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2nd RfC: The Daily Mail

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Is it time to lift the targeted restrictions on using the Daily Mail as a source, thus overturning the Jan 2017 RfC? FeydHuxtable (talk) 10:24, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

Survey (Daily Mail)

*No. -Roxy, the dog. wooF 13:33, 4 December 2018 (UTC) Note : !Vote removed due to abuse of process, and subsequent mangling of thread. -Roxy, the dog. wooF 11:35, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

• Rude. Voting doesn't open until 11 December. You may request an absentee ballot if needed. Please provide documentation of personal hardship and at least seven forms of photo ID. GMG^talk 14:18, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

Will a note from my chemotherapy doc suffice? -Roxy, the dog. wooF 14:43, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

Only if submitted in quintuplicate. (Also best of luck on recovery assuming that's not a joke.) GMG^talk 15:01, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

Can a proposer actually restrict voting in this way? I have never seen an attempt to do so here before, and find it odd, which is why I already voted. The chemo is real, and I'm going to be fine. -Roxy, the dog. wooF 16:04, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

The proposer has close to zero power to enforce anything, but editors generally abide by reasonable requests like "Please keep threaded discussion in the threaded discussion section and !votes in the !vote section" or "Voting is not due to open until Tuesday 11 Dec. This is to allow plenty of time for both sides to develop arguments". Then again, while dogs definitely have a strong sense of etiquette, their rules are not the same as our rules... :) --Guy Macon (talk) 17:07, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

True - but we also ignore unreasonable requests, like demanding an RfC sit for a week before anyone ventures an opinion either way. RfCs open when posted. Guy (Help!) 18:06, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

• Hell no. The Mail is still the archetype of lazy and biased journalism in supposedly serious media. Also we don't do "voting", Wikipedia is not a democracy. They have had a new editor for, what, two months? OK, no editor could be as bad as Dacre but it is way too soon to say if there is any improvement and I will stick my neck out and say we will know it has improved meaningfully on the day the "sidebar of shame" disappears from the Mail online. And not before. Guy (Help!) 18:04, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

I note that some people are treating this as a relitigation of the original RfC. It's not. The assertion is that the Mail has changed and that the guidance should therefore change. The original consensus that the Mail is unreliable stands, the opinions of a minority notwithstanding, this is about whether there has been meaningful change, and actually we should be reflecting the opinions of third party sources. I have not noticed any independent commentators saying that the Mail has become more reliable, the Mail's website is still packed with clickbait, soft porn papparazzi pics and press releases masquerading as stories,but the print edition may indeed be changing, early signs are that it is beginning to take a reality-based line on Brexit, for example. In time I think we could use the print edition again, though not web-only stories, ever. Guy (Help!) 16:16, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

The evidence can never show a change, because the evidence (you know, not anecdotes sourced from blogs, but actual evidence from the regulator and from surveys) never showed it was especially unreliable compared to other UK tabloids in the first place. FOARP (talk) 22:00, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

• No, but some of the opposers at the Sun RfC have valid concerns with how the restrictions are sometimes interpreted. These should be addressed. Editors should interpret the Daily Mail RfC in the context of the issues it intended to address, not as a ruling that justifies incivility and/or wholesale removal of non-contentious content and citations. The problem with this proposal is that it doesn't address the concerns raised in the Sun RfC. If some editors are harassing those who add the Daily Mail to articles (as Andy Dingley contended), this is not going to stop even if restrictions on Daily Mail usage were lifted. feminist (talk) 19:16, 4 December 2018 (UTC)
• Demur in several ways "Basically - if the item is "celebrity gossip" in nature, sourced in whole or in part to "anonymous sources" or to "press releases" or the like - we should disallow it. In the first case as being violative of BLP principles in the first place. In the second because press releases are generally not "fact checked" in any way at all, and are therefore "self-published sources" which should be ascribed to the writers of the press release material, not to the newspapers which run them substantially unedited." is my stated position, and one which, I suggest, has substantial merit. Collect (talk) 21:00, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

Churnalism should not be used, period. It is advertising copy and it routinely misrepresents the facts of the case (almost always, in fact, in the case of university press releases for research). Guy (Help!) 22:45, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

• No, and hell no - they need much more than two months with a new editor - they need a track record of not being a worse-than-useless source to overcome a long and extensively-documented history of literally making stuff up - David Gerard (talk) 00:04, 5 December 2018 (UTC)
• Yes, provided it is not retrospective. Most news outlets have published incorrect stories and false facts at some point but the problem as far as the DM went was the editorial collusion in those false accounts. The new editor Geordie Greig was editor of the Mail on Sunday which was not subject to the Daily Mail ban. It is reasonable to assume he will bring the same practices and code of ethics to his current appointment. To make this simple, we should permit DM articles published from January 1, 2019 to be used as a reliable source. Just for the record I supported the previous ban because of the erosion of trust between Wikipedia and the DM, but a large plank of the case against them has collapsed with the appointment of a new editor, especially one with a good track record. The benefit of the doubt has to be given here otherwise Wikipedia is going to look partisan, especially now it has banned Breitbart. Betty Logan (talk) 07:09, 5 December 2018 (UTC)
• Support removing the previous ban and replacing with new guidance - The statement that the Daily Mail was generally unreliable that came from the previous RfC had no grounding in evidence - it was based only on anecdotal evidence insufficient to sustain a general finding. Instead the evidence from IPSOS shows the Daily Mail to have been not substantially worse, in terms of complaints upheld, than sources generally thought reliable (e.g., in 2015 there were only 2 complaints upheld against Associated, owners of the Daily Mail, whilst 5 were upheld in that year against The Times - see here). New guidance should be produced covering tabloids in general, preferably on the basis that tabloids should be avoided for BLP or controversial statements unless there is a clear reason to use them falling within defined grounds (e.g., to quote someone's own opinions). The automatic filtering of the DM should be deactivated as the politically-motivated censorship it always clearly was, there was never any good reason (other than WP:IDONTLIKEIT) to pick on the Daily Mail in particular out of all tabloid publications. FOARP (talk) 08:07, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

  Without going into the details of this discussion, one should note that IPSO is probably not a good independent source for this since they were founded and are paid by the newspaper industry. Even our own article about them (Independent Press Standards Organisation) reads in parts like an advert. Any decision about the (un)reliability of the Daily Mail should probably be based on sources independent from the UK newspaper industry. Regards SoWhy 15:19, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

SoWhy But in that case it should be a good means to compare those papers that do adhere to its guidelines to try and decide if the DM is any worse than any other of the papers that would help support its ban. If IPSO is biased towards the papers that adhere then it should be biased towards all of them. Don't forget that reliable sources such as the Guardian cite its findings and reports. If we can't use an independent watchdog should we just continue to rely on our own bias and gutfeelings about anecdotal evidence? Dom from Paris (talk) 16:21, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

L we have not picked on the DM, we have also nominated other red tops. It is just that those who are defending these "news" organs have had more luck defending the others. I am sure that all of those who want this "ban" in place would like to see it extended to the Sun, The Daily Mirror and other similar scandal and OUTRAGE!!!!! rags. So not we are not singling it out.Slatersteven (talk) 14:25, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

L If so then the fact that you have failed to spread this ban to other publications indicates that the original ban itself was dubious and probably should never have passed. If people find a ban only palatable when it is directed at a particularly hated publication amongst left-wingers (who are possibly over-represented on Wiki), but not when it is directed at less-hated newspapers that are no better or worse in terms of content, that should surely trigger a re-think. FOARP (talk) 14:36, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

No, no more then if I charge someone with a crime and they got of it means the person before that was innocent. All it means is that this time the arguments were better (not more valid, just better put), or more support was rallied or... well any number of reasons.Slatersteven (talk) 14:53, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

If juries repeatedly refuse to convict, this is a sign that there is a problem with the law. Hey, there's even a name for this. FOARP (talk) 15:11, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

NO, it means that enough of the jury think the law is wrong in those cases (and no this was not been a universal finding, we have had at least one red tops RFC success). Now this is what this RFC is about, is the law still valid.Slatersteven (talk) 15:18, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

The one success was against a paper that is particularly hated by left-wingers, who may be over-represented on Wiki. The other red-tops were the real test, and it failed on them. Maintaining it now is just discriminatory. FOARP (talk) 15:24, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

AGF, I think you will find that most of us who voted yes in the first RFC (and are voting no now) have also supported the same treatment for all the red tops when it has been raised.Slatersteven (talk) 16:27, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

CDare to find one example of a user who has not done this?>Slatersteven (talk) 15:27, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

• The automatic filtering of the DM should be deactivated as the politically-motivated censorship it always ways. Please remember to assume good faith. If nothing else, it is counterproductive to throw around accusations like that when you are, more or less, asking the same people who decided to restrict the Daily Mail in 2017 to change their minds. The original RFC you're trying to overturn here was closed by a trio of experienced, highly-trusted admins who evaluated the strength of the arguments (not just the numerical !votes) before coming to their conclusion. --Aquillion (talk) 14:28, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

• Strong support. Reviewing the evidence for & against, the case to remove the ban seems over whelming. (Weak opinions: Id prefer a simple, retrospective lifting as banning even the Dacre DM seems unwarranted. But I can see the other side here, and if we were to have a cut off point, I agree Jan 2019 would make things nice and simple. Huh, if WP bans arguably questionable sources and reinstates them once they address concerns, this might encourage all sources make more effort to be reliable, which would be quite a pleasing side effect. As for a new guidline against tabloids, this seems rather non inclusive. Both the guideline and practice seem to already strongly discourage weak sourcing of controversial BLP statements, so theres a WP:Creep objection here. It's already ridiculously hard to save moderately notable BLPs from destruction without giving deletionists an excuse to dismiss any tabloid source. But only tentative about this view as I have relatively little experience with BLPs and may be misreading, maybe we really do need said guideline.) FeydHuxtable (talk) 13:44, 5 December 2018 (UTC)
• No In 2017 10 complaints were upheld against it. It continues to publish falsehoods and conjecture as if they are facts (even under its new regime, as shown below). It has had multiple complaints held up against it this year. I see nothing having changed since we had our last RFC. Until any figures are released we have no idea if the problems have been fixed.Slatersteven (talk) 13:51, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Simply balding stating that 10 complaints were upheld does not show general unreliability, not when other publishers, including publishers of RS newspapers with lower circulation, had even more. FOARP (talk) 14:13, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Err the fact we allow other "less reliable" publications is not a reason to allow this one, it is a reason to not allow them. The fact it that when we banned it the upheld complaints had increased, I see no evidence that trend has even peaked (let alone declined). The basis of this RFC is that the situation has changed, I see no evidence of that.Slatersteven (talk) 14:21, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

The fact that the DM is no worse that sources we believe to be reliable clearly is a reason to consider whether the reasoning under which it was found to be generally unreliable is flawed. The change in situation is not the only basis of the RfC. The lack of good evidence to support the result of the previous RfC is right there under no. 2 in the arguments. To my mind, it is the strongest point. FOARP (talk) 14:25, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

What the study of the publishers complaints rate?Slatersteven (talk) 16:35, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Yes, the study showing that the DM was no worse in terms of complaints upheld than other publications considered RS. That one. Associated only have one big publication (the Daily Mail) and they had half the number of complaints upheld in 2015 that The Times did. FOARP (talk) 20:04, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

• Yes I oppose such bans (as already noted on this page). I also see the current ban / restriction as deeply flawed, particularly because it's so unclear as to whether it's a ban or not. Even if there is no wish to overturn it, we should improve and clarify our restrictions around it.

• Is this a ban or not?
• There is no current clear distinction between the DM as newspaper (even when reproduced online) and the even more celeb-heavy DM-online.
• There is no statement of the precise problem with the DM, and thus the scope of the restriction. Is this factual inaccuracy or editorial political bias? It has been challenged for both, yet there are many uses where we would require accuracy but bias would not be an issue. We shouldn't conflate both for judging each and every use.
• What are the penalties for breaching it? At present, editors even discusssing it have been threatened with blocks. This is just bullying and needs to stop forthwith.
• Why single out the DM? If indeed (as claimed by some threats) it already goes further (the Mirror / Scottish papers for some). Why are Fox and RT, which are equally challenged, permissible?
• What are the exceptions to its permissible use?
• Should editors patrol new / changed articles and summarily strip any DM citations (the "crane case")?

Even if the ban stays, these points should be addressed. Andy Dingley (talk) 14:04, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Re: "There is no current clear distinction between the DM as newspaper (even when reproduced online) and the even more celeb-heavy DM-online", what part of "Consensus has determined that the Daily Mail (including its online version, dailymail.co.uk) is generally unreliable, and its use as a reference is to be generally prohibited"[1] are you having trouble understanding? --Guy Macon (talk) 14:52, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

He's saying the 2017 RfC did't distinguish between the two publications, and you are merely reciting the part of the conclusion of the RfC that stated that this is true: it did not distinguish between the two. As such, it is indiscriminate. You are merely demonstrating the fact of what he said. FOARP (talk) 15:02, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Yes, thankyou. Andy Dingley (talk) 15:10, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Nonsense. The RfC clearly stated that both the print and online sources were unreliable -- because they are both unreliable. Andy Dingley, I have seen enough examples of you purposely misunderstanding clear wording to conclude that you are trolling us. --Guy Macon (talk) 16:00, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Guy, ANI is thataway. If you want to accuse editors personally of "trolling", then do it there, not here.

The restriction treats both paper and online equally. Now many people, including the DM's own staff, see the online platform as much less serious a form of news reporting, and it's certainly fuller of celebrities and their "peachy derrières". Given the ease of searching for and linking to an online platform, we have to be even more careful with it. Andy Dingley (talk) 16:39, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

• Yes The only proof that the DM is "generally unreliable" was anecdotal evidence. This is not supported by independent watchdog reports from IPSO. It is a trashy bit of newspaper with editorial opinions that can sometimes be outrageous but it is a newspaper that adheres to control by a watchdog, it was named National newspaper of the year 7 times in the last 23 years, and its journalists have won around 20 British Press Awards. I personally don't like it and would rather use other sources but I cannot support this continuation of this ban which makes Wikipedia editors seem biased. The Guardian article produced by User:FOARP is particularly pertinant and on that anecdotal basis we should see the Times banned as being unreliable too. Dom from Paris (talk) 14:10, 5 December 2018 (UTC)
• No Needs more than two months to be considered more reliable. ^Semi_Hypercube ✎ 16:55, 5 December 2018 (UTC)
• Yes I think it has changed sufficiently. I never supported the original ban in the first place because it did appear that the original decision was taken with a political view against right leaning sources rather than editorial concerns. Indeed we do still have GAs that are supported by DM sources and yet those ones were strangely untouched when the anti-DM purges were going around so clearly there is tacit acknowledgement of DM being reliable. The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 17:04, 5 December 2018 (UTC)
• No It's far too soon to assess any substantial lasting change in a large newspaper with many diverse and controversial topics. The listed character witnesses for this change so far are politicians and opinion pieces, with a limited short-time view that can only speculate about a possible lasting change. Secondly, I strongly object to the unfounded allegations of general political motivations behind the previous RfC. Such repeated personalizing allegations are a violation of WP:AGF and counterproductive. Lastly, anecdotal evidence - within reason - is a perfectly valid argument for community-internal discussions. Wikipedia is not a court of law. GermanJoe (talk) 17:27, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

The proposer of the 2017 RfC is on the record as comparing the Daily Mail to the Volkischer Beobachter, and there was repeated use of emotive language betraying anger at the publication during that RfC (e.g., "kill it with fire", "fake news", "right-wing propaganda"). It is hardly unfair to say that some of the editors were not voting objectively. Finally, the DM remains the only newspaper censored in this way despite being, according to IPSOS, no worse than any other UK tabloid in terms of complaints upheld. FOARP (talk) 19:59, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

I reject your assertion that you can diagnose a persons internat mental state over the internet. --Guy Macon (talk) 00:51, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

Which is odd, because below you are carrying on about my (imaginary) secret agenda, apparently diagnosed through the internet. FOARP (talk) 08:34, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

• Yes - Remove "the Ban" on the Daily Mail Reinstate the Daily Mail as Reliable Source. "The IPSO (Independent Press Standards Organization) is the independent regulator for the newspaper and magazine industry in the UK". As the UK regulator they "uphold high standards of journalism".
• The Daily Mail is one of IPSO's member newspapers and follows the IPSO Editors' Code, publishing corrections, and is subject to investigation and enforcement by IPSO.
• When any of IPSO's members is found violating their Rules and Regulations the members are subject to publishing corrections, paying fines, paying for the cost of the investigation, submitting quarterly statements, and ultimately termination of the newspaper's membership with IPSO.
• In identifying the most complained about publications in the UK in 2017, The Daily Mail had a complaint rate per circulated issue of about 0.32%. This compares to other UK newspapers that were also on the "Most Complained About Publications" list for 2017, including The Sun 0.35%, The Bristol Post 0.21%, The Times 0.14%, The Daily Telegraph 0.08% and The Telegraph 0.006% among others. The arguments put forth to maintain the ban are highly partisan and/or motivated by partisanship. Nearly every argument to continue or to initially propose a ban on the DM could easily be made about news sources considered mainstream such as the New York Daily News or even the so-called venerable New York Times.Wcmcdade (talk) 21:06, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

• Strong No The burden lies on the shoulders of those supporting lifting the ban, to provide evidence that DM is reliable. Being a member of various associations is not a criterion for reliability. Reliability is gained day by day, month by month and year by year. There is no evidence that the public considers DM a reliable source, no published articles in peer-reviewed journals consider DM reliable (at least I am not aware of any) hence we have no reason to do so. Cinadon36 (talk) 21:18, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

The 2014 BBC trusted sources survey had the Daily Mail at 4.7 - in the middle of the table and higher than every other tabloid (see slide 11 here). The 2017 IPSOS MORI BBC survey returned the same result - Daily Mail the most trusted of all the tabloids (see table 5 on page 14 here). In as much as it is possible to confirm, the British public has always considered the Daily Mail to be at least no worse than any other tabloid, and actually better than most/all of them. The perception prevalent on these pages that the DM is somehow the worst of the worst is simply that: a perception, with no basis in fact.

PS - I also note than no evidence of any kind, other than anecdotal evidence, was presented during the 2017 RfC. You are therefore asking for a higher standard of evidence for removing the ban than was asked for for implementing it. FOARP (talk) 22:24, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

• No - Nothing has changed, why should this? Beyond My Ken (talk) 22:59, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

• Yes - I support revoking the RFC. I will only engage in discussion on my talk page. power~enwiki (π, ν) 01:41, 6 December 2018 (UTC)
• Yes - the ban is ridiculous, not evidence-based and is discriminatory in how it singled out the Mail for censorship yet still allowed countless publications of the same (or worse) quality. The UK's strict libel laws combined with press regulation almost inevitably make the Mail a more reliable source than similar quality publications from countries such as the US. Either the ban is lifted or countless others need to be introduced (and I very strongly favour the former).Shakehandsman (talk) 04:46, 6 December 2018 (UTC)
• Yes - there is no news outlet that is flawless, each article needs to be considered on a case-by-case basis. I would go one step further than Shakehandsman and say that any US source is likely to be less reliable. Jack N. Stock (talk) 07:24, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

• No- It's too early to know whether the Daily Mail has genuinely stopped printing complete bollocks and far right propaganda dressed up as news. I'd be open to revisiting this in six months or so to evaluate whether anything really has changed. Then it might be possible to say that "DM articles from such and such a date onward are OK but anything before then is still likely to be mendacious crap". Reyk _YO! 08:50, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

Is "printing right wing propaganda" a justification for a ban of the kind that is - of all the newspapers in the world - applied only against the DM? Wiki even has a policy that explicitly states that "reliable sources are not required to be neutral, unbiased, or objective. Sometimes non-neutral sources are the best possible sources for supporting information about the different viewpoints held on a subject". FOARP (talk) 10:33, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

I'm not going to engage with this badgering. Reyk _YO! 11:33, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

It was a fair question - simply being right wing, or even "right wing propaganda", is not a disqualification from being a reliable source per Wiki policy. Up to you whether you want to, or are able to, answer it. FOARP (talk) 12:50, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

• • Reyk, my google news alerts regularly advise me of Daily Mail articles on topics I am interested in, and have been doing so for well over a decade. Frankly I don't recall this right-wing bias you refer to. How about offering some examples? Geo Swan (talk) 17:51, 27 December 2018 (UTC)
• No - review in six months and we can see if it has changed -----Snowded ^TALK 10:39, 6 December 2018 (UTC)
• No. Nothing has substantially changed, and the prolix legal advocate-style brief below is, shall we say, less than convincing. The "partisan" bit is a particularly bogus argument. --Calton | Talk 10:46, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

• No - nothing has changed, and to say the are worse examples than the Daily Mail is not a very strong argument. (To say that are sources that are even less reliable than the DM, does not make the DM any more reliable, maybe we should seriously remove more poor sources.) ~ BOD ~ ^TALK 10:58, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

• No - Nothing's changed as far as I'm concerned, I also disagree with reviewing in 6 months - We as a community made a decision so that decision should stick ... we don't need to keep revisiting this every year. –Davey2010^Talk 11:04, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

• No far too soon to judge if anything's really changed --Dweller (talk) Become old fashioned! 11:16, 6 December 2018 (UTC)
• No – We shouldn't use tabloids as sources as a matter of course. If the only available source for a given claim is a tabloid, then it's almost certain the issue isn't of genuine encyclopedic value in the first place. I have no first-hand knowledge to what degree the DM stands out as particularly bad among the rest of the bunch, but what I've seen was quite bad enough. Fut.Perf. ☼ 11:20, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

