I would like to revisit the question of whether the Southern Poverty Law Center is a reliable source for whether or not a group is a hate group.

I would rather not be sidetracked into a discussion of whether the SPLC is reliable on other topics. That discussion may be worth having, but this is not the place for it.

This may turn into an RfC later, but please don't jump the gun -- we need to make sure any RfC asks the right questions through prior discussion.

Related:

• Southern Poverty Law Center#Classifications and listings of hate groups
• Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 481#RFC: Southern Poverty Law Center
• List of organizations designated by the Southern Poverty Law Center as hate groups
• List of organizations designated by the Southern Poverty Law Center as anti-LGBTQ hate groups

My opinion is as follows:

If the SPLC is the only source for labeling a group as a hate group, Wikipedia should not make the claim on any page, attributed or not.

If reliable sources label a group as a hate group, Wikipedia should use those sources, and should not add the SPLC as an additional source.

In my opinion, the SPLC has a strong perverse incentive to label groups they politically disagree with as "hate" groups in order to solicit donations and advance their political agenda, even when there is no evidence behind the listing.

There exists no RS on whether the SPLC is a RS on hate groups, only opinions. The reader of the following list should consider the source and reliability of the source, and pay special attention to any verifiable facts contained in an otherwise unreliable source. That being said, here are the reasons why I came to the above conclusion:

• A Demagogic Bully: The Southern Poverty Law Center demonizes respectable political opponents as "hate groups" -- and keeps its coffers bulging. --City Journal
• The church of Morris Dees: How the Southern Poverty Law Center profits from intolerance. --Harpers(paywalled: using alternative link)
• King of Fearmongers. --Weekly Standard(dead link: using alternative link)
• Department of Defense Purges SPLC Information from its Training Material. --Capital Research
• Why Is the Southern Poverty Law Center Targeting Liberals? --The New York Times(paywalled:: Using alternative link)
• Pressured, the Southern Poverty Law Center Admits It Was Wrong --National Review
• Has a Civil Rights Stalwart Lost Its Way? --Politico
• Critics skewer SPLC hate group list --The Montgomery Adviser
• How Did Maajid Nawaz End Up on a List of 'Anti-Muslim Extremists'? --The Atlantic
• SPLC Won’t Label Antifa a Hate Group: To the SPLC, targeting conservatives and giving Antifa a pass is good for business. --Capital Research
• The Unlabelling of an 'Anti-Muslim Extremist' --The Atlantic
• Young Conservative Flagged on SPLC "Hatewatch" List. --Capital Research
• Hateful speech on hate groups. --The Mercury News
• The sad hysteria of the Southern Poverty Law Center --The Week
• The Intellectual Poverty of the Southern Poverty Law Center: Branding dissenters as haters undercuts its effectiveness. --Reason Magazine
• Southern Poverty Law Center Gets Creative to Label 'Hate Groups': Principled conservatives are lumped together with bigots. --Bloomberg(paywalled:: using alternative link)
• 'Shocked' Anti-Defamation League slaps FBI 'diss on hate crimes --Washington Examiner
• The Ivory Spires of the SPLC "Poverty Palace" --Capital Resarch Center
• The Southern Poverty Law Center Scam: A "hate group" list loved by the media is bogus. --Reason
• The Southern Poverty Business Model --Harpers
• The Hate Group That Incited the Middlebury Melee. --Real Clear Politics
• Poynter Institute's Retracted List of Fake News Sites Was Written by SPLC Podcast Producer: Media watchdogs should not outsource their fact-checking to the Southern Poverty Law Center. --Reason magazine
• Some People Love to Call Names --Philanthropy Roundtable

I would like to discuss one specific example which to me shows exactly why I believe that the Southern Poverty Law Center is not a reliable source for whether or not a group is a hate group.

Do they make any effort to check sources? Do they print a retraction or a correction when they are shown to have made an error?

Let's look at the sad case of the First Iowa Stormer Bookclub.

Start with this report from the Iowa City Press Citizen:[15]

Apparently, someone with the screen name "Concerned Troll" posted "The First Iowa Stormer Bookclub was a success!" on theDaily Stormer website, claiming that this "bookclub" met sometime in September 2016 at a unnamed restaurant somewhere in the Amana Colonies, Iowa. Based upon nothing more that that single post, the SPLC listed the Iowa town a "refuge of hate" and listed them as as "the home of the First Iowa Stormer Bookclub neo-Nazi group".

One small problem:The First Iowa Stormer Bookclub never existed. They never met. The restaurant was never named. The local police did a thorough investigation and found zero evidence for the meeting ever happening or or the group ever existing. Someone with the user name Concerned Troll posted something on the Daily Stormer website and that's all the "evidence" the SPLC needed.

The Des Moines Register contacted the SPLC, and Ryan Lenz, a senior investigative writer for the SPLC initially told them that claims by community and Iowa County leaders that no such groups exist in the town are wrong.

Then later, after there was a storm of controversy, the SPLC silently changed the claim to say that this imaginary hate group is "statewide", and later even that claim was silently deleted.

The SPLC still to this day refuses to provide any evidence other than the internet post by "Concerned Troll" to support the original or the revised claim.

The SPLC vigorously stood by its claim for a full year[16], ignoring all calls for any actual evidence, and only reluctantly revised the page to falsely claim that the nonexistent group exists on a statewide level.

When you make a claim without a shred of evidence[17] other than a post on a neo-nazi website by an anonymous user who is an admitted troll, and then stand by your claim for well over a year without providing a shred of evidence, andthen change the claim to another false claim, never publishing a retraction and never admitting that you were wrong, you no longer have a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy, as required to be considered a reliable source by Wikipedia. --Guy Macon (talk)14:07, 14 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

If SPLC is theonly source calling a group a hate group (or similar classification), and that that classification is not itself discussed in sources, then it seems to be an UNDUE issue of including the SPLC's mention, rather than trying to use questions around RS to try to justify inclusion or not.

Of course, if the SPLC's classification itself is the subject of coverage in sources though remains the only source actually calling a group a hate group, that is appropriate for discussion along the lines of the issues around the SPLC's classification. eg DUE is meet. And same when other RSes call a group a hate group, or where there at least some debate about whether a group is a hate group or note, then the SPLC classification also would be DUE. All these cases avoid trying to question SPCL's RS's nature, though obviously in all cases where used, we should have in-prose attribution and not assume wikivoice of the SPLC's classification.Masem (t)14:15, 14 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) I am pretty sure that we are already attributing SPLC everywhere it is used as a reference for hate groups. Few editors get that sort of thing wrong and if they do thier edits don't survive.WP:DUE says "Neutrality requires that mainspace articles and pages fairly represent all significant viewpoints that have been publishedby reliable sources, in proportion to the prominence of each viewpoint in those sources." You have to pass the "reliable source" hurdle before you even get to the "due weight" hurdle. We wouldn't reject a citation toInfowars because of DUE. We would reject it because of RS. And we wouldn't allow a citation to Infowars as an an additional, attributed reference even for material already covered by reliable sources. I am arguing that in the area of hate groups, we should treat the SPLC as an unreliable source, not as a reliable source that has been given undue weight. --Guy Macon (talk)15:16, 14 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I am arguing that in the area of hate groups, we should treat the SPLC as an unreliable source, not as a reliable source that has been given undue weight. If that is your contention, then at least for my part, I find your argument in support of it wholly unconvincing. A bunch of sources defending their political allies from serious charges with emotive or unsound arguments doesn't come anywhere near to making that case.ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPantsTell me all about it.15:28, 14 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

a bunch of sources defending their political allies […] with emotive or unsound arguments Bruh…have you read even one of the articles OP linked? Both contentions in your statement are manifestly incorrect, and several of the sources have a lot less controversy about their reliability than the SPLC. You can’t seriously believe thatThe Atlantic (a national mainstream publication, and leftist enough to platform some very edgy views from time to time) is going to have ulterior motives when it criticizes SPLC. When a very well-researchedPolitico article characterizes its actions the way that it does there, that is a serious matter.RadioactiveBoulevardier (talk)02:02, 17 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Nothing you've said or implied here is even remotely true, and there's evidence in this very discussion. Try harder, Bruh.ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPantsTell me all about it.15:18, 17 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

No, we are not attributing them everywhere. The RfC for this was very confusing, which was why I attempted to challenge the closure, but was unsuccessful. The status quo is we have to attribute their opinions and everything else is ??? uncertain, due to the lack of clarity in the last RfC's closure, which everyone seems to have interpreted differently. When I proposed actually enforcing said RfC closure, people became quite irate, so... But as is onwiki, we do not actually attribute them for most of what we cite to them, except aformentioned opinion statements, and it is unclear if we have to. Personally, I do not think we have to; the incidents you are discussing are not really convincing.PARAKANYAA (talk)23:05, 14 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think that the SPLC's list should be theonly source used to state in wikivoice that a certain group is a 'hate group'. I think it should be discussed on a case-by-case basis whether to state a group is 'designated as a hate group by the SPLC' on sole basis of inclusion on that list, with a preference towards exclusion.

In all cases, we should have multiple sources asserting that a group is a hate group before we state it in our voice, and in general, we should have at leasesome coverage of the SPLC's designation before we consider itWP:DUE for inclusion.

That being said, that list of sources above isn't the best. For example, theCity Journal piece is from 2017, and it states thatdiversity is universally promoted as a civic virtue which is an unequivocally false statement in 2025. I would even contend that it was an unequivocally false statement in 2017, as well, given that the demonization ofDEI in particular and diversity more generally by the political right in this country long predates that year, going back at least as far as the early days of the Obama administration. (It's arguable that it would be a false statement, no matter when it was made, because opposition to diversity has always existed, but I understand the CJ's statement to be in the context of mainstream American politics.)

Indeed, it looks like most of the sources you've cited are right-wing advocacy groups or right-leaning news orgs, at least two of which are 'no consensus on reliability' sources fromWP:RSP.

Digging further into it... One of the few non-right-wing sources you provided,The Mercury News is merely reposting a story from WaPo written by Dana Milbank, the 'extravagant contrarian', which implies without argument that it is ridiculous for the SPLC to label theFamily Research Council a hate group. Except that is an instance in which the SPLC's inclusion on the list is well-justified, covered in multiple reliable sources, and (while, perhaps, arguable), completely understandable to anyone who cares about LGBTQ issues. The FRC disseminates disinformation about LGBTQ people and issues, after all. In 1999, they claimed with a full chest that one of the primary goals of LGBTQ activists was toabolish all age of consent laws and to eventually recognize pedophiles as the 'prophets' of a new sexual order. At best, that is blatant bigotry, which is the same thing as 'hate' in this context.

While numerous criticisms of the FRC being included in the SPLC's list can be easily found, the objections raised never seem to extend beyond "this is a well-funded and powerful group, how dare you call them hateful!"

I'm not going to go into more detail about the list, because I do think some of those represent fair criticisms. But there's enough dubious sources and dubious claims within it that I think it could use a heavy-handed pruning. At the very least, providing some context about the source and nature of the critiques would be a good step.

To be clear, I stand by my opinion above. I don't think the SPLC should be our only source to establish whether a group is a hate group. I think we need either broad acceptance of the SPLC's designation in secondary sources, or multiple, independent sources asserting it.

But I would also advise you to trim down that list, and possibly to stop reading many of those outlets to get useful views on the SPLC. My opinion is based on my understanding of WP policy, and the argument presented here is far too weak to have had any impact on it.ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPantsTell me all about it.15:01, 14 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

"this is a well-funded and powerful group, how dare you call them hateful" Last I checked, you can't promote hatred and persecution in a society if you don't have some kind of funding and access to themass media which are supposed to promote yourpropaganda. Well-funded groups are destined to have more influence on the corporate media, regardless of who is their favoritescapegoat.Dimadick (talk)00:15, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Exactly. And it's wild to me that anyone would even defend the FRC. They've been pushing the blatantly falseand hateful claim that most pedophiles are members of the LGBTQ community for years and years. What is that, if not hateful?ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPantsTell me all about it.14:04, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I don't have an opinion about the main question yet (as I haven't investigated sufficiently), but a few points:

• That there is no public evidence other than one or more pseudonymous statements on the Daily Stormer's site ≠ "The First Iowa Stormer Bookclub never existed." The former makes the latter more likely but isn't determinative.
• It would help to be able to read what the SPLC actually wrote. Is there an archived copy of it somewhere? For example, the Iowa City Press Citizen says "The Amana Colonies is no longer designated as the home of the neo-Nazi group. The Southern Poverty Law Center had previously designated the historic settlement as the home of the Daily Stormer," but it's hard for me to believe that the SPLC referred to the Amana Colonies as "the home" of the Daily Stormer rather than "a home". (Is "the home" of the website the place where the people funding the website live? where the site is hosted? why would it even make sense to focus on the home of the site rather than the locations where supporters live? ...). Yes, this is picky, but if the Iowa City Press Citizen isn't careful about this, what other elements may they have gotten wrong?
• The Iowa City Press Citizen wrote that the SPLC said "it had confirmation that a group of individuals met sometime in September 2016 at a restaurant in the Amanas. A thread, originally posted on the Daily Stormer and since cached by Google, backed the claim." Google no longer makes their caches public, so there is no way to check that their cache, but if there was a thread in response to Concerned Troll's statement, and the thread mentioned a restaurant, then the public evidence wasn't limited to a single statement by one person, Concerned Troll. Also, if the SPLC did, in fact, have some independent confirmation about a meeting at a restaurant, it would be good to know more specifically what the SPLC itself said to the Iowa City Press Citizen, rather than just the latter's statement describing what the SPLC said.
• When I went to find a bit of info, I saw that you (Guy Macon), gave the sameexample in a thread 4 years ago. Do you have any other examples of what you consider serious problems with SPLC's reporting?FactOrOpinion (talk)15:16, 14 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed here. I'd take the "he said/she said" in regards to a single incident a website mentioned (that is apparently not even accessible) years ago with a huge, huge grain of salt.Lostsandwich (talk)19:00, 14 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

So I've poked around a bit more, andGuy Macon, I question some of your information. As best I can tell, here's a timeline of (some of) the relevant Daily Stormer posts:

In August 2017, one source, The Gazette,says "A cached page of The Daily Stormer's former website - which was taken down by the Go Daddy hosting service in the wake of the deadly rally - shows members planning the meeting about one year ago." Presumably The Gazette reviewed the cached copy.

• August 31, 2016: someone with an unspecified name posts on the Daily Stormer that "I'm going to be busy on weekends for a while, but let's do an East Iowa book club too." "Reply if you'd be down. CR [Cedar Rapids], IC [Iowa City], Davenport, Waterloo, etc ... The Amana Colonies might be a sweet place to meet. There is an awesome free shooting range on Amana road plus it is a historic German community.” (The Gazette)
• September 23, 2016: another person with an unspecified name writes that they're "down for the Amana Colonies. ... I would really like for this to happen, they have great food over there, plenty of outside space to chat.” (same source)

No other info is provided about the rest of the thread; perhaps it also included a suggestion for a book club elsewhere in Iowa, given the "too." Alternatively, that person could have been proposing more than one kind of gathering (again, "too").

• September 26, 2016: Concerned Troll posts “The First Iowa Stormer Bookclub was a success!” PJ Mediasays "Concerned Troll did not provide specific details about the visit, but went on to suggest a subsequent meeting in Des Moines." Presumably PJ Media also saw a cached copy of the page.

The Gazette also says "The Southern Poverty Law Center - which tracks hate groups - lists Amana as one of several locations in the nation for The Daily Stormer, a neo-Nazi hate group. ... [T]hat appears to be due to members deciding to meet there for a so-called book club. Ryan Lenz, a spokesman for the Southern Poverty Law Center, said that designation does not mean Amana is home to any actual neo-Nazis. ... 'We know people drive many, many miles - hundreds of miles - to sit with like-minded people.' While hate group activity increasingly has moved to cyberspace, Lenz said The Daily Stormer took the opposite approach in 2016 by calling for members and would-be members to attend 'book clubs” and meet one another. ... Once the center's researchers uncovered the cities where these meet ups were to take place, the cities were added to the map when it was updated this year. Lenz said it was impossible to know how many times the meetups took place." So it sounds like part of the problem is how SPLC and others interpret a given location being listed on the SPLC map, and whether SPLC explains this well.

Guy Macon, you said "Based upon nothing more that that single post, the SPLC listed the Iowa town a 'refuge of hate' and listed them as as 'the home of the First Iowa Stormer Bookclub neo-Nazi group'." Do you have a link to what the SPLC wrote? I think we should all be able to read it in full. Clearly it wasn't just one post. You also wrote "They never met." How do you know? "The restaurant was never named." How do you know? This sourcesays "The owner of the restaurant where The Daily Stormer club met says "people who promote hate are not welcome," so the local Fox channel knew the name of the restaurant; otherwise they couldn't have gotten a statement from the owner. You say "The local police did a thorough investigation and found zero evidence for the meeting ever happening or or the group ever existing." Please link to a copy of this police report. "Someone with the user name Concerned Troll posted something on the Daily Stormer website and that's all the "evidence" the SPLC needed." No, it seems like they were using more than the one post.FactOrOpinion (talk)21:31, 14 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The Local CBS2/FOX28 news station said (Convention and Visitors Bureau Executive Director David Rettig) "Rettig says he even called the county sheriff to see if there had ever been any reports of hate groups being active and was told no. He says the sheriff then contacted authorities in Des Moines to see if anything ever showed up on their radar and again the response was no."[18] The Des Moines Register wrote "Iowa County Sheriff Rob Rotter also has denounced the claim a hate group exists, stating there is no such neo-Nazi group in the county and called the claims 'irresponsible at best'"[19] Compared this we have exactly Zero sources other that the SPLC claiming that the group exists and the SPLC specificly listing one particular anon post on a Nazi discussion group as the reason they think it exists. Yes, we can speculate that other anonymous posts from Nazis (or one Nazi with multiple accounts) may have chimed in, but the SPLC, while defending their listing again and again for over a year, did not quote any other anonymous Nazis. There is no police report because there was nothing to report. There was nothing to report because nothing happened. Any further attempts to convince me that a group of individuals calling themselves the The First Iowa Stormer Bookclub met sometime in 2016 at a restaurant in the Amanas should be accompanied by a source other than the SPLC that makes that claim, or at the very least a source where the SPLC provides a shred of evidence other than anonymous posts on a Nazi message board. If the attempt to convince me lacks such sources, I will continue to ignore them. The belief that the group exists is, in my opinion, a matter of faith and not evidence. --Guy Macon (talk)03:15, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Why would local law enforcement know or care if a bunch of people held a book club? Are book clubs illegal?

