Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 137

Palestinian Centre for Human Rights
Electronic Intifada is being discussed above, but Soosim has also removed references to the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights in the Operation_Pillar_of_Cloud article, which is a reliable source for the facts being presented, and whose opinion would be notable and worth including even if it were only an opinion. Some think these facts are inconvenient, but none of the facts referenced are controversial, and are backed up by other reliable sources. To my knowledge, no one has denied the claims. And if they do, the source should not be removed, rather it should be made clear that this is the position of the PCHR. Until then, it can be stated as fact, but either way the source should not be removed. Mr G (talk) 14:02, 15 November 2012 (UTC)


 * I would have to disagree; Electronic Intifada is not a reliable source for facts. If the event is notable enough—which Operation Pillar of Cloud certainly is—surely you can find these facts in a WP:RS. AdventurousSquirrel (talk) 07:23, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

"Capital Press" as RS for Frank L. VanderSloot
Is the Capital Press a Reliable Source for an article about ranch owner Frank L. VanderSloot and his activities? I maintain that it is, but User:Rhode Island Red and User:RobertRosen maintain that it is not. Capital Press is both a newspaper and a website. It also sends out newsletters. It covers agriculture in California, Idaho, Oregon and Washington. It engages in trade journalism. You can buy the paper edition on newsstands, as shown on this map. You can get a job there, if you are so interested. It's published by the East Oregonian Publishing Company. More info is at Talk:Frank_L._VanderSloot. Sincerely, GeorgeLouis (talk) 05:07, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Trade journals are generally accepted as reliable sources on Wikipedia. Journals self-published to promote a specific company are not, but this does not appear to be in that category.  Collect (talk) 12:59, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
 * More context would be helpful. To save some time, could you briefly explain what material from the Capital Press is being contended, and maybe provide a link to the original article?  The Blue Canoe  15:34, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes, it would have helped immensely if the specific context were provided, as the reliability of a source cannot be established independently of the text that the source is used to support. The issue raised by George pertains to a proposal for modifications to the article on Frank Vandersloot. The current version of the text reads as follows:
 * "In 1994, VanderSloot bought a $1 million interest in the Snake River Cheese factory in Blackfoot, Idaho after Kraft Foods shuttered the factory. Vandersloot paid off a $2 million debt owed to the area's dairymen, and later brought in Beatrice Cheese, a subsidiary of ConAgra, to run the factory. In 1999, the company netted $278 million dollars in sales. In 2000, VanderSloot sold all of his interest in the company to Suprema Specialties, and in 2006, the factory, which by then had been renamed as the Blackfoot Cheese Company, was sold to Sartori Foods."


 * The proposed modification (all differences based solely on the Agri-News source) was as follows:


 * "In 1994, VanderSloot was approached by Firth, Idaho, dairy farmer Gaylen Clayson with a plea to invest in the Snake River Cheese factory in Blackfoot, Idaho, after Kraft Foods had announced a decision to close it. In response, VanderSloot bought a $1 million interest in the plant, which closed anyway within six months, after an investment company assumed control. Dairymen crowded into a local meeting hall afterward to make another plea to VanderSloot, who thereupon paid off a $2 million debt owed to the dairymen, staffed the plant with his own personnel and supplemented the milking herd with two thousand head of cows. He later brought in Beatrice Cheese, a subsidiary of ConAgra, to run the factory. In 1999, the company netted $278 million in sales. In 2000, VanderSloot sold all of his interest in the company to Suprema Specialties. 'My business is Melaleuca and that's what I need to pay attention to,' he said. In 2006, the factory, which by then had been renamed as the Blackfoot Cheese Company, was sold to Sartori Foods."


 * The reliability of the source in question (Agri-News) was not really the issue but rather whether it was sufficient to support the inclusion of the additional information. The objections raised were that the Agri-News article was essentially a fluff piece written, inexplicably, 6 years after the factory deal took place, and it appears to be a blatantly politicized attempt to burnish VanderSloot's image over his controversial political campaign financing and public stances on gay rights issues. It seems to be a very lopsided partisan POV (it reads like a paid ad), and the details are not reflected in any of the other sources that described the cheese factory deal (and these sources were published at the time the deal took place); hence it is given undue weight.


 * It also gives undue weight to the opinion of a single dairy farmer (Clayson) who has no apparent authority or access to insider knowledge about how the factory deal went down. The editor who proposed the change seems to want to put a philanthropic spin on the transaction, but that seems inappropriate given that it's only mentioned in the Agri-News article (not a source for investigative journalism, but rather a trade rag). Lastly, note that the portion "staffed the plant with his own personnel and supplemented the milking herd with two thousand head of cows" cites two sources, but in fact, only Agri-News mentioned these details.


 * These issues, and the objection raised, are discussed in detail on the Talk page. A third opinion was requested, and that third opinion did not support the proposed revisions. Why that third opinion wasn't sufficient is unclear. Seems like a case of WP:FORUMSHOP. Rhode Island Red (talk) 15:50, 16 November 2012 (UTC)


 * In short - you agree the source meets WP:RS. Your cavil on the article talk page  Seems contentious, not to mention the issues with the source (an oddly political puff piece published this year, during campaign season, 6 years after VanderSloot sold the company is quite insufficient to argue against an article in a reliable source, other than as a case of "IDONTLIKEIT" for what the source says.  BTW, "third opinions" are not generally given when there are more than two editors involved - in the case at hand, the third opinion is of no value, alas.   Cheers. Collect (talk) 16:24, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

Collect, the point of going to the noticeboards is to get unbiased input from editors outside the fray. You are very much inside the fray, and your accusation about contentious cavils does not move us any closer towards resolution. The content and the source are what's at issue here. Rhode Island Red (talk) 17:11, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks for sharing your views. The new material doesn't seem to be in conflict with the old. It just adds more detail. Unless there's a valid reason to doubt the veracity of the new material, I don't see much of a problem, and it seems to be a reliable source. I certainly don't understand how an elaboration on a cheese factory deal would do anything to "negate VandeSloot's anti-gay reputation." The Blue Canoe  16:34, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
 * The point is that those details appear in no other sources. There were several sources that provided details about the transaction (sources published at the time the deals took place) but the additional details proposed are not mentioned in those sources -- only in the Agri-News article published 6 years after the fact. The article reads like an ode to VanderSloot as indicated by the meat of the article as well as by the title "Controversial donor praised by dairymen" and byline "Bitter foe of the gay rights movement' invested in plant." The publication of the Agri-News article coincided with the revelation that VanderSloot was Romney's campaign finance chair and had made $1 million+ donations to the campaign, and with criticism of VanderSloot for his rather controversial stances on gay rights issue. So what we have here is a retrospective, politicized, trade-rag puff-piece written from the perspective of a dairy farmer of no apparent (hence good reason to doubt the veracity), and it is given preeminence/undue weight over other more neutral sources. Rhode Island Red (talk) 17:05, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

Capital Press is the 10th largest NEWSPAPER in Oregon. It has an audited circulation of 35,582. Can we agree that it is Reliable? (The other remarks by RIR should really be handled on the Talk Page or on another NoticeBoard.) Is this a fair summation? GeorgeLouis (talk) 17:25, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
 * You seem to have missed where I pointed out that there a multiplicity of issues at stake and not just whether Capital Press/Agri-News is WP:RS in a general sense. The source itself (Capital Press/Agri-News) was not initially being excluded out of hand as unreliable (although it is a trade rag rather than a "newspaper" in the traditional sense); the issue concerns this partisan fluff retrospective article in particular and the specific manner in which it is being used for the proposed edits, as I outlined above. There is an issue with the person being quoted -- a lone dairy farmer of no repute -- for insider details about a corporate transaction. He is non-authoritative; his opinions carry no weight; the details he spoke of were not reported by any of the other sources that wrote about the deal at the time it happened. The details in the proposed edits are gossipy and WP:FRINGE and given WP:UNDUE weight. The article was written 6 years after the fact and it is (or 'was' -- see below) conspicuously laced with politically-charged statements that are irrelevant to the cheese deal, but coincide with VanderSloot's becoming Romney's campaign finance manager and being identified by multiple sources as a high-profile campaign donor with a controversial background on gay rights issues.


 * To make matters worse -- and this is a very serious issue -- the Capital Press/Agri-News article has been scrubbed since the discussion of it began here on October 6. The article originally included the politically-charged byline text "'Bitter foe of the gay rights movement' invested in plant" -- we all saw it and discussed it. As of today, that byline has been scrubbed and no longer appears in the article, and there were other changes as well. This surreptitiously revised version, appeared right after we objected to that very byline specifically on the Talk page, and that's more than a mere coincidence. The newspaper's apparent willingness to secretly sanitize their article (they were not even transparent about the fact that the article was revised -- it still shows the March 1 pub date and no correction notice) gives the final "no' vote as to their reliability and raises the larger questions of shady offsite coordination to influence the WP BLP. This source merits inclusion nowhere. Rhode Island Red (talk) 22:44, 18 November 2012 (UTC)


 * That subhead, "'Bitter foe of the gay rights movement' invested in plant,"  is still on the page," with a Thursday, August 30, 2012 11:00 AM date. I refer you also to this list of articles by John O'Connell, including a chapter in a book, that should illustrate the bona fides of this agricultural journalist. GeorgeLouis (talk) 06:34, 19 November 2012 (UTC)
 * I'm going to withdraw my previous comment about the article having been revised. I could have sworn it had been revised but now I'm starting to second guess myself. Nonetheless, the original concerns about the proposed revision still apply. Rhode Island Red (talk) 16:12, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

Can this be included on Brandon Teena?
This keeps getting reverted from Brandon Teena by the same person. Apparently the subject's mother is not a reliable source for causes of transgenderism and therefore shouldn't be in the article: She also said that her child's transgenderism was a defense mechanism that was developed in response to childhood sexual abuse, rather than being an expression of Teena's gendered sense of self: "She pretended she was a man so no other man could touch her." - http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,85098,00.html As this is a biography article and not a medical one, then I think that reason is ridiculous. Zaalbar (talk) 19:16, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
 * I'm the objecting editor, and I've told Zaalbar that ANY medical claims in ANY article must be reliably sourced, per WP:MEDRS, which doesn't limit the sourcing requirements to "medical" articles. The mother's claim is a medical diagnosis, which includes identifying the cause of the condition in question. The mother has no medical training that would qualify here to make such a diagosis. Her opinion is therefore worth no more than pure and uninformed speculation. Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 19:21, 16 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Article = Brandon Teena
 * Proposed content = She also said that her child's transgenderism was a defense mechanism that was developed in response to childhood sexual abuse, rather than being an expression of Teena's gendered sense of self: "She pretended she was a man so no other man could touch her."
 * Source = Entertainment Weekly
 * Quote from source = Ms. Brandon also criticized Boys director Kimberly Peirce for not explaining that Teena was molested by a man when she was a child: 'She pretended she was a man so no other man could touch her,' she said.

My opinion: The source itself, EW, is adequate. The story itself comes from the AP, which is generally considered reliable. The same AP story was also picked up by the Guardian, which is also considered reliable. See The Guardian article.

However, the source cited does not support all the proposed content. The source cited only supports the direct quote from the mother. It does not support the claims "her child's transgenderism was a defense mechanism that was developed in response to childhood sexual abuse, rather than being an expression of Teena's gendered sense of self" as the source cited does not mention transgenderism, a defense mechanism, or the idea that the transgenderism was in respone to childhood sexual abuse. These are all very contentious claims and support for these claims is not found in the source cited. Either excellent sourcing needs to be found for these claims, or these claims should be removed from the article until such sourcing can be found. Content like "Ms. Brandon said, 'She pretended she was a man so no other man could touch her.'" would be supported by the source. 19:50, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Is the Guardian article sufficient for that content? Her mother further criticised the film-makers for failing to explain that her daughter was sexually molested by a man as a girl - an event to which she attributes her daughter's gender-bending. "She pretended she was a man so no other man could touch her," she said. Zaalbar (talk) 20:02, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

The only thing the Guardian article does is add a little bit of the article author's own interpretation of the mother's words. "Gender bending" isn't a term medical professionals use, and it would be a misrepresentation of the source to attempt to take the Guardian article author's interpretation of the mother's words regarding her daughter, and use it to support the very definitive-sounding content proposed--"A defense mechanism that was developed in response to childhood sexual abuse" sounds like something read off a psychiatrist's report; the mother's quote doesn't support that. 20:12, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Is this sufficient? Her mother further criticised the film-makers for failing to explain that her daughter was sexually molested by a man as a girl - an event to which she attributes her daughter's change of gender identity: "She pretended she was a man so no other man could touch her" Zaalbar (talk) 20:17, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