No-one here is arguing that tabloids are a particularly good source. They are arguing that an automatically-enforced ban of one tabloid in particular (the Daily Mail), which is the only tabloid banned in this fashion, should be removed. FOARP (talk) 16:42, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

• No - it may have a new editor but it's still a tabloid, and tabloids make for very poor sources because of the amount of exaggeration and outright making things up that tabloids engage in. No tabloid should be used as a source on Wikipedia and most editors abide by that guidance; the difference with DM is that for some reason editors weren't seeing it as the unreliable source that it is. I think this discussion should be closed and not revisited for at least a year. Ca2james (talk) 16:02, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

But we don't have "a ban on tabloids". So why single out just one? Andy Dingley (talk) 16:18, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

• Of course. I checked the RfC and most of the older discussions, and I found zero (zero!) evidence that the Daily Mail is known for publishing false information. I'm very amused by the fact that we have a total of around 40 discussions here at RSN, and every discussion consists of pointing to a previous discussion and using actual gossip blogs like Gawker as "evidence" that the Daily Mail is unreliable. This is beyond me. wumbolo ^^^ 5:42 pm, Today (UTC+1)

Unfortunately this is the case. A list of blog-article anecdotes counts as sufficient "evidence" to ban a publication published daily for 122 years, but surveys and regulatory evidence counts for nothing. FOARP (talk) 19:39, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

We can do this with reliable sources, too. Here's a couple of anecdotes for the Southern Poverty Law Center: [2] [3] [4]. Here's for The New York Times: [5] [6] [7] [8]. For Fox News, see Fox News controversies, and for CNN, see CNN controversies and Fake News Awards. Winning a Pulitzer Prize is not enough anymore [9]. These anecdotal arguments really are slippery slopes to ban all sources in existence. I can only point to WP:NOTCENSORED to show that Wikipedia is not a tool for the censorship of the press, and that makes us no better than those who compromise the freedom of the press – one of the sources I cited above is Donald Trump, whose anecdotal story about CNN was awarded the "Overall Achievement in Undermining Global Press Freedom" by the Committee to Protect Journalists. Do we really want to be the next target of journalist advocacy organizations? We will lose all our credibility. wumbolo ^^^ 09:22, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

• Kill it. Kill it with fire. The preceding sentence is based 100% on the demonstrated unreliability of The Daily Mail. Anyone who reads anything else into it other than a strongly-worded expression of the strong evidence that The Daily mail is an unreliable source is simply wrong, and is trying to stuff words in my mouth. I would also note that so far nobody has documented any other UK tabloid repeatedly fabricating direct quotes or repeatedly stealing work from lesser-known publications, changing a few things to make the story more salacious, and publishing the resulting copyright violation under its own byline. If anyone ever posts evidence of another newspaper that does that, I will be happy to post an RfC asking that we don't allow it as a source either. --Guy Macon (talk) 17:35, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

• Examples:

1. The Daily Mail has 'mastered the art of running stories that aren't true', Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales says
2. 10 Egregiously False Stories In The 'Daily Mail'
3. Daily Mail 'spits dummy' after Paul Barry calls out plagiarism
4. Plagiarism at the Daily Mail
5. A Sincere Apology From Cracked to the Daily Mail

--Guy Macon (talk) 18:13, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

Anecdotes sourced in all instances but one from blogs (the one non-blog source is an interview on CNBC, not the views of CNBC itself). Not evidence that supports "general unreliability". And if you want to disprove the accusation of political bias talking about "killing it with fire" is unlikely to have that effect. FOARP (talk) 19:27, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

Every one of those "anecdotes" contains links where you can personally verify the claims made. Any reasonable person who read, say, the Cracked claims[10] would look at the original Cracked article [11] and at the Daily Mail article published a day later[12] You don't have to trust Cracked as a source. You can look at the evidence yourself and draw your own concision. You aren't fooling anyone, you know. We have all figured out what you are on about and why. --Guy Macon (talk) 00:51, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

"You aren't fooling anyone, you know. We have all figured out what you are on about and why" - and what, pray tell, is that? Let me guess, I'm a mole planted by Dacre on Wiki back in 2007 just for this very purpose?

Conspiratorial accusations, swearing, and insults (see below for examples) are not conducive of informed debate and will not help arrive at a consensus. If anything they merely undermine the arguments you make and provide further evidence for the argument that the ban is politically motivated.

Finally, I mean, Cracked.com as a source? Look, I love their lists but you really need to do better than a comedy website. If the supporters of removing the ban had used blog articles as evidence for their position you would have been all over it - but somehow it doesn't matter that all you have here is non-RS-sourced anecdotes? Whilst the statistical data from IPSOS complaints upheld, and the surveys of the general public, show the Daily Mail to be unremarkable in terms of accuracy? Every newspaper has had problems with accuracy and faked stories. The Mirror famously published fabricated photos of British soldiers supposedly abusing Iraqi detainees as a front-page exclusive - an incident that is about as serious as it gets in terms of fabricating a story - yet The Mirror is not subject to this ban. The Times hacked into an anonymous blogger's email account, doxxed him, and then lied about it - but The Times is (correctly) considered an RS. FOARP (talk) 08:32, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

You are comparing sources that fire people when they discover plagiarism with a source that fires people if they refuse to plagiarize. And Cracked is a fine source for a claim about what was and was not published by Cracked. --Guy Macon (talk) 19:33, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

• No I see nothing that was raised in the prior RFC that has changed. There is no worthwhile story the Daily Mail has ever covered that another, more reliable source hasn't covered without the taint of the awful problems. If it's only in the Daily Mail, and nowhere else, I wouldn't trust it being worthwhile to cover. --Jayron32 18:20, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

• And even if if appears to be worthwhile to cover, if it is only in the Daily Mail and nowhere else the odds are extremely high that The Daily Mail plagiarized it, added a few lies to make it more clickbaity, then posted it under their byline as if it was their work. --Guy Macon (talk) 00:56, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

• No Changing the editor is not enough evidence that the DM has changed its ways.-- Pawnkingthree (talk) 18:24, 6 December 2018 (UTC)
• No – Two months simply isn't enough time to know whether the source in question has had a long-term change in its status, one way or the other. I hate to sound like an RFA voter telling the candidate to come back next year, but I think that would be for the best here, as we would at least have more of a sample size to go off of. Giants2008 (Talk) 23:44, 6 December 2018 (UTC)
• Yes Singling out one newspaper, which happens to be in the mid-range in terms of general reputation, is arbitrary. Mainstream media routinely report its investigative reporting. There are no policy or guideline based reasons for the ban. TFD (talk) 01:10, 7 December 2018 (UTC)
• Yes As it is subject to review by IPSO, and false stories will presumably be corrected. It is a problem with certain outlets that they will headline the lie and bury the correction, but this is not so much of a problem for Wikipedia as long as the correction is made. Looking at WP:DAILYMAIL, it is currently treated the same as InfoWars (excluding the global blacklist). I have not cited the DM while editing so the "ban" has not had much effect personally, but it does seem excessive. Hrodvarsson (talk) 01:42, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

• Yes, but the problem here is that the "correction" is often posted a long time after the false story. For example in the case of this one, the story was published in December, and the correction in July. Black Kite (talk) 02:16, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

• No, or at least not yet It is too early to evaluate whether the change of editorship of the Mail is going to make any difference to the causes for the ban in the first place. There are signs that this may be the case - it had 50 IPSO rulings against it in 2017 (though not all of these were for accuracy}, by far the worst of any national UK newspaper, but the stats show that there have only been 11 in the period Jan-Aug 2018 (which is as far as the stats go at the moment). Black Kite (talk) 02:13, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

Not sure which 2017 stat you're looking at. The 2017 annual report shows only ten complaints being upheld against Associated (owners of the Daily Mail - see p. 22-23 here). Where does the "50 IPSOS rulings against it" stat come from? FOARP (talk) 11:25, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

Actually out of 63 complaints only 24 were "Not upheld".Slatersteven (talk) 12:28, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

Which 1) Doesn't add up to anything like 50 and 2) is meaningless as to the number that were actually upheld (AKA "rulings against it") of which there were only 10. The cases which were settled by the parties are simply that - cases which were settled by the parties, with no finding of wrong-doing on either side.

TL;DR - taking Black Kite at face value, he should flip his vote to yes, as he appears to have believed that 11 complaints upheld in 9 months (and I don't know where that stat came from either) was low enough to consider removing the ban, and the real figure for 2017 was 10 complaints upheld during the entire year. If, however, he can substantiate the claim that 50 complaints were upheld against the DM in 2017, then I promise you I will switch my vote to "not yet". FOARP (talk) 12:49, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

You are confusing IPSO rulings with sanctions (I make it 11, but 10 is close enough). However, since you are here for this reason "The one success was against a paper that is particularly hated by left-wingers, who may be over-represented on Wiki" I don't think it's worth engaging with you any further. Black Kite (talk) 00:01, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

So, you're not even going to try to justify that "50 rulings against it" stat which was your entire reason given for voting no? Just hide behind faux-outrage about a comment I made saying people on here hate the DM (which they clearly do)? Well yeah, very convincing. FOARP (talk) 22:24, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

• No - Of the thousands of newspapers that cover world news, this one stands out for its sensationalistic and false reporting. Supporters of lifting the ban have not made the case for why we would need a source like this when so many better ones are available.- MrX 🖋 13:26, 7 December 2018 (UTC)
• No. Nothing significant has changed. Also, I will reiterate what I said at the time - banning a source like this is an unusual step for when a source is in the weird place where they are unequivocally unreliable for virtually anything nontrivial that we'd want to cite them for (barring the few WP:RS exceptions where the reliability of the source doesn't matter, like WP:ABOUTSELF), yet a small but persistent minority stubbornly insists it is reliable and repeatedly tries to cite it excessively, far out of proportion to its terrible quality. The comments above (several of which seem to want to unban it not for policy reasons or because they think the formal ban is unnecessary, but because they are actually trying to claim it is generally reliable) show why the somewhat drastic step of a formal ban and edit filter are needed. --Aquillion (talk) 14:28, 7 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Also, I suggest a speedy close of this and future discussions on the topic unless they have some indication that things have changed, either externally (in the world or the Daily Mail itself) or internally (within Wikipedia, its practices, or policies). The whole point of the massive, extensively-covered, carefully-closed WP:RFC last time was that the Daily Mail was a point of constant contention that needed to be firmly settled once and for all; raising it again (with some people suggesting another pointless RFC in just a few months' time) would defeat the purpose of that. By this point it is pretty clear that this RFC is going down in well-deserved flames; I can sympathize with people who oppose this sort of measure as a matter of policy, but I urge the people who somehow think the Mail is a reliable source to accept the consensus of the community, WP:DROPTHESTICK, and move on. While the Daily Mail has been a constant point of contention, at no point in Wikipedia history (as far as I'm aware) has there ever been remotely approaching a consensus that it is generally reliable. It is almost the standard example of a low-quality source. The RFC that saw it banned was the endpoint of years of discussions; this RFC has accomplished nothing but rehashing them and wasting everyone's time to reach, inevitably, the same result as every past discussion on the topic. Whether we should be formally banning sources and using edit-filters, in an abstract sense, might be a productive discussion. Whether the Daily Mail in particular is reliable is not (unless you have something really amazing to bring to the table; but, spoiler, one or two polls of dubious quality and some hand-waving about other sources is not it. All of this sort of thing came up in the last RFC and is not going to change anything here.) --Aquillion (talk) 14:59, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

    Opposing the motion to reinstate the DM as a reliable source is an entirely valid opinion, but it is simply not correct to state "nothing significant has changed". The Daily Mail has appointed a new editor for the first time in 26 years. Considering that all the problems occurred under the previous editor, then a change of editor is "significant". It is entirely reasonable to try and ascertain how much of the problem was attributable to the previous editor and how far the appointment of a new editor will go to rectifying those problems. Even if the discussion results in retaining the ban it should not be shut down prematurely. Betty Logan (talk) 15:27, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

There's something suspiciously-Brexit-like about trying to get something banned for years in multiple RfCs, finally succeeding at the 20-somethingth attempt, and then declaring that that decision can never, ever be re-opened. FOARP (talk) 17:45, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

Bexit will never happen anyhow, so don't worry about either that or this. Walter Görlitz (talk) 17:57, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

• To be clear (since what you're saying here is unambiguously untrue), the Daily Mail has always failed WP:RS, and as far as I'm aware WP:RSN has always reached a clear consensus on this every time the topic came up. It was discussed repeatedly because the small number of people who incorrectly thought it passed WP:RS kept bringing it here, but it has never come close to passing WP:RS at any point; you can find references to the constant recurring topic of its unreliability (and it being used as a benchmark of unreliable sourcing) going back years in this page's history. The formal ban was an unusual step taken because of the situation of a source that kept coming up despite being unambiguously unreliable, causing repeated, circular discussions that consistently rejected any arguments for using it as a source outside of the most trivial of cases. The formal ban it passed the very first time it was proposed (with a good part, though not all, of the opposition being procedural in nature, ie. people acknowledged that it was not generally a reliable source but were unsure about taking the step of a formal ban and edit filter.) Also, I advise you to read and consider WP:BLUDGEON; the purpose of an RFC is to get broad responses in order to resolve an intractable dispute, not to have one editor trying to argue with the entire room. --Aquillion (talk) 03:51, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

I am aware that it has a different editor, but I don't see how that alone changes anything. WP:RS is based on a source's extended reputation for fact-checking and accuracy; obviously a source's reliability doesn't change with every single staff rotation. --Aquillion (talk) 03:51, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

• No Throwing out the consensus is not an improvement. We invite people to edit who have no idea what a good source is, thus we provide guidance that is developed in long experience with sources and through consensus. So, sure, improve on past consensus and refine it but there is no point in going backwards for a source that has long been deprecated (often by editors analyzing it as tabloid crap) even before the 2017 RfC. Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:44, 7 December 2018 (UTC)
• No – it's far too soon to conclude that the Daily Mail is now a reliable source, given the considerable evidence above and at the last RfC. We can revisit this in a year, but for now we have to continue to safeguard against false information and tabloid journalism. Bradv🍁 20:04, 7 December 2018 (UTC)
• No, non, nyet, buxin The Daily Mail is not now nor has it ever been a reliable source. Simonm223 (talk) 20:09, 7 December 2018 (UTC)
• Spoiled Ballot due to censorship by two no-voters in both RfC eliminating transparent links to other Wikipedia pages bearing directly on the discussion. 1 2
  • Yes. This was one of the more embarrassing en.wp moments in recent memory. I'll add evidence of what I perceive to be its continuing disruptive effect on the sausage-sewing floor (e.g. [13]). — 🍣 SashiRolls ^{t · c} 20:53, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

Quite. The only evidence ever cited in support of this ban has been a hand-full of anecdotes such as could have been given for any newspaper. The actual evidence all points to the Daily Mail being just average for a UK tabloid in terms of reliability and trustworthiness. FOARP (talk) 21:57, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

• No Too soon, and it’s not as if we have a shortage of reliable sources that we can use. O3000 (talk) 21:04, 7 December 2018 (UTC)
• Yes I opposed the original ban and still think it is bizarre that we have singled out a single publication (and one that is somewhere near the top of the tabloid pile) in this way. To me it seems hard not to conclude that many editors advocating a ban are motivated by the paper's editorial position, and comments above regarding the change of position re Brexit only reinforce this perception. GoldenRing (talk) 17:52, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

You claim it's 'top of the tabloids', so the worst then. Actually Brexit and change of editorship was first argued in this discussion by someone who is arguing to overturn the consensus guidance, which means your argument is that you and others in your position only have your position because you support the paper's editorial position. Neither is it the case the source has been singled out, we have multiple restrictions on sources per the perennial sources list that's linked in guidelines. Alanscottwalker (talk) 18:24, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

• No, probably never. The Daily Mail, as of today, looks horribly untrustworthy as a source for encyclopedic articles to me. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 22:14, 8 December 2018 (UTC)
• No it's gutter tripe, and should be closed down. If anything, we should be looking to do this kind of thing more often, disallowing utter shite sources which purport to have some level of gravitas just because they've been around a bit. Nonsense source, usually hysterical and always motivated by POV, not an iota of neutrality, kill it. The Rambling Man (talk) 22:54, 8 December 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose. Invalid RFC as the proposer presents no rationale or evidence for overturning a site-wide consensus. Gamaliel (talk) 14:48, 9 December 2018 (UTC)
• No Tabloids are not suitable sources here. A leopard doesn't change its colors overnight. If there is no better source than the content in question does not belong in Wikipedia. In medical publishing it takes a good 5 years to build a reputation. Maybe we can revisit this in another 4 years. We still have a lot of work to do cleaning up the current DM refs.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 17:03, 9 December 2018 (UTC)
• No, I see no reason to believe that The Daily Mail has improved its editorial standards to the point where it could be considered a RS. GAB^gab 17:48, 9 December 2018 (UTC)
• No I don't see any reason why we should reconsider this. The major reason seems to be that they appointed a new editor in September, which doesn't mean anything. The discussion below suggests that we should reverse the decision because of perceived bias, numbers of official complaints made and perceptions outside Wikipedia, none of which has any effect on the Daily Mail's reliability at all. There's also a suggestion that the Daily Mail would be a great source to use for a BLP, which is a really bad idea. I'd be quite happy to see similar restrictions on comparable publications. There are very few situations in which it is OK to cite tabloid newspapers, particularly for consequential statements. Hut 8.5 19:39, 9 December 2018 (UTC)
• No per above. Still a tabloid -FASTILY 20:59, 9 December 2018 (UTC)
• No Revisit in ONE year. --QEDK (後 ☕ 桜) 21:04, 9 December 2018 (UTC)
• No "In case of tabloid emergency, break glass to release an emergency application reference from the Daily Mail. Caution: DM should only be applied as a reference in cases of real tabloid emergencies." (Yeah, I think we're good here.)  Spintendo  03:02, 10 December 2018 (UTC)
• Strong oppose. I rarely see Daily Mail in the articles I tend to edit. Nevertheless, on more than one occasion I've removed text cited to Daily Mail's years-old legitimate-looking repost of a dubious statistic cited to a dubious and probably non-existing organisation. There's no doubt that a lot of what's written in Daily Mail is true and factual, but that's not the crux of WP:RS. Daß Wölf 06:25, 10 December 2018 (UTC)

  To clarify my position: I'm aware of the changes to Daily Mail and I don't think they're anything more than cosmetic. There's a lot more to a newspaper than editorial discretion. In any case, with the kind of crap DM has posted on occasion, I'd like to see at least a couple of years of good behaviour before reconsidering. Daß Wölf 23:05, 27 December 2018 (UTC)

• No, Hell No, and Strong oppose (use all that apply, suggested daily dose of any of these approximately once every minute). This is still a tabloid. This should simply not be used, with a near-zero number of exceptions. Blacklist/AbuseFilter, remove all. Any specific use only after a consensus-reaching discussion on WP:RS/N for that specific case. That the site has changed will then be shown after a good number of such discussions, after which this may be a discussion that needs to be held. (and let this be a precedent for other, similar sites). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 06:43, 10 December 2018 (UTC)

  So are you proposing banning all tabloids? Because at present only one of them is banned - the DM. FOARP (talk) 09:39, 10 December 2018 (UTC)

  According to WP:RSP, there are many tabloids that the Wikipedia community consider unreliable. Of course, most of those didn't need a sitewide RfC to decide that. --AntiCompositeNumber (talk) 17:51, 10 December 2018 (UTC)

• No If that's all the OP wanted was a yes/no reply. Unless there's some massive change to the DM since the RfC, then it's not going to change anytime soon. Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 12:40, 10 December 2018 (UTC)
• No, do not overturn the RfC: Guy Macon and Aquillion make excellent points above. The bottom line is: the Daily Mail is not reliable. It should not be used as a reliable source. Some people in this argument bring up public trust or distrust; this is not relevant because facts are not the same as public opinion. The Daily Mail has done a good job of hoodwinking its audience into believing its crackpot hoaxes are good journalism. This doesn't make crackpot hoaxes true. Others point out the change in leadership; this isn't a reason to pre-emptively allow a source just in case it improves. WP:BLP is one of the most important policies we have and the Daily Mail's lackadaisical attitude to fact-checking and sources makes it unusable. — Bilorv_(c)(talk) 14:19, 10 December 2018 (UTC)
• No — nothing substantial has changed. XOR'easter (talk) 17:29, 10 December 2018 (UTC)
• No To consider a source reliable, the source must have a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy. The Daily Mail has no such reputation, even if the masthead has changed a bit. Give it at least a year before reconsidering. --AntiCompositeNumber (talk) 17:48, 10 December 2018 (UTC)
• Yes, we have neutrality issues here as the two main right-wing UK newspapers are behind pay walls and their left-wing rivals aren't. I've seen no evidence the Mail is worse than similar newspapers with different views, we can't just ban on a "I don't like" basis which is what we are doing here. Which UK newspapers check their facts better? I can't think of any. ♫ RichardWeiss talk contribs 17:57, 10 December 2018 (UTC)
• No. (EC) Still a big bag of shite. Oh and to address the above, sources are not required to be online, let alone not be behind paywalls - accessibility of sources is irrelevant to questions of reliability and has no bearing on neutrality at all. Secondly, 'Which UK newspapers check their facts better?' - pretty much every single one except for possibly the Sunday Sport, and thats only because it prints obviously made up stories like planes on the moon, compared to slyly fabricating quotes/interviews like the Mail. Granted when you knowingly print lies there is little need to fact check it... So they have that in common. Only in death does duty end (talk) 18:34, 10 December 2018 (UTC)
• No; why would we want to allow a shitty tabloid with a reputation for falsehood to be used as a source here? --MarchOrDie (talk) 18:29, 10 December 2018 (UTC)
• No way - Burden of proof is to show that it has changed and has become reliable. I see no such evidence and must assume it remains a dumpster fire unreliable. EvergreenFir (talk) 18:34, 10 December 2018 (UTC)
• No because we owe more to our subjects than to let their names be ruined forever because the first Google result that appears when someone searches for them is an unverified claim from the Daily Mail that otherwise would get lost in the results. If it is truly important, another source will report on it. TonyBallioni (talk) 23:55, 10 December 2018 (UTC)
• No and please use some common sense - no falsehoods or prolific publisher of such can belong to Wikipedia at any given time. Tsumikiria (T/C) 02:01, 11 December 2018 (UTC)
• Absolutely not. Rome wasn't built in a day, and the Daily Mail's reputation isn't going to be repaired within two months of having a new editor either. We decided to ban them as a reliable source not simply because they publish celebrity gossip and sensationalized headlines, but because they have a history of literally making things up. A news organization that is known for making things up cannot be trusted. Maybe if they make a long-term effort to not make things up, we can revisit their ban in several years time – but right now? Hell to the no. Kurtis ^(talk) 02:45, 11 December 2018 (UTC)
• Not yet - The new editor may have a reforming influence on the paper, but right now it's too early to tell. Kaldari (talk) 05:57, 11 December 2018 (UTC)
• Yes Britain is full of tabloids that have a sensationalistic approach, many with a left-wing perspective like Daily Mirror or Daily Record, which is not to say OTHERSTUFFEXISTS but that it is arbitrary or biased to single out just one source so that it couldn't be used at all even with care. It isn't a great source when it comes to some subjects and should be treated as such, but there's no reason to prohibit it completely. And there are subjects it is a decent or a good source. As mentioned in the older RFC, the Daily Mail for instance has had universally acclaimed theater and musical reviews, which may be surprising to some. --Pudeo (talk) 08:03, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

