewpoint (usually conservative) is wrong so bash away because their views are discriminatory Slywriter (talk) 00:37, 20 October 2020 (UTC)

@Levivich: How on earth are anti-feminist or anti-fascist "meaningless labels"? They both describe concrete political ideologies and contemporary social movements and organisations. It's 100% neutral and helpful to our readers to point out if an affiliation with either is a significant part of a person's biography. – Joe (talk) 15:36, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

Anti-feminism and anti-fascism (of the modern-day "antifa", not the early-20th-century variety) are not organizations, social movements, or ideologies. No more so than "anti-communism", "anti-capitalism" or "anti-anything". "Anti-feminism" is also known as "misogyny". "Anti-fascism" is also known as "being human" (might as well call it "anti-evil-ism"). "Feminism" and "fascism" might be ideologies and might be (or might have once been, in the case of fascism) social movements, but that doesn't make opposition to those ideologies/movements an ideology/movement in and of itself. Calling someone "anti-feminist" is just another way of saying someone is misogynist, and calling someone "anti-fascist" doesn't mean anything at all, it doesn't say anything about the person at all. Lev!vich 16:15, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

@Levivich and Jeff5102: I suspect the Hitler example was supposed to be facetious, but... In the past year, "universally regarded as gravely immoral" was added to the Hitler lead. (See discussion; there's also an ongoing back-and-forth about replacing it with "evil".) It sounds ridiculous to me, that the article gives precedence to modern-day public opinion over the actual deeds. It's really not the same issue as characterization in articles relating to contemporary politics, exactly, but it's somewhat related. For the issues with contemporary political articles, my first thought was that we need some clearer policies, but many of these things are already clearly covered: WP:BLP says "Summarize how actions and achievements are characterized by reliable sources without giving undue weight to recent events. Do not label people with contentious labels, loaded language, or terms that lack precision, unless a person is commonly described that way in reliable sources. Instead use clear, direct language and let facts alone do the talking.", for example. I do think it's clear that we're getting worse at various areas of NPOV editing, somehow. I don't know why, or how to fix it.

Re the points above about ideological identification of a person or group when that conflicts with their self-identification: In present-day political situations, I doubt it would ever be a good idea to label someone eg "anti-Muslim" or "anti-feminist" in Wikipedia's voice; it fits into the category of "thing someone has an opinion on", and doesn't say anything about the topic. There's an implied "Wikipedia says". If a person sees "Wikipedia says that Y says that X is [label]", they can ignore the "Wikipedia says" part since they have no reason to doubt Wikipedia's statement on Y's statement there, so they learn something about Y, and possibly about X if they happen to trust Y's opinion. If they see "Wikipedia says X is [label]", they learn something about Wikipedia, and nothing about X since they probably don't care about the opinions of anonymous internet people. But if they see "Wikipedia says that X [did things that clearly demonstrate [label]-ness in the reader's mind] (sourced to reliable sources)", then they'll actually learn the thing. (That is, assuming the article doesn't sound like it's trying to, as Levivich phrased it, "beat our readers over the head with it", which would immediately cast considerable doubt on it.) --Yair rand (talk) 09:48, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

I completely disagree with this view of labels: if a public figure is antisemitic, identified as such by reliable sources, and this is important to their notability (per the BALANCE of RS) they should be labelled as antisemitic in Wikivoice. The same is true with antifeminist or anti-gay or anti-transgender activists and spokespeople. In the case of Carl Benjamin, there are many, many RS that use "antifeminist" beyond the NYT cited in the lede; in fact, when he was a UKIP candidate in 2019, "anti-feminist Youtuber" seems to have been the standard description used for him. See (among many possible examples) the long explanation in the Guardian, this piece in the Independent, this more recent PinkNews piece, the Houston Press or Vice, which uses the longer descriptive phrase "Youtuber who rose to prominence trailing against feminism". The description isn't incidental: it is, as the sources say, central to Benjamin's "rise to prominence" and subsequent notability. Newimpartial (talk) 15:59, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

Those are some bottom-shelf sources you're point to. Got anything academic? Lev!vich 16:17, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

I disagree that the NYT, the Guardian and the Independent are "bottom shelf" sources. I also find it bizarre when editors insist on scholarly sources on political labels in articles where little or none of the rest of the content is sourced to scholarship.

Nevertheless, because Benjamin's antifeminism has been such a prominent part of his work to date, it has actually been subject to scholarly attention by media studies, criminology, and gender studies scholars. Newimpartial (talk) 16:49, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

NYT isn't a bottom-shelf source but I didn't see an NYT link there; Guardian and Independent are not good sources. Would you kindly quote where in those three papers the authors introduce Carl Benjamin as an "antifeminist YouTuber", or use the words "antifeminist" and "Carl Benjamin" in the same sentence, or in the same paragraph? Lev!vich 17:09, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

@Levivich: How is the Guardian "not a good source?" Seemplez 12:49, 26 November 2020 (UTC)

It's press, not academic. Levivich ^harass/_hound 05:40, 27 November 2020 (UTC)

I don't normally do legwork for other editors, once I have actually linked to sources, but I will make an exception this time. The first article simply states, Benjamin is a conspiracy theorist and anti-feminist when introducing the figures it is discussing.

The Palgrave chapter spends a paragraph analysing Carl Benjamin/Sargon of Akkad's influence post-Gamergate, and states the following about him and his epigones: SoA’s account has been banned from Twitter, but through his followers, he still has a presence in our research data. The overwhelming impression of these most active participants is that they are in 2019 still concerned with “geeky” topics (games, comics, science fiction, and fantasy) but are also, for instance, climate change deniers, against feminism, against the AntiFa movement, and in general against social justice topics.

The third paper opens with the VidCon incident and approvingly cites Sarkeesian as saying, Carl is a man who literally profits from harassing me and other women... He is one of several YouTubers who profit from the cottage industry of online harassment and antifeminism}. This all seems to have been assessed by scholars, from different though overlapping fields, who know what they are doing. Newimpartial (talk) 18:03, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

Thanks. Of those three, don't you think the second and third do a much, much better job of communicating CB's views than the first? And, noticeably, the second and third do not call CB "antifeminist"; the second one is calling his followers "against feminism" among many other things, and the third one is saying he profits from antifeminism, which is not the same as being an antifeminist (it's worse, in my opinion, and part of "the point" is that we should let the readers form their own opinion instead of telling them what to think). Lev!vich 20:27, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

I'm afraid I don't see any incompatibility between the two approaches, or any reason WP shouldn't use both. Newimpartial (talk) 14:17, 23 October 2020 (UTC)

@Yair rand:, w/r/t "why, or how to fix it": I think the "why" has a lot to do with Trump being elected in 2016. It seem to me pretty understandable that in response to the "misinformation age" of the last four years, many people will want to do something to counteract that misinformation, and editing Wikipedia is a pretty natural choice for that. So it makes sense to me that there has been an increase in "naming and shaming", particularly in AP2, since 2016. I checked out the OP's examples with tools like mw:WWT and WP:WikiBlame and was not surprised to find that the familiar AP2 regulars were the editors who originally added labels like "anti-Muslim" to these articles (and others, I have seen), in some cases edit warred to keep them in, and in some cases !voting in RFCs to keep them in. Certain media outlets have been writing about this for years, embarking on their own "naming and shaming" countercampaign (or is it a counter-countercampaign? I've lost track). As with every other topic area, this topic area reflects the editorial judgments of the editors who edit the topic area, and for better or worse, labelling is popular nowadays in this topic area (as can be seen in this discussion, too). So as to how to fix it: partly I think the problem will get better in the future whenever Trump leaves office and hopefully the "misinformation age" subsides, and partly it won't change until/unless more "anti-label" (heh) editors start regularly editing these articles, particularly with an eye towards providing more meaningful leads. Lev!vich 16:58, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

I think there is a problem here, but with regards to the first example, while I think the latter version of The Gatestone Institute article isn't OK, the 2016 version was worse. They, like a great many think tanks, are a glorified propaganda outfit and when we replicated their assertion that they are "non-partisan" in the lead with no indication as to their ideological leanings, we were complicit in reputation washing. "Show, don't tell" might be good advice for many fiction authors but it reduces the value of a reference work: we should be figuring out NPOV leads that do succeed in summarising their topic. — Charles Stewart (talk) 19:20, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

I don't understand the distinction Masem draws between characterising something and describing what something is, since the OED defines to characterise as to "describe the distinctive nature or features of". The Gatestone Institute is a "far-right think tank known for publishing anti-Muslim articles". That is not name-calling or a moral judgement, just a description of the facts as established by reliable sources. It is no less objective (and more precise) than describing it as just a think tank. It's substantially more objective than quoting verbatim the institute's own marketing copy. Ditto for all the other American alt-right figures given as examples above.

Esurnir's maxim is being misapplied here: if we're saying that previous versions of the examples are the model, the Hitler analogy I'd draw is that we should neither call him a bad man nor dispassionately describe his crimes, we should factually introduce him as the "Führer of the Germanic Reich and People",^[1] list his objective political appointments and military accomplishments, and perhaps mention something about criticism of his treatment of minorities in a Controversies section.

If we're getting better at calling spades spades, that's a good thing. – 

Joe (talk) 15:22, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

What something is is through clear, objective tests or evaluations, such as through scientific measurement or simple observation against a long-established definition requiring no interpretation. There may be limited debates here due to shifting knowledge - Pluto being a planet vs just a astral body for example - but for the most part, if you have any competent person that can understand the same process to determine what that topic is, they should always come to the same conclusion.

What something is characterized as is based on subjective measures, and thus will depend on who the person making the description will be. This not only affects, for example, the application of value-laden labels, but as well as what are the most salient "features" of the topic that are not part of what the topic "is". As an example of the latter, Kevin Spacey to some may be an "award-winning actor" while to others, a "sexual predator". Anything where there is a matter of opinion, judgement, or the like where there is even the possibility or room for counterarguments even if these aren't voiced should all be treated as characterizations of a topic.

Now related to multiple other concurrent discussions, with time, if academic sources tend to all agree that a topic - one that is no longer active or alive or whatever - meet some subjective characterization, then maybe there's room to treat that as fact. We're talking, if here in 2020, topics likely before 1950. The problem is editors want to use media sources to do that job, which is absolutely not the same as academic sources as cautioned by RECENTISM. Media is fine for facts, but we should not be trying to include their opinions or characterizations unless they are essential to understanding the topic, and when that's necessary, that's got to be presented as characterization of the topic, spoken out of Wikivoice with attribution and after we've gone through what the topic "is". Calling a spade a spade is great if that's based on a sizable body of academic works, but should be not be the case if we're basing that on current media. --Masem (t) 16:18, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

But not all cases are subject to a simplistic "is"/"characterized as" distinction. For example, I would argue (along with the sources, including scholarly ones) that Carl Benjamin's antifeminism is a defining aspect: it is a major reason he receives the attention of scholars (though anti-immigrant sentiment factors there as well), and perhaps more importantly it was a huge part of how he gained his bully Youtube pulpit through the GamerGate movement. "Antifeminism" isn't a label people apply to Benjamin because they DONTLIKE what he says: his path to notability was entirely wrapped up in his avowed opposition to feminism and feminists. There may he cases where WP would be better to let actions speak rather than labels, but Carl Benjamin just isn't one of them Newimpartial (talk) 17:04, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

What I've said doesn't mean we don't include "characterization" (of which calling CB under "antifeminism" is certainly still characterization since you've just shown it's a subjective label.) Characterization, no matter how loud it is from the media sources, should be presented after the fundamental objective statements as to not impact the initial tone of the article, and always in some type of attributed sources to take it out of wikivoice. That is, in this case, CB's notability is strongly tied to his characerization of being antifeminism and that absolutely need to be stated early in the lede per WEIGHT, but no P&G requires us to open with why a topic is notable in the first sentence, only that this is given somewhere in the lede at some point. --Masem (t) 17:13, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

I am not here to shadowbox about which sentence of the lede something goes in. There have been versions of Carl Benjamin where the antifeminist activism featured later in the first paragraph, and I was fine with that. But I still disagree with any reading of WP:LABEL that would require undisputed characterizations, or characterizations that are undisputed among high-quality (in this case, academic) sources to be attributed in the lede and denied wikivoice. I am for most purposes a philosophical realist, and Benjamin is AFAICT objectively anti-feminist; I entirely disagree that it is a "subjective label" in this instance, in the sense you mean. Newimpartial (talk) 17:24, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

This is the slippery slope fallacy when it comes to LABELs and claiming no dispute exists when you only limit to where the dispute must be from high quality RSes. This is where we entire the fact that RSOPINION is fair game for the source of points of dispute that can be used for labels (even if we don't actually include those sources), as well as common sense that a term would be taken as a disputed term and there is an absence of any sources that dispute it; the nature of the term itself should be sufficient to consider it in dispute.

The thing overall is that wikivoice cannot be judgmental at all, and taking such labels only used in the media in the short term is judgement. Editors should be very much aware that overall there's been a culture war that's been leading to an information war, and WP is at the center of that. No question we have to fight off the misinformation that is trying to be propagated (eg why we have deprecated numerous sources recently) but at the same time, we have to recognize that the press itself is fighting that way in the direction to paint the far/alt-right in a negative light, for numerous valid reasons. But because of this new approach over the last 5-6 years, that makes their coverage more judgmental on these topics - doesn't reduce the reliability of what they report factually but does beg how much we should focus on their commentary and analysis in the short term per RECENTISM. Its why we should be waiting for the academic sources that come later in time, separated from the events that will not be anywhere close to judgmental and consider if they use the same language then. Of course, if the press's broad opinion has the WEIGHT, it obviously should be included, but LABEL as well as WP:OUTRAGE tell us to keep all that outside of Wikivoice. --Masem (t) 18:07, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

No, Masem, I am not engaged in a slippery-slope fallacy. I am naming two scenarios: one where all available sources agree (and none contest) an attribute, and a second where all of the highest quality (e.g. academic) sources agree and there is no dissent within that domain. In both of those cases, I am saying that the distinction you are maintaining between "factual" and "opinion" labels cannot be maintained in some important cases, and the consensus of the sources should stand as a description of reality in these cases. Your assertion that the "antifeminist" characterization of Benjamin is limited to the media is simply incorrect; the idea that the term is "judgmetal" and unlikely to be maintained in future (vs. recent) scholarship strikes me as a truly weird kind of CRYSTAL gazing. There is nothing about terms like antifeminist, anti-transgender or anti-Jewish that makes them suitable for articles about long-dead historical subjects but inappropriate to more recent ones. All of these can be - and are - used by reliable sources to accurately describe important attributes of our BLP subjects. Removing them based on CRYSTAL or CRYBLP concerns seems the opposite of an encyclopaedic approach, to me. Newimpartial (talk) 18:21, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

The first fallacy is claiming "all available sources". WP is not a walled garden or ivory tower as to ignore what happens beyond what we list at RS. RS is important to block out what we include for facts, but we have RSOPINION, and as soon as you start digging at commentary and criticism from sources otherwise deemed RS for fact, you have created fair game to start looking beyond the RS to see if there's other opinions out there to consider if there's more that just the "RSFACT" sources. Otherwise, this logic states we basically can pretend that there is almost no right-leaning views that exist because there are no RSes on that side of the board, which is of course wrong. Contrast this to when we designation scientific theory as fact -this is through peer review and sound scientific principles that are meant to eliminate the possibility of other options. With press and subjective language, you simply cannot prove the negative - that no counter views readily exist. That's why as we get more academic works - the ones that do have peer review with the historical perspective, we now have more something like the scientific fields as to say there's no other options and thus move to a more factual usage. (And I will stress, have little care myself for any of these far right entities. It's just that if this balance is not dealt with now, it will continue to spiral out of hand to other topics beyond the far right.

The other fallacy is the emphatic need to include these terms. Again, WP needs to be non-judgemental, neutral, and impartial, and that starts with how editors approach articles. I've dealt with far too many editors that work on topics who are entering the topic believing they must show the person is "bad", which is basically against RIGHTGREATWRONG. We absolutely need to leave it for the reader to decide for themselves and focus first on writing the basic bio pieces common for any biography, and the consider how to incorporate the controversial bits knowing these are notable facets but they have to integrate in a way that keeps WP non-judgmental. This doesn't mean whitewashing or whatever removals people may claim, 99% of the time it is simply reordering and word choice of the existing text. --Masem (t) 21:47, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

But you are making a BOTHSIDES claim here that doesn't align with reality. The "other side" on Sargon and feminism doesn't claim that Benjamin isn't opposed to feminism; they argue that he is opposed to feminism and he is right. In his own words, This is what feminism has wrought – a generation of men who do not know what to do, who are being demonised for what they are - the reader shouldn't "be left to themselves" whether Carl Benjamin opposes feminism. Everyone - including the scholars, including his supporters, including Carl himself - agrees that he does. Trying to exclude or adopt WEASEL language about this obvious fact in his article would absolutely be WHITEWASHING. Newimpartial (talk) 22:54, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

But that goes to BPP's point: does he call himself "anti-feminism"? It doesn't appear to be, where it seems to be more about favoring men's rights. (It's like why pro-choice supporters on the abortion debates aren't called "anti-life supporters".) Certainly his position is readily characterized by the mainstream sources as "anti-feminism" , no question, and that's no going anywhere, but looking over the walled garden is clear this is not a universal truth and thus cannot be stated in wikivoice. We don't and can't include those sources that fail RS (no need to create false balance), we don't have to even mention that there's conflict per WP:MANDY if we don't have decent RSes that explain the conflict over the term, but we do need to take the language out of Wikivoice, which in no way is any weaseling. It's consistent with WP:YESPOV and WP:OUTRAGE and WP:LABEL. No where else on WP do we apply characterization in Wikivoice except in these areas, which is why there's the problem. --Masem (t) 23:15, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

But someone who declares themselves opposed to feminism is anti-feminist, just as someone who declares themselves opposed to fascism is anti-fascist and someone who declares themselves opposes to the Jews is anti-Jewish. These aren't LABEL issues; this is a matter of basic English-language syntax and Arisotelian logic. Newimpartial (talk) 23:35, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

No, that's still a characterization issue, and one I know I can attest to since I've been on that side that is a result of the race to trying to pigeonhole people (where my arguments to try to keep topics neutral have been argued to saying I'm pro-right). I don't know in depth of CB's statements he made, though I'm well aware he is strongly outspoken against the modern wave of feminism as it impacts men's rights. Yes, that may be (and in this case most likely is) anti-feminism but I can also see that some may argue that's pro mens-rights. Whether he's said himself he's anti-feminist I don't know, and if he has self-labeled as BPP has asked, that simplifies matters. But absent anything CB has said about himself, we have to take the media's use of that as a broad pigeonholing characterization that can't be said in wikivoice. Even if it was the case he used the term to self-identify, as it is still a term that is a characterization, and not something that can be measured or determined objectively like one's career, it still needs to be used as a point of characterization, which means it should be not spoken in wikivoice, and cannot lead off an article if we are to maintain a neutral, impartial, and dispassionate tone that NPOV/BLP requires for writing about these people. The article still is going to reflect on CB's overall stance that speaks against feminism, and by the second sentence of the lede should establish that, the reader is still going to learn this, but we can't force that to the reader, they need to be able to come to that determination themselves. --Masem (t) 13:54, 23 October 2020 (UTC)

I don't want to BLUDGEON this further, so I won't respond at length. That you see the media's use of (such a label) as a broad pigeonholing characterization that can't be said in wikivoice is clear, and is a perspective you have maintained tenaciously in this and similar cases. However, I haven't seen any substantial consensus of support for that interpretation, here or elsewhere. Newimpartial (talk) 14:15, 23 October 2020 (UTC)

It is written in policy via WP:IMPARTIAL how exactly we're supposed to present controversial aspects in Wikivoice. It seems patently clear that applying a label like "anti-feminism" to CB is a controvserial stance so IMPARTIAL 100% applies. But then I know the argument is "but there's no other view presented in the high quality RSes" but that's the other problem is that the high-quality RSes isn't the extent of the real world. We are not blind or deaf to everything else, and we're smarter than that than to know how to apply IMPARTIAL appropriately. That's exactly what has been argued throughout this entire thread from the OP's post. We have given away from what IMPARTIAL requires and instead adopted the tone the high-quality RSes have used because editors feel that's the only sources we can even listen to, which creates the problems. WP cannot write like this and asserting "But this is fine" is creating the problem. --Masem (t) 14:32, 23 October 2020 (UTC)

To try to clarify (again) - I am, by and large, a philosophical realist. I therefore recognize that that are cases where the "consensus of the best" sources may represent only a limited perspective on reality and depart from overall accuracy. For example, there are issues where NPOV derived only from the best English-language sources would depart from a BALANCEd global NPOV, for this reason.

However, in the specific case of Carl Benjamin, there are literally no sources making the claim that he isn't antifeminist; that it is patently clear that applying a label like "anti-feminism" to CB is a controvserial stance is a kind of thing I've heard from (usually avowed centrist) WP editors, but I have never once seen this argument made in the "real world". Op-edsters for example would be much more likely to argue, "people say he's antifeminist, but what he says about feminism is true", rather than objecting to those using the "antifeminist" label.

Finally, IMPARTIAL follows and must be read in the context of FALSEBALANCE. We do not include FRINGE perspectives in articles where doing so would lend undue attention to the viewpoints of small minorities, and we do not provide in-text attribution when saying that a conspiracy theory is a conspiracy theory. Editors going out of their way to insist on attribution for labels that are uncontroversialy applied to BLP subjects are, objectively, engaged in undermining NPOV and encyclopaedic tone through FALSEBALANCE. Newimpartial (talk) 15:02, 23 October 2020 (UTC)

The problem with the CB argument is that you can't prove a negative as well as the fact of the other points that Levivich is pointing out (the sourcing is not as strong as claimed that these are all stating "anti-feminist"). We can do a survey of sources and come to a fair idea how frequent a term is used but that can't 100% conclusively say "no source doesn't say this" since it is impossible to search all sources

But wholly separate is to the last point, because what this comes down to is again my point of differentiating anything that is objective (like a BLP's career and nationality) and what one is characterized as (whether that is a positive or negative characterization). Wikivoice can never speak directly a characterization as fact, period, because of the nature of being characterization of something that cannot be proven, only asserted. Near-universal characterizations can be described as such and forgo the need for direct inline attributions in the lede, "X is widely considered to by Y" is acceptable like that assuming the body has said details, or such assertions can be applied to specific facets which can be taken as fact (like what someone specifically says or does) "X is known for their views on Y", and this is all to maintain the tone. This is not a false balance issue but staying far more middle-ground/conservative in how we provide information rather than the "absolute" that the media write, thus keeping us impartial and dispassionate about the topics. As soon as you take the tone of the press, you take us out of that mode, even if this is reflecting the near-universal consensus of those sources. That's the incompatibility of media writing versus encyclopedia writing, and as we are not a newspaper, we have to change that. No other real encyclopedia writes in a tone like this. --Masem (t) 15:24, 23 October 2020 (UTC)

Apart from your proposed distinction between "facts" and "characterizations" (which alongside most philosophical realists I oppose), I think our key disagreement concerns the scope and application of the following: Near-universal characterizations can be described as such and forgo the need for direct inline attributions in the lede. To me, CB's antifeminism counts as a "near-universal characterization" within the context of his notability as a public figure. While I would have no problem with phrasing the lede as "CB is a Youtuber known for his antifeminism" rather than "CB is an antifeminist Youtuber", I don't agree that what is at stake there is a more "middle-ground" or "conservative" tone. Newimpartial (talk) 15:48, 23 October 2020 (UTC)

Key is that WP is not supposed to be judging topics but let the reader come to the conclusion. In a case of a person who's notability is tied to being controversial in the media as with CB, we have to be very careful of preloading the article with that stance, otherwise we've pre-judged the topic for the reader. We obviously can't avoid it nor should we bury that lede, but it is about establishing as much as we can factually state about CB - as we would at any other bio page - before moving into what makes him notable as a result of his controversy. It drastcally improves the tone and shows to the reader we (Wikipedia) are not making that judgement, but the media at large, letting them decide if the media's portrayal is correct. When we write instead in this aggressive tone that immediately applies labels even if they are well supposed from the press, it disposed the reader as well as other editors, and it encourages only negative additions to the article, which is not what we want. We're still writing encyclopedia biographies, not entries for the SPLC. --Masem (t) 16:03, 23 October 2020 (UTC)

Masem wrote: "No where else on WP do we apply characterization in Wikivoice except in these areas, which is why there's the problem."

Wikipedia says: "The theory and practice of Ayurveda is pseudoscientific. The concept of vital energy is pseudoscientific. Black salve, also known by the brand name Cansema, is pseudoscientific alternative cancer treatment. Unani medicine is pseudoscientific. Zero balancing is pseudoscientific. Reparative therapy is pseudoscientific. The literal belief that the world's linguistic variety originated with the tower of Babel is pseudoscientific. The basis of the Kon-Tiki expedition is pseudoscientific, racially controversial, and has not gained acceptance among scientists. This theory is pseudoscientific. This theory is pseudoscientific. [Note: That was a different theory than the first one.] Candida hypersensitivity is a pseudoscientific disease promoted by William G. Crook, M.D. Crystal healing is a pseudoscientific alternative medicine technique. It is a pseudoscientific supernatural explanation. The Immune Power Diet is a pseudoscientific elimination diet. Ear candling, also called ear coning or thermal-auricular therapy, is a pseudoscientific alternative medicine practice. Magnetic therapy is a pseudoscientific alternative medicine practice. Pseudophysics is a pseudoscientific practice. Reverse speech is a pseudoscientific topic."

I could go on, but maybe we can already agree that we do apply characterization in wikivoice outside right-wing politics. With enthusiasm, even. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:19, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

Pseudoscientific theories are disproven via the scientific method and peer-reviewed studies, and thus once disproven, can be stated in Wikivoice. This also applies to conspiracy theories that have been well-established by highly-reliable sources following investigative reporting to be false/wrong (like Pizzagate), and to fringe science. Importantly, none of these are subjective value-laden aspects compared to what LABEL describes (objective measures are being used to distinguish these facets from reality), so this is completely different concept. --Masem (t) 02:21, 30 October 2020 (UTC)

You say that it is a completely different concept, but Expelled: No intelligence allowed was one of the OP's chosen examples, and it consists of a FRINGE, disproven claim, spun out at length into a conspiracy theory of exactly the kind you are describing. So the concepts do not seem to be all that different in practice. Newimpartial (talk) 11:39, 30 October 2020 (UTC)

The content of what Expelled covered included pseudoscience, but to apply that to the film as a documentary and to spin that as calling that "propaganda" in Wikivoice is inappropriate. Or, another way to look at it, to call someone promoting a fad diet as a sham artist in wikivoice just because we can call the science they try to claim as BS woud be inappropriate. One can objectively prove these "theories" are wrong or incorrect and with those sources label them in a Wikivoice-factual way, but no one objectively do the same with anyone's or any group's personal intent or motivation for doing something, and that's where Wikivoice cannot make the factual leap to make others' characterization as fact. --Masem (t) 14:00, 30 October 2020 (UTC)

So you are saying that there is a category of promotion of misinformation, information that has been proven false per RS, where we have to WEASEL the language and refer to it as "documentary"? Like Plandemic for instance? Because I don't think there's a policy basis for not saying that people are promoting misinformation or CT when that is what they are, in fact, doing. Stating in Wikivoice that the Plandemic videos promote falsehoods and misinformation about the COVID-19 pandemic seems obviously factual and appropriate to me, not as what you call a "characterization" requiring attribution. Likewise, the lede of Expelled observes, Although intelligent design is a pseudoscientific religious idea, the film presents it as science-based, without giving a detailed definition of the concept or attempting to explain it on a scientific level which means to me that the reference to the film as "propaganda" rather than "documentary" has been substantiated as a factual claim. The fact that some people react to terms like "propaganda" and "misinformation" as though they were emotional labels, independent of content, doesn't mean that they lack demonstrable, evidential criteria - criteria that are amply met in the cases of Plandemic and Expelled. Newimpartial (talk) 19:02, 30 October 2020 (UTC)

Wikivoice cannot be judgmental, at least while things are still recent. Whether something was intended to be a documentary or propaganda, Wikipedia can't be a part of making that determination and Wikivoice has to stay with the most neutral description (this being a documentary). Do you know objectively what the intent of the filmmakers were? No, you can't, no one objectively can, save the filmmakers themselves. We can never judge intentions, only read them, and when that happens, it has to be stated from reliable sources and outside of WP voice to avoid the NOR issue. Again, I think alot of this comes from editors wanting to fight misinformation (a good thing) but at the cost of doing what the press is doing, which is calling them out on the BS they spew. Unfortunately, WP cannot do this and stay neutral, and requires a more tempered approach. --Masem (t) 19:30, 30 October 2020 (UTC)

No, Masem; a documentary film is a non-fictional motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education, or maintaining a historical record" while a propaganda film is communication that is used primarily to influence an audience and further an agenda. One term is not more inclusive than the other or more "judgmental" than the other: they simply refer to different things. The statement that Plandemic and Expelled are not documentaries is objective in your sense and is certainly not a matter of POV. To remain neutral, WP cannot call either Expelled or the Plandemic videos "documentary" because that is simply not what they are, and the reliable sources confirm this A description can never be "neutral" if it is both factually incorrect and unsupported by RS; that language choice is what we call "obfuscation". Newimpartial (talk) 20:13, 30 October 2020 (UTC)

Then let's go label An Inconvenient Truth as propaganda as well since its doing the same furthering of agendas (no , I am not seriously suggesting that). Propaganda is a value-laden label, just as much as white supremacy and the like, because it is as subjective. Just as I've been saying elsewhere in this thread, we can historically judge when something is propaganda (eg we clearly can recognizing much of the Nazi propaganda out of WWII because we have had decades of academic study to recognize this), but we should very cautious to apply the term factually to modern works and if its approprate to mention from its use in RSes via WEIGHT, it should be used with attribution. --Masem (t) 20:22, 30 October 2020 (UTC)

Pseudoscientific is also a value-laden label. So's hoax, and yet we have dozens of articles that use "hoax" in the name or directly call the subject a hoax. This guy actually "is" anti-feminist as well as also being "characterized as" being anti-feminist.