They did not call themselves that as a group, it wasthe Daily Stormer. At no point did the SPLC claim that the "First Iowa Stormer Bookclub" was a group distinct from the Stormer, so we aren't arguing about that, and I don't know why you keep bringing it up.PARAKANYAA (talk)03:39, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

"the SPLC specificly listing one particular anon post on a Nazi discussion group as the reason they think it exists. ... the SPLC, while defending their listing again and again for over a year, did not quote any other anonymous Nazis." Please provide a source for that. All I found on the SPLCwebsite is that it was a local group identified as "Neo-Nazi, The Daily Stormer, Amana, Iowa," with nothing about the source of the information. As for "County Sheriff Rob Rotter also has denounced the claim a hate group exists, stating there is no such neo-Nazi group in the county," as best I can tell, a lot of this boils down to a misunderstanding of what an ID on the hate map means, even though I quoted it above. Here it is again:

Ryan Lenz, a spokesman for the Southern Poverty Law Center, said that designationdoes not mean Amana is home to any actual neo-Nazis. ... 'We know people drive many, many miles - hundreds of miles - to sit with like-minded people.' While hate group activity increasingly has moved to cyberspace, Lenz said The Daily Stormer took the opposite approach in 2016 by calling for members and would-be members to attend 'book clubs” and meet one another. ... Once the center's researchers uncovered the cities where these meet ups were to take place, the cities were added to the map when it was updated this year. (emphasis added)

So the SPLC wasn't claiming that there are any neo-Nazis living in Amana; all they were saying is that the Daily Stormer encouraged adherents to meet in person, and there was at least one meeting in Amana, and it may be that none of the people who attended lived in the county.

Re: "we have exactly Zero sources other that the SPLC claiming that the group exists," you clearly have the Daily Stormer site claiming that it existed at least to meet once, and perhaps to meet more than once (since PJ Media reported that Concerned Troll "went on to suggest a subsequent meeting in Des Moines"). As I also noted above, the local Fox station said "The owner of the restaurant where The Daily Stormer club met says 'people who promote hate are not welcome,' so they knew the name of the restaurant and claimed that the group met there. I'm not sure why you say "Any further attempts to convince me that a group of individuals calling themselves the The First Iowa Stormer Bookclub met sometime in 2016 at a restaurant in the Amanas should be accompanied by a source other than the SPLC that makes that claim," when I already provided you with the Fox source.

"There was nothing to report because nothing happened." So why did the local Fox station say that the group met? And why would you think that there would be anything to report about some people meeting / hanging out at a restaurant? The proclaimed intent of the book clubs was just to have people who posted to the Daily Stormer meet others who lived in the same general vicinity as them.FactOrOpinion (talk)04:16, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

BTW, as best I can tell, the sheriff did not investigate until a year later and no one in Amana was aware of the listing until the Unite the Right rally a year later, which is why all of the reporting is from August 2017, not the fall of 2016. Not sure why you'd expect an investigation a year later to turn anything up. BTW, in my experience, police do, in fact, write up a report even if they don't find anything, to record what was investigated and what investigative steps they took (e.g., who they questioned).FactOrOpinion (talk)14:06, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

i dont see much here beyond grumblings from conservative groups that a civil rights group finds that many folks with questionable beliefs belong to such groups.wp:attribute exists for this purpose andWp:publicfigure exists to state that we need multiple sources for any negative statement anyways.User:Bluethricecreamman(Talk·Contribs)15:28, 14 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

By dint of the fact that we always attribute SPLC (or at least, should do so, which is reflected in the RSP entry), we are clearly treating it as opinion and not fact (by NPOV'sAvoid stating facts as opinions, we should not make such attributions if we consider SPLC's opinions fact). The SPLC is a reliable source for their own opinion, and this can only be an issue with the amount of prominence we ought to give it. The level of reliability issues needed to argue a group is no longer reliable for their own opinion is far beyond people disagreeing in their own opinion pieces.Alpha3031 (t •c)16:04, 14 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

In every article I have seen, the SPLC's designation is attributed inline. For example, "According to SPLC, group x is a hate group." Since whether or not a group is a hate group is reported as a matter of opinion not fact, this is the incorrect noticeboard. It should be NPOVN.

In fact the SPLC is a reliable source of information about right-wing extremist groups. Unfortunately for them, a large number of right-wing columnists subscribe to at least one of the views they consider hate, which generates a lot of opposition in the right-wing echo chamber.

DescribingChristina Hoff Sommers as "giving a "mainstream and respectable face" to groups peddling "male supremacy"" (as stated in theReason article cited above) probably agrees with the conclusions of most subject experts. Of course, it offends some conservatives. But no one is suggested it be reported as a fact without inline citation.TFD (talk)01:03, 16 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

SPLC's reliability really should be deprecated, but that can be reserved for another discussion, for the purposes of this discussion, I'd say that both of the above opinion items are in fact valid and should be implemented. Thanks @Guy MaconIljhgtn (talk)20:41, 17 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Guy Macon, it looks like you're getting a lot of pushback, and I don't want to pile on but... I don't see that your opinion if implemented would be an improvement on our existing consensus.

You think thatIf the SPLC is the only source for labeling a group as a hate group, Wikipedia should not make the claim on any page, attributed or not. Currently,WP:SPLC says that "The organization's views, especially when labeling hate groups, should be attributed per WP:RSOPINION. Take care to ensure that content from the SPLC constitutes due weight in the article and conforms to the biographies of living persons policy."

If SPLC were the only source saying a group is a hate group, and no one else covered it, I would agree with you (and I think our existing consensus would also be to omit the classification). If the SPLC were the only source labeling a group as a hate group,and that designation received significant secondary coverage, I would interpret your opinion as saying we should omit the attributed label, whereas the existing consensus would be to include. I think that your way would undermineWP:NPOV - it's not for us to decide that secondary sources are highlighting the "wrong" opinions, even if SPLC's designations are suspect.

Moreover, I thinkWP:SPLC provides plenty of caution in our use of SPLC as a source for its opinion content (the hate designations), even as it holds them generally reliable for factual information. The question of SPLC's general reliability is separate and not directly addressed by your opinions in the first post - I think that if you're correct about the whole Nazi book club thing, that's concerning and is reason to look into their editorial processes, but given the RfC was recent, I wouldn't want to reopen the issue unless more of a pattern can be established.Samuelshraga (talk)09:36, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

They're not correct on the nazi book club thing. See @PARAKANYAA's comments.TarnishedPath^talk09:59, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Would that be the comment that claims that anonymous Nazis (or maybe one Nazi with multiple accounts) posting on a Daily Stormer website are acceptable as primary sources? Do you have a single thread of actual evidence that the book club ever met in Amana? Any sources at all that can't be traced back to the post by "Concerned Troll"? The SPLC has steadfastly refused to even mention any other source despite numorous press enquiries. --Guy Macon (talk)15:25, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

That source has been provided to youmultiple times already: "The owner of the restaurant where The Daily Stormer club met..."[20]. At this point you a dangerously close to IDHT.Thryduulf (talk)15:30, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I wroteif you're correct about the whole Nazi book club thing in a deliberately conditional voice ;)Samuelshraga (talk)13:15, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This seems to be covered byWP:ATT. To be called a hate group by SPLC is not nothing, so if a third party source mentions that SPLC calls them a hate group, it probably merits mention. However, “SPLC calls them a hate group, source, SPLC calling them a hate group” is inappropriate for the usual reasons.Guy(help! -typo?)08:44, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

If you know of articles with "defamatory material reposted without attribution," please name them, so we can fix that right now.FactOrOpinion (talk)21:34, 14 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

That article is more or less just complaining that the SPLC lists groups that are anti-gay marriage as "hate groups". I don't find that to be a compelling argument against it, at least from the perspective that Wikipedia usually comes from. It's not any more garbage than the media, or academia is, which in my experiences in this topic area are just as often wrong as the SPLC is.PARAKANYAA (talk)23:13, 14 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

"Gets sued a lot" is really not a meaningful metric.Lostsandwich (talk)05:19, 15 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It seems that in its 54 years the SPLC has retracted descriptions of people or groups after criticisms or legal threats a grand total of THREE times, two of which relate to a designation as “extremist” and none to a designation as a “hate group”. I don’t think there’s a single case against them that has come to court and resulted in them losing.BobFromBrockley (talk)07:58, 15 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This is aWP:DUE question, not aWP:RS question, since you acknowledge that when it's the only source it's generally used for attributed opinion. Beyond that, sources you cite are unconvincing - these are largely opinion or heavilyWP:BIASED sources (and most of them are accusing it of bias; bias doesn't make a source unreliable. It just requires attribution,which we currently use.) These sources establishe that the SPLC iscontroversial, not that it isunreliable; and they establish that what it says attracts massive amounts of attention, which lends it weight. Indeed, many of these are worded from a clear perspective of, essentially, "everyone trusts the SPLC and treats it seriously, but theyshouldn't", ie. they acknowledge that they are taking a minority position. And beyond that, the argument that we shouldn't describe the SPLC's opinionseven when heavily covered by high-quality secondary sources is absurd - nothing gets that level of prohibition. Literal lies spouted by Lucifer himself could be included in our articles if given sufficient high-quality secondary coverage; we'd want to cover it the way the secondary sourcing does and hope that they'd point out any problems, but in that case it is the secondary source's reputation that matters. And the fact is that, as you are probably aware, secondary sources quite frequently defer to the SPLC - which is doubtless why you made this suggestion, but, again, "fixing" that isn't how we work! "These people areso bad that even when secondary sources quote them we should ignore it because they were obviously wrong to do so" isWP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS. I don't think you've even convincingly made the argument that the SPLC is unreliable, but certainly we have to cover it when it is given significant weight by secondary sources. If anything, the fact that a significant minority dislikes or distrusts the SPLC is an additional reason to make it clear when secondary sources are relying on them - the implication of your request here would be that if an academic paper says "XYZ is a hate group, according to the SPLC", we would... cite that paper without mentioning that it attributes it to the SPLC? That's worse, you do see how that's worse, right? --Aquillion (talk)21:19, 14 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This is a WP:DUE question, not a WP:RS question, since you acknowledge that when it's the only source it's generally used for attributed opinion. That was my thought when I first responded, as well, but Guy clarified inthis comment that he's arguing that the SPLC is unreliable. Apparently, Guy finds those heavily biased right-wing opinion articles much more convincing than the rest of us do.ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPantsTell me all about it.21:26, 14 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Many were not "heavily biased right-wing opinion articles". It's easy to be correct when you can just ignore every dissenting comment.Buffs (talk)17:34, 17 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'm impressed by your audacity in not putting the word 'many' in scare quotes there. I sure as shit would have.

There's 2 sources, out of 23, (less than 9%) which are reliable and not known for a strong right-wing bias. And those two sources are the least damning of all of them. Try again.ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPantsTell me all about it.13:57, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Your language and assumption of bad faith is not conducive to a collegial discussion.Buffs (talk)16:54, 21 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

There is no assumption of bad faith in my response. I merely opined my surprise that you would use such a patently untrue word as 'many' without enclosing it in scare quotes, then laid out why. The why here was germane, of course, as it forms a coherent and sound rebuttal to your eminently false claim.

As for my language... I've had enough collegial discussions peppered with 'shits', 'fucks', 'asses', 'bitches', 'bastards', 'cocks', 'cunts' and 'tits' and even the occasional 'syphilitic shit-packing ass-weasel' to know with absolute certainty that you're just plain wrong.

You know what's not very conducive to collegial discussions? Bullshit accusations meant to sidestep valid criticism of arguments. That shit will derail a discussion like little else. (Notice how we're no longer discussing the number of left-wing sources in Guy's list, if you need proof.) Oh, and pearl-clutching about curse words. That tends to be pretty toxic to a good chat, too.ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPantsTell me all about it.18:41, 21 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

These sources are overwhelmingly right wing publications, followed by those few that aren't but which are almost a decade old, and lastly the NYT piece which is an op-edSnokalok (talk)21:33, 14 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with what everyone else, who posted before me, is saying. Your best bet for restricting the use of SPLC is probably asking whether their opinion is undue when their opinion isn't covered in other secondary sources. Or that if their assessement isn't covered in other sources, it should not be in the lead.Rolluik (talk)22:11, 14 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Read my everyone else as most people. Some people's opinions, I hadn't read yet because they posted at nearly the same time.Rolluik (talk)22:16, 14 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Agree with other commenters - only use with attribution, and not necessarily in the lead. However, this does raise the question of whether it should be down graded atWP:RSP - perhaps to a yellow “additional considerations”.Blueboar (talk)22:23, 14 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I don’t think it raises that question. We have discussed this numerous times and no new evidence calling for additional considerations has been presented in this thread.BobFromBrockley (talk)08:01, 15 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This suggestion strikes me as pointless. If the SPLC is the sole source describing a group as a hate group, that description is going to be attributed anyway. If there's multiple source also describing a group as a hate group alongside the SPLC, why omit it them?Cortador (talk)22:24, 14 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

+1BobFromBrockley (talk)08:00, 15 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hate group is fundamentally an opinion statement so perMOS:LABEL we should never say it in wikivoice anyway.PARAKANYAA (talk)22:59, 14 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

And, as someone who mostly edits about the 'far-right', my opinion on the SPLC itself and theirfactual reporting (not their opinions), I would say they are generally reliable, as our protracted RFC earlier this year concluded and my own experience researching and using them as a source. I have rarely taken issue with their factual reporting, far less than with news media, for example. As shown by FactOrOpinion the specific case at issue is overblown and I don't actually see any issue with how they reported it. The other incidents pointed out here are not really convincing and are a mix of opinion pieces and people subject to the pieces complaining about their opinions. They are just extremely opinionated, but so is all scholarship on this topic (and academic on "hate groups" post-NA is almost entirely just recycling the SPLC anyway), but when it comes to factual matters they are generally excellent. In that regard, they are not really any worse than academia. Relative to all other anti-hate watchdog groups they are by far the most reputable and reliable in terms of facts. But whether it's from the SPLC or anyone else "hate group" is like "terrorist" in that it isa contentious label and basically inherently opinion so per MOS:LABELshould never be said in wikivoice, e.g. we do not call Hitler evil in wikivoice for the same.PARAKANYAA (talk)23:03, 14 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see this discussion really changing how the source is used but my feeling is they should be treated like other advocacy organizations in that we shouldn't give weight to anything they report unless independent RSs do it first. The SPLC, in my view, shouldn't be the only source for a claim of any type. In this regard we would treat it like any number of generally respected advocacy groups/think tanks. As mentioned above, we recently had a long RfC on the SPLC so I don't see the status changing here.Springee (talk)00:26, 15 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

We do use advocacy orgs for factual claims all the time, and there is no policy reason not to. Especially on any topic related to white supremacists/the far right... check pretty much any page for one, and it will be a main source. I don't see any particular reason to treat them differently than other RS, as bias is not related to reliability, and academia is just as if not more biased against white supremacy than the SPLC.PARAKANYAA (talk)00:56, 15 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure wp should be going into whether a group is a "hate group" or not. I think it's more encyclopedic to describe the kind of hate, for example, anti-trans, anti-lgbt, white nationalist, ethnic supremacist, etc. (t ·c)buidhe02:45, 15 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

OP’s proposal has no policy basis. No new evidence has been presented to change our previous consensus reached in multiple discussions. Nothing in this thread indicates use of this source makes our articles problematic in any way. This is not a generative discussion.BobFromBrockley (talk)08:06, 15 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

agreed, wasn't there a very recent well-attended RFC on this?Andre🚐01:27, 16 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The RfC was six months ago and the consensus was 23 to 17 - (57.5% to 42.5%). --Guy Macon (talk)01:51, 16 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Six months agois a "very recent" RFC. And 40 participantsis well-attended.Loki (talk)02:08, 16 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I didn't say it isn't. I simply answered the question asked. --Guy Macon (talk)02:17, 16 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Determining consensus is not a mereWP:HEADCOUNT.TarnishedPath^talk06:48, 17 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

True, but it IS a measure of lack of unity on the conclusion.Buffs (talk)17:37, 17 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The conclusion was challanged atWP:AN and recieved endrosement.TarnishedPath^talk22:19, 17 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The closure received endorsement, not the conclusion. There is a difference.Buffs (talk)00:06, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The closure states the conclusion. Is is the closure that is quoted at places likeWP:RSP. Therefore, if the closure was endorsed, so was the conclusion.ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPantsTell me all about it.14:08, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

To the contrary. People explicitly endorsed the closure even if they didn't endorse the conclusion.Buffs (talk)01:10, 21 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The question of the reliablity of SPLC in relation to hategroups was explicity addressed in the RFC atWikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_481#RFC:_Southern_Poverty_Law_Center which was endorsed atWikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Archive372#Review_of_SPLC_closure.TarnishedPath^talk02:45, 17 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Their lists are entirely subjective and opinionated, as PARAKANYAA stated. Who and what is hateful is an opinion. They have also been known to act like a shakedown organization and thrive on churning and farming hate groups to maintain their existence, which has greatly deviated from the original purpose. Designations like this should probably not even be allowed on here, just like the use ofWP:TERRORIST is restricted. ←Metallurgist (talk)06:27, 17 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

They have a "reputation for fact-checking and accuracy". Whether they have deviated from their original purpose is irrelevent.TarnishedPath^talk06:47, 17 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This is not a comment on the usage of their designations, which I generally do not care for, but since I find your comment to have some wider implications for their accuracy: when it comes to their factual content they do have a "reputation for fact checking and accuracy", and in my experience looking at them as a source they are good. There are no non-opinionated sources on "hate groups" (even academia, which is just as opinionated) or whatever else such groups that tend to be called hate groups are called. If we were to prohibit sources on this topic for being opinionated we would not have any; whether the factual material is accurate is what matters.

And to be fair, in their treatment of 'hate groups', they really have not changed at all from how they were in the past (many of these specific complaints are decades old).PARAKANYAA (talk)07:22, 17 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Is it posssible that you are confusing the SPLC with the ADL when saying that the purpose and methodology have changed?~2025-32692-02 (talk)09:36, 17 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

As others have said, more of an Undue issue. Yes they are fine as long as we attribute it.Slatersteven (talk)14:31, 17 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Guy Macon lefta message on my talk page inviting me to this discussion, and it looks like they also invitedabout 24 others too, with no explicit mention of selection criteria. I've read the discussion on this page and a selection of the articles linked to, and like most others who have commented previously I am not persuaded that any change to the status quo is required.Thryduulf (talk)14:49, 17 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• If you look at the source of the invitation you will find "Sent to everyone who commented on the RfC" (skipping, of course, anyone who has already commented here). Please note that this means that the majority of those notified disagreed with me last time and are expected to disagree with me again. --Guy Macon (talk)14:56, 17 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Guy, I'm sure I'm not the only one who finds your decision to ping all of us here reasonably neutral enough in a fashion that does not run afoul ofWP:CANVAS, even if your objective in doing so seems likely to have been trying to blow this discussion up to a scale where you might have a chance at a second bite at the apple. But bluntly, the effort to do that and the timing you have chosen raise some serious concerns in themselves. Given the massive scale of that previous discussion, the substantial consensus that resulted, and the fact that there was a robust closure review affirming the result, this feels far too soon to re-litigate the outcome of that discussion yet again. And you are doing so not in light of new information but by presenting sources that were largely already available during the previous discussions, and by leveraging one niche, cherry-picked case study of your own design. Which, as others have noted, has a non-trivial amount of speculation in it--and indeed, arguably a fair bit of spin/selective presentation of the facts, intentional or otherwise.

  In short, this dispute has already consumed gargantuan amounts of volunteer time, only to result in a fairly robust consensus. And yet, four months and a few weeks after the end of the closure review, you've revived the discussion basically along the same exact line of inquiry. Now I'll go ahead andWP:AGF that your reasons for pinging such a large group back here to participate again was an attempt to be seen as approaching this situation in a pro forma, neutral fashion. But I also doubt you did so without realizing that the only way the previous consensus would be deemed to be overturned would be if this discussion reached a roughly comparable scale of engagement, and that you had nothing to lose from the effort at making this as big a thing as possible again and hoping that discussion shook out in another direction this time. Frankly, given the full context here, I feel that your overall approach here is very arguablyWP:DISRUPTIVE and I'm a little surprised you haven't faced more pushback for it, all things considered. And I say that as someone who came to the RfC without previous involvement in the dispute, and whose mind remains open to re-assessing in the future.

