Talk:Tariq Nasheed

Continued discussion from WP:FTN noticeboard
User:Kodiak Blackjack has been heavily editing this article. Their latest edit is here and changed "Tariq Allah Nasheed is an American film producer, and internet personality. He is best known for his Hidden Colors film series, as well as his commentary and promotion of conspiracy theories on social media.

tp: Tariq Allah Nasheed is an American filmmaker, anti-racism activist, and media personality. He is best known for his Hidden Colors film series, as well as his controversial views and commentary on race relations in the United States, institutional racism, and dating. plus other changes. Do we use newsone.com? I also see some old sources marked unreliable by Headbomb's script, eg YouTube, a tweet, etc.  Doug Weller  talk 16:03, 19 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Hey, so I think you could've talked to me about this on my talk page before taking the nuclear option and bringing it to the noticeboard. You know, WP:GOODFAITH and all that?
 * I would say the bulk of my edits to the page have mainly been updating references (eg. giving them consistent refnames, making them list-defined, checking for dead sources, archiving, etc.) and resorting the prose from the  and   into appropriate subheaders. I added a section to Personal life about his swatting in 2018, a subsection about his YouTube channel to his infobox (a la Jake Paul), and I did change the lede as you mentioned. I understand that when looking at diffs from before and after, the changes to the article seem pretty substantial, but I think you'll find that the majority of the prose is exactly the same as it was, but maybe just in a different place in the article.
 * Re: the lede, I changed it because it's a more accurate summary of who he is and what he does. He is a media personality, not just an internet personality - he had already achieved some notoriety as an author in the early 2000s, before the Internet took off. The NewsOne/Dawson article lists those as what he's best known for, and it's more informative than the NYT opinion piece referenced previously (which is also behind a registration wall), which only mentions him once.
 * Re: the YouTube video and Tweet. The YouTube video is his interview with KTTV about the swatting, which was reuploaded to his channel, and was referenced and embedded in the Atlanta Black Star article. The Tweet from IcePoseidon is his response to Nasheed, which is also embedded in the Atlanta Black Star article, and referenced to link back to/archive the primary source. Both are only supplementary to the actual article.
 * Not trying to make any huge waves here. Just trying to flesh out his page. — Kodiak Blackjack (talk) • (contribs) 16:46, 19 May 2024 (UTC)


 * I don’t doubt your good faith and note I didn’t revert you, came here for more opinions. Doug Weller  talk 17:35, 19 May 2024 (UTC)


