Wikipedia talk:Reliable sources

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2BHK Tamil Movie Director[edit]

2BHK tamil movie (sc-fi psychological thriller)directed by Bala palaniyappan, 2BHK movie was released on August 4 in ott platforms like Airtelxstream, hungama,vi movies,watcho,moviewood,etc. Bala palaniyappan (talk) 09:39, 5 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Upcoming LLM pseudo-sources[edit]

It looks like (archive) we're going to soon start having a bunch of LLM pseudo-sources: Google Is Paying Publishers to Test an Unreleased Gen AI Platform. In exchange for a five-figure sum, publishers must use the tool to publish 3 stories per day. ... As part of the agreement, the publishers are expected to use the suite of tools to produce a fixed volume of content for 12 months. ... These sources of original material are not asked for their consent to have their content scraped or notified of their participation in the process—a potentially troubling precedent, said Kint. When any of these indexed websites produce a new article, it appears on the platform dashboard. The publisher can then apply the gen AI tool to summarize the article, altering the language and style of the report to read like a news story. ... The program does not require that these AI-assisted articles be labeled. ... 'I think this calls into question the mission of GNI,' Kint said. 'It's hard to argue that stealing people’s work supports the mission of the news. This is not adding any new information to the mix.'

These sources will neither be based on journalists' investigations nor on fact-checking by humans who understand the meaning of things. Chances are they'll also merge a bit of Wikipedia-based content into them, creating a self-confirming loop.

A risk is that if the original sources are good enough, the pseudo-sources may look convincing enough that regular WP:RSP discussions will not be enough to classify them as unreliable. If they mostly say that 1+1=2 and that the world is round, and just occasionally talk about pi being 3, then chances are that they could be classified as mostly reliable, despite doing no journalism at all.

This problem will tend to exacerbate the bias introduced by filter #3 in the standard model of Western mainstream media.

Just brainstorming on possible ideas for handling this:

  • create a list of the specific news media involved in this particular case (might need some sleuthing to to identify them); this would make it easier to debate their reliability
  • be more sceptical about rich-country news sources that are suspected of involvement
    • in particular small "independent" (Google's term) news media
  • create a Wikipedia:AI/Noticeboard (maybe there already is one?)

Boud (talk) 15:27, 9 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

On the reliability of university press publications[edit]

Over the past year or so, I recall being involved in a couple of discussions in which one editor wanted to cite an obscure book that has been ignored by scholars in the field, arguing that anything published by a university press should have an automatic presumption of reliability, because it has been peer-reviewed. This isn't necessarily true.

This topic had been mulling in my mind for a long time, so a couple months ago I took it upon myself to dig up some information and write a short essay about this.

The essay is here: User:Anachronist/Reliable sources (university presses). Feel free to edit, find more sources, more examples, etc.

