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[[User:О.Ц. Рипер|О.Ц. Рипер]] ([[User talk:О.Ц. Рипер|talk]]) 15:17, 15 December 2016 (UTC) |
Revision as of 15:37, 15 December 2016
Systematic problems at US-Russia articles
My first post to this talk, after editing here for over five years.
A new article, Russian influence on the 2016 United States presidential election, is one of a number that addresses recent, apparent conflicts between the United States and Russia. The article begins,
"The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has concluded Russia influenced the United States 2016 election to help elect Donald Trump as President of the United States."
It is sourced to articles from the Washington Post and NPR [1][2], both of which state that anonymous U.S. officials have told the media that the CIA concluded as much. Here is the Washington Post quote, which is typical of media statements on this issue more broadly:
"The CIA has concluded in a secret assessment that Russia intervened in the 2016 election to help Donald Trump win the presidency, rather than just to undermine confidence in the U.S. electoral system, according to officials briefed on the matter."
Again, these statements are attributed, anonymously, to U.S. officials who say they are familiar with the intelligence and can speak authoritatively, if not officially, on the CIA's behalf. In our article, there are no officials, attribution, anonymity: we write the CIA has concluded XYZ as a fact.
I've edited on a number of articles that involve recent deaths and BLP issues, that this kind of editing, where attributed statements become fact, doesn't fly in that editing crowd. In U.S.-Russia articles however, despite hard work any many good contributions from editors on all sides, it is far more common. This is especially problematic for anyone with even a modicum of historical knowledge about intelligence agencies: officials may speak on their behalf, they may produce reports, etc., but what an agency has actually concluded on a given incident may remain unknown even decades after it has occurred (if any comprehensive conclusion is reached). I think the stakes are high: the U.S. and Russia are two major nuclear armed powers, and we have a responsibility to write our articles on U.S-Russia issues with neutrality and caution. We need to get it right.
I'm making a post here because I think this deserves community discussion. I'm pinging a number of people: Mandruss and TheRedPenOfDoom who have often corrected me at BLP articles, TheTimesAreAChanging, The Four Deuces and Kingsindian who I've seen provide plenty of commentary on historical articles here, and Ocaasi and SlimVirgin, who have disagreed in the past, but who I think care about careful editing. If any of you think others might have insight, I would very much appreciate your asking them. -Darouet (talk) 19:59, 11 December 2016 (UTC)
- In my opinion, this is not a good venue to have a content discussion. Our policies seem pretty clear on how we treat information from reliable sources. As to the anonymous sources used by reliable sources for assertions of fact, I refer you to Watergate scandal.- MrX 20:52, 11 December 2016 (UTC)
- Thanks MrX for your comment. I think this is larger than a content question, though content is what suffers in the end if we don't research and write these articles with the utmost caution. I'm bringing this here because I think it's been an issue for years, and I see it getting worse every month. -Darouet (talk) 23:29, 11 December 2016 (UTC)
- I agree that articles should distinguish between facts and opinions and should be clear on whose opinions they are expressing and whether those opinions have been expressed publicly or are being filtered through anonymous sources. And when opinions are mentioned, we need to explain the degree of their acceptance. I think though the problem is wider than Darouet says. During the recent U.S. presidential election campaign, there has been a group of experienced editors who have been active among all the articles who have in my opinion injected a pro-Clinton bias into them to the detriment of all her opponents. Many of these editors have histories of involvement in controversies on GMOs, Eastern European issues, libertarian-related articles and the 2012 election. They even insisted on using a 2009 picture of her, which of course makes her look younger than she actually is. A group run by David Brock called "Correct the Record" has coordinated people to influence discussions at a number of websites, and I think it would be a good idea to see whether it has happened here. TFD (talk) 22:03, 11 December 2016 (UTC)
- There's also been no shortage of very aggressive pro-Trump editors. In other words, there are editors on both sides promoting their views just like most other controversial topics. Shock Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 22:12, 11 December 2016 (UTC)
