Wikipedia talk:Reliable sources

Preprints bullet, general audience writing about scholarship

Right now, the Preprints bullet says in part

Preprints, such as those available on repositories like arXiv, medRxiv, bioRxiv, or Zenodo are not reliable sources. Research that has not been peer-reviewed is akin to a blog, as anybody can post it online. Their use is generally discouraged, unless they meet the criteria for acceptable use of self-published sources, and will always fail higher sourcing requirements like WP:MEDRS.

Would it be clearer to replace that with something like

Preprints, such as those available on repositories like arXiv, medRxiv, bioRxiv, or Zenodo, have not undergone peer-review and therefore are not reliable sources of scholarship. They are self-published sources, as anyone can post a preprint online. Their use is generally discouraged, and they will always fail higher sourcing requirements like WP:MEDRS.

The similarity to blogs is that they're self-published, and there's no need to compare them to blogs to say that, especially since they're unlike blogs in other ways (e.g., in citing literature). I also removed the phrase about the criteria for acceptable use of self-published sources, as preprints generally come from "expert" sources, which is an exception for using SPS. Notwithstanding that preprints generally come from expert sources, their use is discouraged because we don't want readers to confuse them with peer-reviewed research and because editors should use reliable non-self-published sources when available, which often exist in the peer-reviewed literature.

Also, does it make sense to add something about popular discussions of scholarship (e.g., in a magazine)? FactOrOpinion (talk) 22:44, 16 December 2024 (UTC)

Whatever the outcome is, it is silly to say "they are not reliable sources. [A sentence later] they can be reliable sources." Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 23:33, 16 December 2024 (UTC)

The passage is fine as is, IMO. See also WP:SPSWHEN. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 00:03, 17 December 2024 (UTC)

I was prompted by an exchange on the Autism talk page where another editor seemed to interpret "Research that has not been peer-reviewed is akin to a blog, as anybody can post it online. Their use is generally discouraged" along the lines of "the use of sources that have not been peer-reviewed is akin to a blog and their use is generally discouraged" (i.e., interpreting it as text about other sorts of sources, not limited to preprints or non-peer-reviewed scholarship more generally, as is the case with some conference proceedings). Not an accurate reading of those sentences, but it made a couple of us wonder whether the wording of the preprints paragraph could be improved. FactOrOpinion (talk) 17:03, 17 December 2024 (UTC)

I encouraged FOO to start this because of that discussion. We don't need a sentence that can be quoted out of context to say that "Research that has not been peer-reviewed is akin to a blog", because that isn't true. Outside the hard sciences, research is routinely published in non-peer-reviewed books, which are definitely not "akin to a blog". Research gets published in magazines and newspapers.

I like the proposed re-write. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:05, 17 December 2024 (UTC)

Autocracy corrupting reliable sources, censoring what is published

As media are increasingly careful to avoid lawsuits like ABC recently settled, self-censorship will limit the neutral information available to publish. It is said that RFK will even censor releases by the FDA. In this type of media environment, truths must be published underground or at least in less well-resourced publications. How can reliable sources definitions deal with this new state of affairs? Jdietsch (talk) 20:20, 17 December 2024 (UTC)

We should be lending greater weight to academic and NGO sources and less on newsmedia. Simonm223 (talk) 21:35, 17 December 2024 (UTC)

When writing about politics, it's a good idea to look for sources from other countries, too.

For drug information, look for WP:MEDRS and other scholarly sources. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:19, 17 December 2024 (UTC)

This is curious...

The League of Women Voters recommends using this chart to determine bias in various media sources.

Below, I have matched the most left-leaning and right-leaning sources listed, alongside their status as a reliable source on Wikipedia.

STATUS: - generally reliable - no consensus - generally unreliable - deprecated - blacklisted NR - not rated

Status of left and right leaning media sources

LEFT	Statue	RIGHT	Status
AlterNet		The American Conservative
Associated Press		The American Spectator	NR
The Atlantic		Blaze Media
The Daily Beast		Breitbart News
Democracy Now!		Christian Broadcasting Network	NR
The Guardian		The Daily Caller
HuffPost		Daily Mail
The Intercept		The Daily Wire
Jacobin (magazine)	NR	Fox News (politics and science)
Mother Jones (magazine)		The Federalist (website)
MSNBC		Independent Journal Review
The Nation		National Review
The New York Times		New York Post
The New Yorker		Newsmax
Slate (magazine)	NR	One America News Network
Vox (website)		The Post Millennial
		The Washington Free Beacon

When there are 20 shades of blue paint available, and just 5 shades of green...everything starts to look kind of...blue. --Magnolia677 (talk) 17:46, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

Maybe far-right media should start instituting stricter standards for accuracy and fact checking. But also most of the media on the "Left" column is not meaningfully left-wing anywhere outside of the United States. All in all I'd suggest this chart signifies nothing except that the US Overton Window has slid dangerously to the right and allowed a whole bunch of disinformation to be mistaken for news. Simonm223 (talk) 17:48, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

Do we have an article in the mainspace about various ratings? WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:39, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

I would have to agree. I have no desire to get into the politics of this, but Allsides is not a reliable source because it just reflects US opinions. Editors should judge sources based on the quality of those sources, without any regard of their supposed 'leaning'. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 22:25, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

The main point here is that the sources in the table have been selected to make a point. The Guardian is an internationally respected newspaper and Breitbart is a bundle of crap. It's nothing to do with left or right - there's no equivalence. In the right column, the internationally respected media (the Guardian equivalents) are deliberately omitted. No Telegraph, The Times, WSJ, Financial Times etc etc. The two columns are not complete sets - just arbitrary selections. DeCausa (talk) 23:11, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

The source rates the WSJ (for news) and FT as being centrist, and the OP did say that they included only left- and right-leaning sources. The Times (i.e., of London) does not appear to be rated by Allsides. So of your list, only the Telegraph, which is slightly right according to this source and which earns both (most) and (trans/GENSEX content) at WP:RSP, seems to have been overlooked. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:11, 24 December 2024 (UTC)

Allsides is junk, and the other such websites are no better. That they rate the sources like that only shows they are repeating common US opinions, and this is an international project. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 01:24, 24 December 2024 (UTC)

The "source" is nonsense. WSJ, the Times and FT are famously "right". If they're "centre" so is the Guardian. The "source" seems to only classify "far right" as right. DeCausa (talk) 08:36, 24 December 2024 (UTC)

That source differentiates between news and opinion: They classify the WSJ as center for their news and right for their opinions.