I'm also looking at how this same story was reported in other sources: People, Philly.com. Of the four sources I found (EW, Guardian, People, Philly), all report that Ms. Brandon said she was angry the film did not mention that Brandon Teena was molested. Only two seem to make some sort inference that Ms. Brandon meant that it was, in the opinion of the mother, the cause of Brandon's change: Guardian says "an event to which she attributes her daughter's gender-bending", Philly juxtaposes "She said Teena Brandon began dressing in men's clothing and dating women" next to the sentence. In my opinion, the sources can be used to explain why the mother was angry, but should not be used to go as far as to also say that the mother felt that the molestation caused the change. Better sourcing would be needed for that. Can you find a longer interview with the mother, where she gives more detail? Without that, I would not feel comfortable using these sources to include content along this line. 20:32, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
 * I agree with Zad68. What NPOV wording is being proposed at this point and tied to which source(s). I think the issue is both with the sources and wording so let's see what exactly would be added to the article. Insomesia (talk) 21:09, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
 * I don't know what part of WP:MEDRS you misread or if it's actually written in a misleading way. Maybe you should edit whichever part of that policy which caused this confusion to make it more clear. Zaalbar (talk) 23:25, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
 * I may have missed what sourced content you are proposing to add and based on which sources? MEDRS states reliable, third-party, published sources, such as reputable medical journals, widely recognised standard textbooks written by experts in a field, or medical guidelines and position statements from nationally or internationally recognised expert bodies. You don't seem to be employing any of those. What exactly are you proposing and using what source(s)? Insomesia (talk) 23:36, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
 * According to Zad those aren't necessary. I just need to write down what the mother said according to the source. I'll look later for the full interview. Zaalbar (talk) 01:11, 17 November 2012 (UTC)
 * No, that's not correct. You fail to take into account that her unqualified diagnosis is of little significance, and thus not noteworthy for inclusion in the article, attributed or not. Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 01:15, 17 November 2012 (UTC)
 * You said you agreed with Zad before. Regardless, I'll be adding the content back when I find the appropriate source. Zaalbar (talk) 01:49, 17 November 2012 (UTC)
 * We here already and we have others who are well versed in reviewing sources willing to help. I suggest you post here what you propose should be added and specify the source. Then we can come to consensus what's best for the article. Insomesia (talk) 08:07, 17 November 2012 (UTC)
 * My previous comments must seem confusing. I didn't notice that a different editor chimed in lol. As soon as I can be bothered looking for the full interview I'll add what the mother's opinion is, as it's relevant to the article. Zad says it can be added to the article as long as there's no synthesis involved and that's good enough for me. Zaalbar (talk) 22:42, 17 November 2012 (UTC)
 * I think you may be putting words into their mouth. Why don't you post that source here with the content you propose to include and we can all look at what serves the article best? Insomesia (talk) 22:36, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

metalwani.com
Metalwani.com is a website which reviews and gives coverage to metal music. However, there has not been proper discussion as to whether or not it meets the guidelines set forth by WP:ALBUMS/REVSITE. A user by the name of kept adding reviews from the website, and made no attempt whatsoever to discuss his/her additions, despite repeated attempts at discussions from editors such as myself. An edit like this is just about the typical edit from Mpdt. This person carried out his act of ignoring by deleted the notices from his talk page. The Mpdt account was blocked indefinitely for this behavior. Ever since then, accounts such as and the curiously named, who is probably not Mike Portnoy needless to say, have added mentions of Metal Wani to Wikipedia. While the latter two are new accounts, both with fewer than seven edits as of this post, neither of them have discussed how and why Metal Wani is relevant as per REVSITE. The website appears to be run by one person, who happens to be an admirer of Mike Portnoy (as said before, there was a PortnoyMike account promoting Metal Wani on Wikipedia). This information is revealed in the "Who Am I" section of the website. It might be safe to say that metalwani.com can be listed under non-professional reviews for REVSITE, but I would like to gather some input from other individuals instead of adding it on my own volition right now. Thank you. Backtable Speak to meconcerning my deeds. 09:02, 18 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Metalwani is already listed under non-professional reviews. I don't think there are many articles with sources from this website anymore, I spent some time recently removing alot of non-professional reviews from metal album articles. This website was included in those which I removed. I have removed reviews that user Mpdt added in the past, I suspect the user was adding reviews as self promo for the website, and as you said ignored removal of the reviews and talk page warnings. While the website lists a number of staff, it is essentially just a blog. Moreover it seems the website has only been running for around a year and doesn't seem to produce a great deal of articles/content. The vast majority of content is just album reviews as well; they do some interviews but they don't seem to report any news or other journalism on music. Given the lack of content produced from the website, I doubt that the people who run it actually work as music journalists.  There are much more reliable and established sources/websites/magazines that provide reviews as well as other reliable news and information.  I think it should continue to be listed under non-professional reviews. The1337gamer (talk) 14:36, 18 November 2012 (UTC)
 * I hadn't noticed that it had already been added to that section. One further question: is it worth opening a sockpuppet investigation concerning how Mpdt could be behind both the Stonedjesus and PortnoyMike accounts, even if both the latter accounts are only slightly active? Backtable Speak to meconcerning my deeds. 21:38, 18 November 2012 (UTC)
 * From searching metalwani in the wikipedia search box in the top right, it shows that there are only 12 articles left with links to metalwani, which I'm going to remove now. It's probably not worth putting in a sockpuppet investigation yet, as those users don't seem to be as persistent or as active now. If more metalwani reviews do go up in the future though, then it will be easy to spot and make a sockpuppet case straight away. The1337gamer (talk) 21:53, 18 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Removed them, there was actually less than 12, it was just taking time to update from previous removals. So now once the search updates, it should show that no content pages contain links to metalwani. The1337gamer (talk) 21:57, 18 November 2012 (UTC)
 * In case you do intend to make a sockpuppet case in the future, another user: Special:Contributions/Owais.blore also added metalwani reviews way back in March, but has been inactive since. The1337gamer (talk) 22:03, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

Frank VanderSloot
I would like feedback on this source for the Frank L. VanderSloot BLP: http://www.frankvanderslootresponse.com/att-general.html

This website has been established as VanderSloot's by reliable sources. I'd like to say something like, "In 2012, VanderSloot released what he said was a letter from the Idaho Attorney General that called into question some of Greenwald's claims." Andrew (talk) 19:06, 18 November 2012 (UTC)
 * The wording you intend to use implies that VanderSloot was attempting to deceive people with the letter. Ryan Vesey 19:29, 18 November 2012 (UTC)


 * I'm completely open to changing the copy. The current wording of the article makes it sound like the Idaho Attorney General called the company a scam and I'm trying to balance it. Read the last paragraph of this section for context.  I could also use, "In 2012, VanderSloot made public a letter from the Idaho Attorney General that stated that that office had never investigated Melaleuca for criminal activity."  Andrew (talk) 21:18, 18 November 2012 (UTC)
 * That would be no on several counts. I see no reliable source that establish the site as VanderSloot's. It is anonymously registered to Domains By Proxy, LLC in Scottsdale. Vandersloot also cannot be considered a reliable source for documents allegedly published by US government offices. Additionally, the text itself contains no tangible details and serves no purpose. Lastly, it wouldn't be appropriate to include VanderSloot's self-published slagging of reporting from bona fide news/journalism sources. Rhode Island Red (talk) 22:19, 18 November 2012 (UTC)
 * It appears to be a signed document from the State of Idaho (not "US government") and forgery thereof would be a nice felony to tag vanderSloot with, if it is a forgery. As to news sources, that you lightly use a slang term for slander does your position on this no good at all.  Are you asserting that vanderSloot is slandering news sources?  On what basis do you make that interesting claim?  Cheers. Collect (talk) 23:03, 18 November 2012 (UTC)
 * No need to resort to straw man arguments; and you really shouldn't be making these WP:OR speculative comments about felonies and slander in relation to a BLP subject. The site is not registered to Vandersloot, and even if it were, a self-published site by VS would not qualify as a WP:RS for Idaho government documents. What is there left to argue about? Rhode Island Red (talk) 23:30, 18 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Not accepting it's authenticity without proof is not tagging anyone with a felony. That is a farcical argument. Agree with Rhode Island Red on all accounts. The site is unreliable, and Van der Sloot's comment griping is unduly self-serving, and SPS's cannot be used to provide information on third parties. And his opinion is irrelvant, as he does not have any demonstrated competence to evaluate the work of journalists. Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 23:46, 18 November 2012 (UTC)
 * RIR appeared to call the page "slagging" which is a well-defined term for "slander" - so the problem is clearly on his end. If the image is a fake, then a felony has been committed, and we likely should inquire of the Idaho Attorney General whether the letter is a fake before charging anyone with slander on a Wikipedia noticeboard. Cheers. Collect (talk) 00:00, 19 November 2012 (UTC)
 * No, it isn't. It just means griping about them, and your attempt to give it any more meaning than that is absurd. Nothing RIR said can be construed as a charge of slander, nor did he even insinuate that a felony had been committed. Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 00:20, 19 November 2012 (UTC)
 * as RIR and Dominus Vobisdu have said, a self published site can be used for non self serving comments about the subject. the proposed content clearly fails as being both self serving and about others. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom  01:22, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

Andrew's question was nicely, politely worded, and I suppose he has his answer by now: No. We should all look for a RS where VDS has responded to the charges against him, and then we could use these other two citations as backup. GeorgeLouis (talk) 06:01, 19 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes, the answer is clearly no. Which other two citations are you referring to? Rhode Island Red (talk) 16:14, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

Commercial / Business
Is there a section on using commercial websites or sites of businesses as refs? How about non-for-profit organizations? If I were to cite a fact on the non-profit organization GPTMC would that be permitted? I'm sorry if somewhere somebody talks about this, but I couldn't find it.--69.119.249.56 (talk) 00:20, 19 November 2012 (UTC)
 * What exactly would you like to add to the article using this source? Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 01:03, 19 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Here it says that Philadelphia is the 2nd largest city on the East Coast. The only other sites that say that are ones like usatourist.com . Are either of those OK? What is the official policy on commercial businesses or non-profit organizations' websites? Even though these sites may not be ideal, I think they still work and would like to know if they should be used.--69.119.249.56 (talk) 01:16, 19 November 2012 (UTC)
 * That is not a particulary encyclopedic statement. It is largest in terms of what? Population? Due to the bias nature of such sources, you should look elsewhere. If the statement is true, you should be able to find better sources on it, possibily third-party commentary on census data.--Otterathome (talk) 15:42, 19 November 2012 (UTC)
 * I haven't found anything so far, but I'm still looking. It is in terms of population, that is usually the only factor with cities on the web and Wikipedia. Still, is the website a reliable source or is it not?--24.246.112.51 (talk) 15:47, 19 November 2012 (UTC)
 * I posted that earlier in a public location, btw.--69.119.249.56 (talk) 20:02, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

RfC on reliable sources and citing names (with diacritics) in WP:BLP
RfC on Reliable Sources for Names in BLP. LittleBen (talk) 12:32, 19 November 2012 (UTC)
 * I have commented there. I don't see it as principally a sourcing issue. (Or a BLP one, for that matter.) Itsmejudith (talk) 13:37, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

American Pie (song)
Hi all, I would like to state that the above song is one of my special songs and I would like to develop its article further. Well, generally song articles require info about their background, recording etc and a famous song like this one would require so. Now in the article at the end, there are many links to different interpretations of the song. My question to RSN is are those links reliable? — Indian: BIO  · [ ChitChat  ] 15:56, 19 November 2012 (UTC)
 * You may find helpful information WikiProject Songs, and WP:ELNO. Reviews and commentary about songs (and movies and other creative stuff) must be from professional reviewers/critics. a list of professional /acceptable and not acceptable is found WikiProject Albums/Review sites. --  TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom  16:05, 19 November 2012 (UTC)
 * and because it is such a classic song that has been around for a long time, books.google.com would also be a likely resource for generally reliable sourcing. (although you need to watch out for content "published" by Wikipedia mirrors, Heaphastus and Books LLC in particular)-- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom  16:08, 19 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Hi there, I was checking the books, but if there are content in magazines like Billboard etc, will they be reliable? — Indian: BIO  · [ ChitChat  ] 16:32, 19 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes, billboard is a well respected music industry source- although their content at google books is often in the very limited peek version. it is sometimes difficult in that preview mode to know that you are getting the full context.--  TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom  16:39, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

Glenn Greenwald as RS in Frank L. VanderSloot
Source: http://www.salon.com/2012/02/17/billionaire_romney_donor_uses_threats_to_silence_critics/.

Article: Frank L. VanderSloot

Content:

"(a.) Melaleuca has been targeted by Michigan regulators, the Idaho attorney general's office, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for various marketing violations including 'false and misleading' claims about its supplements, and the company has signed a consent decree agreeing to 'not engage in the marketing and promotion of an illegal pyramid.” Frank_L._VanderSloot" "(b.) VanderSloot and Melaleuca were financial supporters of Concerned Citizens for Family Values, an organization that ran attack ads targeting incumbent Idaho Supreme Court Justice Cathy Silak during her 2000 re-election campaign against challenger Daniel T. Eismann. Frank_L._VanderSloot" "(c.) VanderSloot's stances on certain issues of interest to the gay community have drawn criticism from journalists and gay rights advocates. Frank_L._VanderSloot" "(d.) Various sources said that VanderSloot's advertisement outed Zuckerman. Frank_L._VanderSloot" "(e.) According to Rachel Maddow and the online magazine Salon, VanderSloot has threatened defamation lawsuits, copyright infringement and other legal action against critics and outlets that have published adversely critical views, including Maddow, Forbes magazine, lawyer Glenn Greenwald, Mother Jones Magazine, and Idaho journalist Jody May-Chang. Frank_L._VanderSloot"

Comment: The Glenn Greenwald article is not a WP:Reliable source because Greenwald is a "political commentator," as Salon stated on his page, and in this particular article Glenn is not writing as a journalist (note his non-journalist assertion that VanderSloot "has a history of virulent anti-gay activism, including the spearheading of a despicable billboard campaign)," but he is a partisan commentator. 19:33, 7 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Can you clarify how you think the Salon article is being misused in the VanderSloot page? It looks like it's only mentioned twice. Unless I'm missing something, those references don't really seem inappropriate as long as the Salon author's opinions are not treated as facts or presented in a needlessly inflammatory way. The Blue Canoe  20:34, 7 November 2012 (UTC)


 * It is an opinion column, and clearly so, which makes contentious claims about a living person. WP:BLP has this funny idea - that BLPs must be written conservatively, and the use of opinion pieces to make contentious claims, alas, runs afoul of that policy.   The section on the BLP, by the way, is given undue weight and is certainly presented in an inflammatory way. "Silly season" is over, and it is past time to emend the escesses placed in biographies.  Collect (talk) 11:57, 8 November 2012 (UTC)   Example of why it is opinion? It’s almost impossible to imagine any more thuggish attempts to intimidate people from speaking out and criticizing VanderSloot: this was a tiny website being sued for trivial offenses in federal court by a company owned by a billionaire. Also the fact is that copyright law has been held to apply to letters - the erroneous concept that letters from or to anyone are "public domain" has been litigated many times, but this blogger-columnist seems not to know about that.  Collect (talk) 12:01, 8 November 2012 (UTC)
 * (1) The Greenwald article is cited five times, a. through e. above, and each citation should be judged on its own.


 * (2) Neither Greenwald nor his opinion piece is a Reliable Source because "Sources should directly support the information as it is presented in an article." I don't see the direct connection between what he writes in his column and what is presented as fact by Wikipedia. Editors commenting here (and I am not referring to any particular ladies or gentlemen) should look at each of the five instances and comment on them individually, in my opinion.