- @Shock Brigade Harvester Boris: I've seen editors who are presumably coming from all perspectives edit productively (pro/anti-Clinton/Trump/US/Russia), and others edit disruptively. Ideally, everyone leaves their opinions behind and edits neutrally. But this is not working at US-Russia articles, and is the point of my post: many articles are overwhelmed by edits and editors that fail to distinguish between accusation, allegation, innuendo, and fact - and are even hostile to these distinctions. For me, who has zero allegiance to the geopolitical interests or political legitimacy of either the U.S. or Russian governments, it is practically impossible to edit on these articles unless I want to adopt a partisan approach. This hurts Wikipedia, and does a disservice to our readers. -Darouet (talk) 23:39, 11 December 2016 (UTC)
- As expected, there were pro-Trump editors. But they did not show any evidence of sophistication or coordination and were mostly new editors who managed to get themselves blocked or banned. Although they provided disruption, they were not effective in influencing the articles. TFD (talk) 22:33, 11 December 2016 (UTC)
- I'm not aware that we have a policy or guideline that turns a fact ("officials concluded...") into an opinion because the reliable source relied on information from anonymous sources. The Washington Post and The New York Times did not offer their opinion; they reported facts about what government officials have concluded. Whether the government officials' conclusions are actually true are outside of the scope of our role as encyclopedia editors.- MrX 23:30, 11 December 2016 (UTC)
- That "also" is much appreciated, Shock. :) I suppose it's frowned upon to post pictures on Jimbo's talk page, but I must say I made
SageRad(or was it another sage?) cross trying to add a photo of artwork representing Putin from the Abode of Chaos on any of the "oh no, the Russians are coming!" pages. I don't think it's been deleted from the PropOrNot page in the end... but it did get booted from Fake news website, which, of course, has been another "lively" page. ^^ If you've never seen the Demeure du Chaos, Mr. Wales, I hope you'll take the time next time you're in SE France. SashiRolls (talk) 01:57, 12 December 2016 (UTC)
- That "also" is much appreciated, Shock. :) I suppose it's frowned upon to post pictures on Jimbo's talk page, but I must say I made
- I note that you had already started a discussion on this topic on the article Talk page [3]. I think you made a mistake by opening up the same discussion here. You should go back there and respond to Neutrality's message, which I thought was well put. If you wanted more opinions, I think you should have posted only a short neutral request here for more editors to participate over there. Per WP:APPNOTE, "Notifications must be polite, neutrally worded with a neutral title, clear in presentation, and brief..." --Bob K31416 (talk) 22:20, 11 December 2016 (UTC)
- It is entirely appropriate to take talk page discussions to other fora in order to obtain a wider input. TFD (talk) 22:57, 11 December 2016 (UTC)
- @Bob K31416: I think my note was polite, clear and brief. However I think this issue needs a larger conversation beyond Russian influence on the 2016 United States presidential election, one you should also participate in. That's why I brought it here. -Darouet (talk) 23:39, 11 December 2016 (UTC)
- For a recent example of an appropriate notification here per WP:APPNOTE, see User talk:Jimbo Wales/Archive 215#RfC about cartoon of Supreme Court Justice Thomas. --Bob K31416 (talk) 01:04, 12 December 2016 (UTC)
- Deep Throat was anonymous. Any further questions? Guy (Help!) 00:32, 12 December 2016 (UTC)
- I don't see the bearing of your comment on this discussion Guy. The Watergate scandal revealed that the US government itself illegally tried to influence an American election, "and attempts to cover it up, led deeply into the upper reaches of the Justice Department, FBI, CIA, and the White House." Darouet (talk) 01:37, 12 December 2016 (UTC)
- When Woodward and Bernstein published, their source was anonymous. The name of t he source was not revealeed until decades later. The source's anonymity is being used as a pretext to reject the article. The same argument would have led to us rejecting the legendary Watergate articles. As an outsider (I'm British), the parallels seem obvious to me. Guy (Help!) 01:09, 14 December 2016 (UTC)
- How did our Wikipedia article cover the Deepthroat event while it was breaking? And yes, I have a lot of questions, but I certainly won't be wanting any of your input. Frankly User:JzG that's a very unhelpful comment. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mr Ernie (talk • contribs) 14:00, 12 December 2016 (UTC)
Let me try to set out something that I think will be very close to something that everyone can agree upon. In many cases the provenance of some information is relevant to the readers understanding of the degree of trust that should be placed in that information. It is almost always good writing for Wikipedia to add things like "According to the New York Times, citing anonymous sources at the CIA..."--Jimbo Wales (talk) 04:52, 12 December 2016 (UTC)
- This works well but only when it's one source, maybe two, reporting on something. Once you have a dozen or so sources saying the same thing, it becomes impractical to list all the "According to's". In this case, the relevant "according to" is "the CIA".Volunteer Marek (talk) 15:26, 12 December 2016 (UTC)
- That's not necessarily true at all. The statement,
"The CIA has concluded that Russia..."
is very different from saying"U.S. officials state that the CIA has concluded that Russia..."