Our article on Financial Times says they have been called "centrist to centre-right liberal, neo-liberal, and conservative-liberal", but not "right". Our article on The Wall Street Journal similarly declines to simply call them "right", but provides a range of descriptions over time. I would think that if they are famously right-wing, then we'd have enough sources to just straight-up say that in the articles. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:15, 24 December 2024 (UTC)

And if political leaning had been the cause for any of the consensus's in the original table it could be shown by diffs. Instead it's a table matched against an opinion source that is at best contentious in it's ratings. It has zero relevance to reliability on Wikipedia. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 10:46, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

The relevance isn't really to the mainspace, but to the community. The perception that right-leaning sources are disproportionately banned results in sincere questions like this one from editors who are trying to understand our system. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:42, 27 December 2024 (UTC)

So the system needs to be more transparent and easier to explain, as there is a false perception of events. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 11:46, 27 December 2024 (UTC)

There are complaints every single day about this. At what point does it become unfair to refer to these complaints as "false perceptions"? Big Thumpus (talk) 13:53, 27 December 2024 (UTC)

There are reliable right leaning sources, there are unreliable left leaning sources. That this isn't understood is a failure to explain the actual situation, the false perception (maybe poor wording) isn't a failure of those complaining but of the real story not being told well enough. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 14:41, 27 December 2024 (UTC)

Since there seems to be some disagreement here as to what Wikipedia considers a "reliable right leaning source", can you give an example of what you're talking about? Big Thumpus (talk) 14:52, 27 December 2024 (UTC)

Well as an example for UK news media the issue is that people see The Guardian is considered reliable (left) but The Daily Mail (right) is considered unreliable, and so think there isn't a balance. But that is a false perception, caused by not highlighting well enough that The Times or The Daily Telegraph both are right leaning media that is considered reliable. While there are left leaning media, such as Skwawkbox and The Canary (both probably the most left of UK sources), that are not considered reliable.

None of those sources considered unreliable are unreliable because of their political leaning, reliable sources are defined as having "a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy" (see WP:V#What counts as a reliable source) and that is something that the DM, Canary or Skwawkbox all lack. Note also it's not an instance of failure in these areas that causes a source to be considered unreliable, but long term and ongoing failures. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 15:24, 27 December 2024 (UTC)

I agree that this appears to be statistically ridiculous but formally reviewing and potentially reclassifying some or all of these sources per Wikipedia RS policy would be a huge undertaking. I think anyone who legitimately tries to take in the world from a neutral standpoint would acknowledge that every single source in the left column published sensational, misleading and at times outright false information during this last election cycle (at the very least), but since the same can be said for the sources in the right column that leaves us in a bit of a pickle. Big Thumpus (talk) 15:03, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

Anyone wanting to show that any source in the ta or has fallen below acceptable standards can do so. It doesn't have to be a 'review all' kind of situation. Also there is nothing statistically ridiculous about anything, the changing media landscape has changed in different ways for different sources. That sources with a commonality have changed in a similar way is statistically normal. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 15:45, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

What I'm saying is statistically ridiculous is that, on Wikipedia, a self-proclaimed neutral encyclopedia, practically all news sources that have an openly left political lean are classified as reliable while practically all news sources that have an openly right political lean are classified as unreliable. At face value, this appears to represent a one-sidedness among whoever reviews said sources, and when looking deeper into discussions on talk pages for articles having to do with American politics, it's easy to find many editors expressing concerns about left-leaning opinions outweighing right-leaning opinions, to a degree that affects accuracy and neutrality. As it stands, the concerns of these editors are brushed off and they are told to reference reliable sources to support their disagreements - the Catch 22 being that there are no right-leaning sources for them to reference that Wikipedia deems reliable. Big Thumpus (talk) 15:59, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

Not all right leaning sources are considered unreliable and not all left leaning sources are considered reliable. That is just not true.

Many things appear a certain way on face value if you make a list that doesn't include reliable rightwing sources, exclude unreliable leftwing sources, and include 'leftwing' sources in the reliable list that are not leftwing. It would be very helpful to have more reliable rightwing sources, but Wikipedia isn't the issue. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 20:21, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

It might help dispel this complaint to make a similar chart of the right-wing sources that ARE considered reliable. Blueboar (talk) 20:25, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

crickets :) — Masem (t) 20:27, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

Some have already been mentioned in this thread. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 20:30, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

The New York Times is a right-wing publication. Famously so. Simonm223 (talk) 21:22, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

Which doubtless explains why we've gotten complaints from editors about our biased rules preferring the "liberal" or "left-wing" NYT getting preferred over the "centrist" Fox News. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:41, 27 December 2024 (UTC)

Everything looks leftwing after a certain point. But pro-business, low taxation, and anti-regulation are rightwing positions, even if a source doesn't care if people use pronouns or isn't strongly anti-immigration. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 11:49, 27 December 2024 (UTC)

The Spectator and Washington Examiner have no-consensus ratings at RSP. I didn't notice any others within two or three minutes. Mostly, I don't recognize the names of the non-featured news outlets, though a few, like Catholic News Agency, sound like the kind of niche subject matter that would probably be accepted within that subject matter. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:59, 27 December 2024 (UTC)

Except they don't. The news sources in the left column don't have a meaningful left-wing bias with the possible exception of Jacobin. It's just that the American Overton window is so laughably skewed that anything to the left of Ronald Reagan gets called socialist. Simonm223 (talk) 20:37, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

@Simonm223 It does seem pretty skewed. Doug Weller talk 14:10, 27 December 2024 (UTC)

To reframe something mentioned by others above, the source table is one that's calling the Associated Press as far "left" as Jacobin. If a dataset is being skewed in this way that's a data sampling problem. CMD (talk) 14:47, 27 December 2024 (UTC)

With respect, the Associated Press did run some blatantly partisan and misleading stories throughout this election cycle, like this one and this one for example. Of course there are farther-left leaning sources who ran even more with stories like this, but I think it's undeniable that AP platformed opinions-as-news that many would consider "far left" or at least directly serving the interests of politicians considered to be "far left". Big Thumpus (talk) 15:02, 27 December 2024 (UTC)

The AP does not exist just to cover US politics, and if those are examples of their most "far-left" stories, that sort of makes the point. CMD (talk) 15:09, 27 December 2024 (UTC)

Which point are you referring to, though? I linked to those stories because I think it's clear that their left-leaning bias crosses over the line of accuracy and renders them inappropriate for use as a source in a neutral encyclopedia. If the AP does not exist just to cover US politics then perhaps their US political reporting should carry a separate classification? Big Thumpus (talk) 15:18, 27 December 2024 (UTC)

Generally the United Sfstes systematically treats media as considerably more left-wing than it is. For instance being a partisan supporter of the center-right Democrat political party would not be considered an indication of being left wing anywhere else in the world. The sample is, frankly, garbage. Simonm223 (talk) 15:44, 27 December 2024 (UTC)

The United States as a whole? And are you saying that the Democrat party in the US is center-right? The stories I linked to above are inaccurate regardless of party affiliation, in that they misrepresent the factual realities of their subjects. Big Thumpus (talk) 15:51, 27 December 2024 (UTC)

Yes. The United States, as a whole. Yes, the Democrats are center-right. There is no organized left wing in the USA and no mainstream left-wing media. The arbitrary sorting of right wing media like NYT into a left column is just that: arbitrary.Simonm223 (talk) 16:50, 27 December 2024 (UTC)

Are you not from the United States? Big Thumpus (talk) 16:55, 27 December 2024 (UTC)

That is entirely irrelevant. Simonm223 (talk) 16:56, 27 December 2024 (UTC)

I ask out of genuine curiosity because I would find it at least a little bit odd for someone who lives in the US, especially a long-term resident, and who regularly consumes US media to say that there is "no mainstream left-wing media" or that Democrats are legitimately "center-right". That is not at all how it appears on the ground in everyday life. Big Thumpus (talk) 17:04, 27 December 2024 (UTC)

That is that systematic bias that over-estimates how left-wing institutions are at play. Which is the same failure of judgment that led to the division above being treated as a left-right one rather than a mainstream-fringe division. Simonm223 (talk) 17:09, 27 December 2024 (UTC)

I'm not talking about some sort of systematic bias right now, though - I'm talking about actually coexisting with people in the US who outwardly identify as Democrats and how it is not accurate to describe their personal political beliefs, or how they expect their party and media to represent them, as "center-right". Big Thumpus (talk) 17:23, 27 December 2024 (UTC)

No offense but the thoughts and feelings of individual voters is entirely immaterial to the political position of the Democrats as an institution and is doubly immaterial to the actual topic - that list which shows only that Wikipedia allows mainstream media and deprecates fringe publications. Simonm223 (talk) 18:27, 27 December 2024 (UTC)

Here's a story for you:

A friend of mine was a sysadmin in the 1990s. At a time when ragged tie-dye T-shirts were the uniform of "dot com" coders, he wore a buttoned-down shirt to work. They all thought he was unusually formal.