Regarding UK Tabloids & Newspapers ~ politics of the Mirror or the Daily Mail is totally irrelevant ~ but the Mirror is not Left Wing it is as center-left tabloid that supports Labour, the only other center-left paper is the Guardian, the only national left wing paper is the Morning Star, see List of newspapers in the United Kingdom. If you have solid evidence that any other so called news source has a dodgy reputation like the Daily Mail, Daily Star, Sun etc. please start a RfC Here ~> Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard. I totally agree with Insertcleverphrasehere below, just because another paper might be bad, has no bearing on the whether we should use such an unreliable source as the Daily Mail. People rely on Wikipedia we owe it to them to use the best sources always. ~ BOD ~ ^TALK 17:16, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

• No "Other publications are also bad or worse" is not a reason to overturn this ban. I originally voted for the ban due to entirely fabricated interviews that they published, and it hasn't been long enough to verify that this sort of behaviour has ceased. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)}_{(click me!)} 13:48, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

• No. It is too soon to determine if this has become a reliable source. ZettaComposer (talk) 14:33, 11 December 2018 (UTC)
• There's a cultural difference here between US and UK newspapers. Some of the UK newspapers are happy to print nonsense, and the ban should probably be either extended to include other papers, or modified so that multiple independent UK papers could be used, or modified so that UK papers can only be used if a direct quote is used. DanBCDanBC (talk) 16:56, 11 December 2018 (UTC)
• No. Martinevans123 makes good points below. Deb (talk) 17:01, 11 December 2018 (UTC)
• No. While the Daily Mail ban was unknown to me, I support keeping it. I cannot think when we might ever need to rely on this newspaper for verification of facts that need including in an encyclopedia article. Most of its content is garbage with no place in our articles. For the slim amount of its content containing facts that warrant inclusion, we inevitably can look to others on Fleet Street for the same content. And we can do so without needing to guess at whether the journalists, who rarely warrant the title, have done their job. It isn't nice to "ban" so prolific a source, and I agree it appears partisan, but reliability precedes our community's public relations. AGK ■ 19:10, 11 December 2018 (UTC)
• Yes. I am overall uncomfortable with outright bans on all but the most egregious of sources (and no, I do not think the DM falls into that category...that is reserved for InfoWars and the like). I would prefer to leave it up to the editors themselves to determine whether or not the DM is appropriate on an instance by instance basis. Certainly there will be many who will be vigilant about double-checking anything DM-related, and that’s fine. But that should be happening anyway. CThomas³ (talk) 22:52, 11 December 2018 (UTC)
• No. A change of editor has not created substantial change within the newspaper. talk to !dave 11:39, 12 December 2018 (UTC)
• NOOOOOPE. The Daily Mail is still unreliable. Kirbanzo (talk) 17:43, 12 December 2018 (UTC)
• No they've made far too many dubious claims for such an overturn to have merit, regardless of who the editor is. SNUGGUMS (talk / edits) 00:19, 13 December 2018 (UTC)
• No. I'm having trouble seeing why we would need to use it as a source. As things are, Wikipedia is already at its weakest when covering current events, and we should try particularly hard to avoid sourcing that is questionable when we do not yet have historical perspective. Add those considerations to the history of unreliability, and the threshold for changing the previous consensus has not been met. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:54, 13 December 2018 (UTC)
• Yes, at least partially. The comparison above with Infowars is relevant--Infowars is dedicated to the pursuit of disinformation, while the Mail is better characterized as often reckless. That it contains junk does not invalidate the part that is not junk. It therefore has to be used with extreme caution, and the understanding that it needs additional verification in most cases, but it is totally unacceptable to ban it completely, or to make it exceptionally more difficult to use than other newspapers. DGG ( talk ) 02:14, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

That is, consult a working timepiece to see if the broken one happens to be right? I keep a box of broken watches for sentimental reasons, I don't much see the point in comparing them to a functional one. Comparing the DM's article to the Cracked version is more informative, in this case it is the latter that is fulfilling its function: satirical exposure of populist nonsense. cygnis insignis 09:23, 30 December 2018 (UTC)

• Yes, lift the ban - The UK has amongst the world’s strictest libel laws and the Daily Mail also is required to follow the IPSO Editors' Code of conduct with risk of enforcements actions for breaches. Really, there is very little good evidence that the Daily Mail is any less reliable than other sources. The current general ban on use of Daily Mail is, I believe, seriously biasing certain articles - particularly U.K. based ones - because the other two major right leaning newspapers are behind a paywall while left leaning ones are not, which almost guarantees that we are introducing major WP:NPOV issues to our U.K. political articles by this ban. It also makes Wikipedia less credible and look biased rather than NPOV. Finally, the Daily Mail is soon to be under a new editor (in Jan. 2019) who has a good track record of honest professionalism; the concerns of the previous RFC largely surrounded editorial behaviour of the outgoing editor are no longer an issue, so I think the ban should allow sources from Jan. 2019 onwards, for the sake of a NPOV at least. I do fear people are voting largely on political biases with a disregard for NPOV, we can do better than that, surely.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 03:10, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

@Literaturegeek: Not any more. That changed with the Defamation Act 2013. Guy (Help!) 12:32, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

@Literaturegeek: The are 8 Right of Center daily national newpapers in the UK, 3 (2 really as the Morning Star has limited circulation) Left of Center and 2 non political/centerist papers. However, political leanings of newspapers are *irrelevent*. The only thing that is important about a source is its reliability. Having reliable sources makes wikipedia credible.

(Paywalls are unfortunate, they do not stop a source being used, but simply weakens paper's usefulness as a source because it limits other editors ability to check what the source says....but this a separate matter...we are not looking at other papers ....we are looking at the Daily Mail...it does not matter if every other paper is behind a paywall ...we are discussing the Daily Mail). ~ BOD ~ ^TALK 11:21, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

1) The 2013 act did not change the main thing that makes UK defamation laws so strict - that is the requirement that it is the person who makes the allegedly defamatory statement that has to show the truth of it in order to rely on the defence that the statement was true. In, e.g., the US it is typically the other way round - it is the claimant that has to a show that the allegedly defamatory statement is untrue.

2) Pay walls do matter, since Editors almost never wish to pay to use a source.

3) The DM is the ONLY newspaper anywhere in the world that is banned by Wiki in this fashion. This cannot be justified simply by it being a tabloid as other tabloids remain unbanned. There is no need for a ban on the DM alone whilst there is general guidance not to use tabloid sources for BLP/controversial subjects.

The error is not the fact that the Daily Mail is the only bad news source that has this useful filter guiding editors, but that we as editors have failed to add similar guidance on the use of other Tabloids and other Media Sources found to be poor unreliable sources. Useful guidance is rarely bad. ~ BOD ~ ^TALK 19:57, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

4) The only high-quality evidence cited on this thread - the IPSOS decisions statistics and the surveys of the British public - show the DM to unremarkable in terms of trustworthiness. They are no worse than any other tabloid source. The belief that it is "the worst of the worst" is purely the result of ideologically biased analysis. FOARP (talk) 13:37, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

1. The statement was that "The UK has amongst the world’s strictest libel laws". That statement is incorrect. English libel law is now broadly comparable with other countries. Northern Ireland still has bad libel law, but the statement that the UK has the strictest laws is simply not true anymore.

2. Paywalls don't matter, most of our medical content uses paywalled sources. They do lead to FUTON bias - and in fcat deprecating the Mail is a good thing from that point of view as it pushes towards a reliable-but-paywalled source instead of a crappy but free one.

3. The DM is not the only source we deprecate. It is the only one which has a print edition, but most of the DM's content is on the internet not print. And that would not be a reason anyway: I think there is reasonably strong consensus that National Inquirer, the Washington Times and sundry other print sources should also be deprecated. It is not only but first.

4. IPSO is an industry body, nonetheless, its figures clearly show that the Daily Mail and Mail Online have, between them, nearly 50% more complaints as the Sun and Sun Online, the next most complained-about - and most of those Sun complaints were, as far as I can ascertain, related to Hillsborough. So yes, the Mail is, by the objective measure you appear to prefer, worse than other UK tabloids.

You seem very determined to allow one of the worst published sources in the UK to be used on Wikipedia. A much better approach would be to deprecate other, equally crappy sources, including The Sun. The number of facts which are genuinely significant and where the Daily Mail is the best available source is, it is safe to say, very small, and already handled under the existing guidance. Guy (Help!) 14:48, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

User:JzG, you wrote: You seem very determined to allow one of the worst published sources in the UK to be used on Wikipedia. There is no evidence it is the worst out of tabloids and newspapers; it is the largest, most popular newspaper in the U.K. so it will be more complained about and to ban it is madness. Why not also ban the BBC, New York Times or The Guardian who are well known for their biases and twisting of facts? Or is that unthinkable because of their political leanings? This ban is POV pushing, it is obvious. I edit almost exclusively medical content and all newspapers, including tabloids, are quite rightly banned, so lifting or maintaining the ban will have zero effect on articles I edit. I genuinely think I have never used the Daily Mail as a source in the ten plus years I have been an editor on this site. And I have no aspirations to start using the DM personally on Wikipedia. I have no horse in this race, as you implied. My concerns are about NPOV re. the general encyclopedia. Take BREXIT, for example; how can we cover that neutrally when we bias editors into choosing sources that are REMAIN? We want a diverse range of sources to cite all viewpoints, per NPOV. If you don’t or can’t realise the damage this ban does to NPOV, well... good grief chief. This is a largely partisan ban that damages the encyclopedia for agenda driven reasons primarily and needs lifted.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 19:40, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

Are you hinting that the BBC is leftist!? (see https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/bbc-bias-jeremy-corbyn-labour-centre-right-robbie-gibb-theresa-may-laura-keunssberg-andrew-marr-a7844826.html) Lets ignore the fact the clear majority of the press in UK are Right of Center, it is irrelevant. Here we are ONLY concerned with RELIABILITY of the source, NOT its political leanings, political leanings are irrelevant here _{(side note re POV claim: the was a clear leaning in the UK press towards BREXIT e.g. http://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2016-05-23-uk-newspapers-positions-brexit)}. ... It is fallacious to say that it is wrong that the Daily Mail is the only bad news source that has this useful filter guiding editors, so we should lift the ban .... the error is more that we as editors have failed to add similar guidance on the use of other Tabloids and other Media Sources found to be equally poor unreliable sources. ~ BOD ~ ^TALK 22:33, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

The idea that the BBC is leftist is quite funny, but even more "we bias editors into choosing sources that are REMAIN?". Every mass market newspaper in the UK apart from the Mirror and Guardian supports Leave. Even more than that, the Mirror is very careful not to press the point, as it knows a lot of its readership voted to leave, and the Mail has changed course away from its very pro-Brexit stance under its new leadership. Black Kite (talk) 22:52, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

BOD, I do agree with the idea that guidance on the use of newspapers, tabloids in particular, should be authored by the community. I do agree, believe it or not, that the Daily Mail alongside other tabloids have their limitations and shortfalls and often other more reliable sources should be favoured. It is just this almost blanket ban on Daily Mail is really silly. The Daily Mail runs many articles which are nonpartisan and thus not at risk of sensationalism or bias, but if an editor wants to add a non controversial factoid to a wiki article sourced to the Daily Mail it is going to get reverted for no good reason other than this irritating blanket ban. Surely the sensible thing to do is write guidance discouraging tabloids but not outright banning them and not singling out the Daily Mail? I mean for medical articles sources in low impact journals are not outright banned but often discouraged in favour of sources in higher quality medical journals.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 23:21, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

I understand what you say. Sometimes editors can be trigger happy. My own bias is influenced by the fact a close friend took a complaint about the Daily Mail, in regards to an abusive article about her (concerning a court case which she won) to the old Press Complaints Commission 10 years ago, and only received a very weak personal apology rather than a public one. I think the failing to enact on the Leveson Inquiry etc was a bad thing. ~ BOD ~ ^TALK 00:28, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

• Yes, lift the ban. People cite a number of inaccuracies by the DM. But all media have inaccuracies. For example, The New York Times, considered by some the newspaper of record of the United States, engaged in a major conspiracy to hide, dissimulate, and spin the Holomodor genocide that killed 7.5 million people in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The New York Times 60 years later conceded that it is "some of the worst reporting to appear in this newspaper.". The New York Times own investigator in 2003, concluded the NYT gave voice to Stalinist propaganda. Even the owner of the NYT, Sulzberger Jr., said it "should have been recognized for what it was by his editors" (meaning, in his case, "my editors"). Now, some will argue the NYT's "introspection" proves the difference between it and the DM, but, what is easier than to show contrition for the actions of one's forebears? On the contrary, does the NYT face up to its daily sins, omissions, spin, partisanship and peccadilloes of today? How easily it will be admitting it sins two generations from now when all the principals are dead! (assuming it survives that long). Well, the same principle should apply to the Daily Mail, and it is extremely hypocritical to uniquely single it out from among all journals in the world when all journals and journalists have their own POV and spin and sensationalize ceaselessly. Besides, as cited by others, the DM has to content with Britain's extremely demanding libel laws and regulations: it cannot possibly be any worse than any other British media! End the ban already. XavierItzm (talk) 10:19, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

References

• Could you give us some clear examples of the NYT's "daily sins, omissions, spin, partisanship and peccadilloes of today" that it hasn't owned up to? Many thanks. Martinevans123 (talk) 10:26, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

The request that one bring up demonstrated evidence of its current problems is as outlandish as it would have been, in the 1930's, to bring you manifest sources that the New York Times was able to, in fact, win a Pulitzer Prize for being the mouthpiece of Stalin, the leader of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Not a realistic proposition.

But the real issue is that all media has its own implicit bias and errors. Unless you believe, of course, that journalists are angels above all human concerns. XavierItzm (talk) 13:09, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

• Yes - bans are a supremely bad idea and are always misused. There are always other, better sources that can be added to contrast what publications like The Daily Mail say. Also there was poor evidence for this ban in the original RfC. Wikipedia is becoming more punitive and less welcoming. If we want to stop loosing editors we need to make it a more positive experience for editors and putting warning boxes in front of them in ever increasing numbers is antithetical to this goal. Morgan Leigh | Talk 10:38, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

@Morgan Leigh:The is zero harm in providing good guidance to new, inexperienced and other editors ~ that some sources are well known to be unreliable. ~ BOD ~ ^TALK 11:08, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

@Morgan Leigh: Bans don't exist. The Mail is deprecated, not banned. We do the same with predatory journals, self-published books and multiple other classes of source that have a reputation for inaccuracy, bias, and lack of adequate editorial control. The handling of the Mail is fully consistent with this. Guy (Help!) 12:32, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

It's a ban. Please stop pretending that it is anything else. Per WP:DUCK - if it acts like a ban (and it does), if people treat it like a ban (and they do), and if everyone calls it a ban (and even the Guardian did) then let's not kid ourselves that it is not a ban. Post a reference to the DM anywhere on this site and it is highly likely that an editor will come into delete the ban with an edit summary reading "RM non-RS", without bothering to look at the article or at the reference being used. Re-post the reference and some helpful soul may post a DS notice on your talk page.

And let's also stop saying that this is about guidance! We already have guidance about using tabloid sources on BLP/controversial articles and do not need a ban to add to it. This ban is not about guidance - it is the opposite of guidance, it is compulsion. FOARP (talk) 13:13, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

I see. So now we rely on The Guardian to inform us on how we conduct ourselves. You're essentially saying "if editors routinely misuse a measure, that was agreed by means of a RfC, that's the way it has to stay - the misuse is self-justifed"? Martinevans123 (talk) 13:23, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

@FOARP: If it IS inevitable that another editor (and maybe other editors) has to waste time removing stuff, why not provide guidance to halt the inclusion of questionable stuff in the first place. The DM maybe great in a minority of subjects, its overall reliability has damned its usefullness. The are plenty of other sources. ~ BOD ~ ^TALK 13:31, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

• No. The Daily Mail transgressed the press regulator rules no fewer than 50 times in 2017, making it by far the biggest offender of the year out of the publications monitored by IPSO.--Moxy (talk) 12:48, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

Wow. You're literally relying on a ludicrously incorrect blog source to substantiate a point. On an RfC about reliable sources. On Wiki.

The real figure for rulings upheld against them was 10 (see the figure for Associated - owners of the DM - on p. 22-23 here). Counting the total rulings is completely bizarre methodology because it includes the rulings that were in the DM's favour and where no wrong doing was found on their part. Only the rulings against them are evidence of wrong-doing, and in that area the DM is unremarkable, especially when measured against circulation (more copies sold will always mean more complaints, even for publications that are identical).

Here's a tip - if a blog post cites all sorts of "facts" that cannot be found in the original, then they may well be lying through their teeth. FOARP (talk) 13:21, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

Let me hold your hand ...pls review the attached sources reports. --Moxy (talk) 13:38, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

Um, that's a 404 page. Not very good at this whole internet lark, right?

I include a link to IPSOS's 2017 annual report - the one in which they listed only 10 decision upheld against the DM's publishers - in my comment above, BTW, so why not just click on that? FOARP (talk) 13:42, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

Paul Dacre still had a leading role at IPSO until July that year. IPSO is not an independent body in anything but name.

But yes, let's look at that report. The five most complained about publications were, in descending order: The Sun; The Daily Mail; Mail Online; Metro; the Mail on Sunday. Four out of five were Associated Newspapers titles. The three Mail titles received twice as many complaints as any other single news brand. They received an order of magnitude more complaints than anyone else in the list of most complained about publications, other than The Sun, which, to be absolutely clear, I would also consider a never-use source. Guy (Help!) 14:27, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

1) Number of complaints has to been assessed against circulation - it is inevitable that higher circulation papers receive higher numbers of complaints, since they have more eyes on them, you will note that the top five print publications (i.e., non-website) for complaints are also the top five print publications in terms of circulation.

2) The number of complaints includes multiple complaints about the same issue, as well as wrong and baseless complaints - only the ones upheld actually matter as these have been assessed and wrongdoing found, and for these the DM is not remarkable.

3) Dacre is on a committee at IPSOS, but the actual committee that adjudicates cases is completely separate and of a different make-up.

