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Is Wikidata a 'reliable source' ?

Wikidata (http://www.wikidata.org/) data is used in biographies and elsewhere (see Category:Templates using data from Wikidata for a complete list). It is my contention that wikidata is not a reliable source. My contention rests on two planks, either of which is enough to show wikidata is unreliable: (a) it's a publicly-editable wiki with no apparent quality control process (b) it has a history of bulk-incorporating and retaining unreliable data.

(a) Wikidata is a wiki; but rather than being text-centric, it's data-centric, containing typed fields in a manner comparable to a relational database or linked data rather than textual data comparable to a traditional encyclopaedia. Most of the data in wikidata is harvested from various languages wikipedias' and from other datasets, but data can also be edited by hand. I am unaware of any process for checking manual edits. Every fact in wikipedia can be associated with a reference, but many facts (maybe most, I'm not sure of stats) are not backed up by a reference. Where references are present, most of them are to the various language wikipedias (which are not reliable sources, as per en.wiki's definition), the reference (if any) used by the language wikipedia is not recorded, nor is the article / article version in which the reference might be (think William Shakespeare vs Sexuality of William Shakespeare), just the language of the wikipedia. That's like citing 'Encyclopaedia Britannica 1913' without page number or article name; just useless.

(b) One of Wikidata's most used datasets is a dataset called VIAF. VIAF is used by wikidata as a reference for the 'sex or gender' field many thousands of times (these being created semi-automatically). The VIAF field for sex is widely acknowledged to have had it's reliability poisoned (my blogpost on why http://opensourceexile.blogspot.co.nz/2014/07/adrian-pohl-wrote-some-excellent.html ). To this day, Wikidata appears to have no mechanism for attempting to alert users, including language wikipedias, to this unreliability (or removing the unreliable data).

'Answers to strawman arguments

  1. Wikidata is a WMF project. No WMF projects are considered reliable sources, except for the activities of the projects themselves.
  2. Wikidata is doing what it's designed to do. If Wikidata is doing what it's designed to do, then the flaws are in the design as well as the implementation.
  3. Which Wikidata entries are wrong? We'll fix them! This is a defence that attempts to shift the responsibility for reliability from wikidata onto en.wiki editors; it's categorically not our responsibility and highlights the fact that wikidata doesn't have internal mechanisms for finding and correcting errors.
  4. Data from wikidata is basic facts, nothing that can be controversial. Manipulation of even the basic biographical data (parent / child links, dates of birth or identity) can be used to imply sexual impropriety and/or other crimes.
  5. Everything is sourced. Everything might have been sourced, when wikidata was sync'd with whichever wikipedia the data was obtained from, but we appear to have no way of knowing. To the best of my knowledge the synchronisation process does not check for the sourcing of facts.

Potentially interested parties include @Pigsonthewing, Maximilianklein, and Docu:. I will shortly post a note to Wikidata notifying them of this discussion. Please be aware that Wikidata is a cross-language project; interested parties may not have English as a first language. Stuartyeates (talk) 08:37, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

  • I would say it's up to the design of your templates!

    You should design your templates to only accept statements that either are so simple, that you normally do not need sources (coordinates can normally be confirmed on any map for example), or is supported by good references. If the reference is "imported from:Minangkabau Wikipedia", then it is not a good source, and the template should not support the import of such statements from Wikidata.

    I, today, on Wikidata compare the information added by both bots and manual users with databases. I can confirm that both bots and carbon-bases users do a lot of mistakes. Often, they (both the botowners and manual users) add statements in subjects they are not at all familiar with. But this is true in any wiki, even here at enwp. -- 78.73.94.165 (talk) 09:51, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

  • Could you please point me to a template (any template) that's designed in such a way that the data being drawn from wikidata has an accompanying <ref>...</ref> (or similar) identifying the reliable source that data is sourced from? Stuartyeates (talk) 19:33, 25 March 2015 (UTC)
  • Wikidata is indeed a wmf project. As long as Wikipedia use this datas, they are also responsible for the accuracy of the datas ! And it is not a strawman, it is a feature ! I'll explain : Wikidata is unique in the Wikipedia ecosystem : it's a monolingual project whose datas are potentially used by many many other project, in different languages. This means that the responsability of data accuracy is shared beetween every Wikipedia (and more) contributors, so many more than just the enwiki community (which is already huge, but many people don't speak english). Wikidata's items, properties and policies are translated in a lot of languages.