He moved to a different part of the country, doing similar work. Overnight, people's perception of him has transformed into "the wild Silicon Valley guy", because the local standards were so much more formal than him: He didn't wear a jacket or a necktie!

Big Thumpus, I think something similar is going on here. My friend was the same person, wearing the same clothes, but getting interpreted according to two different local standards. The same thing happens with political parties. The US ideas about what constitutes left or right are different from the ideas in other places. Our "left" (e.g., single-payer healthcare) is the "center" in some places (e.g., Europe). Views endorsed by our "right" (e.g., free, healthful school lunches for poor kids) is a "leftist" view in other places (e.g., developing countries). WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:53, 27 December 2024 (UTC)

Assuming by the "our" you mean American, that's one way to describe the view of the "right" on school meals, here is an apparently centrist coverage[1]. That said, even in the variety of US political local standards, I find it hard to believe Jacobin and AP fall into the same category. CMD (talk) 03:53, 28 December 2024 (UTC)

The AP rating is "-3.1" and the Jacobin rating is "-4.0", so the AP is barely in the category. Until this year, the AP was rated as "center" or "lean left".

It seems to be based on surveys, and I found that reading the featured survey comments that the ratings are based on was informative.[2] For example, a survey respondent said that "Many transgender health bills came from a handful of far-right interest groups, AP finds" was evidence of bias, because even if the wording of the bills was practically word for word out of the model legislation published by Do No Harm (organization), about half of Americans support the overall goal in that legislation, so (according to the survey respondent) it's "misleading" to point out that the exact wording came from a special interest group. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:08, 28 December 2024 (UTC)

Ah, American public surveys during an election year. That said, given that's the methodology, I'm surprised the Daily Mail entered consideration at all, although I suppose the somehow BBC made it too. CMD (talk) 04:29, 28 December 2024 (UTC)

Additional information

To demonstrate how selection bias affects the presentation of a situation, here is another selection of entries from the perennial sources list that tells a completely different story than the first table:

Status of left and right leaning media sources

LEFT	Status	RIGHT	Status
AlterNet		The American Conservative
The Canary		Asian News International
China Global Television Network		The Australian
Correo del Orinoco		The Daily Telegraph (UK) (excluding transgender topics)
CounterPunch		Deseret News
Daily Kos		Financial Times
Daily Star (UK)		Forbes
Global Times		Fox News (news excluding politics and science)
The Grayzone		The Gateway Pundit
HuffPost contributors		The Globe and Mail
Independent Media Center		InfoWars
MintPress News		National Review
Occupy Democrats		New York Post (entertainment)
An Phoblacht		The New Zealand Herald
Raw Story		OpIndia
Rolling Stone (politics and society, 2011–present)		Reason
Sixth Tone (politics)		The Spectator
The Skwawkbox		The Times
SourceWatch		The Wall Street Journal
Telesur		Washington Examiner
Venezuelanalysis		The Washington Times
Voltaire Network		The Weekly Standard

See also Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2020-11-29/Op-Ed. — Newslinger talk 05:31, 28 December 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for compiling that. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:40, 28 December 2024 (UTC)

@Newslinger: The original chart used this source. The was no "selection bias". It was a literal cut-and-paste! What inclusion criteria did you use? Or did you arbitrarily cherry pick? Magnolia677 (talk) 12:07, 28 December 2024 (UTC)

Allsides' selection of what to include caused a bias, as it failed to include many sources that have been discussed on Wikipedia. This gives rise to a false impression of the situation, as what is or isn't in the table changes how it will be viewed. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 12:23, 28 December 2024 (UTC)

AllSides didn't pick which media outlets to include knowing the one day some Wikipedia editor would include them in a chart. There are other media bias charts available, and they all demonstrate the same thing. This cherry-picked selection yields cherry-picked outcomes. Everyone knows that, and paradoxically, it supports the original point I was making. Magnolia677 (talk) 13:04, 28 December 2024 (UTC)

No they didn't pick them in relation to Wikipedia, and that's part of the selection issue. They are not reporting sources that have been discussed on Wikipedia, which would be a better selection to look at. By limiting it to only those sources reported by Allsides you exclude many other sources. By looking at the selection of sources discussed on Wikipedia the situation isn't so clear. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 13:54, 28 December 2024 (UTC)

Your linked AllSides page explicitly states:

How Does AllSides Decide Which Media Outlets to Include on the Chart?

Which outlets go on the chart is ultimately up to AllSides' editorial discretion.

The second table was also made with "editorial discretion", using a global selection of sources specifically chosen to refute the point you are trying to make.

AllSides says that they evaluate "online, U.S. political content only" and consider "Whether the source is relevant nationally", using the word nationally to refer solely to the United States. Despite Americentrism being a prominent form of systemic bias on Wikipedia, English Wikipedia editors are global and English Wikipedia represents the entire English-speaking world, which is not limited to the United States. Reshaping English Wikipedia to represent the midpoint of the two dominant sets of political philosophies of the United States (i.e. turning Wikipedia into Ameripedia) is not a goal I or many other editors consider desirable.

It is strange that, despite this being a talk page for the reliable sources guideline, this conversation is focused only on political orientation and not source reliability. The AllSides chart you linked says, "Ratings do not reflect accuracy or credibility; they reflect perspective only." The reliable sources guideline states, "Articles should be based on reliable, independent, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy", so the AllSides chart is not particularly relevant to the reliable sources guideline. Ad Fontes Media's media bias chart, which covers both reliability and political bias, is much more relevant; perhaps you should consider creating a table using this two-dimensional chart, instead, as I did before.

By the way, your table incorrectly lists  AllSides (RSP entry) as "left" and generally unreliable as its first entry. I believe you meant to refer to  AlterNet (RSP entry). — Newslinger talk 15:20, 28 December 2024 (UTC) Corrected "Anglosphere" to "English-speaking world" — Newslinger talk 16:52, 28 December 2024 (UTC)

The point of the original post still stands: the most commonly consumed "left" sources [in America] are considered totally legitimate on the English Wikipedia, while the most commonly consumed "right" sources are not. This, at the very least, has created such an obvious apparent bias to enough editors that it is a daily conversation. Writing it off as "societal bias" or some sort of "Americentrism" does us absolutely no favors, since at the core of this discussion is whether or not these particular sources are factually accurate, i.e. "reliable".

I've said it once in this thread already, but I believe that it's obvious to anyone trying to actually interpret the neutrality and accuracy of a source that most, if not all, of the "left" sources on the given list have published blatantly false and misleading material, recently enough and to a serious enough degree that they should not have their names in green on the perennial sources list if we're holding them to the same standards as "right" sources.

