The Daily Mail ban

Because no one else is doing it--not even the media.
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Re: The Daily Mail ban

Post by CrowsNest » Mon Dec 17, 2018 9:13 am

Look at this moron.....
just because another paper might be bad, has no bearing on the whether we should use such an unreliable source as the Daily Mail. ...... ~ BOD ~ TALK 17:16, 11 December 2018 (UTC)
Are they doing it delnerately, or are they just that thick?

People are pointing out other papers in the UK news print sector are just as bad if not worse than the Mail, because they have not been banned. Only the Mail has been banned.

Why is thst, you dipshits? It's a very simple question. 'People think it is a real newspaper' is not an answer, not when you apparently can't prove it isn't a real newspaper to any reasonable standard.

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Re: The Daily Mail ban

Post by CrowsNest » Mon Dec 17, 2018 9:34 am

A perfect example of a prominent ban supporter being a total liar. A complete unashamed teller of complete untruths.....
I note that some people are treating this as a relitigation of the original RfC. It's not. The assertion is that the Mail has changed and that the guidance should therefore change. The original consensus that the Mail is unreliable stands, the opinions of a minority notwithstanding, this is about whether there has been meaningful change, and actually we should be reflecting the opinions of third party sources. I have not noticed any independent commentators saying that the Mail has become more reliable, the Mail's website is still packed with clickbait, soft porn papparazzi pics and press releases masquerading as stories,but the print edition may indeed be changing, early signs are that it is beginning to take a reality-based line on Brexit, for example. In time I think we could use the print edition again, though not web-only stories, ever. Guy (Help!) 16:16, 5 December 2018 (UTC)
As this lying piece of shit well knows, when the RfC was filed, it included this list of reasons why the ban should be revisited.....
1) The DM has changed dramatically - it is not the same source we banned in 2017.
2) Relatively little high quality evidence exists asserting DM is generally unreliable.
3) Retaining the ban creates a dangerous WP:creep / slippery slope problem.
4) The DM is sometimes the best available source for certain topics.
5) Retaining the ban is damagingly partisan.
6) The ban is disproportionate to its objectives
7) The consensus resulting from the RfC was unclear
......with each being further expanded with proper reasoning.

Only 1 of the 7 is what he claims this RfC is all about. And 5 of the 7 are explicitly about relitigating the original debate, which is perfectly allowed, because it is solid Wikipedia policy that consensus candida change, and so should be periodically revisited, especially when there is a groundswell of opinion that a mistake was made.

Will Guy Chapman be blocked for telling a complete and entirely self-serving lie? No. This is Wikipedia. Telling lies is permitted.

What makes me laugh is that this is so blatant. It is in your face obvious. There isn't a single fibre of his being their either tells him he shouldn't be doing this, or to fear any consequences of doing it. Shameless.

Who the fuck is he to even be telling people what the debate is about anyway? That is a privilege reserved for the filer.

But you watch. Whoever closes this abortion will happily ignore all this evidence of malfeasance.

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Re: The Daily Mail ban

Post by CrowsNest » Mon Dec 17, 2018 9:48 am

Perfect example of what the ban supporters are capable of.....
Yes - bans are a supremely bad idea and are always misused. There are always other, better sources that can be added to contrast what publications like The Daily Mail say. Also there was poor evidence for this ban in the original RfC. Wikipedia is becoming more punitive and less welcoming. If we want to stop loosing editors we need to make it a more positive experience for editors and putting warning boxes in front of them in ever increasing numbers is antithetical to this goal. Morgan Leigh | Talk 10:38, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

@Morgan Leigh: Bans don't exist. The Mail is deprecated, not banned. We do the same with predatory journals, self-published books and multiple other classes of source that have a reputation for inaccuracy, bias, and lack of adequate editorial control. The handling of the Mail is fully consistent with this. Guy (Help!) 12:32, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

It's a ban. Please stop pretending that it is anything else. Per WP:DUCK - if it acts like a ban (and it does), if people treat it like a ban (and they do), and if everyone calls it a ban (and even the Guardian did) then let's not kid ourselves that it is not a ban. Post a reference to the DM anywhere on this site and it is highly likely that an editor will come into delete the ban with an edit summary reading "RM non-RS", without bothering to look at the article or at the reference being used. Re-post the reference and some helpful soul may post a DS notice on your talk page.

