Talk:Territorial disputes in the South China Sea

Unclear if history section Neutral
User:103.152.9.17 has recently done a number of edits to the history section using editorials in Filipino newspapers and a video documentary as secondary sources and removing some potentially verifiable text with no individual change justification. The section does not generally use, where they may be available, academic and peer-reviewed publications which are usually the most reliable sources on topics such as history. Attempted verification of the name of a document in French removed without explanation suggested it is possible that WP:CIRC might apply in potential 2011 Vietnamese language sources. The section as presently written may not be neutral so I have marked for improvement. ChaseKiwi (talk) 13:31, 17 June 2024 (UTC)


 * I would prefer to take even stronger action and restore the last clean diff. All of IP's edits lacked edit summaries. The profusion of timestamp-less YouTube sources is unhelpful and an obstacle to verifiability. YouTube is, of course, a disfavored source. This is an extensively discussed topic in the academe and perennial RS, there are BESTSOURCES available, which these are not. JArthur1984 (talk) 14:07, 17 June 2024 (UTC)
 * The nature of recent reverted edits to Strongylodon macrobotrys suggest we do have a neutrality issue that I was unaware of when notice posted. I have also noted recent edits to Timeline of the South China Sea dispute and South China Sea Arbitration that have not been justified and are using similar sources. ChaseKiwi (talk) 22:59, 17 June 2024 (UTC)
 * The edits that concern you all seem to have been recently made by anon editor 103.152.9.17. Perhaps it is better to target that IP and those edits for a closer look. The ones I have looked at involve two sources, both badly cited in the articles. One is this 1+ hour YouTube video by retired Philippine Supreme Court justice Antonio Carpio, who has taken a special interest in the Nine-dash line and everything related to it. Carpio is a notable, knowledgeable, credible, expert, weighty source on these issues who takes a very one-sided POV on that topic. Other weighty sources disagree. WP:DUE describes policy regarding and provides guidelines for handling such that such POV disagreements between weighty sources. I don't think that the fact that Carpio's views are cited there in a YouTube video vs. an academic journal de-values those views, but I do think that the source needs to be cited in a way that is useful to WP users reading the articles -- see my edits to cites here to clarify what I mean by that, and note that my edits do not solve the citation problems, but do suggest how they might be solved. Wtmitchell  (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 23:56, 17 June 2024 (UTC)
 * I agree with the Wtmitchell approach. I have specifically tried to identify the silent deletions and rewording the anon editor did after a closer look. Using Carpio is fine by me if the source is easy to verify and as you say there is evidence of bad citation which is time consuming to identify from written Carpio sources. I have also tried to provide feedback to the user as they have contributed some useful information in my personal view. ChaseKiwi (talk) 00:25, 18 June 2024 (UTC)
 * The reason for any new POV since 17 June has emerged in mainstream news media. There remains potential historic POV with unreferenced statements. So dust will take some time to settle. ChaseKiwi (talk) 08:32, 18 June 2024 (UTC)
 * For suspected meatpuppetry how is that usually handled, at SPI? Vacosea (talk) 17:12, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

Lead
The assertions that the 1734 map or China has recognized Filipino sovereignty do not appear to be supported in academic or non-Filipino sources. Should those statements be qualified? I will remove them from just the lead for now; there are exact copies in other sections of this article. Vacosea (talk) 06:56, 19 June 2024 (UTC)


 * Possibly related to the above section . CMD (talk) 07:25, 19 June 2024 (UTC)


 * The new editor picked out only certain events from the History section to add to the lead making that part non-neutral as well. Vacosea (talk) 08:20, 19 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Yes I agree whole article now reads as biased. As a potentially separate issue only arising today the active editor User:Ed8694 added a misquoted entry w.r.t. events as reported by news organisations in the public domain. I have drawn attention in their talk to basic wikipedia policy. There are now editors with administration rights monitoring the issues here but for us lower down the pole not fully familiar with how such issues may have to be dealt if they escalate, I mention Neutral point of view/Noticeboard and Sockpuppet investigations. ChaseKiwi (talk) 10:31, 19 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Please see User talk:Ed8694 to note an administrator decision that means correctly that only edit summaries are now available in page history from 06:03, 18 June 2024‎ to 13:19, 19 June 2024‎. ChaseKiwi (talk) 15:22, 19 June 2024 (UTC)
 * It transpires that editor User:Ed8694 may be privy to personal knowledge not yet in public domain given the content of an edited paragraph inconsistent with sources I reverted and documented on their talk page a few hours after they made the entry. See that editors talk page and a subsequent time stamped article at Philippines faces 'barbaric' knife, axe wielding Chinese sailors in WPS. ChaseKiwi (talk) 20:43, 21 June 2024 (UTC)