4) The idea that "IPSOS is not independent" has no real basis, IPSOS regularly makes decisions against the Mail and other newspapers, it's decision are open to judicial review and as yet no JR has found against them. FOARP (talk) 16:20, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

Circulation is listed alongside each source in the IPSO report. The Sun and the Mail are comparable. The Sun's website has half the reach and got fewer than one tenth the complaints. Your fervour to reinstate links to this crappy tabloid is causing you to make bad arguments. Guy (Help!) 17:06, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

@FOARP:_{Fun Note: IPSOS, meaning "themselves", is the magical formula of the Aeon of Ma'at as transmitted by Nema in her inspired magical work, Liber Pennae Praenumbra. :)} ... However the UK Newspaper regulator IPSO is not really independent, it is a self regulator paid for by its member publishers, including the Daily Mail itself. ~ BOD ~ ^TALK 19:28, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

• Yes - lift the ban - however, Replace it with much stronger guidance limiting the use of news media sources (in general). Reliability depends on context. No source is ever 100% reliable or 100% unreliable. What is needed is clearer guidance to help editors understand when and how to use news sources appropriately... instructing them on the distinctions between news reporting and news analysis/opinion. We need clearer guidance on when information taken from a news source can be accepted as unattributed fact, and when it must be attributed. We need to instruct editors to look for subsequent reporting and retractions. We need to make it clear that a specific news story may contain errors or omissions that make it unreliable, while other news stories from the same outlet are fine. Do this, and there will no longer be a need to single out any specific outlet. Flawed reporting will be still be deemed unreliable (on an individual story level), while the reliable reporting can be accepted... regardless of outlet. Blueboar (talk) 18:37, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

• [EC] How would such "stronger guidance" handle the problem -- a daily occurrence with this source, not much of a problem with other tabloids -- of an item appearing in The Daily Mail which is extremely reliable because TDM stole it from a reliable but obscure source, changed a few words here and there, added a paragraph of shit they made up which looks exactly like what a reliable source would report (except it didn't happen), and slapped their byline on the resulting unattributed plagiarism? Here is one such plagiarized story: [14] Imagine you are thinking of using that page as a source. Try to find where TDM stole it from in a reasonable amount of time. Can't find the original even though you know to look for plagiarism? Now explain how "much stronger guidance" would have helped you avoid linking to a clear copyright violation. --Guy Macon (talk) 19:23, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

I almost would support this, it if was in place before any ban was lifted. But I think we will still have the problem, too many news sources now make it almost impossible to tell news from opinion. What we need is stronger restrictions on the use of news media. I suppose one answer is if a news story contains one error it is not RS, regardless of the source.Slatersteven (talk) 19:05, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

Pretty much everything of any significant length ever written by anyone ever contained at least one error. Not sure that would work. For myself I'm happy just saying that tabloid sources should be avoided for BLP/controversial subjects and leaving it there for editors to make their own decisions. The present automated ban is unnecessary and unhelpful. FOARP (talk) 20:54, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

• Strong no The Daily Mail is not reliable - examples: The Guardian, USAToday, The Guardian. The Daily Mail has had a new editor for only two months and the burden of proof is on those claiming that it has changed. Autarch (talk) 22:47, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

The two Guardian links above both cover stories that a whole list of papers got wrong (including online Guardian in the first case). What the DM is uniquely accused of is 'dressing up' the wrong story with a great deal of emotive 'soap opera' detail - despicable, but why would WP be including that kind of tosh anyway? I didn't check out USAToday. Pincrete (talk) 20:24, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

Details like "Following the verdict, Knox and Sollecito were taken out of court escorted by prison guards and into a waiting van which took her back to her cell at Capanne jail near Perugia and him to Terni jail, 60 miles away. Both will be put on a suicide watch for the next few days" are hardly "tosh". They are exactly the sort of thing Wikipedia editors use to make sure they get details like what jail someone was sent to right. --Guy Macon (talk) 20:32, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

So getting the verdict wrong (caused by an early poor/partial translation and the wish to be 'first'), which several outlets did, inc Gdn online, is OK, - but getting the prison wrong that they were supposedly, subsequently sent to is an unpardonable offence! Makes perfect (non) sense to me. It sounds like an argument for us not following the general press tendency to want to be first to publish - rather than indicating a particular problem with this source. Pincrete (talk) 13:49, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

Whether is makes sense to you is your problem. It makes perfect sense to any reasonable person. The first kind of accidental error (getting it wrong and quickly correcting it) is, as you yourself admit, pretty normal. It usually doesn't lead to errors in any Wikipedia article unless someone is sitting their waiting for the first report so they can be first on Wikipedia -- and even then it is quickly fixed. The second kind of purposeful' error (making up details and fabricating direct quotes) only gets corrected in the rare cases where they made the first kind of accidental error along with their usual second kind of purposeful error. Normally, the error just sits there and gets repeated by other major media outlets. I don't know whether you are doing this on purpose (I strongly WP:IDHT suspect that you are) but you are cluelessly acting as if there is no difference between a real journalist who does his best, gets something wrong and then corrects it -- and who would be fired if he purposely fabricated a direct quote -- and a hack who makes shit up, fabricates direct quotes and sometimes publishes entire interviews that never happened, and maybe issues a correction if he gets caught -- and even then the correction is often months later. The Wikipedia community has spoken in one RfC and it looks like the current RfC will go the same way; we have examined what The Daily Mail does, determined that it is unreliable on a whole new level compared to other tabloids, and decided not to use it as a source. --Guy Macon (talk) 17:16, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

• No. I do not see what is supposed to have changed, either among the editorial community of Wikipedia or in the editorial practices of the paper. Drmies (talk) 17:32, 14 December 2018 (UTC)
• Yes, lift the ban The Mail is a major daily in a country famed for its feisty and free press, a country, I hasten to add, that is also famed for (like Wikipedia) for the highly partisan nature of its editors. The charge is that the Mail's editing process published a lot of erroneous info. But I know of no newspaper that has not published untruths, not even the New Yorker. But singling out a major, national daily is highly problematic. A better approach is for editors to be more discrimination about which sources they choose to rely on.E.M.Gregory (talk) 18:05, 14 December 2018 (UTC)
• Fix. It is okay to cite an opinion published in The Daily Mail, according to three of the WP:DAILYMAIL closers, see the NPOVN archive of a May 2017 discussion and look for the words "Attributed opinions of the author were not considered in the RFC, and a reasonable exception from the ban appears correct here." -- but that is not in WP:DAILYMAIL itself so it's been missed sometimes. And the edit filter for The Daily Mail does not represent what the closers said. Of course I voted against the ban last time but see the way the wind is blowing so I'm just pleading for a close now that clarifies: WP:DAILYMAIL should be updated, misuse shouldn't be tolerated, edit filters should say exactly what RfC closers say. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 01:18, 15 December 2018 (UTC)
• Yes no evidence exists that the DM is especially wrong about facts that are within our remit anyway. We should be able to find a better way to discourage the use of tabloids. We should be willing to acknowledge that 'better sources' means not only sources that are more likely to be accurate, but also ones that give fuller, less contentiously phrased, less trivialised accounts of the subject covered. I cannot imagine any situation in which I would prefer to cite the DM (or any UK tabloids), but I am not persuaded that the de facto ban achieves anything. Pincrete (talk) 20:24, 16 December 2018 (UTC)
• No. per WP:CLUE. Allowing this junk source would in no way help our Project. Alexbrn (talk) 20:38, 16 December 2018 (UTC)
• No Lacks a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy as required by our longstanding policy. This is an encyclopedia. If the only possible source for a statement is the Daily Mail that is a strong indication that the material does not belong. Neutrality^talk 17:32, 17 December 2018 (UTC)
• No. It's written by individuals who aren't experts in their subject areas, and their writings aren't reviewed by subject experts. Potentially useful for basic facts that are indisputable and that obviously get mentioned in solid secondary sources (e.g. "Joe Bloggs died yesterday, 16 December 2018"), but not more, just like any other newspaper. Treat it like any other primary source, and don't advocate the fringe theory that news reports about current events are secondary sources. Nyttend (talk) 22:38, 17 December 2018 (UTC)
• Yea As if the backslash wasn't enough. Saturnalia0 (talk) 03:41, 18 December 2018 (UTC)
• No - reading recent articles makes it clear that WP:V/WP:RS is not the mission of this source. Just looking at one or two days of their articles, one finds a lot of articles (even excluding the celeb stuff) that would be rejected as good source material for an encyclopedia. If the Daily Mail had undergone a transformation in its fact checking, this would not be so. I found: a health/medical article that didn't exaggerate, it outright fabricated claims that the underlying studies did not claim. (Claimed the study proved ME is real and caused by the immune system, after decades of baffling experts [15], but the study simply showed that in HepC patients, certain immune responses may cause CFS like symptoms. [16]) An article containing extremely dangerous BLP material. (Quoting the unnamed boyfriend of an ex-girlfriend of a man "has has not been ruled out" in the disappearance of his wife, saying the potential suspect cheated on her while she was in hospital, with no discernible fact checking.[17]) Multiple articles on sensational subjects that other sources do not find notable. (A woman owns a dumb horse [18]. A woman claims her boyfriend is cheating on her during her birthday toast [19]. A woman has such a washboard stomach she didn't notice she was pregnant, until a midwife moved the baby and instantly revealed a baby bump.)[20] If new management had whipped the Daily Mail into WP:RS shape, I wouldn't find two downright dangerous stories and several non-encyclopedic ones (even generously ignoring all the celeb gossip articles), in less than 36 hours of their coverage. Chris vLS (talk) 06:19, 18 December 2018 (UTC)

If we leave aide the fact that even the best newspaper is never going to align fully with the values of an encyclopaedia, then taking this post at face value, its by far the most persuasive pro ban post. So I checked carefully - and most of the above claims are wrong. For example, DM is not saying the baby wasn’t discovered until the midwife moved it. It said the mother took a pregnancy test on her Mum’s suggestion. Afterwards she was looked at by Doctors, and obviously the midwife came on the scene later still. (Granted, it may have been clearer if the DM had used a '.' rather than a '–' in the subheading.) That said, thank you for engaging substantially in an evidence based way and raising the quality of this discussion. FeydHuxtable (talk) 08:26, 18 December 2018 (UTC)

Thanks. In that same spirit, I'll double check my work! Cheers. Chris vLS (talk) 17:55, 18 December 2018 (UTC)

Ok, I have double checked my work. Details below.

1. ME Article. The TDM article states "Chronic fatigue syndrome is a real condition caused by an over-active immune system, a study claims. " I stand by my claim that a responsible editor, with even a moderate commitment to WP:V/WP:RS would not publish this sentence or much of this article. ME/CFS is a complex disease, one study doesn't ever suddenly come out and say "it's caused by x". A WP:V/WP:RS editor would catch this at a glance. And indeed, no other sources said this about this study. So, I stand by the claim that this article is evidence of non-RS behavior, and my description of the article above is still pretty ok.
2. Missing person article. The TDM article states "A former girlfriend who dated (subject) more than six years ago declined to speak to DailyMail.com but her current partner said: 'He cheated on her while she was in the hospital, take that for what it's worth.' " Again, a WP:V editor would not run an unattributed statement about presumably indirect knowledge of an alleged event six years ago about a limited-purpose public figure from a source with such an obvious source of non-objectivity. This does not appear in other sources. So, I stand by my claim that this is evidence of non-RS, even dangerous, BLP behavior. That said, my summary misstated the relationship between the article’s subject and the missing person, they were engaged, not married. And I used too many pronouns. A better summary would be: The article quoted the unnamed current partner of an ex-girlfriend, from six years ago, of a man who "has not been ruled out" in the disappearance of his fiancée. The current boyfriend of the man’s ex-girlfriend claims that the man cheated on said ex-girlfriend while she was in hospital. The article hinted at no discernible fact checking of this statement.”
3. Dumb horse article. The TDM article lede is “A story online about an incredibly stupid and lazy horse named Tango has gone viral on Twitter as people enjoy the animal's funny anecdotes.” This is an article about tweets about a horse that is too dumb to go into the barn when it snows, among other pretty amusing behavior. Honestly, it’s seriously funny. That said, we would not take this article as RS evidence of notability. Other RS did not cover it. I stand by my claim that this is evidence of non-RS behavior and I stand by my description.
4. Birthday breakup article. This is an article about a woman who breaks up with her boyfriend during her birthday toast. It received five million views. It did, in fact, get one or two mentions in WP:RS sources[21], [22]. So this is not evidence of a change of behavior, nor is it evidence of unequivocally non-RS behavior. While I don’t think that we would accept this coverage to support an encyclopedia article, that would be because of other policies, so I withdraw this example.
5. Surprise pregnancy article. This is an article about a woman who didn’t know she was pregnant. You are correct that the sequence was that, after the development of a pigmentation line, she took a pregnancy test, then the midwife re-positioned the baby, then the bump was visible. That said, this article is still not in line with general RS notions of reporting and notability. Even the Mirror, which apparently has no consensus on its reliability here, thinks to say that the woman “claims” that she didn’t know about the baby, as opposed to putting the claim in the reported voice, as TDM did.[ https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/teenager-stunned-find-shes-nine-13744400] The only other major source was the Metro, for which there is a consensus that it is non-RS.[ https://metro.co.uk/2018/12/17/teenager-didnt-know-pregnant-eight-months-8256178/]. I stand by my claim that this is evidence of TDM not being a good RS source, especially for notability. I accept your correction to my summary of the baby bump discovery.

All in all, I should have to dig a lot deeper than one or two days to find this many examples of non-encyclopedic RS source behavior – especially of the kind seen in the first two examples. For most of these, I have no problem that the Daily Mail is doing what they are doing, it’s just that we’re doing something different here. Sorting out when their methods align with ours is too hard if they are not doing it consistently. This is one reason why reputation -- a surrogate for consistency -- is a good test to have for use as WP:RS. Thanks for taking my bit seriously. Cheers. Chris vLS (talk) 23:43, 18 December 2018 (UTC)

• Surely there are better sources that would render the drivel that is the Daily Mail unneeded in most circumstances? Esquivalience (talk) 03:39, 19 December 2018 (UTC)
  • If something is in The Daily Mail and another source, use the other source, making sure that they aren't just slightly rewording something they read in The Daily Mail. If something (anything from an entire article to a small detail in an article) is found only in The Daily Mail, we should assume that it was fabricated. See 'My year ripping off the web for the Daily Mail', by ex-employee: "The Mail’s editorial model depends on little more than dishonesty, theft of copyrighted material and sensationalism so absurd that it crosses into fabrication." --Guy Macon (talk) 10:28, 19 December 2018 (UTC)
    • So what about all those "exclusive interviews", such as Mark Lester's sperm donations for Michael Jackson? Fabricated? (whether or not such material is "encyclopaedic" is another question, of course). Martinevans123 (talk) 10:52, 19 December 2018 (UTC)
      • To be honest we should be verifying basically every 'breaking news' source, not just the DM. If it's not corroborated, we probably shouldn't be including it. CThomas³ (talk) 23:26, 21 December 2018 (UTC)
        • That would mean that "exclusives", whatever their source, can't be used (although they are possibly a journalistic device more used by tabloids, anyway). That's a point much wider than just Daily Mail. Martinevans123 (talk) 23:37, 21 December 2018 (UTC)
          • Yep, it definitely would mean that. And for the purpose of Wikipedia I think that's appropriate; if another source hasn't picked up on it, we probably should at the very least think twice about adding it. Either it ended up not being important, or it wasn't true in the first place. But I agree that it is an issue much wider than the DM. CThomas³ (talk) 00:12, 22 December 2018 (UTC)
• Support This was always an ill-worded sledgehammer to crack an ill-defined nut. Much as I loathe the politics of the DM, and the behaviour of some of its staff, its coverage of the arts, for example, is often very good, and has material which is not available elsewhere. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 17:04, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

• I'd have to admit that the Daily Mail often has excellent pictures. For example, their coverage of the death of Ravi Shankar was very good indeed. A shame we can't just link to images. Martinevans123 (talk) 23:42, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

• If we lifted the ban, we could. :) I actually find that a compelling reason to lift it. If there really is some good content there, let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Nothing says we can't continue to be vigilant about keeping the inappropriate references cleaned up, even if there is no ban. CThomas³ (talk) 00:17, 22 December 2018 (UTC)

^Maybe so. Even then, however, I think it was impossible to avoid the somewhat repulsive "sidebar of shame". Martinevans123 (talk) 12:16, 28 December 2018 (UTC)

• No, and let's not revisit this in six months, but when there's some actual evidence to suggest the DM has changed. Perhaps some articles about cancer research that bear some relationship to the truth? Pinkbeast (talk) 02:56, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

• No. No compelling reasons to vacate the first RfC. --K.e.coffman (talk) 03:11, 21 December 2018 (UTC)
• Yes, the restrictions should never have been put in place in the first case. Let editors use judgement about whether to use the reference in individual articles, don't blanket ban it and throw out useful and reliable references in some topics because of some unreliable ones in other topics. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 06:36, 21 December 2018 (UTC)
• No The Daily Mail is systematically unreliable. Its Australian edition also routinely steals the work of other journalists ([23]). Nick-D (talk) 03:48, 22 December 2018 (UTC)

This is worth reading / viewing. It's a bit of bait-&-switch because the headline suggests the Daily Mail breaks the law, which they admit is not true in the body. Still, this does seem like treacherous poaching, worse then en.wp even for the press, given the google juice they get. Thanks for posting this article, Nick-D. ~ 🐝 ~ SashiRolls ^{t · c} 21:54, 25 December 2018 (UTC)

This practice raises issues about whether the Daily Mail meets WP:COPYVIOEL. While the site may be complying with the law, stealing the work of other journalists is highly unethical. It also means that the DM is frequently not engaging in collecting news itself, and is at best a tertiary source. Nick-D (talk) 04:36, 27 December 2018 (UTC)

• Yes - allow each article to stand on its own merit, rather than assume all articles are bad -- Whats new?^(talk) 05:36, 23 December 2018 (UTC)
• No. We should not consider changing our stance on this until there is evidence that it has transformed itself into a systematically reliable source and has remained so for a significant period of time (at least 12 months, ideally longer). Thryduulf (talk) 01:00, 24 December 2018 (UTC)
• No. No significant change to their operations since the last RfC. Dreamy Jazz 🎷 ^{talk to me | my contributions} 21:51, 24 December 2018 (UTC)
• YesI know many articles in the Daily Mail are very questionable (the infamous health section for a start). However, they are bound by press regulations which restrict them from publishing things that are blatently untrue. This sets them apart from other unreliable sources, such as blogs. All media outlets occasionally publish inaccurate information, but because the British press is regulated by the Independent Press Complaints Commission, they are obliged to retract innacurate information. This is why I think the Daily Mail is a reliable source. Also, it is widely read, and so influences public opinion. I have cited Mail articles to show this.(along the lines of, The Daily Mail said X, the Sun said Y and the Guardian said Z). Also, other papers similar to the Mail are not restricted. The Express is very similar to the Mail in terms of its content, but it is not banned from wikipedia.CircleGirl (talk) 18:02, 26 December 2018 (UTC)

• Really? Please post a link where The Daily Mail published a retraction of their fabricated interview with Footballer Paul Pogba.[24] --Guy Macon (talk) 21:02, 26 December 2018 (UTC)

• Really. Nowhere did CircleGirl claim that The Daily Mail "publishes retractions" of inaccurate information. Many highly reputable newspapers don't. What the Mail did do was remove the story from their website – yes, the verb retract doesn't mean the same thing as "publish a retraction". In fact, that's even better than the BBC publishing a doubling-down [25] after being caught fabricating a report on Band Aid or Live Aid charity. wumbolo ^^^ 15:39, 31 December 2018 (UTC)

• Yes, overturn, and restore the ten thousand or so references to it.

1. While lots of people during the first discussion pointed to the Daily Mail's coverage of celebrities. I don't recall contributors offering long lists of instances where article's had been damaged because reckless contributors had made reckless use of the Daily Mail's coverage of trivial or unreliable reporting on celebrities.
2. As other people pointed out in the initial discussion, the Daily Mail had a long tradition of very solid reporting. It is absurd to trash the references to articles written during this period.
3. As others out, in addition to the Daily Mail's vapid and trivial coverage of celebrities, it continues to have a large number of solid, hard-working reporters, who write high-quality articles.
4. The explanation from the troika of administrators who closed the first discussion contained a naive, facile and deeply wrong passage. Paraphrasing from memory ... they wrote that any references to articles from the Daily Mail that were solid reporting should be able to be trivially recreated by finding equally solid replacement references from its competitors.
   1. This was bullshit, because searching for alternate references becomes more and more difficult the more time has passed. Google's algorithm's keep being tweaked. This tweaking makes google searches more likely to be of value to their average user, but less and less useful to wikipedia contirbutors searching for a replacement for a reference from several years ago.
   2. This was bullshit, because some of the very solid Daily Mail reporting was of the deep investigative kind, where you don't expect their competitors to publish articles competing with the Daily Mail's original. The Daily Mail published article on Diego Garcia, a tiny scrap of UK territory thousands of kilometres from scrutiny, in the Indian Ocean. Half a century ago the UK agreed to kick off all the original occupants, and let the USA use the Island as a military base. In the post-011 world there were rumors that the CIA and US military had established a secret torture centre on Diego Garcia.

      Well, the very solid reporters, working for the solid side of the Daily Mail, published solid articles on this aspect of Diego Garcia. These weren't puff pieces, full of speculation, or innuendo. These weren't anti American opinion pieces. The solid reporters doing this work stuck to the facts, only published updates when their were genuine new facts to report.

      The Diego Garcia reporting is just one instance that suggests the closing administrators, first time around, failed to make a well-informed closure, because they just didn't think things through. They blithely asserted it should be trivial to find alternate references to any solid Daily Mail references, that were just as good. Well, at the time I used those Daily Mail references I searched for alternates. There either weren't any, or they were briefer, less detailed, less authoritative "Yesterday, the Daily Mail reported on new sources that Diego Garcia had been used as a torture centre.

      I've used dozens of solid references to Daily Mail reporting. None of those references were easily replaceable.

At the time of the initial discussion there were tens of thousands of references to articles from the Daily Mail. And yet I don't remember those arguing for blacklisting the Daily Mail offering a long list of instances were those existing references had proven a problem.

One thing the closing administrators overlooked was the incredible amount of work implied by blacklisting this very widely used source. If, for the sake of argument, equally valid alternate references could be found for each solid Daily Mail reference, how long would it take to search for replacements?

To do an effective job, at least ten minutes, more like half an hour, each. (for a total of over ten thousand personhours) Chance of success? Less than fifty-fifty.

So the second half of their closure, which the closing administrators didn't bother setting up, was finding volunteers to spend well over ten thousand hours, on the thankless task of searching for alternate articles to reference, to replace the Daily Mail references.

IMO, not only should the blacklist be lifted from the Daily Mail, but a robot should be set to the task of re-inserting every Daily Mail reference that an earlier robot replaced.

To the many contributors here, who voiced a "no" -- please understand that the initial discussion was not based wikipedia contributor's misusing unreliable Daily Mail articles reporting on trivial aspects of the lives of celebrities, rather it was based on a naive prejudice against the Daily Mail providing that kind of reporting, while ignoring the salid reporting coming from that publication. That those who initially argued that the Daily Mail should be blacklisted weren't able to, or weren't interested in, providing examples of wikipedia contributors mis-using the Daily Mail suggests to me it by and large wasn't being mis-used.