, for two important reasons. First, because this is how almost all reliable sources report the news. Second, there's a reason those sources attribute the statement: pretending that anybody knows what "The CIA has concluded" is a hopeless exercise. -Darouet (talk) 15:51, 12 December 2016 (UTC)- "because this is how almost all reliable sources report the news" - that's just not true. In fact, pretty much the opposite of what you claim: [4], [5] etc. Volunteer Marek (talk) 07:22, 13 December 2016 (UTC)
- Agree with Darouet. "The CIA" means you can read it at www.cia.gov , and that you can ask any CIA official what the position of the agency is, and they will tell you. See plausible deniability and also Iraqi WMDs. When anonymous sources are quoted, we need to specifically say either "according to anonymous CIA officials" or if it is only being sourced from a single media outlet then instead the phrase would be as Jimbo put it (i.e. mention NYT specifically as getting the scoop). When you have independently-confirmed reports from multiple major newsmedia talking to *different* and preferably multiple anonymous sources within the government, then you can drop back to "according to some officials within the CIA" or the like. When you have an official and officially-public opinion of some CIA bigwig at a press conference, which is VERY different from anonymous leaks (whether intentional leaks or the more usual sort), then and only then can wikipedia say in wikipedia's voice that "The CIA said X." Words have meaning, and wikipedia needs to have better control of ourselves than other organizations that begin with the letter W, methinks. 47.222.203.135 (talk) 16:01, 12 December 2016 (UTC)
- That's not necessarily true at all. The statement,
- This works well but only when it's one source, maybe two, reporting on something. Once you have a dozen or so sources saying the same thing, it becomes impractical to list all the "According to's". In this case, the relevant "according to" is "the CIA".Volunteer Marek (talk) 15:26, 12 December 2016 (UTC)
- Thank you for your comment. I agree that in almost all cases, and especially in contentious political articles, rigorously attributing and sourcing information can only help readers. I have learned things when other editors critiqued my writing by demanding attribution, and wish this were more common practice, above all at the U.S.-Russia articles I've referenced. -Darouet (talk) 07:12, 12 December 2016 (UTC)
- I went over there and started to implement some attribution to unnamed U.S. officials, but on reading this article cited there [6] it may be that the reports, not necessarily the validity of their conclusions, are being confirmed by named officials and Trump. However, it's not clear whether the named officials and Trump are commenting on news reports or government reports. The news situation on this is a bit unclear for now as it is breaking news and will probably clarify as the story develops. --Bob K31416 (talk) 13:39, 12 December 2016 (UTC)
- The reports are also contested in the US intelligence community. For instance this NYT piece, "C.I.A. Judgment on Russia Built on Swell of Evidence," reports not one piece of evidence but states,
"The C.I.A.’s conclusion does not appear to be the product of specific new intelligence obtained since the election, several American officials, including some who had read the agency’s briefing, said on Sunday. Rather, it was an analysis of what many believe is overwhelming circumstantial evidence — evidence that others feel does not support firm judgments — that the Russians put a thumb on the scale for Mr. Trump, and got their desired outcome."