And let's also stop saying that this is about guidance! We already have guidance about using tabloid sources on BLP/controversial articles and do not need a ban to add to it. This ban is not about guidance - it is the opposite of guidance, it is compulsion. FOARP (talk) 13:13, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

I see. So now we rely on The Guardian to inform us on how we conduct ourselves. .....Martinevans123 (talk) 13:23, 13 December 2018 (UTC)
Unwilling to accept this is a ban, unable to accept the clear and obvious difference between how the Mail is treated and how the likes of self-publishing is, in their utter desperation to deny reality, they finally have to resort to arguing The Guardian is not a reliable source for what happens on Wikipedia. The Guardian.

Do you think they see the irony?

The Guardian says it is a ban. That is either incorrect (and therefore anecdotal evidence they are unreliable), or they are correct and this process is being polluted by people knowingly telling obvious lies.

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Re: The Daily Mail ban

Post by CrowsNest » Fri Dec 21, 2018 7:33 pm

More lies.
The Wikipedia community has spoken in one RfC and it looks like the current RfC will go the same way; we have examined what The Daily Mail does, determined that it is unreliable on a whole new level compared to other tabloids, and decided not to use it as a source. --Guy Macon (talk) 17:16, 17 December 2018 (UTC)
Did you do all this in invisible ink?

I swear, this has to be some kind of mental illness. There is the Wikipedia debate happening in the real world, and the one the voices in his head are telling him has happened.

Guy Macon is also the person who said this......
A Daily mail article under Hopkins byline can be reasonably presumed to contain the words of Hopkins; she would complain if they made stuff up and published it under his byline. That makes it one of the exceptional circumstances. --Guy Macon (talk) 16:49, 25 May 2017 (UTC)
If the garbage he has been spewing is to be treated consistently, we have to assume every word penned by Hopkins in the Mail is a fabrication, up to and including the identity of who really wrote it, who even thought it, and she would be in on it, as a receiver of the Devil's Coin. That is their business model apparently. Make everything up. Everything.

Has he changed his tune? Or was that said by a different voice in his head?

Macon is of course now trying to get the person who is most animated about the lack of suitable evidence presented anywhere that would persuade anyone his claims are true, removed from the arena. Which is exactly what someone who is lying, and knows they are lying, would do.

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Re: The Daily Mail ban

Post by CrowsNest » Sun Dec 23, 2018 11:11 am

Dan Murphy, the so called journalist who hangs out at Wikipediocracy.....
Der Spiegel, a respected publication that tries to get it right, discovers it may have a serial fabricator on its hands, in much the same style of Janet Cooke at the Washington Post long ago. It immediately suspends the reporter and begins an investigation, ending in the termination of the reporter, a retraction of his articles, and an extensive, public review of the editorial failings that enabled the hoaxster.

........

the fact that Der Spiegel is mired in a scandal over something that at The Mail or The Sun would be merely treated as "Tuesday" tells us something
He of course doesn't have any examples to hand of the source of the controversy currently unfolding at Der Spiegel being a normal occurrence at the Mail.

What pieces of shit like this never seem to remember, is that in Britain, when a real scandal hits a newspaper, one that involves the sort of fabrication being seen at Der Speigel, there is more than just a controversy and an internal inquiry. When the Sun made shit up about Hillsborough, it produced a 20 year fight for justice, culminating in criminal prosecutions. When the News of the World hacked a dead girl's phone, the paper got shut down and the entire system of press regulation was changed. When the Mirror fabricated an image of British soldiers, editor piers Morgan lost his job and had to move to America to escape the shame.

These were all proper scandals, things the average man or women in the street remembers long after the event, and which presumably factors into their purchasing choices (and in the NOTW's case, advertiser's choices). Not for the nothing are the Sun, Mirror and latterly the NOTW, considered "rags" populated by "hacks", whose content is routinely assumed to be suspect and if little news value, but is nonetheless still widely read because many people are stupid, and even more are not, they just like to read this stuff, whether it is true or not. Much like people still read Wikipedia, even though a large proportion know it is potentially made up.

If the Mail is so bad, if they are on the same level as the so called "red tops", if reader's expectations of their content is the same, if this shit is just "Tuesday" in their case, then why am I struggling to think of a single similar controversy involving them? Why is it the people alleging it "regularly makes shit up" keep having to refer to the same single blog written by a disgruntled employee? Is that what constitutes a national scandal to these retards? Or is there a giant coverup? Or is the implication we all know it happens, but we all just accept it?

People need to wake up and smell the shit that is being shovelled. If the only supposed national scandal involving the Mail surrounds what they did in the 1930s, as viewed with the benefit of much hindsight, then maybe you don't have shit? Maybe you are desperate to find anything to use as a reason to discredit them?

When one of the biggest critical paragraphs in Wikipedia's own article on the Mail is their own pathetic ban, when even the Wikipedia article on the paper doesn't list a single controversy that remotely rises to the level of those mentioned above, or this Der Spiegel incident, then maybe, just maybe, these people are letting their political bias and other pet hobby horses colour their judgement of the Mail's actual reputation out there in the real world........