As I noted above, the blacklisting should have been followed by a ten thousand hour campaign to look for alternate references to all the Daily Mail references which were solid and reliable. If the occasional inexperienced wikipedia contributor misused the occasional trivial celebrity article from the Daily Mail, that should, IMO, continued to be dealt with through regular editing, on the relevant article's talk pages. Geo Swan (talk) 12:21, 27 December 2018 (UTC)

• Oppose any vacation for the original RfC; on the matter of a new editor in Derry Street, Zhou Enlai speaks for me. Also, suggest a moratorium on re-running this RfC at any point in the near future. ——SerialNumber54129 18:01, 27 December 2018 (UTC)

Arbitrary break

• Yes Drop it. Such a ham-handed approach to sourcing is a bad idea. Blacklisting a huge set of sources which is a mixed bag of reliable and unreliable. North8000 (talk) 17:58, 27 December 2018 (UTC)
• Comment My two cents is a repeat of what I said at the time of the original WP:DAILYMAIL debate. There are many print and online sources that should be deprecated for use on Wikipedia, including all of the UK tabloids, but outright bans are unhelpful.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 18:17, 27 December 2018 (UTC)
• No -- the bottom line is that we don't need the Daily Mail, and there are enough obvious problems that we lose more than we gain if we go back to using it. Nomoskedasticity (talk) 18:36, 27 December 2018 (UTC)
• No'. We don't need Daily Mail or any other tabloid as a source. (I mean tabloid in the sense of tabloid journalism, not the tabloid (newspaper format) size factor).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:34, 27 December 2018 (UTC)
• No - articles still frequently show bias or fabrication although I believe that it is marginally better than a year ago. Many other reliable sources are available, in my opinion the Daily Mail does not qualify as one. Shritwod (talk) 20:22, 27 December 2018 (UTC)
• No, but with sympathy for User:ianmacm's view. Per WP:IAR we can still include an occasional ref to the occasional well-written and truthful story. If these start becoming more common, we can revist again in a few years. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 21:47, 27 December 2018 (UTC)
• No Most things have already been said. If the DM is quite literally the best source we have, WP:IAR and give it a shot, but it's not generally a reliable source and we shouldn't treat it as one no matter what other stuff exists. Wugapodes [t^hɑk] [ˈkan.ˌʧɹɪbz] 01:30, 28 December 2018 (UTC)
• Yes The overwhelming majority of DM stories hold up. It's not the National Enquirer "The opposition pointed out the Daily Mail might have been more accurate historically; some of its coverage areas are better than others; and by virtue of being a tabloid, it sometimes "rakes muck that nobody else has turned over"." https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/02/wikipedia-bans-daily-mail/ “Last year, the Daily Mail and Mail Online together published more than half a million stories and yet received just two upheld adjudications each for inaccuracy from the UK Industry’s regulator Ipso." https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/daily-mail-wikipedia-inaccurate_uk_589dd292e4b0ab2d2b1467c2 Ghostofnemo (talk) 04:55, 28 December 2018 (UTC) For example, "Inside Guantanamo Bay: Horrifying pictures show the restraint chairs, feeding tubes and operating theatre used on inmates in terror prison" https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2349693/Inside-Guantanamo-Bay-Horrifying-pictures-restraint-chairs-feeding-tubes-operating-theatre-used-inmates-terror-prison.html Ghostofnemo (talk) 05:30, 28 December 2018 (UTC)
• No It's not clear that the publication has changed substantially in kind from the previous RfC, or what benefit would come from the increased use of the Mail as a source that can't already be handled through WP:IAR. Ralbegen (talk) 11:49, 28 December 2018 (UTC)
• No Wikipedia shouldnt be using any tabloids; if the DM is the only place you can find something, it shouldn't be in Wikipedia in the first place. No evidence that it has completely changed after such a short period of time either. Curdle (talk) 12:06, 28 December 2018 (UTC)
• No Like I said at an RfD discussion recently, I'll chew my shoes live on Insta the day DM becomes a reliable source (please ping me when it does and have your popcorn ready). Can somebody please close this moribund discussion? Lourdes 10:41, 29 December 2018 (UTC)
• Yes. To begin with, I oppose this "ban" in principle. It should be up to individual editors, not a political focus group on a noticeboard, to decide what they think of a source. RSN has vast archives of conversations about news sources which editors can use for guidance, but it should not be making rules about each one. The editor should always feel free to argue case by case. Also, people brandish "ten complaints" as if that were significant, but DM publishes tons of stuff every day. How reliable is Wikipedia compared to that, with our vandalized articles and axe-grinding editors and more than 10% of the staff permanently banned over some issue (though trumped up as often as not)? I know Wikipedia wouldn't use Wikipedia for a source, but anything higher on the Mohs scale ought to be good enough for us. Wnt (talk) 16:08, 29 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Wikipedia is not a reliable source. --JBL (talk) 16:04, 30 December 2018 (UTC)
• No I don't care how good their new editors are, they can't change the reliability of content that has already been published. –dlthewave ☎ 16:57, 29 December 2018 (UTC)
• Yes As per comments from TFD and North8000. I actually find them to be quite reliable nowadays.-- 5 albert square (talk) 17:08, 29 December 2018 (UTC)
• Yes, per comments from Ghostofnemo and Wnt. An outright ban is not good. - JuneGloom07 Talk 21:48, 29 December 2018 (UTC)
• Comment: UK Press Complaints Commission ruling;.

Key quotes:

"The complainants also drew the Commission's attention to: the inclusion of quotes attributed to prosecutors, apparently reacting to the guilty verdict ('justice has been done' although 'it was sad two young people would be spending time in jail'); a description of the reaction in the court room to the supposed verdict ('Knox...sank into her chair sobbing uncontrollably while her family and friends hugged each other in tears'; Meredith Kercher's family 'remained expressionless, staring straight ahead, glancing over just once at the distraught Knox family'); and the claims that Ms Knox was 'taken out of court escorted by prison guards and into a waiting van which took her back to her cell' and would be 'put on a suicide watch'."

"The Commission was particularly concerned about other aspects of the report, especially the account of the reaction by those in the courtroom to the apparent verdict, and to the subsequent actions of Ms Knox. In the Commission's view, the article had sought to present contemporaneous reporting of events (describing, in colourful terms, how individuals had physically behaved) which simply had not taken place. This was clearly not acceptable."

--Guy Macon (talk) 00:31, 30 December 2018 (UTC)

A single incident from 2011, of something that other publications, including reliable sources, have also done (most notably recently Der Spiegel). This is also the fourth time you have referenced this case. For a guy who makes accusations of WP:BLUDGEON (which is an essay BTW, not policy) against people, you sure don't mind making the same argument multiple times. FOARP (talk) 20:11, 30 December 2018 (UTC)

• No(t yet). Come on, it's only been two months; too soon to tell. In a year or two, maybe we can revisit this. --Joshualouie711^talk 02:59, 30 December 2018 (UTC)
• No per Guy Macon, ALSO, per SerialNumber54129 OPPOSE any vacation for the original RfC ALSO, per SerialNumber54129, suggest a moratorium on re-running this RfC at any point in the near future. -Roxy, the dog. wooF 11:36, 30 December 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose per Guy Macon and David Gerard. While I appreciate that the paper's new editor is not the same as the old one, and I understand that very occasionally, the DM covers a topic, in a reasonably neutral way, that has otherwise been ignored in the media, the key consideration here is whether or not the DM can be relied upon to report events factually and reasonably neutrally, rather than prioritising sensationalism. So far, even under the new editor, the answer seems to be no. Zazpot (talk) 17:51, 30 December 2018 (UTC)

For that story CBC seems to have made the common error of thinking The Mail On Sunday is The Daily Mail's Sunday edition. They are different papers with different editors. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 23:59, 30 December 2018 (UTC)

• Yes, as per John Peel's comment - "the restrictions should never have been put in place in the first case. Let editors use judgement about whether to use the reference in individual articles, don't blanket ban it and throw out useful and reliable references in some topics because of some unreliable ones in other topics" Govindaharihari (talk) 01:28, 31 December 2018 (UTC)
• No - it was a poor source at the time of the first RfC and nothing has changed. Asking again when indeed nothing has changed is, frankly, a waste of community time. If something matters, some other more reliable publication will state it. - Sitush (talk) 19:54, 31 December 2018 (UTC)
• No. No compelling reason to overturn prior RfC. No compelling evidence that the new editor has improved standards. In another year, we can vote on whether to exempt future Mail articles from the general deprecation. Catrìona (talk) 04:39, 1 January 2019 (UTC)
• No. As others have said, anything of importance can be expected to be covered in other more reliable sources as well, and we should use those. Anything reported only by the Daily Fail should be treated with the very greatest caution, and absolutely avoided in BLP articles. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 21:19, 1 January 2019 (UTC)
• Yes. I do not see any logic. We widely use RT (TV network) for sourcing in WP. This is a propaganda source, much worse than any tabloid. Why should we single out "Daily Mail"? Saying that, I am not against blacklisting a significant number of unreliable sources based on more or less objective criteria or rankings. But I am not sure what these rankings should be. My very best wishes (talk) 21:32, 2 January 2019 (UTC)
• Yes - I dont think such deprecation of a major newspaper is really necessary, editors of individual articles can assess usability of such sources taking into account relevant context. The point made in previous comment about the fact that we don't use so radical measures even about state propaganda outlets of authoritarian regimes is quite appropriate too.--Staberinde (talk) 16:09, 3 January 2019 (UTC)
• No - The ban was appropriate and still is. -- GreenC 20:08, 3 January 2019 (UTC)
• No. The argument that a newly appointed editor (September 2018!) is enough to suddenly make past unreliable coverage reliable is pretty ridiculous. The other arguments do not bear much water, and if the change in editorship does make a difference, we are free to reassess in the future. Also, many of the "Yes" !voters seem to be under the impression that the Daily Mail sanction is an absolute ban, but the second point in the closure explicitly allows its use on a case by case, common sense basis for when an editorial consensus finds it would be a reliable source. Would support a one-year moratorium on reopening this. ---- Patar knight - ^chat/_{contributions} 00:20, 4 January 2019 (UTC)
• No. We should not use unreliable tabloids as sources on BLPs - this was a good call and, if anything, should be expanded, not backpedalled on. The Drover's Wife (talk) 19:46, 5 January 2019 (UTC)

Discussion (Daily Mail)

Suggested conduct for this RFC

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

It may be helpful if we conduct this discussion in a deliberative manner, to improve our chances of arriving at a solid, evidence-based consensus. Going straight to voting with little preliminary discussion is good practice for some issues, but it is liable to elicit non reflective, "top of the head" opinions. Voting has therefore been postponed for 7 days to allow deliberation.

• Any editor who wishes to add arguments or evidence is welcome to do so in the relevant 'For' or 'Against' section, to whatever length they wish.
• If any editor wishes to add inline questions or counter points to the opposing side's section, they are encouraged to be as concise as possible.
• Voting is not due to open until Tuesday 11 Dec. This is to allow plenty of time for both sides to develop arguments. — Preceding unsigned comment added by FeydHuxtable (talk • contribs) 10:24, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Arguments For lifting restrictions on the DM

Outline

1) The DM has changed dramatically - it is not the same source we banned in 2017.

2) Relatively little high quality evidence exists asserting DM is generally unreliable.

3) Retaining the ban creates a dangerous WP:creep / slippery slope problem.

4) The DM is sometimes the best available source for certain topics.

5) Retaining the ban is damagingly partisan.

6) The ban is disproportionate to its objectives

7) The consensus resulting from the RfC was unclear

10) Procedurally, WP:RS/N should be used to advise editors rather than make source rules

Elaboration and evidence

1) The DM has changed dramatically - it is not the same source we banned in 2017.

The publication Wikipedia de facto banned in early 2017 no longer exists. While it may be true that the DM once had reprehensible operating practices, new editor Geordie Greig is cleaning up shop. Greig's appointment has been such a dramatic change that the Atlantic called him the "man who might change Britain" , John Major said he had "the power and the potential to change the political discourse of our country", and Lord Adonis claimed his ascension was "a revolution in the British media … very likely we will now stop Brexit". as summarised in The Guardian . These predictions seem to be holding true. Abundant sources written in the past few days confirm the DM really does seem to have turned over a new leaf, and is now "kinder and gentler" , e.g. Guardian article As late as mid summer, talk of a second Brexit referendum was widely regarded as fanciful. Since Greig took over at DM, John McDonnell has said a 2nd referendum now seems inevitable, while in the last few days even Gove admitted a second referendum is possible.

2) Relatively little high quality evidence exists asserting DM is generally unreliable.

There seem to be few if any high quality sources claiming DM is general unreliable , especially since the major improvements after the recent change of editor. Outdated opinion pieces from journalists & quotes from disgruntled x-employees, while not worthless, are far from top tier sources. Individual DM articles may contain falsehoods, but misleading info can be found in any type of sources, most definitively in the types of sources Wikipedians tend to consider most reliable. There is no totally satisfactory substitute for editorial discretion.

IPSOS, the media watchdog body, tracks complaints upheld against each publisher in each year. In 2015 only two complaints were upheld against Associated, the owners of the Daily Mail, compared to nine complaints being upheld for Telegraph Media Group and Trinity Mirror (owners of the Telegraph and the Mirror respectively), ten being upheld against Northern and Shell (owners of the Express and the Star), and eleven complaints against News UK (owners of the Times, the Sunday Times, and the Sun). IPSOS also noted that "Associated was the most assiduous group at resolving complaints, having done so on 23 occasions". If the Daily Mail is the horrifically inaccurate source that it has been portrayed as being by some editors, then this is not immediately apparent in terms of complaints upheld or the attitude of the publication to those complaints. Whilst 2015 was a particularly low year for Associated, the statistics for 2016 (see pp. 16-17 here) and 2017 (see pp. 22-23 here) in terms of complaints upheld were also lower for Associated than for their main competitors. Whilst the total volume of complaints for the DM is high, it is not higher than for the Sun, and proportionate to circulation is not remarkable compared to other publications regulated by IPSOS.

3) Retaining the ban creates a dangerous WP:creep / slippery slope problem.

Al Jazeera is ranked less trustworthy and impartial than DM in several (not all) of the datasets reported in sources such as Ipsos Impartiality and Trust Market Content Survey 2017 & BBC trust and impartiality 2014 It would hopefully be unthinkable to ban Al Jazeera, but this example may illustrate how retaining the DM ban helps strengthen the case to ban various other useful sources.

One of the requirements of WP:CREEP is that "The proposal if implemented is likely to make a real, positive difference", however there is no evidence that this ban has created such a difference, unless you consider there being less citations of the Daily Mail as being, in and of itself, a "positive difference". Instead there is evidence that it has created a robotic, non-common-sense approach amongst some editors where references to the Daily Mail are deleted automatically without any analysis of whether this is warranted or an improvement of any kind. If anything, this actually points to the ban increasing editor's workloads since they were actively and explicitly encouraged by the RfC to seek out references to the Daily Mail and remove them - this is not time well spent.

TL;DR - Where's the evidence, per WP:CREEP, that the 2017 RfC made a "real, positive difference"?

4)The DM is sometimes a useful, even the best available, source for certain topics.

For an example of the DM being a useful source to improve a poetry article, see this diff The example I most remember where DM was the best available source was for the actress & former model Teresa May. One of the leading glamour models of the 90s, she worked with The Prodigy, stared in several B movies, appeared in numerous tabloids and mens magazines, appeared on TV shows like Men & Motors, GMTV, etc. She wasn't just important in entertainment – starting from the late 90s, she played a major role in the long process of rehabilitating the Tories image as the "nasty party". The single best online source for recording this was the DM. Due in part to said source being dismissed thanks to the ban, our article on this historic figure was destroyed. There must be thousands of other examples. With DM being the only large UK paper with a majority female readership, many may relate to articles of interest to women. Lifting the ban on the DM could help address our embarrassing lack of coverage on such topics.

5) Retaining the ban is damagingly partisan.

Many of the original RfC votes to ban DM were undoubtedly driven solely by the admirable and scholarly desire to avoid possible untruth being included in our articles. Yet given that at least until Greig took over as editor, the DM was regarded as a hugely powerful outlet for right wing opinion, and that several editors call it 'repulsive' , 'repugnant' etc, it does seem likely partisan sentiment played at least some role. In fairness, wikipedians commitment to NPOV makes us on the whole less partisan than most of the rest of the world. Still, our banning of DM is seen by many as a partisan act, adding fuel to the partisan inferno raging elsewhere.

To elaborate on why inflaming partisanship is so bad. Partisanship is maybe the primary reason why suffering is increasing for a substantial proportion of the world's population, despite what should be the fruits of ever improving technology. E.g. Hunger increasing both globally and even in several advanced economies, mental health issues increasing across the world, suicide rates increasing & life expectancies falling in several advanced economies. Societies are dysfunctional when populations separate into mutually suspicious halves on the left right spectrum. A fair view of said spectrum is that almost all on both sides genuinely want the best for everyone, just with different priorities. In relatively bi-partisan times, like the 50-60s, there can be vast improvements in living conditions for all sections of society, not regression for the poor like we have today. It may be satisfying for us lefties to win great victories against the right, as they can in various arenas of public opinion like Wikipedia or the twitter sphere. But perversely, it's left wing causes that suffer the most when we do so. This is why Hilary Clinton came to deeply regret her "deplorable" remark, and why Obama came to see his "guns and relgion" speech as one of his worst mistakes. Lets find it in our hearts to treat the political right with respect, if not out of genuine love for them, then as it helps the cause, and for WP:NPOV!

6) The ban is disproportionate to its objectives

The objective of the ban was to discourage the use of a source alleged, based on largely anecdotal evidence of recent behaviour, to be generally unreliable. To achieve this the entire corpus of work of a newspaper published daily for more than 122 years was subjected to blanket deprecation without a time limit or even scheduling a review after a particular time-period. A permanent ban, covering the entire history of a newspaper, for perceived recent behaviour, is clearly greatly in excess of the wrong that it is supposed to address.

7) The consensus resulting from the RfC was unclear

In previous discussions it has been pointed out that the result of this ban was not a "ban" per se. However, the fact that it has been reported as a ban outside Wikipedia in a source normally thought reliable, that it is commonly referred to as a ban by editors (or even jokingly as a "!ban"), and has functioned exactly as a ban since all new references to the Daily Mail are deleted, shows that the instructions resulting from the RfC were unclear since they have resulted in a sitaution which they were supposed to avoid - a blanket ban on references to the Daily Mail.

Credits: Most of sound arguments in the initial posting here were originally put forward by others, including Collect, Andy Dingley, DomFromParis, FOARP and the Colonel. Possibly foolish elaborations like contrasting DM with the sort of sources held up by WP:MEDS are mine alone. FeydHuxtable (talk) 10:24, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

8) It might lead any sceptics there might be out there in the real world to wonder if there really was an any-cabal on Wikipedia.

When contributing here, for example, I understood that I mustn't put that reference I found on the page into a proper format because then I might risk sanction for refusing to respect previous jurisprudence.

9) It forces wiki-contributors to stop what they are researching when they find a DM reference and go dig up another with a more neutered-friendly no cabal-approved headline.