  So while I am not advocating for any action as a result of this effort to revive the discussion, if this thread continues to demonstrate anything less than a massive landslide shift in community perspective (which shift seems highly unlikely) I wouldstrongly advise you toWP:DROPTHESTICK on this sooner rather than later. Because it's not hard to imagine the possibility of a TBAN if you continue to try to re-open this black hole of a dispute on the basis of idiosyncratic arguments you appear to have been making for several years now. Consensus can change, and this source does intersect with some controversial topics, but even considering those circumstances, the community cannot keep dropping such a volume of volunteer effort into this matter simply because you are not prepared to admit that you lost the argument for the immediate future.SnowRise ^{let's rap}01:16, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  +1ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPantsTell me all about it.13:46, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I massively disagree with this assessment. This is not canvassing nor disruptive.Buffs (talk)20:24, 20 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  It's definitely canvassing. It's probably isn'tinappropriate canvassing, and doesn't seem to have been otherwise disruptive.Thryduulf (talk)20:36, 20 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  By definition, Canvassingis inappropriate.WP:CANVAS: "Canvassing is notification done with the intention of influencing the outcome of a discussion in a particular way, and is considered inappropriate"

  In contrast, notifications of this manner areappropriate. Again, from WP:CANVASS: "In general, it is perfectly acceptable to notify other editors of ongoing discussions, provided that it be done with the intent to improve the quality of the discussion by broadening participation to more fully achieve consensus."

  You're entitled to your own opinion. You are not entitled to your own definitions.Buffs (talk)01:08, 21 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Weird how you read Snow's opinion that Guy's behaviordoes not run afoul ofWP:CANVAS, and took that as an accusation of canvassing.ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPantsTell me all about it.18:49, 21 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I was canvassed to comment. Of course this requires attribution when mentioned, of course if they are the only organization that characterizes some group as a hate group it is likely to be undue weight, but certainly they are a reliable source. Any organization tracking hate groups is occasionally going to be an outlier in some of their characterizations: each have their own criteria, plus it's not a science. -Jmabel |Talk15:48, 17 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Wouldn't call it canvassing—audience notified appears non-partisan. That said, I feel like this discussion can be closed tomorrow if there's no steam for changing the consensus.Aaron Liu (talk)17:12, 17 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I still don't see any problem as long as it's attributed. As mentioned above, the SPLC has existed for over 50 years and the number of times it's beengenuinely pulled up on its definitions is comparatively tiny. Also, I'd look again at whether that long list of sources above is useful here; even at a brief glance, some are obviously unreliable (Capital Research, City Journal), whilst the Washington Examiner/Weekly Standard is yellow-flagged for partisanship at RSP and some of the others are op-eds. Even theHarpers article starts "(SPLC is ...) the do-gooder group that does very little good". There's painfully little from reliable and non-partisan sources there.Black Kite (talk)16:00, 17 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

They're generally reliable on the subject of hate groups, though as an advocacy organization their analysis should (usually*) be attributed. (*If a wide number and variety of sources agree that an organication is a hate group, I believe the responsible editorial decision is to say that in wikivoice. That is more of a DUE issue than RS, however.) I don't think the critical sources above move the needle much, if at all.Woodroar (talk)16:17, 17 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• How can you look at the way they determined that the Amana Colonies was the headquarters for a hate group and conclude that they are reliable on the subject of hate groups? They based this on an anonymous post on a Nazi discussion list and have refused to respond to multiple requests from the Amana Colonies and the Des Moines Register asking them for a shred of evidence other than the Nazi discussion list that their claim was true. --Guy Macon (talk)17:28, 17 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  See FactOrOpinion's very lengthy explanation above.

  Every material on neo-Nazis will ultimately be based on primary sources from neo-Nazis. I don't know what other sources you would expect.PARAKANYAA (talk)17:39, 17 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Seriously? You are defending using an anonymous post on a Nazi message board as a source? It isn't even a primary source. No actual Nazi group has ever claimed that the Stormer Book Club exists. Just the anonymous post. --Guy Macon (talk)17:48, 17 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Every source aboutThe Daily Stormer, a pseudonymous neo-Nazi message board, is ultimately using The Daily Stormer as a source for its own opinions and operations. The Stormer was not a "group" in that sense so yeah obviously they wouldn't say that. Where else do you expect them to get information on its content?PARAKANYAA (talk)17:53, 17 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Seriously. Your description had very clear holes in it (which I described), and you chose not to provide the evidence I asked for.FactOrOpinion (talk)20:25, 17 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

As an advocacy organization, I'm of the opinion that all of their content from their own sites should be considered self-published. --Kyohyi (talk)16:29, 17 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Can you cite a policy or guideline for that? Textbooks advocate theories such as the earth is round and it is 4.5 billion years old. We don't question using them because there is no serious objection to their conclusions.TFD (talk)05:03, 27 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think SLPC is valid for fact checking OR notability. They cover a lot of tiny non-notable groups; that is part of their purpose, so we shouldn't consider those groups notable just because SLPC has an article on them. When it comes to fact checking, this is an example; "Walsh is a self-described “theocratic fascist”".[21] They provide a link to his twitter. He was interviewed back in 2016 about it, and said someone messaged him and told him he was one, so he put it on his twitter as a joke, it's not a self-description of who he is. It is 2025 and they still have it listed as a straight up, factual statement. So, what kind of fact checking did they do? They are a political group, and politicians say this kind of thing about opponents all the time. We can't stop that. But, political talking points like this are always contentious, and should be treated as such. It's not like they are contacting the "hate groups" and asking them for comment - that's not their purpose. But if they aren't useful for Notability or for being reliable... what's the point of using them at all?Denaar (talk)16:37, 17 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

People don't say things like "theocratic fascist" about themselves all the time. He still has it in his Twitter description (https://x.com/MattWalshBlog), so either he recognizes that it's accurate (even though he says it's a joke) or he recognizes that people take it seriously and is choosing to leave it up anyway.FactOrOpinion (talk)20:52, 17 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think in the link you provided, it is beyond obvious that the person there is mentioning that label as a joke. Whether it is funny or not is up to the reader.Iljhgtn (talk)20:54, 17 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

That you, personally, believe it to be a joke does not mean that others believe it to be a joke. If it's a joke, the fact that he's left it there despite knowing that some people are interpreting it as a serious self-description tells us that he doesn't care whether people misinterpret it.FactOrOpinion (talk)21:16, 17 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

You can't seriously believe that he wants people who eat ranch dressing to be burned at the stake, along with anyone who eats Mayo, Ricotta, or Cream Cheese. That's what he says he'll do when it becomes a theocratic fascist.[22]Denaar (talk)03:40, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

That someone has said something is a joke and has, like everyone alive on this planet, made jokes, does not mean they are being honest. The "theocratic fascist" claim appears in a number of academic books, so take up the issue with Routledge, I suppose[23][24], or academics[25]PARAKANYAA (talk)03:45, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

You can't seriously believe that being a theocratic fascist implies anything at all about eating ranch dressing, mayo, ricotta, or cream cheese. As I said: If it's a joke, the fact that he's left it there despite knowing that some people are interpreting it as a serious self-description tells us that he doesn't care whether people misinterpret it.FactOrOpinion (talk)04:20, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

He literally describes himself as a theocratic fascist. He is therefore indeed a self-described theocratic fascist. Our article onMatt Walsh says this without citing SPLC, and cites his response, and it seems it’s his response for which we are unable to find a solid source.His commentary is sometimes described by media outlets astrolling or provocation.^[1][2][3][4] He labels himself a "theocraticfascist" in his Twitter biography,^[5][6] which he said was an ironic response to an opponent using the label as an insult.^{[7][better source needed]} In other words, other RSs suggest SPLC would indeed be factual if we cited them. Further, SPLC link to their primary source so you were able to verify yourself that they were telling the truth. Our own quote from him doesn’t in fact say it was a joke, but confirms it was his self-description:It does say in my Twitter bio that I'm a theocratic fascist, well because a few months ago someone sent me a message, trying to insult me, and the message said: 'hey, y'know, you should put theocratic fascist in your Twitter bio because that's what you are.' In fact, if we did actually cite SPLC here instead of him, we’d be able to note that he said it was a joke; they say:Walsh sometimes suggests his most extreme comments are satirical or in jest, as when he explained why he describes himself as a theocratic fascist. In other words, SPLC would be a better fact checking source thanBobFromBrockley (talk)04:31, 20 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Can'tWP:common sense or evenWP:IAR be used to know that it's clearly meant to be at least partiallyironic?Wikieditor662 (talk)05:42, 20 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I am withUser:MjolnirPants on reasons and argumentation behind this case. To start (and maybe even finish) with sources listed as a basis for questioning SPLC credibility, they are all biased, most are hardly well known and/or mainstream, and apart from Politico, most are right wing polemical outlets, including liberal mainstream but deeply flawed and, from liberal point of view, harshly criticized Atlantic. I would additionally point to arguments offered byUser:Jmabel, with whome I absolutely agree, especially on a matter of criteria and the fact that tracking hate (groups) is not based on empirical evidences so it's not a science, which means there is always risk to digress, for the margin of error. On the matter of usage, concerning atribution, I would repeatUser:Woodroar arguments in a post just above. Bottom line, I find SPLC reliable source that should be used with reason and thoughtfully in every individual referencing.--౪ Santa ౪^99°17:23, 17 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Please explain how Maajid Nawaz and the Amana Colonies are "right wing polemical outlets". --Guy Macon (talk)17:38, 17 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Those aren't sources you listed.PARAKANYAA (talk)17:41, 17 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Are you denying that the SPLC listed Maajid Nawaz and the Amana Colonies were placed on the SPLC hate list? Or that they complained about it? Both claims are well sourced. You can't just dismiss them by saying "everyone complaining is a right wing outlet." Plus, there is the assumption in your argument that it is perfectly OK to label something as a hate group if it is right wing -- no actual evidence required. If I made an article titledList of organizations designated by Infowars as commies, would you argue that the only people complaining are left wing groups targeted by Alex Jones? --Guy Macon (talk)18:01, 17 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  You were responding to "To start (and maybe even finish) with sources listed as a basis for questioning SPLC credibility, they are all biased". Neither of those two things are listed as sources.

  And no, the Amana Colonies were never listed on the hate list as a hate group. Nawaz was never designated as a hate group either.

  Well, if you're taking issue with the entity at issue in the case you bring up (the Daily Stormer), that openly denies the Holocaust, being deemed a hate group, then I don't think there's anything that would satisfy you here.

  Infowars does not have an official "designation" of anything, unlike the SPLC.PARAKANYAA (talk)18:07, 17 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  The Daily Stormer exists. The The First Iowa Stormer Bookclub in Amana Colonies Iowa does not. It is a fabrication of the SPLC. They have no source other than an anonymous post on the Daily Stormer message board (not the Daily Stormer itself, which never claimed that the First Iowa Stormer Bookclub exists, just someone posting a message.) That would be like us grabbing the next message from a new IP editor we see on Wikipedia and using that as evidence that whatever they claim must be true. --Guy Macon (talk)19:34, 17 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  That isn't what they said, at all. According to the sources thatyou linked, at no point did they claim that there was a discrete group called the "First Iowa Stormer Bookclub" but that followers of The Daily Stormer were located in Iowa. That is the locus of the whole dispute, it was the entry of The Daily Stormer, that is what you are challenging.PARAKANYAA (talk)19:55, 17 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I too would concur that SPLC's assessments are overblown and exaggerated for financial gain (at best) or political gain (at worst). That doesn't mean they are wrong on everything or even a majority of their assessments, but the inclusion of some of these groups as "hate groups" is absurd and clearly politically motivated. Such opinions by ANY advocacy organization (left, right, or center) should be treated with a huge grain of salt and with attribution (at a minimum). I concur with Guy Macon's proposal.Buffs (talk)17:31, 17 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• I'd like to see a list of these groups that are listed by the SPLC as "hate groups" but which apparently obviously aren't. It would be enlightening to this discussion.Black Kite (talk)20:20, 17 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  The Family Research Council is probably most prominent. Others include Moms for Liberty, Alliance Defending Freedom, Focus on the Family, Federation for American Immigration Reform, Quilliam, Center for Immigration Studies, The Ruth Institute, Moms for America, Liberty Counsel, Center for Security Policy, Society for Evidence-based Gender Medicine (SEGM), and many others...individuals too: Maajid Nawaz and Ben Carson are probably the most notable, but there are others like Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer, Steven Emerson, Daniel Pipes, Brigitte Gabriel, David Horowitz, Ryan Mauro, Walid Shoebat, and John Guandolo.Buffs (talk)00:25, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I don't see how it is objectionable to describe theFamily Research Council, an organization that uses "anti-gay pseudoscience" to falsely conflate homosexuality and pedophilia' as a hate group.

  Or theCenter for Immigration Studies andFederation for American Immigration Reform, which was founded by a white nationalist who advocates for ethnic cleansing and published theCamp of the Saints?

  If these are your examples of the most problematic ones I don't think that looks bad for the SPLC.PARAKANYAA (talk)01:22, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Or theAlliance Defending Freedom which campaigns to criminalise being gay and considers homosexuality a threat to western society. Or theRuth Institute, whose speakers have compared gay marriage to Nazism, blamed homosexuality for the rise of Nazism, and directly link it to paedophilia. It seems reasonable for the SPLC to say that these groups have"beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people, typically for their immutable characteristics." (The value to the reader is knowing that these are not regular research or expert organisations, despite how some of them may present themselves.) I'm struggling with these as examples of unreliability. Quilliam should not be on the list, as the SPLC withdrew that designation several years ago.OsFish (talk)05:33, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  "The SPLC withdrew that designation several years ago" That's an interesting characterization. the Southern Poverty Law Center listed Quilliam International and Maajid Nawaz in its SPLC Field Guide to Antimuslim Extremists. Nawaz objected, and for two years the SPLC refused to remove the entry. Then Nawaz filed a defamation lawsuit. The SPLC ended up paying out a $3.375 million settlement, admitting that it was wrong, and removing Nawaz and his organization from the list. --Guy Macon (talk)06:25, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Did you know this before you put Quilliam in your list?OsFish (talk)06:29, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Why does it matter?Buffs (talk)20:27, 20 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Wow. I guessed that the FRC, who are an obvious hate group, would be mentioned. I didn't expect a number of other quite obvious ones to be listed as exceptions as well though!Black Kite (talk)11:47, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Can you show where SPLC labeled Ali (or indeed any of these other individuals) a “hate group”? Pretty sure they didn’t. Or are you answering a question other than the one you were asked?BobFromBrockley (talk)04:39, 20 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Obviously, individuals aren't "groups". I very clearly said that they were individuals that the SPLC called out. Article is still live[26]Buffs (talk)01:17, 21 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• I'd actually upgrade them a bit from where we currently have them. When they say a group is a hate group, we should attribute that because that's the SPLC's opinion and not a matter of fact. But they're straight-out reliable for facts about the groups they cover and don't need to be attributed in that context.Loki (talk)18:13, 17 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • They're straight-out reliable for facts about the groups they cover? They cover groups that don't exist, such as the The First Iowa Stormer Bookclub in Amana Colonies Iowa. How is that reliable? --Guy Macon (talk)19:38, 17 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    • Eh, I don't think persistently pushing one of the very few major problems that the SPLC has had over and over again is really helping, to be honest. If we said thatany source that has fucked up in the last 50 years is not reliable, we wouldn't haveany long-standing RS.Black Kite (talk)19:46, 17 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

      One of the very few major problems that the SPLC has had? Ben Carson? Maajid Nawaz? The Family Research Council? All of these were highly prominent.Buffs (talk)00:26, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

      Is a group that conflates pedophilia and homosexuality (the FRC)not a hate group?PARAKANYAA (talk)01:40, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

      The “First Iowa Stormer Bookclub” is NOT a “major problem”. As shown above, (a) we don’t know it doesn’t exist, and (b) SPLC didn’t say it does exist. It’s at best aminor problem, but probably it’s nothing at all.BobFromBrockley (talk)04:44, 20 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    That isn't what they said, at all. According to the sources thatyou linked, at no point did they claim that there was a discrete group called the "First Iowa Stormer Bookclub" but that followers of The Daily Stormer were located in Iowa. That is the locus of the whole dispute, it was the entry of The Daily Stormer, that is what you are challenging.PARAKANYAA (talk)19:55, 17 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    "The Amana Colonies is no longer designated as the home of the neo-Nazi group. The Southern Poverty Law Centerhad previously designated the historic settlement as the home of the Daily Stormer, a neo-Nazi and white supremacy news and commentary organization."[27] --Guy Macon (talk)20:08, 17 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    You know that quote proves PARAKANYAA's point, right?

    Furthermore while that article says "the home",other articles from the same source say "a home". Given the reporting it seems like the SPLC probably didn't even make a true error. At most they were unclear about what they actually meant.Loki (talk)20:11, 17 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    Yes. The Daily Stormer, which you have just acknowledged is real. Do you dispute that The Daily Stormer is a real group? The basic claim this whole discussion rests on is not true.PARAKANYAA (talk)20:15, 17 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    Of course the Daily Stormer exists. That doesn't prove that they met in Amana. Any further attempts to convince me that a group of individuals calling themselves the The First Iowa Stormer Bookclub met sometime in 2016 at a restaurant in the Amanas should be accompanied by a source other than the SPLC that makes that claim, or at the very least a source where the SPLC provides a shred of evidence other than anonymous posts on a Nazi message board. --Guy Macon (talk)03:19, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    That is not what the SPLC said, again. They said the Daily Stormer met up in Amanas. I see no reason to doubt this claim.

    What proof is there that a neo-Nazi message board exists that does not ultimately trace back to the neo-Nazi message board?PARAKANYAA (talk)03:36, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    You meanthe source you've already been linked to above?

    I don't, to be clear, think this is a reasonable objection. I think the Daily Stormer posts themselves are a reasonable primary source that this meeting occurred and so I'm not particularly inclined to try toWP:SATISFY you here. But also, local news directly says the meeting occurred. And they were able to identify the specific restaurant where it occurred, which the SPLC did not publicly name, so this appears to be independent reporting.Loki (talk)06:57, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    I think anonymous posts on a Nazi message board are not a reasonable primary source for anything, includingWP:ABOUTSELF claims. That doesn't mean SPLC is suddenlyWP:GUNREL or anything like that, but I really think that line of reasoning should go no further.Samuelshraga (talk)09:19, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    Oh, so to be clear I don't mean on Wikipedia. We shouldn't be using primary sources in general anyway. I think it's reasonable for the SPLC or other news organizations to use them as their source that this meeting happened.Loki (talk)16:53, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    Is an anonymous post by someone who we only know as "Concerned Troll" (and can changed that user name at will) really a primary source? Its a self-published source with zero indication of who the self who did the publishing is. In todays world we don't even know if there is an actual person behind the post -- it might be an AI that posted a thousand comments using a thousand usernames today. So if an organization can only list a single anonymous self-published source as the sole reason to include a town on a hate list, how doesWP:WEIGHT allow us to have two standalone articles featuring the list? There really is value to the list -- many of those organizations are listed as hate groups by mutiple high-quality sources -- but right now we have no idea whether all of the organizations on the hate group list are actual hate groups. Or whether they are active where the SPLC claims they are. Or whether they exist at all. Perhaps we could replace the current lists with lists of organizations regarded as hate groups by sources thatdon't base inclusion on a single anonymous self-published source? --Guy Macon (talk)20:49, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    You've yet to provide evidence that they claimed they "can only list a single anonymous self-published source as the sole reason to include a town on a hate list," despite being asked.FactOrOpinion (talk)20:58, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    It's a few anonymous posts by different accounts, though, not just the one.

