User talk:JzG/Archive 175

User:JzG/Predatory
I've purged just about everything from User:JzG/Predatory. This is what 'remains', mostly because it's just too much.

I must have purged nearly 2500 crap citation in the last 2-3 days. Very handy. Do feel free to help with the rest. &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:57, 24 November 2019 (UTC)
 * Reliable sources/Noticeboard. &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 07:09, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

Arbitration Case Opened
You recently offered a statement in a request for arbitration. The Arbitration Committee has accepted that request for arbitration and an arbitration case has been opened at Arbitration/Requests/Case/Portals. Evidence that you wish the arbitrators to consider should be added to the evidence subpage, at Arbitration/Requests/Case/Portals/Evidence. Please add your evidence by December 20, 2019, which is when the evidence phase closes. You can also contribute to the case workshop subpage, Arbitration/Requests/Case/Portals/Workshop. For a guide to the arbitration process, see Arbitration/Guide to arbitration. For the Arbitration Committee, SQL Query me!  20:37, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

CESNUR article
Since you recently commented on the RSN thread related to CESNUR, I'd like to ask you to help review that organization's article here on Wikipedia. In an attempt to comply with the spirit of WP:CANVAS, the same message is being sent to everyone who commented on the thread, and no specific editing-conflict is being referenced: the article could simply benefit from more eyeballs. Feoffer (talk) 23:12, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

IRL busy
Singing all week. HIF Biber, Guerrero and Sances. Gig in Exeter Cathedral on Friday. Guy (help!) 23:18, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

WP:MANDY
Excellent essay! Thank you for creating it. Bishonen &#124; talk 21:49, 30 November 2019 (UTC).

Melodica Men moved to draftspace
An article you recently created, Melodica Men, does not have enough sources and citations as written to remain published. It needs more citations from reliable, independent sources. (?) Information that can't be referenced should be removed (verifiability is of central importance on Wikipedia). I've moved your draft to draftspace (with a prefix of " " before the article title) where you can incubate the article with minimal disruption. When you feel the article meets Wikipedia's general notability guideline and thus is ready for mainspace, please click on the "Submit your draft for review!" button at the top of the page. GPL93 (talk) 19:15, 9 December 2019 (UTC)

AN3 report
Can if I change your 31-hour block to indefinite, for the user with the extremely long name? He was previously warned and never communicates. The concern back on October 13 was that he was warring to insert wrong information. Thanks, EdJohnston (talk) 13:01, 2 December 2019 (UTC)
 * , oh sure, please feel free. I was going to check that myself. Guy (help!) 13:05, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

Asking a favor
Guy, I appreciate all the time you spend making wikipedia a better place and was hoping I might ask a favor of you? This year I have written and unsuccessfully posted a few articles about public speakers (who are also notable as authors, entertainers, and business owners). You have deleted a few of those articles from Wikipedia, suggesting that they are either not notable or that the articles were written in a subjective manner. I'm trying to improve those articles and am working on a few others in the same area. Would you mind looking at the article I'm currently working on (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Tbc32/sandbox) and let me know what objections you might have to it. I'd love to get your feedback and/or your stamp of approval before I submit it. Cheers, Tyler (talk) 14:19, 2 December 2019 (UTC)
 * The main one I have is it this reads like a run of the mill guy with a CV masquerading as an article on Wikipedia. &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 14:30, 2 December 2019 (UTC)
 * , yup. Clue's in the job title. Recurrent problem. Guy (help!) 14:35, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

Slow-moving paid-editing issue at Talk:The Daily Caller
This is the sort of thing I'd bring to an American Politics Noticeboard if one existed. The Daily Caller has hired an attorney to suggest rewrites of Wikipedia's article about them. The discussion has brewed on the Talk page for weeks (with intervals), and so far it seems that I'm more willing to engage in it than anybody else. XOR&#39;easter (talk) 16:13, 2 December 2019 (UTC)
 * I thought they’d given up until today. I just wish they’d get on with it instead of prevaricating. Roxy, the PROD. . wooF 16:20, 2 December 2019 (UTC)
 * I looked into their suggestions as far as I could. Out of all the stories they claimed to have broken, the only one where secondary sources actually held it up was the Michael Flynn item. ("Ross has distinguished himself with a number of deeply reported stories about the Turkish connections of fired national security adviser Michael Flynn", noted a WaPo columnist in a post about Ross, um, having to denounce his past racist and misogynistic writings.) Everything else was either heavily qualified in retrospect or listening-to-the-police-scanner level notifications of incidental details. XOR&#39;easter (talk) 16:56, 2 December 2019 (UTC)
 * , the number of lawyers prepared to represent shitty people is much larger than I thought. Guy (help!) 16:56, 2 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Finally, something definite! XOR&#39;easter (talk) 15:02, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