    Assuming Wikidata is a choice every Wikipedia can make, and Imho SHOULD make.

    Some answers to your concerns :

    • there is efforts to build infoboxes with edit features that redirects to Wikidata instead of Wikipedia wikisource of articles. One correction will benefits every Wikipedia projects that made the choice to use Wikidata, so even english Wikipedia when a user who don't speak english adds datas or his wikipedia
    • Infoboxes can be coded to highlight unsourced statements in Wikidata, or to only show data that are provided with a source. This should encourage users to primarily add their datas to Wikidata instead of just on their WIkipedia, and to add source for this.
    • Changes on Wikidata item of an article shows on your watchlist if there is a change (there is an option in your preferences) ! so it's as easy to watch Wikidata as to watch your favorite topic's article.
    • On conclusion, wikidata is a tool to help us collaborate, and everyone will benefit to use it. I hope there is no question left :) (but if there is, please ask). TomT0m (talk) 11:25, 25 March 2015 (UTC)
  • Could you please point me to the discussion where we (as the en.wiki editor community) came to a consensus that this was a responsibility we wanted? Or is this an attempt to foist this responsibility on us without consensus? Stuartyeates (talk) 19:33, 25 March 2015 (UTC)
  • I want to strongly disagree to the claim above about fixing errors: "it's categorically not our responsibility and highlights the fact that wikidata doesn't have internal mechanisms for finding and correcting errors." As it is in all Wikimediaprojects, it is not the reponsibility of the Wikimedia Foundation to fix errors. There is nobody else out there than the users that make the errors and the users that fix it. So the users are responsible for errors and the users are responsible to fix problems. So there is no devine power in this universe to fix this problem except the users. On the other hand there are several internal mechanisms for finding and correcting errors. First of all is datatype. WD can link certain claims only to certain datatypes. So you can not enter "motherfucker" instead of a persons name. Strings can be defined and limited to certain characters or can be limited in the numbers of the characters. The next thing is to search for constraint violations. Values of a claim can be defined in a certain way and bots will check if the values meet the requirements. So the bot might find the problem and the user can see the problem and fix it. There might be some more things you are not aware of. WD has structured data, so it can be compared to many authority control databases by bots. So there can be bots to find errors. There is no way to make a bot to fix the birthdays within Wikipedia articles, but you can do it with Wikidata. In fact with Wikidata we have the possibility to do a consistency check between the different language versions and I found lots of inconsistencies to fix, so WD helps in findig and elimination errors in the Wikipedias. Next thing is mentioned allready: WD is multilingual (not monolingual), so users of all languages can contribute and benefit. So if a French user corrects a birthday on WD, it will not only help the frwiki, but also all other languages. The same with sources. This is a way to use Chinese or Japanese sources for the English Wikipedia without knowing any of these languages. There is also a way to handle several contradicting sources or outdated values. And believe me or not, Viaf or GND use Wikidata to fix some of their own problems too. So WD is not the source of the problem, but part of the solution to reduce errors in Wikipedia.--Giftzwerg 88 (talk) 13:21, 25 March 2015 (UTC)
  • WikiData is not a reliable source because it is a wiki. Current policy about citing wikis in the English Wikipedia indicates, for example, that I could not use the "John F. Kennedy" if I was editing the "Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis" and needed a source for the date of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis's first marriage. Allowing WikiData as a source would be a major policy change and would require a well-advertised discussion at the Verifiability policy talk page. Jc3s5h (talk) 13:58, 25 March 2015 (UTC)
    If you can provide a source to Wikipedia, you can also use it for Wikidata. There is no rule that requires to have different sources for the two articles. Everything in articles is as reliable as the cited sources, the same with Wikidata. So you might use the source you have in Wikipedia also on Wikidata and reuse this information for another article. It´s just one thing to remember: Wikipedia had more than ten years for development, Wikidata started about two years ago and sources were not enabled in the beginning, the same as articles were unsourced and without annotations in the beginning and lots of them are still today. There is a lot of work to do in sourcing, but it has to be done only once and for all languages at the same time, this makes the use of sources very effektive. The development of WD is in several steps: 1. Creating items and provide the links to the projecs. 2. Add labels, descriptions and aliases in every language. 3. Creating properties and use it on the items. 4. Find sources to prove the values of the properties. 5. Use values of WD in articles for infoboxes and templates. None of the steps is completed. So you must do all five steps when you want to take step 5. --Giftzwerg 88 (talk) 14:55, 25 March 2015 (UTC)