 * (3) If the Greenwald article is to be used at all, it should conform to this Content Guideline: "Some sources may be considered reliable for statements as to their author's opinion, but not for statements asserted as fact without an inline qualifier like "(Author) says...". A prime example of this is Op-ed columns in mainstream newspapers. When using them, it is better to explicitly attribute such material in the text to the author to make it clear to the reader that they are reading an opinion." GeorgeLouis (talk) 18:34, 8 November 2012 (UTC)


 * GeorgeLouis, there is a clear logical difference between saying "Mr Smith has been called a Nazi by lots of journalists" and "Mr Smith is a Nazi". Are we dealing with statements of the first type or second? Judging by your own descriptions of the 5 uses of this source, they are already basically all cases where attribution is being used (so the first type;see your point (3))? Of course even with attribution, we would not mention a sensitive accusation if there is no reason to, but then the policy to consider would be WP:NEUTRAL and WP:NOTE. But the media being used here do seem notable, and a reasonable reflection of what types of accusations do get made in the mainstream media? Concerning your point (2) I think you are not interpreting WP:RS as it is normally interpreted. We do not need each source to explain every step made in coming to its conclusions. WP editors making this demand would quickly turn all our editors in original researchers, and in practice our work would freeze up into a big debating forum. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 09:25, 9 November 2012 (UTC)
 * The opinion article was, in fact, being used to make statements in Wikipedia's voice. I rather think you would agree that the opinions must be ascribed as opinion of the author here. Collect (talk) 12:47, 11 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Without making comments on specific statements in Greenwald's article, given the nature of his commentary it should be possible to source this to original reports. Mangoe (talk) 13:08, 11 November 2012 (UTC)
 * To wrap up (maybe), Andrew Lancaster, perhaps instead of a Citation, there should be a Footnote linking to the phrase "Mr. Smith has been called a Nazi by lots of journalists," that states: As an example, Glenn Greenwald said "Blah blah blah" on February 23, 1999. What do you think? GeorgeLouis (talk) 16:51, 11 November 2012 (UTC)
 * @Collect. Attribution always seems an easy compromise to make, so indeed that sounds a good idea.
 * @GeorgeLouis. Problem with moving to a footnote is that this also basically means it is decided that the information is not notable. If it is notable...--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 20:39, 11 November 2012 (UTC)
 * How about putting it right into the text, then? Seven journalists have called Smith a Nazi. They are Steve Nance, Steve Smith, Stefan Gregorivich, Stefano Bolivar, Stephanie Stepney and S.S. Van Dine? But count them up and name them. GeorgeLouis (talk) 00:34, 16 November 2012 (UTC)


 * There's no reason in policy that I can think of that Glenn Greenwald's article here could not be used as a source. He's a prominent commentator, and opinion pieces are allowed, particularly as this is not a borderline BLP. Because it's a BLP it should be used judiciously (not reproducing quotes at length and overegging the pudding), but I see no reason to exclude it. SlimVirgin (talk) 22:03, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

A single Rachel Maddow show as RS on Frank L. VanderSloot
Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/ns/msnbc_tv-rachel_maddow_show#47302840

Article: Frank L. VanderSloot

Content: "'Three op-eds published by the Wall Street Journal criticized the campaign's treatment of VanderSloot and other top Romney donors.[95][91][96] The critiques, two of which were authored by Wall Street Journal contributor Kimberley Strassel, were disputed by Rachel Maddow,[97] Lewiston Morning Tribune editor Marty Trillhaase,[98] and David Shere of Media Matters for America.[99]'"

"'VanderSloot's stances on certain issues of interest to the gay community have drawn criticism from commentators and gay-rights advocates.[11][40][100][97][101][102][103][104]'"

"'According to Rachel Maddow and the online magazine Salon, VanderSloot has threatened defamation lawsuits, copyright infringement and similar legal action against critics and outlets that have published adversely critical views, including Maddow, Forbes magazine, lawyer Glenn Greenwald, Mother Jones magazine, and Idaho journalist Jody May-Chang.[40][97]'"

Note: Please also address the copyright issue. I am posting a referral at the Copyright Notice Board.
 * What copyright issue are you referring to? Ryan Vesey 23:43, 17 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes, what exactly is the copyright issue here? I don't see one. Rhode Island Red (talk) 01:49, 18 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Can you be more specific on what RS issue you want cleared up exactly as well? Ryan Vesey 01:58, 18 November 2012 (UTC)
 * I think the editor wants clarification on whether the claim sourced to Rachel Maddow about threatened defamation lawsuits is reliable. A previous thread questioned the reliability of Salon, which is the other source used to support the same claim. The Salon article was an opinion piece, and Maddow's show is also a kind of opinion/commentary, rather than a news program. The guide to identifying reliable sources states "Editorial commentary, analysis and opinion pieces, whether written by the editors of the publication (opinion pieces) or outside authors (op-eds) are reliable primary sources for statements attributed to that editor or author, but are rarely reliable for statements of fact."
 * With that being said, the statement about threatened lawsuits is probably true (that's my guess), but it's not presented in a non-partisan or neutral way by the sources it's attributed to. The greater concern for me is not about compliance with RS, but with NPOV. Maddow and the Salon author are partisan, and it's unclear what, if any response VanderSloot would have. Defamation lawsuits are legitimate if a person has been defamed. Otherwise, threatening lawsuits against critical news organizations displays litigiousness and intolerance. The reader isn't given enough information to figure out which category VanderSloot might fall into. The Blue Canoe  05:48, 19 November 2012 (UTC)
 * TheBlueCanoe: Do you have any suggestions for the BLP? It's become a hotly contested page and outside feedback is always welcome.Andrew (talk) 01:43, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

-- Reliable source. Is Rachel Maddow a WP:Reliable source? Can what her show reports be considered Reliable in Wikipedia terms? Sometimes her show is Good Reporting, and sometimes it is Commentary. Should WP make a distinction, based upon which hat she is wearing? Her show often casts negative aspersions on living people: Does that aspect of her show negate using her as a Reliable Source?

Copyright. RM's television show is copyrighted. Because of the copyright, can we link to it in the way that this article has — that is, simply as a source for the sentence, phrase or paragraph to which it refers?

I'm not making an argument one way or the other here because I really want to know what how noninvolved editors see this, and also I am pretty much confused by the rules about linking to copyrighted material, because there was a big kerfluffle on the VanderSloot page a few weeks ago about linking to another copyrighted video, which link was eventually eliminated at the insistence of an uninvolved editor that it violated the GeorgeLouis (talk) 05:43, 19 November 2012 (UTC). --
 * She is a reliable source to what she has said, and thus her statements should be ATTRIBUTED; therefore she is a reliable source to only her own statements. However, as a stand alone, I would find other secondary or tertiary sources to verify the content.--RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 18:49, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

San Diego Comic Con
An IP editor added a statement regarding Lucca Comics & Games, on the San Diego Comic Con article using a blog as the reference for the change. Is this blog a reliable source?--RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 19:46, 19 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Blogs are reliable sources if the author has already been published elsewhere as an expert in the field. So someone who is an expert on comics writing about them on his blog could be an RS. See WP:SPS. Is there perhaps another source that says the same thing? SlimVirgin (talk) 23:37, 19 November 2012 (UTC)


 * According to his bio on the site, the author is not an expert. He's a lawyer that has been collecting comics for many years. His only notable accomplishments are that he collaborates with a comics e-book publisher where he takes care of storylines (no evidence of length of collaboration or whether anything of significance has been produced), and that he took part in a project that wrote a chapter in an essay on a comic writer. It's impossible to gauge the magnitude of his contribution to these projects, and from the vague language. In 2007, he wrote for a local newpaper. What he wrote it doesn't say, nor is there any indication that he was employed by the paper. He's been blogging on the site for two years. There's nothing here to indicate that he has any real demonstrated expertise. Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 00:49, 20 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Would it be safe to say that this fails WP:RS, as that is my opinion at this time.--RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 18:42, 20 November 2012 (UTC)
 * The only evidence we have about the author comes from his bio on the blog, which is not an independent source (he almost certainly wrote it himself). Nothing in that bio provides any evidence that he is a respected expert in the relevant field or a qualified journalist. Unless someone comes up with concrete evidence, then the source is definitely unreliable and cannot be used. I think it's highly unlikely that any concrete evidence will ever be found, but if someone wants to try, let them go for it. But until then, the source should not be added. Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 18:58, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

Are Think Progress, Rachel Maddow's blog, and Al Jazera WP:RS in the article Rape and pregnancy controversies in the 2012 United States elections
The article in question is Rape and pregnancy controversies in the 2012 United States elections. THe text in question is as follows:

State Rep. Jim Buchy (R-OH) gave an interview with Al Jazeera. The reporter asked Buchy why he thinks some women may want to have an abortion. He stated, "Well, there’s probably a lot of — I’m not a woman so I’m thinking, if I’m a woman, why would I want to get — some of it has to do with economics. A lot has to do with economics. I don’t know, I have never — It’s a question I have never thought about." These comments were picked up nationally, including by the Rachel Maddow Show.

03:22, 27 November 2012 (UTC)


 * If an editor is challenging the significance of a review then its significance needs to be established. Do either Rotten Tomatoes or Metacritic count it in their survey of reviews? You should probably raise the issue at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Film, since this seems to be more a significance than a reliability issue. Betty Logan (talk) 03:32, 27 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Thanks for your help and advice. In the future I'll take issues like this to the places you two have suggested. Freikorp (talk) 04:13, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

http://beforeitsnews.com/
http://beforeitsnews.com/about/ states:
 * Before It's News® is a community of individuals who report on what's going on around them, from all around the world.
 * Anyone can join.
 * Anyone can contribute.
 * Anyone can contribute.

Seems to be more an open wiki than anything else. The main plus is that they have an editorial policy http://beforeitsnews.com/editorial/. I didn't see anything about the site in the archives. --Walter Görlitz (talk) 23:51, 26 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Normally, a section on this noticeboard should state the article, proposed content and source so that the source can be evaluated in context, but this one is too obvious--it's WP:USERGENERATED and the content of any of its 'news' stories can't possibly be counted on as reliable sourcing to support any claimed statement of fact. Their "editorial policy" appears to be that other anonymous users vote up or down on stories.  There is no 'reputation for fact-checking' here, and that is what Wikipedia requires.    03:34, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

Is TripAdvisor really a reliable source for Georgian alphabet
Of course not, nor is the GeorgiaTraveller website. But a new(?) editor insists he can use them, see and remove reliable sources that disagree. I've tried to discuss this on the talk page but have gotten nowhere. I'm struggling with this editor who is adding badly worded and usually unsourced edits to various articles, eg and various other edits. Dougweller (talk) 14:56, 26 November 2012 (UTC)
 * For other editors, see Talk:Georgian_alphabet. GeorgeLouis (talk) 15:11, 26 November 2012 (UTC)
 * FWIW, I've put it on my watchlist. -- Cycl o pia talk  15:22, 26 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Its clearly not there are plenty of scientific literature on this matter.--Shrike (talk)/WP:RX 16:29, 26 November 2012 (UTC)


 * I have deleted unreliable sources Dougweller. Kartvelian history is my Profession and i am really insulted that you showed me as unserious perso.n I made 7 reliable sources one of them was copy of discovered scripts, in Nekresi. Really, i have read many disinformation and propaganda in wikipedia and when i corrected something, about what i know everything and from the sphere of my Profession, you called me unreliable. I must remember you that Wikipedia is encyclopedia not the note book of peoples view. I am ready to discuss anything from Kartvelian history with anyone on this planet. I spent 6 years of my life in studying Kartvelian history and i think i deserve to be a little bit praised in this sphere.--ChelseaFCG (talk) 16:37, 26 November 2012 (UTC)
 * "Kartvelian history is my Profession" We don't care about your CV. We care about edits being backed up by reliable sources and we care also about avoiding to give fringe viewpoints more weight than they deserve, because we are committed to be neutral. Hope this helps. -- Cycl o pia talk  16:42, 26 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Chelsea it sounds like you must have read other sources? Maybe it helps to know that you can cite non-English sources?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 16:07, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

Sherry Chayat & The Shimano Archive
A dispute is going on at Talk:Sherry Chayat whether or not The Shimano Archive can be used as a reliable source.

1. Source: [http://www.shimanoarchive.com/PDFs/20121021_Chayat_Shore.pdf "An email exchange between Sherry Chayat and Jeff Shore". The Eido Roku, The Shimano Archives. Retrieved 2012-10-21.]

2. Aricle: Sherry Chayat - see also Talk:Sherry Chayat

3. Content:"On August 20th, 2012, Sherry Chayat wrote to Jeff Shore, a Professor at Hanazono University, the Rinzai Zen university associated with the Rinzai head temple, Myoshin-ji, asking him to find out whether the rumors that her teacher, Eido Shimano, was not listed as a successor to Soen Nakagawa Roshi, were true. Professor Shore researched her question, and wrote to Ms. Chayat on October 6th, 2012, saying, 'I have checked into it here in Japan. Eido Shimano is indeed not listed as a successor to Soen Nakagawa. I trust this answers your question.' Professor Shore added, in response to another email from Ms. Chayat on October 7th, 2012, that, 'If so, then you realize that there are no legitimate 'successors' to Eido, and that their role as teachers of Rinzai Zen is null and void.'"

4. Additional info:
 * The Shimano Archive started as the online publication of the Robert Aitken archive. Additional info has added by Kobutsu Malone: "The first group of documents in the Eido Roku™ files became available on August 21, 2008 and they were distributed to a number of scholars, investigators, Zen clerics and students worldwide. These documents were a part of the Aitken Archives in the University of Hawai'i and have been authenticated by University archivist Lynn Ann Davis. With the permission of Aitken Rōdaishi, Kobutsu Malone published these Aiken-Shimano archives on the Internet in March 2010. Subsequently, many more documents have been added to the collection.(source: The Shimano Archive"
 * Kobutsu Malone has explained his reasons for publishing this archive:
 * "SZ: Yeah, what has been your, let’s call it ethical approach, towards maintaining the Shimano archives? Do you strive for a level of neutrality in your work? KM:   I can tell you one thing, I have struggled mightily not to editorialize in the Archives. But it’s a failing in some respects, because, I mean I do choose what goes up there and what doesn’t, and you know, when you look at it, you know, there’s some snide comments here and there, and there are some unflattering photographs, and so on, and so forth.  Yes… But I try to minimize that, and, yet again, I also need to be able to speak somewhat freely; but I’ve tried to keep myself out of it.  It’s a difficult balancing act because I’m so, so incredibly personally involved, and I, you know, I’ve been hurt through the damage that has been done to my family members, to myself, to my friends, to other students, and to people that I’ve witnessed over many, many years of damage that resulted from ‘Shimano-ism’ –  the personality culture that he, uh, perpetuated.  And I see it as incredibly damaging, and I think it’s done far more damage than it has good.  I can unreservedly state: that I think Shimano has damaged far more people than he has, uh, assisted.  Yes… SZ:  What’s your main concern in all this?  Do you worry that he will reassert himself as a teacher somehow again, or be reinstalled again at Zen Studies Society ? KM:  I see that as a concrete possibility, yes. SZ:  What do you think the reaction would be to that? KM:  Well, given the reaction of the Buddhist community, I mean, everybody wants to be so, quote, “Buddhist,” unquote, that nobody’s going to stand up and say, “Hey, what the fuck is going on here?”  I mean, the initial offering on the Shimano Archive was distributed to all three of the Buddhist glossies. I think it was distributed twice to individual magazines.  And there was a deafening silence.  No response.  No one did anything. No one followed up on it. They ignored it. SZ:  So you feel they didn’t want to touch it? KM:  They didn’t want to touch it.  It was handed, I handed it to the New York Times, and not just myself, but in the past others approached various publications and tried to expose the situation.  One in particular was Robin Westen … SZ:  In the “Village Voice”, is that right? KM:  Well, I think there was another…  I think ‘The New Yorker’ was approached, and I think, finally, it was the ‘Village Voice,’ and they were afraid of a lawsuit.  And that was understandable, because basically, she was coming in with a very specific set of allegations; and the thing with specific allegations is that you can always deny them. SZ:  Sure.  Especially if it happened years ago, you know? KM:  Yeah: “These are just allegations, these people are crazy, this is revenge, this is whatever, blah, blah, blah…”  That can go on; but the one thing that I have managed to do with the Archive, and it wasn’t just Robert Aitken, his material was really the seed that started of the Archive; … on his suggestion that I go totally public with it, initially I had reservations, and people said “ Oh, you’re gonna get sued!” And, you know, I pointed out ”Well, be that as it may, I have no assets.” You know, given my health situation, I live off a Social Security Disability check, and I have no savings, zero, nothing.  I’ve got a few books and some tools, and my dog Harley and a fourteen-year-old car. What are you gonna do, take that away from me? Um, actually, you can.  But there are certain things you can sue people for…to file a lawsuit against somebody it’s got to be worth your while… SZ:  Sure.  You have to have some validity to your case; otherwise, you might just end up paying the person you tried to sue. KM:  The thing is with Shimano and with the Zen Studies Society, given the amount of information that I had, and the fact that I made it public immediately pretty much, it was no longer just a set of allegations: it was a mountain of allegations.  And, you know, allegation after allegation after allegation; and pretty soon, when you read it all, and you begin to get the picture and it comes through loud and clear.  And that’s what’s happened with it; people have recognized the volume is just enormous! (source: Kobutsu Malone interview at SweepingZen)"