Additionally, how is the global applicability of certain sources being determined? I find that very hard to do accurately when many international sources simply republish articles from American sources. Big Thumpus (talk) 16:10, 28 December 2024 (UTC)

So here is the thing: most news media is garbage by the standards an encyclopedia should use. Newsmedia has, however, become entirely pervasive within Wikipedia because it rushes to publish first and there is a lot of it. It allows editors to keep Wikipedia timely. However this should help indicate just how bad a source has to become before Wikipedia deprecates. This entire discussion is just asking the question, "if fringe disinformation is popular shouldn't we use it?" This isn't changed by adding, "the mainstream sources also aren't good."

Like we know that. We should be stricter with mainstream sources rather than more permissive of fringe sources.Simonm223 (talk) 16:21, 28 December 2024 (UTC)

What are you referring to as "fringe disinformation"? And I'm agreeing with your last point: if we're being strict about our interpretation of the factual reliability of all news sources, then we should be holding the "left" sources to the same standards as the "right" sources, which would inevitably result in their reclassification if we're being honest. Big Thumpus (talk) 16:32, 28 December 2024 (UTC)

As I mentioned before, what you are seeing "results from a feature of the American media landscape: among low-quality sources, the most popular websites are right-wing sources". The most popular far-left American news website is  The Grayzone (RSP entry), which is only the 123,160th most visited website in the US, according to SimilarWeb. Meanwhile, the most popular far-right American news website is   Breitbart News (RSP entry), which SimilarWeb ranks as the 352nd most visited in the US. Americans preferring to visit low-quality right-wing websites over low-quality left-wing websites is not a problem for Wikipedia editors to solve, because the reliable sources guideline applies to all sources regardless of political orientation.

Claiming that "many international sources simply republish articles from American sources" overlooks the massive amount of independent research and reporting that non-US sources perform as well as the fact that reliable non-US sources are also afforded due weight on Wikipedia. Your proposal to reclassify the reliability of sources on the perennial sources list to fit the consumption habits of people in the United States, instead of their actual reliability, is both Americentric and inconsistent with the reliable sources guideline.

On Wikipedia, there is strong consensus against your assertion that "most, if not all" of the sources AllSides labels "left" should not be considered generally reliable, and Wikipedia editors do apply the same reliable sources guideline to all sources. If you believe otherwise, you are welcome to provide evidence on the reliable sources noticeboard – much stronger evidence than what you used to incorrectly claim that the  Associated Press (RSP entry) publishes "far left" content. — Newslinger talk 16:51, 28 December 2024 (UTC)

I said "most commonly consumed "left" sources" and "most commonly consumed "right" sources", which I think would be sources more like CNN and FOX News. I don't have an account on SimilarWeb but I can see that those networks are ranked 28th and 39th, respectively. Which one of those is green on the perennial sources list and which is red?

I also think it's fair to say that a particular source doesn't need to be explicitly "far" left or right in order to find content on them that endorses what people may legitimately feel is "far" one direction or the other. Big Thumpus (talk) 17:27, 28 December 2024 (UTC)

Whether a source is commonly consumed by Americans is irrelevant to whether the source is reliable. This page (the talk page of a guideline) is not the correct place to relitigate the extremely long 2023 Fox News RfC. If you have new evidence about any of the sources you mentioned, you are welcome to present it on the reliable sources noticeboard. — Newslinger talk 17:35, 28 December 2024 (UTC)

You're continuing to confuse "left" according to AllSides (which explains "Our media bias rating scale is based on American politics," and "our bias ratings reveal the average judgment of all Americans") and "left" according to a global standard. WP editors are not limited to Americans, nor should we be. As Simonm223 already noted, most of the media on the "Left" column is not meaningfully left-wing anywhere outside of the United States. From a global (WP) perspective, that top comparison is mostly comparing centrist news sources (on the left) to right-wing news sources (on the right). FactOrOpinion (talk) 00:30, 29 December 2024 (UTC)

Newslinger and FactOrOpinion with respect, we are simply not having the same conversation. If you regularly consume the sources in the "left" column and do not find the views they platform to be "left" then that is a matter of personal interpretation, and not an accurate indication of some sort of global political spectrum.

It is a fact that Wikipedia fields criticisms of left-leaning bias every single day; to write these criticisms off as essentially a special brand of American Ignorance is not a great example of WP:AGF and, at the very least, contributes further to the appearance of bias that garners criticism in the first place.

It's not enough to just point to discussions happening on obscure noticeboards and claim consensus - many of the complaints are coming from people who came to Wikipedia to read about a particular topic, and were genuinely surprised by what they found to be a very strong left-leaning bias. These are not just Americans. It should come as no surprise that a grand majority of these people don't ever show up at RSN to have a more involved discussion, either because they don't know these noticeboards even exist or because they end up blocked after getting into discussions one might reasonably refer to as "frustrating" or "circular".

The grander point I'm trying to make is that while WP:RS does say that editors should not interpret primary sources for themselves, they are expected to use their judgment to draw the line between usable and inappropriate sources for each statement when it comes to secondary sources. In the specific context of articles about American politics or political figures, the Catch 22 is that editors can't even cite some of the most common "right" news sources - the ones most likely to even publish content on the given topics - while practically every common "left" source is permitted, even while they publish content that frequently matches the same levels of sensationalism and inaccuracy-due-to-bias as the "right" sources. Big Thumpus (talk) 15:14, 29 December 2024 (UTC)

In other words, The Atlantic, which compared Trump to Hitler in the weeks before the election, gets a pass, while the third most popular newspaper in the United States, founded by Alexander Hamilton, and which broke the Russian disinformation Hunter Biden laptop story...what's that newspaper called?...is verboten. Magnolia677 (talk) 15:30, 29 December 2024 (UTC)

What is now called The New York Post was founded 223 years ago. Some obvious questions that occur to me include: (a) why the long-dead founder's identity matters for anything about the present day, (b) why being founded by an ardent advocate of violent revolution against the traditional government is supposed to make us favor the paper, and (c) why we should assume that the paper's editorial perspective has stayed the same through all of these years. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:25, 29 December 2024 (UTC)

Most of the major discussion that are relevant here had hundreds of different editors involved, they where hardly obscure. Unless there is going to be some reflectuon on the issues raised in this discussion then there is little more to say. The jist here is that something underhanded is going on, well if it has then prove it - otherwise AGF. If someone can show that any of these where based on politics, then there would be something to discuss. Otherwise that the US public consumes a lot of low quality right wing news sources is the common link between these sources. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 15:41, 29 December 2024 (UTC)

"Low quality right wing news"...unlike MSNBC. Friend, one thing we agree on is that this discussion will change little. I just wanted have some holiday fun and say the quiet part out loud. I was born at night, but not last night. Magnolia677 (talk) 16:03, 29 December 2024 (UTC)

Magnolia677, you made a table that included just 33 of the 457 entries (7.2%) listed on the perennial sources list and wrote, "When there are 20 shades of blue paint available, and just 5 shades of green...everything starts to look kind of...blue". In one of the replies, Blueboar said that "It might help dispel this complaint to make a similar chart of the right-wing sources that ARE considered reliable". I did just that with a 44-entry table showing there are not just "5 shades of green", and that "blue paint" is held to the same level of scrutiny as "green" paint across the world. Now, I am perplexed as to why you are crying foul.