@Masem, it turns out that pseudoscience is not primarily identified by its inefficacy, and very few research dollars are dedicated to investigating possible relationships between string theory and whether that new brand of hair products is a decent detangler. Whether something is pseudoscience is determined primarily by its explanation. You may remember people joking during the 1980s that they knew so little about electronics that if their grandkids asked, they'd have to tell them that their televisions worked because little Japanese men were running around inside the box to make the picture. If given seriously, that explanation would be pseudoscience. Their televisions would have worked anyway.

For altmed and related commercial products, we accept sources that editors would normally classify as quite low quality, such as a couple of websites with no professional editors or other checks and balances that we find among traditional journalism or similar publications. We're okay with that. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:54, 30 October 2020 (UTC)

Again: there are objective ways (outside WP in RSes, to avoid the OR) to determine if something is pseudoscience or a hoax, that's the scientific method to prove/disprove the science, or through proper investigative reporting of facts to determine the veracity of events. It is impossible to prove with any type of objectivity if creators of a work that may present pseudoscience or a hoax set out to present it as a documentary or as propaganda, though often Occum's razor will apply to how we want to think their intent was (just as we cannot prove out if a person's intention is to be anti-feminist or the like without a statement of self-assertion). (And also, if we have WP articles calling topics as pseudoscience or hoaxes without support of RSes, even if it seems obvious, that is OR and needs to be removed. But I would be surprised to find these articles to meet notability guidelines and still not have any coverage of the pseudoscientific facets from the RSes that are also providing the notability.) --Masem (t) 21:04, 30 October 2020 (UTC)

I don't think we need to go into people's intentions. It is possible to "be" anti-feminist without "intending to be" anti-feminist. This is true for just about every possible intention. Haven't you ever been the target of an inept favor? People very frequently "intend" to be helpful, but that doesn't mean that they "are" helpful. Consider also "I didn't intend to kill him", which doesn't get homicide reclassified into a death by natural causes, "I didn't intend to get drunk", which doesn't make people less drunk, "I didn't mean to hurt your feelings", "I didn't intend to Reply All to that e-mail message", etc. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:47, 31 October 2020 (UTC)

Even if one could set an accepted, standard definition of these value-laden labels, whether someone is an anti-feminist (as an example) still is only something that that person knows that they are; everyone else is using observation of what they say and do to make that judgement. Again, a person who knows (only to themselves) they are trying to promote men's rights with zero intentions of trending on women's rights may still come off as anti-feminist in their external behavior because "promoting men's rights" is often seen as a core part of being anti-feminist. (I am not saying Benjamin fits this). That's why these labels have to be seen as characterizations and judgements that should be kept out of Wikivoice. We don't have to say a single word in favor of the person or entity being called the label, we just have to take that these labels are near-universally controversal or contestable terms and thus words as such outside of WP's voice per NPOV policy. --Masem (t) 00:35, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

No. I simply do not agree that you have to intend to tread on someone's rights to actually do it. "Anti-feminist" does not mean "person who intends to oppose women's rights". It means "opposition to some or all forms of feminism", which this guy actually does. There is no difference between "opposes feminism" and "is anti-feminist". WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:53, 4 November 2020 (UTC)

But you're still looking at what Benjanin has done and thus what RSes have characterized him as, but cannot speak to what he actually intends. He could actually intend to be anti-feminist, he could instead actually intend to want to promote mens rights while staying equal with women's rights but inadvertently speaks more negatively against women's rights in an unintentionally manner, or a range of cases between those. No one but Benjamin will never know for sure (no one can peer into his mind and make that determination); the only case where we could say with some degree of confidence in Wikivoice is if he affirmed what the RS characterization of his actions were, that he was anti-feminist; or if we had enough passage of time to have better clarity of other more academic sources or distancing of time to know how to frame things better without the RECENTISM of current events clouding issues. That's the distinction we have to make here, and why labels are tricky things to be kept out of Wikivoice. Attribution or similar wording to show their origin, sure. --Masem (t) 22:31, 4 November 2020 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you're trying to say about An Inconvenient Truth, but the WP article currently describes it as "a documentary/concert film" - that is, a documentary about an event (a Gore speech), not a documentary about climate change. The speech itself may ask be promoting an agenda, but the film is presented in wikivoice as documenting the event, not the underlying phenomenon.

The point you have consistently been missing here is that "documentary" as a label is every bit as value-laden as "propaganda". For WP to imply that an audiovisual work is documenting reality, when it is not, would be a violation of NPOV and more fundamentally of WP:V. "Propaganda" is no more difficult to identity using impartial criteria than "documentary" - we have the whole discipline of Media Studies to do that, and it isn't especially difficult (or time-consuming) to do so - the preprints on the coronavirus infodemic are already hitting the journals. And what media studies scholars do is not to assess the "intentions" of the filmmakers, but that her the rhetorical impact of the audiovisual work as a whole. This is what determines whether it an educational or advocacy piece - and we use reliable sources to do that, not your personal sense of how we want to think their intent was, which seems to be the criterion you were using in this discussion. Newimpartial (talk) 21:12, 30 October 2020 (UTC)

A documentary film has zero values associated with it; it one of the accepted genres of film for non-fiction works intended to carry information. Whether that information is biased or not, the documentary label doesn't care (our article on documentary film even mentions their use as political tools). Expelled is classified as such in movie databases as AFI [1], IMDB [2], and AllMovie [3]. Propaganda, regardless of how one might dislike the material these push, is a type of documentary film, but whether something counts as propaganda or not depends in the eyes of the viewer, making that classification subjective. The fact that most media do consider a film like Expelled to be more propaganda does mean that we should ultimate describe that this is how the media describes it, but it has to be out of wikivoice because it still remains a value-laden label. To take an example of this being done properly, Zero Dark Thirty was called out heavily by the media as a propaganda film but you'll notice this is only brought in within the third para of the lede of that article and outside of Wikivoice. That's keeping the judgement away from Wikivoice. --Masem (t) 21:46, 30 October 2020 (UTC)

No, Masem. "documentary" as a category does carry a value-laden purpose: namely to "document reality, primarily for the purpose of instruction" etc. Please don't confuse the use of "documentary" as a category in movie databases, with the more rigorous sense in which we use the term on WP. Propaganda is not a subset of documentary, and not only because some Thrillers, etc. are also propaganda films. Newimpartial (talk) 21:58, 30 October 2020 (UTC)

No, on calling films documentaries, this is grounded in how they are categorized by film organizations (see WP:FILMLEAD "At minimum, the opening sentence should identify the following elements: the title of the film, the year of its public release, and the primary genre or sub-genre under which it is verifiably classified"). This is again avoiding applying value-laden judgement in wikivoice. --Masem (t) 22:06, 30 October 2020 (UTC)

That is MOS, not policy, and anyway FILMLEAD does not actually appeal to "film organizations"; rather it specifies, Genre classifications should comply with WP:WEIGHT and represent what is specified by a majority of mainstream reliable sources. Actual articles on WP seem to follow the reliably sourced criticism of the film in question more than they do the "film organizations", so that What the Bleep Do We Know!? is generally classified as a documentary in databases, but WP treats it as a pseudo-science film. Newimpartial (talk) 23:01, 30 October 2020 (UTC)

I think this disagreement we are having about what counts as a factual statement (in this case, concerning CB) is a great example of how the fact/value distinction just doesn't work in settling these disputes. And there are plenty of ways to evaluate veracity and objectivity without handwaving to those particular metaphysics. Newimpartial (talk) 22:27, 23 October 2020 (UTC)

For me, to have a statement like "anti-feminist" in the lede and be an objective fact is if he actually self-identifies with that term. Does Carl Benjamin consider himself anti-feminist?Blue Pumpkin Pie ^{Chat Contribs} 17:33, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

We don't require that standard for many other labels, so why here? The lead at Al-Qaeda calls them an "extremist" group. Do you expect us to find an official statement from them that says "yeah, we're extremists"? WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:54, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

The labels in the lead have to be an objective fact, not a subjective opinion verified by many well-respected sources. I personally find it very problematic myself how anti-feminism is defined as well. I don't believe it a viable term to use so actively unless self-identified because of how loose the term is and how modern-day chooses to use it. The word Wikipedia identifies suggests there are different waves of antifeminism (just as there are different waves of feminism) but will not label it. Hypothetically, a 1st wave feminist may not agree with modern-day feminists. Does that make them both a feminist and an anti-feminist? I just don't agree with such a subjective term being used as an objective fact unless they self identify as one.Blue Pumpkin Pie ^{Chat Contribs} 22:27, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

You didn't answer the question about extremism, though. Even I have to admit that "extremist" is a subjective and value-laden label, but there it is. Newimpartial (talk) 22:44, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

The word "extremist" was added earlier this year, after going without it for most of its existence, and it doesn't seem to be an improvement to me. --Yair rand (talk) 23:04, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

I also want to add that if being an extremist is a label that is once again relying on subjectivity, then we can have that also removed. But i by no means am saying that we need to get rid of all labels. My point is that labels that are heavily subjective shouldn't be used so bluntly in the lead as an objective fact. Its just not encyclopedic.Blue Pumpkin Pie ^{Chat Contribs} 19:16, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

And my point is that I don't see any basis for "extremist" beyond "many sources state" - it seems inherently subjective and perspectival - whereas "anti-feminist", "anti-fascist" etc. can actually be discussed using evidence (including, but not limited to, self-description) and evaluated without bias, objectively. Newimpartial (talk) 19:36, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

Have you looked into the term extremist the same way you looked into anti-feminist? Are you sure without a doubt that the word extremist has no academic definition that can be evaluated without bias, objectively? The majority of the sources you claimed were scholarly, were in actuality more journalistic. Which is a big reason why i'm against using the word as an objective fact. No matter what you say in this situation, the fact is that anti-feminist is indeed a subjective term.Blue Pumpkin Pie ^{Chat Contribs} 20:21, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

Where is the alleged rule that says the labels in the lead have to be an objective fact, not a subjective opinion verified by many well-respected sources?

Where is the logic in believing that self-identification makes something an objective fact? If I self-identify as the Queen of England, is it an objective fact that I'm the Queen? WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:39, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

For the record, the three sources I added here were all peer-reviewed scholarship. And my point about "extremism" isn't that there can't be some esoteric definition used by scholars, of which I am unaware. My point is that "feminist" and "antifeminist" are subject to real world fact checks (e.g., does the BLP subject support or oppose explicitly feminist positions or actions), while extremist does not, at least not the way it is used in (some of) our articles. But your reaction when presented with an actual subjective and value-laden term seems, err, different than one would expect based on your blanket generalizations. Newimpartial (talk) 21:50, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

I can't see two of those, but the one I can see ("Drinking male tears:") in fact does not call Benjamin anti-feminist at all, not directly. He's mentioned to set the stage in like of Gamergate, but that's it. The paper broadly talks of "pickup artists, men’s rights activists, anti-feminists, and fringe groups" and at no time makes any attempt to catalog Benjamin into those. It is absolutely wrong to use that for a BLP sourcing for this purpose. And to that point, it is often that men's rights activists are seen as anti-feminists but that doesn't mean all men's rights activists are anti-feminists, and from what I see of Benjamin's arguments, that is where he places himself (even though most believe he has a very strong stance against women having the same rights as men). I mean, all of use probably would readily recognize that as being anti-feminist, but again, being clinical and impartial, we'd simply say this is a characterization well-stated by the press, but not as a fact. --Masem (t) 22:07, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

I already provided that same quotation at greater length here, along with the content of the other sources I provided. The "Male tears" piece is concerned with CB's "followers" so, no, I wouldn't use it to LABEL him, but it definitely connects Benjamin to the misogynist FRINGE with some authority. Newimpartial (talk) 22:24, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

That paper is quoting Saarkensen (who is a valid critic in this case relative to GG, no question) but she's not the academic here and that quote is not reflective of the academics that wrote the article. That's extremely tenacious use of that paper for that assertion, because the authors themselves make no reference otherwise. Looking at your explanation, the second source (given what you quote)( is also not talking about him specifically, though yes, can be used to talk about the people that seem to avidly follow him, so it would have to be carefully used. Perhaps there's more in that source. Both of those sources would need to be carefully used due to the BLP issues. --Masem (t) 22:44, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

Please remember that I was not offering those scholarly sources for the lede of the CB article. When I spelled out the sources, for example, I was answering this request: Would you kindly quote where in those three papers the authors introduce Carl Benjamin as an "antifeminist YouTuber", or use the words "antifeminist" and "Carl Benjamin" in the same sentence, or in the same paragraph?, which each of the sources does. What seems very clear from these three sources is that none of these scholars consider antifeminism to be a purely emotive or "value-laden" label in the sense that our LABEL policy discusses (though each uses the term for different purposes). Newimpartial (talk)

The problem I see Newimpartial is that you confuse journalism with "scholarly/academic". And we need to make sure it has its proper weight. If there was some academic/scholarly paper saying "Carl Benjamin: The Mind of an Anti-feminist" where it not only defines what an anti-feminist is but also confirms that Carl Benjamin is one, then you'll have more weight in this conversation that we can look into. You claim the word Extremist is used only because a bunch of sources said so, and you find it subjective, you have continued to ignore the question: "why?" Why is anti-feminist something that can be identified objectively and not extremist? This is important to me that you clarify with actual academic/scholarly definition and analysis. I don't feel comfortable you continuing to use extremism is a subjective value-laden term without properly establishing why and why anti-feminism isn't one.

With that said, you have not proven that the usage of the word "anti-feminist" isn't purely emotive or "value-laden". For example, have you found sources that refer to him as an anti-feminist when doing an interview or not reporting anything negative?

I want to make it clear I am not a follower of Carl Benjamin, and I definitely do not agree with his views or methods. But, Wikipedia neutrality matters to me. I have yet to see proof that the word anti-feminist is a label that isn't emotive in the context of journalism.Blue Pumpkin Pie ^{Chat Contribs} 03:28, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

I have given three academic sources in my previous diff, which use "antisemitism" in different ways but none of which treat it in a purely emotive or "value-laden" manner. Per WP:SEALION, I will not be going any further to accommodate new goal posts. There has never been a requirement that only peer-reviewed scholarship focused on a particular political ideology can be cited when using descriptors for a BLP subject.

My argument has been (1) that scholarship does indeed place CB in The context of antifeminism (and other FRINGE views) and (2) that when the term "antifeminism" is used, scholarly sources are not engaged in mudslinging or content-free derogation but are making a substantive evaluation. (The argument had been made that the term "antifeminism" itself was essentially emotive rather than factual, so I went to scholarly sources in part to indicate that this isn't the case.)

I would now add (3): without confusing quality journalism with scholarship, it seems clear to me that serious journalism is also able to assess the nature of a BLP subject's e.g. ideological orientation and to apply appropriate labels to it. Community consensus, expressed in policy, does not require that BLP articles be restricted to peer-reviewed scholarly sources (though we should always use the best sources we have). I think two reasons this is the case are, that we trust editors to distinguish better from worse non-scholarly sources, and that we recognize that the better sources outside of scholarship (such as quality journalism) are able to distinguish fact from fiction and accurate from emotive categorization in a way that is useful for our articles (including BLPs) to reflect. Newimpartial (talk) 13:32, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

You have found academic sources and specific to Benjamin, though I dispute two of them, but lets just say all three of them are good. But they are still all recent, and this is the key problem. Again, I've compared to how we'd handle a situation in the scientific world: if a new theory came out - such as the recent announcement by NASA of water on the moon to use something practical - we are not going to write that as factual yet in wikivoice because the theory hasn't been borne out yet. It is going to take more time to test and validate, even though mainstream media are talking of it in a factual tone. Only once we actually have a system that likely can extract that water on the moon and validate its operation would Wikivoice then say it factually, but until then we'd speak of it as "NASA stated that they have found evidence for.." or the like.

Turning back to the social side, we can't bury our heads to the social war that's going on, and we know that both academics and media on the left are fighting the attempt to sway information from those on the right. The media side is focusing on that as well as their livilihoods, so they have a vested interested here while, while not affecting the reliability of their fact finding, is affecting their tone and makes them far more accusational and confrontational to the right (pretty much as they are fighting fire with fire, the right-leaning media started that). The same type of tone is in at least the one article I can see of the three; the article is far from the clinical nature I would normally expect from an academic, but having seen numerous articles related to studies around Gamergate typically from liberal-leaning academics, indicative of those that are also being critical of the right .. in other words, I see them showing their opinions a bit too much for what I would normally expect academics in social sciences to be. (not to take sides, like we are). Not to say these aren't RSes here, but again, judgement is getting clouded by being too invested in the culture war and the recentism around it.

Assuming this culture war dies out in the next 5 years the most ideal sources to document someone like Benjamin and whether any labels apply would be academic sources written 10 years out from now or longer, following by in-review media sources, where we can reasonably expect no one is directly influenced by current events. In such cases, if those did exist, then it would seem to me to be fair game that if there were enough of them to be able to use the labels factually in terms of characterization in Wikivoice. But if 10 years go by and we don't see any such sources, we can still rely on the sources that were out today, but still should be careful on wording the labels outside of Wikivoice because of the RECENTISM issue. The reason I have generally pushed on the academic sourcing side is that this usually comes much longer after the events to avoid the RECENTISM issue at least in the scientific side of publication. If the social sciences are pushing out these articles faster and come off this nuanced, that still creates a problem from RECENTISM with regards to how to treat the label in wikivoice. --Masem (t) 15:59, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

As far as your first paragraph is concerned, Masem, it doesn't seem to correspond to how WP articles, such as Water on Mars, are actually written. Without being grounded in WP policy or practice, it reads more like "how Masem thinks articles on controversial topics should be written", but transposed to hard science, so I have difficulty seeing its relevance except as a reiteration of your POV.

The second paragraph raises what I take to be the key epistemological difference underlying this discussion: do we think that quality journalism and recent academic sources are fundamentally biased, to the extent that whether man-made climate change or white genocide are real things, or conspiracy theories, are questions where we have to balance BOTHSIDES? Are the standards of evidence for those who assert that cultural Marxism is a real thing comparable in some sense to those who label it a conspiracy theory? My own take on the "culture wars" is that WP should apply consistent standards of evidence, and if scholarship that maintains a consistent standard also tends to reach consistent conclusions about what is real and what is conspiracy theory, then the supposed "bias" in this case is part of reality and should not be treated as a flaw in the sources.

To the last paragraph: thanks for having me read WP:RECENT, but I find your use of that explanatory supplement quite one-sided here. It also recognizes that One of Wikipedia's strengths is the collation and sifting through of vast amounts of reporting on current events, producing encyclopedia-quality articles in real time about ongoing events or developing stories, and it nowhere suggests that we should hold off on explicating controversial topics until the dust has settled and the controversy, faded. Frankly, we would not have BLPs at all if there were a requirement for the distance of time and scholarship before a WP article could be written. And the idea that some of the scholarship itself might be too much influenced by current events features a misunderstanding, I think, of how scholarship is performed. All scholarship reflects, in one way or another, the conjuncture in which it is produced, and it would take an argument I can't currently imagine to convince me that scholarship that is motivated by concerns proximate to the topic researched is of less quality or reliability than scholarship motivated by more distant concerns. The criterion, as with all scholarship and journalism for that matter, should be in the way evidence is used. And so the idea of discounting scholarship if it doesn't have a 10-year trendline of previous studies on the same topic for comparison is, fortunately, not based on or compliant with WP policy in any way I can see. Newimpartial (talk) 18:54, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

If you look at Water on Mars, the word "may" appears over 70 times on that, clearly establishing that most of the article is based on theories and observations and not stating the definitive proof of water on Mars. That's exactly what I am saying in how we write scientific articles on new discoveries that have not yet had the test of time to become scientifically accepted.

And you seem to be implying that I am saying we can't talk about anything controversial about BLPs or the like, which is not at all the implication. If the WEIGHT of sources is clearly there as is the case of Benjamin to cover that a vast swath of media and/or academics at the present time consider him anti-feminist as an essential part of his notability, we should absolutely document that; my point is that we need to document that in a clinical manner. We document controversies but don't become part of them. This isn't false balance issue (that would be saying that we'd need to include more material from Benjamin's side to make the coverage equal), but simply that something that is controversial in the short term may not really be that in the long-term, especially when we consider the state of the world and the media's unhindered response to that. This is the essence of WP:OUTRAGE but it is also be cognizant of the whole situation happening in the world out there for the last decade, not just in this comfy zone provided by the high quality RSes.

Also, we shouldn't be trying to conflate the very real thing of "white supremacy" or "anti-feminism", ideologies that are well documented for decades, with the issues of calling out people and groups based only on the short-term media's observations. We absolutely should write on the ideologies of anti-feminism in a factual voice as it has been a well-studied topic, though obviously there's new theories and concepts that get added over time that should be added with appropriate language in Wikivoice to note they are not yet accepted parts of what is included in anti-feminism. (Same would be true with new theories in climate change). And I'm sure there are historical people that are well documented in these studies as examples of anti-feminists. But when it comes to persons or groups today, we simply don't have the wisdom of time to properly be judging in Wikivoice, considering all factors in play, so as to be clinical, we should be taking the same approach as with scientific articles, simply not stating these factually in Wikivoice but indicating their origin.

Again, most of the time to get to where I've suggested we should be, this is just a matter of changing existing statements to make the tone far less accusational in Wikivoice, like "Benjamin is anti-feminist" to "Benjamin is widely considered anti-feminist", and perhaps an ordering change of information to start with objective and going to subjective, not a neutering of this key information from articles. Though I will say that a fair number of ledes on these articles also tend to stuff in smaller incidents (already documented in the body) that are not directly related to notability but make the person look "bad" just because there's space for that. For example, in the current lede of Benjamin's article, the 2nd para is good (this strongly establishes why he's notable), but I question at least the need of the third para, as while that created a burst of coverage during the election, that doesn't seem to be an enduring factor about him, compared to what the second paragraph says. This is all a part of documenting controversies but not getting involved or taking sides even if it feels much of the rest of the world has.--Masem (t) 20:26, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

I have no problem with removing the third paragraph of the CB lede, or with widely considered antifeminist, though I still prefer "rose to prominence with his antifeminist videos on YouTube". But what what you said previously about science articles is quite unlike what you are now saying about Water on Mars. You had said that we would avoid Wikivoice, as in "NASA stated that they have found evidence for.." or the like, but in-text attribution is not prominent in the Water on Mars article. The lede of that article, for example, consisted almost entirely of unattributed "is" statements based on the current scholarly consensus, with only one "may" hypothetical. This is not at all the meticulous process of distinguishing "theoretical" from "factual" statements that you described previously.

You keep saying that you are concerned about calling out people and groups based only on the short-term media's observations but when presented with recent non-media, scholarly sources, it becomes clear that no level of source quality will satisfy you, only persistence over time. And this is a weird sort of CRYSTAL argument on your part: that maybe, some day, new sources will become available that question the accuracy of these characterizations (although none have to date), so we should attribute them until enough time has passed. And I just don't see anything, in WP:RECENT or anywhere else in policy, that suggests we should do that when we have sources of reasonable quality and quantity to establish a consensus reality. Newimpartial (talk) 21:41, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

On the lack of attribution in water on Mars, you'll note that I've been saying the same type of limited attribution can be used on an article on Benjamin if you're talking about labels that are widely used. You don't need to say "Benjamin is considered to be anti-feminist by the New York Times." but simply "Benjamin is widely considered to be anti-feminist." That aligns with the same type of scientific approach in keeping claims of fact out of Wikivoice on the Water on Mars article. I read that lede as appropriately keeping most of the theories about the topic as theories and not as fact, only factual to what we have observed only from various probes and where there has been scientific corroboration on the results.

And this isn't a CRYSTAL issue, as sources may never appear about Benjamin or others in the far future but he clearly will remain notable. To give a better example, do you think it would be practice to try to summarize a criticism of Trump's presidency at this point with the current media sources? Heck no - the media is clearly hostile towards him for good reason (he's been hostile towards the media in addition to the culture war) and we've yet to see fallout from his term of office, in addition to what might be a second term. We'd probably not be at a place to do that until 5-some years after he's out of office when the full implications and outcomes can be assessed. We can have some short term aspects as there is plenty of WEIGHT to do that, but per RECENTISM and NOT#NEWS we should keep this to just enough and a high level coverage so that a reader with no idea of US politics can understand the larger concerns. While Benjamin's case has nowhere close the impact on the world as Trump, the same principles around RECENTISM applies. Should no new sources come around in time, we can then rejudge the now-current sources with better hindsight and write better around them without being so caught up in events. --Masem (t) 22:24, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

@Joe Roe: Re Esurnir's maxim, I don't understand the point you're trying to make. We don't describe the actions as crimes; we leave that judgement up to the reader. We tend not to have Criticism sections in biographies. Historical articles are typically sufficiently NPOV that one wouldn't be able to tell whether the authors supported or opposed any given action, as they should be. Nothing should hint at the author being eg pro- or anti-genocide. Listing objective appointments and actions and such is basically what the lead has looked like for most of the article's existence. Are you suggesting that it shouldn't be? This is pretty basic NPOV. --Yair rand (talk) 21:40, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

I really, really, really hope that every editor here is "anti-genocide" and I don't see any problem with our coverage reflecting that... – Joe (talk) 07:25, 23 October 2020 (UTC)

And that is exactly the problem. Wikipedia is a neutral source. Editors, who want to have their opinions shown, can edit Conservapedia or RationalWiki. Just take a look at the article concerning the Liepāja massacres. Those massacres were anti-Semitic, gruesome and immoral in every sense of the word. However, such characterizations do not appear in the text: the facts speak for themselves. And that is how it should be written in an encyclopedia. Best regards,Jeff5102 (talk) 11:24, 23 October 2020 (UTC)

@Joe Roe: All articles are required to be written from a neutral point of view. That includes articles dealing with extremely abhorrent views. The NPOV FAQ specifically calls out the issue of morally abhorrent views ("What about views that are morally offensive to most readers, such as advocacy of homicidal cannibalism, which some people actually hold? Surely we are not to be neutral about them?"), requiring that we present them neutrally. NPOV is a binding policy which is non-negotiable. Articles may not be anti-cannibalism, anti-genocide, anti-human-extinction, or anti-anything else. This is fundamental to what Wikipedia is. --Yair rand (talk) 23:23, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

Articles may not be anti-cannibalism, anti-genocide, anti-human-extinction – I will add this to the collection of utterly astonishing and deplorable quotes from this discussion. – Joe (talk) 07:17, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

@Joe Roe: but that is what NPOV means. We all agree that Wikipedia articles must be neutral. That means articles cannot be pro or anti anything, regardless of one's personal views or how widely those views are or are not shared. Thryduulf (talk) 11:32, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

@Thryduulf, I don't think that's quite right. Articles must be pro-something if all the reliable sources are pro-that thing, and anti-something if all the reliable sources are anti-that thing. The goal is not to leave people wondering whether or not a hoax was a hoax, whether the Alternative cancer treatments that Facebook is adverstising are just as effective as what their oncologists recommend, etc.