 * The Shimano Archive has been accepted and used as a source by Vladimir K., publisher of thezensite and Stuart Lachs, a well-known author on Zen, in an article on The Aitken-Shimano Letters.
 * An extensive thread on this topic started at Zen Forum International started on 23 november 2012.
 * 28 november 2010 Kobutsu Malone send a letter to Eizan Goto, abbot of Ryutaku-ji, to find answers to these same questions. Attached to the letter are Japanese lineage-charts.

Friendly regards, Joshua Jonathan (talk) 08:22, 27 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks to Joshua for opening a request here. I'm the admin who fully protected Sherry Chayat as the result of a complaint at WP:AN3, until such time as this matter can be resolved. The literal wording of WP:BLP seems to prevent us from taking information about Chayat or about Eido Shimano from a website that does not have a reliable publication process nor a reputation for fact checking and accuracy. The documents which are said to be emails would, if legitimate, show that Shimano was not properly designated in his Buddhist lineage by his own teacher. Shimano was a major figure in American Buddhism for some time, but was forced to resign from his post, as you can see from his article. One assumes that shimanoarchive.com is part of a desire to tell the tale about Shimano, but it has no named author or publisher and the ownership of the domain is hidden. Since the emails tell such a neat story and are obviously retyped in a nice format, I am concerned they may not be legitimate or may have been altered from their originals. I am setting aside the question of whether primary sources such as emails ought to be used per WP:PSTS, whether the site has copyright permission for the emails, and whether the emails were leaked inappropriately. If Shimano does in fact have a defective lineage, and if this is important, this fact ought to be available from a WP:Reliable source. EdJohnston (talk) 14:16, 27 November 2012 (UTC)
 * I don't agree that the website is anonymous; it is maintained by Kobutsu Malone, as is stated at the website, and as he has stated himself in the interview published at sweepingZen. But I see the point of possible alterations (though personally I doubt that, but that's not relevant). Nevertheless, it is also clear that the concerns about Shimano's lineage have been raised before, and are a matter of concern to other dharma heirs of him, and a lot of Zen-practitioners, as well. I understand the Wikipedia-policies at this point, but I do find it unsatisfying that those policies may be interpreted in such a way that information which is widely available, and highly relevant, is prevented from being included at a Wikipedia-article. I'm not convinced yet it should be excluded - but I'm also not convinced that it should be included. So, I'm looking forward to other opinions. And I'm curious what more is goiing to happen with this information: is it just going to be confined to internet, or will it also be picked up by "real" publications? Best regards, Joshua Jonathan (talk) 14:51, 27 November 2012 (UTC)
 * I think Ed is right. The site contains primary sources whose authenticity we can't always be sure of. The fact that these articles are BLP makes using the material even less of a good idea; a copyright issue may also arise. We would need to get the information from a reliably published secondary source. Andrew Dalby 14:58, 27 November 2012 (UTC)
 * WP:ABOUTSELF may apply here:

"Self-published and questionable sources may be used as sources of information about themselves, usually in articles about themselves or their activities, without the self-published source requirement that they be published experts in the field, so long as:
 * 1) the material is neither unduly self-serving nor an exceptional claim;
 * 2) it does not involve claims about third parties;
 * 3) it does not involve claims about events not directly related to the source;
 * 4) there is no reasonable doubt as to its authenticity;
 * 5) the article is not based primarily on such sources."


 * Ad1: The question about Shimano's lineage is not exceptional; it has been raise before, and here-after.
 * Ad2: This is a complicated one: is it about Shimano in the first place, or about the consequences?
 * Ad3: No problem here.
 * Ad4: This is also complicated: what is reasonable? Considereing the email-exchange to be fake is not reasonable; asking if it is entirely unredacted is reasonable. So far, the Shimano-archives seem to be accepted by many people involved in American zen-Buddhism, including dharma-heirs of Shimano.
 * Ad5: The source is being used for one section, not the whole article.
 * Joshua Jonathan (talk) 15:08, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

Hi, my two cents. As Kobutsu Malone says above, The New York Times reports this incident. It is surely a reliable source. -SusanLesch (talk) 15:54, 27 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Regarding WP:ABOUTSELF. This does not apply, because this is not a website owned by Shimano, purporting to be his work, making claims about Shimano. This is somebody else making negative statements about Shimano. EdJohnston (talk) 15:57, 27 November 2012 (UTC)


 * I was asked to weigh in, as a previous editor on the Shimano article I suppose. While I fought tooth and nail to simply have info from the New York Times on Shimano's misdeeds included, I would never have argued that the Shimano Archive is a valid source here - at least not primary. I think an argument could be made to include it in support of more valid sources. But that site was created for one reason only, by a highly disgruntled former student: nail Eido Shimano to the wall, shame him, get him fired, and leave him in disgrace. I happen to be generally sympathetic to those aims, but I would never consider that site to be a valid source here. Especially not some emails posted there. Furthermore, I would not consider Sweeping Zen reliable for news or verification, much less so Zen Forum Int'l. The former is a highly biased and unreliable site run by one not-very-knowledgable guy, the other is a chat room. Stuart Lachs at Zen Site is likewise sort of a crank.Tao2911 (talk) 16:49, 27 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Shimano Archive is a reliable secondary source containing primary sources. Nothing impermissible about that - that is the very definition of a reliable source. Further, Malone is an established public figure in the Zen world. A website maintained by him is certainly a legitimate source of information. As far as him being disgruntled goes, nowhere does wikipedia require reliable sources to be unbiased or without any agenda. The argument against its inclusion--aside from the points that have already been shown to be untrue--seems to be based on the possibility that a reputable secondary source would fabricate primary sources, possibly criminally--and that is too far-fetched to prevail.Sylvain1972 (talk) 21:30, 27 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Sylvain, where's the evidence that Shimano Archive is a "reliable secondary source"?
 * The evidence is that it is the publication of a respected and well-known public figure with stature in the Zen world.Sylvain1972 (talk) 17:40, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Shimanoarchive.com is simply a clearing house of random information devoid of any organization or sense compiled by Malone, who is not "highly respected" at all. In fact, he's something of the crazy uncle of the Zen world who people sort of tolerate at the holidays, but steer clear the rest of the time. Just look at it! Emails, chat forum posts, comments copied from article chat threads on other people's blogs... Used as a Wikipedia source? You've got to be kidding me.Tao2911 (talk) 22:02, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
 * It's good that the New York Times reports the events: that is a reliable secondary source. There may be an argument for listing Shimano Archive under external links. Doing so might raise BLP issues, but not reliable sources issues. Andrew Dalby 09:58, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
 * As it is now, I think there is no concensus on using the Shimano Archive, so I think it might be better not to use it as a source - though I find this unsatisfactory. Listing the Shimano Archive under "external links" might be an option, but then it should be clear why. It might be better to mention in the article that concerns are being raised about the "legitimacy" of Shimano's lineage. Since this is an issue at the moment, it will pop-up again anyway, so maybe we better wait until that moment, hoping there's a better source available by then. Joshua Jonathan (talk) 11:49, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
 * PS: thanks to everyone for responding! Joshua Jonathan (talk) 12:57, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

Frank Dux's side of the stories.
Someone recently added this reference to the second paragraph of the "Martial arts career" section of Frank Dux, presumably to back up the "disputed by Dux" part. Someone else removed it, saying the source is dubious. I've checked the talk page and can't see why he thinks this (I may have missed it). I believe it's only fair, per WP:DUE and WP:BALANCE, to include both sides of Dux's story, not just the side calling bullshit on him. But, if this is an unreliable source, it obviously can't be used. Thoughts? InedibleHulk (talk) 01:03, 26 November 2012 (UTC)
 * One of the discussions was here . Unfortunately the admin involved in that is on a wikibreak. A user using a series of blocked accounts kept trying to force that piece into the article. More than one experienced editor removed that source over the course of the past couple of years. Chasingthefrog has been used a few times on Wikipedia, but I can't see anything that leads me to believe it is reliable either. This is an article, written on a website with no mention of who wrote it. Is there editorial oversight? Who knows, but I'm not too confident that there is. Dux may not like the fact that most reputable media outlets won't simply parrot his claims. The other issue here is that the article is (allegedly) Dux making the claims again. These claims were put forth in his book 'The Secret Man', the one that the publisher backed away from and refused to print a second run of because the claims were...not to credible. Niteshift36 (talk) 03:40, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

Anybody else want to weigh in? InedibleHulk (talk) 07:54, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

Good Morning America
Is Good Morning America a reliable source? I'm sure it must depend...but my memory from having seen GMA in the states is that it's not a serous news show--more of a series of human interest stories prone to editorializing and dramatizing. The specific article in question is, being used to verify the statement, "has been described as "the largest bat rescue center on the planet"." on Bat World Sanctuary. A COI editor has pointed out that this is very unlikely to be true, given the relatively small size of this location and a site that she claims is listed in Guineess as having 10,000 times more bats. Qwyrxian (talk) 22:27, 26 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Your characterization of Good Morning America is accurate. However, GMA can be used to support that Bat World "has been described as" this or that, because "has been described as" is a very low bar--it means somebody said something once, whether or not it is true.  Whether that is notable enough to include in an encyclopedia article is another question, to me it sounds like ad copy.    00:21, 27 November 2012 (UTC)
 * It does not sound like the sourcing is bad enough to justify deleting the material. There are many cases where a better source would be preferable.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 10:11, 27 November 2012 (UTC)
 * True...this seems to be more a matter of WP:WEIGHT than sourcing, since it is written essentially as a sourced opinion. The article's currently at AfD, so I'll wait and see what happens there and then bring up the matter if it survives. Qwyrxian (talk) 14:56, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
 * This is not from Good Morning America, which is an ABC show. This is from the CBS equivalent, The Early Show. All of the comments applied to GMA apply equally to TES, but I want to make sure that the actual source is discussed, not something similar from another network.
 * As for what's in the source, a read of the article seems to say that Bat World is different from others not because of the number of bats it houses, but because the bats are unable to feed themselves--they lack the ability to hunt insects like bats in the wild or are unable to fly. That is unusual, and having 120 bats who need to be hand-fed every day is not the same thing as the 300,000 bats who live on the University of Florida campus (http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/bats/facts.htm), who feed themselves every night, or of other sanctuaries where they house bats who are self-sufficient.  Horologium  (talk) 13:53, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

American Pie (song)
Hello all, my post is here regarding some of the links highlighted in the External links section of the above article here. I have added them here one by one. My question is that how reliable are these so called websites? They look like fan-sites with their varied interpretations of the song, so just asking my fellow editors to guide me in their reliability. Thanks — Indian: BIO  · [ ChitChat  ] 10:50, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Bob Dearborn's American Pie Analysis original broadcast February 28, 1972
 * Full "See the USA in Your Chevrolet" lyrics for Dinah Shore on the "The Dinah Shore Chevy Show" (1956–1961).
 * FAQ maintained by Rich Kulawiec, started in 1992 and essentially completed in 1997.
 * "American Pie—A Rock Epic" A multi-media presentation of Rich Kulawiec's The Annotated "American Pie".
 * Full "See the USA in Your Chevrolet" lyrics for Dinah Shore on the "The Dinah Shore Chevy Show" (1956–1961).
 * FAQ maintained by Rich Kulawiec, started in 1992 and essentially completed in 1997.
 * "American Pie—A Rock Epic" A multi-media presentation of Rich Kulawiec's The Annotated "American Pie".
 * The Straight Dope would probably be OK, Cecil Adams is a regularly and widely published columnist answering people's odd questions - it would probably be better to incorporate into the article as a regular reference, though. the others as you suggest appear to be inappropriate fansites. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom  12:00, 28 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Since these are used as external links and not sources for writing the article, a slightly different set of criteria apply: WP:EXT. --Odie5533 (talk) 08:24, 29 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your inputs TPoD and Odie5533. To the later user, I was wondering whether any of those sources in the EL could be incorporated in the article hence I had asked the question, not that whether they are valid ELS. :) — Indian: BIO  · [ ChitChat  ] 10:28, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

Robert Almeder
I would appreciate some uninvolved input to resolve a dispute about a source at Ian Stevenson. It concerns whether an article by Robert Almeder, professor emeritus of philosophy at Georgia State University, is a reliable source. Dominus Vobisdu has been removing it and the material it supports. Discussion here.
 * Background

Ian Stevenson (1918–2007) was a professor of psychiatry at the University of Virginia School of Medicine, who devoted his life to interviewing children who claimed to have past-life memories. Several philosophers are interested in his research, because it has implications for the mind-body problem, namely whether it makes sense to think of consciousness existing independently of a brain.

One philosopher who has written about this is Robert Almeder, author of Beyond Death: Evidence for Life After Death (Charles C Thomas, 1987) and Death and Personal Survival (Rowman & Littlefield, 1992). Almeder is supportive of Stevenson, arguing that no one knows whether consciousness can exist without a brain. Against this is the philosopher Paul Edwards (1923–2004) of the New School of Social Research, who devotes a chapter in his Reincarnation: A Critical Examination (Prometheus Books, 1996) to criticism of Stevenson, and to Almeder's arguments in support of him.