    But regardless, we at Wikipedia aren't in the business of second-guessing our sources' sources. We can't cite court documents directly here but we regularly cite sources that read and analyze court documents. We can't cite a petri dish directly but we regularly cite sources that analyze the contents of a petri dish. We don't do original research here but we rely heavily on sources that do.

    Which is to say, we know the list is reliable because it's published byan organization with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy, namely the SPLC. I know you disagree with this and have no desire toWP:SATISFY you on it. I'm frankly surprised the guy who wroteWP:ONEAGAINSTMANY has so far refused to take his own advice.Loki (talk)20:59, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    @Guy Macon, given that you keep making claims about the First Iowa Stormer Bookclub, I'd really like you to respond to what I wrotehere.FactOrOpinion (talk)21:07, 17 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  +1. The actual evidence presented in this discussion has ended up showing how high their factual accuracy is.BobFromBrockley (talk)04:40, 20 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• A quick look at Google Scholar hits shows that a great many writers accept SPLC's hate group classification without question. A few challenge the definitions, but more simply attribute the results to SPLC to make sure that the reader knows the source. Wikipedia should continue to follow this middle path perWP:ATTRIBUTEPOV.Binksternet (talk)18:55, 17 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I would concur that this should be the path that we should follow at a minimum.Buffs (talk)00:27, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Here is a CNN article on the SPLC listing the Family Research Council as a hate group:

https://web.archive.org/web/20120822022430/http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2012/08/17/shooting-sparks-controversy-over-hate-designation-for-conservative-group/

In my opinion the FRC has some really vile positions, but I am undecided as to whether they are an actual hate group. It is a reasonable conclusion, and not batshit insane like the listing of the Amanas and Maajid Nawaz.

From the CNN article:

Peter Montgomery, a blogger for the liberal think tank People for the American Way, said he backs the SPLC's designation. "If you ask me, 'Does the FRC promote hatred towards gays and lesbians?' I would say yes it does," he said. "The FRC is not the KKK. But that doesn't also mean they deserve a free ride from being called out on their hateful rhetoric."

Tufts University political science professor Jeffrey Berry said the council is a mainstream, if very conservative, public policy shop - one of a multitude in Washington. "I'm not comfortable calling them a hate group," he said. "There's probably some things that have been said by one or two individuals that qualify as hate speech. But overall, it's not seen as a hate group," said Berry, who has written extensively about the influence of ideological and public policy groups in Washington.

On the website for "Truth Wins Out," which describes itself as a nonprofit "fighting anti-gay lies and the ex-gay myth," blogger Wayne Bessen wrote that the SPLC was "100% correct" in labeling the council as a hate group. "As someone who reads Perkins' anti-gay fundraising letters - make no mistake about it - this group loathes LGBT people with a special passion," he wrote.

In The Washington Post, columnist Dana Milbank wrote ""I disagree with the Family Research Council's views on gays and lesbians," he wrote Thursday. "But it's absurd to put the group, as the law center does, in the same category as Aryan Nations, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, Stormfront and the Westboro Baptist Church."

--Guy Macon (talk)06:48, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Do you think a group that conflates pedophilia with homosexuality isnot a hate group?

Yeah, that they aren't in the same category of harmfulness as the KKK doesn't mean that every group less significant than the KKK is not a hate group.PARAKANYAA (talk)07:15, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

They've beenvery specific on this subject:

"FRC has never said, and does not believe, that most homosexuals are child molesters. However, it is undisputed that the percentage of child sex abuse cases that are male-on-male is far higher than the percentage of adult males who are homosexual. This suggests that male homosexuality is a risk factor for child sexual abuse. Homosexual activists argue that men who molest boys are not actually "homosexual;" but scholarly evidence undermines that claim. It also cannot be disputed that there is a sub-culture within the homosexual movement that advocates "intergenerational" sexual relationships. FRC's writings on this topic--unlike the SPLC's--have been carefully documented with references to the original scholarly literature."source

That isnot conflating "pedophilia with homosexuality". There is accompanying research to back up this claim.Buffs (talk)01:26, 21 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

have been carefully documented with references to the original scholarly literature with the most recent research they choose to use being 40 years old, so it would seem they areseverely lacking in their understanding of the literature. And this is before we get into how the argument of "homosexuals are not inherently child molesters, they're just much more likely to be" is still homophobic nonsense, though it is indicative of their 40 year out-of-date research. --Cdjp1 (talk)09:27, 21 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

That's an intentionally and unnecessarily inflammatory reading of the claim being made. A disagreement whether "men who molest boys are homosexual" (paraphrasing) is not the same as "homosexuals are not inherently child molesters, they're just much more likely to be". Just because the research is 40 years old doesn't mean it isn't invalid. Just because it is a "risk factor" doesn't mean it's a probability. A life of crime is often associated with fatherless homes. That means it's a risk factor. That doesn't mean that, just because you come from a fatherless home we should be wary of you because you're more likely to be a criminal. It DOES mean we should identify the correlative factors and do what we can socially to minimize the effects that lead to negative impacts. In the case of a lack of a father in the home, it could be to emphasize good, fatherly figures and engage in activities with positive male role models. In comparison, that same application could apply to saying that we should continue education efforts on safer sex practices and emphasizing the need for consent. That's not the same as vilifying the homosexual community or engaging in "homophobic nonsense".Buffs (talk)17:07, 21 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

it is undisputed that the percentage of child sex abuse cases that are male-on-male is far higher than the percentage of adult males who are homosexual. This suggests that male homosexuality is a risk factor for child sexual abuse.

I don't get it. How does the second sentence follow from the first? Genuinely asking.TurboSuperA+_[talk]08:25, 26 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I agree, that seems to make no sense. @Buffs Can you explain?Wikieditor662 (talk)16:35, 26 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Absolute nonsense. The basic idea behind even making such a comparison is the assumption that how adults select willing adult sexual partners is the same thing as how child rapists choose victims. That isn't even true in addult rapes. See[28]:"The authors ranked accounts from 133 offenders and 92 victims for the dominant issue and found that the offenses could be categorized as power rape (sexuality used primarily to express power) or anger rape (use of sexuality to express anger). There were no rapes in which sex was the dominant issue; sexuality was always in the service of other, nonsexual needs." --Guy Macon (talk)17:08, 26 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This seems like a case ofWP:AGEMATTERS, there's extensive works over the last 40 years that dismiss the connection between homosexuality and such crimes. --LCUActivelyDisinterested«@» °∆t°17:14, 26 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I explained above.

As for Guy's comments, he took a study and said (paraphrasing) "no rapes were due to wanting sex in this study of adults, therefore no one wants sex due via rape". That's a couple of steps beyond the quoted passage.

1. You've left out literally all child molestation and child sexual abuse which was the start of this thread.
2. Just because there "were no rapes in which sex was the dominant issue" doesn't take into account the perpetrator's sexuality or whether it is a risk factor.
3. This intentionally omits the "consenting" adult-minor relationships that asmall subset of the gay community find acceptable/advocate.

I'm not claiming that this organization is 100% right on anything. I'm not saying "I support all they do/say!". I'm saying that their position is a reasonable one. Whether they are correct or not is a different matter. Classifying that position as justifying labeling them a "hate group" when it represents less than 1% of their work is unreal/unreasonable.Buffs (talk)05:21, 1 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Supporting that specific position as a reasonable one is certainly...a choice. We might call it one of the choices of all time, even.Alpha3031 (t •c)08:16, 1 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Are you saying the quote was incorrect paraphrasing? If so, do you have the correct quote? Just curious.Wikieditor662 (talk)01:02, 2 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

What is the definition of "hate group" that you are using, and how does it differ from the one used by the SPLC? Is the argument that targeting gay people for who they immutably are is not the same as targeting ethnic groups for who they immutably are? Also, as I pointed out above, Maajid Nawaz and the now defunctQuilliam are not currently listed as "hate groups" by the SPLC. That said, it's also worth pointing out that to characterise their original inclusion as "batshit" (ie it is completely beyond any reason and unfathomable to suggest animus towards the Muslim community) contradicts thethe views of published writers.This article, for example describes Quilliam's work thus:

Stereotypes of ‘Muslim rape gangs’ were greatly boosted by the Quilliam Foundation’s ‘grooming gangs’ report, source of the spurious but ubiquitous claim that ‘84% of grooming gang offenders’ are Asian. 62 Although framed as‘academic’ 63 and ‘evidence-based’, the report is shoddy pseudoscience.

So I'm really not sure what the point of mentioning them repeatedly when you yourself know the SPLC doesn't in any case list them as a hate group is supposed to achieve.OsFish (talk)07:24, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

2017 Quilliam paper:[29] Article inThe Guardian about same:[30] Article inThe Telagraph:[31] Related:Child sexual abuse in the United Kingdom#Offender demographics --Guy Macon (talk)16:51, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

So to summarise

- you knew before you included Quilliam in that list that the SPLC currently does not list it as a hate group

- you described the SPLC's original designation as "batshit" ie that no reasonable person would say the same thing despite knowing that other experts had indeed said similar things

- you cite an article implying critics of Quilliam's 84% of grooming gangs are Asian claim might be wrong despite knowing it transpired that Quilliam's claims were indeed quite unfounded and that official figures showed something very different

So I really don't think the Quilliam case shows anything much. Nor am I impressed with arguments that targetting people for their sexuality is so clearly less hateful than targetting people for their ethnicity that the SPLC should be considered "unreliable". The idea that sexuality is a free personal moral choice is decidedly fringe, and shouldn't inform policy here.OsFish (talk)06:35, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Please be civil, avoid personal attacks. and assume good faith. First, I looked up the new info on Quilliam right before I posted it, not days earlier. Despite rumors to the contrary, I do not posses a time machine. Second, neither you or anyone else making the "The SPLC deleted it so it doesn't count" argument has established that it really doesn't count. If a source admits to an error and prints a correction or retraction, thatadds to the reliability of the source. If a source refuses to provide evidence for a claim, stands by it for years, and only deletes it when forced to do so by a defamation lawsuit where they also paid out millions of dollars, thatsubtracts from the reliability of that source.

Also, while targetting people for their sexuality and targetting people for their ethnicity is vile (as is targeting people for their political views), neither justifies inclusion in a list of anti-islam hate groups. One would have to target people for their religion for that. Getting the category right is what we would expect from a reliable source. Putting groups in the wrong category and then promenantly featuring that inclusion in fundraising messages is not. --Guy Macon (talk)15:21, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

If the SPLC does not include Quilliam as a hate group, it doesn't make sense to raise the issue of Quilliam at RSN. If the idea is to make ahistorical case of broad reliability against the SPLC about that one time, under legal threat, they withdrew a classification, then the whole history of that case is relevant, including whether or not it turned out Quilliam had actually produced bogus figures, and whether other experts would have considered Quilliam to be unfairly targeting an ethnic minorities. That is, the claim that it was "batshit" (ie crazy, unfathomable) to include Quilliam in the first place should be struck, given that other experts agreed, and were proved correct in the end about a significant controversy relating to this issue, and not through sheer luck but reasoned, evidenced argument. (I'm assuming here that "batshit" is being used to mean something other than an meaningless insult.)

As for the Family Research Council, they aren't listed as an anti-Islam hate group. Maybe you have confused issues?They are listed for their anti-LGBTQ policies. My point is, I don't see why being anti-LGBTQ rather than racist is a reason ipso facto not to consider a group a hate group - an argument put forward by the Washington Post columnist you cited. As others have pointed out, the FRC's views on the LGBTQ community are not exactly tame. I'd need to see actual experts in extremism explain why the difference matters.

All these objections to the SPLC seem to be OR based on an unstated definition of hate group that differs from the SPLC's definition, although it's not been made clear specifically how. The SPLC's definition seems reasonable to me. Could you explain, with sources, the problem you have with their definition?OsFish (talk)02:50, 20 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

For the Quilliam paper, I don't recommend to click on Kirkegaard's site but to find another copy. The Guardian article is in the "comments is free" section, meaning that it's Malik's opinion. Still, it warns against making hasty generalizations or promoting panic, that there apparently are more claims and cherry picking than evidence, about most offenders being asian. I don't see a mention of the SPLC there.~2025-32692-02 (talk)09:10, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Kenan Malik’s piece is indeed labelled opinion but he’s a well published author writing in an RS that fact checks opinion pieces and he cites the criminological literature in his piece. It’s certainly at least as robust as a Telegraph editorial.BobFromBrockley (talk)04:54, 20 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

(summoned by talk page message). SPLC is reliable for what it publishes: its opinions, which may be due if neutral reliable sources report that their opinion is relevant. They have recognised expertise in American racist groups, but outside of that niche their opinions don't seem to carry as much weight. Clearly they are a player, not a neutral referee, so their opinions should always be attributed. In general, we should put less focus on applying contentious labels to groups and more focus on providing encyclopedic content about those groups. The facts will speak for themselves.Barnards.tar.gz (talk)11:41, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I am fine with the consensus going against me. This isn't about "winning". That being said, certain arguments that have been made do not seem to align with Wikipedia' policies. (And of course, many do).

• Can we at the very least agree that a self-published comment from Anonymous user "Concerned Troll" on a Nazi message board in not a reliable source for anything, and is not a primary source for the views of the owners of the Nazi message board?
• Can we agree that even if a Wikipedia's editor does some original research and concludes that theremust have been more comments by other Nazis that we don't have any source for, that does not improve the reliability of the Concerned Troll comment?
• Can we agree that any attributed claim in a secondary source that is clearly and explicitly labeled as being based only on a comment or comments on a Nazi message board are no more reliable that the original comment or comments?
• Can we agree that a secondary source refusing to reveal any other source other than the Nazi comments when repeatedly asked to do so by government officials and a major newspaper should not be considered evidence that other sources exist?

--Guy Macon (talk)17:22, 21 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

1. Depends on what you mean. It's not a reliable primary source for Wikipedia purpose but mostly because primary sources are rarely reliable sources for us at all. It's a perfectly fine source for the SPLC itself and it's not our job to second guess our source's sources.
2. Irrelevant, because that's not what happened. A Wikipedia editor found secondary sources that say there were other comments.
3. No, absolutely not. That is directly against Wikipedia policy. We can't cite a petri dish but we can cite research based on observations of a petri dish, and similarly we can't cite anonymous forum posts but we can cite secondary sources based on anonymous forum posts. If you were right about thisBellingcat wouldn't be green at RSP.
4. Again, irrelevant. This is neither what happened nor would it matter if it had. The anonymous forum posts are a perfectly fine basis for the SPLC to say this even if they would not be for us. Expertise exists.

Basically, I think that this is a clear case ofWP:ONEAGAINSTMANY and am thus going to quote your own words back at you:

In a "one-against-many" dispute, you (as the one) might be upholding a Wikipedia policy or guideline against a majority that isn't following policy. If this is the case, the one prevails over the many.

The problem is that for every case where the one is upholding policy, there are at least a hundred cases where they only think they are. The newer you are, the more likely it is that you are wrong about this. Having more than one or two editors who all misunderstand Wikipedia policy doesn't happen very often, and having some uninvolved third party look at the page and make the same error almost never happens.

If you are absolutely sure that there is a Wikipedia policy being broken by multiple editors on a page, and you can quote the exact wording of the policy being violated, get another opinion. dispute resolution is a good place to start. If as a result of dispute resolution a previously uninvolved third party says that no policy has been broken, it is probably time to face the fact that the policy doesn't say what you think it says.

Loki (talk)17:54, 21 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

(Warning: This comment is entirely tangential to the topic here.)

While those are good words to quote, I think Guy missed an important caveat when he first wrote them.

There may indeed be a situation in which one editor is upholding policy against a majority who are not and does not (andshould not) prevail, and that is one of thoseWP:IAR situations which merits a subsequent update of the policy (and which usually results in such). I would also point out that this is one of the more common mechanisms by which policy has changed over time.

So even when the one is upholding policy, it's usually still a very good idea for them to reflect deeply upon the question of why so many editors are opposing them.ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPantsTell me all about it.18:56, 21 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Can we agree that any attributed claim in a secondary source that is clearly and explicitly labeled as being based only on a comment or comments on a Nazi message board are no more reliable that the original comment or comments? - no, we absolutely cannot agree on that. Your statement here is honestly shockingly wrong coming from an experienced editor. We cannot cite a random man on the street; but we can cite a secondary source interviewing a random man on the street. To a certain extent, using theirreputation for fact-checking and accuracy to perform research on primary sources like forum postings is the whole purpose of secondary sources; in cases like that only the reliability of theproximate source matters. Without that we could never cite anything at all, because all sources could be traced back to research done by someone. And your misinterpretation of policy here allows people to use OR to second-guess any source they disagree with - you could constantly go "yes, this article says X, buttheir evidence isn't good enough, is it?" Is your argument that we could never cover message board postings regardless of the quality of the source covering it, because "well it's just message board postings?" Not how it works; the proximate source is what matters. In any case, nothing has changed since the recent RFC, and most of the objections above (including this one!) essentially consist of people saying they disagree with specific things the SPLC has said, which is not an RS criteria. The SPLC is still widely-trusted and used as a gold-standard source for hate groups in academia; nothing you're saying really challenges or changes that. --Aquillion (talk)15:39, 26 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  +1.User:Bluethricecreamman(Talk·Contribs)06:28, 1 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

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Which describes the reliability of Olympedia best:

1. The source is recognized as being generally reliable.
2. There is no consensus or additional considerations apply.
3. The source is recognized as being generally unreliable in most cases, though it can be used under certain circumstances.
4. The source is recognized as being generally unreliable and should be deprecated.
5. The source is:
   1. Generally reliable for sports-statistics data.
   2. Of unclear reliability for biographical data.
   3. Not independent of the International Olympic Committee (IOC).
6. Another option (please specify)

11:17, 18 November 2025 (UTC)

• Olympedia's biographical info (September 2025)
• Recent AFDs includingAntoine Masson andKarel Pacák,
• LUGSTUBS (March 2023, nb. that referencing only to Olympedia was one of the del. criteria and the motion passed, also note the discussion of the incorrect biographical details for Alexander/Arthur Martin)
• NSPORTS2022 (February 2022)
• Olympedia (December 2021)
• Olympedia (April 2021)
• Reliability of Sports reference (2017)

A search using the WP search tool showsit is used on approximately 86,000 pages.