There are subjects over which reasonable people (and, relevantly, reliable sources) can disagree, but neutrality means "representing fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without editorial bias, all the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic", not "articles cannot be pro or anti anything, even if all reliable sources are 'pro' and none are 'anti'." If all the sources are 'pro', then the article can't be neutral unless it is also "proportionately" 'pro', too. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:29, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing: yes and no. If all the reliable sources are pro (or anti) obviously our article will be presenting only that viewpoint, and our readers should not be left wondering wether the subject is or isn't a Good Thing. However, we should be careful to always show not tell, including in that situation. "Quack Mixture is a syrup manufactured by BadCorp marketed as a dietary supplement that will cure various diseases and ailments including the common cold, influenza and Covid-19. All reliable medical authorities agree that the mixture conveys no medical benefits and indeed may be harmful for some people. It has been banned by regulators in the EU, USA and 27 other countries." rather than "QuackMixture is a fraudulent and harmful fake product that, despite marketing claims, does not cure the common cold, influenza or Covid-19." (please can someone add some sub-headers to this section, it's not easy to edit currently). Thryduulf (talk) 02:21, 30 October 2020 (UTC)

@Thryduulf, I don't think that's the actual practice. See, e.g., "Homeopathy or homoeopathy is a pseudoscientific system of alternative medicine." I am only partly joking when I say that some editors would like to have that sentence read "Although it doesn't work, homeopathy, which doesn't work, is a type of alternative medicine that doesn't work". WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:11, 31 October 2020 (UTC)

Search Carl Benjamin and read the text in the box to the right. Wikipedia editors are writing for google and not a reference work. fiveby(zero) 20:25, 23 October 2020 (UTC)

@Fiveby: Google just takes information and create their own infoboxes and link to whatever they like. That doesn't mean that the editors edit for Wikipedia. If you notice there's also links to facebook, Instagram, and twitter too.Blue Pumpkin Pie ^{Chat Contribs} 21:09, 23 October 2020 (UTC)

Good company. fiveby(zero) 21:37, 23 October 2020 (UTC)

I feel some editors are unintentionally using WP to wage the fight in the ongoing culture war in an inappropriate RIGHTGREATWRONGS matter, knowing that WP is read by many and has influence (such as appearing in Google search results like this). It is important that we do not allow those agencies that are deep in the culture war get their way on WP and we have to fight off mis/disinformation campaigns from these agencies and those that want to support them, absolutely, but that doesn't mean we swing the other way to treat those groups in an unencyclopedic fashion. Again, Wikivoice is amoral here, and we're not supposed to be taking a side here. --Masem (t) 22:21, 23 October 2020 (UTC)

I hope my hyperbole is not taken to mean that it's not important, or that the difficulties aren't apparent. I think lots of editors do phenomenal work. fiveby(zero) 23:26, 23 October 2020 (UTC)

@Fiveby: I think you're right on the money. I don't feel that the way the lead starts at Proud Boys really doesn't conform to generally accepted MOS for biography yet there is such a great bickering over tha first line. See all the discussion at Talk:Proud Boys and Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view/Noticeboard#White_supremacy_and_the_Proud_Boys. I think how it gets picked up by Google is why such a big deal is made over the first line. Graywalls (talk) 21:25, 23 October 2020 (UTC)

...all those RfCs asking: should the first sentence of the lead describe X as Y? and filling the talk pages. fiveby(zero) 21:37, 23 October 2020 (UTC)

After reviewing all the information that I saw, I'm going to also weight in and agree with Masem and Levivich that these labels are not encyclopedic and it is not for Wikipedia to label these people. I believe this especially holds true if the person doesn't align or confirm alignment with those views.

Terms such as "far-left" or "far-right" or even "alt-right" and even "Facist" are not encyclopedic and they are indeed bludgeoning tactical terms that media has continued to use. There is room to be labeled "Far-left" or "far-right" but I believe after the political meltdown. I truly believe Wikipedia needs to be more strict with these terms. In this modern age, it's almost impossible to be subjective. Even scholars have their own political alignments. So we can't rely on subjective opinions on where someone is aligned with and call it an objective fact. There's some recentism at play by labeling with these terms when at this time it's common to use them as insults.Blue Pumpkin Pie ^{Chat Contribs} 22:07, 23 October 2020 (UTC)

Be that as it may, in the case of Carl Benjamin, that he is "known for his opposition to feminism" or "for his antifeminism" is an objective fact, and that he is "opposed to feminism" is something he himself has stated. There are various ways this can be stated in the article, but leaving out this basic piece of information - which is the main reason for him to be considered notable - would be most unencyclopaedic (and also a NOTCENSORED violation). Newimpartial (talk) 22:23, 23 October 2020 (UTC)

You've just contradicted yourself with that statement, as there's no way that we can consider any of that "objective fact". Objctive fact is something demonstrated though something comparable to the scientific process, not just "because so many journalists said so so it must be true"; we do not use that approach anywhere else on WP, and to continue to argue that shows how broken this is --Masem (t) 23:06, 23 October 2020 (UTC)

Objective social facts are facts that are established by rigorous social-scientific processes, such as those used by sociologists and historians. Not all of these processes have to wait years after the fact for such data to be collected, as many professional ethnographers or demographers could tell you. In the case of Carl Benjamin being noted for his opposition to feminism, this has already been established by scholars and quality journalists who have looked at the reporting about him and observed the online communities he has been part of. Given the extent of the documentation available for this (recent) history, this is a verifiablen, objective fact. That Benjamin has stated his opposition to feminism is, in fact, part of the historical record already. You are strawmannig me ("because so many journalists have said so") in a discussion where I have presented scholarly citations on this as well as journalism; in point of fact I am not the one applying different standards of evidence on this topic than in the rest of the encyclopaedia. Newimpartial (talk) 23:24, 23 October 2020 (UTC)

Sometimes subjective attributes are presented as facts in professionally written encyclopedia. For example https://www.britannica.com/science/chloroform "has a pleasant ether like odour." "plesant" and "ether like" are subjective qualities, yet these are stated as facts. In my opinion, that's about as accurate as describing lemon as having "lime like flavor" and perhaps not everyone finds the odor "plesant". "denser than water" is an objective fact. Graywalls (talk) 23:38, 23 October 2020 (UTC)

Which itself would extend from the scientific literature, given that smell or taste of a chemical is something impossible to quantify except against other more common things. (Eg its well known that cyanide has an almond-like taste but that's the last thing you'd want to verify). But here again, this is something that the scientific literature has come to agreement to use via peer-review as a means to assess chemical odors, which the EB just replicated; it is something still determined through the scientific process, and not really comparable to the use of value labels to describe people which can't be proven out, only asserted. --Masem (t) 23:51, 23 October 2020 (UTC)

Objective social facts are facts that are established by rigorous social-scientific processes, such as those used by sociologists and historians Which I agree with, and why we should we be waiting some time (Years) until these sources actually arrive with that rigorour process that takes years to complete to make that determination, and not using the current media. Doesn't matter how much material there is, we're still far too close to these events to establish if this is how history will document him, for example. Completely different standards are being applied here, because if the same standards were used across WP, we'd be calling Hitler evil, Casablanca the greatest movie ever, the Beatles the greatest musical group ever, and numerous other things directly in wikivoice and right up front in their respective articles. It is a very selective twist of policies that editors have applied across the right-leaning set of topics (the ones the current media have shown high detest for) only. I don't think this is intentional, its fighting back against the culture war, but it is showing how badly these articles are written in terms of tone and presentation of media and public opinion in wikivoice compared the rest of the encyclopedia. We can't be in this blame game (that's a job for a liberal-leaning wiki, not us) even though it is really easy to slip into taht mode. --Masem (t) 23:51, 23 October 2020 (UTC)

Noting that Carl Benjamin is anti-feminist is simply not in the same category as describing the Beatles as the greatest musical group or Casablanca as the greatest movie. The former can be documented using logical and impartial criteria, while the latter are subjective judgements. Many of the other statements in article ledes objected to by the OP, such as describing Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed as a "2008 American documentary-style propaganda film", rather than a "documentary", are simply more accurate than the whitewashed versions they replaced - not only do they give more information, but the information they give is more accurate. There is no justification for presenting Expelled first as a documentary and then noting criticisms of its veracity, when the reliable sources have concluded with very good reasons (that don't have much to do with any "culture war") that it is propaganda. Newimpartial (talk) 02:22, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

The arguments are exactly the same - the bulk of the media say so, there's no counterargument, so we need to present it that way as fact is effectively the logic here, and that's why its wrong. Taking a look at the Expelled talk page, the change to label it a propaganda film is only recent (last 2-3 years) and thus part of this same twist of using Wikivoice to be judgmental, and represents the same problem here; the talk page uses the same logical faults ("none of RSes same its nothing but proganda, so it must be fact that it is"). Given that the filmmakers appear to have earnestly made it a documentary, it should be presented like that --- BUT clearly because its touching on fringe concepts, its contents should be called out where appropriate in line with FRINGE and we can certain reference that major sources considered it more a proganda piece. Almost all of these problems (making the jump that the "majority of press agree on point of contest/controversy/subjective nature" means it must be an "objective fact") is drawing WP into this culture war when we need to be distancing ourselves and not taking any sides or the like. The more we keep doing it, the more we continue to create conflicts and have editors drawn to try to "fix" it by flooding with misinformation. Staying neutral and impartial on these topics will significantly help prevent that. --Masem (t) 02:59, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

@Newimpartial: Personally, I agree that Expelled is a propaganda movie. However, as an encyclopedia we cannot say that. WP:NPOV states that Articles must not take sides, but should explain the sides, fairly and without editorial bias. This applies to both what you say and how you say it.

If we call the film a propaganda movie, we take sides and violate the very basics of the NPOV-rule. Thus, the best we can do is explaining the falsehoods, inaccuracies, and the tricks the producers pulled both during production and editing. And all without editorial bias. That is not "whitewashing." That is making a good article. Best regards, Jeff5102 (talk) 09:01, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

FALSEBALANCE is on the same level as IMPARTIAL for a reason. Not all issues have two (or more) comparable sides - sometimes there is "one side" that is based on what actually happened, and an "other side" based on a conspiracy theory. And in that scenario, User:Masem, "not taking sides" is in fact taking a side, and we call that activity WHITEWASHING.

Also, nobody in this discussion is using the argument the bulk of the media say so, there's no counterargument, so we need to present it that way. I have pointed this out as a strawman twice already, and will not be responding to it further since it is not my position. If you haven't read correctly my account above of how social facts are known, that ain't my fault. Newimpartial (talk) 11:52, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

WP:FALSEBALANCE is about claims that the Earth is flat, that the Knights Templar possessed the Holy Grail, that the Apollo moon landings were a hoax, and similar ones. Conspiracy theories, pseudoscience, speculative history, or plausible but currently unaccepted theories. It is not about denying persons to defend themselves in their own article. In short: Carl Benjamin is not on the fringe when it is about Carl Benjamin. Jeff5102 (talk) 13:29, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Not true at all, especially since we are only supposed to be documenting the controversy. I know in the current culture wars that the idea that if one is not actively engaged on one side or the other, one is considered part of the problem, but WP has to be neutral and cannot be involved here, that's not anything in our purpose or the like. We can't take a side. The argument is not a false balance one either, as that would be asking to include the counter-arguments at any length. Instead, as documented at WP:YESPOV, if we know that a stand is controversial or contestable , we're not supposed to present it in WS as fact, but with sometime that implies its attribution, and that's all that needs to be then be said if there's nothing that can be reliably sourced in counter-argument to that. Just as we can't say "CB is anti-feminist" but can say "CB is widely considered anti-feminist", we can't say "The Beatles are the greatest musical act of all time" but we can say "The Beatles are often considered one of the greatest musical acts of all time", without the need to any any counter-points or any other sourcing from what exists already (eg avoiding the false balance), but keeping characterization out of Wikivoice and thus keeping it neutral and impartial. --Masem (t) 13:36, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

Both of you are arguing about a counterfactual. Carl Benjamin isn't defending himself against accusations of antifeminism; he argues rather that feminism really is the problem. The fact that he takes an antifeminist position is pure WP:BLUESKY. Likewise, to note that Benjamin rose to prominence through his participation in Gamergate and his antifeminist activism isn't becoming involved or taking a side, it is making a factual statement backed up by scholarship as well as quality reporting. Nobody disputes these facts - not the BLP subject, not the right-wing disinformation machine, nobody. But certain avowed centrists among the WP community imagine these documented facts to be "contentious" and thereby create FUD that makes them appear so. They are not, except in the minds of certain WP editors.

Perhaps, Masem, you believe that if everyone including the BLP subject understands that subject to inhabit a contentious identity, like being a flat-earth advocate, that WP must nevertheless attribute that characterization because being a flat-earth advocate is taking a controversial position. If so, this seems to me to be a complete misreading of LABEL, which is intended to cover situations where the labels themselves are contested, not ones where everyone can agree that a categorization applies but some are for and others agin' the position categorized. Newimpartial (talk) 14:30, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

We have more common sense to understand that even if there is an absence of any direct contentious to the use of a label in any source, even those not in RSes, the use of such labels should be taken for granted as a contestable aspect, particularly in the absent of direct self-identification, that's the whole reason they are value-laden labels - you can't prove the negative. Otherwise, we're presenting a position of only allowing what the media presents as their view to be our view in wikivoice, which is absolutely not acceptable. As I mentioned, only with significant time and academic analysis can we even begin to consider adapting labels to be fact but that's after allowing the academic process of peer review and the passage of time to distance analysis from current events to be able to judge that. Otherwise, we are simply making WP be an engager in the current culture war, which is not a role we're suppose to take.

Self-identification is where things change. If a person has said they were a flat-earther, we'd present that as one of those areas they present. A good example (properly written) pulled from the category appears to be David Wolfe (raw food advocate), where we state, neutrally, what he is in his career, and then note his pseudoscientific beliefs which is what he is notable for , but without any additional commentary to that. That's putting the characterization secondary to the objective facts about the topic, but still covering it as appropriate to the WEIGHT of sources. Trying to pushing characterization before is not our place. On the other hand, from the same flat earth category, somethng like B.o.B is clearly badly worded that sets an immediate negative tone by the forced inclusion of the non-objective "conspiracy theorist" term in the lede. That he does promote conspiracy theories including flat earth should be noted in the lede, which it does later, but you can see how that small inclusion at the time immediately taints the entire read of the article, and given how small the section on his views are compared to his musical career, that's even perhaps UNDUE. This is the type of blame game that editors are likely unintentionally doing because of this attitude, that we have to call out these "bad" behaviors on such topics, which in reality WP needs to be far more impartial on. --Masem (t) 16:15, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

I didn't see much there that engaged with what I said in a meaningful way, so I wasn't going to reply. However, I think I should address the assertion that you can't prove the negative. This is a nonsense argument in this context - people try to prove the negative of these labels all the time. People try to show that Ezra Pound wasn't really a fascist or that Martin Heidegger wasn't really a Nazi, for example. And when such arguments have supporting evidence, the descriptions of such figures become nuanced to reflect the scholarship. But arguments that Adolf Hitler wasn't a Nazi, or that the National Socialist party wasn't antisemitic, are taken as nonsense - not because you can't prove a negative, but because the negative is so obviously false. Newimpartial (talk) 23:36, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

And those arguments go to the "sufficient time passed" factors I've mentioned: we have more than enough time in academic analysis that scholarly determination has made that distinction that clearly define the Nazi party as antisemitic in a factual basis from an academic view. We're not using media of the 1940s to make that distinction, but academic analysis from the decades that followed. --Masem (t) 23:59, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

I am reasonably confident that Hitler is characterized as a Nazi, and the Nazi party is labelled antisemitic, from their very first respective mentions in encyclopedias. And I doubt very much that discussions of Pound and Heidegger in encyclopedias and similar reference works left out mentioning or characterizing these BLP subjects' Naziism and Fascism until "sufficient time passed". Masem, your claim here seems entirely unsupported by evidence - just because so much time has passed by now does lend support to the hypothesis that it only recently became possible to make these characterizations. Newimpartial (talk) 01:24, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

The First paragraph of the Adolf Hitler-article is:

[Hitler] was a German politician and leader of the Nazi Party. He rose to power as the chancellor of Germany in 1933 and then as Führer in 1934.[a] During his dictatorship from 1933 to 1945, he initiated World War II in Europe by invading Poland on 1 September 1939. He was closely involved in military operations throughout the war and was central to the perpetration of the Holocaust.

Please note the absence of words like "antisemitic", "racist" or "far right." Without these characterizations, it is perfectly clear to readers that initiating World War II and perpetrating the Holocaust is very bad already. That is no coincidence. After all, MOS:LEADBIO tells us to write clinically, and let the facts speak for themselves. These concerns are especially pressing at biographies of living persons. Even after all the discussions here, I do not see good reasons to divert from this rule. Regards,Jeff5102 (talk) 10:08, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you are saying here, since the leader of the Nazi party is literally a Nazi - the opening of the Hitler article. And anyone following that link will find that The Nazi Party ... was a far-right political party in Germany and at the end of the lede in the 1930s the party's main focus shifted to antisemitic and anti-Marxist themes. As I stated above, Hitler is labelled as a Nazi, and the Nazis are characterized as antisemitic, as I believe has been the case for as long as either have held encyclopaedic attention. Newimpartial (talk) 13:08, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

There is a difference between "the nazi-party is an antisemitic and anti-Marxist party" and "Nazi political strategy focused on anti-big business, anti-bourgeois, and anti-capitalist rhetoric, although this was later downplayed to gain the support of business leaders, and in the 1930s the party's main focus shifted to antisemitic and anti-Marxist themes," as the complete quote goes.

And on your other point: indeed, now it says immediately the Nazi Party is "far right." This was inserted in June 2017 by User:Jaco IV, a user who was blocked a year later, and turned out to be a sock puppetteer. I would say that the article could do without this label, if the discussion page was not visited by one-time editors whose fringe-theory expressed the opposite. In situations like this, I understand the labeling.

Still, that does not change MOS:LEADBIO tells us to write clinically, and let the facts speak for themselves. These concerns are especially pressing at biographies of living persons. I still believe that this rule stands. Regards,Jeff5102 (talk) 16:36, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

I agree that we should be clinical, but CB is quite clinically and impartially antifeminist, and that he "rose to prominence through his antifeminism" is a purely accurate statement that does not imply POV. Obviously for his many followers, his antifeminism has been a feature rather than a bug. Newimpartial (talk) 17:46, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

I don't know what people mean when they say feminist these days, let alone an antifeminist. Looking at his article, he opposes Reclaim the Internet and social justice feminism. Reading antifeminism#Definition tells me nothing about Benjamin, and really the political views section does not either. Editors ref-bombing the labels and failing to actually describe the person. His views are probably somewhere in between oppisition to just the two things mentioned and revoking the vote and founding Gilead, but I really have no idea. Seven talk page archives and this is the best Wikipedia can do to serve the reader? fiveby(zero) 00:30, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

I think it is safe to sat that people who blame feminists for the rise in misogyny are antifeminists. Newimpartial (talk) 01:58, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

Women Against Feminism is antifeminist [4], as was Lucy Dawidowicz [5], among other notable women. I read "CB is an antifeminist" and I think "Oh, like Dawidowicz?". No, not like Dawidowicz. Not at all like that. That's why the label is meaningless... it has too many meanings. Lev!vich 02:22, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

Anti-feminists may not have any more in common than feminists do, but that doesn't imply that either term is meaningless. Next thing I know, you'll tell me we shouldn't be talking about libertarians or anarchists because there are too many different kinds. :p. Newimpartial (talk) 02:32, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for bringing up anarchism. I went to the article of Noam Chomsky, and saw his article starts with his professions and expertises. Only in the end of the first paragraph, it says that Ideologically, he aligns with anarcho-syndicalism and libertarian socialism. That is how to "write clinically," and is so much better than describing him as a anarcho-syndicalist and libertarian socialist linguist and philosopher. Or, even worse, if we let his enemies characterize him: an America-hating, Holocaust-denying anarchist. We do have reliable sources to back these claims up, but charactarizations like those would turn the article into an attack-page, and attack-pages do not belong on Wikipedia. Instead, I do think the Chomsky-lead is a good example on how encyclopedic leads should be written. Regards,Jeff5102 (talk) 09:01, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

Yes all that for the first line. When you search Proud Boys on Google, the right side box shows "The Proud Boys is a far-right and neo-fascist male-only organization that promotes and engages in political violence in the United States and Canada. Proud Boys|Wikipedia". Clearly, I think one of the huge motivation behind such a long winded bicker over the line is for the control of how it shows up on Google. Graywalls (talk) 22:44, 23 October 2020 (UTC)

• My thoughts: a well written, neutral article lead starts by defining WHAT the topic is, and THEN discusses WHY the topic is NOTABLE. The facts can be presented in one sentence or many... but the order is what establishes the neutral tone. So... we don’t say “Hitler was a genocidal German leader”... we say “Hitler was a German leader who was genocidal”. Blueboar (talk) 00:48, 26 October 2020 (UTC)
• Comment - this discussion is long, intense, and informative. After weighing and measuring the different perspectives that were presented, I closely align with the arguments presented by Masem, Levivich, and Blueboar, which are basically corroborated by Jimbo, who did not participate in this particular discussion but whose perspectives are similar as evidenced by the following: To say it in WikiVoice, or not??, To include it in a BLP, or not??, and Politics, presidents and NPOV. I think it pretty much wraps it up in a nutshell. WP:LABEL guides us in the handling of contentious labels, and WP:Editorializing further explains certain aspects of NPOV relative to impartial tone. In fact, our WP:PAG are quite clear about everything that has been brought up in this discussion, and we should not stray too far off the beaten path in what appears to be an effort to RGW, or to align with one's own subjectivity. Our editing should be pragmatic reflecting a dispassionate tone; i.e. encyclopedic. Granted, WP doesn't have firm rules, and content and interpretation can evolve over time but it should not go in a direction that may prove detramental to the project's neutrality. With the slang characterization of opinions in mind, use your imagination and I'll just say everybody has one, including our readers. They should be the ones forming their own opinions based on what they glean from our neutral, accurate and factually presented articles. Atsme 💬 📧 10:18, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

  I Agree completely with Atsme, Masem, Levivich and Blueboar. NPOV on Wikipedia has long been described as "absolute and non-negotiable" and part of that is not labelling people as pro or anti anything. When people descirbe themselves as pro or anti something, or there is a strong consensus of academic literature that so describes them then we report that characterisation without labelling them ourselves. Thryduulf (talk) 11:32, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

  But in MOS:LABEL, this only applies to Value-laden labels—such as calling an organization a cult, an individual a racist or sexist, terrorist, or freedom fighter, or a sexual practice a perversion. Are you seriously suggesting that anti-racist or pro-irridentist activism are "value laden" in the same sense as the examples given? If so, what about "environmentalist" or "climate change activist"? Do they count as well, even though they don't have "pro" or "anti" in the name? Because if the scope of MOS:LABEL is supposed to be that wide its language needs to he clarified, for sure. Newimpartial (talk) 11:45, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

  IMO, yes MOS:LABEL should apply to all labels. What is "value-laden" is subjective. We should describe someone as "an activist for environmental issues" rather than "an environmentalist", unless "environmentalist" is the only term they use to describe themselves. Thryduulf (talk) 12:15, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

Indeed, self-described labels should be fine. When a politician was a life-long member of the Anti-Revolutionary Party, then there is no problem in calling him an "Anti-Revolutionary politician" (though "politician of the Anti-Revolutionary Party" is better). That said, I also completely agree with User:Atsme. We are here to make, as she says, neutral, accurate and factually presented articles, to have readers form their own opinions, not to tell them how to think about persons,organisations, documentaries or music groups. Is there a way to highlight her words as the conclusion of this discussion? Best regards,Jeff5102 (talk) 12:38, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

I'm very late to this party (I normally don't follow VP). The original editor makes a very compelling argument. I 100% agree that we need to use fewer labels and let the readers draw their own conclusions from the actions, events, etc discussed in the article. What is the answer? Not sure but seeing the problem sure is a step in the right direction! Springee (talk) 22:48, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

I do want to stress that I don't think there's an argument to disallow the use of labels. But when they are used, they should not be in wikivoice if the labels are primarily originating from recent media and not from academic sources. A concurrent argument would be when the sourcing of such labels in quantity is sufficient to not require named attribution in lede/summary statements, and when it should be more specific to whom is making the claim by naming the speaker(s) (differentiating between a label widely used to describe a person/group, and a label used somewhat more selectively), and of course avoiding one-off label claims even if coming from one single high quality RS. --Masem (t) 23:08, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

...but for some subjects, "recent media" is the best, and sometimes the only, source, and for non-academic subjects, high-quality media should not be despised.

I do not think that we should be afraid of stating, in "wikivoice", things that are very widely stated in Wikipedia:Independent sources. We should not have sentences that start to sound like "According to Alice, Bob, Carol, Dan, Erin, Frank, Grace, and pretty much every other independent source that's ever written about this guy, he's a _____". That would be silly. The opening sentence of Richard B. Spencer is probably fine just like it is, and it does not need to be re-written with WP:INTEXT attribution. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:13, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

For recent topics, recent media may be the current best source, but it should be recognized as "recent" and that means RECENTISM applies. This doesn't mean we ignore the media, because much of the time their notability is tied to how they are characterized by the media and actions/events that stem from that. But we have to recognize that the media does not have the "wisdom" that time and sufficient academic review can give, so it is wrong to call them the "best" source", at least while things are still current. To compare it to the scientific world, even if a peer-reviewed paper came out tomorrow in the journal of Nature that said we can get cold fusion with graphene, Diet Coke and Mentos, and there's sound scientific theory behind, we would not write that immediate as fact in Wikivoice, but instead something like "Researchers from such-and-such claims they achieved cold fusion..." in the short term. If other researchers were able to replicate it, bring it to scale and show it to be correct, then we may later change it to fact. This is the same vector that climate change theory became accepted as fact over multiple decades. Now, I do understand that we may never see academic analysis of some of these people or groups years down the road, which okay, sure, at which point if there's nothing else that shows conflict in the long-term future, then the consensus that had been developed now could be taken as fact, but we should absolutely wait on that.

On the matter of writing towards that, I've talked elsewhere of the idea of a source survey that serves double duty for this as well as satifisying future complaints "but no sources say this!". If we want to incorporate any of those labels on Spenser's article, the first step would be to take a good number (100 or more, but 200+ is better if we can) of what we do deem as RSes over a reasonable source range and time range that Google News will give hits on (say, 2014 to 2020), and find out how many apply the label of interest (eg neo-Nazi, conspiracy theorist, etc.) to him in that context against how many many that don't. If its a reasonable high percentage that do (and to me, 25% or more is reasonable high), we're talking a broad use of the label which can be reflected in Wikivoice without stating it as a fact that "Spencer is broadly considered to be a neo-Nazi." without having to name sources, presuming that the body is going to state this again and have a paragraph or so that gets in to the evidence from these sources to explain why this is the case (he expresses neo-Nazi beliefs? He sides with neo-Nazi groups? I dunno exactly what is used, but when you read on SPLC why they label a group as a hate group, they give reasons why, this is the type of "documentation" I would expect). If only 10-25% of sources say this, or the source selection is very narrow, then it probably is necessary to name the specific sources that use the label. If its' less than 10%, then you're probably looking at only a handful of individuals using the label, and that's something probably to keep out of the lede and may itself be a fringe/undue view to include. (These are very very rough guidelines but it gives the idea of addressing the concern of having a bazillion source names in the lead when its not really necessary). --Masem (t) 20:08, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

• RECENTISM is about breaking news, not about subjects that don't interest scholars.
• Given that you can create a BLP on the basis of just two (2) independent reliable sources, why do you think that we could realistically have 200+ reliable sources that all talk about the same aspect of a typical BLP?
• I notice that on the one hand, you're advocating for only mentioning negative things that scholarly sources say about BLPs, and on the other, you say that you like the SPLC as a source. Are you counting their website/database as a scholarly source? I don't. I count it as a reliable source, and I think we should use reliable sources for this kind of content, not merely reliable sources that were published in the academic literature.

WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:00, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

RECENTISM is more than just breaking news; it covers many facets related to how to cover topics that are recent and making sure to focus on facts over opinions.

Keep in mind that in terms of notability, WP is looking at enduring coverage. We want to know why a person is notable over time, not for a spat of coverage. (The essence of WP:BIO1E and WP:NEVENT as well). Someone it just takes one event to cause a change in perception: arguably this is the situation around Andy Ngo after that Proud Boys incident in Portland, or how we view people like Kevin Spacey caught (convicted or not) in the #MeToo movement that seeming changes how the tone of writing in the media which gets reflected in Wikipedia. So just because 200+ sources all might focus on, say, the anti-feminism of Benjamin here, we're still writing a biographical article and need to write that clinically and neutrally. If those 200+ sources were all over a period of a few months representing just a burst of coverage, and nothing since (which I know isn't the case but hypothetically), maybe the event that triggered them wasn't as significant as implied by the source count. Even if those 200 sources are spread over time, but all they just do is name drop the person with the label and do not explain further, that's not helpful either. If it is notable facet, it will be covered in an enduring manner.