In 1997 Almeder published a response to Edwards in "A Critique of Arguments Offered Against Reincarnation", Journal of Scientific Exploration, 11(4), 1997, pp. 499–526. I have used this article as a source for Almeder's definition of what he calls the "minimalist reincarnation hypothesis" in the second paragraph of of this section in the Stevenson article. See extended content below for the paragraph.
 * Disputed source

"Stevenson's research is associated with what Robert Almeder, professor emeritus of philosophy at Georgia State University, calls the minimalist reincarnation hypothesis. Almeder describes this as the view that: 'There is something essential to some human personalities ... which we cannot plausibly construe solely in terms of either brain states, or properties of brain states ... and, further, after biological death this non-reducible essential trait sometimes persists for some time, in some way, in some place, and for some reason or other, existing independently of the person's former brain and body. Moreover, after some time, some of these irreducible essential traits of human personality, for some reason or other, and by some mechanism or other, come to reside in other human bodies either some time during the gestation period, at birth, or shortly after birth.'"

The definition is not contentious, and no one has objected to it. But there are objections to the use of this article as a source because it was published in the Journal of Scientific Exploration. The editor-in-chief of this journal is another philosopher, Stephen E. Braude, emeritus professor of philosophy at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. The journal is regarded by some editors as not an RS for anything, because it is not peer-reviewed (the journal says it is peer-reviewed, the editors say it is not; I don't know which is true), and because it specializes in anomalies (parapsychology, etc).

My argument in favour of using this article as a source is as follows:
 * My argument in favour of the source


 * 1) A previous discussion on this noticeboard about the journal determined that it is an RS for the opinions of its authors, but not for "scientific fact" or "scientific statements." I am using it for an author's uncontentious definition of reincarnation.
 * 2) Sources don't have to be peer-reviewed to be reliable sources, per WP:SOURCES, which is policy.
 * 3) Reliability in this case does not lie with the publication, but with the author, Robert Almeder, an academic who has written two books about this issue.
 * (WP:SOURCES says: "The word 'source' in Wikipedia has three meanings: the work itself (a document, article, paper, or book), the creator of the work (for example, the writer), and the publisher of the work (for example, Oxford University Press). All three can affect reliability.")
 * 1) Even if Almeder had published this article on a personal website, it would still be an RS under WP:SPS because: "Self-published expert sources may be considered reliable when produced by an established expert on the topic of the article, whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable third-party publications." That provision would seem to confirm that, in the case of experts in the field, the credentials of the author matter more than the place of publication (except when it comes to BLPs, where the place of publication always matters).

I am currently using this article only as a source for Almeder's definition. However, I am thinking of extending the Stevenson article to say more about Edwards's arguments against Stevenson and Almeder, and Almeder's rebuttal of those arguments. The rebuttal is in the article that people are objecting to.

I would therefore like to be allowed to use this one article as a source in the Stevenson article. I feel the need to add that I don't myself believe in reincarnation, but I find it interesting that a psychiatrist spent so many years researching it, and I would like us to have a decent article on him. SlimVirgin (talk) 16:33, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

Discussion

 * Notifications: Talk:Ian Stevenson, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Philosophy, and the wikiprojects with banners on the talk page: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Biography/Science and academia,  Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Religion/Interfaith work group,  Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Spirituality,  Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Paranormal,  Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Alternative Views,  Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Rational Skepticism.  SlimVirgin (talk) 19:29, 18 November 2012 (UTC)


 * A couple of things that SlimVirgin didn't touch on.


 * 1) The topic is considered pseudoscience by the scientific community, and appears to be a topic related to science, and not philosophy.
 * 2) Stevenson was the founder of the publication in which Almamder's supportive statement appears, and so the source cannot be considered independent.
 * 3) The statement to be included is not an "opinion", but an operational definition to be used in scientific research, in which are Almader has no demostrated competence.
 * 4) There is no evidence that Almader is an recognized expert on the topic, because he has never published anything on the topic in reliable academic sources. The two books she mentions did not go any form of academic review, and were published by non-academic presses. There is no evidence that his competence as a philosopher extends to this topic, nor that his opinion on this topic carries any weight in the academic community at large.
 * 5) There is no credible evidence that the journal is subject to any peer or academic review.
 * a)Their submissions policy does not conform to academic standards [].
 * b) "peer-review" is not mentioned in their discription on ERIC [], which reads as follows "Features original research papers in areas falling outside the established scientific arena. Attempts to provide an unbiased, professional, forum for discussion and debate about anomalous phenomena".
 * c) The only evidence produce for peer review are the publication itself, and an "index" called EBSCO, which appears to be a non-selective commercial web directory that simply reports what the journal submits about itself. No evidence of editorial oversite or responsibilty for that directory.
 * 6) There is no evidence that the publication is widely cited by serious academics in peer-reviewed sources, nor any evidence that the publication is know, never mind highly regarded, within the mainstream academic community.
 * In short, I can see nothing that distinguishes this from a fringe pseudo-journal that Stevenson founded to promote himself and his work and evade academic peer review. Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 17:39, 18 November 2012 (UTC)


 * The source should not be used for scientific/pseudo-scientific claims. Almeider's "definition" of reincarnation (not really a definition in the normal sense) is clearly such a claim and, SV, your suggestion that it is "uncontroversial" in plainly ridiculous.
 * In order to demonstrate it's noteworthiness, Almeider's position should be shown to have been discussed in reliable third-party sources. Formerip (talk) 18:10, 18 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Almeder's definition (the minimum of what people mean when they use the word "reincarnation") is completely uncontroversial. It is not a scientific or pseudoscientific definition, but a philosophical one. And yes, it is a definition "in the normal sense" (as used by academic philosophers). No one involved in this discussion has objected to it. Their objection is only to the place of publication. I must say that I find it very depressing that I have to argue for a paper by a philosopher to be allowed as a source to support a philosophical definition. SlimVirgin (talk) 18:24, 18 November 2012 (UTC)


 * (ec) Sources don't have to be peer-reviewed to be reliable, especially not in a biography. And this journal does seem to be peer-reviewed. It is listed on the Education Resources Information Center, and on EBSCO Academic Search.  In addition the journal itself says it is peer-reviewed.


 * But again, reliability is determined in this case by the author, not the journal. I am arguing only in favour of this one article, not the journal as a whole. If Barack Obama published an opinion on a paper handkerchief we could still use it as a source so long as the public could access it. Robert Almeder has published two books about arguments for life after death, and Paul Edwards refers to Almeder's arguments in his own work. To deny Almeder the status of expert in this area would leave very few experts, if any. SlimVirgin (talk) 18:20, 18 November 2012 (UTC)


 * If you are going to argue that the "Journal of Scientific Exploration" is legitimately peer reviewed (you appear to be changing your argument?), I'm afraid it's clear that it isn't, since it is a "major outlet for UFOology, paranormal activity, extrasensory powers, alien abductions etc", and "They seem to be interested in promoting fringe topics as real mysteries and they tend to ignore most evidence to the contrary. They publish 'scholarly' articles promoting the reality of dowsing, neo-astrology, ESP, and psychokinesis. Most of the prominent and active members are strong believers in the reality of such phenomena." It's clear that they have peer review which is inadequate in any academic sense. Let me quote their own author instructions: "the Journal of Scientific Exploration necessarily publishes claimed observations and proffered explanations that will seem more speculative or less plausible than those appearing in some mainstream disciplinary journals." You wish to use a source which admits to including "speculative or less plausible" material. IRWolfie- (talk) 21:04, 18 November 2012 (UTC)


 * I don't know whether this is peer-reviewed, and it doesn't have to be. But they say they are, and they are academics in mainstream universities, so I see no reason to doubt them. I recall that someone tried to argue that a book on intelligent design wasn't peer-reviewed even though the publisher was Cambridge University Press. When that didn't hold, the argument became that it hadn't been "legitimately" peer-reviewed. But the point is -- and this is surely what academic freedom is about -- that sometimes educated people will write about things that other educated people find ridiculous.


 * You and Dominus have strong views (exceptionally strong views, in your case) about what counts as fringe and how none of it belongs on WP. I know that your aim is to preserve quality and I respect that. I just think you take it too far. When someone has to spend days begging to be allowed to use a philosopher's article to support a completely uncontentious philosophical definition then it's a sign that we're placing ideology over common sense, in my view. SlimVirgin (talk) 21:12, 18 November 2012 (UTC)
 * SV, I don't know how familiar you are with the publication. I hadn't heard of it until it came up in a previous discussion. It's important to understand that the problem with it isn't that it's low-status or has an inadequate peer-review process. It may have the appearance of an academic journal, but it isn't. It's a magazine that, generally, cranks who happen to have PhDs submit nonsense to on topics they are unqualified to comment on. So it features engineers writing about ESP, astrologers writing about ghosts, mathematicians writing about faith-healing and so on. Without risk of exaggeration, it has less intellectual integrity than Whizzer and Chips. Take a browse through the back-issues on their website.
 * In this specific case, the problem is that the material about Almeder gives the reader the impression that Stevenson has had an influence on something important within his field. But, on the basis of the sourcing provided, this would be a totally false impression. If other sources can be adduced to show that Almeder's view of reincarnation is in some way an important contribution to philosophy, then that might change the picture. Formerip (talk) 22:17, 18 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Actually, it wouldn't. If Almader himself didn't think that it was valuable enough to publish in a real academic source, why should anyone else think it's important? Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 22:49, 18 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Well, that's partly my point. But, FAIK, the article in question could be a re-hash of something Almader previously had accepted by Nature and has since been cited 8,000 times. Not particularly probable, perhaps. But if this were the case, that would change the picture. Formerip (talk) 23:04, 18 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Of course it would change the picture. We wouldn't be having this discussion, for one, as this source would become irrelevant. Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 23:34, 18 November 2012 (UTC)
 * We NEVER take a source's word for it that it is peer-reviewed. That would be utterly stupid. Not every book published by CUP is peer reviewed (don't know where you got that idea). Personal attacks and failure to assume good faith will get you nowhere except ANI. And absolutely no one is making you "beg". We're asking you to support your arguments with credible evidence. Besides, begging will get you nowhere, no matter how long you beg. Especially with me. My students tell me I have no heart, and that the words "pity" and "mercy" are not in my dictionary. I take that as a compliment. In case you haven't noticed, they don't appear anywhere in the WP policies, either. Anyway, an argument to pity greatly insults my intelligence, and an argument to common sense even more so. Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 22:43, 18 November 2012 (UTC)


 * (ec; reply to FormerIP) Thanks, I hadn't heard of this journal before I looked at the Stevenson article. And I have no interest in pushing a pro-Stevenson POV there; on the contrary I've been adding criticism and would like to continue doing so. I'm asking only that I be allowed to use this single article from Almeder. The definition he provides is completely straightforward to anyone with a background in academic philosophy.


 * Stevenson has had a tremendous influence in this field. Obits in major newspapers (New York Times, Washington Post, Daily Telegraph); two in the British Medical Journal; an entire issue devoted to him in the 1970s in the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease. His work is impressive when you look at it casually. When you start to look closer, it isn't (I have only just started and am perhaps being unfair to him, but I see major flaws in the way he collected information from the subjects). However, other physicians, psychiatrists and at least one philosopher disagree and see his work as thorough and important. I can't explain that, which is in part why I'm interested in him. Anyway, here again is the definition I want to include. There really isn't a single contentious thing about it, except for its place of publication. And it's a good definition, because it distills the argument down to its essence.


 * "Stevenson's research is associated with what Robert Almeder, professor emeritus of philosophy at Georgia State University, calls the minimalist reincarnation hypothesis. Almeder describes this as the view that: 'There is something essential to some human personalities ... which we cannot plausibly construe solely in terms of either brain states, or properties of brain states ... and, further, after biological death this non-reducible essential trait sometimes persists for some time, in some way, in some place, and for some reason or other, existing independently of the person's former brain and body. Moreover, after some time, some of these irreducible essential traits of human personality, for some reason or other, and by some mechanism or other, come to reside in other human bodies either some time during the gestation period, at birth, or shortly after birth.'"


 * SlimVirgin (talk) 22:47, 18 November 2012 (UTC)


 * I think you're still missing the point, SV. Whether Stevenson (or Almeder) has had a significant influence in his field is not the issue. The question is whether Almeder's views on reincarnation are at all significant in the field of philosophy. Given the outlet, that looks unlikely. It's not impossible, but it would certainly require further sourcing. If Almeder's views in this specific instance cannot be shown to be important to Stevenson's biography, then they should not be in it. Formerip (talk) 23:11, 18 November 2012 (UTC)


 * If you can find that Almader has published this definition elsewhere in a REAL peer-reviewed academic source, then we might be able to use the definition in the article using the REAL academic source, depending, of course, on whether it is relevant to the topic of the article or not. Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 23:34, 18 November 2012 (UTC)


 * (reply to FormerIP) Your point would be fine were it not for the fact that there's a very small Western academic philosophical input into this area. So it's unlikely that Almeder's definition has been picked up by anyone else (also, it's such a straightforward definition most philosophers would just write their own -- the only reason I need to cite someone is that this is WP, so I have to cite someone who has offered a definition and discussed Stevenson, and that is Almeder).


 * The situation is that Almeder wrote two books about the general topic and Stevenson's work (1987 and 1992), then Edwards in his book (1996) criticized Stevenson and responded to some of Almeder's points, and then Almeder (1997) offered a rejoinder in the disputed article. So what you are saying is I can use the first two-thirds of the discussion, but not the final rejoinder, no matter how pertinent it is, no matter how important for NPOV, no matter that it would clarify things (e.g. the definition) for the reader. That makes no sense to me. Almeder is not just some nut writing on a website. See some of his work on JSTOR. SlimVirgin (talk) 23:33, 18 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Well, I'm not actually saying you can use the first two-thirds. That's not something I have considered. And I'm not suggesting Almeder is a nut. What I am suggesting it that the fact that an article was written in Journal of Scientific Exploration citing Stevenson appears irrelevant to Stevenson's biography. The fact that there is a small Western academic input into the relevant area is not a problem for WP. We have a solution - there should be a small amount of content citing Western academic sources on the topic in the encyclopaedia. What you say about NPOV and clarification doesn't seem relevant here. It seems like just a gratuitous mention of an article in a fringe publication. We can simply perform a paragraphectomy on the article without making anything less clear or creating any NPOV issues, surely? Formerip (talk) 01:09, 19 November 2012 (UTC)


 * The Edwards/Almeder discussion is a discussion between philosophers, and the problem we have on WP is that we have very few people with a background in philosophy. Most philosophers would not (I believe) care that Almeder had chosen to publish his rejoinder on this minority issue in a minority publication. Almeder may have placed it in that journal because Stevenson had published in it (including autobiographical material that we use as a source in the article), and was one of its founders, so it was a natural place for Almeder's essay.