Mainly I'm wondering if the topic of university presses should be mentioned somewhere in this WP:RS guideline, or perhaps the essay could be moved into Wikipedia namespace and linked in "See also" if the community deems it appropriate. ~Anachronist (talk) 01:30, 13 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Agree that university press publications be vetted since they may be vanity publications by the university's faculty. Harvard University Press has books published by academics and non-academics which do not have any peer reviewed status.
They are essentially not reliable sources for the same reason that an academic technical report has not been peer reviewed.
Books such as, dictionary of (academic field) also too are not peer reviewed, they are a collection of short articles on various topics in that academic field and represent the viewpoint of the author.
Often, these university press books are written to be included in the university's own college classes, forcing students to buy books which directly benefit the faculty. It is a conflict of interest for a college faculty to enrich themself by forcing their own students to buy a book.
By extension, the large number of newspaper articles quoting the author and the book of these university press publications should be reviewed for reliable source status since the underlying university press book may not be peer reviewed and may not be a reliable source. 2600:1700:D591:5F10:40C5:FE3:6045:96CD (talk) 06:46, 17 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Anachronist, I suggest that you consider the alternatives here. We don't want to say "Oh, you should be a bit suspicious about university presses", because the alternative for books is not the peer-reviewed literature, but non-academic publishers. We should generally prefer a book from (for example) Oxford University Press over a book from (for example) Random House.
I also think you need to clarify the statement in your essay that "There are multiple reasons why a university press chooses to publish a book. Authors need those publications to be considered for tenure..." That's a reason why the author would submit the book, but not a reason why the publisher would choose to publish that one instead of another one.
Also, as much as it goes against the grain for certain academics, Wikipedia's job doesn't really entail citing only sources that are endorsed by the field. We're citing sources to show other editors that some passably (possibly only barely) reliable source said this thing before we posted it in Wikipedia. We're not citing the sources so that we can provide a curated list of the best books in the field. Readers basically don't read the sources that we're citing. The viewpoint we use that source to support matters (because NPOV), but the source itself is just not the point. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:25, 26 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Anon: I would be interested to know what books from Harvard University Press are by non-academics without any peer review.
@WhatamIdoing: Excellent points. This essay arose from two (as I recall) completely different discussions with different editors in which one editor was claiming that stating something as fact from a university press book should get an automatic pass because books by university presses should be considered as inherently reliable sources. I and other editors countered that this isn't necessarily the case, and the essay includes some examples as demonstration. This essay's intent is to provide an overview of the pitfalls if such disagreements occur in the future.
My objective in asking for feedback is to find out if the arguments are reasonable, and if there is anything that should be added or improved.
I have clarified the statement you suggested.
Most readers don't read the sources we are citing, true. I do, however, when the source is available. I have no objection to citing an unreliable university press book to verify a view of the author. Where I have a problem is citing a university press book to make assertions of fact in Wikipedia's narrative voice when citing a book that may not actually be a reliable source. Bottom line, publication by a university press doesn't necessarily merit an automatic presumption of reliability. ~Anachronist (talk) 02:57, 26 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I think it would be fairer to say that no source gets an automatic presumption of reliability, since (a) any source could suffer from an unfortunate typo or other unintentional error, and (b) whether the source is reliable for a given statement depends on what the statement is. That is, sometimes the source is "unreliable" in WP:RSCONTEXT through our fault (e.g., because we misquoted it) and not because of any flaw in the source itself. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:23, 26 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I would not be surprised to learn that, in that second situation you mention, the source could be "reliable" but wasn't WP:DUE. A source can be perfectly reliable for viewpoint or even for an undisputed, objective fact ("Chris Celebrity wore red shoes to the Big Event") and still not be appropriate for an encyclopedia article. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:26, 26 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Remove academic self-promotional 'about our faculty' page references[edit]

Many of the academic researcher pages have self-promotional citations from the university 'about our faculty' page for the person.

Consider "Liz Lightstone" or "Jennifer Martiny" Wikipedia topics, both academics where half of the citations are from their own employer's about our faculty pages, from a conference / lecture 'about our speakers' page, or from a grant proposal written by the same person - all of which are self-promotional.

The citations and the statements from them should be removed as not reliable sources for the same reason that Wikipedia does not include CV/Resume or book jacket about the author citations.

There are many academic researcher pages with self-promotional citations which need those self-promotional citations removed. Wikipedia should not be a CV/resume/about my research/who's who database directory for academic researchers. 2600:1700:D591:5F10:40C5:FE3:6045:96CD (talk) 07:10, 17 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

References 4,5,12,22,23,24,35,43 for "Karen Mills" are all self-promotional 'about our faculty' pages at her employer. There are also multiple citations 'about our distinguished panel members' for meetings she attended at other universities.
Can someone give instructions on how to find all citations on Wikipedia for a given self-promotional URL such as 'about our faculty' for Harvard, Columbia, or other universities?
Wikipedia is not a CV/resume database like linked in. 2600:1700:D591:5F10:40C5:FE3:6045:96CD (talk) 07:32, 17 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
A Google search for "www.hbs.edu" site:wikipedia.org results 10 academics self-promotional 'about the faculty' pages at Harvard in the Wikipedia articles for those persons. Those citations should be removed as they are self-promotional. Wikipedia is not a CV/Resume database. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:1700:D591:5F10:40C5:FE3:6045:96CD (talk) 07:37, 17 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
WP:PRIMARY sources are allowed, although these are closer to WP:ABOUTSELF statements. Either way the use of such sources are fine, as long as the content they support isn't unduly self serving. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 23:54, 17 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Of course, if the 2600:1700:D591 is volunteering to personally spend the time needed to replace (=not just remove) the existing sources with Wikipedia:Independent sources, then I'm sure nobody would object to that. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:29, 26 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