SPLC may cross both but it depends on context. For example, they recently did an article to look at the origins of the monuments in the South and their ties to the Confederacy and other groups. That would be a scholarly article. On the other hand, their typical database of cataloging groups into hate groups would be more media/advocacy and needs to be attributed - but still a reliable source. Remember, the issue here is not doubting the quality or reliability of these sources, but simply the context of how we present their information in Wikivoice to keep a clinical , neutral, impartial tone on topics that may be highly controversial otherwise in the media and current scholarly works, per WP:OUTRAGE; Wikivoice cannot be judgement or imply judgement on current topics, but only can lead the reader to understand what that judgement is if that has the WEIGHT of coverage. --Masem (t) 17:18, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

Actionable proposals This is a valuable discussion, with some good points raised by both sides. I think there's common ground to be found here – is anyone willing to propose some actionable guidelines or suggestions that we can compromise on and implement? I have an initial idea to get the ball rolling, but I'll first put my cards on the table (skip to my suggestion below if you don't want to hear me wax lyrical). I lean in the opposite direction to Masem, Levivich et al. and sympathise most with the arguments made by Guy and Newimpartial. I recognise the valid points made about the slippery slope of labels and moral judgements, and think it's worthwhile seeing if we can take steps to reduce this trend as some of the examples above have simply taken this too far. We avoid advocacy ... and describe points of view in context rather than as "the truth" or "the best view". Saying that, I have strong reservations about a slippery slope in the opposite direction, where we avoid calling a spade a spade despite the overwhelming weight of RS saying this, and give unnecessary oxygen to the conspiracy theories and intolerance which left unchecked in an age of disinformation, will eventually gobble up the free society, tolerance and civility Wikipedia relies on. We characterize information and issues rather than debate them ... all articles must strive for verifiable accuracy, citing reliable, authoritative sources – we should take care to avoid debating baseless conspiracy theories or extremist narratives from non-RS sources, or presenting their case in a way that creates a WP:FALSEBALANCE. If we're going to cover conspiracies/extremists, we have to call them what they are. So, on that basis...

• Suggestion:

The use of politicised labels (perhaps there's a less nebulous term for this? can we define this?) in the first lead paragraph:

1. must not rely on or cite opinion, editorial, commentary or feature articles, even from media judged as RS;
2. requires widespread (not universal) RS coverage from academic articles, published books or factual reporting only in media judged as RS (e.g. the news section of broadsheet newspapers with excellent reputations, press agencies); —can we include sources like The Economist (excellent reputation but does not separate analysis from reporting) here? My gut feeling would be we should, but then again, on what basis?

and no dissenting coverage in RS (not including dissenting coverage in non-RS, opinion pieces in RS etc.)

This may well be a stupid suggestion, but at least this way we can still call David Duke a white supremacist. Can we come up with a better one that we can build a consensus around? Rhetorical debate is only helpful up to a certain point. Jr8825 • Talk 04:24, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

I'm not sure if this is necessary the right way. To use the Carl Benjamin example, the lede absolutely should mention the "anti-feminism" label somewhere, because the WEIGHT of sources that use it (even if it is going to be out of Wikivoice) is undeniable and it is part of why he's notable. It's more simply, going to what Blueboar said above, that our ledes should start with the more objective, factual elements (what I've said "what the topic is") and then move onto the subjective assessments if that's what they're most notable for ("how they are characterized") with those characterizations kept out of wikivoice if we don't have the wisdom of time to use more academic sources for it. More generally, editors need to step back and make sure it is not Wikivoice looking like it is the one being critical here, and that we are being clinical and impartial in the coverage of the lede, and should not be overly focused on painting people like Benjamin as "bad" but summarizing the sources as to explain that. --Masem (t) 14:12, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

Do you notice that I suggested this could be only for the first lead paragraph? Perhaps, instead of labels, we should focus on reducing value-laden judgements? Jr8825 • Talk 14:30, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

I appreciate Jr moving this discussion towards some concrete improvements via an actionable proposal. I agree that what we're really talking about is how to strike the right balance: it's not about "labels" or "no labels", but about when, where, and how to use which labels. For my part, most of my focus has been on the use of labels specifically in the lead sentence. I think the specific parameters set out above are reasonable, and could be incorporated into MOS:1ST. However, I think a better approach than trying to devise must/must-not rules (which is always very hard to do site wide across topic areas), would be to focus instead on how a lead sentence should describe the topic, with encourage/discourage language, and specifically addressing labels in the course of that guidance. Currently a lot of MOS:1ST is focused on technical formatting issues rather than giving advice about how to write good content. That advice is contained in other essays and stuff, and perhaps some of that essay guidance should be incorporated into the MOS guideline. Lev!vich 18:22, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

BTW when I think of "guidance", I think of examples like Jeff's above: I went to the article of Noam Chomsky, and saw his article starts with his professions and expertises. Only in the end of the first paragraph, it says that Ideologically, he aligns with anarcho-syndicalism and libertarian socialism. That is how to "write clinically," and is so much better than describing him as an anarcho-syndicalist and libertarian socialist linguist and philosopher. Or, even worse, if we let his enemies characterize him: an America-hating, Holocaust-denying anarchist. We do have reliable sources to back these claims up ... Lev!vich 20:17, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

Agree with Lev!vich. Regards, Jeff5102 (talk) 19:50, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

@Jr8825: I agree with enacting more stringent requirements for politicised labels, but only for BLPs. There are multiple reasons for this: 1. People are complicated and often change their positions or have nuanced positions that are easily over-simplified. 2. We need to be conservative in the wording of BLPs because of the potential to cause actual harm to people (see WP:BLP). I think that it's fine for Wikipedia to have relatively low requirements for politicised labels in articles that aren't BLPs, such as deceased politicians (e.g. Hitler) and political organizations. What would you think about adding "in BLP articles" to your proposal? Kaldari (talk) 22:11, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

@Kaldari: - I have no objection to this. Jr8825 • Talk 22:16, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

Just a note that, since factual claims cannot be sourced to opinion pieces anyway, it seems somewhat redundant to insist that these labels not be sourced to opinion pieces. It only makes sense to me to include such characterizations in the lede if they represent factual (ultimately, evidence-based) descriptions, and we don't use opinion pieces for that. Newimpartial (talk) 22:31, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

@Newimpartial: I agree, I would describe the purpose of my suggestion as making more explicit/a restatement of existing principles. While I don't have the experienced to judge how frequently it happens, I have come across a considerable number of feature/analysis pieces (and even opinion pieces) being used to support value-laden terms on the basis that they are published by RS such as the NYT, Washington Post, Guardian etc. In particular, I think it's easy for editors less familiar with media literacy to conflate editorials and 'long-read'-style feature articles with NPOV. I suspect the decline of printed newspapers, with nicely delineated news and comment sections, and the spread of online news/social media makes this more of a concern than it would've been in Wikipedia's early days. It's an easy mistake to make even for more experienced editors, if the URL/title doesn't explicitly say "comment" or "opinion". Jr8825 • Talk 22:55, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

We have to contend these days with even major, traditionally-reputable, serious media organizations completely doing away with the distinction between news, analysis, and opinion. Lev!vich 23:00, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

(Perennial favorite Forbes (well, Faux too, but that already earned the RSP designation of "never use for politics"). Is there anyone else doing that right now? --Izno (talk) 23:24, 28 October 2020 (UTC))

Two examples front the current front page of CNN: this starts out as straight news but about halfway through, plenty of analysis and opinion gets mixed in. This is straight analysis not obviously labelled as such (for comparison, here is an example of labelled analysis). Both are in the "politics" section, where columns and contributor op-eds are still clearly marked, but in-house news/analysis gets real mixed. I think all "politics" sections are like that now. Partly it's Trump's fault. His administration has put out so much misinformation over the last four years that mainstream media has responded by doing inline fact-checking. Could we cite the first article to say that Trump is not happy about campaigning? Could we cite the second article to say that Obama pulled punches to use late in the campaign? I don't know; I can't tell. Lev!vich 23:38, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

While this practice started with Fox News since its inception, the use of it by the sources we'd call more reliable started with the Assoc Press's "accountability journalism" push in a more ethical manner in 2008 [6] which nearly every other major paper has adopted. And this is a well known issue - The Economist, CRJ American Press Institute. And considering that accountability journalism is to make these people of higher power "accountable" for what they do, that's completely against WP's neutrality, which is why this style of report is a problem and causing these issues. --Masem (t) 00:16, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

That is as may be, but to me there is a significant difference between a long-form, evidence-based analysis piece by a qualified subject matter journalist, and an editorial or op-ed intervention. It doesn't take much work for a volunteer to make that distinction, IME, beyond a critical look at the byline and an examination of the evidence cited or referenced. If WP editors can't make that distinction for themselves, I don't think we can blame legacy media for that. Newimpartial (talk) 00:33, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

Except its clearly not happening given this entire thread. To point out from the Economist article These pressures are changing the way newspapers report. Last year ap’s style book declared: “Do not use racially charged or similar terms as euphemisms for racist or racism when the latter terms are truly applicable.” Some organisations have embraced, even emblazoned taboo words: “A Fascist Trump Rally In Greenville” ran a headline last year in the Huffington Post. Others are inserting more value judgments into their copy....Disenchanted with objectivity, some journalists have alighted on a new ideal: “moral clarity”. The phrase, initially popularised on the right, has been adopted by those who want newspapers to make clearer calls on matters such as racism. Mr Lowery repeatedly used the phrase in a recent Times op-ed, in which he called for the industry “to abandon the appearance of objectivity as the aspirational journalistic standard, and for reporters instead to focus on being fair and telling the truth, as best as one can, based on the given context and available facts.” The editor of the Times, Dean Baquet, called Mr Lowery’s column “terrific” in an interview with the “Longform” podcast. Objectivity has been “turned into a cartoon”, he said. Better to aim for values such as fairness, independence and empathy. This is the problem , those values that are being praised by this approach in the press are incompatible with the encyclopedic form, but there are editors that stand on "but the media reported this, it must be true" stance. We need to editors to be aware of this type of reporting and recognize this, and the easiest way is simply to know that value-laden labels should never be said as fact in Wikivoice from this current period. --Masem (t) 00:45, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

I'm still stuck on the first part of that quotation: Last year ap’s style book declared: “Do not use racially charged or similar terms as euphemisms for racist or racism when the latter terms are truly applicable - try as I might, I can't see the problem with that change. If the journalist has correctly assessed the truth and relevance of the term "racist" or "racism", I don't see why using it, rather than a euphemism, would be a problem (1) for journalism or (2) for article writing here. The Economist piece is also downplaying a key argument being made by those it is quoting, namely the distinction between objectivity and the appearance of objectivity. It seems to me that this is clearly what is meant by objectivity has been "turned into a cartoon". The point is not to embrace partiality and ignore objectivity; the point is that the euphemisms, bothsides-ism and FALSEBALANCE that had been used to maintain the appearance of objectivity had led to coverage that was less objective and less truthful than it should have been. While the obligations of WP editors are not the same as those of journalists, I don't think our articles gain anything when they obscure the (reliably sourced) truth and the best available characterization in favor of imaginary WHATABOUT considerations or concessions to FRINGE POV. Newimpartial (talk) 01:11, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

Guys, we're going in circles here, and illustrating quite nicely how our job as Wikipedia editors is not simple at all. This is why it's worth trying to find some common ground, it helps to be as explicit and clear as possible in guiding editors on how to approach areas such as current affairs, where these difficulties are most apparent. News & analysis inherently merge into each other – it doesn't make RS less serious or reputable. Perhaps stricter rules in (BLP) leads will encourage editors to inform themselves about this. (The Economist, which wears its self-described liberal values on its sleeve, has never separated factual and analytical articles, priding itself in its "distinctive blend of news, based on facts, and analysis, incorporating The Economist’s perspective"). As along as media sources are transparent about the values they apply to their reporting (even if they don't explicitly spell this out in individual articles), having an independent perspective, or "soul" (to quote C. P. Scott), is a highly desirable trait. It's an extremely common misconception (media literacy is not intuitive!) that media should (or even can) be impartial – witness the limitations of ardently value-free sources such as Reuters (refusing to label the 9/11 attackers terrorists, for example). Critical viewpoints are essential for understanding our world. At Wikipedia we have to cover the facts, then accompany these with the major analyses and viewpoints as fairly and neutrally as we can (which inherently requires us to adopt some value judgements). Our current policies say we shouldn't go as far as sources like Reuters, that we should describe [fringe views] in their proper context with respect to established scholarship and the beliefs of the wider world. CNN doesn't explain its stance as eloquently as The Economist, but I did notice that its stated aim is "To Inform, Engage and Empower the World", which is obviously a value-driven stance, not "just report the facts". This doesn't make it unreliable, value-free journalism doesn't exist, while fact-free journalism does!

@Izno: re: who else distinguishes between analysis and news: take a look at The Guardian, with its (rather undeserved) reputation among conservatives for being horribly biased. It rigorously (yet subtly in its online version) separates its "hard" factual reporting from its "soft" news sections. Take this article for example, which appears to the untrained eye to be an opinionated news article, but, if you scroll down to the end, you'll see it's tagged as 'features' (i.e. stories about news). All Guardian articles that are not pure factual reporting are tagged under 'features', 'opinion' or another relevant section. Compare this with its actual news reporting, which is tagged as 'news'. Here's an excellent example about climate change causing a train crash, demonstrating why it has its well-established reputation for fact-based reporting. This is what distinguishes a RS from a non-RS, but it's unreasonable to expect all our editors to be making this distinction all the time. That's why I think it's worth spelling it out for contentious topics. Jr8825 • Talk 01:18, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

Your "excellent example" of fact reporting and summary as "climate change causing a train crash" is a excellent example of how distinctions of "fact", "news analysis", and "opinion" are meaningless in the face of WP editors inability to critically read and evaluate sources, and their willingness to interpret them according to their point of view. fiveby(zero) 14:37, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

@Fiveby: You missed my point. It's an article whose title connects climate change with a train crash. My point is that The Guardian does not editorialise on the issue, it's simply reports the facts and statements of relevant politicians because it's the news section. Even the title is paraphrasing a government official's quote. To spell it out more clearly, my point is that you while you might expect a source like The Guardian to make a point on climate change, it doesn't. It's a good example of robust factual reporting. Jr8825 • Talk 17:14, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

I'm reluctant to push this further, but I find your criticism of my ability to read and evaluate sources a bit rich, given your recent (reverted) edits disputing the Daily Mail's inaccuracy. Jr8825 • Talk 17:25, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

There are some things i might use The Daily Mail for, finding factual information not one of them. I am disputing Wikipedia's accuracy. Michael Matheson is actually quoted further here. Guardian stretches the truth a bit, editors here do a great deal, and What we don't want to do at this particular point is to start to speculate about what actually caused it becomes climate change causing a train crash. Wikipedia has fine policies concerning neutral point of view, verifiability, and no original research, but those policies are left behind when it is easier to divide editors into the right side and wrong side of an issue. fiveby(zero) 18:46, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

I think that's a bit harsh. I do not think at all this is a competency issue with most editors particularly in these topic areas. I would say that some editors are strongly driven by their feelings towards a certain topic (whether it is like or dislike of that topic area) to let that cloud judgement and/or their willingness to evaluate sources critically in such cases. But I know it has been hard to discuss the changing nature of the media and its reporting style and how that impacts how WP should use these sources because of the "blind" trust some editors maintain for these works despite the evidence that the changing style moves away from elements that we can use appropriate while staying neutral and impartial. --Masem (t) 14:55, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

What I would say is that we are in the middle of a cultural shift, and are all experiencing it in different ways. Language that is "woke" to one person is "neutral" to another, and language that is "impartial" to one person is "euphemistic" to another. This isn't a context that allows for truly general rules, I think, only principles. Newimpartial (talk) 18:03, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

That's true, but it's also tautological: we are always in the middle of a cultural shift; there has never been a time or place in history when that hasn't been the case. What do we do about it? We don't impose our (editors') beliefs about what is woke/neutral/impartial/euphemistic. Instead, we follow the sources, and impose their beliefs. The question is: which sources? We get a different answer when we look at academic sources v. media. (And a different answer depending on which media we look at.) Lev!vich 18:58, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

Well, here is where my take is different from yours or Masem's: I don't think we really do get a different answer from academic sources vs. quality journalism. Academic sources over the last 10 years, say, use similar (though more nuanced) language to most journalistic sources over the last say 5 years - indeed, a lot of the language choices that have changed in this cultural shift probably came to journalism by way of academic discourse (which doesn't mean they originated there). So while the inclination I seem to detect in Masem is to set aside the most recent of scholarship until there is less turbulence in these language communities, I hold a view closer to yours I think, Levivich, that these issues are going to be with is for some time and we just have to navigate them. Newimpartial (talk) 20:46, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

We also have to acknowledge that journalism has changed within the last decade, and there is political bias involved more than ever, even to high-quality journalists. I still don't agree Journalists should be the deciding factor to label someone's ideology just because they believe they fit that criterion. To me, labeling their ideology it's very similar to label someone's religious belief. I understand that can be an extreme opinion, but i think its very important that we have labels that involve ideology. Especially BLPs who in the next ten years could identify as a Nazi, or as a new 4th wave Feminist. Even if it holds no value-laden, or used to spread a negative reputation, we're still labeling someone's own personal beliefs with words like feminist/anti-feminist.Blue Pumpkin Pie ^{Chat Contribs} 22:07, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

And where I differ from that is, that I don't agree that there is more political bias involved than ever. What I think has changed over the last 10 or so years, is a shift in the dominant political bias in reputable media from "let's make up terms that sound neutral, so that we (the media) can seem objective, even if it distorts what is actually happening" to "let's call things what they actually are, as best we can tell". And it is not at all clear to me that the second thing is in fact less neutral than the first, only that it may sound less neutral to people who are used to the old obfuscations. Newimpartial (talk) 00:12, 30 October 2020 (UTC)

Than "ever"? "Ever" would have to include the period of Yellow journalism plus various forms of state-controlled media and wholesale suppression of media. The Walter Cronkite era of "de-politicized" news was a historical anomaly, and it only existed in a handful of countries. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:58, 30 October 2020 (UTC)

So in your eyes, you believe media hasn't become more bias, almost the opposite direction?Blue Pumpkin Pie ^{Chat Contribs} 20:57, 30 October 2020 (UTC)

More than when and where? WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:59, 30 October 2020 (UTC)

Sorry, my question is directed toward Newimpartial, not you.Blue Pumpkin Pie ^{Chat Contribs} 21:01, 30 October 2020 (UTC)

Sorry; I didn't recognize that question as addressed to me. To answer it, I think we need to look at journalism at least as a field rather than a spectrum. Let's use left and right for political orientation (obviously a simplification) and the vertical direction for something like "expressiveness". So the Wall Street Jounal and the New York Post might be about the same distance to the right of the origin, but the WSJ would score much lower on expressiveness. Now it might seem that the more expressive sources are less reliable in general, but I'm not sure how true that is: Huffpost and the Guardian might score about the same for expressiveness, but the Guardian's news stories do not show the reliability problems that have plagued Huffpo.

So if this map makes any kind of sense, I would say that the last 10 years have seen a number of dots on the graph move up and to the left, while Fox made its dash up and to the right 15-20 years ago. During the postwar consensus in the US, the dots were clustered towards the center and much further down, and the UK print media have always been much more widely scattered in cartesian space than US print media ever were, while the same was never true of UK broadcast media. Does this make any sense? Fundamentally, I suppose I am saying that it isn't necessarily more "neutral" to be lower on the expressive dimension - 1960s US coverage of race issues is a good example, where it went out of its way to use pseudo-neutral language but was far more distorted in its reporting than the more expressive media of today. Left and right, expressive and not are characteristics of style, but what we should concern ourselves with when we use journalistic sources is the accuracy of their statements and their consistency with other sources. Newimpartial (talk) 15:31, 31 October 2020 (UTC) I suppose reliability would be a third dimension in this model, so that the Guardian would be close to Huffpo in X and Y but quite a bit higher in Z. The New York Post would be above the WSJ in the Y dimension, close to the same X but quite a bit lower in Z. Etc. Newimpartial (talk) 18:07, 31 October 2020 (UTC)

On one small point I agree with Newimpartial. It's not really about academic versus journalistic sources.

It's more about finding multiple sources that present a particular view, and then stating that view in Wikivoice, without establishing that it is a consensus view among the sources.

One example that's come to my attention recently is the Proud Boys, who are described in the first sentence as "neo-fascist". This is supported by four sources, and no doubt many more could be found.

Now, are they neo-fascist? Particularly in the carefully descriptive sense one would expect of an encyclopedia, meaning something like "adherents of a philosophy that has its origins in the works of Giovanni Gentile, albeit modified for later developments"? I don't know. They might be. I have not looked into it deeply. But what I can say is that looking at the tone of those four sources does not especially convince me.

What an "actionable proposal" for this might be, I don't know. As a rough-and-ready rule of thumb, I might say that if a group is described by a particular term by sources from the four poles, conservative, progressive, libertarian, and communitarian, then it can be so described without attribution. So if you can find them described as "neo-fascist" in the Wall Street Journal, Vox, Reason, and Utne Reader, then go for it. But if you have to cherry-pick from a particular viewpoint, then it should be attributed. It's not perfect because that doesn't exhaust the political space, but it's a lot better than the current situation. --Trovatore (talk) 05:21, 31 October 2020 (UTC)

• I would suggest that rather than focusing on kicking out sources (or kicking out opinion/editorial page sources), we should do a better job of identifying for the reader the type of source being used. For example, saying that an article from X news site, or an editorial from Y newspaper, says whatever is in the point being cited. BD2412 T 00:00, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

I don't mind the source, or the quality of the source. After all, sources should return in the main part of the article, and prove their value and validity there (see MOS:LEADCITE). To return to the Noam Chomsky-examle: you will find hardly any references in the lead, and his politics is not sourced at all. Still, it is a good lead. For me, this discussion is more about how the lead is written than how the lead is sourced. Therefore:

• Suggestion 2:

Wikipedia-editors should take strong care that lead paragraphs:

1. has to be written in a clinical and neutral tone, see MOS:LEADBIO
2. do notattribute political viewpoints to persons or organisations as factual traits (thus, [Chomsky] aligns with anarcho-syndicalism and libertarian socialism as opposed to [Chomsky] is an anarchist philosopher.
3. Instead, start with birthname, and birthplace, then go through the person's professions, expertises and his/her career. Or, in the case of organisations: name the founding date, founders, expertises) Then, in case it is relevant, convictions can be mentioned in a distant way (as in: "X aligns with XYZ-ism")
4. Avoid to bring up your own opinion: even though every sane person should agree that Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed is a propaganda movie posing as a documentary supporting a pseudo-scientific idea, don't tell the reader that: show the facts.

Is this something?~Regards, Jeff5102 (talk) 14:14, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

+1, I think it's a step in the right direction. #1 I agree with but I think it's a bit of a "throw-away"... a vague statement that no one would disagree with and is already adequately stated in various PAGs ... I think we're more at the point of defining or fleshing out what "clinical and neutral" means for a lead, rather than simply restating core principles; #2 I think is the "meat" of the "something", I think perhaps more examples like this would be helpful; #3 I'm not sure I agree with, I think that's too restrictive or one-size-fits-all. I think the first sentence should state why the subject is notable/important, e.g. Albert Einstein, which starts with the few things he's most notable for, and doesn't get into the details of his career until later. I'm not saying that the lead of Albert Einstein conflicts with #3, but I feel like #3 doesn't say everything it needs to say; as to #4, I agree with the general guidance "show don't tell" but I'm not sure about the (implied) suggestion that "propaganda" is a label to be avoided (or that any particular label should be avoided). As an example, I cannot imagine an article about Triumph of the Will that doesn't include the word "propaganda" in the opening. I'm not sure if the same applies to Expelled, but I think it'd be better in general guidance to avoid that kind of specific question, perhaps by choosing a clearer example. Lev!vich 06:30, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

I agree with Triumph of the Will. It is safe to say that movies, produced by the Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, can safely be called "a "propaganda movie" in the lead. As for "Expelled": I don't know about that one. That would leave the door open for NRA-sympathizing editors to describe Bowling for Columbine as a "documentary-style pro-gun-control-propaganda-movie." That is not the road Wikipedia should take.Jeff5102 (talk) 09:09, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

I would generally suggest that reference to someone's views should generally be made obliquely. For example, rather than the aforementioned [Chomsky] aligns with anarcho-syndicalism and libertarian socialism, we should say (assuming it can be supported) that [Chomsky] has been described as aligning with anarcho-syndicalism and libertarian socialism. BD2412 T 06:36, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

This removes all forms of bias and I fully support this option.Blue Pumpkin Pie ^{Chat Contribs} 16:29, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

I also seek attention to the lack of NPOV in the Joseph Nicolosi article. - 45.125.220.162 (talk) 18:53, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

If you are concerned about it describing Conversion therapy as "pseudoscience" instead of "bad science", then it's probably easier to find sources that call it pseudoscience. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:59, 4 November 2020 (UTC)

Again, this Nicolosi-article is an example of how Wikipedia-articles changed as compared with four years ago.Jeff5102 (talk) 10:11, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

Seems like one of the issues is also with undue weighting of criticism from news media sources, especially in articles on topics that don't have much coverage so most of the coverage is negative. For example The Post Millennial, mention of a single controversy with one no-longer present editor who previously worked for Russian outlets seems to be too much for a Lead paragraph, but it is justified under the idea that the Lead summarizes the article. A lot of politically charged and media outlet pages similarly have this problem in which every single controversy covered by a media source is listed in the lead. Another such article is The Daily Caller. Marquis de Faux (talk) 05:16, 6 November 2020 (UTC)

• I know this is kind of an old discussion but I think you really make a fair point. We should describe the subject neutrally instead of barraging the lead sentence with a half a dozen of labels. We should show why they are percieved as these labels as opposed to just telling. Regards  Spy-cicle💥  ^Talk? 20:00, 14 January 2021 (UTC)
  • User:Spy-cicle, I think the difficulty is that editors do not agree on what it means to "describe the subject neutrally". Imagine that every single independent reliable source about 'Paul Politician' says that he has an absolutely enormous ego. Imagine that he's even named in a widely used university-level psychology textbook as an example of egocentrism. In your opinion, is it "neutral" for the Wikipedia article to say that he's got a huge ego? Or should we take an approach that some editors might call self-censored, and omit that entirely because it "doesn't feel neutral" to include derogatory information? Or maybe we should take a mealy-mouthed approach, and turn sources that say "He has a huge ego" into a Wikipedia article that says "He has a lot of self-confidence"? Editors in this discussion do not seem to have achieved a mutual understanding of what the word neutral means. (Our actual definition, as written in the policies, is that the article is neutral if it accurately and adequately represents what the sources say about the subject.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:46, 15 January 2021 (UTC)

    WhatamIdoing I think you make a valid point. In your example I would personally say something along the lines of Paul Politician has been widely described as having a large ego, and is often pointed as an example of egocentrism. some where in the perhaps later lead section but depends on the person/article itself. I personally just do not think bombarded people with heavy value laiden labels, especially in the lead sentence, is particularly helpful in maintaining and creating a balanced and neutrual encylopedia. Take for instance This proposal on Trump's page. People want to insert that into the first paragraph of a BLP as if it is the defining characteristic of him as a person. That is certainly no way no neutral in my view. Regards  Spy-cicle💥  ^Talk? 22:10, 16 January 2021 (UTC)

    @Spy-cicle, how is that proposal's suggestion of "widely accused of abuse of power and corruption" different from your suggestion of "widely described as having a large ego"?

    (Abuse of power isn't a characteristic of anyone as a person; it's an accusation about actions. That accusation is about "bad choices", not "bad person".) WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:18, 16 January 2021 (UTC)

Section break

I often put Wikipedia's content policies in a one sentence nutshell: Wikipedia is to be an accurate summary of what Reliable Sources say about a subject. I have resolved some messy arguments when one side reluctantly faced the fact that the content-they-object-to was indeed an accurate summary of what the sources said. Continuing the argument be futile. I also notice above repeated mention of "truth", "facts", or "proof". We do not debate truth on Wikipedia, such arguments carry zero weight. On the internet somebody will spend 42 months in a nonstop argument about the truth of anything, Wikipedia can't and won't engage argument about "truth". If the sources say the moon is made of cheese, then the article will say the moon is made of cheese. If sufficiently many Reliable Sources say the moon is made of cheese, if zero percent disagree with that, if the sources which don't explicitly address it are compatible with it, our summary can and does simply repeat the statement without in-text attribution (but we will ref it). Whatever Wikipedia says, it's not about truth or facts or proof, it's only about whether it is an accurate summary of the sources. If someone has a problem with what the sources say, it is futile to argue those concerns on Wikipedia. Alsee (talk) 17:59, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

Like I said above, I am not interested in what reliable sources say: I am interested in writing good, unbiased articles. Like I showed in my first bit, the last few years Wikipedia has become more partisan (and thus, less neutral), and resorts to name-calling when describing persons, organizations and documentaries. I do not believe that is a healthy development.