 * Yes, I could remove that paragraph, and lose the only definition of reincarnation that it's in the article. Under WP's rules I can't simply add another one that I think might apply to Stevenson. Also, I will not be able to add the first two-thirds of the Almeder/Edwards discussion of Stevenson if the last third is declared off-limits (that is, I won't add Edwards's criticism of Almeder if I'm not allowed to add Almeder's response), so article expansion is somewhat stymied, which will please Dominus, but it ought not to please Wikipedia.


 * There is nothing in our content policies that allows this to happen, and this board is meant to be patrolled by people who explain the content policies, not who try to rewrite them. If you disagree, please point to which part of which policy would allow Almeder's essay to be excluded. SlimVirgin (talk) 16:54, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

It's not to be seen as a source that just happens not to be peer-reviewed. JSE is a pseudo-journal. Nothing in it is reliable for factual claims in the natural sciences, social sciences, philosophy or humanities. However, it may be reliable as a primary source for what proponents of fringe theories assert. Even then, mainstream analysis of the fringe theories, e.g. by a sociologist of science, a media analyst, even a respected commentator in the mainstream press would be preferable. Itsmejudith (talk) 18:50, 19 November 2012 (UTC)


 * This is not a request to have this journal declared a reliable source. It is a much narrower request to have this article declared to be an RS for Ian Stevenson. The article is written by a mainstream academic philosopher, and academic philosophers are of course reliable for the claims of academic philosophers. My argument is that, because he's an academic who has written about this elsewhere, it doesn't matter that he published his rejoinder in this journal. If he had published it on his blog we could still use it (under SPS). So that's the only question that matters here -- does reliability in this case reside in the author or the place of publication?


 * As for the primary/secondary distinction, Almeder is a secondary source for Stevenson and a primary source for his own views, but I'm not sure that makes a difference here. SlimVirgin (talk) 18:57, 19 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Question: I am not sure if this applies to this specific article or not, but could the problem here be one of Due Weight rather than Reliability? Would the problem be resolved if the article did a better job of summarizing what various sources say... stating viewpoints more concisely (ie would it help if the article spent less article space outlining the various views)?  Rather than the outright removal of entire paragraphs (and thus entire viewpoints)... could the paragraphs be reworded and combined to make everything more concise? Blueboar (talk) 18:56, 19 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Yes, and that will happen. I am hoping (or I was hoping; this discussion has been rather off-putting) to rewrite the article with a couple of case studies from Stevenson, then criticism of them, and criticism of the criticism, insofar as it exists. And during that process everything will become more succinct. The disputed article from Almeder is part of the discussion, and I don't want to write the article with one hand tied behind my back. It's the nature of the beast that some of this material has appeared in fringe publications. But the authors themselves are mainstream academics, which in my view is what matters. SlimVirgin (talk) 19:04, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

Essence of the argument
What some editors are arguing here is that if Robert Almeder, an academic who has been published independently in this field before, had written the same essay in a journal they approved of, it would be an RS. If he had published exactly the same words on his blog, it would be an RS (per WP:SELFPUB, which is policy). But the same words from the same academic are not an RS if published in the Scientific Journal of Exploration. That seems irrational. SlimVirgin (talk) 19:34, 19 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Professor Jane Bloggs is Chair of Widget Studies at the University of Southern California. Let us consider her following publications: "Findings of some recent major Widget research studies" in International Journal of Advanced Widget Theory; "A radically new approach to the widget", letter to the editor of The Smalltown Review of Local Widget Research; "Fun Tricks with widgets in the home", in Very Easy Engineering for Everyone; and "Widgets will end the energy crisis", in Journal of Perpetual Motion. 1 is your standard RS. 2 might be OK as a scholar's non peer reviewed output. 3 is very weak when there is academic literature on the topic. 4 is no good. The existence of 4 puts a question mark over her other work that would otherwise appear highly reliable. Itsmejudith (talk) 20:34, 19 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Yes, but it's a little more complicated than that. The situation is
 * (1) Professor Jane Bloggs, "Findings of some recent major Widget research studies" in International Journal of Advanced Widget Theory;
 * (2) Criticism of Jane Bloggs by Professor John Doe in "A critique of Bloggs' widget hypothesis," in American Journal of Widgets, and
 * (3) Professor Jane Bloggs, "Reply to John Doe," in Very Silly Journal that No one Likes.


 * In wanting to cover the Bloggs/Doe debate -- which is directly relevant to the article I'm working on -- I am only allowed to mention the first two parts of it, but not the third. But had Bloggs published the third part on her blog, SPS would have allowed it. That's what I'm arguing is irrational. SlimVirgin (talk) 21:17, 19 November 2012 (UTC)


 * "Liking" has nothing to do with this. It's "Journal that no one has never cited in reliable independent sources". — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dominus Vobisdu (talk • contribs)


 * I haven't seen any editor present that position except you, SV. As indicated by a number of editors above, this is mainly about UNDUE rather that RS (although it is also true that JSE is not considered RS per WP:PARITY).
 * For any biographical article, there is a limit to what information should be considered encyclopaedic. If you want to cover someone's influence in an article then that's fine, so long you restrict yourself to their influence on things that can be demonstrated to matter, even if only in a small way. This ideally means fidning them discussed in third-party reliable sources. Once you're scraping around in fringe journals (or, for than matter, on blogs) then you're just too close to the bottom of the barrel.
 * In other words, you're not demonstrating that anyone in the world should care about Stevenson's influence on what Almeder wrote in an obscure fringe journal. Formerip (talk) 20:31, 19 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Sorry, this has nothing to do with UNDUE, no one is scraping around anything, and I don't understand your final sentence. These are the two academic philosophers that discussed Stevenson. The view of these philosophers is directly relevant because they specialize in philosophy of mind and philosophy of science, and wrote about reincarnation. Most of their writing about Stevenson is published in three of their books by independent publishers. A final rejoinder was published in the disputed journal. It is this final rejoinder that we're discussing. SlimVirgin (talk) 21:24, 19 November 2012 (UTC)
 * I think Slim may have a point here... I see this as being similar to the "expert exemption" clause of SPS (where we allow a self-published source if the author has previously published on the same topic in a more reliable forum).  Suppose the exact same rejoinder had been published on Almeder's personal webpage, instead of in the iffy journal.  Would we allow it?  I think so.  And in which case, disallowing it because it was (instead) published in an iffy journal really strikes me as being a wikilawyerish technicality. In this case, the reliability of the author outweighs the unreliability of the venue.  That said... because the author did publish it in an unreliable venue, we do need to down play it somewhat. It definitely should not be an equal third in terms of weight (note: I would say the same if it had been presented on his personal website). Blueboar (talk) 21:57, 19 November 2012 (UTC)


 * It bothers me that some peer-reviewed journals are dismissed out of hand and not allowed on WP, simply because of the topics they cover. Of course, HOW and WHERE they're used is key. I feel that in this instance the use is appropriate, per SV and Blueboar. I agree that there doesn't seem to be a policy that would disallow this source in this particular instance. TimidGuy (talk) 22:05, 19 November 2012 (UTC)


 * (to Blueboar) As things stand, Almeder could simply create a free blog and post those same words on it, and then we could use it. Yes, I agree about the two-thirds. It won't be. Most of the material I want to use will be from Almeder's and Edwards's books. The one thing I do want to retain from Almeder's essay is the "minimalist" reincarnation definition (see above), which describes Stevenson's position, and any pertinent rejoinder to Edwards. But it won't be anywhere close to two-thirds. SlimVirgin (talk) 22:10, 19 November 2012 (UTC)


 * @Blueboar: Why, exactly, should they be assigned any weight at all? If Almader himself did not consider them important enough to publish in a real academic outlet so that it could be read by the academic community, how is this any different that him crying to his mother? Almader is just licking his wounds in his own corner of the ring and preaching to the choir. We have no credible eveidence that the other party to the debate has even seen this "response". There is no evidence that the journal is even read by serious independent academics in the field.
 * Second of all, Almader has no demonstrated expertise in the topic of this article. All of his work on this topic has been published in non-academic sources, and this is a scholarly topic. Nor is he an independent source on Stevenson, as Stevenson was the founder and editor of the "journal" in question, and Stevenson had written the preface to one of Almader's books. Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 22:23, 19 November 2012 (UTC)


 * @TimidGuy: Reliable sources are not an option here, as per the very first sentence of WP:V. You can't do anything on WP without reliable sources, no matter HOW or WHERE you do it. Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 22:23, 19 November 2012 (UTC)


 * @SlimVirgin: Forget about the blog argument. It would disqualify the source as unduly self-serving. Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 22:27, 19 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Almeder's books were published by reputable publishers; our sources don't have to be published by university publishing houses. His books on this topic are Death and Personal Survival (Rowman & Littlefield, 1992) and Beyond Death (Charles C Thomas, 1987), and numerous other books and papers on philosophy of mind and philosophy of science, all of which are directly relevant to whether he has demonstrated expertise in this topic.


 * He also doesn't have to be independent of Stevenson. It's common for academics to write prefaces to each other's books. But even if he were very closely connected to Stevenson (which he wasn't so far as I know), his being a primary source would not change whether we could use him. As for "unduly self-serving," his defence of Stevenson wasn't in his own interests in the sense intended by the policy. SlimVirgin (talk) 22:40, 19 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Not, in his own interests, but in the interests of his publisher, who was Stevenson, effectively. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dominus Vobisdu (talk • contribs)


 * Stevenson was not in any sense Almeder's publisher. But even if he had been, that would not affect whether the essay is an RS, because subjects and those connected with them are allowed as primary sources. Also, please sign your posts. SlimVirgin (talk) 02:16, 20 November 2012 (UTC)


 * He was on the editorial board of the magazine. Formerip (talk) 02:32, 20 November 2012 (UTC)


 * What difference does that make? The worst it can do is make Almeder a primary source, which is fine. SlimVirgin (talk) 02:42, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

Maybe it would prevent things going round in further circles to point out that the text inserted into the article doesn't seem to be a correct representation of the source in any case.

"Stevenson's research is associated with what Robert Almeder, professor emeritus of philosophy at Georgia State University, calls the minimalist reincarnation hypothesis. Almeder describes this as the view that: 'There is something essential to some human personalities ... which we cannot plausibly construe solely in terms of either brain states, or properties of brain states ... and, further, after biological death this non-reducible essential trait sometimes persists for some time, in some way, in some place, and for some reason or other, existing independently of the person's former brain and body. Moreover, after some time, some of these irreducible essential traits of human personality, for some reason or other, and by some mechanism or other, come to reside in other human bodies either some time during the gestation period, at birth, or shortly after birth.'"

The problem being that Almeder gives that definition on page 502 of the source, but he doesn't say anything that implies it is associated with Stevenson. It is just Almeder's own defintion. In fact, it seems somewhat at odds with Stevenson's view of reincarnation. Almeder's minimal version talks about "irreducible traits of human personality" being passed from person to person - i.e. something purely psychological. But, as can be seen from the WP article, one of Stevenson's main claims is that people get birthmarks where their past selves had scars - i.e. something bodily. Formerip (talk) 01:50, 20 November 2012 (UTC)


 * All this will be explained in the article if I'm able to continue working on it. Someone arguing that consciousness does not equal brain states does not mean they are arguing that brain (and other physical) states are not involved, or that consciousness can't affect a body, when clearly it can and does. So I don't know what "purely psychological" would mean here. And I want to use the essay as part of the Edwards/Almeder discussion about Stevenson, not only for the definition of the minimalist position, so I need a decision about that essay as an RS in that article. If we get that decision, we can discuss further on the talk page how it should be used. SlimVirgin (talk) 02:12, 20 November 2012 (UTC)
 * But, for now, we can remove the content as unsupported, yes? Formerip (talk) 02:16, 20 November 2012 (UTC)
 * I had to stop writing the article because of this. If I can start to write it again knowing that this source won't be removed (i.e. that I won't be wasting my time), I'll be able to make clearer how it is supported. But I'm not willing to discuss the article here. I'm here only for a decision about that source. SlimVirgin (talk) 02:23, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

Example of the kind of thing the source is needed for
Here is one example. Edwards highlights a Stevenson case study that he regards as very weak, and presents it as a reason not to trust Stevenson's methods. I have added that case to the article here. In his essay, Almeder argues that Edwards has misrepresented Stevenson, that it is not a typical case, and that he took the description from the wrong book, not the original one where the case was written up properly. Now, even though I could see that myself from Stevenson's work, I can't write that opinion without it being OR. But if I'm also not allowed to source the material to an academic making the same point, it leaves the article POV and misleading.

So if Almeder is not allowed, that example from Edwards should be removed. But if I try to remove it, I'll be reverted, because it makes Stevenson look bad, and so the editors who don't like him will want to keep it. This is what I mean by being asked to edit with one arm tied behind my back. SlimVirgin (talk) 02:54, 20 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Wherever did you get the idea that anyone involved to date would oppose your removal of the Edwards article? It's from the same fringe journal. If it weren't beddy-bye time, I'd remove it myself, and all the other fringe-sourced material. Do you seriously think that serious scholarly discussion among serious scholarly experts takes place in outlets like JSE, where no other serious scholars would even bother wasting their valuable time looking for them? You just walked in on an academic circle-jerk, and thought it was a full-fledged orgy. Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 04:21, 20 November 2012 (UTC)


 * The Edwards material comes from his book, Reincarnation: A Critical Examination. Prometheus Books, 1996. The material he was responding to comes from Almeder in Skeptical Inquirer (vol 12, Spring 1988) and Death and Personal Survival (Rowman & Littlefield, 1992). The third part of the conversation is in the essay by Almeder that is the subject of this discussion.


 * I came here for input about policy from disinterested people who had not already commented on the talk page. You and I have already discussed it there at length, so repeating the exchange here is unlikely to be fruitful. SlimVirgin (talk) 16:07, 20 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Oops. I mispoke about Edward's. That book was not published by JSE, but by Prometheus Books, which is a reliable non-academic press with editorial oversight and a good reputation for fact-checking and accuracy. It can be used to present the mainstream view on Stevenson's work per WP:PARITY. Almeder can't be used to criticize Edward's though, because it's an inferior fringe source published in a sham journal. Even if he were to publish it on his own blog, it couldn't be used because a self-published fringe source cannot be used to criticize a reliably published mainstream source, per WP:NPOV. Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 19:30, 20 November 2012 (UTC)


 * I'm sorry, your interpretation of policy is just mistaken. Please allow uninvolved editors to weigh in. The more the conversation seems to be between you and me, the less likely others are to respond.