If the charge is that the Mail routinely fabricates stories, if your complaint is a little stronger than 'wah, wah, I didn't like it when they said this', then let's see the evidence.........

If you have no evidence, or it is pathetically unconvincing, then by all means, make whatever claim you like. Hopefully one day, you will be held to account for it. Hopefully once the world has moved on from this idea that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and Wikipedians are capable of integrity.

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Re: The Daily Mail ban

Post by CrowsNest » Sun Dec 23, 2018 12:04 pm

Here's a brilliant example of Wikipedia being incapable of even recognising a reliable source......

From the Wikipedia article for the Daily Mail:
The independent Media Bias/Fact Check (MBFC News), in its April 2017 assessment of the newspaper, wrote: "Has a strong conservative bias and has a poor track record with fact checkers" and rated it as right bias, with factual reporting "mixed", but did not reduce it to the questionable sources/fake news category.[168]
The actual text of the "source"......
History

Established in 1896 by Harold and Alfred Harmsworth and Kennedy Jones, The Daily Mail is a tabloid newspaper in the UK. It is edited by Geordie Greig, who took over as editor in November 2018 from Paul Dacre, who had been the editor since 1992. The Daily Mail’s parent company is DMGT, which owns newspapers including the Daily Mail, the Mail on Sunday and The Metro. The chairman is Jonathan Harmsworth, 4th Viscount Rothermere, who inherited the media empire founded by his great-grandfather Harold and his brother Alfred a century earlier. Harold Sidney Harmsworth is also known to be a admirer of Mussolini and supporter of Nazi Germany.

Analysis / Bias

The Daily Mail is a known a supporter of the Conservatives. They are also one of the pro-Brexit tabloids and according to a Reuters article, the Daily Mail published a controversial headline in response to a Brexit Court ruling criticizing the judges, by branding them as ‘enemies of the people’ According to CNBC, the Daily mail also has been criticized by Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales for publishing fake news articles and “hyped up” headlines and “mastered the art of running stories that aren’t true’”. Further, CNBC reported that DMG media responded by saying “DailyMail.com is the very antithesis of click-bait and hype headlines. We just tell stories better than anyone else.”

In review, the Daily Mail tends to publish stories utilizing sensationalized headlines with emotionally loaded wordings such as “Woman, 63, ‘becomes PREGNANT in the mouth’ with baby squid after eating calamari”, which is obviously a fake news story. In 2017, Wikipedia banned the Daily Mail as an ‘unreliable’ source. When it comes to sourcing information they use minimal hyperlinked sourcing as well as sourcing to themselves. In general, most stories favor the right, however the Daily Mail will report either side if the story is sensational enough.

A factual search reveals that the Daily Mail has a poor track record with fact checkers. Here are a few failed fact checks:

(List of examples)

Overall, we rate Daily Mail Questionable due to numerous failed fact checks and poor sourcing of information.
If you didn't know any better, you might suspect this garbage was literally written by the Wikipedians. It has all their hallmarks....

-Since when was their political stance relevant to their accuracy?

-Since when was it acceptable to imply the paper is owned by closet fascists?

-Since when was Jimmy fucking Wales an accepted authority on press standards?

-Since when was Wikipedia banning a source remotely considered an authortative indicator of reliability?

-Since when was the headline treated as the story for the purposes of fact checking?

-Since when was a random list of anecdotal evidence, sufficient to establish a pattern?

-Since when was an imprecise word like "numerous" appropriate in this context?

How did this website even get accepted by Wikipedia as a reliable source for such claims? Does it meet their RS criteria? Their "About" page makes it pretty damn obvious that it doesn't.......
Media Bias/Fact Check (MBFC News), founded in 2015, is an independent online media outlet. MBFC News is dedicated to educating the public on media bias and deceptive news practices........MBFC News follows a strict methodology for determining the biases of sources. Dave Van Zandt is the primary editor for sources. He is assisted by a collective of volunteers who assist in research for many sources listed on these pages.

MBFC News also provides occasional fact checks, original articles on media bias and breaking/important news stories, especially as it relates to USA politics.

MBFC News was founded by Dave Van Zandt in 2015. Dave studied Communications in college and over the years has focused on personal research in media bias and the role of media in politics.
Is there a single reliable source out there that backs up what "Dave" claims his site is all about? Does he use any sources other than Wikipedia and Google for his "research"? Does he understand the difference between a robust methodology and simply using the same format and check list?