• Option 5 (orOption 4 for biographical data in any event, andprimary) - I don't doubt that the sport-statistics carried on Olympedia are generally accurate since they appear to come directly from official sources, but it would always be better just to cite those sources directly. This is also clearly a sport-reference-type source (indeed, it *WAS* part of Sports-reference.com) that doesn't indicate notability due to its wide-sweeping nature perWP:SPORTBASIC.
  When it comes to the biographical data, over the years I've seen a lot of mistakes in this whichI've listed here. Asthis Swimming World piece notes, a lot of this biographical information appears to come from either the families of the athletes, or from the research of the hobbyist volunteers who run the website, and they do not cite the sources they get their information from making its reliability dubious. Some (the majority?) of these hobbyists are also active as editors on WP and I don't see why their contributions on Olympedia should be treated as any more reliable than it would be if it was entered as uncited OR here.Olympedia lacks a clear editorial policy, but also clearly solicits contributions from amateurs and again notes that a lot of their information comes from the Olympians themselves or their family members. A lot of emphasis is often placed on Bill Mallon and Jeroen Heijmans having set up Olympedia, but these people are self-described amateurs/hobbyists and, even if they weren't, there is no sign that these people write or edit all or even most of the content on Olympedia.
  The lack of independence from the IOC is now also undeniable given their business relationship.

The primary nature of this source is demonstrated in the way they repeatedly just relay incorrect data (e.g., the recent case ofDragan Kusmuk, who they describe asDragomir Kusmuk because that's how his name was incorrectly listed by the IOC, one of many, many such cases). If this was really a reliable secondary source, there would be some degree of fact-checking on this and comparison with other sources where his name was correctly listed.FOARP (talk)11:17, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

FOARP, goodness knows I have no love for the IOC, but Dragan isn't exactly an uncommon nickname for people with the first name Dragomir; I'm curious as to how you decided that was an error on Olympedia's part as opposed to somebody registering & competing under a legal name, but later sources using a common name/preferred name?GreenLipstickLesbian💌🧸10:34, 21 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think if you check the previous RSN conversation or maybe it's the AfD, someone noted that the official IOC documents gave his name as Dragomir, as did the news reports listing the results of the Olympics.Katzrockso (talk)10:42, 21 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@GreenLipstickLesbian It was thisAfD (still ongoing). The original reports from the Olympic Committee reported his name as Dragomir. Unclear if there was perhaps a mistranscription of the Cyrillic or perhaps a nickname like you suggested, but it's hard to fault Olympedia from originally having the same spelling of a new as the literal official Olympics did. For all we know they could have a policy for naming that just reflects what original Olympic documentation states, just like Wikipedia has a more idiosyncratic policy on article titles and naming.Katzrockso (talk)10:49, 21 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Katzrockso I think you might be onto something with the naming scheme - looking at their other entries, though they note the name change, they haveBalian Buschbaum asYvonne Buschbaum andHeinrich Ratjen asDora Ratjen. These are the names they competed under, but they aren't their common names or legal names (as far as I know).

A blanket policy like this makes sense - it's not going to be practical, or even wise, for Olympedia to track whether former Olympians have legally changed their name or adopted a new on. For example, a female athlete might change her name upon marriage for cultural/practical reasons, but want to keep her professional credentials associated with the name she is known by - and therefore won't publicize the name change. (And will view trying to give the credit to their husband's name as incredibly offensive). On the complete opposite end of the spectrum, I'd imagine women likeRobina Muqimyar are doing all they can to stay under the radar now.

So are they errors? We often write about people under the name they used at the time.Barbara Bush, currently an FA, calls her "Pierce" until her marriage, and we often use "Folsom' forFrances Cleveland. I agree it's hardly fair to fault Olympedia for doing the same thing.GreenLipstickLesbian💌🧸11:40, 21 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Given that the official Olympic report, every English-language report from when he competed, andeven someSerbian newspapers referred to him as "Dragomir" – I don't think it's even accurate to say its an error.BeanieFan11 (talk)18:41, 21 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Option 1. Describing the people who run the site as mere "hobbyists" is a very, very inaccurate label. As has beenexplained to you already by historianBill Mallon himself, the group is composed of ~25-30 members of the International Society of Olympic Historians who are academics, published experts, former Olympians and historians. Mallon himself, who has writtendozens of published historical books on the history of the Olympics, and received numerous honors for being one of the preeminent Olympic historians, performs most of the statistical updates. Forany biographical changes, the site has anextensive, week-long peer-review process in which all 30 historians and experts are required to review the biographical data, several others are required to edit it, and Mallon reviews and edits the final version. That is an insanely thorough peer-review process among historians that I doubt the vast majority of reliable sources even approach for their content. Olympedia is clearly reliable. And I'll add that many of the tiny "errors" list (12 out of probably 1 million+ pages) mentioned by FOARP are not actually errors, such as him deciding himself that Olympedia is wrong since we weren't able to find any further sources under the name they gave for a pre-internet athlete, or them (accurately) having the maiden name of a female athlete which she competed under and FOARP deciding that that's an "error" since she later married and changed her name.BeanieFan11 (talk)16:54, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Bill Mallon would appear not to be an indendent source on the topic and the International Society of Olympic Historians is an amateur association not a professional one (you and I are both welcome to join it tomorrow despite having no higher qualification than a bank account). Which would make sense because Bill Mallon is an amateur historian not a professional one, he doesn't actually meet the standard for subject matter expert on wiki... Unless I'm missing something none of his work has been published by academic presses.Horse Eye's Back (talk)19:33, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  he doesn't actually meet the standard for subject matter expert on wiki ... none of his work has been published by academic presses Mallon isvery clearly an expert. Policy states that someone is an expert if their "work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable, independent publications". Are you suggesting thatMcFarland & Company,The Globe Pequot Publishing Group,Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, andSaunders are all not "reliable publications"? As all of them have published his many books.BeanieFan11 (talk)19:46, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  No those are not in context reliable publications, those are mass market presses. I also think you're mixing his publishing in medicine with his publishing on Olympic history, the only Saunders book I see is "Ernest Amory Codman - The End Result of a Life in Medicine"Horse Eye's Back (talk)19:51, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  those are not ... reliable What??? These are academic and scholarly publishers? How is something likeMcFarland & Company or The Globe Pequot imprint Scarecrow Press unreliable?BeanieFan11 (talk)19:59, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Lets take the emotions down a notch, there is no reason to be getting worked up here. Those are mass market presses (Scarecrow was stripped by Globe Pequot to just its name and eventually not even that) and you do appear to be conflating his publishing on multiple topics. Work with me here, show me a peer reviewed article in a university journal or something like that.Horse Eye's Back (talk)20:06, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Do you have any sources describing Scarecrow Press as some unreliable "mass market press"? From all the descriptions I can find of them, they're academic and scholarly.BeanieFan11 (talk)20:22, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  You said it was published by The Globe Pequot, an imprint is not a publisher its just a trade name. It also seems like you're picking one little thing to focus on while ignoring almost everything else, for example whether or not you're conflating his publishing on multiple topics. Remember he can published by both of those presses and be neither an academic or a scholar but simply an adult non-fiction writer.Horse Eye's Back (talk)20:27, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  His sports books were published by Globe Pequot/Scarecrow Press and McFarland, while his medical books appear to be published by Wilkins and Saunders. I still don't see why Globe Pequot/Scarecrow Press is unreliable?BeanieFan11 (talk)20:33, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Do you understand the distiction between academic, scholarly, and adult non-fiction?Horse Eye's Back (talk)20:36, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Also, we are not citing these books and Olympedia is not clearly written by Bill Mallon.FOARP (talk)21:02, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  "Describing the people who run the site as mere "hobbyists" is a very, very inaccurate label" - "Hobby" isliterally the word that Mallon himself uses here.FOARP (talk)20:45, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Option 4. There have been so many issues identified with this source and its reliability we should stop using it.John Pack Lambert (talk)17:38, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  It's generally reliable for sports stats like Olympics results, dates, etc. Plus this source has been used in academic research and sports media. And the IOC's Olympic Studies Centre promoted it as a reliable resource for Olympic info.Frankserafini87 (talk)05:02, 27 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Option 1 - I haven't seen any major continuous issues from Olympedia. What major issues have been found? I can't help but feel that this has something to do withWP:LUGSTUBS andWP:LUGSTUBS2.KatoKungLee (talk)17:50, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Option 4 or 5 I find the arguments that this source is unreliable to be compelling but the formatting is throwing me a bit here preventing me from arriving at a clean numbered !vote. From their about page[32] it really is a more hobbyist group even if there are some professional participants. Note that theInternational Society of Olympic Historians is an amateur association, not a professional one... There is no membership qualification other than the ability to sign a check. There are also real questions about Olympedia's independence from the IOC, they seem to have had a very real if complicated relationship which ended in the freezing of the site.Horse Eye's Back (talk)19:30, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Their contract with the IOC has been renewed.FOARP (talk)20:42, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Thank you for the clarification, it would then unambiguously appear to be "Not independent of the International Olympic Committee (IOC)." however else we find about its reliability... So I will repeat my confusion/frustration with the formatting of the question.Horse Eye's Back (talk)20:45, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  What would help on the formatting front? There is an option 6 if you want to make a bespoke !vote.FOARP (talk)20:51, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I think its too late for any changes, lets just go from here. I think in general we agree that this source is probably fine for statistics supplied by the IOC but less than awesome for non-statistical information. On the statistics side I also don't see why we wouldn't just use the IOC's stats directly if Olympedia is just copying them without any edits, but thats more a due weight question.Horse Eye's Back (talk)21:02, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  FYI the issue with the formatting of the options is that you have made it unclear what to select if one believes that the source is both non-independent AND generally unreliable. The former is Option 5, but the latter would be Option 4.~2025-34572-30 (talk)03:14, 20 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Unfortunately the horse has already rather bolted on that one, for which please accept my apologies, but you can simply just state that in your !vote if it is your view.FOARP (talk)09:38, 20 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Option 1. I don't see any reason this wouldn't be reliable. If we were to downrank a source for getting the names of a handful of people out of thousands wrong I we would not have any sources. Also, some of those don't even seem to be wrong? Generally reliable is not infalliable.PARAKANYAA (talk)21:06, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  @PARAKANYAA: and on the question of independence from the IOC how do you find? Perhaps I was wrong above to say it was too late for any changes...Horse Eye's Back (talk)21:08, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Are we going to be using them as a source on the IOC itself? I don't see why that would matter.PARAKANYAA (talk)21:12, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Presumably we're going to be using them for a source on the Olympics, which is entirely controlled by the IOC. There is no indepedence issue which would apply to the IOC but not the Olympics in this context, there is no Olympics independent of the IOC unless we're talking about really really old ones.Horse Eye's Back (talk)21:18, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I mean to me that's like saying that any study that receives a grant from any major governmental healthcare body is non-independent from the governmental healthcare body and so cannot be trusted on healthcare. There can be no source on the Olympics that is 'independent' in this context, even the news, but that's clearly not what we mean byWP:INDEPENDENT. They seem to have editorial independence.PARAKANYAA (talk)00:33, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  They would appear to receive 100% of their funding from the IOC... And any study that receives a grant from a major governmental healthcare body is non-independent from that governmental healthcare body but it stops there, there is no wider "cannot be trusted on healthcare." WP:INDEPENDENT instructs us to ask "Is this source independent or third-party, or is it closely affiliated with the subject?" and the answer here is clearly "closely affiliated with the subject" when it comes to the Olympics.Horse Eye's Back (talk)00:37, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  There are plenty of academic studies and sources that are 100% government funded and yet completely independent of the government. What matters is if their editorial decision making is independent of the funding they receive, which I see no reason to suggest otherwise for this source.Katzrockso (talk)01:14, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Then why does it say "or is it closely affiliated with the subject?"Horse Eye's Back (talk)01:16, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Go read the sectionWP:IIS that explains what that means.Katzrockso (talk)01:20, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  The section begins: "An independent source is a source that hasno vested interest in a given Wikipedia topic and therefore is commonly expected to cover the topic from a disinterested perspective. Independent sources have editorial independence (e.g., advertisers do not dictate content) and no conflicts of interest (i.e., there is no potential for personal, financial, or political gain to be made from the existence of the publication).Interest in a topic becomes vested when the source (the author, the publisher, etc.) develops any financial or legal relationship to the topic."Horse Eye's Back (talk)01:37, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  By this logic, would it not be the case that any sports network (or hell, probably any news network big enough to have a sports division) was non-independent, e.g. ESPN, since that has a "financial or legal relationship to the topic"? They're not financially isolated from the topics they cover.PARAKANYAA (talk)01:46, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Yes, agreed. If they have a broadcast relationship with the league their coverage can't be considered independent for wiki purposes. Remember that there are still plenty of uses for non-independent sources, it isn't like they can't be used they just have some stipulations that come with them.Horse Eye's Back (talk)01:48, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I do not agree with that. Banning all news coverage from contributing to sportsperson notability would be ridiculous, and is not what I get from my reading of the independent sourcing guidelines.PARAKANYAA (talk)01:50, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  It wouldn't ban all news coverage, just those with a broadcast relationship with the league or team which is a small minority of them.Horse Eye's Back (talk)01:53, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  That's all news coverage from anything non-local, which doesn't contribute to notability anyway.PARAKANYAA (talk)01:54, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  No it isn't, leagues and teams generally have exclusive or regionally broadcast relationships. Thats already how its written and broadcast relationships are both legal and financial. They come with non-disparagement and promotional agreements. See for exampleOlympics on NBC.Horse Eye's Back (talk)01:57, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I disagree that the "financial incentive" in sports broadcasting is only limited to there.PARAKANYAA (talk)01:59, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Where is that quote from? And again this is already the standard, this is already what we do.Horse Eye's Back (talk)02:04, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I meant to type "financial interest" (WP:ISS "no vested interest [...] "develops any financial or legal relationship to the topic"). And according to what?PARAKANYAA (talk)02:11, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  According to WP:IIS which Katzrockso brought up. Thats the explainer, so "according to literally that"Horse Eye's Back (talk)02:15, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I don't agree with the idea that "any study that receives a grant from a major governmental healthcare body is non-independent from that governmental healthcare body", at least if you're exceptinghealthcare. They cannot be divorced unless you can also divorce IOC the company from the broad cultural event that is the Olympics.PARAKANYAA (talk)01:37, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  So you would say that a publication financed by theNational Football League was an independent source for information about NFL games and players because they exist in a broad cultural space?Horse Eye's Back (talk)01:40, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Depends on if they have editorial review and the nature of their coverage. I would not call them independent from the NFL's company workings but specific players and games, perhaps.PARAKANYAA (talk)01:44, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  The way its written they need both editorial independence and a lack of conflicts of interest/vested interests. A financial relationship is clearly laid out as counting as a vested interest. See above.Horse Eye's Back (talk)01:46, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Yes, with regard to thecompany, but the IOC does not own the people who have contributed to the Olympics.PARAKANYAA (talk)01:51, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  This would not cover information about people who have contributed to the Olympics which isn't about the Olympics.Horse Eye's Back (talk)01:54, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Why would it not? The independence issue would be the same there.PARAKANYAA (talk)01:56, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Because Olympedia does not cover information which is not about the Olympics.Horse Eye's Back (talk)01:59, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  The people that compete in the Olympics are independent from the IOC because the IOC does not control them.PARAKANYAA (talk)02:03, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  We are not discussing those people as sources.Horse Eye's Back (talk)02:05, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Yes, but I am saying that a publication funded by the IOC with editorial independence would be independent from the people who have competed.PARAKANYAA (talk)02:05, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  It would not count as independent coverage of anything those people did at the Olympics or awards awarded by the IOC or constituent organizations. Everything else would be on a sliding scale of how related to the Olympics it was. It would never count for notability.Horse Eye's Back (talk)02:09, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I don't accept that, but I've never seen a description there longer than a paragraph or two, so it's not going to count for notability anyway?PARAKANYAA (talk)02:16, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  You are of course welcome to propose changes to the relevent policies and guidelines, but please respect the consenus now that you are aware of it.Horse Eye's Back (talk)02:18, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Well, good thing we have unambiguous guidance at NSPORT that explicitly states governing sports orgs are not independent of players.JoelleJay (talk)19:35, 28 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Option 5 and a primary source It is good for statistical data, since it's from the IOC itself, but that's where the buck stops. It's also a primary source for said data, so doesn't contribute to notability in any way. In short, for everything else like biographical and personal info, get some better sources. If you don't have anything else, then sorry, but your person is not notable. My question that honestly has felt relevant for years is: why is the sourcing for sports subjects so terrible all the time?Silverseren^C01:46, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Can you explain how it's a primary source?Katzrockso (talk)10:06, 20 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Option 5 and a primary source: I find the arguments by Silverseren and Horse Eye's Back to be compelling. I would also very much not have to go through so muchWP:BLUDGEONING; I find fifteen comments in one RfC to be excessive. Let someone else get a word in, please. Finally, this is Yet Another Example of an RfC that would have benefited greatly from a pre-RfC discussion about what questions to ask and what options to include. Perhaps we can work that a bit more deeply into the guidance for RfC authors? --Guy Macon (talk)04:54, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Option 6 /Option 1: The source is generally reliable. 12 cherrypicked incidents of largely misspelled names is hardly a evidence of inaccuracy when it comes to biographical details. So truly there are 2 examples of errors in biographical data, which amounts to "generally reliable" when it comes to biographical details. I think it's obvious the source is reliable for sports statistics data as well (seeWP:USEBYOTHERS in e.g.[33][34]). This source is obviously not independent of the IOC in the strict sense, as it has a contract with the IOC. So consequently, it can't be used to establish notability on things like e.g.International Olympic Committee. However, this does not mean that the source is non-independent of any Olympic athlete.Katzrockso (talk)09:51, 20 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Also, it is absurd to claim that this is a primary source - compiling information from news reports by definition makes it not a primary source. Maybe a mix of secondary and tertiary source would be the best designation.

  The examples of errors in biographical data listed include an error that is now corrected. I didn't think we here atWP:RSN called sources unreliable for errors that were corrected - that's literally a sign of editorial policy in action working. Other than that, precisely no evidence has been offered to suggest even the slightest bit of unreliability for their biographical information, so it seems like it's all based on feels or something. I find a group of historians (which getWP:USEBYOTHERS: search Bill Mallon's name on Google and you'll find him being cited byThe New York Times,ESPN, etc for claims about Olympic history) is generally reliable for this type of information.Katzrockso (talk)10:05, 20 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Option 5, which, to my mind, is a special species ofOption 2 (additional considerations apply). Compendia such as this do often rely on information from family (per FOARP), and probably sometimes the subjects themselves, and as they don't cite sources, we are left placing trust in what is collated. That this method generally produces information that is broadly true is certainly the case, as is the case for Who's Who (any version). Like Who's Who, the issue isn't so much that there are errors, but that this collation is therefore akin to a self published source. There is no clear biographical research and editorial process. Unlike Who's Who, I am not convinced the issues are so serious as to go straight to option 4, especially since the stats are taken, largely without synthesis, directly from the primary source. But there needs to be a suitable caution, particularly about the biographical information. And to forestall the obvious objection to possible loose wording on my part: I am not saying itis a self published source. Rather, the issue is that the independence of the biographical information is unclear, and there is no clarity that there is any suitable editorial process that addresses this. There should be better sources (and if there are not, the subject is not notable anyway).Sirfurboy🏄 (talk)09:17, 21 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Option 5 (or, at the very least, Option 4 for biographical information) With a heavy reliance on self-proclaimed experts, multiple examples of inaccurate information being published (such as the Frank English case) and a lack of a clear editorial policy, we should not be using this for anything other than pure sports-statistics data. While uncited, [[35]] is also another example of how this source has published numerous inaccuracies.Let'srun (talk)18:27, 22 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Why is an error that has since been corrected being held as "inaccurate information being published"? The entire list of "multiple examples of inaccurate information being published" are names discrepancies (plausibly explained by reliance on official Olympic reports) and things that have since been fixed or are accurate.