  • @Stuartyeates Your vision of Wikidata is not correct: if most of statements are not sourced and the large remaining part is sourced only with a language Wikipedia, some statements are sourced with all usual reference data of books, article, websites,... So the question is not to define is wikidata is reliable or not but if the data available on WD have some reference or not. You can do the same referencing work on WD that on WP: we have some structure to build sources like d:Help:Sources. The only selection to do is to filter the data display in WP according to the fact that the data have some reference on WD. And by using lua you can directly create the reference display on WP using data from articles of books. For example look at this WD item for a scientific article or this one for a book. Using that information you can create references in WD (look at d:Q556 under atomic number property to see the use of another item as reference) and in WP. WD is neutral from sources point of view: some statements have sources some not. So the objective is not to know if WD can be source, the objective is to be able to extract the reference data from WD and to display them in WP. Snipre (talk) 15:16, 25 March 2015 (UTC)
  • @Stuartyeates: It's code, one modification of the biography template will benefit all biographies. It is not a rock solid argument, just a circonstantial one. Ask the usual template coders suspects to work on this. Actually I don't know about infobox code architecture here but if it is done well it will be little more than modifying the codebase commons to all templates. Apart from that it's no harder to check for a valid reliable source on enwiki than directly on Wikidata. TomT0m (talk) 21:21, 25 March 2015 (UTC)
  • @TomT0m: My expectation is that none of the templates do the check described, because whenever I've checked wikidata doesn't have the sources to check against. As for 'it's code, it can be fixed' type arguments, they only hold weight before those templates get put in BLPs. Stuartyeates (talk) 21:33, 25 March 2015 (UTC)
  • @Stuartyeates: I don't know what to answer at that point. You just point on negative points and seem reluctant to change, not really cooperative. Are you opposed to Wikidata use at all or will you change your mind if those points are improved ? If it's the second option, you are at the wrong page to talk about this, go to templates enwiki projects. Wikidata has nethertheless a lot of efforts and is moving fast. It would be a shame to close that door. TomT0m (talk) 21:44, 25 March 2015 (UTC)
  • I'm a little puzzled by this discussion. Wikidata is not intended to be a "reliable source" (a source defined as one from which we can source statements that are made in an article to reliably, because they are known for fact checking, etc.). It is a place where you can store those statements which need to be sourced (as well as those statement's reliable sources). In other words, I would never expect to see a URL containing the text "wikidata.org" inside a <ref>...</ref>. I would expect to see it as part of the visible text of an infobox for which a source is provided. --Izno (talk) 17:38, 25 March 2015 (UTC)
    • I also don't really understand the gist of this discussion. Of course Wikidata isn't a reliable source. Who's claiming that it is? That doesn't mean that we should never use data from it though. Wikidata claims can have their own references to actual reliable sources. Templates that use Wikidata should either import such references or allow you to specify your own. Kaldari (talk) 22:09, 25 March 2015 (UTC)
    • Agreeing with Kaldari above. Maximilianklein (talk) 21:12, 31 March 2015 (UTC)
      • At the moment most wikidata statements do not have quality references. In the future they will. Any wikipedian who is interested in WMF projects having better sources is welcome to come and help. By the same token most of Wikipedia (the less visited articles) does not yet have good sources and this includes most of the existing infoboxes and nearly all the category assignments. Wikidata may be worse at the moment but it is catching up. At some point in the future I hope that any wikipedian interested in references to support information in a (wikidata based) infobox will be able to add those references to wikidata by just clicking on the infobox. There is also an idea to use wikidata info to help fill out source templates on wikipedia - if the details of a book or scientific paper are entered once they don't have to be entered again - though you will have to enter the chapter, verse, page and quotation info specific to the new reference. Smarter people than I will, no doubt think of other ways we can use info from and contribute info to Wikidata. We are only just beginning and the information is already good enough to use for some things. It is probably good enough now to be used for infoboxes in the 200 smallest wikipedias. As the quality of the info improves it can be used for more things. There are probably thousands of wikidata items today (out of millions of wikidata items) which have references good enough to be reliably used for infoboxes on english wikipedia. Next year there will be more. filceolaire (talk) 03:57, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

My reading of the above that the consensus is:

  1. that wikidata is not in itself a reliable source
  2. that facts sourced via wikidata need to have a reliable source accessed via a <ref/>s (or equivalent)
  3. wikidata has minted identifiers for reliable sources (and continues to do so)

What worries me is;

  1. to meet it's cross-wiki goals, wikidata needs a consensus of what a reliable source is for each of the language wikis and I see no attempt to achieve that consensus. The consensus needs to be reached prior to the building of most of the infrastructure, or risk the already-built technology driving the definition of 'reliable source' rather than the wikis. I'm particularly worried that a primarily Western / European group of editors may end up forcing their conceptualisation of a reliable source onto, for example, primarily oral cultures and their wikipedias. I may be missing this it the discussion is in language(s) I don't speak. It may surprise some western editors that some encyclopedia such as Te Ara, the national encyclopedia of New Zealand, no longer meets the strict western definition of an encyclopedia due conscious decisions around what counts as a suitable source, and it's likely that mi.wiki will follow their lead.
  2. as pointed out above, a wikidata entry for the reliable source is not enough, what is needed is a fully fledged bibliography system, but I see no attempt to achieve that. en.wiki has the {{cite}} infrastructure with many variants and dozens of fields, I can't imagine that a wikidata version can be less-complex given that it has to generate similar references and deal with both internationalisation/localisation issues as well as varying definitions of reliable source.

To the editors who thought that this noticeboard was not the correct place to discuss this: this is absolutely the correct noticeboard to discuss the reliability (or otherwise) of a source used in hundreds of thousands of articles in this wiki. Stuartyeates (talk) 00:03, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

Reliable sources in China

Today I've noticed the deletion of Popup Chinese last year - as a foreigner living in China I know that this website hosts the highest-profile English language news discussion podcast in China. It was deleted as "some of the sources are either self-published or weak on reliability" and "the sources are not particularly notable. Some of the sources are not particularly independent either" "The sources given in the article are either self published blogs, or commercially attached to Popup Chinese thus lacking independence" and ". What's left is a collection of blog posts as references"

These are the English language news sources in China:

  • 1. State-run English-language media - of generally poor quality, cut-down versions of national propoganda.
  • 2. Overseas Chinese media - generally pushing an agenda, no more reliable than state sources
  • 3. English-language blogs - much more reliable, often well-produced, well-researched and much more professional, but not acceptable as sources because "blogs" and 'self-published"
  • 4. Mainstream western media - only interested in the larger stories or ones they have a particular angle on.

Does anyone else see the problem here? The rules that work well enough for media in the US do not work in other countries. I recall a very famous Romanian singer having her page deleted for similar reasons. "blog" and "self-published" are simple phrases which hide a huge amount of diffence, and relying on these to assess how reliable a source is simply does not work in some countries. 阝工巳几千凹父工氐 (talk) 07:44, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

@Bienfuxia: Do remember the name of the Romanian singer by any chance?
Celia - https://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celia - 阝工巳几千凹父工氐 (talk) 15:03, 25 March 2015 (UTC)
@Bienfuxia: Thank you! I haven't yet seen the deletion discussion, but I can imagine that Romanian newspapers should have articles about her. These articles should be online since she was born in 1984. If the deletion discussion never considered the articles and these articles are uncovered, a new article can be written about her using these sources. WhisperToMe (talk) 16:31, 25 March 2015 (UTC)
Sure, but - do we have a Romanian-reading Wiki editor with an interest in pop culture who has access to newspaper databases and fully understands sourcing rules? The answer seems to be "no". 阝工巳几千凹父工氐 (talk) 05:26, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
1. Remember biased sources are allowed as reliable sources. Please review Wikipedia:Identifying_reliable_sources#Biased_or_opinionated_sources. This means that No. 2 are allowed, and No. 1 in many cases may also be allowed. (as long as they follow proper editorial procedures, biased sources are allowed)
2. If needed Wikipedians can do another sweep for sources on these topics. If reliable sources are found, a new article may be created without prior discussion unless sensitive BLP matters are involved.
WhisperToMe (talk) 14:19, 25 March 2015 (UTC)
My point here is that numbers 1 and 2 are sources which are actually unreliable IRL, but number 3 is reliable IRL. 阝工巳几千凹父工氐 (talk) 15:00, 25 March 2015 (UTC)
Are they unreliable in terms of editorial control/fact checking, or is this stated simply on the basis of being biased/opinionated? People deem sources unreliable because of the former, not the latter. If you know of cases of the former, it may be good to bring up examples of poor fact checking in specific publications to get them marked as unreliable. WhisperToMe (talk) 15:11, 25 March 2015 (UTC)
Mainly editorial control/fact checking, though breadth of coverage is also an issue. However, getting publications marked as 'unreliable' will only reduce the number of viable sources, which will make the problem worse if anything. 阝工巳几千凹父工氐 (talk) 05:26, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

Wikileaks source?