This discussion has already covered the main reason your selection of entries looks biased whereas a broader examination of the list does not: AllSides only lists a small number sources on its chart that it believes is relevant to the US and classifies them on a curve that is shaped to popular opinions in mainstream US politics, while excluding many other US and non-US sources that have a documented political orientation, all with no regard to source reliability. Meanwhile, on the reliable sources noticeboard, editors examine not only US-based sources that AllSides pays attention to, but also many other sources all around the world, because editors cite sources from many countries for all the topics Wikipedia covers, including but not limited to US politics.

Insisting on narrowing the scope of the discussion to US-focused sources rated by a US organization on a scale oriented to mainstream US political opinions is a perfect example of Americentrism. Demanding that editors view the evaluation of source reliability – using nonpolitical criteria – through the lens of American politics is Americentrism. Using affirmative action to reshape the perennial sources list to fit American consumption patterns, instead of reliability, would also be Americentrism. I am not using that word as an insult; I am referencing the fact that Americentrism has been listed on the systemic bias page since January 2016. I described Americentrism as selection bias and systemic bias, but not "American Ignorance"; the latter words are your Big Thumpus's words and not mine.

Magnolia677, your claim that you created the first table to "have some holiday fun and say the quiet part out loud" seems to indicate that you expected a controversial discussion. If you have problems with The Atlantic, MSNBC, or any other source, and you have the evidence to back it up, feel free to go to the reliable sources noticeboard and present that evidence to substantiate your point of view. That would be the most appropriate place to start a likely controversial discussion about the sources you mentioned, and it would be in accordance with the advice at WP:RSPIMPROVE. — Newslinger talk 19:04, 29 December 2024 (UTC) Corrected comment attribution — Newslinger talk 19:41, 29 December 2024 (UTC)

(TLDR). All I did was cut-and-paste every far left and far right source listed here, then add their Wikipedia rating. It was a literal cut-and-paste!!!. And the result has editors madder than a mosquito in a mannequin factory...looking for excuses. Let's discredit the source; let's make up some other meaningless chart; let's denounce all the right-wing media. Did I miss any? Magnolia677 (talk) 19:34, 29 December 2024 (UTC)

You preference for this source and the ratings it produces is clear. You appear to have missed every objection to them. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 19:39, 29 December 2024 (UTC)

Yes, you overlooked all of the explanations of why your chart is not a representative sample of the perennial sources list, and you missed the numerous low-quality "left" sources and higher-quality "right" sources listed in the second table – which was designed as a rebuttal. (You also missed that AllSides does not have "far left" or "far right" classifications.) I am not "mad", and I am not sure why you believe that to be the case. — Newslinger talk 19:43, 29 December 2024 (UTC)

Then use Ad Fontes Media chart. The results are the same. Magnolia677 (talk) 19:47, 29 December 2024 (UTC)

I already did. The bottom line is: if there are any sources you would like to have the community re-evaluate, the reliable sources noticeboard is the right place to present your new evidence, and you may use comparisons of other sources as part of your evidence. This page is not the appropriate place to complain about sources. — Newslinger talk 19:55, 29 December 2024 (UTC)

(TLDR) That says a great deal. If you're unwilling to read and seriously consider the responses to you, what's the point? FactOrOpinion (talk) 20:00, 29 December 2024 (UTC)

Then use Ad Fontes Media chart. The results are the same. That's not true. For example, AllSides rates the Associated Press as Left, whereas Ad Fontes rates it as Middle. AllSides rates both the NYT and Jacobin as Left, whereas Ad Fontes rates the NYT as "skews left" and Jacobin as "hyper-partisan left" (which still isn't Ad Fontes's furthest left category). Ad Fontes rates accuracy as well as bias, whereas AllSides pointedly does not. Sometimes they don't even use the same subsets for a large news entity. For example, Ad Fontest breaks Fox into 10 subcategories, each of which is rated separately, whereas AllSides' breaks Fox into two subcategories. In neither case do their subcategories correspond to any of the three subcategories that WP uses for Fox. (BTW, in your original table using AllSides, you made a clear choice to ignore the main Fox News entry in RSP and instead use the Fox News (politics and science) entry.) Ad Fontes isn't explicit about whether they use American raters, but my guess is "yes." AllSides and Ad Fontes use different rating methodologies. FactOrOpinion (talk) 23:59, 29 December 2024 (UTC)

My friend I don't disagree that MSNBC isn't a great source, take it to RSN and show that's the case. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 19:25, 29 December 2024 (UTC)

No, I don't think "something underhanded is going on", I just think that discussions like this highlight that some editors have such deeply held personal political beliefs that they do not acknowledge the facts of the matter - which are that Wikipedia continues to receive daily criticism of a perceived left-leaning bias, and that this affects public perception of the encyclopedia's reliability.

Broadly referring to some of the most widely consumed news sources in the country as "low quality" does us zero favors and gets the discussion nowhere. It's fair to say that there are millions of Americans, and even non-Americans, who might view the "left" sources as "low quality", especially after a lot of their reporting during this last election cycle apparently completely failed to capture the perspectives of a majority of the country. Big Thumpus (talk) 15:59, 29 December 2024 (UTC)

Of course there are low-quality "left" sources; I have listed some of them in the second table. Popularity does not determine reliability, and the reliable sources guideline does not use popularity as a criterion for determining whether a source is reliable. Doing so would be like using a food's popularity to determine whether it is healthy. — Newslinger talk 19:04, 29 December 2024 (UTC)

So their not being deliberately biased just fools, or again you could assume good faith. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 19:23, 29 December 2024 (UTC)

Frankly I don't give a pair of dingo's kidneys worth of care to the opinions of Breitbart readers. If they want to think the encyclopedia is biased for not treating their disinformation website as a legitimate source they can go ahead and think that. They will be wrong. Simonm223 (talk) 19:59, 29 December 2024 (UTC)

It is a fact that Wikipedia fields criticisms of left-leaning bias every single day; to write these criticisms off as essentially a special brand of American Ignorance is not a great example of WP:AGF... First, I don't see any evidence in this discussion of non-American sources suggesting that en.WP has a left-wing bias, much less about the potential bias of WPs in other languages. (Maybe I missed it. If so, please point it out.) From my reading, this discussion has focused on how AllSides — which very explicitly represents only an American perspective — characterizes a small subset of mostly American media, and how en.WP characterizes those same media. Second, I don't see any attempt to characterize the bias of most non-American media or even how en.WP characterizes the full spectrum of American sources, many of which aren't even listed in RSP. Third, I'm not sure what you mean by "American Ignorance." I don't think that it's ignorant for Americans to view things from an American perspective. I think it's normal for people in Country X to view things from the perspective of Country X. I'm simply noting that an American perspective need not be representative of a global perspective. That's not a failure to assume AGF.