When that name-calling and those partisan descriptions are the result of an accurate summary of what Reliable Sources say about a subject, then that is saying a lot about the decline of those “Reliable Sources.” That is disturbing, to say the least. Regards, Jeff5102 (talk) 09:58, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

Alsee, I think what you are discussing ends up being part of the problem. Note that I'm not questioning your summary rather questioning if this is really what we want. For many (perhaps most) topics this method often works just fine. However it fails when many sources either repeat the common refrain or repeat the reaction to something without actually analyzing the something. Consider the example of the Ford Pinto, the rear impact fires and the infamous Pinto Memo [[7]]. From the mid 70s through perhaps 1991 it was understood that the Pinto readily caught fire when impacted from the rear and that Ford had calculated that it would be cheaper to fight the lawsuits vs fix the problem. This was so well known that the narrative was widely repeated and even used as an example of unethical corporate behavior in academic material. It also is largely not true. In 1991 a legal review paper[[8]] spent a lot of time diving into many details of the Pinto case. It was one of the earliest articles that explained why the popular view of the Ford's attitude towards safety and the Pinto Memo were wrong and perhaps the paper that caused many other sources to reexamine their understanding. Were we writing the Ford Pinto article in 1992 we would have a problem in that we have lots of sources that repeat what is basically conventional wisdom and one source that actually looks at the primary sources to refute that conventional wisdom. Most of the sources repeating conventional wisdom provided little in the way of sourcing for their claims while the law review paper was extensively researched and argued. But we would have said 1 RS vs many RS thus.

I think a better way to approach this is to use the large volume of sources discussing the Memo to indicate that it is important as a topic but once we establish the (sub)topic is important we then strive for an IMPARTIAL and, when reasonable, a detailed discussion of the topic. That means if 20 sources say "Ford was immoral" but one source says "Ford engineers and managers did X, Y, Z" then we give equal treatment to these discussions vs 20:1 reaction:investigation. Things like this seem to come up a lot in political topics where many sources will criticize someone for something they said but few will actually discuss the controversial statement in context and detail. We should.

Perhaps this can be summarized by saying we need to spend more time on the factual thing and less on the subjective reactions. Springee (talk) 13:36, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

I think that the areas where en Wikipedia has the most problems and is most losing it's credibility are where where it reflects a large scale real world contest. And the two biggest categories within that are where there is a culture war, and US politics. And face it, a lot of editors WANT the article to be biased and so it is a question of giving better guidance in our policies and guidelines especially wp:npov and also the definition of RS's. One thing that would help in an immense range of areas is to evolve the wp:RS definition to where it reflects actual reliability. More specifically a context-specific definition that reliability means degree of expertise and objectivity with respect to the use at hand. And since not every source can be established as such, say that that is a gauge of strength, and the more controversial the content the stronger the required strength and vice-versa. The problem is that in this area sources have transitioned to often being participants rather than coverers. The ham-handed approach of defining an overall source as an RS or not an RS based on a few trappings or a (political) vote ("consensus") in Wikipedia is now obsolete. Also, modifying wp:NPOV to say that we are here to present information not characterizations. Characterizations are usually not information. A rough gauge for where a characterization becomes acceptable and useful would be if 90% agree on it and if it provides information. Finally another good change would to introduce degree-of-WP:Relevance as a factor in content inclusion/ exclusion decisions. Person B's opinion (=talking points) about person A in the person A article is not info on person A, it is info about person B's opinion/ talking points, even if Person B is a "source" North8000 (talk)

Second the above. Things like the RSP list are problematic. If a lower quality source produces a very well reasoned article with evidence etc we should give it more consideration vs say a subjective description in a generally reliable source. We definitely should stop assuming no good information exists in "unreliable" sources as well as stop assuming that reliable sources never mix subjective assessments into their facts etc. This doesn't mean treat them as equal but currently we are rather arbitrary when it comes to including/excluding sources. Springee (talk) 13:42, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

Before this circle-jerk gets awkwardly close to a climax, I want to point out that there is a kind of saw-off between those who "value expertise or depth of analysis" and those who "reject characterization". It seems to me that the logical relationship between these two things would be that characterizations by experts in the field would be accepted, and characterizations by non-experts would be rejected. But what I have actually seen out there in article-land is that the editors who "reject characterization" also reject the whole idea of expertise in social sciences, so they reject the views of experts/academics along with those of non-expert journalists. And meanwhile, many of these same editors are comfortable with self-characterizations of BLP subjects - even in Wikivoice - when these are often the least expert commentators of all. These observations make me skeptical of the POV that says that the more accurate labeling of political and social issues by academics and journalists over the last 15 years or so is some kind of challenge for encyclopaedic writing. Newimpartial (talk) 14:14, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

Your argument might be rhetorically satisfying but fails to address the concerns at hand. Perhaps if you had specific examples it would help. Springee (talk) 14:36, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

There are enough examples in the parent section that I don't feel the need to point elsewhere. Newimpartial (talk) 15:05, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

I don't think that it is good to characterize small or large agreement as "circle-jerk gets awkwardly close to a climax" North8000 (talk) 15:12, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

I counted four messages (by three editors) that were mutually self-reinforcing; rather than seeing that trend continie I wanted to ruin the vibe. Newimpartial (talk) 15:19, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

That's called agreement. North8000 (talk) 17:10, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

Next time I'm in a bathhouse, I'll try to remind people of that. :P Newimpartial (talk) 17:29, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

The thing is , we are an encyclopedia. We are not supposed to be as indepth as the sources we use, and in fact should be encouraging readers to go to the sources to read more. In terms of current events, while factual information does not changes, positions and characterizations do rapidly change and that's simply something we should not be documenting in the short term, but our references provide those links for readers to learn more. We can capture, in attribution, when there is broad characterization, but it should be treated as that, and not as facts of the situation, because of the immediacy of reporting. Also I don't think anyone's said we're automatically going to take self-identification automatically in wikivoice. If self-identification matches with the broader characterization, there I don't see a problem saying in wikivoice, but self-identification alone would still require attribution. --Masem (t) 14:56, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

Masem, you have suggested that we wait for posthumous reports or decades of scholarship to develop consensus characterizations in this area. My essential difference from your position is that I think "broad characterization" can be established much more quickly than you do - not for "current events", but certainly within five years or so. Supposedly "contentious" labels that have been used consistently for several years by high-quality sources and have never been contested by RS should not be considered "contentious", because nobody is actually contending about them. On the other hand, I totally agree that where self-characterizarion and RS characterization match, attribution should not be used. Newimpartial (talk) 15:05, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

It really depends on the situation. In the US, we're still in the midst of a culture war that started at least around 2016, and given the trend on this election, could go to 2024 if not beyond. Saying to wait five or even ten years should be after that situation has completely cooled down, so it would be inappropriate to be talking characterization-as-fact for people and events from 2016 in 2021 given the current state. But remember, I'm not saying we can't include characterization at all. If it is clear that such characterization is so common among the reliable sources (and I've talked of source surveys that should be documented to prove this out so that we're not be accused of piece-mealing this characterizations), its clear DUE to include a type of attributed characterization statement, even if that's "X is broadly considered to be Y" to avoid having to name all sources that say it, just as 1) it is not treated as fact in Wikivoice and thus 2) placed secondary to an establishing objective sentence or phrase in a lede of the article which is defining the topic is as neutrally and non-characterizing method as possible. This has miniminal impact on what we already have in most of these articles, but it drastically changes the tone of the articles for the better as they do not come off as attack pieces from the start, which is where we get criticized for acting just like liberal media. --Masem (t) 15:27, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

Agree with North8000. However, I do believe that the NPOV-guidelines give enough guidance in these matters. WP:NPOV is a policy, while WP:RS is a guideline. And, as WP:PG states, policies are standards all users should normally follow, and guidelines are generally meant to be best practices for following those standards in specific contexts. This means that a statement like "it's only about whether it is an accurate summary of the sources" is incorrect. It assumes that using texts from "reliable sources" automatically implies neutrality. Actually, it is the other way around: it is the editor's job to keep articles neutral by selecting the relevant facts, and remove the bias from it. Regards,Jeff5102 (talk) 19:36, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

I would very much like to see certain types of allegations removed from the lead section of articles, and support the #1 Suggestion list above. While i agree with @Newimpartial:'s comments about how some labels go from contentious to undisputed, i would like to bring your attention to the part of WP:LABEL that says "[...] are best avoided unless widely used by reliable sources to describe the subject, in which case use in-text attribution". A referenced statement is not automatically in-text attribution, and adding a single source's words would be, in my opinion, undue weight for the lead (unless that source was the top expert in that subject, which isn't a claim any newspaper can really back). That same in-text attribution may be perfectly acceptable in the article's body. I think this specific instruction asking for these claims to use direct speech is widely ignored across Wikipedia, and we would go a long way simply by doing more to enforce that policy. YuriNikolai (talk) 02:33, 13 November 2020 (UTC)

But this section applies to value-laden labels that express contentious opinions. There is - and has been for some time - a sustained conflict about which labels are or aren't considered "value-laden" in this sense - viz. the discussion of "documentary" and "propaganda" above - what counts as "contentious", and when a characterization is merely descriptive (I for one hold that undisputed characterizations should always count as descriptive and never require in-text attribution). Newimpartial (talk) 02:49, 13 November 2020 (UTC)

I saw the discussion above on the use of the words "propaganda" and "documentary." Your arguments are not that convincing. When you say that documentaries are there to "document reality, primarily for the purpose of instruction," then Expelled does document the reality as perceived by it's makers. As are The Exodus Decoded, and Michael Moore's documentaries (which all are, rightfully, described that way on Wikipedia). There is not much difference in Michael Moore shoving an idea through the throats of his viewers, or Ben Stein, doing the same. Thus, the best thing to do is to keep the wordings in leads neutral, as it was four years ago, and avoid words as "propaganda" when it is not suitable. (Newimpartial, if you really think I am wrong in this, please edit the articles on Michael Moore's documentaries, and replace the phrase political documentary with documentary-style propaganda film. If something important for Wikipedia, it is that it is impartial and consistent.) Regards.Jeff5102 (talk) 13:07, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

"Wikipedia is to be an accurate summary of what Reliable Sources say about a subject.". Not a bad thing to say, but in my opinion, especially in the past six to ten years, NPOV and WP:RS have both fallen victim to partisan POV pushing and have become a complete joke. We all know it, it's just considered impolite to point it out. Jtrainor (talk) 12:27, 22 November 2020 (UTC)

Many of the disputed characterizations are based on claims that WP:RS have made. Even though they are made by RS, they still can be undue or biased. I would argue that therefore we should rely on editorial judgment and local consensus, rather than merely counting sources, in order to achieve balance in the level of emphasis given to these characterizations. Per the existing WP:BIASEDSOURCES, even though biased sources can be reliable, they often need to be attributed in text. Perhaps WP:NPOV needs to be elaborated to explicitly give editors more leeway to choose a more neutral approach even when RS do not.Jancarcu (talk) 04:55, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

Agree'.This is exactly what should happen.Jeff5102 (talk) 12:51, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

That plan is not possible. Imagine the results with a rule that said articles should follow reliable sources except that people could make up their own minds about when to not follow those sources. I would put in my POV, you would insert yours, someone else would add theirs, and so on forever. If reliable sources say a claim is false, then it is false and an article should not suggest otherwise. Johnuniq (talk) 22:59, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

As I've stressed in this discussion, if we were talking about journalism standards 20 years ago, where there was a rather strict wall being "news" and "editorial", if a news article from the NYTimes came out with a characterization as a statement of fact, there's a very strong reason they have made the effort to research all sides of the issue and justify that as a statement of fact. In today's journalism world were accountability journalism reigns, we cannot assume that there is this rigor anymore when it comes to value-laden characterizations. We have the capability as editors to simply take a statement out of fact in wikivoice into attribution to the source(s) that state it without diminishing anything, and in most cases, this improves the tone and impartialness of the article. Now, there is a whole different area around "false" claims which is connected but requires different approaches and solution, as this starts to get into the area of conspiracy theories and fringe topics, which we do take a more proactive stance on if enough RS assert them to be false especially if they involve BLP. --Masem (t) 00:18, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

This entire thing is basically a partisan complaint, but it's worth pointing out that most of the original "neutral" examples are not neutral; they are puffery.

• The Gatestone example: The first sentence is literal advertising copy, directly quoted from the organization website. "_____ publicizes the writings of authors as diverse as" is also textbook advertising copy, and (it would not be the first time, probably not in the first hundred thousand) possibly written by a flak. Although if it was, the flak had a very creative interpretation of a reference called "The Sugar Mama of Anti-Muslim Hate."
• The ACT example is also, essentially, an advertisement. About 30% of the lead is direct quotes from the org website or press releases (https://www.huffpost.com/entry/hirsi-ali-and-act-for-ame_b_7977994), much of which is corporate buzzword speak like "force multiplier" (the only quote ostensibly from a neutral source, but in the profile, this is not editorial but a promotional quote by Frank Gaffney, the founder of a similar organization) and "a central player." These quotes are spackled together with weasel words like "it has been described as."

Other examples, while not as obvious puffery, are puffery by omission. In particular, the original Sargon piece reads like a conference bio. Most of the information is either vague or trivia (being married with children) and goes out of its way to avoid incorporating external sources -- going from "I set out to troll her — why all this fuss about 600 rape tweets?" (the article cited) to "He is married, has two children and lives in Swindon." (what the citation goes with) is some spectacular citation gymnastics. The incident is clearly far more noteworthy than being one of three people involved in a refunded Kickstarter. (It's about as notable as the Parliament run, but obviously in 2016 that had not happened yet.)

Almost all of the examples mistake citation for endorsement. Back to the Sargon example, the Jess Phillips incident is a newsworthy event that happened -- newsworthy enough to dominate a run for Parliament. It is a fact. It doesn't cease to be a fact because some people might view the subject in a negative light (or, for that matter, because some people might view it in a positive light). If Lex Luthor becomes a public figure for eating 40 cakes, you can't suppress that fact from an article just because someone might think "and that's terrible." Similarly, while the Crowder controversy obviously hadn't happened in 2016, once it did, it certainly is relevant information to include. ("The videos as posted don't violate our policies" is also different from "YouTube exonerated him," but even if YouTube did fully exonerate him, the incident still would be newsworthy.)

The only actual instance of negative POV in the revised example is possibly the Expelled article, but even that is fairly mild. If you wanted to, you could probably make an argument claiming that the original article was heavy-handed by including the verbiage "criticize evidence supporting Darwinian evolution and the modern evolutionary synthesis," which was since cut. Otherwise, the new examples seem fine, and your primary complaint seems to be that Wikipedia is being an encyclopedia and not a PR firm. Or, more accurately, your complaint is that Wikipedia is being an encyclopedia and not a PR firm for right-wing subjects, since there's certainly no shortage of startup companies and indie bands and bloggers and autobiography and paid editing to remark upon, and I'm sure you could find liberal or leftist subjects with non-NPOV articles as well. So this whole thing is very disingenuous. Gnomingstuff (talk) 16:53, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

As for the examples, let's take Steven Crowder. According to the article, events he is known as known for are the December 2012 union protest, his sacking because of his negative statements about Fox News host Sean Hannity, his Change My Mind meme, the YouTube investigation for using racist and homophobic slurs and his Coronavirus misinformation. Yet of all these events, only the investigation over "his repeated use of racist and homophobic slurs" (just see how the investigation if something happened is changed into an investigation about something that happened in the lead) made it to the lead-section. That looks a more like a violation of WP:UNDUE than "puffery by omission," if that really is a thing.

And as for the "while the Crowder controversy obviously hadn't happened in 2016, once it did, it certainly is relevant information to include"-argument: the opposite could be said on Carl Benjamin and his 2016 Jess-Phillips-tweet: it already happened in 2016, yet it was not until later it was regarded as important enough to include in the lead (as opposed to his troubles with Patreon, The Guardian, milkshakes, Vidcon and Akilah Hughes).

It is saddening to see how an appeal for more neutrality is regarded as a "complaint (...) that Wikipedia is being an encyclopedia and not a PR firm for right-wing subjects." and responded to with "I'm sure you could find liberal or leftist subjects with non-NPOV articles as well. So this whole thing is very disingenuous."

It might certainly be true that there are "liberal or leftist subjects with non-NPOV articles." As you have read above, I did check some, which resulted in me praising the Noam Chomsky-article as an example how a Wikipedia-lead should be written. And I noted that Michael Moore's documentaries were described as such, instead of "documentary-style propaganda films." Yet, if I missed leftist subjects with non-NPOV articles, then please show them and we can approach them too. That would be a win for both sides of the aisle.

But apart from that: I never said that the neutrality-problem was especially with rightist or conservative subjects. If you can prove me wrong, please do so. But otherwise, calling my concerns "very disingenuous" is a serious attack on my good intentions. Your comments are exactly how User:Levivich described it above: "to paraphrase, starting the article on Hitler with anything other than "Hitler is a bad man" is considered pro-Hitler." Gnomingstuff, please study WP:GF. Jeff5102 (talk) 16:28, 12 December 2020 (UTC)

I think Michael Moore's article is a good example of a liberal or leftist subject with a non-NPOV article. The lead doesn't include any criticisms of him, including the (well known) criticism that he is, indeed, a propagandist, and not a documentarian. For example, it mentions Bowling for Columbine's awards, but not the ensuing scandal over the staged scenes in the movie. It doesn't mention that his books have failed fact checks. And so forth. I also agree that calling "this whole thing" disingenuous is just WP:ABF. This kind of dismissal of legitimate concerns as sour grapes is what fuels our NPOV problem. Levivich ^harass/_hound 16:40, 12 December 2020 (UTC)

I do not mind the lack of criticism in the lead; it is not up to the editors to say if someone is bad person or not. This can be discussed later, while awards can be mentioned to show someone's notability. However, I would like to elaborate on the comment that my "complaint is that Wikipedia is being an encyclopedia and not a PR firm for right-wing subjects" Again, I never said that the neutrality-problem was especially with rightist or conservative subjects. But the topic may be discussed.

Indeed, Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, and not a PR-firm. However, there is a big difference between "a PR Firm" and "an attacking pamphlet." Encyclopedic articles should be neither. However, over the recent years, it appears that leftist subjects indeed are met with more sympathy than rightist ones. To stick with Michael Moore: In the current version, he is described in the first sentence as an American documentary filmmaker, author, and activist. In September 2016, Wikipedia described him as an American documentary filmmaker and author. On the other hand, Dinesh D'Souza, Moore's conservative counterpart is currently described as an Indian-American far-right political commentator, provocateur, author, filmmaker, and conspiracy theorist. In September 2016, his article on Wikipedia only described him as an Indian American political commentator, author, and filmmaker. I am unfamiliar with D'Souza's work. However, the different approach the D'Sousa- and Moore-articles have met the last years at least raises eyebrows. This example also confirms the concerns of the recent decline of neutrality on Wikipedia of my original comment above.

That said, I am still interested in Gnomingstuff's examples on liberal or leftist subjects with damning non-NPOV articles, which had more neutral articles in the past. I would love to correct them too. And I would love to be corrected, if my examples turn out to be the result of some tunnel vision. After all, our task is to make neutral, encyclopedic articles here, and not damning, partisan pamphlets. Best regards,Jeff5102 (talk) 10:42, 13 December 2020 (UTC)

Sorry for not seeing this earlier. The burden of proof is on the person presenting the complaint to come up with representative examples. Given that every example given was of a right-wing figure or organization, I think it's fair to characterize it as a complaint about how Wikipedia specifically treats articles about right-wing subjects, and that presenting it as something other than that is a bad faith-argument, as is characterizing positive coverage as neutral and largely neutral coverage as negative, as is misrepresenting facts in a defensive manner (claiming the one guy was "exonerated"), as is claiming I said or believe that articles should read like "Hitler is a bad man."

As for the specifics: Puffery by omission is absolutely a thing. In fact, there is an entire field devoted to reputation management, i.e. burying any unflattering coverage of a client to present positive material only. Unsurprisingly Wikipedia articles are a major focus of reputation management -- so widespread that one example involves Wikipedia itself.

That said, if you do genuinely want to create a more neutral encyclopedia, and are concerned about NPOV as a general principle, then one good way to get started is by wikisearching some of the PR language mentioned in my post, as this tends to be something of a code-smell for press releases disguised as articles. Just off the top of my head, searching "as diverse as" +organization yields a manageable 600+ results, many of which obviously are fine -- that's the nature of searching -- but many of which are glorified PR. (Whether any of the subjects qualify as "liberal" I'd have to click through to see, but of course if it's just neutrality you're concerned with, that shouldn't matter, right?) Gnomingstuff (talk) 22:18, 14 December 2020 (UTC)

I don’t understand you. I have given five examples on how over the years, the neutrality of lead sections on Wikipedia has been victim of partisan editing, which is done, among other things, by moralizing name-calling. You point out that the examples I’ve given are all from “right-wing figures or organizations.” Maybe this is indeed the cause why these lead-sections have changed so much for the worse as compared to those of, say, Cenk Uygur, Noam Chomsky or Michael Moore.

But actually, I don’t care. I just want to make a good, neutral encyclopedia, regardless the political orientation of the subjects of the article. That is why I invited you to come up with examples of left-wing figures or organizations whose lead-sections also have worsened over the years. But for some reason, all that is “very disingenuous,” according to you. That puzzles me.

As for the rest: the article on reputation management does not mention the term “Puffery by omission” at all, nor does any other article on Wikipedia. Apart from you, there is only one mention of the term on a five year old user-talkpage. That is not enough to use this as a policy on WIkipedia. Therefore, WP:UNDUE is a better guide in these matters, but I discussed that one above.

And finally, for your suggestion to look for the term "as diverse as" + organization: 1) That is a whataboutism, 2) I do not see much neutrality issues with the articles on national numbering agencies, Geoscience Australia, Association for the Study of Modern Italy, Oxford e-Research Centre, the European Space Camp, the Oregon Public Utility Commission or the European Atomic Energy Community, and 3) it was you who was complaining about PR-issues, not me. Otherwise, I would have complained on how the lead of MoveOn only cites the organization’s website, without mentioning the MoveOn.org ad controversy at all. But like I wrote: WP:UNDUE is a better guide on Wikipedia than complaining about “Puffery by omission”. Best regards,Jeff5102 (talk) 08:29, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

If someone is going to open an RFC, then please do so already so we can formally terminate this. Otherwise this should be shut down as unconstructive. Expelled says "propaganda" because that word was widely used by both film experts and science experts. Above it appears some people suggest random-idiots-on-the-internet should get to decide the Reliable Sources aren't being fair, and should be allowed to negotiate a more fair description than "pseudoscience" on the astrology article (or whatever other article they feel isn't being treated fairly by RS). That won't work and it ain't gonna happen. Alsee (talk) 17:34, 13 December 2020 (UTC)

It is not editors asking for sources to treat the film fairly; it is about presenting topics in a neutral, dispassionate voice and impartial tone. This doesn't mean whitewashing any criticism out of the article, in the case of something like Expelled, but starting with what the work is objectively is (the most factual and neutral information), and once that basic taxological information is set forth, then moving into the characterization of the film as propaganda (getting to why the topic is notable). This is all about order of information and wording, not about removal of information as some claim. This is all outlined in NPOV already and more importantly in WP:OUTRAGE related to topics that may be detestable to some editors, we're still supposed to be dispassionate and neutral in how we present them in Wikivoice, but doesn't meant we avoid the criticism that meets UNDUE. --Masem (t) 17:54, 13 December 2020 (UTC)

To return to the Hitler example given in the quote at the beginning of the section: the article doesn't say explicitly that he was evil, but reading the article you would undoubtedly conclude that. Thos conclusion would come from the Holocaust and/or World War 2, and the lead explicitly mentions his responsibility for both. 109.186.67.148 (talk) 05:29, 24 December 2020 (UTC)

An encyclopedia does not need to tell people that Hitler was evil—to do so would be redundant commentary. That particularly applies because the vast majority of Wikipedia's readers know who Hitler was. By contrast, most readers would have no prior knowledge regarding the items listed as examples above. A duty of an encyclopedia is to inform readers. That means, for example, that a film which pushes pseudoscientific fringe ideas needs to be described as such. Exactly how to do that can be discussed and I favor not overdoing negativity, but the brief facts need to be outlined in the first one or two sentences. Johnuniq (talk) 06:07, 24 December 2020 (UTC)

Hilter is actually a strong example that Wikipedia cannot come out in wikivoice to say he was evil or any other value-laden term, but we can refer to the clear consensus of historians that he was broadly considered evil. This is exactly the advice of WP:OUTRAGE as well as WP:LABEL. The problem we get is that editors often feel so upset or angry at a topic (which they are entitled to do) to a point that they appear to want to make sure readers are clear that the topic is a "bad" thing, but WP has to be neutral and impartial and non-judgemental here in Wikivoice. (I've seen some editors feel this is even to be WP's duty, but that's falling against WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS too). We can't describe Hitler being evil but we can be clear that the history books paint him that way and that WWII is pretty much attributed to him. Or to go back to Expelled, we can't call it propaganda directly, but we can call it a documentary that expert reviewers and commentator clearly saw as pushing numerous conspiracy theories and likened it to propaganda. Eg: we can still cover what outrages people as long as there's RSes to back it up, but its just got to be taken out of Wikivoice and framed after establishing neutral coverage of the topic. Otherwise, we're no better than a work like Conservapedia which lets editor POV take over. --Masem (t) 06:54, 24 December 2020 (UTC)

Agree with Johnuniq, in general, if there is clear cut negativity (or positivity) then I don't see why that should not be included right up front. Putting it in down the page somewhere is not helping the reader much.Selfstudier (talk) 13:46, 24 December 2020 (UTC)

And no one is saying to bury the negativity, particularly if that is what the topic's notably is based one. It just should not be the very first thing say about the topic and doesn't need to be the first sentence, but can be in the second sentence of the lede. Every other lede on WP generally goes "Topic is objectively classified as (). Topic is subjectively characterized as ()." if that characterization is important to the topic. There is absolutely no reason per NPOV to make an exception for topics that are generally considered "bad" (alt/far-right people and groups for example) but this still gets to the key notability factors early enough in the lede as we'd do for all other topics. --Masem (t) 15:47, 24 December 2020 (UTC)

You know, to play dumb devil's advocate, a sociopath isn't necessarily going to be able to tell that it's evil just by reading a description that says 'he killed 6 million people'. --Izno (talk) 16:15, 24 December 2020 (UTC)

Controversial subjects

Many articles say "this subject is controversial, with some people applauding and some people condemning". Well, that's not very informative.

Any subject is controversial, no matter how obvious it seems at first sight. Even whether the Earth is round or if vaccines prevent diseases. On the contrary, it would be unusual that an article says "every one of the 7 billion people in the world think exactly the same about X".

The article on Donald Trump says: "His election and policies have sparked numerous protests". Who hasn't? That's barley newsworthy, much less to include in the lead.

It also says: "He reacted slowly to the COVID-19 pandemic". Er, most governments did.

Now, it also says: "He made unsubstantiated accusations of electoral fraud". Now that's s strong statement. It would be more neutral just to state that courts rejected all those accusations. I'm pretty sure that many other sections of the article make non-neutral statements. As the original poster said, these affect the trusstworthiness of Wikipedia.

