Talk:Nigel Williams (conservator)

TFAR
Today's featured article/requests/Nigel Williams (conservator) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 15:18, 9 May 2018 (UTC)

The Daily Mail
, you recently removed a 1992 article from the Daily Mail from both this article and from the Rupert Bruce-Mitford article. Your rationale was that "rm claims sourced entirely to deprecated source WP:DAILYMAIL". I restored the source, explaining that a "1992 source is old enough that it should not be automatically disqualified." And in turn, you again removed the source, writing in one edit comment that "So provide something convincing, this is a deprecated source from well into the Daily Mail's utterly unusable period, it's not a suitable reference", and in another that "no, 1992 is well into Daily Mail's massively fabricated and unusable period".

As an initial matter, we've been here before. After you removed two Daily Mail articles, coincidentally both from 1939, from Sutton Hoo helmet and George Sidney Herbert, I left a note explaining the reasoning for keeping them, and noting that per the WP:DAILYMAIL which you cited, "old articles may be used in a historical context". As I also said at the time, "The desire to remove the Daily Mail as a source is certainly understandable. At the same time, it would help to treat older Daily Mail articles more generously than newer ones. And it would be even more helpful to look for non-Daily Mail sources which could replace Daily Mail sources, rather than entirely removing all Daily Mail-sourced material. After all, the Daily Mail's demonstrated issues with reliability do not mean that what the Daily Mail reports on is not worth including in Wikipedia; they just mean that better sources are needed." You did not respond.

Of course, age is just one part of the equation. Context also matters. WP:DAILYMAIL points out that the Daily Mail is "generally unreliable" and "generally prohibited, especially when other more reliable sources exist" (emphases mine). This is a much more nuanced and context-dependent take than your claim that it the paper "utterly unusable". Indeed, WP:DAILYMAIL goes out of its way to note that "The restriction is often incorrectly interpreted as a 'ban' on the 'Daily Mail''".

So moving back to the 1992 article in question, we have a source that needs to be evaluated for both age and context. For age, although you say that "1992 is well into Daily Mail's massively fabricated and unusable period", it's unclear where you are getting this from; if you could point me to guidance on this point, that would be helpful. In any event, 1992 is two and a half decades before the Daily Mail was deprecated by RfC. And in context, the source adds interesting but uncontroversial information, is largely backed up by other sources (I say "largely", because the Daily Mail article adds a few facts of its own), and does not suffer the Daily Mail's shortcomings such as sensationalism. Meanwhile, it seems clear that you did even look at the source before removing it. Your edit removing it came at 23:42; you were already editing another page seconds, and you had two edits at 23:39. The link to the article brings up a paywall, which it is unlikely you would have found your way around in three minutes.

We also have a third opinion. Nigel Williams (conservator) is a featured article, and at its nomination, underwent a source review. The Daily Mail source was not an issue then, and it should not be now. I'm adding it back to both articles. --Usernameunique (talk) 06:00, 24 December 2020 (UTC)


 * 1992 is well into the fabricated sources era of the Daily Mail. Consensus has yet to set a date; so if in doubt, you should not presume that consensus from two broad general RFCs does not apply, just because you don't want it to. "Exceptions are possible so I want this to be an exception" isn't a good argument.
 * "Nuance" that is unique to the DM turns out, over and over, to be embellishment or fabrication on the DM's part. If there is a detail that is there and nowhere else - like, in, say, a Reliable Source - then there is no reason to trust the DM on it.
 * A featured article that has known bad sources is in danger of defeaturing.
 * The source should not be used in Wikipedia. If this is the only source for the claim, then the claim needs to go too.
 * If you really want to override two broad general RFCs, then WP:LOCALCONSENSUS explains why you can't just declare it so on a talk page.
 * Do you think your argument to keep the DM cite would stand at wP:RSN? If so, we can take it there - David Gerard (talk) 09:07, 24 December 2020 (UTC)

I've removed the Kennedy cites. In general, featured articles can't have unreliable sources, let alone actually-deprecated sources. In this specific case, the claims from the deprecated source are additional quirky interesting stuff and colour, i.e. precisely the sort of Daily Mail content that they have an extensively documented history of fabricating. I see that some of it is vague statements about living persons too. The article is stronger without this sort of thing. We really don't need tabloid "colour" - David Gerard (talk) 11:34, 25 December 2020 (UTC)