User talk:The Four Deuces/Archives/2017/February

RfC about neoliberalism

Thank you for your input. I have rewritten the section. I hope you can engage in the discussion. Dryfee (talk) 20:14, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Fame at last

Not sure I wish to be cited defending the Mail in my national press. Although of course the point being made by both of us was more about the broader principles than the Mail per se ... (which I hope comes across) N-HH talk/edits 12:53, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, I had not seen that before. Maybe we can start an article about the Daily Mail ban? TFD (talk) 13:15, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

Notice of noticeboard discussion

There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you. Beyond My Ken (talk) 01:43, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

Reasonable question about Daily Mail

You asked, "Can anyone provide examples of where using Daily Mail articles has resulted in inaccurate information being presented in Wikipedia articles?" I've examined about 15 citations of it, and found one example where the Daily Mail got it wrong, and consequently Wikipedia got it wrong.

Buriganga River states "According to the Department of the Environment (DoE), 22,000 litres (5,800 US gal) of toxic waste are released into the river by the tanneries every day." For this it cites: Brady, Tara (24 March 2014). "Working themselves to death, the Bangladesh men and women tanning leather for a pittance in one of the world's top 30 most polluted locations". Daily Mail. Every day, the tanneries collectively dump 22,000 litres of toxic waste ... into the Buriganga ... according to the environment ministry.

Unfortunately the Daily Mail is off by a factor of 1000. The daily toxic discharge is 20,000–22,000 cubic meters (22,000,000 liters) according to a large number of sources, all of which seem to get their information from a 2001 Department of Environment report. So far I haven't located the report itself, but the cubic meter figure is in line with 1998 and 2001 articles in peer reviewed academic journals, using older data, that say 14,910 cu m and 15,800 cu m.

This example is a better illustration of why one should cite peer reviewed scientific papers rather than newspapers for scientific information than it is an indictment of the Daily Mail in particular. All sources sometimes make mistakes, and it's worth noting that the Daily Mail is not alone in flubbing the units. A Malaysian newspaper did the same, The Guardian said 22,000 "cubic" liters, and another newspaper reported the volume in "square" meters!

Nevertheless, it is an example where an error in the Daily Mail made it into Wikipedia and has persisted for nearly 3 years. Before the citation to the Daily Mail was added in response to a {{citation needed}}, Wikipedia's article had for years said 20,000 tonnes, which, if water, would be 20,000 cu m. So Wikipedia seems to have had it more-or-less right until a well-meaning editor used the Daily Mail to correct Wikipedia. --Worldbruce (talk) 07:41, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for replying. The figure was also used in the Daily Star[1] and was posted on Digital Journal as an article from Agence France-Presse (AFP).[2] The Daily Star however reported the figure as 21,000. So this appears to be an error in a wire service story that was repeated by multiple media. While I would fault the Daily Mail and the Daily Star though for not attributing their articles to the AFP, I would not fault them for not fact-checking the source. Of course it may be that the error was in the DOE report.

I agree that we should be using peer-reviewed sources for this type of information. News media are the only sources we have for what happened yesterday, but poor sources for anything else. I notice you have replaced Daily Mail cites with the Daily Star. While I am sure it means reliability, it appears to be even more sensational. "Human race descended from Martian ALIENS claims UFO boffin" for example has pictures of aliens, while the article merely says a SETI scientist says that the first microbes on Earth may have come from Mars. It then provides pictures of "Extraterrestrial objects spotted on the Moon and Mars."

TFD (talk) 17:23, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for sharing that piece from Daily Star (British newspaper). Now thet ah knows th' TRUTH ah gots t'improve me some Wikipedia!!! The replacement I've used for some Daily Mail cites is The Daily Star (Bangladesh), a completely unrelated broadsheet that is more or less The Times or The New York Times of Bangladesh (my area of focus), in the sense of being the most reputable and professional non-foreign news organization in the country. Of course they're still only reliable for things for which news media are usually reliable. --Worldbruce (talk) 02:06, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

Sorry, I should not have assumed. TFD (talk) 03:36, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

Keith Ellison

You posted some objections at the Keith Ellison talk page but they seem to have been based essentially on a misunderstanding (plus one item of material that I restored after you objected to removal). You've since gone on editing other articles and I'm wondering, does that mean (1) that you don't have any more objections to the latest edits from New York Times, or (2) that you're just collecting your thoughts and plan to post more objections later on? Centrify (f / k / a Factchecker_has_annoying_username) (talk) (contribs) 15:38, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

Or perhaps (3) you just planned to revert and walk away without discussion? Centrify (f / k / a Factchecker_has_annoying_username) (talk) (contribs) 17:03, 25 February 2017 (UTC)