This is absurd in the case of exclusives, such as this one. That diff led me to do a study / take a snapshot in time of Wikipedian sourcing for the benefit of this noticeboard. (NB: the results are frozen in time, they will have changed significantly since). In other less exclusive cases, like the one I mentioned above, it is also unnecessarily time-consuming. — 🍣 SashiRolls ^{t · c} 21:37, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

Further evidence for #4: The @Emir of Wikipedia: alerted me, through their user page, to the fact that only the Daily Mail published the story of Laura Nunes' death at the Burj Khalifa. Otherwise, the Dubai police were very successful in keeping this information out of the press. if this article—9news.com.au—is to be believed: [26]) Since the Emir is being called out by this publication, I've pinged them so that they can add any further background that seems necessary for background. — 🍣 SashiRolls ^{t · c} 17:23, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

Also untrue [[27]], [28], [29].Slatersteven (talk) 17:32, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

The standard procedure is to strike out incorrect comments like this @Slatersteven:. Unless of course you are stating that en.wp is currently wrong, or that the coroner's report is not to be believed... AGF, I'll let you correct your errors above... or provide proof that I'm mistaken, which none of the three articles above does. Be sure to also see the talk page I linked above, where Nunes' mother tries to get the wiki-story corrected. — 🍣 SashiRolls ^{t · c} 19:24, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

WP is not an RS, and may well be wrong. Especially as I have provided three sources that do mention this claim (on dated the same date as the DM "exclusive"), so it was not only the DM that reported it.Slatersteven (talk) 15:03, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

This claim has been verified to be false: the original article is dated the 16 May 2015, none of the other articles appeared until after the UAE cover-up began on 18 May 2015. Her mother's complaint about the Wiki cover-up is dated 29 December 2015 and can be found in Archive 11 of the talk page (this pursuant to the removal of the Daily Mail article and all reference to the suicide on 28 August 2015). Can this be compared to the Rothschild affair, where the High Court found the Daily Mail accurate in their reporting and Rothschild's SLAPP suit as frivolous? — 🍣 SashiRolls ^{t · c} 21:31, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

So is the claim "they were the first to cover it" or "that only the Daily Mail published the story of Laura Nunes' death at the Burj Khalifa"? And I would argue that a suicide is not usually worthy of reporting, a Police cover up is. So this is why the DM should not be an RS, not everything it published is notable, and it often misses the actually important part of a story so as to get "exclusives".Slatersteven (talk) 11:19, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

Acknowledgment of your error is requested @Slatersteven: in order to establish that we are all investigating the matter in good faith. — 🍣 SashiRolls ^{t · c} 21:55, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

OK, the DM were the first (FIRST) to report her suicide.Slatersteven (talk) 11:19, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

Them being first is not a Good Thing. It is a Bad Thing. As we have seen with the Knox case, they are often first because they write the articles (including all sorts of made-up details and fabricated direct quotes) before they actual event happens. They also rather obviously have a bunch of prewritten articles for [celebrity] commuted suicide, [musician] overdoses with [drug], [politician] resigns over scandal, etc., again containing made-up details and fabricated direct quotes. --Guy Macon (talk) 13:22, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

Thanks, I appreciate the acknowledgment that they broke (i.e. did the work on) the story of the suicide from 2014, which (weirdly) led the Dubai police (or Gulf News) to make something up on 18 May 2015, which two of the other papers reported. As you say, the key event is the cover-up, as Rob Davies noted in the DM's original article: Although the Burj Khalifa is a popular attraction among both tourists and those living in Dubai, Ms Nunes' death, on November 16 2014, has gone unreported until now. (One wonders how her SIM card magically disappeared from her Blackberry, of course, but one can speculate that this was just a courtesy to her wealthy Emirati ex.) All that said, this, like the work the Mail did on the story of Lord Mandelson, Nathaniel Rothschild and Oleg Deripaska [30] is anecdotal evidence that, in fact, they have gotten things right where powerful interests would have preferred that they didn't. This doesn't seem like a good reason to ban a national paper. — 🍣 SashiRolls ^{t · c} 13:34, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

Going unreported does not mean "the police covered it up". Of course they get things right, the issue if how often we have to fight to keep out the things they get wrong. As has been said if it is worth reporting other sources will. We lose nothing by not using the DM. The point is they missed the important part of the story.Slatersteven (talk) 09:04, 18 December 2018 (UTC)

Regarding the Nunes case you are grasping at straws obviously. Here is the chronology: [31]. Of course they are due credit for breaking the story. The police denial appeared in Gulf News and other Gulf papers the night after the story broke as a direct result of the DM pointing out the cover up. The DM article was updated to include the coroner's report proving the Dubai police were making it up. They did not "miss the important part of the story". <-- an example of en.wp "fake news"

But, please, do what you want. Nobody puts much stock in en.wp anyway. I know I've seen over 10 fake news stories in the last two or three days here... see point 2 above.— 🍣 SashiRolls ^{t · c} 20:27, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

10) Procedurally, WP:RS/N should be used to advise editors rather than make source rules. This is one of my points. Every other source, RS/N has been content to leave an archived conversation to guide editors, who might start a new one for a new case by case determination or just use their own judgment. Now all of a sudden we have this one source that is the subject of (as another point mentions) partisan politics. Editors who want to just write about stuff should be free to focus on doing so rather than worrying about a new Legislature that decides where they should go to read about things. A lot of times a Daily Mail reference is a routine article, absolutely no problem yet people carry on about it as if it were some kind of heinous crime. Whereas when they are pushing the line, everybody knows they're pushing it. Wnt (talk) 16:16, 29 December 2018 (UTC)

Arguments Against lifting restrictions on the DM

Many many of us in fact argued against it solely on its tendency to present opinion, speculation and out right misrepresentation as fact. I dislike the way this RFC has been framed.Slatersteven (talk) 10:57, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

Outline

Nor do I think this has changed (as certain recent discussion at the DM about Wikipedia have shown). As nothing has substantively changed, and in fact they continue to be (quite literally in the UK) a joke means to my mind undoing the "ban" (as the DM put it) will in fact do our reputation for using only the best sources weakened not strengthened. I think our taking a stand over this issue did our reputation (expect among the Red Tops) no end of good as we had started to take a real meaningful stand against fake news (by which I mean news organs that have a willingness (and knowingly publish) pure speculation and opinion as fact).Slatersteven (talk) 10:57, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

Elaboration and evidence

[32], not only is this not usable as a BLP (but try saying that if we do not "deprecate" the DM "but its an RS" will be the plaintive cry) but is a prefect example of why it should not be considered an RS. Speculation masquerading as fact, but they even (and have to have used) Wikipedia as a source despite (after the earlier spat with them) claiming (categorically) they do not use Wikipedia as a source. The dishonesty and representing opinion as news continues unchanged.Slatersteven (talk) 10:57, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

A note on quality control: the linked article (cached here), dated December 2, 2018, misspells Barack Obama as "Barrack Obama" twice, once in the bullets under the headline, and once in the article body. It has not yet been corrected. There are over 200 instances of this, and most of them are written in the Daily Mail's voice, not in reader comments or quotes from other people's writings. — Newslinger talk 07:09, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

In an independent report by campaignlive.co.uk, the Daily Mail was ranked the second most untrustworthy newspaper in the UK behind The Sun. When asked "I trust what I see in it", 46% of readers said "yes" (against 39% for The Sun). Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 13:17, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

As to upheld complainants, well lets look at this year (as this is then one that has supposedly seen a change), well they will not have released the figures yet, so how about last year? [[33]], 10 up held complaints, a five fold increase.Slatersteven (talk) 14:49, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

"The DM has changed dramatically - it is not the same source we banned in 2017". There has been a change of editorship to Geordie Greig, but only for the last two months. Hardly enough time to properly judge if there has been any change. But are we seriously suggesting that all news previously published by the Daily Mail has been re-assessed by the new editor and taken down or amended if necessary? Martinevans123 (talk) 14:53, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

Interesting. There may be grounds to lift the ban, but with a side note that consensus remains generally against including the DM articles when they predate the change of editor. At this point I’d prefer an unconditional lifting, but this is something to reflect on. FeydHuxtable (talk) 15:01, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

Slatersteven there were 10 upheld complaints for the group but only 3 for the Daily Mail and only 2 for accuracy for the Daily Mail for 1456 complaints in total = 0.13%. In 2015 there were 402 complaints for accuracy and 2 complaints upheld = 0.50%. This means that instead of being multiplied 5 fold as you suggest the percentage of upheld complaints was divided nearly four fold. --Dom from Paris (talk) 14:31, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

In 2015 there were 44 complainants against Associated (of which 19 were dismissed), in 2017 there were 73, of which 24 were not upheld. So almost double the complaints, and 5 times the number sanctioned (for comparison in 2016 it was 64 of which 20 were found to not be a breach).Slatersteven (talk) 14:47, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Slatersteven Are we talking about associated or Daily Mail? Because if we are treating all publications from one owner in the same basket please don't forget that The Sun and The Times are owned by the same group. This is not about Associated Press but the Daily Mail from what I can gather. What we are talking about is accuracy here and the Daily mail. I have checked and double checked the figures and I stand by what I said, 2 upheld complaints for each year 2015 and 2017 and a multiplication of 3.6 times the number of complaints made 402 to 1456. Try using this to check them and you will see what I mean. [34]. Dom from Paris (talk) 15:26, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

In 2016 there were also 2 upheld complaints for accuracy for a total of 1895 complaints sent in. Dom from Paris (talk) 15:35, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Err, I was not the one who used the Associated press as the example to start with...look at the opening salvo.Slatersteven (talk) 15:37, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Ohh and it was not 1895 complaints in 2016, it was 3140. In 2017 there were 4847 received, but they now only list findings by company.Slatersteven (talk) 15:43, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

(you need to filter for accuracy which is the subject of the ban) I know you chose associated press and that is why I replied because I am just trying to understand why you have chosen to lump them all together rather than just deal with the subject of this discussion which is the Daily Mail and accuracy. (we can also add the mail online I suppose but this changes very little in terms of percentages of complaints received upheld.). you have knowingly chosen to take the Associated Press rather than just the Mail. You might be interested to know that The Times had 4 complaints for accuracy upheld in 2017 for 385 complaints = 1.04% which is twice as many complaints or 8 times more in percentage of complaints compared to the DM. In 2015 the Times had 3 complaints upheld for accuracy for 159 complaints in total = 1.89% (the Sun from the same group in the same period only had 1 complaint upheld for 1618 in total = 0.06%, 31 times less in percentage terms than The Times.) Dom from Paris (talk) 16:09, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

I did not choose AP "IPSOS, the media watchdog body, tracks complaints upheld against each publisher in each year. In 2015 only two complaints were upheld against Associated, the owners of the Daily Mail," the nominator did, I just looked at the same set of statistics but for following years.Slatersteven (talk) 16:26, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Obviously numbers of complaints is a function of circulation (the more people read who read it, the more complaints are made, and often multiple complaints are tendered on the same issue). The real measure is the number of complaints upheld since these are the ones where actual wrongdoing has been found, which is not remarkably higher for Associated than for the publishers of news sources considered RS. Every paper has had instances where stories have been fabricated - even some of the ones considered highly reliable like the New York Times (see Jayson Blair) and the New Republic (see Stephen Glass). Anecdotal evidence cannot support a general finding. FOARP (talk) 16:03, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

The fact that a publication participates in the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO) is in my opinion conclusive evidence of its reliablity. Of course IPSO could be better, but it meets the threshold that policy requires. TFD (talk) 19:35, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

Why is was RFC'd stories like this [[35]] (2014), why is has not changed [[36]], [[37]] (2017) and [[38]] (2018).Slatersteven (talk) 16:51, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

While one of your sources mentions false stories published by the Daily Mail, it also mentions The Sun, the Brighton local paper The Argus, the BBC, the The Telegraph, and the Express as having published fake news stories. The most egregious and damaging fake news story published by most mainstream publications in this century was about the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. We are all still paying for that one. Certainly more important than whether the Queen reprimanded the Mayor of London, which was the no. 1 fake news story of 2017, according to your source (not published by the Daily Mail btw). TFD (talk) 20:07, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

The point was made "give us evidence they make stuff up", As every teacher who has ever lived has had to say "I do not care that the other boys are doing" (which is not in fact true, I am not the one preventing them from being treated by the same set of standards). I take this as starting as I mean to continue, we should not use any of the red tops. But I am happy to set a precedent.Slatersteven (talk) 16:11, 9 December 2018 (UTC)

Sorry, but I am not following you. The Daily Mail and other papers have made things up. Are you saying you don't care that other papers make things up, just that the Daily Mail does so? Then why ask for examples of other papers that have made things up? TFD (talk) 16:54, 9 December 2018 (UTC)

No, and I did not ask for other examples of papers making things up. I am not the one using "whataboutsim".Slatersteven (talk) 17:52, 9 December 2018 (UTC)

#: Their long titles are annoying frame-busters. — 🍣 SashiRolls ^{t · c} 21:07, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

• Comment Frankly, Wikipedia is over-dependent on newsmedia in general; WP:NOTNEWS is more ignored than observed these days. With that in mind, I'd say we should be more restrictive about what newsmedia to allow as an RS, not less. Simonm223 (talk) 13:54, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

Closure proposal

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

• Procedural close. Not a neutrally-presented RfC. ——SerialNumber54129 13:19, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

Agree with Serial numbers above. -Roxy, the dog. wooF 13:27, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

Agree with SerialNumber as well. The editor who opened the RfC stated "Worse is when editors colludes in advance and open voting after posting detailed but one sided arguments" and then proceeded to posted a long string of one-sided arguments apparently compiled from a number of editors. –dlthewave ☎ 13:33, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

Tend to agree a non neutral wall of text, that poisons the well by (off the bat) questioning the motives of other eds.Slatersteven (talk) 13:52, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

Agree. Biased RfC. Needs to be re-framed. Martinevans123 (talk) 13:58, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

• Procedural close- this RfC is an immense, partisan wall of text. I would suggest suggest waiting at least a few months to evaluate whether Geordie Greig's reforms have given the Daily Mail the status of a reliable source. Two months after his appointment is too soon to know whether this has had a lasting effect. Any future RfC would need to be presented neutrally, instead of poisoning the well right from the outset. Reyk _YO! 14:04, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

• Do not close - This is the section was intended as the section for arguments against, so I have separated out the closure arguments from the arguments against the proposal. It is simply an abuse of process to try to close this discussion at this point, rather than argue against the point being made. The proposal at the top of the discussion is clearly neutrally framed, it states only "Is it time to lift the targeted restrictions on using the Daily Mail as a source, thus overturning the Jan 2017 RfC ?". Would it make any difference if, as in the case of the 2017 RfC, the proposer had simply posted their arguments directly under the proposal in the form of a "support" vote? Finally, as for it being a wall of text, this is because there are significant arguments in favour of removing the ban. FOARP (talk) 14:22, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

Sorry but this was part of his pitch on the RFC, so yes it should have been in the vote section and not party of the RFC launch. Moreover it (essentially) questioned the motives of other eddds and thus poisoned the well before anyone had even responded. Nor is a wall of text needed, much of what he said could have been said on one sentence (not, in some cases, two paragraphs).Slatersteven (talk) 14:31, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

IN fact this derail is a good example of why it should not have been done.Slatersteven (talk) 14:33, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

What on earth is the actual, functional difference between an editor putting it in the first support vote of their own proposal, and an editor putting it into a "arguments in favour" section? These are literally the same things just given different names. This is an example of the kind of Wikilawyering that is doing this site to death. FOARP (talk) 14:41, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

The problem is it is a huge wall of text that you have to read, aft er having been told this is a problem (see below). He says this givers one side an advantage, on he then takes advantage of.Slatersteven (talk)

You're objection here is literally that the arguments in favour of the proposal are so substantial that they take a long time to read? FOARP (talk) 15:14, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

No it is (literally) that it contains too many (as it a lot) of words, an unessential and unneeded verbosity that conveys no real information that a one sentence comment could not have done (or to put it another way, I can make this reply last for ever and just say the same thing 15 different ways).Slatersteven (talk) 15:18, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

WP:TLDR is literally a bad argument, and you're literally making it. FOARP (talk) 20:25, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

• As long as the "Arguments in favour" section is clearly separate from the opening RFC statement, I don't see a problem. It's only the statement of the RFC itself that needs to be neutral - obviously the arguments don't. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 14:45, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

Except it followed the initial question with this "Worse is when editors colludes in advance and open voting after posting detailed but one sided arguments . This gives the opening side a framing / agenda setting advantage, which at worst is manipulative, and at best reduces the chance of arriving at a fair, evidence based consensus."Slatersteven (talk) 14:55, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

Hasn't that been fixed now? As long as it's addressed quickly, I see no need for being excessively bureaucratic and forcing this one to close and then open a new one. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 15:01, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

In what way fixed, it still says it.Slatersteven (talk) 15:04, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

It has now been fixed, by another ed.Slatersteven (talk) 15:22, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

• Procedural close per above - David Gerard (talk) 14:59, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

Part of the issue may be the structure of this RFC, which puts the opening comments in favour immediately under the proposition (thus making it harder to tell one from the other), looking at the Sun RFC (for example) we have the survey first, not the comments.Slatersteven (talk) 15:03, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

Yes, god forbid that people read the reasons for the proposal before going straight into the voting section, which is anyway delayed to allow for deliberation and won't even open for 7 days. FOARP (talk) 15:10, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

No they should read all the arguments for and against, but neither side should have been given an advantage (as the OP puts it) of going first.Slatersteven (talk) 15:15, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

To point out the obvious, in the 2017 RfC the proposer did exactly that, they just did it in the guise of a support vote, which as the proposer they were in the position to post straight away. FOARP (talk) 15:27, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

They voted with a one paragraph comment.Slatersteven (talk) 15:31, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

And this is better because......FOARP (talk) 15:37, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

Well for a start it means you can get to the counter arguments quicker, and thus get a more balanced view. As this RFC originally said, going first is an advantage, if you then present a wall of text you increase that advantage (which it also said). If the OP thought that then doing it was clearly something they would not have considered unacceptable if done in reverse.Slatersteven (talk) 15:44, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

So if you're not allowed to go first, who goes first? Or are you saying it's OK if your side goes first? Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 15:46, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

I am not saying someone should not go first, but it should not be with a massive wall of text *much of which does not seem to be about the DM's reliability and some of it , irrelevant, soap boxing) that appears (at least on quick inspection) to be part of the RFC's opening statement. The whole point is the OP said we should not do what he then when ahead and did, the fact this has been removed now just (to my mind) emphasis the fact the RFC was meant to be biased (and was as much as it could be).Slatersteven (talk) 15:52, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

Ah, so what you want to do is censor what and how much the opposing side can say? Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 15:58, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

No I am saying that bating straight off with bad faith wall of bludgeoning text make the RFC poisoned from the off. I am saying that making a one paragraph post criticizing the source is not the same as a multi paragraph lecture that flies of at wild tangents that have nothing to do with the reliability of a source, but rather wider issues in both society and alleged bias among fellow eds. I did not raise the issue of the other RFC, I did not use it as an example of what should be done here (nor did I post the original point about the side that goes first getting an advantage).Slatersteven (talk) 19:27, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

You do know that WP:TLDR is not actually a good argument, right? As for a "bludgeoning wall of text", I mean honestly, you position here is that it's OK for the proposer to make a vote including arguments right after the proposal - presumably of arbitrary length - but when using a process that delays voting it's not OK to put the arguments in a section two paragraphs below the proposal that is clearly marked "arguments". FOARP (talk) 20:24, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

I was not the one who made a point about "posting detailed but one sided arguments" (not that the arguments are detailed, they are just verbose, a sizable chunk having nothing to do with the actual question raised).Slatersteven (talk) 20:51, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

• Procedural close - Unacceptably-biased structure and wording. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 15:12, 4 December 2018 (UTC)
• Keep open, do not close The opening statement "Is it time to lift the targeted restrictions on using the Daily Mail as a source, thus overturning the Jan 2017 RfC ?" is not problematic. I may change "Is it time to lift" to something like "Should we lift", but I like how the arguments are presented in its own section as it enhances discussion. It's no different from other RfCs with separate "Survey" and "Discussion" sections, except that this time the position of the two sections are swapped. feminist (talk) 15:47, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

  Note that if this is to run as a proper RfC, the survey should start now. Either that or the RfC template should be removed. It's common to present your arguments in a separate discussion before starting an RfC, but why include the RfC template if you don't want to start it yet? feminist (talk) 19:03, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

  I have removed the RfC template for now. Feel free to restore it if any editor wants to start the survey. feminist (talk) 19:06, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

• Procedural close, encourage the proposer to start over with a neutrally-presented RfC. The basic plan should be to make the actual question completely neutral, then put your arguments in a "support as proposer" !vote. --Guy Macon (talk) 17:11, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

Which would be different to putting the reasons for the proposal in a section clearly marked “Arguments” because.... Furthermore opening the voting straight away prevents deliberation from both sides before voting. FOARP (talk) 17:22, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

The fact that you are still asking this question after a dozen different people have explained what is wrong with what you are trying to do tells me that you have no business posting RfCs. WP:CIR. Furthermore I have not commented on "opening the voting straight away". Please stay on-topic. --Guy Macon (talk) 18:51, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

You're asking that the proposer puts their arguments in a !vote, which logically requires that voting already be open right from the start. It is not clear - AT ALL - why this is different in any way - AT ALL - to putting the arguments in a section marked "arguments". It is not clear why one is neutral and the other not. FOARP (talk) 19:37, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

• Procedural close - Certainly no opposition to having an RFC on reinstating Daily Mail as an RS, but this has to be rewritten to be suitably neutral first. As it is right now, it's not.--WaltCip (talk) 17:15, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

What exactly is it about the proposal that you believe is non-neutral? It’s a one-sentence statement at the top of the proposal which does not advocate either way. The supporting arguments follow two paragraphs down in a section cvlearly marked “arguments” FOARP (talk) 17:26, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

You clearly do not understand what a neutral RfC question is, as evidenced by your believe that inserting a large chunk of non-neutral material at the to is somehow magically made OK if you add the word "arguments". You should voluntarily withdraw this RfC, post a new one in your sandbox, and invite comments on how to make it neutral. If you aren't willing to do that, an uninvolved editor should close this RfC, based upon the strong consensus for a procedural close. --Guy Macon (talk) 18:08, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

You are correct that I do not understand what the difference between stating the reasons for a proposal in a section called "arguments" and stating the reason for your proposal in a !vote posted right at the top by the proposer as was done in the 2017 RfC. FOARP (talk) 19:48, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

• Procedural close. RfCs are not supposed to be extended soapboxes with demands for a week's wait before anyone ventures an opinion. This proposal is essentially the proposer's first significant activity on-wiki since July, I question whether this is a good-faith exercise. I'd expect, at a minimum, an increasing number of discussions at this board with consensus for individual links to the DM as evidence that standards have increased (which is also the way sites get deprecated, after multiple consensus "unreliable" debates). Guy (Help!) 18:11, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

It's not a week's wait until expressing an opinion. It's a week's wait until voting. This procedure has been used elsewhere on Wiki. FOARP (talk) 19:48, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

There's no need to question other editors good faith! I am an editor with over 10 years experience. If you read the Sun RfC above , both pro & anti DM ban editors were requesting a dedicated RfC for the DM. I thought I'd step up as I was fresh from my wiki break, and have some experience with RfCs where a little innovation seems called for. See here for example, a RfC I opened in a quite similar manner - it was well attended and a very cordial discussion. In this case, my efforts don't seem to have been so well receivedand I apologise for being the source of objections thanks to the way I framed this. Still, no need to ABF! FeydHuxtable (talk) 18:49, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

• Would anyone mind if I refactor this discussion to have the survey on top? feminist (talk) 19:24, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

Not me, whatever ever changes you think would help are most welcome. FeydHuxtable (talk) 19:28, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

I doubt it will change anything since this just seems to be an abuse of process designed to stifle debate, but you can give it a try. FOARP (talk) 19:32, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

This process has become a joke. The thread itself has been mangled unrecognisably overmynight, such that it is pointless. -Roxy, the dog. wooF 08:22, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Wow. Let's break it down:

1) Someone proposes a procedural close objecting to wording under the RfC proposal, the wording is then removed.