--NaBUru38 (talk) 11:51, 29 December 2020 (UTC)

The problem with the Trump text is that, as editors, we can't pass judgement on partisan nonsense while that squabbling is going on. So the current text is accurate, but weak. However that will get fixed as we transition from live-news sourcing to historical-oriented sourcing. Historians are rapidly cementing Trump as the worst president in US history. (Historical rankings of presidents of the United States has preliminary surveys, and all indications over the last two years are that historians only firmed up on ranking Trump as the worst.) The shift in sourcing will, in time, allow the lead to more clearly and directly summarize the reasons why Trump was a complete shitshow. And again, anyone who doesn't like what current sources say, or who doesn't like how historians rank Trump, have no business arguing about that on Wikipedia. If someone doesn't like what the sources say, any efforts to "fix" that need to be taken off-Wikipedia. Alsee (talk) 16:35, 29 December 2020 (UTC)

More the issue of the lede at Donald Trump would be excessive emphasis on his presidency and criticism of it. This is not to say WP cannot lay out that criticism in the lede, but we have to consider that there's a whole swathe of articles about Trump's presidency that these can go into detail there; further, while there's very little positive that can be said out of his presidency and we can't make a false balance, at this point in time we should be careful about overloading the negatives in the lede. But the statements that are being pointed out all seem legit given sourcing. --Masem (t) 17:04, 29 December 2020 (UTC)

See this US News article: "These "academic parlor games," as historian and presidential expert Richard Norton Smith calls them, have been conducted for years. None are perfect, he says, and historical comparisons of leaders who served in two completely different eras becomes difficult." Put the WP:Crystal away because it's still too early to make a credible determination, although if we're judging only personalities, Trump would clearly take the lead away from Obama as the worst president since WWII. At this point in time, we're dealing with subjective political views, echo chamber-style news, most of which is left-leaning, and then there's the COVID pandemic. WP has alienated a good portion of its conservative readers while gaining readers in other respects. We've also lost a substantial number of editors, arguably as a result of WP's left-wing ideology per The Critic, and that's kinda sad. Half the US will see it one way, and the other half another and that will probably hold true for the UK as well. I've also seen misunderstandings about American politics by some Europeans who are accustomed to a different form of government, so unless they've actually had years of studying/living under US government, and are familiar with the 3 branches of government, the US Constitution, Bill of Rights, electoral college and are familiar with the Federalist Papers which provide context/intent, chances are they will naturally relate more to their own country's type of government. SCOTUS is charged with the job of interpretation in the US because there are American politicians and citizens who still don't understand our form of government or the purpose of the electoral college. With all of the latter in mind, it's hard to get excited about WP publishing neutral AP2 articles this early on. Right now, we're not much more than mirrors of left leaning media per this Bloomberg article. Jimbo addressed the issue in one of his responses in 2019 which I have "enshrined" on my UTP. Just look at the grading system at WP:RS/P, and you'll see some instances of ideological bias, some of which is explained in how we achieve consensus. There's no doubt that several of our political leads are in dire need of improvement if we ever hope to achieve NPOV but it's going to take time. I'd like to see more strict adherence to our core content policies, as well as RECENTISM, NOTNEWS, 10YT and RS. If there's ever an RfC relative to the aforementioned, I hope it will be announced via Centralized discussion. Atsme 💬 📧 19:50, 29 December 2020 (UTC)

SCOTUS is charged with the job of interpretation in the US because there are American politicians and citizens who still don't understand our form of government or the purpose of the electoral college - there certainly are such politicians and citizens. Some of them are now serving in lame duck roles as president or members of cabinet, or have been holding press conferences in front of landscaping firms. Newimpartial (talk) 20:23, 29 December 2020 (UTC)

I started this discussion about the NPOV-differences I noticed in several current articles when comparing them with the same from 2016. Issues with the 2020 election, aftermath and involved persons logically can not belong in the scope of this discussion. As a side note, I would say that phrases like "Trump's political positions have been described as populist, protectionist, isolationist, and nationalist." and "Many of his comments and actions have been characterized as racially charged or racist." are much more neutral than something like "Donald Trump is a racist, populist, protectionist, isolationist, and nationalist politician, who is the 45th and current president of the United States." As such, the problems I described are not the ones in Trump's article. But that said: this discussion is going on for more than two months now. I believe all arguments have been written. Shouldn't there be an administrator/staff member close the discussion, and come to a judgement by now? Regards,Jeff5102 (talk) 20:13, 1 January 2021 (UTC)

I have just discovered and read this whole discussion. Given your statements

• WP:FALSEBALANCE is about " claims that the Earth is flat, that the Knights Templar possessed the Holy Grail, that the Apollo moon landings were a hoax, and similar ones."
• I am not interested in what reliable sources say: I am interested in writing good, unbiased articles.
• I agree with Triumph of the Will. It is safe to say that movies, produced by the Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, can safely be called "a "propaganda movie" in the lead. As for "Expelled": I don't know about that one.
• Avoid to bring up your own opinion: even though every sane person should agree that Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed is a propaganda movie posing as a documentary supporting a pseudo-scientific idea, don't tell the reader that

my impression is that you do not want the reliable sources to decide what is the right and neutral way of putting it, you want to decide it yourself. When it comes to Triumph of the Will being propaganda, it is OK for you to avoid false balance. But not when it comes to "Expelled". So, what is the real difference between both? Reliable sources agree that one is propaganda, and they agree that the other is propaganda. The difference is your personal opinion on what the correct stance is: you regard "Triumph of the Will is propaganda" as a fact, and "Expelled is propaganda" as just your own opinion. But you do not get to decide that. Reliable sources get to decide that. Of course that is not only about you, but also about those who agreed with you. Don't see this as an attack; it is not intended as such. I just want you to see that your own biases will creep in even when you try very hard to keep them from doing so. Mine sure do.

Since Wikipedia has been founded, reliable sources have changed their ways. They have moved away from false balance, toward being more fact-based. Before, they treated things like intelligent design and climate change denial, which have no basis in fact, in a some-say-this-and-some-say-that manner. Now, they tend to care more for truth and denounce those ideas. You picked 2016 as your comparison point for article intros, and 2016 was a year when the who-cares-what-is-true-let's-just-report-who-said-what attitude bore ugly fruit - which have since turned into windfall. The reality-based community has fought back, and maybe the article intro changes reflect that.

Two of Wikipedia's pillars are neutral language and dependance on reliable sources, and the ground on which the second pillar rests has moved. Now we are doing the splits, and we must choose one pillar to stand on or collapse. Some here favor the first pillar and others favor the second one. Well, WP:LUNATIC tells us where Jimbo stands: on the second one. I do not think that removing even a part of that second pillar is a viable option. When reliable sources tell us something is a lie, we cannot override them, not because we happen to disagree with them and also not because we happen to agree with them and feel we should avoid writing something that is also our own position. --Hob Gadling (talk) 18:47, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

You already literally quoted my argument: “movies, produced by the Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, can safely be called "a "propaganda movie" in the lead.” As such, when a self-proclaimed propagandist produces a movie, it may be called a “propaganda movie.” I can only assume that this point is logical; it is not my “bias” or “personal opinion” that made the nazis call their ministry like that.

But that aside: like I said above: editors, who want to have their personal opinions shown, can edit Conservapedia or RationalWiki. Those who prefer a more neutral approach, can edit over here. And to establish that, we need to be better both better than our opinions, and be better than those “Reliable Sources.” After all, editors on reliable sources have their personal opinions too, which we should not allow to have them included in Wikipedia.

Therefore, we need to be even better than the New York Times, CNN, or CBS News. Being named a reliable source by some Wikipedians (and largely rightly so) does not make that source infallible. As with Wikipedians, the own biases of reporters and journalists will creep in in their articles, even when they try very hard to keep them from doing so. That is especially true in the current 24-hour news-cycle, in a world with sharply divided opinions. We always need to be careful and critical. Therefore, blindly copy-pasting what reliable sources have to say on a topic sounds like a ridiculously careless idea to me.

And as such, I would prefer Brittanica’s approach on its article on homeopathy above the current one on Wikipedia. Brittanica says homeopathy doesn’t work in a much gentler, neutral way, without ignoring reality. I see still see that as an example; not as an outdated concept. Regards,Jeff5102 (talk) 14:15, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

Jeff5102 I understand you have good intentions, but the idea won't work. In the name of neutrality you are advocating that Wikipedia take a more Conservapedia approach, where random idiots on the internet (us) pass judgement that scientists being biased and unfair. Pass judgement that professional historians are being biased and unfair. That medical professionals are being biased and unfair. That Reliable Sources in general are being biased and unfair. We already have a hard enough time keeping issue-advocates under control, gutting the core of NPOV policy to invite overruling majority mainstream Reliable Source coverage is a recipe to fail. It's hard enough getting random idiots on the internet to accurately summarize what the Reliable experts and professionals say. It is a well intentioned fool's errand to imagine that random idiots on the internet are somehow going to make things better by overruling the Reliable majority mainstream coverage. WP:OR: A perfect editor doesn't know anything (and imperfect editors are to keep what they think they know out of articles). WP:NPOV: A perfect editor doesn't have have any opinion on the content being summarized (and imperfect editors are to keep their opinions out of their work). You are inviting editors to have opinions on the content, and explicitly suggesting they insert their opinions instead of an accurate summary of the Reliable experts and professionals. For every time that arguably results in an improvement, there will be multiple failures. Wikipedia does not contain Truth, it is an accurate summary of what Reliable Sources say. Anything that allows or encourages Truth-warriors to overrule ReliableSource coverage is a recipe to fail. Alsee (talk) 21:10, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

Sorry, Alsee, but that is not what I am saying. I do not understand how my "We are here to make neutral, accurate and factually presented articles, to have readers form their own opinions, not to tell them how to think about persons,organisations, documentaries or music groups." morphed into "You are inviting editors to have opinions on the content, and explicitly suggesting they insert their opinions instead of an accurate summary of the Reliable experts and professionals." Nor do I understand how my "Being named a reliable source by some Wikipedians (and largely rightly so) does not make that source infallible" morphed into me advocating that "Reliable Sources in general are being biased and unfair."

Furthermore, it is confusing to see that Hob Gadling disagrees with me, because nowadays, Wikipedians "care more for truth", while you disagree with me, because "Wikipedia does not contain Truth".

Thus, per WP:GOODFAITH: what was your intention with your last comment?Jeff5102 (talk) 09:15, 12 January 2021 (UTC)

Your confusion was caused by your misreading of what I wrote. I extract the relevant parts: reliable sources have changed their ways. [..] Now, they tend to care more for truth Do you now see who "they" is? It is not "Wikipedians".

So, what does your quote "Being named a reliable source by some Wikipedians (and largely rightly so) does not make that source infallible" mean? So what if they are fallible? Does it mean that Wikipedians should correct what they see as potential mistakes and replace what the reliable sources say by some-say-this-others-say-that text? That would be WP:OR. That is what Alsee is saying: You want to reject the judgment of reliable sources on, say, Expelled, and want to force the reader to form an own opinion unhindered by previous expert assessment. RS could be wrong, so let us not repeat them! Whew, we have avoided the remote hypothetical possibility that Wikipedia contains a false statement, at the price of throwing out one which is very probably true. Let's avoid collecting the knowledge of humanity because some of it could be wrong.

Do you really believe that readers can "form their own opinions" only if Wikipedians predigest their message, remove any bits that taste to them like evaluation, and turn it into a flavorless pulp, while if we report on how RS are judging something, the readers' opinion-forming glands are somehow inhibited?

Reliable sources on a subject usually have inside knowledge and professional skills the average reader lacks, and they are able to connect dots and get a meaningful picture. If you show the same dots to laypeople without saying which picture the experts see, the opinion they form will be random and worthless, but at least you have reached your goal of having them form one. Your flavor of neutrality is just another form of bias, leading to another flavor of misinformation. --Hob Gadling (talk) 10:32, 12 January 2021 (UTC)

Jeff5102 you are objecting to what Reliable Sources say, and arguing we should not allow [an accurate summary of Reliable sources to be] included in Wikipedia. You say we need to be better [] better than those “Reliable Sources”, that a bunch of random idiots on the internet are supposed to be 'better' than professional scientists and professional historians and professional reporters who operate under professional editorial management, and that random internet idiots are to pass judgement over and overrule the majority-mainstream-Reliable sources. If the prevailing Reliable Source view is that something is a conspiracy theory, or pseudoscience, or propaganda, or far-left, or far-right, or whatever, we can't allow the UFO-fans or political-activists to strike that because they feel the Reliable mainstream position is biased or unfair. That is substituting editor opinion in place of an accurate summary of Reliable Source info. I am personally baffled why anyone considers the Mona Lisa a significant or even interesting painting. However if the experts say it is a "masterpiece" with an "enigmatic expression" and assert a "monumentality of the composition", then our job is to accurately summarize that. Those are all opinions, and you argue we are to overrule those Reliable expert views. We can't have editors trying to "do better" by excluding or overruling the majority mainstream Reliable expert content. Our core struggle is to get imperfect editors to stop asserting their personal opinions over what the sources say. An ideal editor wouldn't care what the sources are saying. They would just summarize it accurately. Alsee (talk) 14:18, 12 January 2021 (UTC)

So, if a propagandist calls himself a propagandist, we call his products propaganda, and if he doesn't, we don't? He gets to decide what Wikipedia calls him? You want to ignore the reliable sources and let the propagandist do his propaganda on Wikipedia, although you personally disagree with him? Well, that is, as I said, "your personal opinion on what the correct stance is", or "your bias", but reliable sources do it differently. They call both movies propaganda. We follow reliable sources and not you. --Hob Gadling (talk) 10:32, 12 January 2021 (UTC)

Hob, let me first thank you for clarifying the "they" in your response. I misread that one indeed. Now, I was mostly referring to the newsmedia when I was saying that reliable sources aren't infallible.I already explained that in the sentence afterwards. I do not know about you guys, but I refuse to write over here that Iraq had weapons of mass destucktion, because a reliable source like The New York Times said so, even when I know that those at the New York Times are professional reporters who operate under professional editorial management. It is beyond me how a critical stance towards news media opens the door towards UFO-fans. Anyway, to keep with the Expelled-example: Already in the version of March of my beloved year 2016, at the end of the lead, we could read:

The general media response to the film has been largely unfavorable. Multiple reviews, including those of USA Today and Scientific American, have described the film as propaganda.^[1][2][3] The Chicago Tribune's rating was "1 star (poor),"^[4] while The New York Times described it as "a conspiracy-theory rant masquerading as investigative inquiry" and "an unprincipled propaganda piece that insults believers and nonbelievers alike."^[1] It received an 9% meta-score ("rotten") in late May 2008 from the film review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes (later improved to 11% overall) where the film was summarized thus: "Full of patronizing, poorly structured arguments, Expelled is a cynical political stunt in the guise of a documentary."^[5] Christianity Today gave the film a positive review, earning a rating of 3 out of 4 stars.^[6]

The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) describes the film as dishonest and divisive propaganda, aimed at introducing religious ideas into public school science classrooms.^[7] Paul Kurtz, founder and late chairman of the Center for Inquiry, called the film “anti-science propaganda” and an “exercise in anti-intellectualism at its worst.”^[8] The film has been used in private screenings to legislators as part of the Discovery Institute intelligent design campaign for Academic Freedom bills.^[9]

In this text, there were enough sources present to see that the "Let's avoid collecting the knowledge of humanity because some of it could be wrong"-claim is baseless. But what is more important: the Wikipedia-article did not say the movie was propaganda; the encyclopedia stayed neutral on that point. Instead, it merely quoted the authoritive scientific outlets saying so, and let the reader decide if all these scientific outlets were right or wrong. Moreover, under this text, all falsehoods in Expelled are summed up extensively. As such, the reader can follow the reliable sources, and doesn't have to follow the judgement of the people, who Alsee describes as "bunch of random idiots on the internet" (Thanks, Alsee. That excactly is the kind of appreciation I like to see after my 15 years of editing here).. In short: I do not mind having reliable sources quoted on wikipedia that say a movie is a propaganda piece (and why should I?). I only oppose that Wikipedia itself says it, since Wikipeda is merely written by bunch of random idiots, and idiots aren't the ones to judge. Jeff5102 (talk) 16:08, 12 January 2021 (UTC)

Jeff5102 you may have missed that I referred to myself as a random idiot on the internet. The only way the Wikipedia model can work is if we firmly insist random idiots on the internet (us) do not get to argue whether scientists or other Reliable Sources are wrong. Internet Truth arguments are endless.

Regarding It is beyond me how a critical stance towards news media opens the door towards UFO-fans: People advancing a fringe or non-ReliableSource view often advance the same argument you do, I've seen it repeatedly. They argue the source content is just an opinion, just a theory, or biased, or wrong. Either they misunderstand NPOV policy, or they argue to change it. They object to how the content is covered in the sources, they want editors to be better than the sources, they want editors to pass judgement on the sources and fix it so Wikipedia is "neutral" between their position and the mainstream Reliable Source position. That is not what the "neutral" in NPOV means.

A perfect NPOV editor is one who doesn't care what the sources say, an editor who just summarizes the sources accurately. If the sources are wrong, or biased, or part of come alleged conspiracy, NPOV means Wikipedia is an accurately reference-summary of the wrong/biased/conspiracy content. That is because Wikipedia cannot be a platform for random idiots on the internet to argue scientists or other ReliableSources are wrong. If the science books say the moon is made of cheese then Wikipedia will say the moon is made of cheese. If someone wants to argue that the moon is not made of cheese, they must go off wiki and work on fixing the sources.

When abundant Reliable Sources assert something in a factual manner, and when there is zero Reliable dissent or only Fringe dissent, it is generally appropriate to summarize the content with a direct statement as the sources do. We should not butcher every sentence in the Evolution article into attributed-claims-by-some-scientists. That's not your intent, but that's the door you're suggesting we open. Objecting to an accurate summary means the objection actually lies with the coverage in the sources. Alsee (talk) 12:11, 13 January 2021 (UTC)

This is broadly my takeaway. I think it's noteworthy that a number of the people arguing for major policy changes above express dissatisfaction with how reliable sources are covering things today. People aren't really upset that Wikipedia is biased, they're upset with mainstream coverage of topics in reliable sources, and are trying to address that on Wikipedia because it's the one place they can push back against it - but that falls under WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS. If eg. reliable sources refer to someone as a white supremacist, we're ultimately required to do so ourselves; we cannot go "reliable sources are using this term too freely, let's put our thumb on the scale to correct it!" Neutrality is ultimately determined by looking at the sources, not our guts. --Aquillion (talk) 17:29, 13 January 2021 (UTC)

I disagree with the "A perfect NPOV editor is one who doesn't care what the sources say, an editor who just summarizes the sources accurately."-stance. Editors should see what is of value, and what is not. They should combine all sources into an article that is the best reflection of the truth. Just see my comments on the articles of Noam Chomsky and Steven Crowder throughout the discussion for this. I would rather be an idiot, who judges the merits of the sources, than a brainless copy-paster, who summarizes some hit-piece of a disgruntled editor of the Washington Post (which is a reliable source). If that disqualifies me from being a good editor per WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS, then this "upset random idiot" leaves for the Commons, and wishes you all well.Jeff5102 (talk) 14:57, 14 January 2021 (UTC)

This I agree with as well, as its absolutely necessary to understand the broader relationship that what we are using as reliable sources for a topic have with that topic; it is not just sufficient to blindly summarize them, and this is actually supported in NPOV's language in terms of being aware of what is being the printed word in the RSes. Case in point is that it would be poor of us to not consider that the quality RSes we have for American politics are very much at odds with Donald Trump, who is also very much at odds with them. This doesn't mean these sources aren't useable but we have to be aware of their bias and have good reason to keep things with inline attribution than to take as fact. But that goes back to why NOT#NEWS and RECENTISM are important in that we should not be using sources so close to the time, or so close to the matters at hand for analysis and opinion but instead look to those sources that are well separated in both time and any connection to the event, who are going to be far more disinterested and dispassionate and thus their analysis and opinion would be more appropriate to consider.

What is important is that if the current RSes are all near unified in some type of opinion that that still is reflected appropriate per UNDUE/WEIGHT, but it still needs to be respected as opinion if it's still coming from sources with a close time or topic-relationship to the topic at hand. That the RSes express universal detest of Trump is something I would expect to read in our coverage, as long as it is stated this as attributed to the media. That meets verifyability, that meets NOR, and that meets NPOV. Key to all this is that we do not blindly follow RSes; we're not that beholden to take every word they printed as undisputable fact blindly, though we are not in a position to completely doubt the authority of their word, as some IPs would tend to want us to do. --Masem (t) 16:20, 14 January 2021 (UTC)

• The initial example for this discussion was originally my wording, many years ago, using Stalin. Difficult as it is to write truly NPOV about things which really matter, It is harder still to apply NPOV in summaries, and even harder in lede sentences, and it's better not to try to reduce to a single term. I don't think we ever have to use epithets, whether positive or negative. We can always avoid it by summarizing what the person has done that makes them notable . It may be easier to understand if we look in a positive sense: we do not have to write , for example," Luc Montagnier is a famous scientist-"-we can say "Luc Montagnier is a scientist who won the Nobel prize for the discovery of the HIV virus". We don't even have so say X is a criminal. , when we can say X is known for his role in the murder of A. It can be tricky, because not everything's importance can be expressed so easily. It might be right to say that CATO is "a libertarian free-market think tank" (though it would be perhaps better to say "a think tank that generally supports free-market libertarian positions" --the very first thing I want to know at such an article is the political orientation, and I think everyone including themselves would agree on that; but it is gross overemphasis to add "funded by polluters,", when that's only one particular criticism about it.There may be a reasonable connection between supporting free market libertarianism and engaging in industrial pollution, but that's a political opinion, not a basic fact.

Applying to politics the Pseudoscience ArbCom decision used in WP to justify the framing of a particular practice as "pseudoscience" is a mistake--the degree of general consensus possible in these two areas is very different. . Even in science, that decision, at least in how it is being interpreted, was in my opinion the most momentous error ever committed by arbcom. The world is not as simple as they thought; the best way of ensuring neutrality is to avoid anything that might be taken as a judgement of value, rather than statement of fact-- one could in most cases better say "a therapeutic practice not supported by most physicians". Even such practitioners would agree on that, and it's even clearer. Politcs is much more complicated Judging the role of a contemporary politician in a few words is usually impossible. I can think of many terms to apply to the current president, but no single one seems sufficient. If I had to , I would say "whose views and sharply polarized the country" which would be enough of an alert for an imaginary someone who had never heard of him.

We write articles, not taglines, because articles are necessary to explain things requing more than a dictionary definition. DGG ( talk ) 06:42, 16 January 2021 (UTC)

C:1 of WP:ANYBIO states that:

The person has received a well-known and significant award or honor, or has been nominated for such an award several times.

• Related theory: It is a common instinct that the winner of a major award will obviously get enough coverage and that may have been the ground for the enactment of this criteria but the foremost fact that undermines this criteria's reliability is that there have been several instances where a major award has been given unfairly to an undeserving person for comparatively trivial things. In these situations, the subject, although expected, does not receive significant coverage. An example was provided by Eddie891 on his talk page here. Another one is Deviprasad Dwivedi who is the recipient of Padma Bhushan for something that i couldn't find despite trying. A writer whose books (has only written three or four) have never been reviewed and an academician for a local university. Nothing else on his resumé other than being member of some regional associations. The articles of these peoples are stubs that can neither be expanded nor can be referenced and therefore undermine the reliability of Wikipedia.
• Derived conclusion: We have to lay more stress on the contribution for which a person gets an award and the consequence (coverage, recognition etc.) rather than just the significance of the award that they have got in order to be more consistent in judging the notability. Also, "well-known and significant" sounds subjective given that it has not been defined that what makes an award significant.
• Proposed amendment: I think that we should either define the weightage of these notability criterias (blatantly failing WP:SIGCOV or WP:GNG overrules passing WP:ANYBIO which is anyways an additional criteria rather than a basic one) or replace C1:ANYBIO with something that is more precise. I lie in favour of the former.

Pesticide1110 ^{Lets wrestle!} 11:35, 13 January 2021 (UTC)

I would say WP:ANYBIO is a weak and almost worthless section. I believe the first line of WP:ANYBIO basically provides the answer here:

People are likely to be notable if they meet any of the following standards. Failure to meet these criteria is not conclusive proof that a subject should not be included; conversely, meeting one or more does not guarantee that a subject should be included.

That line pretty well says ANYBIO is a vague suggestion someone might be Notable, but that doesn't really establish someone is or is-not Notable. Notability is actually established by WP:SIGCOV / WP:GNG or perhaps under other sections of WP:Notability (people). Alsee (talk) 12:36, 13 January 2021 (UTC)

@Alsee: I agree with you. But some peoples i have come across here do not. See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Deviprasad Dwivedi. Your contribution to the ongoing deletion review will be helpful and would prevent editors from taking a wrong step in the implementation of WP:ANYBIO. Pesticide1110 ^{Lets wrestle!} 14:40, 13 January 2021 (UTC)

• Agreed that WP:ANYBIO is pretty weak and overly subjective. ((u|Sdkb)) ^talk 10:50, 14 January 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose per WP:CREEP. We don't have exact numerical weightings for the various notability guidelines. As they are guidelines, rather than policies, they are explicitly loose and exceptions may apply. When it comes to awards and honours then there is a large range of possibilities and each case will tend to be judged on its merits rather than according to some hypothetical formula which the OP doesn't detail. Andrew🐉(talk) 16:27, 14 January 2021 (UTC)

  It's really subjective i think. Don't you think that it could be made more precise? It'll help decrease the cases of misinterpretion of it. Pesticide1110 ^{Lets wrestle!} 16:37, 14 January 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose This sounds like guideline creep to me. The problem of judging whether or not a person merits an entry in an encyclopedia is intrinsically difficult, and throwing more words at it won't eliminate gray areas and edge cases. XOR'easter (talk) 16:58, 14 January 2021 (UTC)
  • Amendment is a necessity because this guideline is misleading. Coverage comes only when your contributions are worthy enough because the incident of winning an award comprises of only 1% of any article covering such happenings. The rest answers the "why". If there is no answer to the why, then there's no point of dedicating an article. Yet again, i cite Deviprasad Dwivedi as an example. Deviprasad was a member of the Union Public Service Commission at the time when he was awarded the Padma Bhushan. And around the same time this information surfaced. This shows the real reason why he was awarded. He is granted notability per ANYBIO but he has received no coverage let alone coverage by independent reliable sources. Stating these repeatedly may leave a bad impression of mine but this can be helpful when shared. Pesticide1110 ^{Lets wrestle!} 09:08, 16 January 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose. All the guidelines are inherently subjective, and I've seen good faith arguments based on GNG used by experienced editors on both sides in Articles for deletion. I don't see that we, as Wikipedia editors, are in a good position to be able to rule that a national or international awards-making panel has made a mistake. It might be helpful to compile a list of awards that are generally perceived to confer notability and lead to retention in Articles for deletion, but it would be descriptive (like Outcomes) not prescriptive. Espresso Addict (talk) 01:52, 15 January 2021 (UTC)
• Comment: We've got a lot of people citing WP:CREEP here. Well, i'm not asking for the three-line criteria to be expanded to a form where it becomes "unmanageable". I'm basically asking for narrowing the scope of the criteria. What a "significant" or "well-known" award is, is left undescribed. And due to such subjectiveness, which i contradict is not common in any other guideline, many peoples are declared notable when they are not notable at all. Pesticide1110 ^{Lets wrestle!} 08:06, 16 January 2021 (UTC)
  • Comment: It's like, Pompeia (wife of Caesar) had done nothing, remove her article because, "Caesar's wife must be above suspicion"! Bookku (talk) 09:46, 16 January 2021 (UTC)
    • Caesar's wife is an important figure and part of historical events of high importance. Additionally, she has been the subject of various studies, print and high-profile researches. P.S. I never said "has done nothing". There's not a single person who hasn't done anything. Instead, i said that Deviprasad has done nothing so as to receive the Padma Bhushan. Here, his work is being compared to the general PB winners. Its like comparing a book shelf to a whole library. Pesticide1110 ^{Lets wrestle!} 10:10, 16 January 2021 (UTC)
  • Additionally, she has been the subject of various studies, print and high-profile researches. So you mean there was more to her than Wikipedia article Pompeia (wife of Caesar) mentions, What is that ? Caesar's wife is an important figure How? just because she was Caesar's wife? and part of historical events of high importance. Which ones? as of now article Pompeia (wife of Caesar) mentions only of celebrating one of regualr festival with women, what is so special in that? If she was really important Caesar would not have divorced her! What did Diana, Princess of Wales do other than marrying a prince later divorcing him and dying in an accident, her birth, marriage and road accidents were just another accidents out of trillions of accidents that happen every year, what did Diana, Princess of Wales do to merit a Wikipedia article? Do you know how many numbers of Criminals do have Wikipedia articles? many Criminals even won't have articles in their names and still Wikipedia has articles! Why ? just because they are encyclopedically notable and do have significant coverage, isn't it?

What business any Wikipedian has in their encyclopedic editorial role to decide if some is worth an award or not? It is for those agencies which give awards. If some one has some award reader searches for information, and Wikipedia's business is to render whatever information available – the awardee fellows were worth or not readers will decide after reading information, Why Wikipedia editors do need to decide worth of some one for readers, what to read and what not to read and what to think? once some one has an award hence has notability? next is just speak about if significant coverage is available or not. As much significant coverage available cover it and present it. Wikipedia collects donations from general readers and then those reader have right to check whatever available information on Wikipedia, don't they? And Wikipedians do have 'moral responsibility' to provide maximum information won't they?

This reminds me the great US President Donald Trump asked Yazidi Nadia Murad what did she get noble peace prize for? May be for Donald Trump she was just another raped woman! Are Wikipedians editors in their editorial role small copies of Donald Trumps to decide whether one is worth of noble peace prize or not? And which prize is big and which is small?