I'm sure Wikipedia's world renowned quality control systems will be swinging into action any minute now. ANY MINUTE NOW.

They have had four months to notice this edit to this high profile article, but hey, give them time. They're all volunteers after all.

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti ... =855421707

Still, is anyone really surprised to see that Wikipedia is now happily using questionable sources that give credence to its own ban, to support the idea the Mail is unreliable? This isn't quite citogenisis, but it is close.

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Re: The Daily Mail ban

Post by CrowsNest » Sun Dec 23, 2018 12:44 pm

Unsurprisingly, the Wikipedia article on Media Bias/Fact Check is a car crash, one where even after it has been gutted of their worst editorial practices, you still have to wade through around fifty words describing it, all sourced to itself, before you even find words from an independent reliable source.

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti ... =874501087

And they are not very complementary......

https://www.cjr.org/innovations/measure ... rtisan.php
Amateur attempts at such tools already exist, and have found plenty of fans. Google “media bias,” and you’ll find Media Bias/Fact Check, run by armchair media analyst Dave Van Zandt. The site’s methodology is simple: Van Zandt and his team rate each outlet from 0 to 10 on the categories of biased wording and headlines, factuality and sourcing, story choices (“does the source report news from both sides”), and political affiliation.

Both efforts suffer from the very problem they’re trying to address: Their subjective assessments leave room for human biases, or even simple inconsistencies, to creep in. Compared to Gentzkow and Shapiro, the five to 20 stories typically judged on these sites represent but a drop of mainstream news outlets’ production.
The article of course repeats the mistake that anecdotal examples is proof of a broad claim with profound implications......
The site's ratings have been used by BBC News and Newsweek when discussing the reliability and bias of other media organisations.[6][7][8]
But hey, who cares what the precise methodology of Wikipedia is? We're only concerned with the methodology of an established newspaper which is biased. Sorry, unreliable. Keep forgetting to use the right word there. Must be the Wikipedia rubbing off on me.

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Re: The Daily Mail ban

Post by CrowsNest » Mon Dec 24, 2018 2:11 am

On and on it goes. Lie after lie. The irony is palpable.
No. The Daily Mail is systematically unreliable. Its Australian edition also routinely steals the work of other journalists ([43]). Nick-D (talk) 03:48, 22 December 2018 (UTC)
Routine theft? Quite the claim, that.

How ironic that, on closer inspection, the source provided for this claim by this piece of shit Wikipedian, seems to have done exactly what people accuse the Mail of doing. A hopelessly biased story, pure sensationalism, all under a demonstrably false headline.

Headline......

Can anything stop the Daily Mail and its brazen theft of other people’s yarns?

Relevant text, way way down at the bottom of the story, past all the outrage and handwringing.....
what the Mail is doing may actually be legal, as the Mail claims.

The key is the fair dealing provision in the Copyright Act, which says you can copy someone else’s news story if you make sufficient acknowledgement.

Which is why the Mail credits the author and links to the original.
So that's Australia's premier television channel calling something both "brazen theft" and possibly legal, in the same story. That's what Wikipedia calls a gold standard reliable source. Quite how you use it, is anyone's guess.

Might I suggest this as a suggested edit to Wikipedia, using this reliable source.......
According to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, the Australian Daily Mail's brazen theft of other people's work may actually be legal.
Yes, a very useful addition to an encyclopedia. Not.

I'm noting this here so people know when this RfC gets closed with some bullshit about how the "No" camp succeeded based on the evidence, you will know what a dirty trick it all was. Because you know damn well they aren't going to read each link from top to bottom, if at all, and so they will be relying on the biased presentation of scum like Nick, who absolutely wants people not to read what he is presenting as proof of his claims. Dare we even assume he read beyond the headline?

Interesting to note that "Nick-D" is a Wikipedia Administrator and "proud to be a financial member of Wikimedia Australia". He should probably clarify that post-haste, last anyone assume they are acting as proxies for the corporate entity, and therefore assume he would be a very good target for litigation. It won't matter of he hasn't fully identified, if there are WMF documents out there which specify what the "D" stands for, they can be compelled to hand them over.

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Re: The Daily Mail ban

Post by sashi » Mon Dec 24, 2018 12:07 pm

I think it might be good to actually have a link to the abc.net.au article here. After reading it, I think your argument is quite a s - t - r - e - t - c - h.

Yes the headline is a distortion, but I don't think the MediaWatch story makes DM (or Google) look too good.

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Re: The Daily Mail ban

Post by CrowsNest » Mon Dec 24, 2018 12:57 pm

sashi wrote:I don't think the MediaWatch story makes DM (or Google) look too good.
Because........?

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