Article: Yōichi Masuzoe

Source: "ASO ELECTED PM; CABINET PICKS AIMED AT SOLIDIFYING LEADERSHIP". US Department of State. Retrieved 25 December 2013. "His book on welfare issues, his political commentary, and frequent television appearances have given him wide name recognition. Masuzoe is married without children. His second wife, Satsuki Katayama, is a first-term member of the LDP Lower House representing Shizuoka seventh district. Masuzoe's hobbies include horseback riding, golf, and skiing; he has a black belt in judo. He speaks excellent English and French, having been a visiting fellow at the University of Paris and the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva, and was an engaging interlocutor during the May 2008 G8 Labor and Employment Ministers' Meeting."

Source cited three times in article, once for apparently non-controversial list of his hobbies, but also for the statements Prior to entering politics, he became well known in Japan as a television commentator on political issues. and He is conversationally fluent in English and French.

I don't think the quotation provided is adequate for "conversationally fluent in French" (an obvious implication being that he cannot read or write French accurately, and no mention of English) when it actually says he "speaks excellent English and French". It also says he was known for his book on welfare issues, his political commentary, and his television appearances, which is not the same as "he became well known in Japan as a television commentator on political issues".

I would rewrite the problematic sentences based on what the source actually says, but I'm not sure about the source itself since I've never used Wikileaks and all the references to it I have heard in secondary media imply that the current source might be a self-published source.

Opinions?

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 12:46, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

The text is correct that he was a political commentator. And you are correct that the wording of the source doesn't exactly support that. So I'd say the answer is to find a better source. That should be easy as it's common knowledge. Likewise with the fluency in English and French. The hobbies might take more searching, but in general wikileaks is not a RS because it's a confidential cable with no vetting that we know of. Published sources are better. – Margin1522 (talk) 19:02, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

Rape stats help

The Rape in India article has some questionable sources:

In the lead ref #5: Niti Central [1]

In the lead ref #7: Messy Matters [2]

Regarding ref #8, I feel quite confident that this is taken out of a larger context and would be best not included. Thoughts on that?

Thanks for the help - you guys are great and I appreciate the work you do. Gandydancer (talk) 17:40, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

Ref #5 seems like RS as it has an editor. Ref #7 is a blog and not RS. The source in ref #8 is a reliable source and can be verified here. I agree though that it is mischaracterized on the article though. Those are official statistic and don't necessarily reflect actual rates of crime. That needs to be discussed on the article's talk page though. EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 17:54, 29 March 2015 (UTC)
Neither NitiCentral, nor Messy matters are appropriate sources for the article. As mentioned above, the latter is a personal blog; and the former is an opinion column in a even otherwise borderline (and highly POV) source. Note the disclaimer at the bottom:

Opinions expressed in this article are the author's personal opinions. Information, facts or opinions shared by the Author do not reflect the views of Niti Central and Niti Central is not responsible or liable for the same. The Author is responsible for accuracy, completeness, suitability and validity of any information in this article.

The Deviant Behavior reference seems fine in itself, although it would be better to cite the United Nations survey of crime report itself (I assume it is available online somewhere), since the latter is likely to provide more details and context. (Also second the points made by EvergreeFir in that regard) Abecedare (talk) 18:22, 29 March 2015 (UTC)
Good catch on that niti site caveat. Not rs. EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 19:17, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

The Raben Group - Are they able to use their website as main source

Help requested on this page which is currently advertising for a lobbying company - They are whitewashing facts. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Raben_Group Richie1921 (talk) 00:47, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

Suggest posting instead to WP:NPOVN or even WP:COIN. Also, as of right now the page is protected and can only be edited by administrators, which might help mitigate the problem you're seeing. TheBlueCanoe 02:28, 30 March 2015 (UTC)
we are working on it. new user is running all over the place instead of working slowly/calmly. we'll get there. Jytdog (talk) 22:33, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

Two items from GoFossilFree.org at Fossil fuel divestment

Whaddya'll think of these two items from GoFossilFree.org as RS? (I'm asking the RS question, not the NPOV question.)