These are not just Americans. But you're not talking about a random sample, nor is there any reason to believe that it's a representative sample, so your sample isn't that informative. In the specific context of articles about American politics Most of en.WP is not about American politics. It sounds like your argument boils down to something like "I think en.WP's articles about American politics have a left-wing bias because they mostly rely on American sources, and editors from varied countries have concluded that many American right-wing sources aren't reliable, while also concluding that sources Americans consider left-wing (but that might not be characterized as left-wing by editors from varied countries) are reliable." If I'm misrepresenting your argument, please correct me, thanks. FactOrOpinion (talk) 18:00, 29 December 2024 (UTC)

As this whole thread appears to have been a troll I suggest we just close it. Simonm223 (talk) 20:41, 29 December 2024 (UTC)

@Simonm223: I'm going to take your Civility Barnstar away if you call me a troll again. Be nice. Magnolia677 (talk) 20:52, 29 December 2024 (UTC)

I don't think it's fair to characterize it as Trolling, but I do think that there is not much else worth saying that hasn't already been said. People who measure Wikipedia against their own idea of "the middle" will often find that it differs. (Much of the world, for example, will disagree with our content on abortion. This could be because abortion is completely normal in their own culture, so they think it is weird that we spend so much time talking about moral opposition to it, or because it is abnormal in their culture, so they think it is terrible that we spend so much time talking about experts recommending that it be legal and destigmatized, but our attempt to encompass all the views will feel "off" by emphasizing the view that is less familiar or de-emphasizing the view that is most familiar.) That doesn't make Wikipedia wrong, and it doesn't make people wrong for wondering why their perception doesn't align with our articles and practices. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:56, 29 December 2024 (UTC)

Reliability versus notability of an author of a source

Should sources be used or quoted in an article if the author of the quoted piece is not themselves a notable individual, with their own Wikipedia article? Is there any policy in Wikipedia that could be interpreted as requiring the author of a source to have their own Wikipedia page, or to be Wikipedia-notable? Conversely, if there is no such requirement, where is this specified? BD2412 T 03:02, 24 December 2024 (UTC)

Reliability is not notability, notability is not reliability. Nikkimaria (talk) 03:09, 24 December 2024 (UTC)

Where is this written? Asking for a friend. BD2412 T 03:22, 24 December 2024 (UTC)

Although this has been asked before, I'm not sure that we ever wrote it down. However, it obviously follows from the answer to "Are reliable sources required to name the author?" in the Wikipedia talk:Verifiability/FAQ: If you can cite a news article that doesn't have a byline, then sources can be cited even if the authors are not known to be notable. Obviously any such rule would be a nightmare, though perhaps we'd be a little amused by the chicken-and-egg aspect (nobody can be notable first, because only sources written by already-notable authors would count towards notability) while Wikipedia burned to the ground.

I suspect the other editor is using notable in its real-world sense, e.g., to prefer sources written by known experts or other reputable authors. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:22, 24 December 2024 (UTC)

What about the specific context of quoting the author? For example, in Howard the Duck (film), we have: In The Psychotronic Video Guide, Michael Weldon described the reactions to Howard as being inconsistent, and, "It was obviously made in LA and suffered from long, boring chase scenes", with the "Michael Weldon" there being neither of the ones with Wikipedia articles, the Australian politician and the South African cricketer. BD2412 T 20:52, 24 December 2024 (UTC)

It's fine. You're supposed to provide WP:INTEXT attribution for most opinions/reviews.

Imagine a world in which we couldn't quote a scholar or an expert unless they qualified for a Wikipedia article. Or if we couldn't say something like "He denied the charges" about a non-notable person. Most editors would agree that such a result would violate NPOV. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:59, 27 December 2024 (UTC)

The New York Times should not be considered a reliable source

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

Plenty of evidence presented here, with information about many more sources: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhYS59egWQc --Scottandrewhutchins (talk) 06:28, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

I'm not going to click on a video of unknown provenance. If you can't make your point in writing, I'm not going to take it seriously. —David Eppstein (talk) 06:42, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

It would be a lot of copying and quoting from articles shown in the video. Scottandrewhutchins (talk) 08:28, 4 January 2025 (UTC)

This is the wrong place. If you want to question the reliability of a source, start a section at WP:RSN. However, you would be wasting your time because there is no chance NYT would be judged as generally unreliable. Zero^talk 10:02, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

Because people are unable to think. It is an extremely propagandistic source as the October 7 rape story proved, and this video shows plenty more examples that have nothing to do with the Israel-Palestine conflict. --Scottandrewhutchins (talk) 08:29, 4 January 2025 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Machine learning

Under § Sources produced by machine learning, I removed the statement ML generation in itself does not necessarily disqualify a source that is properly checked by the person using it (diff). What does "properly checked" mean? Does "the person using it" refer to the person submitting prompts to a chatbot or the Wikipedia editor using it as a source? Since it appears that most GenAI systems are trained using text scraped from the internet (including Wikipedia), I don't see any reason to treat large language models any differently to other § User-generated content. In other words, LLMs and other chatbots should be presumptively disqualified as sources until specifically verified by a human author with relevant expertise. —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 02:33, 12 January 2025 (UTC)

I assume "properly checked" referred to published sources that are checked by a human author, but I do not think the sentence you removed is necessary or helpful to include in the guideline, and I support the removal. I would also support bolstering the language of this section to explicitly state that sources composed of LLM-generated content are generally unreliable/unacceptable. I do not see a problem with authors using LLMs to assist with research, but any source that directly publishes LLM-generated content does not meet the "reputation for fact-checking and accuracy" required by this guideline. — Newslinger talk 02:59, 12 January 2025 (UTC)

OK, I added LLM-generated content from tools such as ChatGPT and other chatbots is not generally reliable etc. (diff). —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 04:41, 12 January 2025 (UTC)

It's not reliable at all! At best, and this is as permissive as people have proposed under the current tech, it is equivalent to our writing, that is, WP:OR. CMD (talk) 04:50, 12 January 2025 (UTC)

I believe the idea here was something like:

• Rae Reporter interviews a dozen people plus gets hundreds of pages of information from a government agency. The interview transcripts and all the information gets dumped into a magical AI tool, with instructions to summarize it all in the style of a 600-word-long newspaper article. After several iterations, the journalist then decides that it sounds basically okay, re-writes part of it, and individually hand-checks each and every name, claim, and quote in the original documents, because journalists don't actually like misquoting people. This gets handed off to the editor for normal processing.

and in particular, I think we want to avoid:

• A whistleblower leaks a massive amount of information to a journalist, who uses AI to summarize what's in the document trove. The journalist hand-writes a news article about the information in the documents, and it is published in a reputable newspaper. A POV pusher claims that the news article is unreliable because the journalist used AI as one tool among many.

What we don't want is:

• Wikipedia editors to say "Dear LLM, here is a long list of people who sound like notable BLPs, so please write Wikipedia articles about each of them. They all need to have about 1,000 words and two inline citations to reliable sources per paragraph. The second sentence should say what they are best known for. Thank you."

WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:33, 12 January 2025 (UTC)

The first "Rae Reporter" example case sounds controversial. In their current state, I do not believe LLMs are able to process that volume of information into a 600-word article without significant inaccuracies or omissions that would compromise the quality of the output text. Additionally, LLMs are not yet sufficiently advanced to perform fact-checking on the original documents, which would result in incorrect and misleading claims being presented in the published article without appropriate context.

As the section text currently states, "It may not be known or detectable that ML was used to produce a given piece of text", so LLM-generated content that undergoes extensive rewriting and an adequate editorial process should theoretically be indistinguishable from human-written content that passes the same editorial process – a situation that might be comparable to the Ship of Theseus paradox. However, in practice, published articles that directly incorporate LLM-generated content tend to be less accurate to the point of being considered questionable, regardless of what the website claims to do editorially, because the direct use of LLM-generated content is a cost-cutting measure. This aligns with the consensus view expressed in the 2024 Red Ventures RfC and a 2023 discussion on G/O Media websites.