 * Regarding whether anyone other than Edwards has responded to Almeder's views on reincarnation, there is another exchange: Almeder responding to Steven D. Hales, a philosopher at Bloomsburg University, in Philosophia with "On reincarnation: A reply to Hales" (2001), and Hales responding to Almeder with "Reincarnation redux" (2001). SlimVirgin (talk) 20:59, 20 November 2012 (UTC)
 * DV has policy exactly right. WP:PARITY couldn't be much clearer: peudo-journals "should generally be considered unreliable". The case also seems almost indistinguishable from one that was thoroughly gone over in relation to the Astrology article not long ago. Information was included in the article about a study in a reputable source (Nature) which tested various astrological hypotheses and came up null. An editor wanted to add further material from a psuedo-journal (also JSE on that occasion, I think) purporting to show how the Nature study was methodologically flawed. After protracted hoo-ha, the interpretation of policy clearly made was that this material could not be included. Arguments about the credentials of the author were neither here nor there. The bottom line was that we simply couldn't rely on the basic integrity of material criticising the work of a mainstream academic if the material came from a pseudo-journal.
 * Philosophia is not a pseudo-journal, so articles by the same author published there would be a different matter, obviously. Formerip (talk) 12:03, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

WP:PARITY does not say that. These responses miss two points that I keep trying to highlight, because they are crucial, and I'd appreciate it if you could address them.


 * 1. I am not asking that the journal be regarded as an RS. I am asking that this 1997 essay by Almeder be regarded as an RS for this particular issue, regardless of where it was published. I am arguing that the expert exemption applies, as if the essay were an SPS (which is policy), and that reliability can reside with the author, not the journal, per WP:SOURCES (which is policy).


 * 2. The reason I am asking to apply that exemption is that the essay was part of an extended conversation between two mainstream academic philosophers, both respected:


 * (a) Almeder discussed Stevenson in Skeptical Inquirer in 1988 and in Almeder's book in 1992;


 * (b) Edwards responded to Almeder's points in his 1996 book;


 * (c) Almeder responded to Edwards' points in his 1997 essay.


 * To cover this academic debate, I need to use all three sources. I do not want to have to pretend that (c) does not exist. SlimVirgin (talk) 17:06, 21 November 2012 (UTC)


 * What you are doing is giving the publication in a fringe source the last word. You stop covering a discussion when the reliable sources dry up. IRWolfie- (talk) 17:51, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

Publication sequence

 * A REQUEST: to help those of us who know the policy, but who are not really familiar with this specific topic, could someone outline how much WEIGHT should or should not be given to Almeder's initial discussion of Stevenson.
 * I think that may be the key to this dispute... If Almeder's initial discussion of Stevenson is significant, then I think Slim Virgin is correct. The article should present the entire academic debate; the expert exemption would apply; and we would base reliability on the author and not the venue of publication.
 * If, on the other hand, Almeder's initial discussion of Stevenson is not actually all that significant, then I would suggest omitting it completely (and if we don't mention Almeder's initial discussion, then there is no need to bring up the Edwards response to it or Almeder's reply to that response.) In other words... I think the key to this tempest in a tea pot is determining how much Weight to give Almeder's initial discussion of Stevenson. All else flows from there.
 * Note... I am not asking whether Almeder's initial discussion is reliable ... I am trying to get a handle on how significant it is to understanding the article topic. Blueboar (talk) 17:54, 21 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Here is a summary of the Almeder-Edwards debate about Stevenson. It is from Christopher Bache, professor of religious studies, in his Dark Night, Early Dawn: Steps to a Deep Ecology of Mind, SUNY Press, 2000, pp. 37–40. SlimVirgin (talk) 19:16, 21 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Review here of Almeder's 1992 book, saying it is "one of the best books of this type". Another here, by the same reviewer, of Edwards 1996 book. I believe both reviews mention Stevenson, Almeder and Edwards. SlimVirgin (talk) 19:34, 21 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Another philosopher, Mark Woodhouse (specializes in personal identity, among other things), refers to the Almeder-Edwards debate about Stevenson in his Paradigm Wars (p. 144ff). He writes that the paradigm war over reincarnation "has pitted Robert Almeder, a nationally distinguished philosopher of science, against Paul Edwards, general editor of the Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Almeder's recent book, Death and Personal Survival: The Evidence for Life After Death, contains perhaps the most formidable point-for-point defense of reincarnation against a wide range of criticism."


 * Steven Hales, professor of philosophy at Bloomsburg University, cites Almeder's 1997 essay in his "Evidence and the afterlife", Philosophia, 28(1–4), pp. 335–346, and writes: "the best set of arguments for the thesis that some people survive their deaths has been given by Robert Almeder in his recent book Death and Personal Survival." SlimVirgin (talk) 20:15, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

Reply to Blueboar – I think I have the Edwards-Almeder publishing sequence about reincarnation in order now. Edwards and Almeder discussed Stevenson in the following, and in several discussed each other, or their disagreement about Stevenson was discussed by a third (academic) party.


 * 1) Paul Edwards (1986). "The Case Against Reincarnation: Part 1," Free Inquiry, 6, Fall, pp. 24–34.
 * 2) Paul Edwards (1986/7). "The Case Against Reincarnation: Part 2," Free Inquiry, 7, Winter, pp. 38–43.
 * 3) Paul Edwards (1987a). "The Case Against Reincarnation: Part 3," Free Inquiry, 7, Spring, pp. 38–49.
 * 4) Robert Almeder (May 1987). Beyond Death: The Evidence for Life After Death. Charles C Thomas
 * 5) Paul Edwards (1987b). "The Case Against Reincarnation: Part 4," Free Inquiry, 7, Summer, pp. 46–53.
 * 6) Robert Almeder (1988). "Response to 'Past Tongues Remembered'," Skeptical Inquirer, 12, Spring.
 * 7) Robert Almeder (1992). Death and Personal Survival: The Evidence for Life After Death. Rowman and Littlefield (mentions Edwards on pp. 33–36, 40, 91, and Stevenson on pp. vi, vii, 2, 4–5, 15–17, 23–25, 27, 31, 33, 35–39, 40, 55, 58–59, 90–94, 160–161, 273–274, and numerous others).
 * 8) Paul Edwards (1996). Reincarnation: A Critical Examination. Prometheus Books (mentions Almeder on pp. 8, 20–21, 136–137, 254–255, 266, and Stevenson on 8–9, 24–25, 52, 56–58, 78, 84, 87, 102–103, 103–105, 135–140, and numerous others).
 * 9) Edwards, Paul (1997). "Introduction" and "The Dependence of Consciousness on the Brain," in Edwards, Paul (ed.). Immortality. Prometheus Books (discusses Stevenson in numerous places, and mentions Almeder's 1987 book and defence of Stevenson on p. 317).
 * 10) Robert Almeder (1997). "A Critique of Arguments Offered Against Reincarnation", Journal of Scientific Exploration, 11(4), pp. 499–526 (a review of Edwards's 1996 book, particularly his criticism of Stevenson; cited by Hales 2001a below).
 * 11) Mark Woodhouse (philosopher) (1996). Paradigm Wars. Frog Books, p. 144ff: "[The paradigm war over reincarnation] has pitted Robert Almeder, a nationally distinguished philosopher of science, against Paul Edwards, general editor of the Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Almeder's recent book, Death and Personal Survival: The Evidence for Life After Death, contains perhaps the most formidable point-for-point defense of reincarnation against a wide range of criticism."
 * 12) Robert Almeder (1998). Harmless naturalism: The limits of science and the nature of philosophy. Open Court Publishers (argues that reincarnation is unique as a form of mind-body dualism because testable).
 * 13) Christopher Bache (2000). Dark Night, Early Dawn: Steps to a Deep Ecology of Mind, SUNY Press, pp. 37–40 (summarizes the Almeder-Edwards debate about Stevenson).
 * 14) Steven Hales (2001a). "Evidence and the afterlife", Philosophia, 28(1–4), pp. 335–346 (Hales cites Almeder's 1997 essay, and writes: "the best set of arguments for the thesis that some people survive their deaths has been given by Robert Almeder in his recent book Death and Personal Survival."
 * 15) Robert Almeder (2001). "On reincarnation: A reply to Hales", Philosophia.
 * 16) Steven Hales (2001b). "Reincarnation redux," Philosophia, 28(1–4), pp. 359–367.

It is number 10 that we're discussing here. SlimVirgin (talk) 23:29, 23 November 2012 (UTC)


 * @Blueboar: In the article in question, Edwards book is used to criticize Stevensons work. In that book, Edwards also notes that Almeder has (somewhat) defended Stevenson's work, but the tit-for-tat between them is peripheral to this article.
 * How much weight should we assign to Almeder's response? None. Almeder hismelf did not think it important enough to publish in a real academic outlet. As a heavyweight academic and the editor of several heavyweight journals himself, he could have easily published his response in a real academic source so that other academics could read and cite it. Instead, he published it in what he well knew was a sham "journal" that no one in the academic world would bother to read (practically no one cites the journal in serious academic sources). Furthermore, this appears to be the case, as no one in the academic community has so much as commented on Almeder's response in real academic sources, even Edwards himself.
 * As weight is assinged on the basis of how the viewpoint's prelevance in reliable sources, it can't be said that Almader's views expressed in this response are shared by anyone at all except Almader and Stevenson, and thus can be characterized as "held by an extremely small (or vastly limited) minority". Such views do "not belong in Wikipedia regardless of whether it is true or not and regardless of whether you can prove it or not, except perhaps in some ancillary article". Mentioning them in the article on Stevenson would be using the article on Stevenson as a coatrack to present Almader's extreme minority viewpoint.
 * Furthermore, the sham "journal" that Almader published this response in was Stevenson's own "journal", so far from a disinterested outlet. All the more so because Almader owed Stevenson a favor, because Stevenson had written the preface to one of Almader's non-peer-reviewed books. It's hard to argue that Almader does not have a conflict of interest here. His response in the sham "journal" is basically Almader licking his wounds in his own team's locker room after the beating Edward's gave him out on the field, which is of little significance to the topic of this article or to our readership in general. Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 22:22, 21 November 2012 (UTC)


 * You're acknowledging that Almeder is a heavyweight, and that he could have published his paper anywhere. That's precisely why the expert exemption applies in this case -- in addition to the fact that the Almeder-Edwards debate is discussed by other academics, so it would be odd to pretend that part of it doesn't exist. (And Edwards does more than say Almeder somewhat defends Stevenson. He writes that Almeder strongly defends Stevenson and attacks him for it.) SlimVirgin (talk) 22:36, 21 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Dominus, could I ask you not to change your posts substantively after I've replied to them? Otherwise, I'm replying to something that you appear not to have said, or I'm failing to reply to something that you did say. Here is the version of your post that I replied to.


 * Your argument about using Stevenson as a coatrack for Almeder is not one I follow. The fact is that the Almeder-Edwards debate about Stevenson has been discussed by academics. There are a number of papers and books on both sides that are part of it, some of them not even mentioned here. I would like to have the intellectual freedom to refer to any of them in my editing of Ian Stevenson without worrying about whether the place of publication has an entry in the Book of Light. I would like to focus on the arguments, the reputation of the philosophers, and the extent to which their arguments are relevant to Stevenson. SlimVirgin (talk) 23:14, 21 November 2012 (UTC)


 * You forgot again about SPS, which rules out sources that are unduly self-serving. Almeder's response is a self-defense, and all self-defenses are by definition unduly self-serving. That's why they are only allowed if published in non-self-published form. This part of the Almeder-Edward's debate can be ignored pecisely because no one describing the debate has commented substantially on THIS source specifically in the real academic literature. In fact, as far as we know, nobody has every read it or even knows that it exists. Even if it were mentioned off-hand, it wouldn't matter very much unless the discussion about it was substantial enough to show that the views espressed in it had prevalence in the reliable literature. As far as we can tell, Almeder's views on reincarnation are shared only by an extreme minority of his peers.
 * As for the coatrack argument, this article is about Stevenson, and material about Edwards response to Stevenson is on topic. Responses by anybody to anybody else, including Edwards response to Almader and the debate that insues, are peripheral to the topic of the article. As for your "intellectual freedom" plea, that is ridiculous, even more ridiculous than an appeal to common sense. The place of publication matters very much as far as our policies are concerned, especially for self-serving self-defenses that make WP:EXCEPTIONAL claims. Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 23:39, 21 November 2012 (UTC)


 * The "self-serving" provision of SPS is intended for people saying things about themselves that are unlikely to be true or realistic, not for this kind of situation. Almeder's response was defending Stevenson. You seem to be going from policy to policy desperately looking for reasons to keep this out because you don't like it. But we're here as educators. Two relatively heavyweight academic philosophers have gone head-to-head over Stevenson, and one of them specializes in precisely this field (truth, skepticism, philosophy of science). Philosophers are interested in this because of an interest in consciousness, and a separate interest in knowledge and how it's formed (epistemology). Both have written books about reincarnation in which Stevenson figured heavily. Other academics have commented on their input. Our instinct as Wikipedians should be tell our readers what those people said, not to look for excuses to leave out one part of it. SlimVirgin (talk) 23:50, 21 November 2012 (UTC)
 * No, we are not here as "educators." Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 01:02, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

Thought experiment for Dominus
Dominus, you say on your user page that you have a background in microbiology. So imagine this scenario:


 * 1. Professor of Microbiology John Smith. "A new idea in microbiology," in Very Important Peer-reviewed Journal, 2008.
 * 2. Professor of Microbiology Susan Jones. "Response to Smith's new idea in microbiology," in Very Important Peer-reviewed Journal, 2009.
 * 3. John Smith. My New Idea. Oxford University Press, 2010.
 * 4. Susan Jones. Smith's New Idea: A Critique. Cambridge University Press, 2011.
 * 5. John Smith. "Rejoinder to Jones" in Really Weird Little Magazine that Quite a Few People Don't Trust, 2012.