 * Ah, okay. I'm sorry if I came off as a bit overly defensive there, Doug. Anything in particular you want my opinion on?
 * When it comes to the NewsOne article: I don't see any reason not to use it on the page, per se. I found this old RS discussion on the matter from 2023, and the consensus there was more or less "depends on a case-by-case basis, treat it like you would Buzzfeed." As far as I can tell, the article seems to be accurate, and there's a fair bit of information there that I haven't found elsewhere yet, so it'd be a big help when it comes to expanding Nasheed's page.
 * I'm not familiar with Headbomb's script, so I don't know what sources it's flagging as unreliable. Anything besides the tweet from IcePoseidon and the YouTube video?
 * As an aside, I can't find a single reliable source that says his middle name is Allah. I'm pretty sure it's something a vandal snuck into the article for the lulz and it's stayed there since. I'm inclined to get rid of it, but I'd feel like an ass if it was true.
 * ...And it looks like most of my edits just got reverted by . Summoning him here.— Kodiak Blackjack (talk) • (contribs) 20:47, 19 May 2024 (UTC)
 * "More opinions" means "opinions from more people". This is not the old "I want a second opinion, doctor" - "you are also ugly" joke. This noticeboard is for notifying knowledgeable people of an ongoing discussion so they can go there and participate in it. --Hob Gadling (talk) 06:52, 20 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Woah, hey, I'm sorry. I didn't really pick up on what he meant by that. My bad. — Kodiak Blackjack (talk) • (contribs) 19:07, 20 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Middle name was added here. The ref in the infobox for the middle name was not reliable and somebody at some point removed the name and ref from the infobox but apparently missed it in the lead. Schazjmd   (talk)  20:55, 19 May 2024 (UTC)
 * There are fringe issues here, for sure. There are also WP:BLP issues, and unreliable source issues, and due weight issues. Some of these changes were, as Kodiak Blackjack says, non-controversial, but this probably isn't the place to go into detail about which work and which don't. Briefly, Nasheed is both a conspiracy theorist (per sources) and commonly a target of other conspiracy theorists. Figuring out how to summarize this is difficult, but downplaying it by removing it from the lead won't work. Grayfell (talk) 21:00, 19 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Okay, thanks. Glad that's out of there, at least.
 * Gonna address this one point at a time:
 * There are fringe issues here, for sure.
 * He's a fringe topic. Isn't it kind of unavoidable that fringe issues would crop up?
 * There are also WP:BLP issues
 * So, re: stochastic terrorism, since I assume this is what you're referring to - I don't see how it's not?
 * Definition of stochastic terrorism per its own article is:
 * "'when a political or media figure publicly demonizes a person or group in a way that inspires supporters of the figure to commit a violent act against the target of the communication. Unlike incitement to terrorism, this is accomplished by using indirect, vague, or coded language that allows the instigator to plausibly disclaim responsibility for the resulting violence. A key element is the use of social media and other distributed forms of communications where the person who carries out the violence has no direct connection to the users of violent rhetoric.'"
 * ✔️ Ice Poseidon is a media figure.
 * ✔️ He publicly demonized Tariq Nasheed (as per his Tweet, which is also embedded in the Atlanta Black Star article), calling him "evil" and a "professional victim" (in the immediate wake of him getting swatted).
 * ✔️ A reasonable person can assume that this would inspire Ice Poseidon's supporters, who have a history of anti-black racism (per Asarch 2018 and the Atlanta Black Star article) and have been implicated in similar swatting attempts against Nasheed before (per the KTTV interview, which is in the Atlanta Black Star article), to commit more violent acts against Nasheed, a black man, in the future.
 * ✔️ The Tweet uses indirect, vague, or coded language that allows Ice Poseidon to deny responsibility for any resulting violence.
 * ✔️ This took place over social media.
 * It's stochastic terrorism. If a reliable source says Alice set Bob's house on fire, Bob says in an interview embedded in the source that Alice set his house on fire, and another source says Alice has a history of childhood pyromania, would it be a BLP violation to link to arson?
 * And before you say, "it'd be a WP:SYNTH violation," the Atlanta Black Star article already embeds both Ice Poseidon's tweet and the interview inside it. A reasonable person can still come to the conclusion that it's stochastic terrorism without the additional article from Asarch 2018, in the same way that I can come to the conclusion that Alice is an arsonist who tried to burn Bob's house down without reading the article about her being a childhood pyromaniac.