"Draft:Erica C. Barnett." listed at Redirects for discussion
An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Draft:Erica C. Barnett.. Since you had some involvement with the Draft:Erica C. Barnett. redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion if you wish to do so. Doug Mehus T · C  15:37, 3 December 2019 (UTC)
 * , the obvious way to fix this was to ask any admin to delete the redirect left after the move as housekeeping. Guy (help!) 15:42, 3 December 2019 (UTC)
 * , Thanks. I was going to just ask you if you wanted to delete it, but didn't know if you'd be hesitant to do so following that long and cumbersome vaccine hesitancy redirect. Thanks for deleting this speedily! Doug Mehus T · C  15:48, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

Allsides.com
Hi JzG. I was hoping you'd comment at Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_278 before it was archived. The more I look at it, the more I think it's at best reinforcing a false balance mindset, and so should not be considered reliable for anything but their own opinions. Am I missing something? --Ronz (talk) 17:25, 4 December 2019 (UTC)
 * , you can un-archive and bump if you like. I have never heard of it. Guy (help!) 21:56, 4 December 2019 (UTC)
 * No problem. You had mentioned it here, so I thought you were familiar with it. --Ronz (talk) 00:04, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

Was it a misclick?
Hello. With this edit you archived a fresh discussion at WP:ANI without explaining why, so would you mind telling why you felt the subject shouldn't be discussed? - Tom &#124; Thomas.W talk 08:33, 7 December 2019 (UTC)
 * I noticed that User:Aidayoung has been indeffed for socking, but a proper close with an explanation would be nice for future reference... - Tom &#124; Thomas.W talk 08:37, 7 December 2019 (UTC)
 * , a duplicate thread from a sock. No closure needed. Guy (help!) 10:41, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

Adding BLP-style restrictions to medical/health content
Your comment at ANI:
 * In fact I'd have no issue with applying "consensus required" to all medical articles. ... Guy (help!) 10:47, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

reminded me that I have long advocated that we should have a BLP-style policy applied to medical and health content. I have always argued that getting medical information wrong can be as damaging to our readers as getting BLP info wrong, and as we do in BLPs, we should be able to remove on sight any medical/health content that is not MEDRS sourced. Exactly as we require the highest quality sources for BLPs, and exempt removal of poorly sourced text per BLP from 3RR. In the health realm, I believe no info is better than bad info, and the HUGE majority of our medical content is faulty. We had an RFC on that somewhere years ago that failed after being derailed by too many options. It could be time to revisit another, taking care that is better written. But again, the top notch medical editors who also advocated same have given up and left. I was just checking some FAs that I haven't looked into for years, and SHEESH already ! No one is watching the farm anymore, and the top content people are all gone. Sandy Georgia (Talk)  16:36, 8 December 2019 (UTC)

forbetterscience blacklisting
HiGuy, on this page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_talk:Spam-blacklist/archives/August_2019#BLP_spam_-_self-published_and_dangerous_source, you discuss the blacklisting of the forbetterscience website, but should this be on the spam list? I do not agree. The posts are very well founded, with lots of links to articles and it is pretty good journalism. So not sure why it should be banned. One of the latest example is the case of C. Verfaillie. This scientist is under heavy investigation and lots of newspapers report about it, however the best story (full story) is found on the better science blog. It is well written, well sourced and it gives more details about the potential fraud compared to the news papers (check forbetterscience.com/2019/12/04/catherine-verfaillie-the-zombie-scientist-of-ku-leuven/). I would prefer this source compared to newspapers (that hardly give any details, information).Garnhami (talk) 14:02, 8 December 2019 (UTC)
 * , it was spammed by the site owner. Guy (help!) 20:46, 8 December 2019 (UTC)
 * HiGuy, I am not sure what you mean? You mean that the site owner used his site too much as a source on wikipedia?Garnhami (talk) 21:04, 8 December 2019 (UTC)

