User talk:Mxt3r

Hi, Mxt3r.

In response to your post on my Talk page:


 * Hi Xenophrenic,


 * I wanted to address your recent changes to the Richard Carrier piece regarding his sexual harassment allegations. You mentioned that facebook was not a reliable source, hence your removal of my sources that appeal to it. However, according to the Wiki page on reliable sources, Facebook can occasionally be used as a reliable source if they "are clearly marked as official pages for notable subjects, with direct link to those pages from official websites, in which case they may be used as primary sources."


 * Both Facebook posts added as sources to Richard Carrier's sexual harassment allegations come from the official Facebook pages of the respective organizations. For example, the fact that SSA removed Carrier from its speakers list is clearly attested in a Facebook post from their official page, which states that "After an internal investigation, Mr. Carrier was removed from our speaker’s list last year, and no longer has an official or unofficial affiliation with the Secular Student Alliance." In another, the fact that "Skepticon had previously stopped inviting him to speak after he displayed a pattern of inappropriate behavior at previous conferences" is corroborated in the Skepticon facebook page, which states the following:


 * The accusations specifically against Richard Carrier are, sadly, not so surprising to the Skepticon organizers. While he was a featured speaker for many years, we stopped inviting him to speak partly because of his repeated boundary-pushing behavior, including towards someone involved in Skepticon. What has been made clear by the recent discussions is that our attendees’ well being and comfort is put at an unacceptable risk by Carrier’s presence, and so we are officially prohibiting Richard Carrier from attending any future Skepticons.


 * Thus, there is good reason to think that both posts are reliable sources, in spite of the dubious nature of Facebook itself as a reliable medium. These posts would only be unreliable if it were the case that the authors of those posts were unaffiliated with the organizations cited in the original Carrier edits. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mxt3r (talk • contribs) 16:27, 28 March 2018 (UTC)

There appears to be some confusion as to why I reverted your proposed edit, so I will explain my concerns in more detail here. Of primary concern is that of coverage by the required high quality reliable sources, which this content lacks. Disparaging content, which alleges potentially illegal activity, needs to first be covered in secondary sources which have reputations for fact-checking and accuracy. Should the allegations someday rise to the level necessary to receive extensive mainstream coverage by actual reliable sources, there are several other issues with the proposed content. It was written to present just one side of an alleged story. It was inappropriately placed in the WP:LEAD section, which is reserved for actual encyclopedic information relating to the subject's notability, rather than tabloid rumors and disputed allegations from blogs. But these are issues for another time, after the tabloid-esque is actually covered in mainstream sources and rises to the level of encyclopedic information.

As for the cites to Facebook as a reliable source, you did not quote from our policy on reliable sources; you quoted from a user-generated essay. Even that essay, however, states "Facebook is generally not acceptable as a reliable source", and further explains that it would only be usable as a primary source about the notable subject for which it is the official page. Neither of those Facebook pages are an official page for the subject (Carrier). You would be better served to follow our core pillar policy: Never use self-published sources as third-party sources about living people, and as clarified here: Self-published and questionable sources may be used as sources of information about themselves. Hopefully this helps. Regards, Xenophrenic (talk) 17:52, 28 March 2018 (UTC)