  • EXAMPLE 1
"By September 2014, 837 institutions and individuals had committed to divest over $50 billion."
Sourced to "Rapid increase in institutions pulling money out of fossil fuels"
  • EXAMPLE 2
"==Economic risks of divestment from fossil fuels==
In 2013 the Aperio Group calculated using a multi-factor model that there is a 0.0002% theoretical return penalty in divesting from fossil fuel companies in the [[Russell 3000 Index]] stating: "the portfolio does become riskier, but by such a trivial amount that the impact is statistically irrelevant" (Patrick Geddes, Chief Investment Officer, Aperio Group)" That's the entire section under this heading, so far.
This is sourced to "Do the Investment Math: Building a Carbon-Free Portfolio", a paper from that Aperio Group that is posted at the GoFossilFree.Org website

Thanks for thoughts. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 13:45, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

GoFossilFree.org is an advocacy site, it's not a WP:RS. The Aperio Group document might be a WP:RS, but if it is, it's not apparent from this context. Stuartyeates (talk) 19:44, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

In my opinion, which I have stated before, the reliability of a paper depends on the reliability of the original author. It doesn't matter where a copy of the paper is hosted, unless there is reason to think that it's not a true copy. In this case, the best URL for the Aperio Group paper is the Aperio Group website. Unfortunately that paper has been updated and the current version doesn't contain the quoted statement. But the 2013 version of the paper did, and it was in the Wayback Machine. So I changed the URL from GoFossilFree.org to www.aperiogroup.com, via the Wayback Machine.
I did the same thing for the IEA report quoted in Rolling Stone. The Rolling Stone summary was accurate but it didn't cite the report so it couldn't be verified. So I located the report, found the page, and changed the URL to the IEA website instead of the Rolling Stone article.
As for the divestment totals report, that should also link to the original report, if possible. But the reliability of the report isn't affected because a copy is hosted at GoFossilFree.org. The copy is as reliable as the original was. – Margin1522 (talk) 20:46, 30 March 2015 (UTC)
Stuartyeates says that GoFossilFree is not reliable because it is an advocacy site. I disagree with that position, because I think that advocacy publishes can be excellent sources for biased positions and information which should be included in Wikipedia. NPOV means including all positions, not judging sources for neutrality or bias.
That said, GoFossilFree is not a reliable source because it makes no claim for integrity in publishing. It has no editorial process, does not name authors, makes no attempt to tie the research it presents with any research publications, and otherwise seeks to be sensation and removed from other publication in its sector. It would be appropriate to cite advocacy organizations in that sector but this one is low quality due to its neither making a claim of expertise nor tying its publication to other expertise. Blue Rasberry (talk) 20:55, 30 March 2015 (UTC)
Regardless of whether GoFossilFree is an RS, the article did not cite GoFossilFree. It cited someone else. – Margin1522 (talk) 21:47, 30 March 2015 (UTC)
Subsequent to my opening post, you made the wise bold edit to change Example 2's url from a paper hosted by GoFossilFree to the paper's original source, Asperio. Good idea, and that took care of Example 2. However, what about Example 1? That was and still is attributed to GoFossilFree, no? If you changed that too, please be more precise by using DIFFs. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 22:02, 30 March 2015 (UTC)
No, I hadn't done that, but I have now, so for these particular facts we can discuss the reliability of the original Arabella and Aperio papers instead of being distracted by the agenda of GoFossilFree, which cited the papers. – Margin1522 (talk) 22:53, 30 March 2015 (UTC)
Ah-ha! I had not realized, until now, that Example 1 was from anyone other than GoFossilFree. Thanks for pointing that out. I agree the article should point to the original sources. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 23:08, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

Tercer Sector magazine

Was wondering if this magazine would be a reliable source: http://issuu.com/tercersector/docs/pdf_final_rts_92— Preceding unsigned comment added by 187.189.141.42 (talk • contribs) 23:35, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

It's hard to tell since you can't physically see and look through the magazine, but it does look quite professional. However, a reliable source according to Wiki policy has three characteristics: the piece of work itself, the creator of the work, and the publisher of the work. As long as you can accurately identify all three of these things, then the magazine should be a reliable source. For more information, you can look to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Identifying_reliable_sources or WP: reliable. Cheers Comatmebro ~Come at me~ 03:02, 31 March 2015 (UTC)
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