  @FOARP why did you evaluate Alexander Cudmore as being in the "wrong regiment"? His veteran headstone application from 1945 lists him as a private in Company K in the 6th Infantry.Katzrockso (talk)23:08, 22 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  1) Frank English was fixedin response to our AFD. Do we typically rely on sites that use Wikipedia to fact-check them? No.

  2) Their site says that heserved in Europe with the 6th. He may well have served with the 6th, but it wasn't the 6th that deployed to Europe in WW1, it was the 140th Infantry, which was formed by merging the 6th with the 3rd.FOARP (talk)15:37, 23 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Just because they fixed an error that was first spotted at Wikipedia doesn't mean they're unreliable, and further,worthy of deprecation – an extraordinary measure that only the very worst of all sources receive. Whether his 6th regiment was known under the title of "140th Infantry" in Europe or not is such a very, very minor detail. The outright deprecation of animmensely helpful, expert-run source with hundreds of thousands of entirely correct entriesjust for that and, at most, 10 other similar, extremely minor alleged "mistakes" (many of which aren't actually mistakes), would be one of the most ludicrous things I have ever seen at Wikipedia.BeanieFan11 (talk)19:01, 23 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  But Beanie, asWP:NOTSOURCE notes, wikipedia is not a reliable source, so why should this site get a pass for effectively doing exactly that?Let'srun (talk)12:19, 28 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  this site ... [is] effectively doing exactly [what Wikipedia does] – what on earth??? Describing Olympedia as "effectively Wikipedia" is a stunningly-awful interpretation of how they work. Does Wikipedia restrict its editing to 30 academics and historians known for their expertise on the subjects? Does Wikipedia require,for any biographical update at all,all 30 of said academics and historians to review the change, including several to edit it? Does Wikipedia, after all that, then require one of the very top historians on the subject to further review and edit the proposed change? I don't think so.BeanieFan11 (talk)17:06, 28 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  It's an unfortunate fact that because the title of the website has -pedia in it, people are incorrectly assuming that it is an open wiki that anyone can edit.Katzrockso (talk)17:12, 28 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  They are self-described hobbyists, not professional historians, a laCitizendium.Let'srun (talk)18:39, 28 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Again, comparing them to "Citizendium", another website thatanyone could edit, is completely ridiculous. Citizendium did not require a select group 30 academics, experts and historians to review every single proposed edit ever across a week-long review process. And that the group have called themselves hobbyists is irrelevant and does not remove their status as experts. People like Mallon are clearly historians.BeanieFan11 (talk)19:07, 28 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  We don't know who wrote each of the biographies though, since there is no byline on any of them, and no published editorial policy.Let'srun (talk)17:26, 30 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  You have been told, over and over again, Olympedia's editorial policies.Bill Mallon is involved in the editing of every single biography.BeanieFan11 (talk)18:13, 30 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Every single one? Modern summer Olympics can have 10,000 athletes competing and they've been going on for a long time... Their self provided statistics suggest that they have 174,104 biographies which doesn't seem possible for one person to be substantially involved with, even as a full time job let alone a hobby.Horse Eye's Back (talk)18:23, 30 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  The site has basic profiles, such asthis (with no biography), and then entries with actual biographies, such asthis. Mallon said he is involved in the editing of all written biographies.BeanieFan11 (talk)18:34, 30 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  All written biographies would appear to be 43,507 articles, so we're still well over the abilities of a single human editor to substantively review. Also I pulled the wrong number before, its 194,421 not 174,104.Horse Eye's Back (talk)19:11, 30 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  @FOARP the headstone application gives the exact dates that are in the Olympedia article (1917-1919)Katzrockso (talk)21:36, 23 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  And?FOARP (talk)22:08, 23 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  So his veteran headstone application from 1945 lists him as a private in Company K in the 6th Infantry from 1917-1919.Katzrockso (talk)17:13, 28 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• I'm atoption 3. There aren't grounds to deprecate it. Deprecation is an extraordinary measure that we use for sources that are reckless or flagrant in their disregard for accuracy. The OlyMADmen, whoever they might be, are not that; they care about details that no other source cares about, and they're completionist. They're not out to gather clicks regardless of the truth. Option 4 is as unjustified as option 1 is. But it certainly doesn't meet my personal reliability threshold for biographies and shouldn't be used in them.—S Marshall T/C23:51, 22 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Option 2 I don't think we need to say anything one way or the other. I don't think removing birthdates from thousands of Olympians will improve Wikipedia.~WikiOriginal-9~ (talk)18:50, 23 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Option 1, it is a reliable source.Strongwranglers (talk)01:31, 24 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Option 5/4.4meter4 (talk)20:35, 24 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Why?BeanieFan11 (talk)20:39, 24 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    • Based on the opinions of those voting above for options 5 and 4. I agree with their assessment as to why this source should be deprecated as unreliable. I've also caught occasional errors over the years of editing and interacting with that source. Best.4meter4 (talk)20:52, 24 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
      • Why does the "occasional error" in an expert-run source with hundreds of thousands of entirely accurate entries warrantdeprecation, an extreme measure reserved for only the worst sources that areso terribly inaccurate that they are never to be used?BeanieFan11 (talk)21:15, 24 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
        • I didn't say that was my only reason. It's only one contributing factor ofmany. See the reasons given above by others which I agree with. Green Lipstick Lesbian in particular said it well. I don't need to say anything more than my thinking is the same.4meter4 (talk)23:20, 24 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
          • So I see ~10 "errors" which mainly aren't errors given as a reason. Then I see, as a reason, FOARP declaring that some of the information comes from the subjects themselves (who, naturally, would be the most knowledgeable for information on themselves), that its run by "hobbyists" (who also happen to be some of the world's most prominent experts on the subjects), that they "lack a clear editorial policy" (which is a completely false statement asBill Mallondirectly detailed to FOARP an incredibly extensive process that involves a week of review among 30 historians and academics to makeany change to the site), and that there is "no sign that [Mallon] write[s] or edit[s] all or even most of the content on Olympedia" (also untrue as Mallon told FOARP directly that he is involved in the vast majority of statistical edits and all biographical edits), and that it is a "terrible source". Am I missing anything? What did GreenLipstickLesbian say that indicates Olympedia is unreliable?BeanieFan11 (talk)23:28, 24 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
            • Respectfully, this is meant to be a survey of opinions not an inquisition. You don't need toWP:BLUDGEON the process by rehashing points we can all read. Other editors may reach different conclusions and find different arguments more persuasive than others than yourself. We should all be able to participate without the diatribe. I don't want to comment more other than to say that I find the opinions of editors above arguing for options 4 and 5 to be persuasive, and I agree with those opinions. I'm not going to change my mind.4meter4 (talk)01:00, 25 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Option 1 Olympedia is generally reliable. It satisfiesWP:USEBYOTHERS as shown by Katzrockso. Bill Mallon is an acknowledged expert in Olympic history. Although Olympedia contains some inaccuracies, this is inevitable for any source of such volume. It is receptive to criticism and willing to correct its entries, which is a sign of a high-quality source.Kelob2678 (talk)10:33, 25 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Option 1 A quick glance at the website's about section states that the people who created it are dedicated historians, meaning that the vast majority of them, or at least enough so that contributions by the others can be thoroughly vetted, have the knowledge to make a reliable depository. There could be certain areas where the reliability could be placed under scrutiny, but overall it seems to work fine.interstatefive 22:33, 26 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Being dedicated to a project doesn't mean someone is a reliable source, in fact often it means the exact opposite for fan led projects such as this. As been pointed out here, Olympedia has a working relationship with the IOC, meaning that at the very least it should not be used as a source on any articles specifically dealing with them.Let'srun (talk)12:24, 28 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Sure, I agree that this source should not be used on articles about the workings of the IOC or the IOC itself. A person who happened to be an Olympian is not the same thing.Katzrockso (talk)14:09, 28 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  The clear financial interest and relationship between the IOC and Olympians has been recognized in hundreds (probably thousands) of AfDs by now. NSPORT also explicitly rejects coverage from any governing sports body as nonindependent.JoelleJay (talk)19:28, 28 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  So you are suggesting that the relationship between the IOC and Olympians is the same as the relationship between Olympedia and Olympians? Frankly that doesn't make senseKatzrockso (talk)19:35, 28 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  ...yes. Because Olympedia is not independent of the IOC.JoelleJay (talk)19:36, 28 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  That type of far-reaching evaluation would affect literally every publication, a web of connections that impinges on the reliability of everything. Is The New York Times not a reliable source for anything that Blackrock has an interest in because Blackrock has ownership in the NYT? The idea that Olympedia is editorially dependent on dead Olympians is not credible.Katzrockso (talk)20:07, 28 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  That isn't far reaching its very basic and is the standard we've applied evenly across the article space for a long time now. If Blackrock has ownership in the NYT then the NYT's coverage of Blackrock+related isn't independent. There are plenty of ways to use non-independent sources and we do it all the time, but it would clearly not be independent.Horse Eye's Back (talk)20:29, 28 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  No, I agree that NYTimes wouldn't have independent coverage ofBlackrock. What I disagree with is saying that the NYTimes has non-independent coverage of anything that Blackrock might have interest in. That would imply that e.g. the NYTimes coverage of China is non-independent because Blackrock has connections to / interest in China.Katzrockso (talk)20:43, 28 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Nobody has said that... And thats not an equivilent here... The equivalent here would be Blackrock hosting a global investment competition... And coverage of those investor's participation in the competition by the NYT in that context would absolutely not count as independent coverage.Horse Eye's Back (talk)21:40, 28 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Even setting aside whether I agree with that, the New York Times could provide perfectly fine independent coverage on those investors outside of the competition and their coverage on those investors in other contexts wouldn't be permanently tainted by the existence of that competition.Katzrockso (talk)22:06, 28 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Olympedia by definition has no coverage which falls outside of the context of the Olympics. There is absolutely zero coverage in any other context here.Horse Eye's Back (talk)03:25, 29 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Unless someone's birth date is suddenly defined as part of their Olympic career, this is false and you know it to be false.Katzrockso (talk)04:42, 29 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  That birthdate is only being provided in the context of the Olympics. Take it down a notch unless you want this to turn into a discussion about your competence.Horse Eye's Back (talk)15:01, 29 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  As HEB said, this is how independence is already assessed on Wikipedia. And Olympedia has an even closer connection than your Blackrock example since it is specificallyfunded by the IOC to cover Olympians; the more apt analogy would be a company buying the local community newsletter and instructing it to report on company activities.Of course there will be a vested interest in providing extensive coverage.JoelleJay (talk)23:48, 28 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  We are getting completely off-topic with this independence stuff (no need to continue to disagree only on a non-substantive issue since the question as asked in the RfC is a masquerade for a different question), the relevant question here is reliability.Katzrockso (talk)04:41, 29 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Assessment of independence is literally a subsection of one of the options. And you're the one who focused this thread in that direction...JoelleJay (talk)18:24, 29 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Option 5. Option 4 for BLPs. Biographies do not have sufficient information on provenance, and the stated editorial policy of "sending drafts around to the email listserv" is nowhere near professional enough, to consider them reliable by default. And of course it is not independent of Olympics topics.JoelleJay (talk)19:26, 28 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Option 6: Olympedia is aWP:SELFPUBLISHED website by Bill Mallon and a small collection of hobbyists. It likely should be considered areliable self-published work "by an established subject-matter expert" (Mallon) whose work in this field has been previously published, and thus usable on Wikipedia. But BLP and Notability guidelines on all self-published sources should be followed. Appears to have past COI relationship with the IOC. This puts my !vote somewhere in the realm ofOption 5 as well.PK-WIKI (talk)09:08, 29 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  @PK-WIKI, AFAICT we can't see who the author of a given biography is, so it's impossible to know whether it was written by an actual expert versus amateur/hobbyist (or someone with a relationship with the subject). This is especially a problem when there doesn't appear to be meaningful editorial control.JoelleJay (talk)18:20, 29 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Option 6 - generally unreliable. The source is self-published, it isn't possible to see what is written by supposed experts and what isn't, and it isn't independent from the IOC.Cortador (talk)10:47, 1 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The opening of this RFC was prompted bythis story in Swimming World Magazine discussing the IOC's renewal of their lapsed contract with Olympedia. Particularly it repeatedly describes the people who run Olympedia as being hobbyists engaged in a "hobby", and it is obvious that they are at the very least in a business relationship with the IOC.FOARP (talk)11:17, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

If the general reliability of the sports statistics is not controversial, I think they should probably be excluded from the RFC. From skimming the previous discussions, the main open questions seem to be how reliable the biographic content is and to what extent it can establish notability. If there hasn't already been a pre-RFC discussion, would you be open to changing the format of the question? —Rutebega (talk)16:25, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The biographical data and the independence issue, yes. The pre-RFC discussion are all of the discussions linked (and many more on AFD). What format do you propose?FOARP (talk)16:44, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This horse may have already left the barn, which is OK, but I would have suggested something like:

Question 1: is Olympedia areliable source for biographic details other than sports statistics?

Question 2: is Olympediaindependent of the International Olympic Committee for the purposes of assessingnotability andneutral point-of-view?

This would allow everyone to separate their answers (as you have in your preferred option) or answer only one or the other. People can also !vote "sometimes" or "it depends" (with explanation), which the closer can consider appropriately. There are no options unlikely to be supported by anyone, and nobody has to explain their second or third preferred option.

This is only a valid formulation in cases where the two related questions are not contingent on one another. I think this is such a case, because a source could reasonably be reliable but not independentor independent but not reliable, so there is no chance of a consensus outcome that contradicts itself. If the questions are contingent, an alternative is to provide options that answer both, but only with combinations that are coherent. As a more generalized example, this could look like:

Option A: Generally reliable

Option B: Generally unreliable

Option C: Generally unreliable and deprecate

but not

Option D: Generally reliable and deprecate

As an aside, I think it's also important to clearly distinguish between interpreting policy and interpreting consensus. With a few exceptions (notablyWP:DRV), participants in a discussion shouldn't be asked to gauge consensus, only to assess proposals on their merits, in accordance with relevant policies and guidelines. RfCs should not generally ask"is there consensus for...", as this is a question only the closer can answer (consensus can change, after all). Likewise, if an overwhelming majority of participants wind up pickingno consensus, you could have a nasty paradox on your hands. When necessary, just leave an option forno change or similar. The distinction matters substantively because deferring to existing consensus over new analysis undermines the current discussion and unduly privileges the status quo.

This is just my proposed approach to drafting an RfC aimed at being easily understandable and yielding a clear, useful consensus moving forward (as well as being brief and neutral as all RfCs must be). I'm open to any feedback even if it doesn't influence or pertain to this particular RfC. —Rutebega (talk)21:32, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

P.S. @FOARP did you intend to add{{rfc}} to this discussion? —Rutebega (talk)21:44, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The only time I've used Olympedia as a source was onChris Chan, to provide citations for his birthdate and an Olympic award he received. Do opponents of this website also oppose it being used to cite birthdates and awards received? ―Howard •🌽³³18:04, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think they want it to be discounted for biographies.Katzrockso (talk)09:57, 20 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Then I'd oppose such discounting. Olympedia's the only source which gives his exact birthdate. ―Howard •🌽³³10:38, 21 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Something being the only source for something does not make it a reliable, independent, secondary source.FOARP (talk)14:22, 21 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Can't argue with that, I guess. ―Howard •🌽³³16:18, 21 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Only sources that repeat information found in other sources are reliable? What??BeanieFan11 (talk)18:49, 23 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

For those who have not seen it, I'd encourage the reading of [[36]] from the supposed operator of Olympedia, before !voting.Let'srun (talk)18:54, 28 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

There's been a bit of scattered debate about these three sources, from myself included, with some labelling these areWP:SYNTH orWP:SPS in the case of FlightsFrom. I have to admit, the waters are getting muddied every time the arguments crop up, so I think it may be time to put this to bed once and for all:

The use-case here is verifying the continued existence of an air route - eg.Wikipedia Airlines flies from DannersTown to Synthland seasonally (or not seasonally).

• FlightConnections seems to be a website dedicated to showing airline routes - there has been discussion (specifically between @Thenoflyzone and @VenFlyer98 that this source isWP:SYNTH. Personally my primary concern is there appears to be zero transparency as to where the website obtains its information, as I cannot find an About page anywhere. Example source:[37] to verify that the route YUL-LIR is operational (Guanacaste Airport
• FlightRadar 24 is a popular website for sourcing, but I personally agree with a number of others (such as @10mmsocket) that it's SYNTH - however, it's very similar to the above. Example use is[38] to verify that there are flights between Kuala Lumpur and Juanda (Juanda International Airport).
  • However, FR24 also has another part of their site which lists future flights for an airline - for example,[39] - unlike the flight history pages in the above bullet point, it's showing future flights. As with FlightConnections, my only thought here is where the data is coming from.
• FlightsFrom appears to be very similar toWP:AEROROUTES in that it publishes information about airlines starting, changing or ending routes - however, unlike Aeroroutes, its About page lists two people working on the website, so it would appear to passWP:SPS. I've included it here because it's become the "go-to" source since Aeroroutes was labelled SPS, so I wanted to have clarity one way or the other to avoid any potential conflict or disagreement. Example use is[40] to verify a flight from Houston to Bozeman (George Bush Intercontinental Airport).

To clarify for editors, I don't know what the outcome here will be - apart from FR24 (flight history - not the future flights section), I don't really have any strong opinion... I just want to stop the back and forth between editors by having the discussion once in the appropriate forum, and deciding one way or the other - reliable or not.Danners430_{tweaks made}11:15, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment - I wouldn't say these sources were reliable, secondary, independent sources in any event. FlightConnections.com is a ticket-sales site associated ultimately with Kayak - very obviously not independent. Flightradar 24 is a flight-tracker website whose data comes from transponders and so-forth: clearly primary. The same is true of FlightsFrom - it's a ticket-sales website.

Please just stop doingWP:OR/WP:SYNTH to generate route-lists and recognise that WP is not a host for non-notable fan-content.