Bookku (talk) 13:24, 16 January 2021 (UTC)

Bookku Thankfully, i've learned the skill to tolerate pointless and offensive arguments so i don't mind being called "small copy of donald trump"."And which prize is big and which prize is small?" The one that occupies more volume of space is the bigger one. "Many criminals do not have any article in their name but still wikipedia has articles because they do have significant coverage" So a person can not have any article "in their name" but still be significantly covered? New information for me. And at last the question that appears everywhere in your comment- "who are wikipedians to judge who is worthy or not". I have not only judged but i've backed it up. The TOI article and the complete absence of any kind of contribution by him explains it all. And Wikipedia has never forbidden anyone of us from using "common-sense" which i am using here. "You presented your best attitude with this comment. Wikipedians can do better than this." Pesticide1110 ^{Lets wrestle!} 15:17, 16 January 2021 (UTC)

• Yes I repeat Wikipedians can do better than this. and also that they don't have any moral right to pass value judgements in their editorial role beyond discussing notability and significant coverage (Pl. do read again)Bookku (talk) 15:29, 16 January 2021 (UTC)

• Fix the general problem by setting a minimum standard for all articles about individual people. I think that this problem would evaporate if we fixed the big problem, which is that editors have invented, over the years, a variety of "objective" reasons to write articles without considering whether it is actually going to be possible to write an article. I give several examples:
  • "Anyone who gets paid to play certain games": Write an article. It's okay if the only thing you know is the person's name and the place where he played the article. Wikipedia should have whole article that says "One time about 150 years ago, This Guy got paid to play one ball game. Nothing else is known about him."
  • "Any school that issues a diploma": In this case, according to its supporters, you don't even have to know the name of the school. I'm not kidding. I asked some of them once about whether we should have an article on a school I'd learned of, which was in operation for a year or two during the 19th century. I told them that all that was known was the the approximate location, the approximate dates of operation, and that it had burned down. They said, yes, absolutely, if even one student had completed his education there, then we needed an article. And... we'd name the article what? Nobody knows the name of the school. Nobody knows if it even had a name. Unnamed school operating for part of two years in a 19th-century California mountain logging camp? Yeah, right. Not even knowing the subject's name is a tolerably good indicator that the subject isn't notable.
  • "Any academic who had a significant impact on universities": The preferred source, according to the PROF proponents, is the subject's own self-published résumé, bolstered by press releases from his employer. They say it's unfair to expect Wikipedia:Independent sources or a Wikipedia:Secondary source about any modern academic's life, and they beg to be excused from core content policy requirements such as NOT's "All article topics must be verifiable with independent, third-party sources" or NOR's "Wikipedia articles should be based on reliable, published secondary sources".
  • "Anybody whose career is being quoted in the news": Don't bother with things like whether anyone ever writes anything more about him as a person than labeling him as a "computer consultant" when quoting him. The important thing is that he got his name in the paper by returning phone calls from journalists. Begin the article with "Chris Consultant is a computer consultant who is regularly quoted in the news" and fill the rest with evidence of him expressing opinions to journalists who were desperate for anyone who was willing to be quoted on the record.
• The bottom line is that if we actually required that it be possible to write a non-stub-length article that described the person's life directly (e.g., content such as "Chris Consultant attended Big U.") while citing only independent sources (which means that you can't cite Chris Consultant's résumé to claim that he attended Big U.), then we wouldn't have problems with people who win "significant" awards but nothing's known about them except what they say about themselves. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:59, 16 January 2021 (UTC)

Circular reporting is "a situation in source criticism where a piece of information appears to come from multiple independent sources, but in reality comes from only one source". This may occur for example when one book makes a claim (the veracity, context, and coverage on the claim being another matter), and some other books may repeat the claim and cite the original book, including both direct citations and indirect citations (book cites another book that cites the original). This provides the illusion that the claim is independently made by each different source, when in fact there was only one original claim, and the other works simply cite that. Essentially, there's only one actual and original source for the claim.

Is this covered in any Wikipedia policies already? If not, why may that be, and what can be done to change it? Thanks!

PS: I know about the circular reporting template, but it is specific to sources that use Wikipedia as a source and isn't a formal guideline. Saucysalsa30 (talk) 22:35, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

Perhaps you are looking for WP:CIRCULAR? I think that covers much of it from a policy standpoint. PackMecEng (talk) 22:37, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

Unfortunately, WP:CIRCULAR is confined to using Wikipedia articles as sources. Is there a policy regarding the more general case described in the opening comment, or can WP:CIRCULAR be extended to cover it? Saucysalsa30 (talk) 23:11, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

I suppose possibly WP:USEBYOTHERS partially covers that, from a reliability standpoint. I'll keep looking. PackMecEng (talk) 23:21, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

Saucysalsa30, WP:CITOGENESIS has information about specific incidents occurring here and how they were handled. Elizium23 (talk) 23:38, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

Saucysalsa30, Wikipedia policies are forged to assist editors with things that occur on Wikipedia. The behavior of sources citing other sources is rather beyond our ken, and not something that a policy will be written about.

There is a great deal of discretion given to editors insofar as our use of reliable sources, when and if a consensus determines them as reliable. I can foresee that if a given source is known for believing a fact that was reported by only one unreliable source, then transitively we could judge it as reliable. But single-source reporting comes up so much, and is not inherently unreliable, so I don't see how we could adequately defend against all cases of it.

Sometimes you have a source and it is the only definitive scholarly source on a topic and others "stand on the shoulders of giants". Other times, you have a source that is fringey or dicey and asserts something and other less-dicey sources pick it up, and it is "blessed" into the common knowledge that way. Once again, I don't see a way for Wikipedia as a body to defend against these things.

We are here to summarize reliable sources, and part of that job includes determining which sources are and aren't reliable, but when we get down in the weeds of determining the provenance of individual facts, that is just beyond our ken; we summarize and move on. Elizium23 (talk) 23:43, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

Elizium23 Thanks for the response. For clarification, WP:CITOGENESIS is also specific to circular reporting with respect to Wikipedia itself. The deeper question is why is this considered a problem everywhere else in reporting, but not in Wikipedia? More pertinent, if we aren't to be concerned with sources citing other sources, then why do WP:USEBYOTHERS and other guidelines exist that are specifically concerned with sources citing sources? That is, is this a contradiction?

With regards to the statement, "Other times, you have a source that is fringey or dicey and asserts something and other less-dicey sources pick it up, and it is "blessed" into the common knowledge that way," this is inadvertently dangerous. If for example one book trivially has a couple sentences in a footnote making a completely novel claim and gets picked up in other works, how is that situation handled? I understand other issues such including trivial mention and WP:CONTEXTMATTERS are at play here that may not qualify such content as encyclopedic information, but specifically with regards to the circular reporting how would that be handled given Wikipedia already appears to be concerned with sources citing sources? Thanks. Saucysalsa30 (talk) 00:23, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

I would assume if a fact can be shown to be circular it then editors could discount sources that used that fact as relevant. I think the problem is proof. As an example, the infamous Pinto memo and Ford's deciding it was cheaper to pay off burn victims vs fix the Pinto. Anyway for many years that was common knowledge and all one had to do was point at an early Mother Jones article for proof. This universal understanding was widely referenced but never actually happened. Yes, the Pinto fires did and there was a memo but only much later and with strong academic sourcing and we confidently say the original story and those who repeated it were wrong. So if a modern source were to reference the claim we could show the narrative is false and discount the source per our current policies. Springee (talk) 00:44, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

Springee Agreed, and the proof of sources using an original source is certainly present if the downstream sources say X with a citation to the original source which claimed X. My question is in line with your assumption: is there a policy related to that and if not, why can't one be made? Saucysalsa30 (talk) 00:58, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

Saucysalsa30, I am daunted by the kind of editorial burden you propose to lay at our feet. We already have trouble keeping up with the deprecated sources and evaluating them at WP:RSN. There are millions of sources, how can we possibly categorize and evaluate enough of them to make a dent? Now you're proposing to slice and dice each fact and its provenance. What structures do you propose to put in place to handle this? This is why a policy is unwritable. The task is Sisyphean. Elizium23 (talk) 01:12, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

Saucysalsa30, I would say that a primary problem on Wikipedia is that facts are uncited. Not that they are unverifiable, just nobody knows what source would support a given fact. That's a visible and marginally solvable problem: place ((citation needed)) tags and someone will do the groundwork.

A secondary but even graver problem here is that facts are cited but the sources doesn't actually support the facts! We often rely on casual readers to stop and say "hey, I read this source and it doesn't say what you say it does." ((failed verification)) tags are used in this case, and get used far less often, simply because checking all sources in an article is a job for a WP:GAR and you know how many articles never, ever make it to GAR.

So now you're asking us about a related problem that isn't even on Wikipedia. It's not our problem. If sources are bad and cite another bad source and somehow that is generated into citations in a good source, it's beyond our ken to handle it. The best we can do is discover such shenanigans and red-flag the sources that caused the havoc and track them all down and strike them from our articles and then pray it never happens again. It's editorial discretion. It's the operation of consensus on RS, I don't see how a policy could be written for it. Elizium23 (talk) 01:18, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

There is a maxim Wikipedia:Verifiability, not truth. Perhaps it is germane to your query. Elizium23 (talk) 01:23, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

Elizium23 Sorry if it came across as I was implying I was asking to create more work for people, but it appears this is a misunderstanding. I'm not asking anyone to do anything or for every individual source in Wikipedia to be checked. For example, an individual editor can demonstrate out evident circular reporting on a given statement or claim within an article, and discuss it just as they can point out other issues just as is regularly done on Wikipedia. This would require checking closer to 5 sources, not millions. A guideline or warning regarding circular reporting can help editors in such content discussions.

As noted, Wikipedia already has guidelines that are concerned with sources citing sources. Do such policies need to be removed from Wikipedia? Some guidelines exist to post cautions and necessitate multiple sources on the topic like WP:REDFLAG. Why can't a warning guideline be similarly provided for identified general circular reporting (like the Wikipedia circular reporting), other than that it may theoretically create more work for editors? A guideline on that would help bring alignment on content discussions and if anything, prevent more back-and-forths and create less work.

Take this example: A statement on Wikipedia has 3 sources. There's the original source to make a claim: let's say an otherwise unsubstantiated fringe/redflag novel claim in an appendix. The other 2 sources directly cite the first source, but add nothing extra and evidently are not independent from the original source regarding the particular claim. An editor can write, "I know there's nothing covering this otherwise novel claim except a sentence in an appendix and this is not encyclopedic information for X, Y, Z reasons, but other sources cite it!" How would you handle this situation? Do you focus primarily on the underlying issues of the poor quality content to begin with, or do the additional non-independent sources add weight? Saucysalsa30 (talk) 02:09, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

If source 1 is the "origin source" for this, and sources 2 and 3 are merely duplicating its claims there still may be value to use sources 2 and 3 if source 1 is not a typical reliable source but sources 2 and 3 are very strong reliable sources that give weight to source 1. So for example, there was a recent story broke by Axios (website) related to Chinese spying in the US which is not quite the best RS in the world for that type of information, so if that was the only source reporting on it, I'd be careful. But the story was quickly picked up by multiple quality RSes like Washington Post and SF Chronicle, which to me give weight to say they considered that story reliable enough to include. In incorporating that information, I'd be careful to attribute to the originating source (source 1) but still included the sources that implicitly acknowledge the validity of the story. On the other hand, if sources 2 and 3 are at the same quality or less than source 1, they are doing nothing to help here so their inclusion is just extra weight. --Masem (t) 02:20, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

Thank you Masem. For my better understanding, let's say in this scenario that Washington Post and SF Chronicle were not writing independently from Axios, such that instead they directly cited Axios and didn't independently report the story. Also, hypothetically the Axios article was reporting on something entirely different but in an offhand random remark mentioned the Chinese spying (which may have RS/VER issues such as CONTEXTMATTERS and REDFLAG), and SF Chronicle and WaPo did nothing more than copy-paste from the Axios article regarding the offhand remark on Chinese spying? How would it be considered in this scenario? To clarify, I'm focusing more on the content itself and how it is used and treated, rather than who the publisher is. Saucysalsa30 (talk) 02:44, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

If it is clear a literal copy/paste, I would not consider the WaPost/SFC as usable sources from the primary one. For example, this is the situation all the time with Assoc. Press news. So for example, this is an AP-first story [9], which is sent on wires to other papers and picked up there. Most papers will properly identify it as a wire story from the AP (eg [10]) and so there's no point in using that second source if we have the AP source already, the second source is not helping. --Masem (t) 04:37, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

Masem Thanks for the clarification, much appreciated. Is there an editing guideline regarding (not including WP:NEWSORG but more general to include books and other publication types), or is it left to editors' discretion? Saucysalsa30 (talk) 04:49, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

Not aware of any explicit guideline, this is one of those that comes from common sense + editing experience. --Masem (t) 20:42, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

Masem Agreed with that perspective. Do you think some form of guideline under RS or VER should be created to help service as a caution to editors regarding this case? This is essentially what my initial comment was pointing towards. Saucysalsa30 (talk) 02:33, 12 January 2021 (UTC)

Saucysalsa30, it seems like a narrow special case. We generally don't try to legislate something unless it becomes contentious and outside the bounds of common sense for editors. We rely on a lot of common sense in judging sources, their reliability, and the genesis of facts. Can you document whether this is a pervasive problem? Is it particularly troublesome in sources which are cited by Wikipedia? Do you have stats? Elizium23 (talk) 02:44, 12 January 2021 (UTC)

Elizium23 Yes, it's not excessively common like ^{[citation needed]} type situations, but more like WP:NN which is not so common and not as clear-cut. The scenario I am describing in this section I've seen demonstrated by other editors or demonstrated myself ~10 times. I fully agree on common sense but as the saying goes "common sense isn't common". I don't believe there's stats for sourcing issues on Wikipedia, as there isn't an automated system or algorithm that would be capable of identifying such things like how many articles don't meet notability criteria but don't have the notability template. I understand your point though.

Given you're a very experienced editor, regarding this scenario, how would you handle it? If you point out, "There's one original source making this claim in a sentence in an appendix and this is not encyclopedic information for X, Y, Z reasons, and any other sources available on this particular claim almost-verbatim or verbatim copy-paste and cite the original", common sense says the dependent sources are frivolous. But what would you do if someone else says, "But still, other sources cite it"? Thanks. Saucysalsa30 (talk) 04:48, 12 January 2021 (UTC)

First, let me say I've never ever encountered this in my 13 years of editing. Admittedly, I haven't spent any appreciable time checking up on these things.

I would handle it by handling each source on their independent merits. If the fact could not be found elsewhere and the original source failed WP:RS then I would remove the fact with the source. Then I would evaluate the auxiliary sources. Am I positive they obtained the fact from the first source? Could it be possible that they researched or corroborated it? It depends on whether it's an important fact or an insignificant one. Evaluating each aux source and reporting this whole affair to WP:RSN and I would be essentially done with it. Elizium23 (talk) 04:57, 12 January 2021 (UTC)

But is there good reason to leave any ambiguity, if we all agree that it is inherently a bad practice to use such sources for controversial information? So when such a situation does occur here, editors will have some policy to point to, instead of just hand-waving about it being bad practice in all other media. FunkMonk (talk) 20:57, 13 January 2021 (UTC)

FunkMonk Precisely. If it's all common sense and editors will know what to do and it's bad practice everywhere in other media outside Wikipedia, why leave it to unnecessary ambiguity and arguments? Saucysalsa30 (talk) 05:42, 14 January 2021 (UTC)

@FunkMonk, we don't create this policy now, because

1. Adding more words to our impossibly long policies when we don't have a practical problem is always WP:CREEPy.
2. This problem is easily solved by normal editing, and specifically by editors remembering that three sources:
   1. Alice said ____.
   2. The Washington Post said that Alice said ____., and
   3. The San Francisco Chronicle said that Alice said ____
      do not magically add up to "____ is true".
3. It's very hard to write this and not run into serious problems with POV pushers, who will then argue that statements from reliable sources that don't say "____ is true and I promise that I fully investigated this myself and did not get any of this information from Alice, whom I consider to be utterly unreliable" actually came from Alice even when the claim is not attributed to Alice.
4. Some factual claims should always come from the same central source. Consider, e.g., the reported revenue for publicly traded companies. Who are you going to believe: The CEOs, who will go to prison if they lie about the revenue, or anyone else in the world?

While I think it's useful for editors to be aware of this problem (which is called the telephone game, not circular sourcing), we don't need a policy that encourages editors to distrust reliable sources. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:41, 16 January 2021 (UTC)

WhatamIdoing A couple of your points are good, but point 1 is not pertinent, as you could easily make that case to eliminate about 90% of Wikipedia's policies and guidelines and not allow anything else. At least this scenario is considered a serious issue in all media outside of Wikipedia and it's an oversight if anything that it isn't covered here. Also the idea here is this would be a guideline on an existing policy, rather than its own policy, so much less WP:CREEPy.

Point 2 is exactly what everyone else in this thread is saying: if it's such a common sense thing, then why leave it to ambiguity and unnecessary arguments?

Point 3: Actually in practice, POV pushers actually abuse the opposite of this. They may even even acknowledge the circular reporting going on, yet say "But other sources cite this claim so it must be necessary to include!" If there was a simple guideline in place to point them to, it would resolve disputes immediately.

Point 4: And if the claims are not factual or reliable coming from the central source or the source is not reliable even admitting to contain "rumors and stories" (remember, reliability is not only the publisher, but also the author and work itself), which is what this is about?

While related, telephone game is different from circular reporting, which is the problem at hand here. "we don't need a policy that encourages editors to distrust reliable sources." Then why is much of WP:RS and WP:VER conditions specifically about mistrusting and being careful with superficially "reliable" sources or context of sourced material? Saucysalsa30 (talk) 03:09, 16 January 2021 (UTC)

Point #1 is pertinent for all discussions about expanding policies until we have demonstrated that multiple separate editors (i.e., not just the same editor causing multiple disputes) have actually been unable to resolve disputes in a reasonable manner. Wikipedia is not a system of laws and rules, no matter what it must look like to someone who has only made a few hundred edits, and most of those in articles under Wikipedia:General sanctions/Post-1978 Iranian politics. We have no evidence that there actually has been a significant number of "unnecessary arguments" about this. Therefore, this is not the time to be writing down extra rules.

(I have seen Point #3 argued, even in the absence of written rules saying that it should be avoided, so you will not tell me that it does not happen.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:01, 16 January 2021 (UTC)

Who is the "we" here? You? Because this matter has been brought up other times by others. Not sure who you're referring to nor do I know what that project page is anyways, but if it's to me, then it's rather discourteous to demean someone simply because they refuted your points. And to repeat, I'm not suggesting rules or laws. I'm not sure why you brought that up. Saucysalsa30 (talk) 06:07, 18 January 2021 (UTC)

Masem, Springee - what are your thoughts about the media giants and the way they're grouped in this article? There's a box just above the social media links at the end of the article that's labeled Sources, and it gives a list of the RS used to gather the info. Atsme 💬 📧 00:50, 13 January 2021 (UTC)

I've been a Wikipedian for over 16 years, and I would like to comment here, that over time, many good editors have left due to exhaustion and frustration with what appears to be an ever increasing set of rules being enforced by an overzealous army of editors who seem driven by the unquenchable need to remove every bit of content that they deem unnecessary, non-notable, insignificant, or inadequately cited or sourced to degrees clearly not originally intended by the rules and guidelines. I would dare to say that Wikipedia has become a rather unfriendly place, where the police shoot first, and ask questions later. Sadly. --Thoric (talk) 18:31, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

WP has matured. Sixteen years ago, we were definitely much more maverick and open about what content we allowed but we've recognized that a lot of readers depend on us for quality research and summation, as well as trying to avoid the reputation of having 1000s of pages of Pokemon but very little on practical history. We've better focused on material that is backed by more reliable sources and less on "popular" topics which are better covered in other places. --Masem (t) 18:35, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I'm afraid you will have to give specific examples of the "increasing set of rules", the "overzealous army of editors" and the "unquenchable need to remove every bit of content." If you are just blowing of steam then so be it - everyone needs to do that from time to time but don't expect any big changes without examples of what needs to be changed. I will add, for the record, that the reference to "shooting first" would be out of line at the best of times but after the year we've lived through it is particularly vile. MarnetteD|Talk 18:40, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

Just to note that IMO the Wikipedia Seigenthaler biography incident brought about the need for WP:RS and several other guidelines and policies that are part of WikiP today. MarnetteD|Talk 18:44, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

You are assuming that Editors will move from editing articles that they have an interest in, to articles on practical history. The more likely scenario is they start off on Pokemon and move on to other things. Bits are cheap. Just have a flag saying that the article is not notable and let the user be able to exclude non notable articles. And let the project people by able to split them from their stats. AT the moment the many articles keep on being searched for and deleted. Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 08:11, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

I'm reasonably certain that this is a reaction to SMAUG and particularly Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/SMAUG (2nd nomination). Bald assertions of notability from an article's primary author are not unusual, nor is frustration at having an article one cares about nominated. The difference between 16 years ago and now is that such assertions were often accepted at AfD and now AfD participants expect there to be some evidence to back up these assertions. A MUD will always struggle with the notability criteria but that is why pop-culture topics have split off into their own Wikia universes. Indeed, there is wiki devoted entirely to MUD's and one could even create their own SMAUG wiki, if one wished. But Thoric is correct that the culture has changed and it is harder to keep articles such as the SMAUG one on en:wiki. That is by the general consensus of the participants in this community. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 19:00, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

I haven't thought about MUDs for years. I never used SMAUG (I was a Shattered Worlds fan). But SMAUG and Shattered worlds were used for AI research [11]https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-642-12842-4_40 Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 08:41, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

(ec) I agree that the "shoot ... ask" metaphor is misplaced; nobody dies here as a result of proper editing. Questions aren't asked because experience has unfortunately taught us that the majority of such questions go unanswered, and it adds a level of extra workflow complexity that we don't find palatable. It's much easier to revert something that is likely wrong or uncitable and let the promoter of it prove it. After all, restoration is only a click away. I'm not advocating blind reversion – a certain amount of finesse is required (and I believe, used). The fact that we are becoming more vigilant at removing trivia or otherwise unnecessary fluff, stuff that is uncited (and often uncitable), etc., is a good thing for the most part. Now, if we could just enforce WP:RAWDATA instead of supporting the recording of every poll or vote, goal or basket, pageant quarter-finalist, game show contestant, or minor supporting actor, etc., too much of which is never cited, verified, self-consistent, ... —[AlanM1 (talk)]— 19:05, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

Obviously the articles, not the people, are the fatalities in this case, although I know for a fact that over the past decade, a significant percentage of original editors burnt out and departed. The problem isn't that some articles are "uncitable" in so much as becoming difficult to cite according to ever changing rules. Many "cited" articles have become "uncited" as previously acceptable sources were deemed unacceptable. --Thoric (talk) 22:22, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

Articles that are deleted are not "fatalities." Considering the number of people who have died this year your continued use of such language is truly disgusting. BTW you have yet to provide examples of any "ever changing rules" that are causing a problem. Yes, sources can become unacceptable due to their actions not Wikipedia's guidelines. MarnetteD|Talk 22:32, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

Sure... keep attacking me personally because not only are you guys the Wikipedia police, you're also the language police. You guys are the very reason that the two Wikipedia founders ended working on entirely new spinoff projects. Let that sink in. "No small group of elites deserves the power to declare what is known for all of us." -- Dr. Larry Sanger --Thoric (talk) 23:20, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

No one has attacked you personally even though you've leveled plenty of accusations and attacks. Seeing as how you have no desire to present evidence to act on, nor any concrete proposals to make perhaps you would be happier working on one of those spinoff projects. I've been here almost 16 years as well and still can't find any "small group of elites." Thus, your whinging on is unlikely to change anything. MarnetteD|Talk 00:19, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

I mentioned our maturity. That includes not only aspects like notability, but sourcing quality as well. We're less likely to accept primary source as principle sourcing for articles nowadays since companies and others have found ways to abuse WP to self-promote themselves with primary sources, for example. This thus causes some articles that we'd have accepted a decade ago to no longer be considered appropriate here. --Masem (t) 23:36, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

I understand that Wikipedia is held to higher standards than it was 16 years ago, and I understand the need to prevent self promotion, but things have gotten to the point where rules meant to prevent abuse are being used to slice some articles down to a stub, which then gets flagged as too small to have its own article, and gets deleted without allowing a redirect to a relevant parent article, and next the parent article ends up on the chopping block (am I even allowed to say chopping block here?) Over 250 articles are removed from Wikipedia daily, such that there is a site for the express purpose of archiving them (deletionpedia.org). There is a problem here. It's not just me. --Thoric (talk) 00:14, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

Do you have any examples of how sourcing guidelines (Expanded or not over the last decade) have been misapplied, in the specific context that you're here about your own project being at AFD? SMAUG was never culled down to a stub. There were a few attempts once to redirect it back in 2016, a soft delete at AFD which was restored at your request (A COI refund is a little off, IMO), and then a subsequent renomination after the only improvement you made was a copyright violation. Otherwise the article is in the same state it was in 2015, which was mostly written by you. -- ferret (talk) 00:23, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

I brought it back to work on it, then was told I couldn't work on it due to COI. Are you saying the renomination was due to the copyright issue? I misunderstood one of the WP:C-P concepts, and had permission to use the content, but I can reword it (if I'm even allowed to). Most edits by anyone other than me were removed and/or reverted. There used to be an entire "MUD Task Force" at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Video_games/MUD but it's gone now, so who is even to edit articles such as this? Look -- MUDs are the historic predecessor to MMORPGs such as WoW. SMAUG earned itself a mention on Raph Koster's Online World Timeline of "significant events for the development of virtual worlds". The SMAUG codebase has been downloaded well over 100,000 times, and is used by over 5% of the MUDs listed on The Mud Connector. It's a piece of Internet history. It's non-commercial. It has many derivative works. --Thoric (talk) 01:14, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

Ok, so, no, you can't provide any examples of sourcing policy or notability policy being used "against" SMAUG, other than the AFD itself. It's pretty clear that the article hasn't been "attacked" or "purged" of content in any form. In fact, the most substantial removal of content in the article's history was you in 2005. The page has been nearly static for over a decade beyond minor tweaks or template syntax/merge type fixes. The article restoration and the copyright incident occurred in October. You made no further edits from that point to improve it, and the AFD nomination didn't come until December, and the COI warning after that, since I am familiar with ROD and SMAUG and recognized your name. I'm more than adequately familiar with MUDs and MU*s and their history, having ran several myself. -- ferret (talk) 01:43, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

So a developer formerly used Wikipedia to promote his product and now comes back after a 10 hiatus of active engagement and complains that the entire project is fatally flawed because of an article about his MUD is being rightly nominated for deletion. Do I have those facts right? That's an awfully big claim to make based on one article in which you have a conflict of interest and which hasn't undergone anything like the set of alterations you ascribe. You haven't yet, despite multiple requests, provided a scintilla of evidence for your MUD's notability nor have you provided any sort of evidence for your complaints here. Do you really think this is going to be taken seriously or result in any action based solely on your evidence-free assertions? Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 00:41, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

The SMAUG article is certainly not representative of my work as a wikipedian, as can be gleaned by my user page. I purposely avoided work on it so as not to appear to be self promoting. It's a piece of Internet gaming history. --Thoric (talk) 01:14, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

• Having read through the above, I'm not seeing any indication that this could lead to alterations of our longstanding notability and sourcing requirements, and VPP is not the place to coach an editor who doesn't understand them. This discussion should be closed. ((u|Sdkb)) ^talk 02:32, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

I don't think this discussion should be closed yet. It raises a couple of important points on motivation of wikipedian editors. The criteria 16 years ago and for many years since have been strict. The point being made is not solely about notability and sourcing. This discussion could result in a new stage in the deletion process. This could introduce the concept of prompting suggestions for improving articles from the people who are unhappy with articles, rather than jumping straight to deleting, merging or redirecting them. Please let me know if this stage has been proposed before, and where, I would be grateful for a link. This new stage would result in improvements to wikipedia, and more motivated contributors. The point being raised is that the deletion process is thinning and reducing Wikipedia plus also losing valuable editors, forever. Please could we address those two separate points and come to consensus conclusions before closing this valuable discussion, thanks. Mediation4u ^(chat) _{nb: editing is fun} 18:22, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

@Mediation4u:, this is already required and has been for eons. The Deletion Policy includes consideration of alternatives to deletion and nominators are expected to carry out exactly those types of checks before nominating. You may also find Wikipedia:Perennial_proposals#Deletion worth reading. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 18:28, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

Many thanks for the relevant links. I did suspect that this topic had been discussed before and I see that many wikipedians have expressed in great detail that Wikipedia should not be limited by the disadvantages of a paper encyclopedia, here >> Wikipedia:Deletion reform/Brainstorming#Remove notable requirement. There are calls for clear definitions of notability in that discussion. It is a fine line between Wikipedia's integrity and gravitas on one side, and the appeal of Wikipedia's innate eccentricity on the other side of the coin. Deletion without sufficient cause risks throwing out the baby with the bathwater and throwing out well-intentioned contributors too. Mediation4u ^(chat) _{nb: editing is fun} 01:03, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

For instance:

Notability has been used by editors with an axe to grind. It is a way of suppressing useful information in order to give preference to a personal POV. Notability is too subjective. It hands a loaded gun to a child. Wikipedia is becoming increasingly crippled by the limiting view of some editors that it must model itself after paper encyclopediae, and mimic their limitations. The Notability criterion is one painful, destructive manifestation of that policy. --Aminorex

On one hand Wikipedia is not a random collection of information and on the other hand Wikipedia's appeal for many is that editing it and reading it should be fun. If there are more links to prior discussions, then please feel free to gather the links here. A compendium of prior consensus summaries may speed up the closing of this thread. Mediation4u ^(chat) _{nb: editing is fun} 01:03, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

There's really nothing further to do in this thread. There is no true call to action or proposal. We have infrequent editors popping up in response to what I believe have been at least some offsite mentions to defend a particular topic of which the poster has an unambivalent conflict of interest. No one is rushing to deletion without sufficient cause. We have processes and procedures in place and they are operating just fine. Not a single person has mentioned how or why the process is supposedly failing in this instance, and the AFD has not even closed yet. So the complaint boils down to "how dare they even think about deleting my topic", which is simply a non-starter. -- ferret (talk) 15:23, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

@Mediation4u:, it is very nearly inexplicable that you cherry-picked one editor's statements out of a discussion that was overwhelmingly in favor of keeping notability requirements and use it to suggest that there is some sort of active debate on the issue. "Many wikipedians have expressed in great detail that Wikipedia should not be limited by the disadvantages of a paper encyclopedia" is not exactly an untrue statement but many, many, many more have expressed that the "disadvantages of a paper encyclopedia" have nothing to do with notability requirements. There is a strong, lasting, and continuing consensus that we as a community have no interest in becoming a vehicle for promotional or trivial articles. Notability is the bar that intentionally keeps those out and neither you nor the thread originator have yet expressed any reason why that should change. You haven't even made a proposal for such a change. The idea that notability and AfD leads to "thinning" of the encyclopedia is belied by the actual facts at hand which show that we are at 6.2 million articles and growing, despite whatever gets removed through CfD, Prod's, and AfD. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 16:22, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

@Eggishorn: I concur. You have summarised, above, my conflicted position.  I am sure there are other essays and debates on this topic.  I paste a second quote, for balance. 