 * and unreliable source issues
 * I only added a few sources to the article, those being:
 * The aforementioned NewsOne article.
 * The aforementioned Atlanta Black Star article.
 * The aforementioned YouTube video of the interview.
 * The aforementioned tweet by Ice Poseidon.
 * The article about Ice Poseidon's supporters spamming the N-word in chat, which I directly took from his article.
 * Nasheed's channel, for the YouTube part of his infobox - which I think is fine. I don't see why you wouldn't link to a YouTuber's YouTube channel when the infobox template tells you to.
 * The source from Moguldom about the museum, which based on your edit summary, you didn't think was reliable, but I don't know why.
 * If you take issue with any of the other sources, like the Business Insider article, it wasn't me - they were there before I started editing the page.
 * I think you might be confused because I did rework a lot of the references that were there originally to incorporate stuff like archived links, consistent refnames, other parameters that were missing, stuff like that. I can see how that would look like a new source in a diff, but they weren't, and - no offense here - but I think you going scorched earth on anything that had my fingerprints on it was a little hasty.
 * and due weight issues
 * ...Is this about removing "conspiracy theorist" from the lede? Is that what has everyone here all up in a tizzy?
 * I'm not trying to whitewash his article or downplay that he's a conspiracy theorist. I'm not on the Tariq Nasheed Defense Squad™ or anything.
 * When I started editing the page (and also the way it is right now, because of the reverts), that sentence had (has) no in-line citations following it. It was unsourced. Textbook WP:BLP violation. Of course I was going to delete it and rewrite the lede with something a little less pointed.
 * Some of these changes were, as Kodiak Blackjack says, non-controversial, but this probably isn't the place to go into detail about which work and which don't.
 * Should we move this to the talk page then?
 * I mean, to be frank, I'm not really sure why this is taking place there instead of here in the first place. Is this noticeboard just to discuss whether he should be considered a fringe topic or not? Because if it is... Yeah? He is. Unequivocally. And the Contentious topics/Pseudoscience and fringe science notice should be added to his talk page. I'm honestly kind of surprised it hasn't been already.
 * Briefly, Nasheed is both a conspiracy theorist (per sources)
 * Sources that weren't in the lede.
 * and commonly a target of other conspiracy theorists
 * Figuring out how to summarize this is difficult, but downplaying it by removing it from the lead won't work.
 * see response to "and due weight issues"
 * Look, I get that this is a high-profile page, that's extended-protected, that's related to several contentious topics, that's a BLP and everything that comes along with that, that's also had at least two instances of a literal paid shill trying to edit the article to paint Nasheed in a more favorable light... but I'm literally just trying to contribute to it. I think everybody here is overreacting a little. — Kodiak Blackjack (talk) • (contribs) 22:47, 19 May 2024 (UTC)
 * A multiple-page contribution on a specific article, posted on a board for notices, certainly counts as overreacting. Can you do this discussion on the article talk page please? One of many reasons: it will be easier to find next year when someone wants to know the reason for the edits that resulted from the discussion. --Hob Gadling (talk) 06:52, 20 May 2024 (UTC)
 * @Hob Gadling ok, mea culpa. But I just don't have the time or energy to handle this sort of thing by myself. I don't seem to know when it is ok to bring stuff here and when it is not. I will add another point, to describe him in Wikipedia's voice as anti-racist is just wrong. I:m sure he considers himself anti-racist. Doug Weller  talk 08:05, 20 May 2024 (UTC)
 * mea culpa No! You did the right thing, posting a notice. That is what this board is for. After that, if people move discussion from the article talk page to here, that is out of your control. --Hob Gadling (talk) 11:00, 20 May 2024 (UTC)
 * @Hob Gadling Thanks for clarifying. I think our reply system confused me. Doug Weller  talk 11:43, 20 May 2024 (UTC)
 * As I said, there are conspiracy theory issues here. Since Kodiak Blackjack removed the term 'conspiracy theorist' from the article's lead, this page is a reasonable place to get more eyes on that specific issue. There are also multiple other issues here, so resolving the 'conspiracy theory' issue alone wouldn't be sufficient to restore those other changes. Since sources do support that he is a conspiracy theorist, and those sources are cited in the body of the article, it is not a "textbook BLP violation' and downplaying that description is whitewashing the article even with the best of intentions.