We can keep playing whack-a-mole with the incredibly bad sourcing that people see fit to use for flight information, or people can finally acknowledge that Wikipedia actually has policies for sourcing.FOARP (talk)11:35, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Comment If I remember correctly there were previously removals about how FR24 wasn't a valid source, but flightsfrom isn't a ticket sales website because you can't book any flights on such websites, I genuinely think we shouldn't keep on bringing up about aviation sources because this has prolonged so long and it's already becoming harder to source routes ever since Aeroroutes became declared as not reliable and it will be more harder to source if we start to do one for many other sources, and the case about whether they're secondary is making it look like we're reaching to the point like we're trying to see where a source receives it's information from rather than if it publishes routes/aviation updates that did happen and become true or misinformation that was never plannedMetrosfan (talk)11:43, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

And for the record, if we are gonna count a source as non-independent because it receives information from the airline itself or another source that depends on it, it's basically near impossible to label a source that isn't a secondary sources because all sources rely on source that use information from the airline or at most use a source dependent on itMetrosfan (talk)11:45, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The information it's showing you comes direct from transponders onboard the planes themselves. In what way is this not primary? It's the equivalent of using ATC radio traffic as a source.FOARP (talk)11:51, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Just a note that there’s two parts to FR24 - the flight history which very much comes from transponders, but also the second bullet point where they appear to list future flights. I’d argue they’re almost two separate sources, since they would likely get their data from different places.Danners430_{tweaks made}12:09, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

That also is information direct from the airlines per what it tells you on the page. It's (at most) only as reliable and independent as the corresponding airline web-page.Per the disclaimer:"The information provided on this page is a compilation of data from many different sources includingflight scheduling systems, airline booking systems, airports, airlines and other third-party data providers. The data is provided as is, there are no guarantees that the information is fully correct or up to date. Changes and errors may occur. Therefore Flightradar24 cannot be held liable either for the accuracy of the information or for ensuring that the information is up to date at all times.Some of the flights presented may be charter, cargo, ambulance or other types of flights not available for passenger travel.". It even tells you that these are not necessarily regular flights (see underlined section). Clearly a primary source as there's no actual analysis or comparison going on.FOARP (talk)13:15, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I am largely unknown for the case of FR24 as I do think that FR24 does kinda fail to reach certain requirements so I won't comment on that. However for FlightsFrom and flightsconnections I would say they are reliable, as they update routes each month based on schedules and they do sometimes even list some routes updates or new routes that AeroRoutes didnt end up coveringMetrosfan (talk)11:17, 21 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hey, thanks for finally bringing this up. I’ll quickly go over my reasoning for saying FlightConnections wasWP:SYNTH:Thenoflyzone (talk ·contribs) was using it with a start date. When clicking on the link, it just shows who’s flying the route, but when it’s a route starting multiple months out, you have to click over the calendar to find the first flight. Additionally, FlightConnections doesn’t tell you if it’s a new route, returning route, seasonality…It’s not like a news article where that info may be outright stated. Assuming a route is beginning off of FlightConnections is SYNTH since we’re assuming that’s the actual first date and that isn’t stated by the source. As for using it for existing routes, I’m not too sure. I will say that I pretty much agree with all of the pointsFOARP (talk ·contribs) has made. I just feel sites like these don’t provide enough information for route beginning/end dates since it isn’t outright stated when it begins or ends (especially FR24 because it could be a one-off or charter flight), and since it isn’t outright stated by the source, that meets the definition ofWP:SYNTH (specifically the “Similarly, do not combine different parts of one source to state or imply a conclusion not explicitly stated by the source”). I just don’t think they’re reliable enough for the sake of the tables. (VenFlyer98 (talk)18:06, 19 November 2025 (UTC))[reply]

I do not agree withVenFlyer98's assessment. There is nothingWP:SYNTH about flightconnections. I'm not combining multiple sources to imply a conclusion. It's one website clearly listing which airlines fly what routes. All the information is easily available without taking additional steps. We have to be careful here, because airlines don't necessarily announce every single route they operate in a press release. Some routes are simply added in the schedules without much fanfare, as is the case with WestJet from Montreal to LIR and ADZ. It's the same when airlines remove routes. Ex. Emirates to Damascus. That doesn't mean we shouldn't find other reliable sources and include these informations on Wikipedia. Not doing so will render information on airport pages incomplete and unreliable. Is this what we want? I don't think so.Thenoflyzone (talk)20:17, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Without commenting on the reliability of the sources for a second and addressing the incomplete lists - that is what is required by Wikipedia policy, namely ourVerifiability policy… content only belongs on Wikipedia when it can be sources with reliable sources. This is why there’s an RfC shortly about these route tables atWP:VPP, so that might be a page to add to your watchlist.Danners430_{tweaks made}20:19, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, I get that, but what I'm trying to say is that flightconnections is a reliable source. I'll also add that I don't think flightconnections falls in the same category as FR24. I agree that FR24 shouldn't be used as a source, because we can't really determine if a flight shown on FR24 is a scheduled or ad-hoc charter flight. We don't have to worry about that with flightconnections. It lists only scheduled flights available for sale to the general public. So apples and oranges.Thenoflyzone (talk)20:22, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

While I understand your points, here’s the other issue I have: the link to FlightConnections in the future. Let’s say an airline launches a route and we use a FlightConnections source. 6 months later the airline cuts the route. Maybe they announce the cut, maybe they don’t. At least if the reference is a news article or some kind of article that says they launched it, then at least if the destination is kept in the table it’s sourced. The source for FlightConnections at this point wouldn’t be accurate because it wouldn’t show the airline flying that route anymore. It would mean we’d have to keep checking back to the FlightConnections source to see if it’s still accurate. Along with that, what if we have a seasonal route and someone looks at a FlightConnections link during the season the flight doesn’t fly? They may think the source is outdated and remove the flight which wouldn’t be accurate. Again, that’s just my take. (VenFlyer98 (talk)20:52, 19 November 2025 (UTC))[reply]

Let's take a concrete example. Transat from Montreal to Toulouse. Transat currently doesn't operate this route because it is summer seasonal. Flightconnections clearly mentions this See:https://www.flightconnections.com/flights-from-yul-to-tls. So I don't see how someone will remove the route when the source clearly mentions "from Apr to Oct", with future dates available to book on top of it.Thenoflyzone (talk)22:27, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Why are you using a 3rd-party ticket-sales website with algorithmically-generated content? In what way is that at all appropriate sourcing? Even with that, this source does not in fact state that Transat only flies April to October. Instead it states"Air Transat flights start in April".FOARP (talk)09:15, 20 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It does list "April to Oct" under Transat. If you go to flightconnections.com, and they type in YUL in the departure airport, followed by TLS in the arrival airport, if you look on the left side of the page, it clearly states "April to Oct" under Transat.Thenoflyzone (talk)12:46, 20 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

That isWP:OR, anytime you have to do that much work its no good.Horse Eye's Back (talk)16:12, 20 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

No, the Wikipedia editor is not making their own conclusions or synthesizing sources by inputting fields and looking at the results. That's absurd to call that original research. There is absolutely no requirement that something can only be verified with a direct URL to the data. "Doing work" does not mean a fact is unverifiable. — Reywas92^Talk16:35, 20 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

If you are inputting fields you are doing OR... Sources need to be readily usable without manipulation. That is in fact how verification works on wikipedia, the data needs to be found at the source in the quoted form without manipulation.Horse Eye's Back (talk)16:55, 20 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The prohibition against original research means that all material added to articles must be verifiable, in the sense that it must be possible for an editor to find a reliable, published source that directly supports this material. Followed byA source "directly supports" a given piece of material if the information is present explicitly in the source so that using this source to support the material is not a violation of this policy against original research. What you are describing is definitionally OR.⇒SWATJester^{Shoot Blues, Tell VileRat!}17:03, 20 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This was a specific example to refuteVenFlyer98's claim that seasonal routes pose an issue. They don't. Your argument holds no water. The links I am inputing in wikipedia lead directly to the final webpage listing all the airlines that fly a route, with the proper schedules well into the future, not just 7 days like FR24. All of this is verifiable data.Thenoflyzone (talk)19:18, 20 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I was not making an "argument." I was quoting our policies againstoriginal research. But do explain how those "hold no water."?⇒SWATJester^{Shoot Blues, Tell VileRat!}20:03, 20 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I just did. And I have read your link aboutWP:OR. What I described above isn't that.

"Wikipedia articles must not contain original research. On Wikipedia, original research means material—such as facts, allegations, and ideas—for which no reliable, published source exists. By "exists", the community means that the reliable source must have been published and still exist—somewhere in the world, in any language,whether or not it is reachable online.""

Care for me to explain more on how your argument based on your policy holds no water ? I can do this all day.Thenoflyzone (talk)20:14, 20 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

If not online where else is this source published?Horse Eye's Back (talk)20:42, 20 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, I don’t understand, in a discussion about the reliability of websites, making the point that the source doesn’t have to be online to be reliable. These are websites, their content is either online or they don’t have it.FOARP (talk)22:45, 24 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, this was a bit of an... interesting... thread. That is to say, I would like tostrongly second @Horse Eye's Back, @VenFlyer98 and @Swatjester in that what they are describing is OR. However, I wouldn't call something likethis OR. Everything is listed in plain text. As long as you can directly link to the result you're seeking to include in the article, and reader need not enter any information to obtain the same results, I'd say it's good. I'm not commenting on whether or not I believe these sites to be RSs... that is a complicated question and one which I'm not nearly intelligent enough to opine on. All I'll say is that they may be fine to use as long as it is for simple, easily-verified information and perhaps with a requirement of direct attribution.MWFwiki (talk)01:47, 30 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

"may be fine to use as long as it is for simple, easily-verified information" I would actually agree with that... But to me that means that the source is essentially unusable because such a source is basically never due (attributed or otherwise), if we can easily verify the information using a stronger source then that stronger source should be the one used.Horse Eye's Back (talk)14:34, 30 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

You are mistaken, two people does not mean that it passes SPS. Still a SPS, do not pass go, do not collect $200 dollars.Horse Eye's Back (talk)18:08, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Wait, validating a source is valid gets us $200? Excuse me while I open another 300 RSNs… 🤣Danners430_{tweaks made}18:17, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Dollars... Donairs... Doll hairs... Something like that... Either way SPS isn't contingent on there being only a single person involved.Horse Eye's Back (talk)20:39, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Are there any examples of the sources used in context? Why do we need to verify... airline flight routes?Denaar (talk)20:29, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Answering my own question, we've got two examples in contextGuanacaste Airport,Juanda International Airport. Each article has a list of Airlines and their Destinations... and I just question why this detail is needed; it's not static information but rather something that will consistently change, requiring it to be monitored and updated. I wouldn't expect Wikipedia to be a place to go to verify airport routes. So why are we including the information?Denaar (talk)21:03, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

They apparently exist because people want to use Wikipedia to make their itinerary for travel plans and also for last minute changes in routes. Which, you know, isnot what Wikipedia is for. Go to WikiVoyage or, perhaps, these sites themselves if you need that information. There's no reason for it to be here.Silverseren^C21:09, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I guess it's been discussed a few times, with previous discussions noted here:Wikipedia:WikiProject_Aviation/Style_guide/Layout_(Airports)#Airlines_and_destinations.Denaar (talk)21:27, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It has been discussed a few times in the past, and I'm about to start an RfC on the topic atWP:VPP shortly, but there's a related RfC ongoing at the moment hence the delay. I'll make sure to ping you when it goes up.Danners430_{tweaks made}21:37, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

As someone who mainly edits the lists, my only answer as to why they’re there in the first place is because that’s how it’s always been. There’s been a few discussions on it here and there and I wouldn’t be opposed to a new one.VenFlyer98 (talk)04:30, 20 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Unreliable, inappropriate, and ridiculously primary to boot I don't think you can get more primary than literal transponders on the planes. It's basically like using raw data to make a claim in an article, which is highly inappropriate. Originally, I wasn't going to say the sites were unreliable, per se, since they were just regurgitating said data, but since it appears they're not only doing that, but also combining said data in unknown ways to get their overall output, that means they're actively doing data synthesis. And they are not reliable sources for doing that. These sites shouldn't be used anywhere on Wikipedia at all. They're honestly worse thanAeroroutes, which is an impressive accomplishment.Silverseren^C21:09, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Aeroroutes was absolutely impressive, and yet we can't use it now. I understand the why, but flightconnections and aeroroutes can't be dumped in the same category as FR24. On top of it, flightconnections, unlike aeroroutes, isn't a blog, so in my opinion, there is no valid reason I see that prevents us from using flightconnections as a source.Thenoflyzone (talk)22:30, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  They are random people's websites. Meaning they aren'treliable sources.Silverseren^C00:21, 20 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Agree. The argument seems to be "airline routes are notable, therefore there must be reliable, independent, secondary sources, these are sources about airline routes so they must be reliable independent secondary ones", rather than looking at what the sources actually are. Sometimes the thing you are trying to write about just isn't notable.FOARP (talk)09:10, 20 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  abcnews, cnn, abcnews, etc. are random people's websites too. It doesn't matter who they are. As long as the info is verifiable. And on flightconnections, it is.Thenoflyzone (talk)12:35, 20 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  It might not be notable to you, but to a lot of people, it's notable. Who are you to decide what is and isn't notable?Thenoflyzone (talk)12:36, 20 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  That's not a good argument at all. The news sites that you quote are run by multiple people with strong editorial controls. A one- or two-person enthusiast/fan site is completely different.10mmsocket (talk)12:45, 20 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Prove to me that flightconnections is a one to two person fan site.Thenoflyzone (talk)12:50, 20 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Or that the info it provides is unverifiable.Thenoflyzone (talk)12:50, 20 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  That’s not how WP works … perWP:Burden andWP:Onus it is up to those wanting to include material to prove the positive (ie that the source IS reliable). It isnot on those challenging the material to prove the negative (ie that the source isn’t reliable).Blueboar (talk)13:04, 20 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Flightconnections is neitherWP:SYNTH norWP:SPS. It collects its information (airline flight schedules) from multiple sites selling airline tickets. It's as simple as that. It is completely verifiable data and is 100% accurate. What more proof do you need.Thenoflyzone (talk)18:58, 20 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  We don’t want proof - we want reliable sources. Big difference. SeeWP:TRUTH.Danners430_{tweaks made}19:06, 20 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  So far, I have yet to see a valid reason why flightconnections isn't a reliable source.Thenoflyzone (talk)19:20, 20 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  It isabsolutely on those challenging the claim to prove their point. You haven't shown me one shred of evidence claiming flightconnections is a fanboy site, unverifiable and/or not a reliable source. I, on the other hand, have shown on multiple occasions that this particular website is very much a reliable source.Thenoflyzone (talk)20:07, 20 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  What "editorial controls" would you even have over flight schedules? This is not a newspaper and is not opinion pieces or reporting, nor can only newspapers with editors be used in articles. Articles can use data, and there is no actually presentation that this data is false. — Reywas92^Talk16:04, 20 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  The same we expect of any RS, I'm not seeing how this topic would differ signficantly in any way. Why do you want to apply a different standard to these sources than those for other topics?Horse Eye's Back (talk)16:14, 20 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I don't think it's a different standard. These sites say that X airline runs a flight from A to B at a certain time, and they know that because the airline says so, sells tickets for it, and is tracked as such. That's perfectly reliable data with no concern for bias or fabrication of facts. Is something inaccurate about this? — Reywas92^Talk17:37, 20 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  All sources are required to meet the same editorial standard... You appear to be saying that standard doesn't apply to these sources because of the information they cover. Is there something I'm not getting?Horse Eye's Back (talk)17:44, 20 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  And I believe thesedo meet that standard: the website has appropriate controls to ensure that when it says X airline flies from A to B, that it's an accurate statement. Do you think these websites are just making things up? That they are happy to allow incorrect information to be presented? — Reywas92^Talk22:05, 20 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I agree with Reywas92 and Thenoflyzone here, the sources lists what airlines fly on a route and it shows what destinations a airport have, unlike AeroRoutes it doesn't publish articles and it was only a tab of destinations listMetrosfan (talk)23:29, 20 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Where can I find more information about their editorial policy and staff? Maybe I'm just missing what you're seeing... Also remember that reliability on wiki requires more than accuracy, no amount of pointing out how accurate a SPS is for example will make it not a SPS.Horse Eye's Back (talk)23:52, 20 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  This isn't self-published material, it'srepublished material, making data from airline timetables, booking portals, transponders, and other sources accessible. This isn't a blog, podcast, book, or forum post by someone making their own claims or sharing their research, it's simple data already published elsewhere. They don't name their staff because staff aren't coming up with their own reporting or commentary. Yes, FlightRadar24 has a podcast, and I would not cite that! But the website as a whole is not merely a banned SPS, and it's perfectly reliable for verifying that an airline flies a particular route. — Reywas92^Talk01:47, 21 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Whether or not material is republished or not has nothing to do with whether its self published or not.Horse Eye's Back (talk)02:01, 21 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I have a website. Nobody other than me decides what information is or is not published on that website. That website is unquestionably self-published.

  Transport for London publish lots of factual information about the services they operate, including details of planned weekend engineering works[41]. That information is:

  • Primary
  • Reliable
  • Not-self published

  They also make this information available via an API[42] meaning that (if I had the technical ability) I could incorporate TfL's weekend engineering work information as part of my website. I would be republishing TfL's information. Would that make TfL's data:

  • Secondary? No
  • Self-published? No
  • Unreliable? Not if it is unaltered.

  The questions for this discussion are thus, (1) are airlines a reliable source for the flights they operate? Unquestionably yes. (2) Are the websites in question republishing airline data without material modification? I've not seen any evidence to the contrary.Thryduulf (talk)02:30, 21 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  If a self-publisher republishes something it becomes self-published. It would also be unreliable because we would have no way of knowing that it was unaltered without access to the actual data posted by ToL... And if we have access to the actual data posted by ToL why would we use your scraped version of the data? Nothing in your analysis here supports the use of these sources as RS, you actually appear to be digging their grave with great enthusiasm.Horse Eye's Back (talk)16:39, 1 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  If a self-publisher republishes something it becomes self-published.^{[citation needed]} That doesn't make any logical sense at all, otherwise my quoting the New York Times on my website would make the New York Times self-published, which is very clearly ridiculous.

  It's true that we need to know whether the quoting and republishing is accurate, but you don't need access to every bit of source material to do that. For example, if I accurately republish 100 facts from a given source and 95 of them were proven to be accurate when verified and the other 5 could not be easily checked but were exactly as plausible as the 95, what are the chances of those 5 being inaccurate?