Absolutely not. Removing the notability criterion means Wikipedia becomes an unusable morass, not an encyclopedia. Here are five practical problems with it, completely aside from the fact that an encyclopedia by definition is selective: Spamming, vanity articles, bids for fame, it would break categorisation and also the random article feature. -- Fubar Obfusco

By way of explanation, I fell into the confirmation bias trap, which explains that a person sees the things they agree with when reading a discussion and they are blind to items they don't believe are true.   Seeing the balanced view requires an open mind. I also agree with your point that the discussion so far has generated a lot of heat and light, but nothing which moves the Wikipedia project forward. So I have drafted a small positive proposal which I will add, below. It is similar to Ferret's constructive approach to this issue. Deeds, not words (Acta, non verba). Mediation4u ^(chat) _{nb: editing is fun} 23:39, 13 December 2020 (UTC)

Further, we have the WP:AFC and Drafts system in place that help editors get an idea early in article creation if the article has a chance to be sustainable with the newer criteria on sourcing and notability. --Masem (t) 18:30, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

I think this is an interesting discussion and raises a question. Is there a way Wikipedia can capture knowledge that isn't covered by our traditional sources yet might be of interest to readers. Is that knowledge "encyclopedic"? I'll offer two automotive related examples. The first might be an article like the one about the Sports_2000 amateur race car class. This is clearly a special interest article. As it stands the article has no sources. I'm sure that could be improved but many of the best resources are likely to fail WP:RS. Even some of the better sources about racing at the less than top tier are going to be iffy per our RS standards (as an example here is an article about a designer of one of the Sports 2000 cars [[12]]. Techie/geekie details about the cars are often on blogs, forums and other largely self published sources. I would find such content really interesting. I would like to know that the Swift DB1 used rocker arm front suspension with dampers actuated via a pivot link. I also get this doesn't rise to the same level of significance as many of our articles. Still, I think Wikipedia would be a more interesting place if we could have some of this "content sourced to low quality sources". Think of it something like Bloomberg vs Bloomberg Contributor. In my view it would be nice if we could separate these into articles that are perhaps of interest to some readers but not sourced to the same standards as many articles. I also understand such an allowance could easily be abused etc. Still, I think it would make Wikipedia a richer resource. Springee (talk) 19:30, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

Based on the situation around the "walled garden" of the mixed-martial arts area from several years back that WPians had to dismantle, the answer to this ("can WP cover topic areas not well covered by traditional sources") is "no". In our maturity we've moved away from accepting niche sources. The MMA is one example; demoting porn actors from NBIO is another, dealing with the COI-filled world of cryptocurrency reporting is yet another. The general notability guideline is there to try to set a minimum amount of coverage and sourcing for all topics so that no topic area has the freedom to use more niche coverage or the like to be more inclusive of what it includes; we have have some exceptions to that as agreed to globally, such as WP:NPROF for academics, and stuff like WP:OUTCOMES isn't readily challenged though not formally set. But in general, if a topic field is simply not covered in depth by good sources, and the sources that do exist for that field are considered problematic, we really can't develop that content. We can get as close as possible to guiding readers where to go next short of pointing them to Fandom, for example. --Masem (t) 20:00, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

Concur with User:Ferret and User:Masem. I see no problem with strictly enforcing WP:V and WP:RS. With so many reliable sources easily discoverable through Google Books as well as public and private academic databases, it's getting easier every day to find reliable sources for even the most obscure factual assertions, such as the fact that the most common generic term for a law school in the United States is "school of law." I stumbled across that interesting fact while researching something completely different, and saved a copy of the relevant article so that I could add that fact to WP several months later. --Coolcaesar (talk) 03:52, 12 December 2020 (UTC)

• Proposal

My proposal acknowledges that it is the hard work of deletionists which has kept Wikipedia at the high standard it is today, holding back the flood of Pokemon articles, etc.  However I sincerely hope that incremental improvements to how this is achieved can be made.

Proposal - amend the deletion criteria to include a main aim of any deletion discussion to be:

Do not lose the contributor, educate the contributor.

Education before castigation

• Reason #1  Education

This means include educational evidence and links, do not include unsubstantiated emotive arguments which intend to demotivate the contributor(s) into submission. Taking one example of attempting to dominate the opposition on the recent SMAUG deletion thread.  I don't think weight should be given to the accusation of meatpuppetry.  Perhaps that accuser did a check, using the automated tools, and found no sock puppets were on that page.   If so, then please post that evidence.  That would be objective, useful, and educational for newbies.  Then all those in the discussion know that there are no sock puppets.  By contrast, jumping to a "meatpuppet" claim,  with no evidence provided of that, just lowers the tone of the debate in an adversarial manner.  With no evidence of sock puppets, then please conclude that many people independently hold a view which is different from your own.  This would be more rational than seeing gangs of meatpuppets acting in concert around every corner.

• Reason #2 Vicious circle

As more of the project falls into disrepair, with no active editors, then those areas become ripe for deletion too.  Hence the vicious circle of thinning and, in the long run, losing Wikipedia's raison d'etre.  No fun will mean no new editors. No new Wikipedians fighting the vandalism will mean Wikipedia is likely to exponentially implode. Anecdotally, I see more vandalism sticking now than 10 years ago. Get on over to WP:CVU and WP:SVT if you have some spare time.

• Suggested approach #1

Previous debate links instead of divisive and abrasive exchanges

If the point being made in the argument has been discussed before, and ideally has a summary paragraph which concludes the debate, then always furnish a link to that debate.  Instead of an aggressive assertion, show the contributor the links to the actual policy and also to previous debates on that point where the policy was decided. So in this case, on notability, it allows the contributor to see the discussion has been held before.  Taking as an example, in the case of the SMAUG deletion discussion, with a full understanding of notability criteria, we can find an appropriately notable page on which to merge the valuable content. 

• Suggested approach #2

Face to face test.

For instance, imagine you are at a cafe/diner/breakfast table /telephone/video recording. When making a point in a deletion debate - would you say that same statement,  in that way, to someone who is sitting across the table from you?  On the phone?  In a video post, in your own name, on public YouTube?  Hold up what you are about to say and imagine it in those situations. As well as the onus on being kind to newbies, there is also a case to be made on thinking before writing anything negative, to anyone, not just newbies.  Flame wars are an inevitable consequence of written exchanges in anonymous forums, email chains, etc.  The written word can be misinterpreted very easily.  Imagine a contributor arrives enthusiastically to become famous by writing an article about themselves, then they could be welcomed in and encouraged to find someone who is famous already and write an article about them instead. - a very different outcome to the current atmosphere.Other outcomes could include pointing them to Wikihow / Fandom / other internet wiki WP:OTHERWIKIS or blog more suited to their specific article.

Consequences

Unfortunately some appear to hold a view that Flame wars should not be taken too seriously.  It is these people who need to realise that the  consequence of this abrasive level of debate will be the death of the Wikipedia project.  While it may seem a speedy and efficient use of time to stamp someone's views firmly into the ground, the project will die by a thousand cuts.  There are other times in history when man's cruelty to man has been unbelievable.  Let's try to turn the ship around and stop Wikipedia being one of them.

There is a turning point in many Wikipedians' trajectory of contributions when they leave the project, disillusioned. 

That disenchanted, experienced, contributor will also have an impact on others they know.  Probably for the rest of their life.

Word of mouth is a powerful way to spread a message.  Bad news travels much faster and much further than positive information.  

---  luckily it is the season of goodwill, so with peace on earth as the goal uppermost in people's minds, I hope the spirit of this proposal makes its way in some form to the right places as advice and guidance for deletionists.  Mediation4u ^(chat) _{nb: editing is fun} 10:49, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

• If anyone has examples of previous similar suggestions, please provide some links in the box, below. Thanks very much.

• Is anyone keen on the proposal above, in theory? If so, please mark your ~~~~ sign, below.

Any support is much appreciated. Thanks. Mediation4u ^(chat) _{nb: editing is fun} 18:05, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

Support --Thoric (talk) 16:53, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

Proposal - kindmas

Revised proposal: Create a WP:RFC To publish guidance for deletionists during an annual season of good will.

It has now been 13 days since my proposal and there has been very little support for the full proposal, above. For the reasons below I have revised the proposal to only apply for a specific, annual, period during the year.

A summary of the advice to be posted annually. This for guidance in article deletion debates during a season of good will.

Season of good will announced

• Education before castigation
• Do not lose the contributor, educate the contributor.
• Previous debate links instead of divisive and abrasive exchanges.
• Face to face test.
• Be bold in editing, not in attacking.

The paragraphs in the section above give detailed explanations of these five bullet point guidelines, the background reasons and the consequences if they are not followed.

REASON FOR REVISING THE PROPOSAL

My reason for revising this proposal is that no independent Wikipedian has voted for my proposal so I must assume everyone in the two associated discussion threads are content with carrying out future exchanges in the same robust manner, due to expediency. So I have amended the proposal to make a WP:RFC for the face-to-face test and a reduction in slap down debate to be announced every December on deletionists forums, backlog drives and perhaps even a link posted on a few user pages. This cease fire hiatus will be during an advent season of goodwill. Perhaps that calm time is a good reason for abrasive deletionists to take a fortnight off and have a well deserved rest. Then kindness can prevail for that period, ready for hostilities to resume after the season of goodwill is over. Mediation4u ^(chat) _{nb: editing is fun} 08:38, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

Athanasius1, I do not personally believe that this proposal serves a real purpose, as it seems like the proposal is just to spread WikiLove. JJP...MASTER!_{[talk to] JJP... master?} 18:50, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

I think you are right, in that the proposal above could be discussed further on WP:Wikilove forums. Luckily your valid point has inspired more constructive, positive steps to address the root causes in deletion debates. A similar regular review during a ceasefire period of wiki-kindness, (being kind to all, as well as the newbies). This could be during winterval, Christmas, kindmas, call it what you will. At that point, step back and see if more of the approaches below could be suggested. i.e., continuing to view the deletion process improvements in the same vein. A regular review could reduce or eliminate divisiveness wherever the inherent battlegrounds are found. Mediation4u ^(chat) _{nb: editing is fun} 15:55, 22 January 2021 (UTC)

Proposal - positive steps

An Alternate Proposal.

I went through the Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Log/2021_January_1 and reviewed https://deletionpedia.org/en/Main_Page. The request for deletion pages are stressful, so hats off to the people who do it. Personally, I would never create a page

• Go with the Desire Paths. Change the notability guidelines to match up with what people are looking for. Search deletionpedia shows 20 % of the deletions are to do with schools . Primary Schools are not notable. Change it so kids can have their school having a page.
• Change the creation of wiki pages process to encourage the user to find out information first, but have the option to continue. So you want to create a page about a soccer player ? Have they played 50 games ?
• Get some statistics - users leaving after having their page deleted, which pages are most searched for, but don't exist
• Change the disambiguation process to allow a simple to link to a section. I think you can do it, but I have never seen it done Smaug_(disambiguation which started this thread I think has this issue
• Change the wording on Article for Deletion to article for review and possible deletion. It also refers to both the deletion policy and a guide to deletion. Choose one
• Change the approach on AfD. Its prosecutorial. A user can not canvas for support from the project page. from January 1st - see Branch_Insurance "ZXVZ, I want to apologize and will see myself out." IComparison_of_Remote_Music_Performance_Software "I am afraid to post here, as I am unfamiliar with your process.
• Make the procedure simpler, so that a new editor can understand it Wikipedia:Deletion_process. Allow the user to merge it with other articles. At the moment, the creator of the page has to wait. "Even if the article is ultimately deleted, you can ask the closing administrator for a copy of the material to reuse, and the administrator can also advise you on any further steps that you may need to perform in order to reuse the content."

Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 11:17, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

I fully agree with all of the thoughts above. Many thanks for this constructive review. Mediation4u ^(chat) _{nb: editing is fun} 15:55, 22 January 2021 (UTC)

Hi, I understand that Wikipedia rules are a common set of standards that have been agreed on by a majority, however I am more confused than ever.

We state that articles have to have not ability set out in the rules and associated accepted essays. However this means we have articles which will be lost that have historical significance, as sigcov is not there and the articles are covered more by smaller snippits. Surridge Sport is the current example which I picked up from a current AFD. They were a big supplier of sporting equipment right upto the 1990s, supplying some of crickets biggest stars. There is little significant coverage, however anyone who watched cricket will know of their equipment, especially the Jumbo and Turbo cricket bat's.

Another example is The Cambridge Working Group. Again little sigcov but historically very significant as it influenced the US Federal authorities to stop certain research, which stood in place for three years.

My request is can we have a caveat in place, where editors can discuss historical significance at AFD, and if enough multiple sources are available, can be applied, much like WP:Basic is for individuals? Davidstewartharvey (talk) 10:23, 18 January 2021 (UTC)

If subjects truly have historical significance, why would there be no significant coverage available? – Teratix ₵ 12:16, 18 January 2021 (UTC)

Historically something may have been significant, but coverage may have been smaller. For example The Cambridge Working Group does not have an article totally directed at itself, however it has been documented in many scientific articles about bioscience and vaccines how this group did bring about the memorandum federal authorities brought in that stopped research. The group there is historically significant for forcing a change in policy. In the other case I gave Surridge Sports were historically active prior to the net, but in articles since regarding cricket bat's they are discussed for the innovations (the Turbo for instance) but it is not in depth coverage about the company themselves.Davidstewartharvey (talk) 13:08, 18 January 2021 (UTC)

For Surridge Sports – if the company has received little significant coverage but their products have, what's wrong with simply having articles on their products, if they are what is notable? Similarly, if Cambridge Working Group itself received insufficient coverage but the policy change did, what's wrong with simply discussing the group's influence on the policy change, in some other related article? Just because a subject doesn't satisfy a notability standard doesn't mean it can't be discussed in Wikipedia articles at all. – Teratix ₵ 08:33, 19 January 2021 (UTC)

I suspect that the answer to your question is for the same reason that if an academic has received little significant coverage but their research has, some editors think it's wrong to merely mention their research in relevant articles about their subject-matter expertise, instead of having a biography of the person.

The question for me, as always, is how much of an article you could write if you were required to build that article exclusively from Wikipedia:Independent sources (not the owners, not the business, not the product brochure...) that directly address the subject in some detail (let's set "more than one full sentence about the business" as the floor for this). If you are reasonably certain that you could only write (and source) a couple of sentences about the business under these restrictions, then it may be an "important" business without being a "notable" one. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:37, 22 January 2021 (UTC)

I am not arguing for minimum referencing and stub articles that are pointless. The example I used Surridge Sports, has been in existence since 1867, but by 1993 was swallowed up by Dunlop-Slazenger pre net. When you look at other sport equipment companies their siqcov is post net. Surridge Sports has a huge amount of small evidence which shows that it was once a major player. If this was an individual people could argue the WP:Basic rule. In the AFD for Surridge Sport the following comment was made:

"Delete Wikipedia does not, currently, have any rules regarding the historical importance of a subject versus its notability guideline. I wish it had because a lot of articles that would be considered to have historical importance may have been saved. That being said, as it currently is, this subject does not meet the basic notability requirements. We can say that there must be something out there because of its prominence within the sport, however, whether we believe it is there or not does not supersede the guideline policy. Does not receive SIGCOV in independent and reliable sources as per WP:N. If a suitable location for redirect or merge can be presented then I wouldn't be opposed to that route. --ARoseWolf (Talk) 16:34, 11 January 2021 (UTC)" Davidstewartharvey (talk) 07:23, 23 January 2021 (UTC)

Hello - sorry if this is the wrong board, but I believe I'm in the right place for this. I've got a few accessibility-driven suggestions for articles being proposed for FA status.

I've been pottering around Wikipedia adding language tags and alternative image captions for a while now. My point is that I really haven't seen much of a drive for adding them as part of improving the status of an article; they seem, unfortunately, like an afterthought. Considering that we haven't changed the design of the Main Page since 2006 for its accessibility, the fact that basic edits for accessibility and the appraisal of article standards haven't been married together seems like a missed opportunity.

There are WikiProjects that deal with this, that's true; there's the wider WikiProject Accessibility, the partially-active WikiProject Usability and the now-inactive WikiProject Writing Captions. But outside of that? There's no mention of accessibility standards on FA article criteria, and there's no mention on FA review criteria. I apologise if I've somehow completely missed something. But these accessibility standards don't seem too standardy.

As someone who's disabled - I don't use a screenreader, but I'm autistic and have ADHD - and as someone who's been through higher education, it can often feel as though you're expected to handle your issues yourself; as though disability and accessibility issues are a thing only tackled by those who need them, and not really touched upon, or touched upon in a cursory manner, by those who don't. What I propose would, I think necessarily, forcibly bring accessibility standards to the fore for Wikipedia articles.

Disabled people already have to plan their way around the world - will this bus have a wheelchair ramp, will this shopping centre have disabled toilets - and Wikipedia should be a place where they don't have to. We've all fallen down the Wikipedia rabbit hole. Imagine having to plan your way around that. Imagine, all of our finest articles, put together by our finest minds, inaccessible. If we're not going to change the Main Page's design for 15 years because of accessibility, we can change our FA article standards because of accessibility.

I can, and have, added language tags to a single large article of an afternoon. It's boring work, but it doesn't take that long, and they are necessary, moreso than you'd think. French terms? Oh, well maybe, since this is English, it won't be so bad - nope. My parents' SatNav manages to butcher the word Calais, and we barely live across the Channel. Imagine how well a screenreader does with, say, Japanese language terms, or tonal languages like Mandarin?

(Also, can I add - adding language tags is fun. It sounds silly, but it is. You learn little bits here and there about different languages, and the different writing systems they use and why. I managed to answer a question on University Challenge about Hangul because I'd added language tags in Korean the day before. In the far-off future where we can meet in pubs again for quizzes, you may net yourself a point or two.)

This does not mean retroactively stripping all FA articles of their status, as my admittedly uneducated guess is that consensus would deem that a step too far. However, a check on the Talk page - some kind of banner or header, "This article has FA status and has been checked for language tags and alternative image captions/This article has FA status but has not been checked for language tags and alternative image captions/This article has FA status but does not have language tags and/or alternative image captions", or words to that effect, may be an option.

For FA articles undergoing review, accessibility could be a 'soft' criteria of some kind - counted against the article, but let go, under the impression that it will be fixed while the article is undergoing review. If an article is going to be suggested for FA review, its alt captions and language tag status should be brought up on the Talk page and hopefully dealt with then. I don't know. Hopefully someone more knowledgeable than me can come up with something to that effect.

Maybe it sounds like puzzlingly and absurdly minor criteria; that implies it is a minor fix. We have guides on the inclusion of alt captions, we have guides on the inclusion of language tags, it's very basic housekeeping, much like deleting doublespaces within article text, outside of infoboxes and galleries. (I would have brought up doublespaces, but to my knowledge, someone brought up a doublespace-removing bot once, and it got shouted down for reasons I can't remember. Thought I'd steer clear of that here.)

Anyway - apologies if this is completely in the wrong place and I've entirely missed the mark. I hope this makes sense! --Ineffablebookkeeper (talk) 19:26, 23 January 2021 (UTC)

• There was a discussion a while back making accessibility a part of the FA criteria, but it was decided that the existing criteria implied accessibility for current and future FAs; nevertheless, there are FAs dating back to 2001 that haven't been thoroughly reviewed in a decade or more. Perhaps a taskforce can be set up for checking FAs and such reviews can be marked down on the talk page banner. (Also, for screenreaders you should use

  <em>

  tags rather than italic markup for emphasis). – John M Wolfson (talk • contribs) 20:17, 23 January 2021 (UTC)
• I want to say that alt text usually gets caught during the image review. Certainly the captions are scrutinized. Other bits of accessibility could maybe use a checklist, but maybe that's general truth. "Tables: are simple, headers have scopes; Lists: no LISTGAPs; Foreign words: Marked up with ((lang))... Etc." --Izno (talk) 23:23, 23 January 2021 (UTC)
• I'd say most of this is already brought up, certainly the altext for new FACs. Personally, I add to any articles I write, but if you have any suggestions for WP:ACCESS issues I don't know about, let me know and I'll encorporate them. IMO, it should be a standard at GAN as well. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 21:33, 24 January 2021 (UTC)

I think Wikipedia should take a harder line against crystal ball gazing, particularly in the current world situation. Take the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. It didn't happen last year. It might not happen this year. Why are we creating article about events before they have happened? We already have a longish article on the Second impeachment trial of Donald Trump, even though its start date is unknown.--Jack Upland (talk) 04:22, 22 January 2021 (UTC)

I think the problem is that this is not as easy as saying get rid of all of these articles. In the example of the second impeachment is that he has been impeached, it is not that it had not been voted on by Congress. The Tokyo games are also another example that is not normal. The covid pandemic has caused a cancellation, but normally it would have happened, and details of the games, like the venues will be announced before the games happen. However I do agree when we get an article about the F1 season before it has even been announced the actual provisional race list, or a movie that has not been released, that these are just way to early. But I think we don't need to change the rules, just keep the current AFD process and let the community decide.Davidstewartharvey (talk) 06:44, 22 January 2021 (UTC)

I agree with @Davidstewartharvey:, I don't think you can have a hard and fast rule unless you have it as no crystal at all, so it is better to just leave it to editors judgement and the AFD process. Funny enough your example for 2020 Tokyo Olympics, I had a look at when it was started. It was created on the 15th March 2005, 15 years before it would have been held. Though an event like that, all the information and bidding process, would have likely passed WP:GNG long before the open ceremony. So the notability of the upcoming event that the article maybe about, would have a lot to do with if the article stays or not. NZFC^(talk)(cont) 07:33, 22 January 2021 (UTC)

I think you misunderstand what impeachment is. The second impeachment of Donald Trump has already occurred. What is yet to occur is the senate trial on the charges. --Khajidha (talk) 11:33, 22 January 2021 (UTC)

With regard to the Tokyo Olympics, it would be better to call the article "Preparations for the Tokyo Olympics" (or something like that). With regard to the trial, all that information could be (and basically is) contained the the impeachment article already. The guidelines state: All articles about anticipated events must be verifiable. The problem is that in reality the future isn't verifiable. Most people would probably have averred that the Tokyo Olympics would have gone ahead last year. They would have been wrong. Equally, people will say that Trump's trial will go ahead. But, in my opinion, we don't know that. Apart from the Tokyo Olympics, four Games have been cancelled. By my calculations, that's means about 9% of all Games have not occurred in the year scheduled. So when you say the situation with the Tokyo Olympics is "not normal", I would reply that it's a situation that occurs about 9% of the time. Most people would probably say that the Olympic Games is an event that can be predicted with certainty, but in fact the probability is about 91%. Across all articles that are created on the basis that the event will "certainly" occur, we could guesstimate — for argument's sake — that around 10% of of those events won't occur. And that's a huge amount of articles.--Jack Upland (talk) 01:03, 23 January 2021 (UTC)

The relevant distinction is that the word "verifiable" in the context of Wikipedia doesn't mean readers should be able to check that our predictions are true, but rather readers should merely be able to check that the prediction was previously published in a reliable source (see Wikipedia:Verifiability, not truth). In this sense, information about the future can be verifiable, in Wikipedia's sense of the term. Mz7 (talk) 03:33, 23 January 2021 (UTC)

In other words, the word "verifiable" doesn't actually mean "verifiable" in its normal English sense, but is a piece of Wikipedian jargon. Not a good way to right an article. In addition, sources deemed "reliable sources" are not reliable predictors of the future. They did not predict Trump's win in 2016; they did not predict COVID-19; they did not predict Brexit; they did not predict that the Tokyo Games would not be held in 2020. They are not reliable, so why rely on them? But, in reality, despite the language used, they are really reporting announcements, rather than actually making predictions.--Jack Upland (talk) 07:52, 23 January 2021 (UTC)

I apologize for the jargon, but I do think Wikipedia's current approach to future events is reasonable. I also feel like you may have answered your own question: our articles aren't making unverifiable predictions about the future, but rather reporting on verifiable statements that other people have made about the future. Reliable sources have reported that the 2020 Summer Olympics are now scheduled to take place in July 2021, and our article merely repeats this verifiable fact. Yes, we can never be 100% sure about the future (heck, sometimes we can't be 100% sure about the past, e.g. if there is a dispute about the historical record), and our readers know this too. We can trust that our readers are intelligent enough to conclude from the fact that an article is about a future event that some of details surrounding its planning may change as new information comes in. Mz7 (talk) 09:30, 23 January 2021 (UTC)

• I think the relevant policy at WP:CRYSTAL is already sufficiently clear about these situations and doesn't need clarification: Individual scheduled or expected future events should be included only if the event is notable and almost certain to take place. The Olympics and the second impeachment trial of Donald Trump are both events that are systematically scheduled and generally almost certain to take place—Tokyo 2020 is very much the exception rather than the norm, and even if the event is cancelled, the cancellation in itself would be such a notable event that we would almost certainly have an article on it anyway. WP:CRYSTAL is more about cracking down on unverifiable speculation, such as having an article about Star Wars: Episode X before any reliable sources have begun to seriously discuss such a project. Wikipedia can and does report on verifiable speculation about future events that have been well-documented in reliable sources, even as far into the future as the ultimate fate of the universe. Mz7 (talk) 03:14, 23 January 2021 (UTC)
  • What does "almost certain to take place" mean? 91% certain? Or less? How do we calculate this? Shouldn't events occurring during this COVID-19 period be considered less certain to occur? Are events involving old people less certain due to the heightened chance of death? I don't understand your logic on the topic of Tokyo 2020. It is not difficult to create an article. We do not need an article on Tokyo 2020 to pre-exist in order to have an article about its cancellation.--Jack Upland (talk) 07:52, 23 January 2021 (UTC)
    • There is no point worrying about rare events. Dozens of pages are deleted or renamed every day and it is no big deal if it turns out that a couple of future olympic games articles need to be moved. The point of WP:CRYSTAL is that it is not satisfactory to create an article about a future event if there is nothing verifiable to say about it. Johnuniq (talk) 23:55, 23 January 2021 (UTC)
      • So WP:CRYSTAL is redundant because the issue is covered by WP:V, WP:GNG etc???--Jack Upland (talk) 06:20, 25 January 2021 (UTC)
        • Jack Upland, there is a certain combination of being pedantic and dogmatic that is not at all a good look. If either the Super Bowl or the Olympics or both are cancelled, then the corresponding articles will be updated almost instantly. As for the second impeachment trial of Trump, the news about that is flowing rapidly and it is 99.9% certain to happen. As The Beatles sang: "Let It Be". There is no chance that you will prevail on this point. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 06:30, 25 January 2021 (UTC)
          • Sorry to be pedantic, but the trial is not "99.9% certain to happen". Many Republicans think the trial should not go ahead and might try to vote it down. America is beset by civil disorder and a pandemic. Trump is an old man and might not survive the week. To say there is only one in a thousand chance that the trial will not occur is downright wrong. It is better to be pedantic than downright wrong. You are not pedantic.--Jack Upland (talk) 07:21, 25 January 2021 (UTC)

The Constitution requires that a trial take place once the House sends the Article of Impeachment to the Senate. Trump may not be convicted but he will be tried. On the broader point, none of the examples under discussion are anywhere close to crystal ball territory. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 16:49, 25 January 2021 (UTC)