-Darouet (talk) 15:54, 12 December 2016 (UTC)- You are once again misrepresenting the source. The disagreement (this "firm judgments" thing) is NOT about whether the interference happened or whether it was only "alleged". There's agreement that it happened. What the disagreement is about is whether the *goal* was to help Trump or just to discredit American democracy. This has been pointed out to you like a dozen times yet you keep WP:IDIDN'THEARTHAT pretending otherwise and keep misrepresenting what the sources say.16:01, 14 December 2016 (UTC)
- The reports are also contested in the US intelligence community. For instance this NYT piece, "C.I.A. Judgment on Russia Built on Swell of Evidence," reports not one piece of evidence but states,
- I also don't see the release of the report to government officials (e.g. leaders of the Senate and Congress) as being anonymous. These named leaders have confirmed that they've been told about the report and they've given a very short summary - the CIA believes that Russia hacked to interfere in the US election. The CIA officials who confirmed the existence of the report were anonymous, but I think we can trust the NY Times, WaPo, NPR, CNN, senators and congressmen etc. when they say that there was a report. As far as I know the details haven't been published. So the claims about this incomplete report/conclusion being anonymous strike me as being misleading. It's incomplete, nobody at the CIA has publicly put their name on it (what else is new?) but the existence of the report has been confirmed by the best sources we know of. Let's try not to muddy the waters. Smallbones(smalltalk) 20:25, 12 December 2016 (UTC)
- You did not read my post carefully. My concern isn't just anonymous sources, it's sourcing on Wikipedia. If the NYT, WaPo, NPR and CNN say,
"According to US officials, the CIA has drafted a report concluding that Russia,"
this attribution should not be dropped here on Wikipedia. Similarly, if newspapers write that the CIA has concluded Russia interfered in the US election, our article title should not be "Russian interference in the US election." @Smallbones: do you think that departure from allegation or attribution into declared fact, in either of these instances, is defensible scholarship? -Darouet (talk) 05:50, 13 December 2016 (UTC)
- You did not read my post carefully. My concern isn't just anonymous sources, it's sourcing on Wikipedia. If the NYT, WaPo, NPR and CNN say,
- Agree that an encyclopedic entry should meet the "There was" test. "There was a US Civil War", "There was an American Civil War". "There was PropOrNot." and should not be responding to crystallballing questions, such as the hypothetical "Is there PropOrNot?", or "Was there Russian influence on the 2016 United States presidential election?" SashiRolls (talk) 06:05, 13 December 2016 (UTC)
- There are various good points being brought up in the above discussions, but I would note that it's a new article about a controversial developing story. So there's going to be some chaos in the story and in editing the Wikipedia article, which I think will be mostly sorted out as time goes by. --Bob K31416 (talk) 14:51, 13 December 2016 (UTC)
- Agree that an encyclopedic entry should meet the "There was" test. "There was a US Civil War", "There was an American Civil War". "There was PropOrNot." and should not be responding to crystallballing questions, such as the hypothetical "Is there PropOrNot?", or "Was there Russian influence on the 2016 United States presidential election?" SashiRolls (talk) 06:05, 13 December 2016 (UTC)
- For now, the article has largely adopted a reckless approach, assuming that allegations are true unless evidence, if it is ever released, demonstrates otherwise (the article title itself declares the allegations a fact). One of the article's main contributors, who insists on this approach, was a participant in the famous WP:EEML case. EEML
"members coordinat[ed] in order to protect each other and their point of view in articles against a perceived 'Russian cabal'... [and] further displayed a battleground mentality, encouraging each other to fight editors perceived as being "opponents" and generally assuming bad faith from editors editing from a Russian or against the prevalent Western European point of view."
A review of discrepancies between our article text what is actually known via sources, and the talk page declarations, show that a similar mentality remains present not just at 2016 United States election interference by Russia, but at related articles. These issues require effort: as with most problems, they are solved via hard work, and good scholarship. -Darouet (talk) 17:59, 13 December 2016 (UTC)- Actually, for now the article has largely adopted the approach of following reliable sources. Which is what it's suppose to do. The fact that you don't like what reliable sources say isn't a problem with the article but rather with your own approach to editing.Volunteer Marek (talk) 15:58, 14 December 2016 (UTC)
- For now, the article has largely adopted a reckless approach, assuming that allegations are true unless evidence, if it is ever released, demonstrates otherwise (the article title itself declares the allegations a fact). One of the article's main contributors, who insists on this approach, was a participant in the famous WP:EEML case. EEML
