User talk:Therealhacker

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Disaclose.tv at List of fake news websites

Hello. I've just noticed that you've been a registered editor for almost two years now and your only contributions have been requests to remove Disclose.tv from the List of fake news websites. You've now made four of them, including three today. This suggests to me two things: 1) no-one has explained how sources become listed on such lists and 2) no-one has explained how the process of consensus editing works on this site.

On any list, we do not decide as editors whether the entity in question considers itself to be a member of the group contained in the list nor do we decide for ourselves whether we consider the entity to be a group member. We find reliable sources that substantiated that entity's inclusion or exclusion. This is because of the Core Content Policies: Neutral point of view, Verifiability, and No original research. Accepting a source's self-evaluation would be counter to the first two policies and using our own evaluation would be counter to the last. In the case of Disclose.tv we have references to both U.S. News & World Report and to PoliticiFact stating that Disclose.tv generates fake news. It does not matter to us whether that fake news is generated by paid staff or by site users, the result is the same. If Disclose.tv or its owners or its users wants those sources to withdraw their characterization of the site, they would need to talk to them. If Disclose.tv or its owners or its users wants those sources to be not considered reliable, they would need to start a discussion about that specifically either at Talk:List of fake news websites or at the Reliable Sources Noticeboard. Fair warning, neither is likely to be successful.

Which brings me to the second point, consensus. When this community finds a dispute between points of view or factual statements or procedures or anything else, the mechanism for making decisions is spelled out at WP:CONSENSUS. This happens literally on a 24/7/365 basis. There is no time of day or week or year where there are not ongoing discussions, disputes, disagreements, etc. about a whole host of things. The only way of cutting through this is that we frequently assess the general judgment of the editors who are concerned about the subject. This means that repeated requests by one person are not going to change a consensus. You would need to start a new discussion specifically about the inclusion of Disclose.tv at the list article talk page and let other editors add their opinions. You would also need to include in such a discussion not only the reasons you presented in your last request but your own sources to substantiate why Disclose.tv should not be considered a member of the list. An edit request is not going to be successful. I hope this helps. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 19:51, 22 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Many thanks for your reply and for helping me to understand how this works on Wikipedia. Frankly, all this is quite new to me. But in this case a) it's factually wrong to have them listed (otherwise Reddit, Twitter, and any other social media network should be listed) and b) the references listed on the list for Disclose.tv are outdated and moot.

Reference [18] links to an outdated article which references a website (namely http://www.fakenewswatch.com/) which does not even exists anymore.

Reference [42] links to an old PolitiFact article that contains an outdated list that is not updated anymore. PolitiFact themselves added "(This list was last updated Nov. 9, 2017, and is no longer updated.)" on that page https://www.politifact.com/article/2017/apr/20/politifacts-guide-fake-news-websites-and-what-they/

Are those considered reliable references?

Therealhacker (talk) 20:14, 22 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

That the sources are three or four years old is not enough to invalidate them. They would generally still be accepted as reliable sources for this site's standards. You would need other sources to challenge the two references given. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 21:16, 22 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]