  What we have in this case is evidence that when these sites have been checked, literally everything they claim to say has matched reality. In what universe does that make them unreliable?Thryduulf (talk)18:18, 1 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  The hypothetical quote from the NYT on your hypothetical page is self published... That doesn't make the NYT self published, I have no idea how you are making that jump.Horse Eye's Back (talk)18:23, 1 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  My website is self-published. The quote from the NYT is not self-published. If I can be relied upon to quote the NYT correctly then the information in the quote from the NYT has the exact same reliability it has on the NYT's website. You are arguing that 100% identical information is reliable when published by source A but unreliable when published by source B, even when B cites A as the source, there is evidence that source B reliably republishes source A and no evidence that source B unreliably republishes source A. That is simply not credible.Thryduulf (talk)18:30, 1 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Yes it is... You are the publisher of the content on your site, not the NYT. Anything you republish becomes self published content. The NYT is only the publisher for the stuff they actually publish, if you're quoting, scrubbing, or ripping off the NYT they're not the publisher of what you publish, you are.Horse Eye's Back (talk)18:37, 1 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  So you are saying that I publish the New York Times? I'm sorry but your arguments are getting even more detached from reality.Thryduulf (talk)21:59, 1 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  If you were to scrape and publish entirety of the New York Times each day yes you would be self publishing a pirated copy of the New York Times. No we would not consider your pirate mirror to have the same reliability as the New York Times.Horse Eye's Back (talk)22:21, 1 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  If you're just going to double down on redefining reality then there is no hope of a good faith discussion.Thryduulf (talk)23:54, 1 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  What I am describing is how we currently do it... AKA reality... If you created such a NYT mirror site we could not use it as a RS. If you disagree then do it, copy paste the NYT and start adding your copy pasted site to articles and see if anyone objects.Horse Eye's Back (talk)15:17, 2 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  You seem confused about ourWP:RS policy and how it would apply to abcnews, cnn, abcnews, etc., is this your first time encountering it?Horse Eye's Back (talk)16:10, 20 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Best summary yet @Silverseren. I fully agree.10mmsocket (talk)09:13, 20 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Yet again, FR24 and flightconnections cannot be bunched into the same category. Just because both websites have the word "flight" in them doesn't make them similar. Yes, FR24 is transponder based live information website. That is not the case with flightconnections.Thenoflyzone (talk)12:38, 20 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  @Silver seren, the data synthesis on airline trivia isn't even limited to external sites, it's explicitlyendorsed for editors to perform themselves...JoelleJay (talk)18:14, 27 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• All reliable These are all widely-used, highly respected sources. I have seen no basis to believe their content is likely to be incorrect or unreliable. This data is generally compiled from information submitted to the FAA or other entities and published in timetables to reflect actual flight schedules and movements. There is literally nothing wrong with using "raw data", nor does a source providing raw data affect its reliability. These may not establish notability, but that does not mean they cannot be used generally for verification. A source being a primary source doesnot mean it is unreliable or unusable, it means it should be considered carefully for bias or omissions, which is not an issue for straightforward data like this, which is routinely used in articles. This is yet another roundabout way to delete airport destination tables by systematically attacking the numerous sources that can verify them, despite there being no legitimate issue with accuracy.Reywas92^Talk16:00, 20 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  @Reywas92: can you support "widely-used, highly respected sources" or is that your personal opinion? Even if marginally reliable I'm not seeing widely used or highly respected for any of these so I'm wondering what I'm missing.Horse Eye's Back (talk)16:08, 20 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Flightradar24 at least is a major company recently valued at$500 million, and our article says "The Guardian considers the site to be 'authoritative'." The other two import some of the same data. — Reywas92^Talk16:50, 20 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  The quote says authoritizative for flight tracking, which isn't what we're trying to use them for. How would importing the same data as another source ammount to widely used and highly respected?Horse Eye's Back (talk)17:00, 20 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  @Reywas92 I suggest you readWP:AGF - as I've made abundantly clear in my message, there is no "ulterior motive" so stop suggesting there is such. There have been arguments about the use of these sources, so this is the correct place to discuss their inclusion.Danners430_{tweaks made}16:13, 20 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I don't think you need to use quotation marks there but you're right, my apologies.Reywas92^Talk16:52, 20 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  The arguments against flightconnections hold no water. Period.Thenoflyzone (talk)18:59, 20 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I have a thought. What if we use the airport website as the main source for all destinations for the table. I mean they are the ones that know the flights after all and most airports have a list of destinations on their websites. It seems fairly simple instead of running around trying to find something that mentions the route we are wanting to edit in a vague article. It’s not the airline themselves stating the route rather the airport which seems to make sense to me.DesignationJazz07 (talk) 18:59, 20 November 2025 (UTC)strike sock --Ponyo^{bons mots}21:11, 20 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I agree. However not all airport websites have a destination list that they serve, and furthermore, they might not list every single airline that operates a same route. I still think it's a good idea however.Thenoflyzone (talk)19:05, 20 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This is true unfortunately. I was looking at the Lincoln, NE airport website for example and they didn’t have a list of the destinations but provided an article with announcements of Breeze starting flights. Could we hypothetically combo both, the airport websites that list all their destinations, as well as articles the airport pages that post on their websites who don’t have the destinations list? I hope that made sense. Basically to the airport website that has no destination list, we use the article announcements they list instead? Yes? Maybe?DesignationJazz07 (talk) 19:19, 20 November 2025 (UTC)strike sock --Ponyo^{bons mots}21:11, 20 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Think the problem is reliability. The airport websites just aren’t reliable enough, as you both mentioned.VenFlyer98 (talk)19:22, 20 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yes I think so too. But I'm wondering if the airport sites themselves could be help fixsome sourcing issues if they are posting specific articles. Now this only would seem to work for route resumptions or beginnings as I doubt the airport websites would post route ending. So yeah definitely a reliability problem trying to implement at a mass scale.DesignationJazz07 (talk) 19:45, 20 November 2025 (UTC)strike sock --Ponyo^{bons mots}21:11, 20 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Why wouldn't the airport website be reliable?[43] and its corresponding linked[44] are perfectly reliable – this is theexact kind of source we would want to use that verifies everything. I know many airports don't have this kind of a page, but we should be using this wherever possible. — Reywas92^Talk22:01, 20 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• So, what I'm gathering from this discussion thus far is that the editors involved in this topic area don't understand what reliable sources are on Wikipedia and are extremely dedicated to pushing the entirety of such trivia ephemera into articles (or their own separate articles like the destination lists).Silverseren^C23:33, 20 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  What I'm gathering from this discussion is that there are many editors who should know better who are failing to distinguish the concepts of notability, reliability, primary/secondary source, independent source, and DUE. This is not helpful to anybody. So lets set out some basic facts:

  • Primary sources can be reliable, and indeed are almost always reliable for statements of fact about the source.
  • Primary sources do not confer notability, but can be used to verify information about notable topics.
  • Not every bit of information in an article needs to be independently notable.
  • Whether any particular information is DUE or not is unrelated to the reliability of the source it is found in.
  • Information can:
    • Unverifiable and UNDUE
    • Verifiable only in primary sources
      • and DUE
      • and UNDUE
    • Verifiable only in non-independent sources
      • and DUE
      • and UNDUE
    • verifiable in independent secondary sources
      • and DUE
      • and UNDUE
  • Reliable sources can be:
    • Independent or not independent
    • Primary, secondary or tertiary
    • Commercial or non-commercial
    • Published by an individual or an organisation
  • Unreliable sources can be:
    • Independent or not independent
    • Primary, secondary or tertiary
    • Commercial or non-commercial
    • Published by an individual or an organisation
  • The current consensus of the English Wikipedia community is that lists of airline destinations can be DUE for inclusion.
    • There is a vocal portion of the community that dislikes this consensus, but unless and until the consensus changes that is not relevant.
  • Whether a given airline flies between Airport A and Airport B is a matter of fact, not opinion. There is therefore no requirement that sources be independent or secondary.
  • An airline is a reliable source for whether that airline flies from Airport A to Airport B, and for whether those flights are scheduled or chartered. They are not independent, but that is irrelevant to the reliability of facts.
  • Aircraft transponder data is a reliable source for whether an aircraft flew between Airport A and Airport B on a given date, but not whether that flight was scheduled, charter or something else. They are not independent, but that is irrelevant to the reliability of facts.
  • Schedules published by an airline are reliable sources for whether that airline intends to operate flights between Airport A and Airport B on dates covered by that schedule. They are not independent, but that is irrelevant to the reliability of facts.

  If anybody disagrees that any of the above is factual, please present explicit evidence that it is incorrect.Thryduulf (talk)01:47, 21 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Thryduulf, we aren't discussing the airline websites. We are discussing some websites run by random people that are synthesizing transponder data with other unknown data in unknown ways. So it's both primary and not. The original transponder data would be primary, but then they are using it in a way that makes it not. And they aren't reliable for being secondary reporters in the latter manner. So the websites in question are not reliable sources.Silverseren^C01:56, 21 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  As has been pointed out multiple times, that's both true and untrue depending which part of which site you are talking about.Thryduulf (talk)03:50, 21 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  If we're talking about FR24, it literally tells us that"Some of the flights presented may be charter, cargo, ambulance or other types of flights not available for passenger travel.", and this is being used as a source for what are and are not regular flights.

  Why not just use the airline website if that is the information we wish to use?FOARP (talk)10:14, 21 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I am happy to use airline websites, which is what has been done all along for many lists with a references column, though not all of them have an easy-to-link route map or timetable. FR24 data does usually have a flight number and history that is identifiable as a regular passenger route, though that type of page has not been extensively used since a route is usually not tied to a particular flight number. Context and what is being sourced to what matters – we are usually not stating facts that relate to precise locations of plane transponders anyway. — Reywas92^Talk18:24, 21 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Just a reminder that I deliberately put examples of where and how these sources are being used in the original statement, with the intention being that these are the use-cases to be discussed.Danners430_{tweaks made}18:30, 21 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Also, just a thought - the current guidance atWP:AIRPORT-CONTENT is thatairlines and destination tables may only be included in articles when independent, reliable, secondary sources demonstrate they meetWP:DUE, which is based off themost recent RfC on the topic - so arguably, using airport websites as sources would go against this previous consensus. Now, given the current inclusion of full route tables, I'm personally also of the opinion that they should be used - from my reading of this guidance, the use of secondary sources is specifically to ensure notability of the routes being included, not due to any reliability concerns (which would of course be nonsense). But for now, they would go against that consensus, so I'd suggest we not try and add them for now.

  Given the impending RfC on what to do with the route tables, which will explicitly not discuss the sourcing guidelines as previously agreed during theWP:BEFORE discussion, we can have a second RfC specifically on the sourcing guidelines following the first one's conclusion so that these can be amended if required. It may well be that we decide to keep the route tables - then it would make sense to change the sourcing guidelines so that the lists are complete... whereas if we decide to summarise, it could make more sense to keep the guideline as is, so that only notable routes are included. Personally I don't know what the outcome will be, so we'll have to see.Danners430_{tweaks made}19:12, 21 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I never realised all these proper news websites followWP:DUE. Yes, when i think of foxnews, the first thing that comes to mind is a "neutral point of vue".....lolThenoflyzone (talk)20:25, 21 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Again - Fox News is deprecated perWP:FOXNEWS, so I'm not entirely sure it's a good example here.Danners430_{tweaks made}20:27, 21 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Any editor who truly believes thatabcnews, cnn, abcnews, etc. are random people's websites should have theircompetency questioned.
  Per FOARP, these sources should be deprecated/removed on sight.—Fortuna,imperatrix11:01, 21 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Fortunate for me then that we are not discussing my competency here. Oh and btw, last time I checked, Rupert Murdoch is a random dude, and foxnews is one of this websites. I rather read what's on flightconnections than on that guy's new sites. I guarantee you it's more accurate and verifiable. Maybe you should get your competency questioned.Thenoflyzone (talk)20:13, 21 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  OK, let's quit thepersonal attacks from both sides. It's worth noting that Fox News is also deprecated perWP:FOXNEWS.Danners430_{tweaks made}20:23, 21 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Courtesy pinging @Snape2324 following our discussion on their talk page.Danners430_{tweaks made}20:24, 21 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you @Danners430.Snape2324 (talk)21:16, 21 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thinking about this entire situation, I’m starting to think another RfC may be needed for the inclusion of destination lists. When I think about it, so many airport articles have unsourced destinations, there’s always discussions about what sources are reliable…withWP:NOTTRAVEL, I really think a new discussion on the lists is needed.VenFlyer98 (talk)22:15, 22 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Already in the works :)Danners430_{tweaks made}22:44, 22 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Appreciate you being on top of it, Danners!VenFlyer98 (talk)20:02, 24 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

So what’s the consensus on these three sources being used for airline routes?Danners430_{tweaks made}07:08, 24 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Not sure about FR24 but for flightsconnections it might be where it's counted as unreliableMetrosfan (talk)07:21, 24 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - just wanted to give a couple further examples of how FR24 is being used. This is fromDr. António Agostinho Neto International Airport:

By 18 December 2024, an average of 4 flight departures per day was recorded.^[1]
By 17 April 2025, an average of 11 flight departures per day was recorded, all by TAAG Angola Airlines and nearly all to Angolan destinations.^[2]

To me, this seems an OK use of FR24, since we're giving statistics based on data...Danners430_{tweaks made}15:11, 24 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Well... Firstly, the two references are for the same FR24 page retrieved on different dates, so without an archive they are unverifiablea posteriori. Secondly, I don't see any mention on the cited FR24 page that would verify the "all by TAAG Angola Airlines and nearly all to Angolan destinations" claim. Thirdly, FR24 doesn't explicitly give a daily average, though I guess that could be allowed underWP:CALC. With those caveats, I guess this is just about acceptable, yes.Rosbif73 (talk)16:32, 24 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Not reliable, per the extensive reasoning above by @VenFlyer98, @Silver seren, et al. If certain details can't be sourced directly from RS then theydo not belong in an encyclopedia. And even info that would be nominally acceptable through WP:CALC is not BALASP if you're making a whole table column out of calculations not present in any source.JoelleJay (talk)16:16, 26 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Not Reliable (ie secondary) per @JoelleJayDw31415 (talk)00:43, 27 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Whether something is reliable, and whether it is secondary are completely independent questions. I benefits absolutely nobody to conflate them.Thryduulf (talk)11:00, 27 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Fair point but RS often gets used to refer to the policy. I’ll take another look at the question and RFCBEFOREDw31415 (talk)13:44, 27 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Why would there be any need to use these sources as primary sources? Wouldn’t the airlines be better primary sources? I could edit my vote to say they are reliable primary sources, but not secondary sources if that’s helpful.Dw31415 (talk)04:12, 28 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

What does "certain details" mean?WP:CONTEXTMATTERS – different types of sources can be perfectly appropriate for different types of content but suboptimal for others. These sources just put airline schedule data in visual formats and there's no reason to believe they are unable to verify straightforward schedule- or route-related content. — Reywas92^Talk16:51, 27 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

All details must be supportable by RS... if the only sources supporting certain flight schedule details are SPS like the sources above, then those details are not encyclopedic.JoelleJay (talk)17:54, 27 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Except the information on those sites is not self-published any more than my publishing data from an official API on my personal website would make the data in the API self-published. My website including a copy of an FAA accident investigation report does not make that report self-published. There are only 2 relevant questions:

1. Is the data on these websites being changed in any way from the data supplied by the airline?
2. If so, does that materially impact the reliability of the data for the purposes to which it is being put?

Only if the answer toboth questions is yes can we say that the websites are unreliable for the factual information relevant to this discussion. Nobody has presented any evidence that the factual data differs from that supplies by the airlines in any way other than presentation and formatting.Thryduulf (talk)22:45, 27 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

ADS-B data are not being "published" by the airline, the aircraft itself is periodically transmitting its ID/position/etc. in real time and this gets automatically aggregated on the site via crowdsourced transponders. Just like an app that collects location ephemera from its users' personal radar detectors to generate a map of police activity isn't "republishing" a "work" from the PD... Primary, automated electronic signals aren't exactlyaudio, video, and multimedia materials that have been recorded then broadcast, distributed, or archived by a reputable party...JoelleJay (talk)06:39, 28 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

That's beside the point though - is there any evidence at all that the factual data published and/or republished by these sites differs from reality? Those who oppose the use of these sites have written a massive amount of words without actually addressing the relevant questions, when it would be far easier to just demonstrate that the data is not a reliable reflection of reality if it were - despite multiple requests to do exactly that. The longer this goes on the more I'm becoming convinced that the reason we aren't seeing proof of unreliability is because they are actually reliable.Thryduulf (talk)09:47, 28 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I have no reason to believe that the raw data is being altered by these sites such that they fail to reflect reality – so in that sense, they are reliable. The question is whether they are suitable for the claims they are being used to verify. If FlightRadar24 shows a particular airline and flight number as having flown from airport A to airport B on a particular date, or being scheduled for a particular date, we have no reason to doubt the data point. But can we conclude from that data point that there is a regularly scheduled commercial flight between those airports? Can we conclude that the flight is marketed by the airline that operated the aircraft (as opposed to being operated on a wet lease or similar basis on behalf of some other airline)? Can we conclude from the absence of a data point that a previously scheduled flight has been suspended or terminated? All of those would beWP:SYNTH.Rosbif73 (talk)10:18, 28 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think this really is the crux of the matter for FR24 (and other tracking websites) - it’s not in dispute that their data is accurate and reliable… it’s whether it’s suitable to be used as a source to verify whether a route exists and is regularly flown by an airline. I would agree with Rosbif73 that using this tracking data to verify this specific thing is SYNTH.

However, it’s worth remembering the second point I put in my initial question - there is also the separate section of the FR24 website which lists upcoming flights on a specific route. I would argue this is a distinct source from the above, as it’s not SYNTH based on flight tracking data… but I’m also not sure about whether it should be used or not, as I can’t work out where this data is coming from.Danners430_{tweaks made}10:35, 28 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It seems likely that the upcoming flights section of FR24 is generated from data provided by the airlines, perhaps intended for booking systems, travel agents, whatever... Regardless, we have no reason to suspect that the data is unreliable. However, it remains a collection of individual data points, and drawing conclusions from such data points remains SYNTH in my opinion.Rosbif73 (talk)12:31, 28 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

From one data point we can't conclude anything, but it's not synth to conclude that if there are multiple flights each way every day that this is a regularly scheduled route (that comes under simple calculations). Again a single absent data point tells us nothing, but no data points for a month does.Thryduulf (talk)10:43, 28 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Flights occurring every day on a given route is highly likely to imply a regularly scheduled route, sure, but not verifiably so: the data is only visible over a short time window and doesn't tell us whether the flights happened the previous week or will happen the following week – yet editorsare citing things to single data points or, worse, using the presence or absence of data points to cite that one route is seasonal and another is year-round, for example. That sort of claim could only be verified on these sites by retrieving data on a regular basis and comparing over time, which is rather a stretch forWP:CALC.Rosbif73 (talk)10:58, 28 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Extrapolating business practices from scheduling data (or the lack thereof) is not in any way a simple calculation. A route being "regularly scheduled" isn't some subjective, observational description, it's a legal designation. As Rosbif said, this isnot verifiable from flight data.JoelleJay (talk)19:11, 28 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The requirement that content bepublished is integral to WP:V. If the only sources that are actually publishing these data are automated, user-generated fan sites, then those data are not reliably published.JoelleJay (talk)19:18, 28 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed. Otherwise I could go set up my own Wordpress site right now pulling from the same transponder data, making the same flight claims from it, and then say here that my website is a reliable source. Which is obvious nonsense.Silverseren^C19:21, 28 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

If the source data is published, which if you can mirror it it very obviously is, and reliable (and it very obviously is reliable for what it is) then it doesn't magically become unreliable by being quoted verbatim. Whether it verifies what it is being used to verify is a very different question that is independent of its reliability.Thryduulf (talk)19:53, 28 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

So if I got an RFID reader and started tracking the movements of the local orca pod on my blog, you think this would be a reliable republication of data from the research org that put ID tags on the animals? We don't consider preprints to be RS even when they're intentionally made available to the public by a reputable institution, but a site that aggregates user-generated reports of the raw, automatic transponder data an aircraft transmits to ATC is not only merely "republished"—because the CSV data strings extracted from those electronic signals correspond to an aircraft ID and flight numberassigned "published" by an airline and were "made accessible to the public" by virtue of being detectable by civilians with certain equipment—but has the "meaningful editorial oversight" and "reputation for fact-checking and accuracy" to qualify as a reliable source on the operation ofregularly scheduled routes... Which would mean we could also use these sites as the source for an accident the instant an aircraft's QNE appears incompatible with normal flight.JoelleJay (talk)23:32, 28 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]