- It's always important to say what the source says. It's equally important to say what the source says. That means that if a source says that an anonymous source near the CIA told them the CIA thinks that the Russians influenced the election, that's exactly what you say - no more, no less. You don't say they did it, nor do you cut out the source and its assertion based on some ad hoc personal argument. It is often very, very difficult to determine the degree to which foreign powers exert pressure on political processes, but they do it all the time and have strong motive to continue; there's no null hypothesis here. Wnt (talk) 20:28, 13 December 2016 (UTC)
- Alright, now we have a problem!!! Apparently, according to something just posted on that talk page, the Arbcom has just imposed a censorship regime on all "highly visible" American politics articles. The way it works is that anyone who wants to patrol the article can revert one edit a day, and nothing is allowed to go back in until there is consensus. As anyone who has read a thing or two about American politics in the past decade and a half knows, there is not, and can never be, consensus. So over time any highly visible article is going to lose its facts and we're not going to be allowed to put any of them back in. Someone needs to stop Arbcom, or Wikipedia's coverage of American politics is going to become dominated by patrolling Wikilawyers. Wnt (talk) 21:07, 13 December 2016 (UTC)
- @Wnt: Neither endorsing nor condemning the Arbcom decision, your statement implies that rampant falsification on the page prior to Arbcom's decision - declaring Russia's intervention in the U.S. to be a known fact - was not a problem. If that's your conclusion you are neither appraised of what reliable sources have reported regarding these allegations, nor editing in a manner consistent with them. -Darouet (talk) 21:25, 13 December 2016 (UTC)
- @Wnt: Arbcom just made placing page restrictions possible. user:Coffee actually came up with the restriction. See my comment here.- MrX 21:39, 13 December 2016 (UTC)
- User:Coffee's last visit was on September 9th. Quite a parting gift. (1RR, plus any challenged material must remain out of the article until consensus is achieved on the
battlepagetalk page). The requesting admin wants to "slow down the battling" after this article was shaped out of nothing by named users (no IPs obviously need apply on the page in question) with the usual intensive editing sprees. Cyroxymandias: "Look on my words, ye doubters, and despair..." SashiRolls (talk) 22:57, 13 December 2016 (UTC)- My comment shouldn't be viewed a s criticism of Coffee's action. It's done much more good than harm, and it's better than doing nothing at all.- MrX 23:03, 13 December 2016 (UTC)
- A maximum number of edits per week (or per hour) per editor (talk + article space) would probably work better for developing consensus, and for getting people like me to use the preview button to make sure their word salads are properly dressed. And I've used mine up here, so... :)SashiRolls (talk) 23:24, 13 December 2016 (UTC)
- My comment shouldn't be viewed a s criticism of Coffee's action. It's done much more good than harm, and it's better than doing nothing at all.- MrX 23:03, 13 December 2016 (UTC)
- User:Coffee's last visit was on September 9th. Quite a parting gift. (1RR, plus any challenged material must remain out of the article until consensus is achieved on the
- @Wnt: Arbcom just made placing page restrictions possible. user:Coffee actually came up with the restriction. See my comment here.- MrX 21:39, 13 December 2016 (UTC)
- @Wnt: Neither endorsing nor condemning the Arbcom decision, your statement implies that rampant falsification on the page prior to Arbcom's decision - declaring Russia's intervention in the U.S. to be a known fact - was not a problem. If that's your conclusion you are neither appraised of what reliable sources have reported regarding these allegations, nor editing in a manner consistent with them. -Darouet (talk) 21:25, 13 December 2016 (UTC)
- Note my concern is not just about this page. See the text at top: "The article 2016 United States election interference by Russia, along with other highly visible articles relating to post-1932 politics of the United States and closely related people" -- that's the difference between an infection and an epidemic! Wnt (talk) 00:08, 14 December 2016 (UTC)
- Yeah, I'm not exactly a suspicious person - and I'm not usually active on U.S. politics articles other than New Mexico state politics to a limited extent - but everywhere I turn lately there is a group of freshly minted accounts doing things one normally doesn't see freshly minted accounts doing, like !voting in AfDs (all the same way), voting in RfCs (all the same way), etc. I literally can't take two steps forward without tripping over a dozen new accounts trying to purge some articles, massage others, and change the titles of others to reflect high-probability Google search terms rather than encyclopedia article titles; like this latest one - 5 !delete votes, three of which are from accounts less than 10 months old (one a month old, and another a freshly minted two weeks). That one isn't even U.S. politics related other than it apparently shows the U.S. in a negative like so gots to go! Maybe I'm being overly suspicious and there just happen to be a lot of new people signing-up to WP this month, which of course would be great. BlueSalix (talk) 00:14, 14 December 2016 (UTC)