 * As for Nasheed being targeted by other conspiracy theorists, for convenience, a source cited in that article helps explain how Nasheed's work was quoted and subverted by the 2022 Buffalo shooting murderer, which was tied to conspiracy theories. Grayfell (talk) 09:12, 20 May 2024 (UTC)
 * @Kodiak Blackjack There are sources for conspiracy theorist. Did you not read that part of the article? It’s sourced Doug Weller  talk 18:47, 20 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Oh, no, I know it's sourced in the article's body. It not being sourced in the lede is my point of contention. MOS:CITELEAD states that The necessity for citations in a lead should be determined on a case-by-case basis by editorial consensus. Complex, current, or controversial subjects may require many citations; others, few or none. This article has two contentious article headers on its talk page, and it's a BLP, so I figured it'd probably be better to lean on the safe side. As I said over on the talk page, I'm fine with keeping conspiracy theorist in the lede, I just think we ought to have an in-line citation after it. — Kodiak Blackjack (talk) • (contribs) 18:59, 20 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Look, I get that this is a high-profile page, that's extended-protected, that's related to several contentious topics, that's a BLP and everything that comes along with that, that's also had at least two instances of a literal paid shill trying to edit the article to paint Nasheed in a more favorable light... but I'm literally just trying to contribute to it. I think everybody here is overreacting a little. — Kodiak Blackjack (talk) • (contribs) 22:47, 19 May 2024 (UTC)
 * A multiple-page contribution on a specific article, posted on a board for notices, certainly counts as overreacting. Can you do this discussion on the article talk page please? One of many reasons: it will be easier to find next year when someone wants to know the reason for the edits that resulted from the discussion. --Hob Gadling (talk) 06:52, 20 May 2024 (UTC)
 * @Hob Gadling ok, mea culpa. But I just don't have the time or energy to handle this sort of thing by myself. I don't seem to know when it is ok to bring stuff here and when it is not. I will add another point, to describe him in Wikipedia's voice as anti-racist is just wrong. I:m sure he considers himself anti-racist. Doug Weller  talk 08:05, 20 May 2024 (UTC)
 * mea culpa No! You did the right thing, posting a notice. That is what this board is for. After that, if people move discussion from the article talk page to here, that is out of your control. --Hob Gadling (talk) 11:00, 20 May 2024 (UTC)
 * @Hob Gadling Thanks for clarifying. I think our reply system confused me. Doug Weller  talk 11:43, 20 May 2024 (UTC)
 * As I said, there are conspiracy theory issues here. Since Kodiak Blackjack removed the term 'conspiracy theorist' from the article's lead, this page is a reasonable place to get more eyes on that specific issue. There are also multiple other issues here, so resolving the 'conspiracy theory' issue alone wouldn't be sufficient to restore those other changes. Since sources do support that he is a conspiracy theorist, and those sources are cited in the body of the article, it is not a "textbook BLP violation' and downplaying that description is whitewashing the article even with the best of intentions.
 * As for Nasheed being targeted by other conspiracy theorists, for convenience, a source cited in that article helps explain how Nasheed's work was quoted and subverted by the 2022 Buffalo shooting murderer, which was tied to conspiracy theories. Grayfell (talk) 09:12, 20 May 2024 (UTC)
 * @Kodiak Blackjack There are sources for conspiracy theorist. Did you not read that part of the article? It’s sourced Doug Weller  talk 18:47, 20 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Oh, no, I know it's sourced in the article's body. It not being sourced in the lede is my point of contention. MOS:CITELEAD states that The necessity for citations in a lead should be determined on a case-by-case basis by editorial consensus. Complex, current, or controversial subjects may require many citations; others, few or none. This article has two contentious article headers on its talk page, and it's a BLP, so I figured it'd probably be better to lean on the safe side. As I said over on the talk page, I'm fine with keeping conspiracy theorist in the lede, I just think we ought to have an in-line citation after it. — Kodiak Blackjack (talk) • (contribs) 18:59, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