2) More editors propose a procedural close objecting to the formatting of the RfC, the formatting is then changed.

3) Editors then propose a procedural close on the basis that changes have been made.

The only consistent thing here is the demand that this discussion be closed before it even begins.

Can an Admin please come in and assess this closure discussion? FOARP (talk) 08:39, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

The wording was removed after many eds had asked for a close.

As far as I can tell not votes for a close have been made after the reformatting.

There was no request to close this before the discussion had begun, the request to close it was made after at least two eds had responded. What eds have asked for this to be close because changes have been made?Slatersteven (talk) 10:36, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

The comment from User:Roxy the dog directly above mine, in a discussion about closing, states that the discussion is now pointless due to changes (i.e., it should be closed). This statement came after the reformatting and obviously in response to it. As for "before it even begins" this is a common turn of phrase or colloquialism in the English language - which I believe (correct me if I am wrong) is the correct language of proceedings for this particular forum - to indicate that something is being done very early in a process (example).

You know it might help if you actually stated a ground for closure at this particular point, or withdrew your original proposal in order to expedite proceedings. FOARP (talk) 11:07, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

It might help if you read my comment with the grounds for closure (translated helpfully by me here as - "fucked up proposal") in it. -Roxy, the dog. wooF 11:12, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Which ultimately adds up to asking that the discussion be closed because the issues that other editors objected to in their closure proposals were addressed. FOARP (talk) 11:18, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

I may be wrong it it can just as easily be read that there is no point in restructuring the RFC as it is already FUBAR, not that is her grounds for closure, just that she no longer see's any point in trying to fix something that is broken beyond repair.13:01, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

You may well be wrong. They stated specifically that "The thread itself has been mangled unrecognisably overmynight", that is, the modifications made after posting to address the concerns raised by other editors are the cause of them supporting closing. FOARP (talk) 13:13, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Yes I know that, that is what I was referring to. And no it does not say "that is why they support the close", it is response to a suggestion to re-structure it. Maybe you need to start AGF?Slatersteven (talk) 13:20, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

They also stated that their was comment was "with the grounds for closure". Can we stop playing this silly game? All the things that were objected to above were changed within hours of the proposal being posted and yet no-one withdrew their closure-proposal, and now the latest grounds for closure are that changes were made. I really don't see how this closure can be justified. This is a clear abuse of process just directed to shutting down debate. FOARP (talk) 13:56, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

• Do not close I don't believe this is non-neutral as the mover of this motion asserts. To me it looks like the RFC proposer is just outlining the common pro and con arguments that can/will be made but has included spaces beneath each one for people to include their pro/con arguments if he has omitted them before the opening of the RFC !vote. I would support keeping this open and running the RFC as proposed because this will be a intense discussion and it seems only fair that everyone can view all arguments in summary form. The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 13:51, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

• Procedural close - for the reasons I've already given. Martinevans123 (talk) 17:40, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Comments

Ownership of the Daily Mail

• Re "...two complaints were upheld against Associated, the owners of the Daily Mail", The DM is owned by Daily Mail and General Trust. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 14:14, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

"DMG Media, formerly Associated Newspapers, is a national newspaper and website publisher in the UK. It is a subsidiary of DMGT." FOARP (talk) 14:27, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

Ah, in that case I suggest changing "Associated" to "DMG Media" above. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 14:30, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

Overturning consensus is a "nuclear option"

• The nuclear option of blowing prior consensus-up seems extreme, when what it seems your arguments point to is refining the editing guidance. Because blowing the consensus up entirely is not going to lead to less arguments about this source. Alanscottwalker (talk) 16:10, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

I think we agree that there should not be no guidance on the DM after this RfC closes. The DM will still be a tabloid newspaper and under similar guidance to other tabloid newspapers. It just won't be the subject of an unjustified and unhelpful automatically-enforced ban. Getting to that point requires overturning the previous consensus FOARP (talk) 16:17, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

Who is we? At any rate, your (singular) desire for no guidance actually makes little sense, as a matter of practice. It actually seems anti-consensus, because your desire seems to want to return to the days of multiple fights over this source, and it doesn't change the earlier practice of regularly deprecating this source. Alanscottwalker (talk) 17:31, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

For certain highly restricted values of "we". Guy (Help!) 22:24, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

Umm, I think you misread my comment. “We” means me and you and I was stating that I at least thought we were in agreement that there should be guidance. This proposal is simply that the blanket, automatic filtering that takes place now be ended. The DM will then just be treated like every other tabloid newspaper is at present. FOARP (talk) 17:44, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

"This proposal is simply that the blanket, automatic filtering that takes place now be ended." As written, this is not a proposal to simply remove the edit filter. The proposal is to overturn the entire 2017 RfC which would include the general prohibition on using it as a source. –dlthewave ☎ 18:31, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

Well, it's probably best you not try to speak for me. You say it is a tabloid, what do you mean by that besides it being generally unreliable. Alanscottwalker (talk) 17:55, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

I'm not trying to speak for you, merely understand your position. Hence my stating "I think....". I don't think Tabloids are generally unreliable as I don't think the evidence exists to substantiate that (anecdotes do not count). I do think great care should be taken when using them as sources for BLP or controversial subjects and the guidance should reflect that. Automatic deletion of the kind practically mandated by the present ban is unhelpful, unwelcoming to new editors, unbalanced since of the UK papers it is only applied to the DM, and censorious. FOARP (talk) 08:51, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Re: "...unbalanced since of the UK papers it is only applied to the DM", show me evidence that any other UK newspaper does what The Daily Mail does, which includes:

• Completely fabricating direct quotes
• Photoshopping news photographs
• Stealing work from lesser-known publications, changing a few things to make the story more salacious, and publishing the resulting copyright violation under its own byline.

That last one is, by itself, reason to never allow The Daily mail as a source. And despite me asking over a dozen "all UK papers do that!" Daily Mail fanboys for evidence that any other UK paper does that, they have never given me am example -- and neither will you (Please prove me wrong with a documented example).

This last one was documented at [ https://gizmodo.com/that-viral-story-about-a-japanese-man-crushed-to-death-1792986533 ] several other examples are documented at [ http://tktk.gawker.com/my-year-ripping-off-the-web-with-the-daily-mail-online-1689453286 ].

Key quotes:

"The Daily Mail seems to have taken a sad story of a man’s death in Japan and added a few lies to make it more sensational."

"The Daily Mail story doesn’t link out to Nikkan Spa, or acknowledge at all where its information came from. The average reader would assume that all the information presented in the Daily Mail story was collected by the Daily Mail alone. It appears that nothing in the Daily Mail’s version contains original reporting, aside from the sensationalist errors that it introduced.:

Despite me asking over a dozen "all UK papers do that!" Daily Mail fanboys for evidence that any other UK paper does that, they have never given me a single example. I also searched for one, but only found more examples of The Daily Mail doing it.

Even if The Daily Mail had no other problems as a source, this alone would prevent us from ever using it as a source. We don't link to any sources that we know have a high probability of being copyright violations. --Guy Macon (talk) 15:53, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Every major paper has had instances where stories have been fabricated (see Jayson Blair and Stephen Glass for examples in publications general considered reliable). Anecdotes cannot support a general finding. Only statistical evidence can do this, and the evidence form IPSOS is that the DM is not remarkable in terms of the complaints against it that are upheld. FOARP (talk) 16:06, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Evasion noted. You have, as expected, failed to provide any examples of any papers doing what I documented The Daily Mail as doing. The examples you gave were both of individual reporters plagiarizing and fabricating and being fired for it when the publications they worked for found out about it. The Daily Mail tells their reporters to plagiarize and fabricate. --Guy Macon (talk) 16:28, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Guy Macon you might try and avoid the ad hominem "Daily Mail fanboys" to try and discredit those who do not agree with you. I for one detest the Daily Mail but I do not agree with its ban for objective reasons and I am not sure that there are many who have commented that have expressed any support for the paper. It is similar to those that treated me as "a warmongering fascist" because I was an army officer I would reply that I was not one but I was willing to fight and die to defend their right to call me one. There is no objective reason to ban the DM even if I hate it so I defend the right to use it as a source. Dom from Paris (talk) 16:34, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

And just to be clear I am a remainer (I live and work in France) and the DM did me a lot of personal damage when they supported the Brexit. Dom from Paris (talk) 16:37, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

And that is why some of us said this RFC was broken, that horse has long since bolted.Slatersteven (talk) 16:39, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

I think we have to many "ye...but" votes. Can we please either vote yes or no? I would not object to another discussion about modifying the results of the RFC, but this is not it.Slatersteven (talk) 16:37, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

There was also the Nightstalker case involving The Times, which involved a reporter hacking into the emails of an anonymous blogger, allegedly with the sanction of his superior, and, infamously, The Mirror's fabrication of photos of British soldiers abusing detainees in Iraq. The Times is considered an RS, The Mirror is not considered generally unreliable. But all of these are still, only anecdotes, and not statistical evidence of the kind required to substantiate a finding of general unreliability - for that we have the IPSOS statistics of complaints upheld that do not show the DM to be remarkably worse than any other UK publication.

Finally, can you please lay off the "Daily Mail fanboys" talk? I personally do not like the DM. I think that the 2017 RfC was very poorly reasoned and politically motivated, and has resulted in harm to the Wiki project. FOARP (talk) 16:39, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Not all editors who disagree with the ban are daily mail fanboys, but all daily mail fanboys disagree with the ban. The way to tell them apart is that the first group posts thoughtful objections based on evidence and reason, while the second group just makes shit up and throws it against the wall hoping some of it will stick. Disagreeing with me is fine. Claiming that other papers do stuff like this[39][40] without providing any evidence is not. --Guy Macon (talk) 16:48, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Can we keep it polite please?Slatersteven (talk) 16:50, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Agree with Slatersteven. Swearing and insults are not the hallmark of informed debate. I've already provided an example of another UK newspaper fabricating pictures of British soldiers abusing detainees - however there is no consensus against use of the Daily Mirror, because to make a finding of general unreliability requires more than anecdotal evidence. FOARP (talk) 16:55, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Stick It Up Your Punter!: The Uncut Story of the Sun Newspaper mentions a number of similar episodes: the paper scooped its sompetitors with a report that the UK had successfully recaptured South Georgia Island, although it had not happened yet and Liverpool fans were falsely reported as urinating on people's lawns. A person held in a Greek prison wore a Mirror T-shirt during his imprisonment and thanked the Mirror because it had helped him get released. The Sun changed the story so that the man thanked the Sun and replaced the logo of the Mirror in a picture of the man wearing the T-shirt with their own. The owners of the Sun also own Sky, Fox, the Times and the Wall Street Journal. TFD (talk) 14:57, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

MSNBC, the New York Times, the Associated Press, and CBS all ran the fakenews story that Bernie Sanders' supporters had thrown chairs at the Nevada Democratic Convention, according to Snopes.[41] The reporter who fabricated the story was fired, but mainstream media continued to report the story as fact. The Washington Post promoted the fakenews story that a picture of Bernie Sanders was actually a picture of Bruce Rappaport. The New York Times Judith Miller pushed the fakenews story that Iraq had WMDs, helping to build the case for a war that would lead to hundreds of thousands of deaths and cost trillions of dollars. TFD (talk) 15:36, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

Most of the "falsehoods" attributed to the DM concern matters that WP has no reason to cover anyway! If they dress up 'human interest' stories cloned from half-way across the globe - what bearing does that have on us? Most of the UK tabloids are crap, they trivialise and write to a 'soap opera' narrative, but is there any reason to believe that they are more factually wrong about topics that WP should actually be covering? The DM - and all the UK tabloids are likely to give partisan, trivialised, contentiously phrased accounts of many news stories - but is there any reason to believe that the core facts of their coverage are more likely to be false? The tabloids are all bullies - but clever ones, who know who is likely to be able to fight back and what is likely to cause them to get "egg on their face". They sometimes make up - or falsely present the stories of the weak and are pretty despicable, but no one has offered any evidence that this affects topics that WP should be covering. I broadly agree with FOARP and others - general guidelines about the use of "tabloids" - especially for BLPs, would be more useful than 'banning' individual ones on a - seemingly - arbitary basis. Pincrete (talk) 19:30, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

Re: "Most of the 'falsehoods' attributed to the DM concern matters that WP has no reason to cover anyway", not true. For example, The Daily Mail fabricated a news report on the end of the Amanda Knox trial, publishing a report with the headline "Guilty: Amanda Knox looks stunned as appeal against murder conviction is rejected". The Daily Mail had two news reports prewritten -- one for each possible outcome -- and accidentally published the wrong one. They quickly replaced it with the other one. Now before anyone complains, making such a mistake wouldn't be objectionable if that's all The Daily Mail did.

Here is the problem (and despite me asking again and again nobody has provided any examples of any other tabloid doing this); the news report contained this gem:

"As Knox realised the enormity of what Judge Hellman was saying, she sank into her chair sobbing uncontrollably while her family and friends hugged each other in tears. A few feet away, Meredith’s mother, Arline, her sister Stephanie and brother Lyle, who had flown in especially for the verdict, remained expressionless, staring straight ahead, glancing over just once at the distraught Knox family. Prosecutors were delighted with the verdict and said that 'justice has been done' although they said 'on a human factor it was sad two young people would be spending years in jail'. Following the verdict, Knox and Sollecito were taken out of court escorted by prison guards and into a waiting van which took her back to her cell at Capanne jail near Perugia and him to Terni jail, 60 miles away. Both will be put on a suicide watch for the next few days as psychological assessments are made on each of them but this is usual practice for long-term prisoners."

If Knox had actually been found guilty, would anyone using the Daily Mail account as a source on Wikipedia have noticed that all those details and direct quotes were totally fabricated? You can repeat the "all tabloids are equally bad" claim all you want (it is, after all, one of The Daily Mail's talking point that they keep trotting out when criticized), but can you show me an example of. say, the Sun fabricating an entire story about a major news event like that? --Guy Macon (talk) 20:22, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

@Guy Macon: How many of those details really sound fabricated? The tears and the glance, technically yes -- that's your leader. But it was a good guess and it can be argued that the story was a draft meant to be checked against the facts before publication (including, of course, which way the verdict went!) and that would have been fixed if need be. The reporter probably spent a very long time watching those people and knew how they tended to act about these things during the trial. The prosecutors might have said that this is what they would say if the verdict went that way -- you don't know they didn't. The detail of the van and the jail and the suicide watch was almost surely planned in advance so that there's nothing wrong there.

Now I don't know, I'm not trying to prove, that the story wasn't fabricated. But here you stand brandishing WP:BLP while you accuse a specific writer of a specific story of serious professional misconduct and try to damage the viability of his or her employer based on that, something which is the strongest possible attack you can make against a person from Wikipedia, based on how you want to read a quote that wasn't meant to be published. And that's bullshit, just like the policy against Daily Mail. Wnt (talk) 16:25, 29 December 2018 (UTC)

what they claim to be an eyewitness account by a reporter within seconds of the event happening -- far too little time for even the fastest typist to actually write the article. And no, they don't come back a few minutes later and update the article with what actually happened.

By the way, it wasn't me me who found The Daily Mail of professional misconduct. It was the UK Press Complaints Commission. You can read the decision here. --Guy Macon (talk) 00:23, 30 December 2018 (UTC)

It should be noted that overturning a consensus, resulting from a parochial discussion that had not been advertised at the Central Discussion template, is certainly not "nuclear". Concerning former ArbCom member @Nuclear Warfare:, who may or may not be related to ArbCom member @Gorilla Warfare:, it does not appear to me necessary to engage in such hyperbole. Substantive comment from these two "Wiki-insiders" is welcome. — 🍣 SashiRolls ^{t · c} 22:34, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

Discussion about evidence needed to show a positive effect of the ban per WP:CREEP

Where's the evidence? You know, I think it might be helpful if those editors in favour of keeping the ban could present evidence of anything positive coming from it. It's been in place almost two years now. It's a big, big change to permanently ban an entire publication, published daily for 122 years. Where is the evidence that this has had a positive effect? Thus far the only person who did this did so in the discussion about the Sun, but what they said was simply that it made removing DM references easier - but the response to this was to ask whether they had been removing references that actually needed removing to improve Wiki, or just searching for DM references and taking them out because they were DM references (a behaviour that I and other editors have observed)? No answer was forthcoming. I suppose we could also include the assertion that having the ban prevents discussions about the Daily Mail taking place. Quite obviously this is not true. Even excluding the present discussion, the DM ban has instead led to a wave of subsequent ban proposals based on it, in each of which the topic of the Daily Mail comes up. Are there any actual positive effects that have come form this ban? If not, how does this ban pass WP:CREEP?

Hard to say, as it is not used anymore. So we cannot say what it should have been used for. But if we look at other sources that are not considered RS, and the number of fights that occur at pages like SPLC or Russian interference in the US elections over sourcing then it might well have had a positive effect in keeping down arguments about "well we say she did X, the DM said it and it is RS". Tellingly even many of the yes votes acknowledge it is no good for BLP's (and others yes votes have expressed other concerns, they are hardly ringing endorsements).Slatersteven (talk) 09:38, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

Where's the evidence?

Where's the relevance of that question? Answer: nowhere. It's not anybody's responsibility to jump through your rhetorical hoops. --Calton | Talk 09:57, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

Yes, god forbid that anyone should have to actually justify the banning of a newspaper and show why it has been worthwhile. It's not like we have a policy that says that instructions have to have a "real, positive effect" to be justifiable. The ban was justified by the effect it was supposed to have. There is no evidence, or at least non produced thus far, that it actually had any significant, positive, effect.

If the drastic step of banning a newspaper was justified per WP:CREEP then there would by now - nearly two years on - be plentiful evidence of the positive effect, since a drastic action can only be justified by a equivalently drastic gain. Again: Where's the evidence? FOARP (talk) 11:00, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

Define "positive affect", it has after all be removed form a number of articles where its presence was felt to be detrimental, is that not positive.Slatersteven (talk) 13:00, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

And many others where its effect was negative (including articles that were then put up for AfD because e.g., one of the two supporting references was a DM reference). A positive effect would be one that made Wiki a better place. Simply saying "my positive effect is less DM references" assumes that "less DM references" is in and of itself a good, and not simply the effect of editors robotically removing DM references without even looking at the article or the reference - I've seen this myself when one (amongst 2-3) references supporting a particular statement of fact was removed after I re-edited an old sentence by an editor who said simply "rm non-RS". In what way is that time well spent? Yet the 2017 RfC explicitly encouraged editors to go and do this. FOARP (talk) 13:14, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

Have they, give an example of one article where the effect was detrimental (not where you were required to find a better source, or alternative source (that was the explicit purposes of the RFC, to force people to use better sources)) one where a vital piece of information had to be removed.Slatersteven (talk) 13:20, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

You've got the burden of proof the wrong way round: The ban itself has to show a "real, positive effect" per policy. Lack of such an effect means it should be removed. There is no requirement that it have a negative effect to be removed - just that it should lack a positive effect and therefore be a useless ban, since useless bans are in and of themselves a negative.

However, strictly for the sake of argument, it has already been shown that it has a negative effect of exactly the kind you've asked about in the arguments above at point 4). It wouldn't matter if it hadn't had this effect though: the mere absence of a "real, positive effect" is sufficient. FOARP (talk) 13:31, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

How exactly would you gather evidence that the ban shows a "real, positive effect" without removing it and seeing what happens? The "real, positive effect" is that unreliable or copyright infringing information is not posted? Martinevans123 (talk) 13:36, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

The supporters of the 2017 RfC believed that it would have a positive effect. That effect - whatever it was supposed to be - should be a "real, positive effect" per WP:CREEP, and specifically one that required a ban to achieve it and which outweighed the negative effect of what it did (i.e., closing off the entire corpus of a daily publication with 122 years of history). Are inaccuracy or copyvio problems less now? Are there fewer RfCs? Even RfCs in which the DM is discussed? Clearly not - there's three RfCs open on this page right now in which the DM ban is referenced.

So, again: Where's the evidence? FOARP (talk) 13:44, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

Well the DM ones are yes, you have said it is used less. As to RFC's, why are they here?Slatersteven (talk) 13:47, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

They are here because the topic of the Daily Mail did not magically disappear as a result of an RfC. They are here because of the problems that the 2017 RfC caused. So again: Where's the evidence of a "real, positive effect"? Wiki policy says there should be one otherwise this is pure WP:CREEP. Since the ban was drastic and carried a significant negative effect as it involved cutting off a major body of work, the benefit should be significant and thus easy to show evidence of, but there is no such evidence. FOARP (talk) 13:54, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

Ignoring "but we no longer use it as a source for contentious or dubious information" does not make it go away, what is the positive effect. These RFCs are here because some people will not drop the stick about this. This is exactly why the RFC was launched, and why it was put into effect. The amount of time wasted on opposing its use for every blt of tittle tattle and dishonesty some user tried to include (usually on a BLPs but not always). All we now have is the odd (say two or three a year) RFC here, rather then one or two a day on random talk pages.Slatersteven (talk) 14:03, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

If it is only 2-3 a year, then why are there three here right now? And as for BLP/controversial content, there was already guidance not to use tabloid papers - papers which are not subject to this ban - for BLP unless necessary. Simply stating "there are less references to the DM and that's my positive effect" just assumes that less references are a good in and of themselves, but since the removal of DM references is being done robotically and without thought, in relation to non-controversial/non-BLP subject matter, then how is this a benefit? FOARP (talk) 14:13, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

because this is one of the two or three? A misapplication of the RFC result is not a reason to overturn it, but to better enforce it. There may well have been guidance, it did not stop it being used (or the arguments over its use), this (apart form the odd RFC) has stopped it. And it is not a question of less sources, but less poor quality ones, anything that reduced the overlreliance on (what ever supporters seem to accept) are hardly top line sources is a net benefit.Slatersteven (talk) 14:19, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

This is one of the 2-3 on this page, because the 2017 RfC is being used as justification to impose the same ban on the Sun and other newspapers. The thought of reopening it probably wouldn't have even occurred to me and the other supporters of the proposal if it wasn't continually being used that way, since using it that way requires begs the question of whether it was justified in the first place.