Suppose you were writing a Wikipedia article on Smith's new idea, and you wrote to him and said: "For heaven's sake, please tell me why you published that last paper in Really Weird Little Magazine?" And he replied that he could have published it anywhere, but he likes Really Weird Little Magazine and he thinks there are sometimes good things in it. And he doesn't care what other people think about the place of publication, because he has reached a point in his career where he doesn't have to care about things like that. Add that Jones has died to rule out any BLP complications. Would you seriously use only 1–4 as sources, but not 5, no matter what 5 said? SlimVirgin (talk) 00:14, 22 November 2012 (UTC)


 * If I may reply, JSE is not really equivalent to a really weird magazine that quite a few people don't trust. It purports to be an academic journal but isn't. This is like following a country road that gets narrower and narrower until it ends up in a farmyard. So we can't always follow all the twists and turns of an academic argument. Something similar has cropped up in relation to cold fusion, where the vast majority of academics don't want to engage with the CF enthusiasts at all, then one publishes a critique, then the CF crowd reply, then the critical scientist responds, then the CF crowd are back in again. By this point the critical scientist feels he has nothing more to add. Does that mean the CF-ers have to have the last word? And now I am done with this thread. Not reliable for commentary on academic work. Itsmejudith (talk) 00:38, 22 November 2012 (UTC)


 * I don't follow the farmyard analogy, and you didn't address the crucial point. If two academics have been discussing an issue for years, would you really only use 1–4 as sources for Wikipedia, and never mention 5, no matter what it said?


 * We have to follow policy. Otherwise the editors who like and don't like particular publications will go back and forth forever. This has long been a problem, and it's the reason RSN was started, to keep things focused on policy, but away from the policy talk pages.


 * The policy (V) does allow an expert exemption in SPS for a self-published source, and SOURCES (also part of V) allows reliability to reside in the author, not in the publication. The Almeder-Edwards debate about Stevenson is not an unknown one. Here again is a summary of it from Christopher Bache, professor of religious studies, in his Dark Night, Early Dawn, SUNY Press, 2000; and here from a philosopher, Mark Woodhouse, in his Paradigm Wars. In light of that confirmation of this very specific expertise, there really is nothing in policy that I'm aware of that would disallow that essay as a source. SlimVirgin (talk) 00:54, 22 November 2012 (UTC)


 * You bet your bottom dollar that I would not cite the fifth source here on WP, even if the ideas in it were consistent with the mainstream view. And alive or dead, there is nothing that Smith could say to convince me otherwise. You forget that for a scholar, the most important thing is not how much they publish, but how many times other scholars cite their work in the real scholarly literature, and that's not going to happen if the work is published in some silly "journal" that no one in their right mind even knows about, never mind would read, and definitely not cite in their own scholarly work. The fact that Smith published it without the benefit of peer review is proof enough for me that he himself was convinced that whatever he wrote was not all that important.


 * Neither would I cite it in my own professional work, and I can't imagine that any microbiologist would. Or any scientist in any field. I'd have a whole bit of explaining to do to the editor and the peer-reviewers of my article if I tried to pull such a stupid stunt.


 * I probably wouldn't even use the second or third sources here on WP for a science related topic (including fringe or pseudo-science) if they were not peer-reviewed or had not otherwise undergone some form of credible scholarly review (not everything by OUP and CUL is necessarily peer-reviewed). Otherwise, I might read them, and consider what's in them seriously, but I wouldn't cite them, except perhaps with extreme caution, meaning that I would have to be MIGHTY convinced that they had the consensus of the scientific community behind them.


 * As for self-published sources, I would never cite them at all for a scientific topic unless the material I were citing was also specifically mentioned in high-quality sources and thus clearly relected the consensus view (which is not the case for Almeder). Even then, I would only use them to support or illustrate what those more reliable sources say. About the only exception that I might consider using them for is to provide a CLEARLY consensus view on a fringe topic per WP:PARITY, like with the Edwards book in this article.


 * As for reputation, that counts for exactly jack shit as far as the merits of a scientist's ideas go in the scientfic community. When a paper is submitted for publication, only the merits of the paper itself count. The reputation of the author is immaterial. One doesn't even have to be a scientist to publish in the peer-reviewed literature, and even the best scientists get their papers rejected if they don't pass peer-review.


 * You seem to forget that even Noble Prize winners are perfectly capable of spinning complete and utter nonsense when off the clock, that is, when they are not subject to peer-review. Most especially when they talk to the popular press. Look at Linus Pauling and William Shockley for two good examples of Noble prize winners who did so.


 * As far as the exception to WP:SPS is concerned, you should read WP:IDHT. I've told you several times that SPSs cannot be used when they involve WP:EXCEPTIONAL claims, no matter who writes them. Multiple high-quality sources are required, and for a scholarly topic, those would have to comply with WP:SCHOLARSHIP. So no, there is no policy based reason to use Almeders source here. And your wasting your time and mine insisting that there is. Now read WP:DEADHORSE. Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 02:08, 22 November 2012 (UTC)


 * There are no exceptional claims in the article. It's a straightforward critique of Edwards' arguments, including those about Stevenson. So the SPS expert exemption can apply. And, speaking of IDHT, I keep pointing out that SOURCES, part of the V policy, says that reliability can lie with the author. Take those two together -- SOURCES and the expert exemption in SPS -- and there is no reason in policy to exclude the source. All the rest that you are pointing to are guidelines, and even they would support it if you read them carefully.


 * I'm saddened that you would include 1–4, but not 5. Perhaps that's one difference between science and the humanities, and certainly philosophy. A philosopher would want to know what everyone qualified had argued. I think Wikipedia's readers want the same. I can't imagine any reader saying, "please, whatever do you do, don't tell us what Almeder said in response." SlimVirgin (talk) 02:24, 22 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Have you even read the article? It's nothing except exceptional claims, even from a philosophical standpoint, unless you define philosophy as "any old sort of bullshit". If our readers want to read any old sort of bullshit, they could go to Conservapedia or Creationwiki or Astrowiki or whateverwiki. We're only obigated to give the the best possible information from the best sources we can, and any old sort of bullshit from JSE doesn't qualify by a wide mile, regardless who wrote it.


 * FWIW, Itsmejudith is a humanist, and I have two humanist degrees myself, from a Jesuit university, no less, so I have a darn good idea of how academic philosophy works, and it certainly ain't the free-for-all that you think it is. Lax, yes. Lax to the point of publishing one's work in JSE and thinking that someone will take it seriously, hell no. Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 03:12, 22 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Re: exceptional claims. SV, take one step back from the picture. Edwards is a philosopher of considerable standing and the thesis of his book is basically "there is no convincing evidence of reincarnation". Surely, any serious attempt to attack that position held by that author has something of the exceptional about it.
 * Almeder's paper is JSE, when read, only confirms the suspicion that any sensible person approaching the question would take in advance. JSE is a publication which, frankly, exists in order to support intellectually dishonest writings about the paranormal. We cannot in good conscience take it seriously in reporting a supposed academic debate (there actually is no debate here - Edwards gave his dismissal of Stevenson in one go and, rightly, did not afford the respect of an ongoing exchange of views).
 * It's perfectly acceptable to explain Stevenson's views in the article and to outline what others have said about them, positive and less so. But I think it would demean WP somewhat to offer the distortion that there is a serious academic debate somewhere involved in all this. Formerip (talk) 00:58, 24 November 2012 (UTC)
 * I wonder whether this discussion is caused by a misunderstanding of philosophy. Philosophers examine arguments, and Almeder is pointing out weaknesses in Edwards's arguments. And Edwards didn't, as you say, dismiss Stevenson's work in one go; see the publishing sequence above. SlimVirgin (talk) 20:39, 24 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Do you have academic training in philosophy? Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 22:54, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

Response from the author
I made Professor Almeder aware of this discussion a few days ago, and we've exchanged a few emails about it. He has given me permission to summarize and quote from the correspondence. Regarding the journal, he wrote:

I was happy to publish my review of Edwards book in that journal (1997). That journal has a large readership outside philosophy  and it is now edited by a well-regarded philosopher (Stephen Braude) who knows his philosophy of science. If there is a question of the reliability of what is expressed in the essay on the position and arguments Edwards advanced, it would be very easy to read the essay and check the references against the actual words Edwards uttered in his book. The Journal for Scientific Exploration was established as an antidote to the work on the Journal for Psychical Research which had become more like cheerleading activity for the paranormal rather than live up to its mission of providing a vehicle for serious research and probing discussion on the logic and science of the paranormal. Stevenson's work was often reviewed and discussed in that journal by thoroughly serious and competent scholars. And sometimes I wrote about Stevenson's work and defended the minimalist conception of reincarnation in equally solid but less specialized professional journals for philosophers only (such as my exchange with Steven Hales in Philosophia ( dec. 2000 ) volume 28.....that's the Israeli  Journal of Philosophy). That was an interesting exchange initiated by Steve Hales' Essay on reincarnation. The editor asked me if i would reply to him, and i did. In that exchange I also advanced minimalist conception of reincarnation and again attributed it to Stevenson and argued for its merits as a solid empirical thesis.

More importantly, judging the quality ( reliability) of peer-reviewed journals in a particular area can be tricky business. My experience as an editor for six years of a premier philosophy journal (the American Philosophical Quarterly) led me to believe that when departments want to hire or promote philosophers it is good to remember that good philosophers sometimes publish not so good papers in very good journals. But, in any case, the judgement of quality and importance should be made not on the usual quality of items in that journal but on the content of that essay ( or review) in particular.

Note that I haven't seen Almeder's exchange with Steven Hales in Philosophia, but if Hales addressed the 1997 essay in his paper(s), that deals with the objection that there was no academic response to it. Almeder went on to say that he wanted in the 1997 essay to clarify the minimalist conception of reincarnation because Edwards seemed to conflate all reincarnationist views with religious belief and superstition. He also wrote:

"What seems particularly important to note, as you do, is that for Stevenson, the best available empirical explanation for the facts in the stronger cases is reincarnation (of the minimalist sort), and I believe (as I argued in my book) that it is unreasonable to reject that view as empirically the best currently available explanation of the best cases. But it makes no difference whether we believe it or not. The question is rather about what we should believe."

He added that the editor who is opposing his work (I assume he meant Dominus, but this could apply to anyone) should feel free to contact him directly with his reasons. If anyone wants to do that, please email me and I'll pass on the details. He also pointed out that he has written a chapter, "The Major Objections from Reductive Materialism Against Belief in the Existence of Cartesian Mind-Body Dualism", in Alexander Moreira-Almeida and Franklin Santana Santos, Exploring Frontiers of the Mind-Brain Relationship, Springer 2011, pp. 16–33 (reincarnation discussed on pp. 21–22, 24, 32). I hope this further addresses the issue of whether he has expertise in this area. SlimVirgin (talk) 21:46, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

Summary
This has become so long that uninvolved editors may be reluctant to comment, so this is a summary. The policy question is whether reliability invariably rests with the publication, or whether it can also rest with the author. Sorry for banging on about it, but we sometimes need to cite experts who published in odd places (or self-published) in the interests of NPOV.

I would like to use this essay by Robert Almeder, professor emeritus of philosophy, as a source for our biography of Ian Stevenson (not a BLP). Stevenson was a psychiatrist who interviewed children who claimed to have lived before. Almeder's essay is a response to another philosopher, Paul Edwards, who devoted a chapter of a book to criticism of Stevenson. I would like to include the criticism and the response. Both philosophers had published several times before about Ian Stevenson and each other. See the publishing sequence above.

The argument against using the essay is that Almeder published it in the Journal of Scientific Exploration, which deals with parapsychology and similar issues. The argument for is that WP:V says reliability can rest with the author:


 * 1) WP:SOURCES: "The word 'source' in Wikipedia has three meanings: the work itself (a document, article, paper, or book), the creator of the work (for example, the writer), and the publisher of the work (for example, Oxford University Press). All three can affect reliability."
 * 2) WP:SPS: "Self-published expert sources may be considered reliable when produced by an established expert on the topic of the article, whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable third-party publications."

If we can use self-published sources when the author is an expert, we should be able to apply the same expert exemption to an essay published in the Journal of Scientific Exploration. See the author's statement about this in the section above. SlimVirgin (talk) 19:02, 26 November 2012 (UTC)


 * I think it allowable to use Almeder in the context that SV is describing. However, I note that (apparently) there are others who have commented upon the debate between Almeder and Edwards... they would be even better sources (as this would avoid having to use both Edwards and Almeder in a WP:PRIMARY context.) Blueboar (talk) 19:45, 26 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the reply. Using Edwards-Almeder directly is unavoidable if Edwards's critique of Stevenson is to be added, because both the criticism and the response are detailed (more detailed than currently in the article). But I'll use the independent sources too to show that the debate was noted by others. Many thanks again. SlimVirgin (talk) 19:51, 26 November 2012 (UTC)


 * You were given a number of independent responses, you just seem to have chosen to ignore them and keep arguing until one editor gave you a response you like. Your basic argument is to give weight to a dubious source to counter other sources, IRWolfie- (talk) 17:57, 1 December 2012 (UTC)


 * I don't believe anyone has adequately answered the points SlimVirgin has raised that a source's reliability can rest with the author and that self-published expert sources may be considered reliable when produced by an established expert on the topic. SlimVirgin has made the case quite well, I think, especially with statements from Almeder himself. So I agree with SV's position. --EPadmirateur (talk) 20:25, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

It's reliable for his own opinion, but not something which can be stated in the Wikipedia tone. It's not a standard RS with a reputation for fact checking. It has little to no due weight attached due to it being a fringe publication, per WP:FRINGE. IRWolfie- (talk) 17:59, 2 December 2012 (UTC)


 * This discussion was hours away from being archived by the bot until IRWolfie reopened it (I hope unrelated to my opposing his position on an RfC). I think it serves no purpose at this point. V and IRS both allow reliability to reside with the author, and the author is an expert. From WP:IRS (bold added): "Reliable sources may be published materials with a reliable publication process, authors who are regarded as authoritative in relation to the subject, or both." I'm therefore going to close this. SlimVirgin (talk) 23:36, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

Summing up
A previous discussion on this noticeboard about this journal concluded that it is an RS for the opinions of its authors, but not for scientific fact. During the current discussion, the opinion of involved editors (those already on article talk) was:


 * Dominus Vobisdu: opposed using the essay because of the place of publication, no matter who the author is;
 * IRWolfie-: agreed with Dominus, but added that the source is reliable for the author's opinion, though not for anything in Wikipedia's voice, and only if following UNDUE;
 * Itsmejudith: journal is not reliable for factual claims, but may be reliable as a primary source for the views of fringe theorists;
 * SlimVirgin: reliability resides with the author qua expert, not the publication, per WP:V and WP:IRS.


 * The opinion of uninvolved editors:
 * FormerIP: suggested removing the author's material from the Stevenson bio; wanted to know how significant the author's views were in relation to Stevenson
 * Blueboar: the situation is similar to the "expert exemption" clause of WP:SPS;
 * TimidGuy: how and where sources are used is important; the source is appropriate here, no reason within policy to remove it;
 * EPadmirateur: agreed that a source's reliability can rest with the author.


 * Many thanks to everyone who commented. SlimVirgin (talk) 23:36, 2 December 2012 (UTC)