Summoning involved editors here:

Alright, so I'd like to start off by saying that I apologize for the massive wall of text above, and again, I apologize if I come across as overly defensive. I pasted the FTN discussion into a collapsible for the sake of readability — if anyone disagrees with doing that on WP:RTP grounds, let me know, but I think(?) it should be fine. Discussion is still ongoing, so it's going to have to be updated here whenever someone responds there.

Re: Grayfell's response. I slept on it, and you are right about not linking to stochastic terrorism. It's a heavy allegation to drop on someone, and this article isn't the place for that. Keeping conspiracy theorist in the lede is fine too, although I think we should at least have an in-line citation following it.

I guess we can start off with a few questions that I think will be uncontroversial before we move onto stuff that other editors might have qualms with. — Kodiak Blackjack (talk) • (contribs) 15:34, 20 May 2024 (UTC)
 * 1) Should a Contentious topics/Pseudoscience and fringe science notice be applied to this page, in addition to the existing notices for post-1992 politics of the United States and gender-related disputes or controversies?
 * 2) Is this article within the scope of WikiProject Skepticism?
 * 3) Should a section about his YouTube channel be added to the infobox?


 * Thanks for bringing this up here. I apologize for being so rude. The article's history of memes and COI editing and such may help explain that somewhat, but it was not an excuse.
 * For the first, WP:CT/CF applies to pseudoscience regardless of whether or not the notice is applied. I defer to those with more experience with the arbitration process on whether or not this notice would be appropriate for this article.
 * For the second, sure, why wouldn't it? The article already mentions his anti-vaccine pseudoscience, and Hidden Colors contains chemtrail and AIDs denialism nonsense, so it's basically WikiSkeptic's bread-and-butter.
 * Since it's come up a lot here and elsewhere in the past: it is almost universal for conspiracy theorists to include some valid points and criticism in with their conspiracies. Calling him a conspiracy theorist should not be seen as a criticism of every single word he says. The problem (as already indicated in the article) is that he severely undermines his own credibility by conflating real issues with bigoted fringe nonsense, which only makes it harder for anyone to take him seriously. This is not a problem that Wikipedia can help him fix.
 * For the third, I cannot remember, do reliable, independent sources mention this channel or describe him as a youtuber or similar with any regularity?
 * For the swatting incident, as far as I can see, Nasheed is the only source for this being from Ice Poseidon's followers. Reliable sources present this as Nasheed's accusation, not as a simple fact. That is not a defense of Ice Poseidon. Reliably-sourced and properly attributed information about Ice Poseidon belongs at Ice Poseidon, not here. Grayfell (talk) 22:49, 20 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Hey, no harm, no foul. I totally understand. It's a high-risk article, I made six consecutive edits in the span of eight hours, and I didn't have any edit summaries for five of them. I'm sure it must've looked like a signal flare going off in the watchlists of anyone keeping an eye on it. You had every right to be suspicious.
 * For the first, [...] I defer to those with more experience with the arbitration process on whether or not this notice would be appropriate for this article.
 * Then I will too. I will say that it'd probably be more applicable to this article than gender-related disputes is, but I also don't know the specifics on how that sort of thing is decided.
 * For the second, sure, why wouldn't it? [...]
 * Alright. I'll add it to the talk page banner then, since I don't think that anyone would have any objections to that.
 * For the third, I cannot remember, do reliable, independent sources mention this channel or describe him as a youtuber or similar with any regularity?
 * Some. [16 ] does in the prose, and [28 ] links to his channel, as previously mentioned. I think most media outlets are hesitant to give him the publicity. His channel is verified, though, and it has ~234K subs at the time of writing — not a huge audience, granted, but it's large enough where I think it'd be weird not to document its existence in some capacity.
 * Now, there's two sources in the article that jump out to me as potentially unreliable. The first [9 ] is IMDb, which is generally unreliable per WP:IMDB. The second is [30 ], which I'm pretty sure is a self-published paper, and (pot meet kettle) is hosted on a wiki that anyone could edit. The former, I think we can replace with Metacritic's page on the episode, the second is only used once in the Filmography section, and could be substituted with [23 ].
 * Thoughts?
 * — Kodiak Blackjack (talk) • (contribs) 14:25, 22 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Agree about IMDb. But Wikipedia Signpost/2013-07-31/Recent research does say "the Digital Methods Initiative (DMI) is a school of Internet researchers at University of Amsterdam led by Rogers to 'create a platform to display the tools and methods to perform research that ... take advantage of "web epistemology"'. Currently the DMI has built some basic Wikipedia research tools that help social scientists to analyze cross-lingual images, anonymous edits, tables of contents, etc. " so it seems ok.
 * I've removed one bad source. Doug Weller  talk 14:40, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

Extended-confirmed-protected edit request on 19 July 2024
Tariq did not create FBA, that is a lie, he is just the most polarized. 2600:8800:3701:5A50:8992:8347:CB58:3868 (talk) 22:42, 19 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done: please provide reliable sources that support the change you want to be made. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 22:51, 19 July 2024 (UTC)