MSN News[edit]

Is MSN considered a reliable source of information? Never17 (talk) 21:53, 17 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

MSN News is a news aggregator… not a source itself. It reposts news stories from other news outlets. Thus we should not be citing MSN, but the outlet that originally published the story. Reliability is thus based on the reputation of the original outlet… Not MSN. Blueboar (talk) 22:25, 17 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
K Never17 (talk) 00:12, 18 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
MSN, yahoo, Forbes all aggregate stories. What is the procedure for qualifying stories as RS?
for example, yahoo repeatedly has thinly veiled advertisements from financial advisers giving a crafted scenario which would lead readers towards investing with the financial advisor. 2600:1700:D591:5F10:A98C:7BBF:91EE:619D (talk) 04:03, 18 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Ultimately editors are required to use their own judgement on the reliability of sources, and no sources is considered always reliable only ever generally reliable. Undisclosed advertorials are common place in Indian and Nigerian media, in sources that would otherwise be considered generally reliable, and it's a practice that is likely to become more common globally.
For aggregators always start with the original publisher, if they are unreliable then they are still unreliable even if Yahoo/MSN/Forbes republish the article. There is also more information about Forbes on the Perennial sources list. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 09:57, 18 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
To quote that page, "Yahoo! News runs both original reporting and syndicated feeds of other sources. Editors have treated the original reporting as an ordinary WP:NEWSORG, and thus presumed generally reliable. Take care with syndicated content, which varies from highly reliable sources to very unreliable sources. Syndicated content should be evaluated as you would evaluate the original source. Syndicated content will have the original source's name and/or logo at the top." Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 08:16, 26 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In the "piadina" page Francesca Cres added some information about the history of this food, I removed her edits because Julietdeltalima previously deleted them (Julietdeltalima: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Piadina&diff=prev&oldid=1213904179). The link from which Francesca Cres had taken the informations is this: https://www.piadinaloriana.it/en/company-history/the-piadina-history/#; is it a reliable source or not? Since it explains the whole history of piadina, it would be a real pity to lose all this information. JacktheBrown (talk) 13:26, 25 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This is a commercial website whoes about page contains 'Lorem ipsum'.[1] I would suggest finding a better source. For reference questions like this should be raised on WP:RSN rather than the talk page. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 20:38, 25 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@JackkBrown, I agree with ActivelyDisinterested, but I add that it's a bad idea to call sentences like "In the 1300 during the Middle Ages Piadina was made with dried legumes and acorns" "unencyclopedic". That is perfectly appropriate tone and content for an encyclopedia article. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:32, 26 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@WhatamIdoing: you should tell that to user Julietdeltalima, not me. JacktheBrown (talk) 04:21, 26 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

How do you assess reliability for Russian state media?[edit]

You have a group like RIA Novosti, for example. They are an officially approved Russian state media broadcaster. But if I were to cite them to support, say, a claim which Western publications would deny, how would their reliability then be assessed? What if all the other Russian publications then support RIA Novosti's information? This is not very specifically about them, or at least not only them. I use them only as an example.106.69.220.173 (talk) 17:10, 25 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

When it comes to political matters I think all Russian media needs to be attributed. There are some which are better than others but there has been a general crackdown since the Ukraine war. I think you'd need to bring up a specific instance to get anything much better. See WP:RSP for some of them including RIA Novosti. NadVolum (talk) 19:05, 25 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
By the way questions like this shoud be on WP:RSN. This page is about possible changes to the general guidelines. NadVolum (talk) 19:14, 25 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Please see the discussion at Wikipedia:Teahouse#DOB issue - Don Spencer OAM. This seems to be a genuine, good faith request from the person involved, and a classic example of where our policies are getting in the way of improving an article. Is there any way we can solve this problem? HiLo48 (talk) 01:20, 26 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@HiLo48: Wouldn't this be acceptable under Wikipedia:Verifiability#Self-published_or_questionable_sources_as_sources_on_themselves? I'm going to post this at the teahouse thread. --David Tornheim (talk) 01:37, 26 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yes. That looks reasonable to me. HiLo48 (talk) 01:42, 26 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]