An example of LLM usage in published media that would be appropriate for citation on Wikipedia is the Pew Research Center's 2024 report "America’s News Influencers", which discloses in its methodology that GPT-4 was used for data processing during the research and analysis process, although the finished report was written by named humans. This type of report is similar to your second "whistleblower" example case. — Newslinger talk 07:12, 12 January 2025 (UTC)

I assumed the part I removed was referring to fully AI-generated content farms as potentially reliable sources in themselves, rather than LLMs as just another tool used by human authors of published, independent sources. I think it would be fine to add a caveat for things like the Pew report, making it clear that sources using LLMs for research need to separately have a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy. —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 09:35, 12 January 2025 (UTC)

An explicit caveat in the guideline would help clarify this, but I am not sure if it is necessary. Authors regularly use unreliable sources that are not LLM-generated as sources of data, and the author's writing can still be considered reliable as long as the author uses the data in an appropriate way that satisfies the "fact-checking and accuracy" requirement. The same would apply to authors using unreliable LLM-generated material as sources of data. — Newslinger talk 09:11, 13 January 2025 (UTC)

Proposal: Let we the audience vote for what we consider left-leaning and right-leaning sources

The discussion about Wikipedia's left-leaning bias 1 never goes anywhere in this page because there is a self-referencing loop involving Wikipedia Consensus -> aleggedly far-left, or very left-of-center and not-that-reliable sources -> someone brings up the perception of a left-wing bias -> Wikipedia editors point to a supposed "reliability" of a source without actually providing evidence for such reliability, except perhaps for academic articles on humanities, that don't prove objective facts either. What if both academic sources and media sources validate each other's "reliability" while not actually being reliable in the perception of the society? That's why democracy and suffrage exist.

Are you guys scientifically minded? Rationally minded? Are you against absolutism? Allow me to present a point.

Is it possible to reach an absolute truth about a government or a candidate? Can an administration or a candidacy be objectively qualified as "100% positive" or "100% negative"? Or course not. In any democratic system, an administration may reach an approval rate of, say, 70-90%, but there will be always people that perceive that administration as negative. The outcome of an election legitimates a consensus, not an objective truth.

The same holds true for thoughts, for philosophy, and for subjective classification of things based in consensual taxonomy frameworks. So we come down to left-right and reliable-unreliable classification:

Where did the reliable sources consensus come from? As far as I know, the bulk of it came arbitrarily from MrX's point of view in 07/28/2018. Who is he/she/they? Is this legitimate? Does the consensus of Wikipedia reflect the consensus of the general public? Who said so?

Let's suppose a consensus exists among the general audience, that there is a leftist bias in Wikipedia. Not only we are failing to properly address this, by not measuring or acknowledging it, but also Wikipedia would be contributing negatively for a biased media environment.

Let's suppose, for contrast, that there isn't a consensus among the general public that the leftist bias of Wikipedia is real. In this scenario Wikipedia would be luckier, but still negligent because it lacks a legitimate evidence for the perceived reliability and bias of its sources. What legitimates a president? There is a reason why he/she can't be elected by a special chaste of "specialists". The only legitimate means to claim power is through direct vote. Similarly, I propose that the only legitimate means to claim that a certain source is "reliable" and "has a certain political bias" is through vote.

I noted that Fox News isn't considered reliable specifically for transgender topics. What if the consensus among the general public is that several sources aren't reliable specifically for politically-charged topics? And... If the perceived consensus of left-right in the US is different from the rest of the world, we can address politics of each country separately. To be honest, I don't actually agree that the left-right division in the US is that much different from the rest of the world. What I see are left-friendly editors using very questionable and fragile statements ("the Democratic Party would be center-right in Europe"/"it doesn't matter if practically every self-identified leftist votes blue"/"source X follows the broader capitalist economic agenda, therefore it can't be called leftist") to pass far-left and verifiably flawed sources as flawless and reliable. And, by verifiably, I mean that it's verifiable through factual confrontation with other sources, suffrage, and intense civil scrutiny of what common citizens perceive, verify, think and say. Does anyone here value common citizens? There is a thing named afer this, it's "Communism" you know. Some people confuse it with free healthcare, but the historical consensus is that we were never capable of implementing it.

I know I may sound harsh and pretentious, but the political bias debacle is really annoying and tiresome. In my perception, Wikipedia's credibility for politically-charged topics has deteriorated since its foundation.

To wrap things up, in my point of view the current sources guidelines are a false consensus. They weren't built bottom-up from a consensus to begin with. They are illegitimate in the present moment, and have to be replaced by a proper consensus built from scratch. I propose that you all Wikipedia editors gather valid evidence - in the form of popular votes from the general audience - so you can legitimately claim that some source is "reliable" or "non-reliable", and "right-leaning" or "left-leaning" as well. Otherwise, the existing "reliable sources" and "center-right/center/left" labels are nothing but arbitrary and personal. And Wikipedia, once envisioned as a tool by the community, for the community, is just another voice of arbitrary "truths" as told by media oligarchs. JC Beltrano (talk) 07:49, 21 January 2025 (UTC)

@JC Beltrano, you are in the top 20% of contributors to Wikipedia. Congratulations. But this means that you stopped being part of "we the audience" several years ago.

Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Perennial sources ("WP:RSP") came from hundreds of prior discussions, mostly at Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard. Most of those discussions are linked on the page. If you want to influence RSP's contents in the future, then keep an eye on that noticeboard. At the moment, I notice a discussion in which an editor proposes slightly loosening the RSP classification on a left-wing source, and the proposal is being soundly rejected. Another left-wing source looks like it might get downgraded.

Something that you might want to think about is that what's "left" in US politics is "center" in European politics, so if we open it to a popular vote, you might get outvoted. Personally, I think it'd be best if we evaluated sources based on whether they get the facts right, rather than whether they're left or right or center. Good Wikipedia editors can build a neutral article even if the sources have the "wrong" political slant. WhatamIdoing (talk) 09:14, 21 January 2025 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a forum. So let's stop this silliness. Simonm223 (talk) 12:36, 21 January 2025 (UTC)

"But this means that you stopped being part of "we the audience" several years ago." The categories aren't mutually exclusive. Also, this is irrelevant. "If you want to influence RSP's contents in the future, then keep an eye on that noticeboard." From that noticeboard, I gather that Wikipedia is now a purple place: several reconsiderations and revisions denied. But it's pointless anyways, because something happened in this site in the last years so that discussions end with 10-20 votes favorable to non-consensual left-wing views that don't reflect society, thus should have no place in an encyclopedia that claims to be neutral. I actually found zero evidence to support the claim that HuffPost deserves to be treated better than Breitbart in a neutral encyclopedia. This isn't too different from a solo work of a random MrX - that also happens quite frequently. I mean... Drawing an analogy between Wikipedia and a printed encyclopedia, a chief editor is free to editorialize it to reflect only left-wing POV, but the problem is to claim neutrality. All the people involved in the typical RfC and editing of project pages won't consider for a second that they maybe, just maybe, are throwing the neutrality of their own project on the mud for not acknowledging that they are basing an entire encyclopedia on anecdotal samples of a dozen left-sympathetic people. Now, how this anecdotal leftist sample took over and is granted to win all critical decisions in the wiki, is beyond my research. You will keep editorializing this with a left bias until the worse happens (some right-leaning tech oligarch takes this project over) and it's not like my complaints will make any difference. I'm doing this mostly for the sake of historical record. The irony is that if a right-leaning "fascist" technocrat takes over this (very politically strategic) website, he/she probably will appoint an admin team more balanced and diverse than the current one. "Something that you might want to think about is that what's "left" in US politics is "center" in European politics, so if we open it to a popular vote, you might get outvoted. If this is true at all, let's open to popular community vote then. JC Beltrano (talk) 01:30, 22 January 2025 (UTC)

Re: consensus of the general public.

