Talk:Hawar News Agency

Independence
Hawar News Agency has been accused of being "PKK-affiliated" by Iraqi Kurdish broadcaster Kurdistan 24. It may just be slanderous infighting, I don't know... Batternut (talk) 18:28, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

Illegality of Facebook reference count
Re your edit on Hawar News Agency, removing a hit count of facebook mentions. Your comment was "Removed facebook ref, illegal" - which wp policy makes it illegal? Thanks, Batternut (talk) 08:54, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Hi Batternut, regarding the above. Do a search for it, and you will find it. All social networks, Facebook, linked in, twitter, Instagram, IMDb, IMDb pro, are user generated and are not under editorial control, as such are not allowed as references on Wikipedia. Any refs like this are not reliable, not verifiable, and cant be asserted to be fact. scope_creep (talk) 10:56, 21 June 2017 (UTC)
 * The url actually points to google, not Facebook. It is a measure of Facebook content rather than quoting someone's self-posted opinion. Does not the fact that anyone can run the same query on google make it reasonably verifiable? Batternut (talk) 15:23, 21 June 2017 (UTC)
 * No, it is not covered by the WP:NPR standard, or more specifically WP:SOURCES. It is user generated content, and it is not allowed as a verifiable source on WP. It can't be verified as fact, or as notable. All things on the web are mostly can be discovered by google >80%, but the content is still on facebook. scope_creep (talk) 15:35, 21 June 2017 (UTC)
 * Do you mean WP:NPR, shortcut to New pages patrol/Reviewers, which is not a standard?
 * Citing a Google snippet from a Facebook page is just citing user-generated content. But here the cited text, "About 8,100 results", is Google's own content. The number 8,100 is a result of the actions of thousands of Facebook users, but it is only as user-generated as "62,984,825 people voted for Donald Trump"! The issue for WP:SOURCES is whether Google's estimate is reliable, to which I'd answer that the true figure could be much higher though probably not much lower, so good enough to support the statement "Hawar News has been referenced ... thousands of times in social media." Batternut (talk) 20:37, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Batternut, you put a list of facebook searches by google as a ref into Hawar News Agency Facebook as a reference is illegal, and search list is not a reference. Don't put it back in. The page has been reviewed, and undertaking disruptive editing. scope_creep (talk) 09:58, 24 June 2017 (UTC) (comment moved from User_talk:Batternut)


 * You say search list is not a reference, but the citation is "About 8,100 results", ie not the list. For the benefit of everyone, tell us which wikipedia policy or law that you believe is being broken. Thanks. Batternut (talk) 17:11, 24 June 2017 (UTC)
 * Here it is WP:GYNOT. A Quick search would have found it. If you insist on putting it back, then it will need to kicked up to administrator. scope_creep (talk) 22:37, 25 June 2017 (UTC) (moved from User_talk:Batternut)
 * Oh, WP:GYNOT - that is just an essay, not a policy, and is largely about deletion debates. It was proposed as a policy or guideline in 2010, but was rejected. Do you have any actual policies or guidelines in mind to back up your "illegal reference" objection? (Please post replies here for all to see) Batternut (talk) 08:47, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

Notability
Hawar News Agency is currently referenced on well over 500 articles on this wikipedia. Count them here. Despite that, and despite acting as Rojava's state media (which is observable but does not seem to be officially declared), without much "significant coverage" about the agency itself (rather than just quotations etc), the article will not satisfy WP:GNG. See Articles for deletion/Al-Masdar News as an example of how a similar AfD was discussed.

Replacing this article with a redirect to Media of Syria, where a summary of the Hawar News Agency exists, might be the best option. I have done this for Ekurd.net. Batternut (talk) 13:23, 30 June 2017 (UTC)