That's missing a final. &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 18:28, 10 December 2019 (UTC)
 * The "... predatory open access journal" should also be updated to predatory journal or publisher, since it will catch some non-journals. Also the This filter catches journals that use these DOI prefixes or URL domains: is no longuer needed since it's in the table. &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 18:30, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

Notice
There is currently a discussion at Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. The thread is Sennen goroshi. Lepricavark (talk) 22:30, 12 December 2019 (UTC)

The MCS SPI
Hey, thanks for supporting the SPI re. multiple chemical sensitivity. I dispute one of the findings: see User_talk:Bbb23 and would like the closing and archiving of the investigation to be placed on hold until User:Bbb23 logs back in and considers my concern. Is it possible to stall the closing and archiving of that investigation? Thanks!-- Literaturegeek |  T@1k?  01:44, 15 December 2019 (UTC)

You did not sign your comment, it looks like I wrote it, lol.-- Literaturegeek |  T@1k?  03:42, 15 December 2019 (UTC)

2019-12 Politics
Hello,

About User:JzG/Politics, I suggest reading this and that. Visite fortuitement prolongée (talk) 13:29, 15 December 2019 (UTC)

MEDPRICE RfC
I thought we were making some headway in how we could possibly find a solution, but you closed the side conversation. This is feeling like a huge waste of time. --Ronz (talk) 17:09, 10 December 2019 (UTC)
 * , whether they are encyclopaedic or not is not a thing you'll fix there. That's a question for the RfC, because I am pretty confident that the two "sides" will divide exactly as expected. Guy (help!) 17:23, 10 December 2019 (UTC)
 * My concern is that we were making progress in the discussion, and it was stopped. --Ronz (talk) 17:25, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

Nobody's doing that Sorry it appears that way to you.

I'm wrangling with how we can create an RfC that opens the dispute to a wider audience while there are such behavioral problems behind it. Colin's proposal will make for an problematic RfC, but I'm at the point where I don't see how our RfC process can work with such a difficult topic. There don't seem to be any simple questions to ask or simple answers to give, so we can't have a normal RfC process. --Ronz (talk) 17:09, 16 December 2019 (UTC)

Please reconsider
Could I get you to review the discussion and reconsider your position at Reliable sources/Noticeboard? This source is being used in BLPs to label people as belonging to a hate group, sometimes despite abundant evidence that the hate group doesn't exist and has never existed. --Guy Macon (talk) 11:22, 12 December 2019 (UTC)
 * , SPLC is treated as reliable-with-attribution by a large number of sources we habitually trust. Many of the allegations against them noted by Atsme are simply smears (though others may not be). I don't use SPLC as a source other than for its own attributed statements, but this does not seem to be our problem to fix. Guy (help!) 11:44, 12 December 2019 (UTC)
 * This source is being used in BLPs to label people as belonging to a hate group This sounds like it might be a problem of inappropriate synthesis. 1) SPLC says Group X is a hate group. 2) Person A is a member of Group X. 3) Synthesis: Person A belongs to a hate group. Would any of the BLP problems you mentioned fall into that category? ~Awilley (talk) 16:06, 12 December 2019 (UTC)
 * , X belongs to Y (RS), described by SPLC as a hate group (RS) would work, but I would not primary-source to SPLC Guy (help!) 16:11, 12 December 2019 (UTC)
 * No, "X belongs to Y[1], which is described by SPLC as a hate group[2]" is textbook synthesis. The only way that works is if you have a secondary source that supports the entire sentence. "X belongs to Y, which is described by SPLC as a hate group[3]". If the fact that Person X belongs to a hate group is notable enough to be in Wikipedia it won't be hard to find reliable sources that support the whole sentence. ~Awilley (talk) 21:47, 12 December 2019 (UTC)
 * , no it's not. "X is a white supremacist" based on "X is a member of Y" and "Y is a white supremacist group" is synthesist. "X is a member of X, a group identified by SPLC as white supremacist" is absolutely not SYN. Guy (help!) 21:49, 12 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Only if you have a source that supports the entire sentence. Look at the first sentence of WP:SYNTH: "Do not combine material from multiple sources to reach or imply a conclusion not explicitly stated by any of the sources." Stating that X is a member of a white supremacist group implies that X is a white supremacist. To do that in a BLP you'd need a source to support the entire sentence. Here's an example of a sentence that (AFAICT) your definition of SYNTH would allow: "JzG is an administrator on Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia that uses The Daily Mail as a source more than 10,000 times." Any objections to that sentence? Both parts of the sentence are factually accurate, but it implies that you are OK with using Daily Mail as a source. ~Awilley (talk) 22:25, 12 December 2019 (UTC)
 * , no, because it's a non-sequitur: enWP only uses the Daily Mail because we haven't cleaned it up yet. But ZjG is an administrator of Wikipedia, a site that blacklists the Daily mail as unreliable, would be fine. Guy (help!) 19:44, 16 December 2019 (UTC)