The general public is an idiot. What matters is the consensus of expert reliable sources. The general public may believe that earth is 6000 years old. Their view is irrelevant. What matters is the view of planetary scientists, geologists, and other qualified experts, who all agree that Earth's about 4.5 billion years old.

If the general public has a problem with this, too bad. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 12:51, 21 January 2025 (UTC)

"The general public is an idiot." Great! Wow, this is seriously some of the most reactionary statements I've read in a while. Let's raise the minimum voting age to 25 then. Let's restrict voting to only real estate-owner men. Why not change the main page from "Welcome" to "Welcome, idiot. We hope Wikipedia makes you less idiot"? "What matters is the consensus of expert reliable sources." What experts? Galileo was dismissed by the most credible board of experts of his time. Jordan Peterson is an expert, Alexandr Dugin is an expert, and taking the word literally, even Steve Bannon is an expert. But some experts are, somehow, being called by other experts "fascist" of "far-right". Joseph Goebbels was an expert, too. The Wiki is treating some experts as more expert than the others. Every "expert" association have their own set of oligarchs and trillionaire assets management funds behind them enough to raise conflict-of-interest questions. The best a free and neutral encyclopedia can do is to treat all oligarchs and billionaires equally, with the same degree of untrustworthiness. "What matters is the view of planetary scientists, geologists, and other qualified experts, who all agree that Earth's about 4.5 billion years old." This is a false equivalence. You are comparing apples to oranges. The approximate age of planet Earth is an objective datum that has been estimated using best evidence. So, what is the best evidence to estimate the political alignment of a media vehicle or a party? Well, reach to the civil society itself. The best political scientist gives more importance to the self-identification of voters of that party, and the perception of the audience of the media, than what his academic colleagues have to say individually, or to what the party declares officially. If you do a poll and the evidence shows that practically all the self-identified left-wing voters choose the Democratic Party, you, as a good political scientist, don't blindly conform to the self-designation of that party as "centrist", "big-tent" or "center-right". The best current evidence points to the Democratic Party being a center-left party, the same way it showed a center-right party until 1996. The people's perception and political action has greater relevance than whatever bullshit the party says about itself. Adolf Hitler put the -socialist suffix in his party, for instance. And the Republican Party doesn't self-identify officially as fascist. JC Beltrano (talk) 01:30, 22 January 2025 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a democracy and our original research cannot be used in Wikipedia articles. Wikipedia editors are indeed "scientifically minded"; see User:Guy Macon/Yes. We are biased. — Newslinger talk 14:22, 21 January 2025 (UTC)

So the policy of the site is to just ignore problems. Fine, I guess? Just apathetically point to links. No arguments, no evidence for decisions. This deadpan attitude is making Wiki go downhill. No comment on Larry Singer's statements? He is an expert, you see. No shock for the current impossibility of referencing right-leaning sources on political topics while left-leaning sources aren't banned? No one here provided valid evidence that MSNBC is more reliable for politics (thus, presumably less biased) than Fox News and New York Post. Anyways, this section is ready for purple. JC Beltrano (talk) 01:30, 22 January 2025 (UTC)

The policy of the site is that failing to kowtow to popular opinion, including but not limited to the popular opinion in the US, is not actually a problem.

An argumentum ad Larryem sounds pretty irrelevant. I can agree that he's an expert on his own opinions, though. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:17, 22 January 2025 (UTC)

Your very long comment has not actually identified a problem, especially because your premises are wrong. While MrX started the perennial sources list, it is incorrect to claim that "the bulk of it came arbitrarily from MrX's point of view in 07/28/2018". That list is a summary of discussions on the reliable sources noticeboard, a venue that has received contributions from thousands of editors representing a wide variety of views. There are plenty of right-leaning sources that are cited on Wikipedia, of which the ones listed here are a very small selection. If you have new evidence concerning MSNBC, Fox News, the New York Post, or any other source that you would like to start a discussion about, you are free to present that evidence on the noticeboard.

Reading, understanding, and applying the policies and guidelines is a fundamental part of being a Wikipedia editor. I recommend reading the policy on consensus to learn about how editors make decisions on Wikipedia. Soliciting votes from readers to determine article content is not how Wikipedia is written, but you are welcome to create your own online encyclopedia on your personal website if you would like to engage in that experiment.

And no, Larry Sanger is not an expert in politics, because experts in politics do not make statements like this. — Newslinger talk 03:01, 22 January 2025 (UTC)

• The key to political labeling (far-right, right, center, left, far-left) is INTEXT attribution. Wikipedia should not label things ourselves, we should inform our readers of the labels applied by our sources. Blueboar (talk) 14:39, 21 January 2025 (UTC)

  In an article, I completely agree with you. But the OP's concern appears to be that Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Perennial sources#New York Post does not endorse the newspaper's (lack of) fact checking and corrections. He'd probably be upset about the facts reported (and cited) in New York Post#Content, coverage and criticism, too, but the complaint itself is about our internal notes at WP:RSP. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:15, 21 January 2025 (UTC)

journals supplements -clarification needed

Subject: scientific conferences, a.k.a. symposia

TL;DR; they are unreliable primary sources, even when "peer-reviewed"

The current version says:

"Symposia and supplements to academic journals are often (but far from always¹) unacceptable sources. They are commonly sponsored by industry groups with a financial interest in the outcome of the research reported. They may lack independent editorial oversight and peer review, with no supervision of content by the parent journal. Such articles do not share the reliability of their parent journal, being essentially paid ads disguised as academic articles. Such supplements, and those that² do not clearly declare their editorial policy and conflicts of interest, should not be cited."

1: This "far from always" lost me. I need clarifications. Are supplements that clearly declare their editorial policy and COI acceptable? It think they often are not:

a)They are still primary sources, so not ideal.

b) They often include early stage results (not reliable; please see the paragraph about symposia on the Medicine page Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources (medicine)).

c) And if they don't include early stage results, we should then cite the original paper rather than the conference. Note: conferences are NOT an acceptable type of secondary sources, because they don't follow any scientific protocol; unlike secondary studies (a.k.a. reviews).

Anyway, I understand that some flexibility is needed. So how about simply deleting that "(but far from always)" parenthesis?

2: "and those that": it doesn't make grammatical sense. If we are to keep the ambiguity on whether such supplements are valid sources, let's insert "and especially those that". Okay? Galeop (talk) 04:04, 1 February 2025 (UTC)

Supplements that are paid ads are a COI problem. Conference papers typically are not; they may lack peer review, but in many cases the authors would qualify as subject-matter experts. I think it would be helpful to more clearly differentiate between these cases, and more clearly point to SPS for the evaluation of the latter (and potentially introduce the MEDRS issue). Nikkimaria (talk) 06:07, 1 February 2025 (UTC)