As for the RfC being misapplied - this is happening so widely that editors like me who didn't give a monkey's about the DM ban and didn't even know that it had happened are finding out about it from editors doing drive-by deletions of DM references on uncontroversial subject matter for no apparent reason. FOARP (talk) 14:32, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

My question was this: How exactly would you gather evidence that the ban shows a "real, positive effect" without removing it and seeing what happens?. Is that sufficiently clear? Thanks. Martinevans123 (talk) 14:35, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

It should be clear from evidence before/after the ban. Or we could remove the ban and see what happens - that is not a crazy suggestion since the situation pre-2017 was hardly intolerable, was it? FOARP (talk) 14:50, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

Well may be it should. It seems odd to me that, whenever a ban like this is imposed, the exact metrics and criteria, that will be used to demonstrate that it has provided a "real benefit", are not also agreed at the exact same time. Similarly, for how long measures should be taken to ensure all the effect is captured. I imagine that in most cases a law of diminishing returns would be shown - a dramatic benefit at first which will gradually plateau off. But it may depend on the measures chosen. Martinevans123 (talk) 15:09, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

An impact assessment was suggested as part of the 2017 RfC. Unfortunately it only went as far as analysing the number of DM references at that point. There was no real suggestion as to what the ban was supposed to achieve, other than simply discouraging citing DM references and encouraging editors to go and remove them, this being assumed a good thing in and of itself. FOARP (talk) 16:40, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for the info. Obviously a major flaw. If this current RfC is going ahead, and if it succeeds, criteria for jugding it's "success" will need to be agreed, won't they? Martinevans123 (talk) 10:25, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

It would be most desirable to agree on measurable criteria for success, except it would be challenging to prove any future improvement in said criteria really resulted from lifting the ban. Now the Foundation have started using AI and big data methods to measure such things, it would indeed be possible to track even relatively subjective improvements like the expected decrease in partisanship , the increase in the deliberative evaluation of sources or coverage of woman's interest topics. (Btw, the Foundation are currently interested in hearing from editors on ideas for this sort of measurement of community health and are even giving out grants, anyone interested could participate here ) But it would be impossible to draw a clear causal link with lifting the ban and any improvement with such indicators. We'd not be able to disentangle from the various other influences, both deliberate and unintended, internal to Wikipedia and external. Even if we had a sizeable improvement on all indicators, tabloid hating elitists would scream 'correlation does not imply causality', and in this case they'd be right to do so. FeydHuxtable (talk) 14:19, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

Of course there is the problem of observation, if people know they are being watched it will affect how they behave. In essecne this experiment would need to be blind.Slatersteven (talk) 10:43, 10 December 2018 (UTC)

Questions about standards of evidence and timing of a review

@David Gerard: @SemiHypercube: @GermanJoe: @Beyond My Ken: @Reyk: @Snowded: @Bodney: @Calton: @Davey2010: @Dweller: I hope you guys/girls don't mind me pinging you, please don't think it's badgering but you have all !voted with the same reason more or less "nothing has changed it's too early to judge". I am genuinely interested to know why you think nothing has changed, what are your criteria and how in 6 months or a year or 2 years or 10 years we are going to be able to judge if things have changed. What yardstick are we going to be able to use? What was the yardstick that was used in the first RFC to say it is generally unreliable and can we apply the same criteria to a new RFC? I understand that those supporting the ban (let's call a spade a spade) came in with maybe 10 or so exemples of cases where there were accuracy issues. This anecdotal evidence was the basis for the ban and not any objective figures or report. How are we supposed to judge if there has been a change if it is only on the basis of anecdotal evidence? Dom from Paris (talk) 13:32, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

As my words pretty clearly implied, presenting actual evidence would be a start. What do you have? For the rest, you appear to be wanting me to make your argument for you - David Gerard (talk) 13:49, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

The IPSOS complaints upheld data and the IPSOS/MORI and BBC polling showing the DM to be unremarkable both in terms of complaints upheld against it and trust amongst the general public (it comes middle of the table overall and first amongst tabloid publications in terms of trust) are both discussed above. FOARP (talk) 14:06, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

David Gerard I have already made my argument. You may not have seen my comments above but I pointed out above the percentage of upheld complaints for accuracy has gone down between 2015 and 2017 from 0.50% to 0.13%. There were 2 upheld complaints in both years (in 2016 2 for 1895 complaints = 0.11%). So I suppose we could say the number of complaints for accuracy rose from 402 to 1895 in 2016 and then dropped to 1465 in 2017 but as the percentage is so very small is that really important. Up to the end of August 2018 there has been 1 upheld complaint. This is the only yardstick that I know of that doesn't rely on anecdotal evidence. I may not have the same strict criteria as others because 0.13% or even 0.5% seems pretty small to me but this seems to be pretty concrete evidence of an improvement if that is what is needed. I'm more interested in knowing what it would take for you to consider that there has been a change from "worse-than-useless" to reliable. I am presuming that your !vote was based on something more objective than dislike for the paper so you could objectively change your mind if the right evidence was produced, I just wondered if you could say what that evidence could be. Dom from Paris (talk) 16:33, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

Hi guys, I hope you don't mind me breaking up the comments section into subject headings. I think this makes it easier to follow since there are different discussions happening on different parts of it, but if you want to revert or edit the headings that's fine. FOARP (talk) 14:03, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

Yes I do, we do not have to keep on refactoring this RFC.Slatersteven (talk) 14:04, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

As I said, I have no objection to reverting or amending, I merely thought it might be helpful. FOARP (talk) 14:08, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

I am not saying that creating lots of sub sections is not helpful, refactoring the RFC every day after people of posted is just annoying. It makes following what is going on that much harder.Slatersteven (talk) 14:15, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

OK Steve, I'm not proposing doing anything further. FOARP (talk) 14:23, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

The sun has a larger circulation then the Daily Mail.Slatersteven (talk) 17:54, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

Bludgeoning

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

WP:BLUDGEON says "Bludgeoning the process is where someone attempts to force their point of view by the sheer volume of comments, such as contradicting every viewpoint that is different from their own."

FOARP (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) Is, by my count, at 60 comments regarding The Daily Mail. (I am at 16, which is at least twice as many as were actually needed to answer questions, clarify factual issues, etc.) Many of FOARP's comments make the same few points over and over again.

Enough is enough. Anyone who is likely to be convinced by FOARP's arguments has already been convinced. I call for FOARP to take a voluntary time out, keeping in mind that the alternative is likely to be a trip to WP:ANI and a topic ban from discussing The Daily Mail for the next six months. --Guy Macon (talk) 22:34, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

• Seconded Walter Görlitz (talk) 22:55, 14 December 2018 (UTC)
• Thirded, though I'd make it twelve and someone else has to move any RFC on the subject. I am particularly unimpressed with the repeated midstream shuffling around of the RFC arrangement - David Gerard (talk) 23:50, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

• Let's see whether he volunteers to stop before deciding whether to ask for a six month or 12 month topic ban. Such a topic ban would forbid any edits made to any daily mail related RfC, but a ban from moving any RfC would be a separate request, and likely unneeded. --Guy Macon (talk) 02:36, 15 December 2018 (UTC)

• Oppose I dislike discussing users actions anywhere but their talk page or admin notice boards. Nor do I agree that warnings (however they are written) should be posted here.Slatersteven (talk) 15:36, 16 December 2018 (UTC)
• 60 edits does seem a little excessive, but not sure it was neccessary to go straight to threatening a trip to ANI. Especially as their contributions are almost all concise, well argued points. And always playing the ball not the man. We could do with more of that round here. FeydHuxtable (talk) 18:52, 16 December 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose per Slatersteven and FeydHuxtable. Pincrete (talk) 19:03, 16 December 2018 (UTC)
• Support - There is nothing more that FOARP can say that hasn't already been said. Any further excessive commentary is definitively bludgeoning.--WaltCip (talk) 21:06, 16 December 2018 (UTC)
• Comment / Oppose -- Members of the press should note the Original Poster's vote: "Kill it with fire" and their own "bludgeoning" (Wikipedia:WikiSpeak). It should also be noted by the press that Guy is a quintessential en.wp insider, particularly concerned with advancing a POV, concerning the Daily Mail. Cf. extensive off-wiki criticism, at, for example, Wikipedia Sucks. — 🍣 SashiRolls ^{t · c} 22:12, 16 December 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose Silencing others is rarely a great idea, and I have seen disputes where single posters get way more total edits than are present in this colloquy. We can certainly be civil, I trust. Collect (talk) 23:06, 16 December 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose There is an unfortunate trend lately to try silence people that one doesn't agree with. That is not how consensus is done. As long as the editor is lucid and not rude I see no reason to silence them. It is remarkably common to see editors jumping in and commenting in reply to every person who votes the other way than them on a given issue. It is disingenuous to single out one particular editor for this. Morgan Leigh | Talk 02:41, 17 December 2018 (UTC)
• No. I will not "voluntarily" do anything on the basis of this thread, and this thread asking that I should should therefore be closed.

60 edits, in an RfC with multiple different debates is not grounds for anything. It is worth noting that only 29 of my edits are in the survey section - a number comparable to the number of interventions by Guy Macon in the 2017 RfC in the same section. There was no attempt at procedurally closing the 2017 RfC before it even began, but I expect that if there had been he would have been just as active in that as I was in the procedural close discussion here. Guy is therefore accusing me of something which, judged by the same standard, he has also done. No evidence beyond the edit count is produced above, and this is insufficient since a long, multi-part discussion with many editors involved will necessarily involve a large number of comments without devolving into bludgeoning.

The refactoring of the RfC is discussed above. This was necessitated by the procedural close proposal and without it this discussion may not have gone ahead. However, my contribution to that was small - one edit to remove language that editors believed was derogatory with the consent of the poster, and one edit to divide the discussion section into topics.

Guy Macon's behaviour in this thread is a matter of record. It includes rude and aggressive language ("Kill it with fire", "DM fanboys [who] just [make] shit up") and bizarre accusations of having a secret agenda ("You aren't fooling anyone, you know. We have all figured out what you are on about and why"). If he wanted me to volunteer to do something he should have done so on my talk page. If he wants to take this to ANI he should do that directly and not try to engage in further attempts at intimidation and stifling debate in this RfC.

All that said, unless some new issue arises here I doubt I will be commenting much further on this RfC as the discussion was clearly winding down even as when I wrote my last comment on this page four days ago. FOARP (talk) 09:55, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

• Oppose- The danger with repeating yourself over and over, and replying to everyone with the same points over and over and over isn't that you could be banned. It's that people will stop listening to you. Reyk _YO! 10:14, 17 December 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose - I actually disagree with FOARP on this but his comments are all concise and well-argued. If this does make a trip to WP:ANI the OP may well see a WP:BOOMERANG headed their way. WCM_email 10:19, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

• Support This was always an ill-worded sledgehammer to crack an ill-defined nut. Much as I loathe the politics of the DM, and the behaviour of some of its staff, its coverage of the arts, for example, is often very good, and has material which is not available elsewhere. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:24, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

  Pigsonthewing, what exactly are you supporting here? This closed section is about the behavior of a participant, not the DM itself. --AntiCompositeNumber (talk) 13:55, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

  Meh. Wrong section, sorry. Struck. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 17:02, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

Bot for removing banned publications?

Seeing the number of publications that have started getting banned (& reading news from the good banshee User:Dysklyver who pointed out the 60 fake stories Der Spiegel published [42]), I wonder if anyone has created a bot to automate the process of banning publications & people which Wikipedians have deemed worthy of global shunning, and to automate removal of all the associated references &/or contributions.

I ask because there are still 26,542 references to the Daily Mail on Wikipedia [43] (down from 27,336 last quarter). Cf. the news (UK) section of the categorized Wikipedia Source survey I made for this noticeboard. Maybe there was one made for Breitbart? They've dropped to 14 references from 785 last quarter.— 🍣 SashiRolls ^{t · c} 22:18, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

This is not going to happen. The idea that Wikipedia has banned the Daily Mail (or any other publication) is a myth; there are sources that are strongly discouraged, but there's no publication that we ban outright as a source. Even something like The Onion or The Sunday Sport that's beyond any possible dispute an unreliable source is still a RS in Wikipedia's terms in some contexts (e.g. as a primary source for quotes from that publication). ‑ Iridescent 22:25, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

If that is true I suggest writing it clearly into the conclusion of this RfC. The Daily Mail is not banned, but contributors are asked to use discretion when they cite it, as they would with Der Speigel, the Daily Beast, the various Posts and Times', Suns and Stars, etc.... — 🍣 SashiRolls ^{t · c} 22:42, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

Because it's more nuanced than that, and bots don't do nuances. What happened with the Daily Mail wasn't an outright ban, but a consensus that the Mail shouldn't be a criterion in judging notability and shouldn't be used as a source for any assertion in articles, but that it can still be used as a primary source for itself when a statement or allegation made by the Mail is itself the topic of reliable, independent secondary sources, and it's deemed appropriate to link to the exact wording used by the Mail to allow people to see the full context, such things to be determined on a case-by-case basis (my emphasis). The exact wording and context of pro-Nazi propaganda back in Hurrah for the Blackshirts! days would be an obvious instance of an occasion when we'd potentially want to link readers to somewhere they could see the entire issue of that paper to judge for themselves whether quotes were being cherry-picked; for a somewhat less contentious example, see the penultimate paragraph of Hope (painting)#Later influence in which an allegation made by the Mail is itself the topic of academic writing covered in the article, and the article consequently links the Mail article in question as a service to the reader. ‑ Iridescent 08:51, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

Nope. Apart from the issue of "ban" vs. "strongly discouraged", we should not be removing the source that a piece of text was based on; either remove the text and source as possibly incorrect or replace the DM source with something better (neither of which, of course a bot can do). Galobtter (pingó mió) 09:05, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

Reading the replies that have been given to me by Galobtter and by Iridescent, I think I understand that the Daily Mail, while not banned, should not be used in any entry except when the Daily Mail itself is being referred to. As a result, I apparently accidentally violated this non-ban ban by rewriting a sentence that had been sourced to the Daily Mail, which was correct and verifiable, without looking for another source to replace the not-banned banned source here. This was due to the fact that I apparently did not understand the original wiki-bull approved of by maybe 50 people and disapproved of by a slightly smaller number. This wiki-bull again imposes the obligation on editors to remove any DM sources they find with others, in the 26,500 remaining cases. Not because the source is inaccurate, but because the Wiki-Bull pushed through by a few people was successful (without site-wide discussion).

In the example I gave of Ms. Nunes above, it would appear that the original investigative article can be left in the article only if it is directly quoted in wiki-text iff "it's deemed appropriate to link to the exact wording used by the Mail"? In the example of the George Galloway interview of Saddam Hussein, it must be removed and en.wp must effectively erase any trace of that interview having ever happened, as was done here without discussion while the page was full-protected.

Reasonable people might well, in my opinion, consider this to be an abuse of language and logic. It is for this reason that despite being no friend of far-right ideologies or tabloid journalism, I have to urge that this blanket not-ban ban be overturned as a terrible precedent of forcing wiki-contributors to execute a small but vocal group's political wishes.— 🍣 SashiRolls ^{t · c} 10:35, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

A related, but separate, question: banned sockpuppet Sagecandor (aka the CIRT) is the #1 and #2 author of Fake news website (roughly 80% of 140K). Should this unreliable source's 13,885 contributions be removed from Wikipedia or does an individual sockpuppet have more standing at en.wp than a national newspaper? — 🍣 SashiRolls ^{t · c} 12:20, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

• I find myself in complete agreement with SashiRolls. the removal of either the references or the material they support needs to be done with judgment. The RfC would do great harm if taken literally and blindly. DGG ( talk ) 05:30, 22 December 2018 (UTC)
• No bot, thanks. 1) it is not a ban, it is an edit filter asking for great care in using a publication that is not trying to be a WP:RS (see my comments above for how I come to this conclusion), 2) the edit filter is a labor-saving device, so editors don't have to tell editors who don't know to review the source carefully every time TDM is used, 3) in many cases, editors have reviewed the use of TDM carefully, so the removal isn't needed. Doing it by bot won't work, or necessarily make the encyclopedia better. Chris vLS (talk) 23:16, 27 December 2018 (UTC)

• No bots. This is already a bad idea, and editors are already being unreasonably robotic about it. Wnt (talk) 04:27, 30 December 2018 (UTC)
• neutral I am not sure a bot doing this will have to targeting to not remove all useages, even when it is policy compliant. But if such a bot could be created why not.Slatersteven (talk) 11:53, 30 December 2018 (UTC)
• No bots, agree with Chris vLS. My very best wishes (talk) 05:38, 3 January 2019 (UTC)

Does BLP apply to accusations against journalists when trying to get their newspaper banned on Wikipedia?

The kind of accusations we're seeing above are meant to have the real life consequence of having tens of thousands of Daily Mail references and accompanying traffic removed from Wikipedia. But I keep seeing debatable, subjective, and often unsourced allegations made against Daily Mail articles accusing the paper of misconduct that I find unconvincing. For example, User:Chrisvls above claims that

I found: a health/medical article that didn't exaggerate, it outright fabricated claims that the underlying studies did not claim. (Claimed the study proved ME is real and caused by the immune system, after decades of baffling experts [44], but the study simply showed that in HepC patients, certain immune responses may cause CFS like symptoms. [45])

Yet The Guardian published a very similar article [46] which treats ME/CFS as absolutely real, though it quoted the more moderate statement that "It adds to the growing weight of scientific evidence which indicates that the body’s immune system is playing an important role in the causation of CFS." and even the BBC article originally quoted as "refutation" says that "For the first time, we have shown that people who are prone to develop a CFS-like illness have an overactive immune system, both before and during a challenge to the immune system. " Wikipedia itself has an article on Controversies related to chronic fatigue syndrome, indicating that CFS has in the past been subject to debate about its medical nature. Now the Daily Mail's way of putting it may sound painfully immoderate in a professional scientific context, but when it comes to trying to explain the facts of life to an audience of regular people, it looks to me like they did a decent job, with no more exaggeration than is necessary to turn a convoluted sentence of mealymouth into something a lay person can wrap his head around. The truth is, the study makes a solid attempt to Certainly they did not fabricate. And there are half a dozen uses of "fabricate" in that section ... each as bogus as the next, as far as I know. A tiny handful of debatable incidents is used to tar the writers and the newspaper. And I mean, half the people promoting the ban say that it is all about BLP even when the argument to ban it is all about ignoring BLP! The vote here looks more like a lynch mob than a trial to me. Wnt (talk) 04:24, 30 December 2018 (UTC)

No, everyone makes mistakes. But we are not singling out a journalist, but the news organ they work for. An individual journalist may well be fine, but his work goes through a process before publishing, it is that process that is under doubt. As to a few debatable incidents, people have linked here to them actually being found guilty in the courts, that is not debatable.Slatersteven (talk) 15:41, 1 January 2019 (UTC)

Thanks, Wnt for taking at least one of my examples seriously. I hear what you are saying, the study and the RS sources treat ME is real, that's right. But the TDM story said that the point of the study -- the headline of the article -- is "ME is real and your body is to blame." But the study wasn't studying if it was real -- it didn't even really study people with ME. The Guardian and other sources don't even have a sentence like "ME is real" -- again the headline, sub-head and first sentence of the TDM article. Why? because there is no sentence anything like that in the underlying study. That's why I used "fabricate" -- perhaps that's too strong, but still, there is no sentence in that study that says "this study shows ME is real." Indeed, the Guardian has a great paragraph that, while possibly "mealymouthed" as you claim, discusses the limitations of the study: this was a small, not entirely realistic study that just opens the door to more research. As an encyclopedia, especially with complex scientific topics (see WP:MEDRS), we have to summarize in clear language, as you say, but we don't/can't/shouldn't take the liberties that TDM took in this case. This level of being "immoderate" is not what we do here. If an editor put "ME is real" in WP with that TDM article as the cite, the correct thing to do would be for us to remove it. Indeed, as you point out, there are controversies related to chronic fatigue syndrome, so a newspaper editor at a WP:V, WP:RS paper would immediately know that a single small study doesn't merit a "ME is real" headline. Thus, I am still comfortable saying that the editors at TDM are doing something different than what we are doing here. Who knows, maybe the "painfully immoderate" approach serves the public good by strongly advocating for taking ME seriously. But here at the encyclopedia, that's not our style or mission, so using TDM isn't really an option for us. As for my other examples, feel free to take a look, as others have -- as you can see, I'm happy to discuss them. Cheers. Chris vLS (talk) 21:48, 3 January 2019 (UTC)

I never suggested that Daily Mail was "MEDRS". If you're writing about immunology it's a terrible source, like anything else that isn't proper scientific literature. But if we had a long article about the cultural aspects of ME (which would be a perfectly legitimate article to write, even if it seems beyond present ambitions) then we could use a source like that, in conjunction with many others, to document changing attitudes toward ME, in this case in the conservative press. Now you can say that is close to the exception granted in the ban about using DM as a source about itself, but I am saying something different, namely that you can use it as a source to gauge public attitudes that go beyond its own pages. Now like most media, of course, it has an oligarchic role in altering such opinion on behalf of its master rather than merely reporting it, but one does not improve an oligarchy by pruning down the number of oligarchs. Wnt (talk) 13:11, 4 January 2019 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.