 * I think you've missed the point. The purpose of this wasn't for you to demonstrate how to take an obviously misleading SYNTHy sentence and rewrite it into a less misleading SYNTHy sentence. The point was to illustrate what SYNTH is and why we shouldn't use it. ~Awilley (talk) 00:07, 17 December 2019 (UTC)

Please see this report from the Iowa City Press Ciitizen:

Apparently, someone with the screen name "Concerned Troll" posted "The First Iowa Stormer Bookclub was a success!" on the Daily Stormer website, claiming that this "book club" met sometime in September 2016 at an unnamed restaurant somewhere in the Amana Colonies, Iowa. Based upon nothing more that that single post, the SPLC called the Iowa town a "refuge of hate" and listed them as as the home of the The First Iowa Stormer Bookclub neo-Nazi group.

Later, facing a storm of criticism, the SPLC changed the The First Iowa Stormer Bookclub’s designation to "statewide."

One small problem: The First Iowa Stormer Bookclub never existed. They never met in Amana or anywhere else. The restaurant was never named. The local police did a thorough investigation and found zero evidence for the meeting ever happening or of the group ever existing. The real neo-nazis mock the SPLC for this and have invented hundreds of book clubs such as the "1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Stormer Bookclub" which meets "every Friday at 11:00 AM in the Vermeil Room". Seriously. Someone with the user name Concerned Troll posted something on the Daily Stormer website and that's all the "evidence" the SPLC needed, and yet we treat them as a reliable source about hate groups.

The SPLC vigorously stood by its claim for a full year, ignoring all calls for any actual evidence, and only after there there was a huge public backlash reluctantly posted a "correction" that still insists that the nonexistent group exists on a statewide level. Needless to say, there is zero evidence for the "statewide" claim.

David Rettig, executive director of the Amana Colonies and Visitors Bureau, says that he attempted to reach out to the SPLC as soon as he learned about the map, but nobody from the civil rights organization would return his message. "It was a shock to us when we found out," he said. "We’ve checked around with the sheriff (Rob Rotter) and he indicated to me there is absolutely no hate group operating in the Amana Colonies, and he checked with his superiors in Des Moines and there are no reports ... we’ve seen nothing of this, visitors or residents." Rotter backed up Rettig’s remarks: "There is no such neo-Nazi group in Iowa County." and that the SPLC was "irresponsible at best. I would hope that the SPLC is a more responsible organization than this example of their professionalism exhibits."

The Des Moines Register contacted the SPLC, and Ryan Lenz, a senior investigative writer for the SPLC initially told them that claims by community and Iowa County leaders that no such groups exist in the town are wrong. Then later, after there was a storm of controversy, the SPLC changed the claim and now says that this imaginary hate group is "statewide". And the SPLC still to this day refuses to provide any evidence other than the internet post by "Concerned Troll", and refuses to retract the bogus claim that their is such a hate group in Iowa. This is despite multiple media outlets asking for evidence backing up the claim.

When you make a claim without a shred of evidence other than a post on a neo-nazi website by an admitted troll, and then stand by your claim for well over a year without providing a shred of evidence, you no longer have a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy, as required to be considered a reliable source. --Guy Macon (talk) 23:26, 12 December 2019 (UTC)