User:John J. Bulten/DR1

Communication

BTW, if it would help matters, I'd be happy to chat with you in IMs about the subtleties of Wikipedia policies. I'm easily found on AIM, Google Talk, Yahoo, and MSN. Do you use any of them? --Elonka 19:34, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Unreliable sources

John, please stop. I'm trying to assume good faith here, but it seems that you're just bit by bit trying to re-add all the information to Moneybomb that was previously removed as unreliable. I'm also very disappointed that you're sourcing some information to freemarketnews.com, which appears to be an obvious campaign site. Please, what you're adding is just going to get deleted again, please don't waste your time trying to re-add it. --Elonka 22:50, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

This is normal consensus procedure. Please pick which edits you disagree with and explain WHY my invocations of reliability policy are incorrect. It is insufficient and wearing thin to continue to simply say "unreliable". Further, your professed knowledge of the future deletion of these edits is starting to cross a line. John J. Bulten (talk) 22:55, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

John, I have seen no consensus for your edits. Instead, I see multiple editors expressing concerns about what you're doing, removing the information that you're adding, and then you go right back in and re-add it. Please see Wikipedia:Tendentious editing. --Elonka 23:37, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

FYI, I have started a thread on the Moneybomb dispute at the Conflict of Interest noticeboard, in case you would like to participate or monitor. --Elonka 05:20, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

John, I realize that you're a relatively new editor, but please, throwing every warning that you can think of at me, isn't helping matters. For future reference: A 3RR warning is for cases where editors are repeatedly reverting each other to a specific wording of an article, and reverting in a rapid fashion, multiple times per day. In our case, there's no 3RR, since you haven't edited the article in days. If you disagree with my edits at Moneybomb, I would encourage you to actually participate in the editing of the page, in what's called a WP:BRD cycle: I make a change, you make a change based on my change, I make a change based on your change, and we work together in good faith, to try and come up with a version that's agreeable to both of us. That's the wiki-way.  :) If you would like to continue editing the article, please do, but I again strongly urge you to stick only with information from reliable sources. If you add more information from unreliable sources (such as Ron Paul promotion sites), per one of Wikipedia's core policies, that of Verifiability: "Any edit lacking a reliable source may be removed." But as long as you stick with only adding information from reliable sources, and you present it in a neutral fashion that accurately represents the sources, and isn't giving undue weight or violating original research, I'm really not going to have a problem with it.  :) --Elonka 16:40, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

Your statement demonstrably mischaracterizes how many warnings I have thrown at you, the use of "3RR" warnings for non-3RR, and the steps involved in BRD; but I am not elaborating at this time. Further, just to provide an example of what I think your edits are like (and because it's my talk page), I have removed your claim that you will "have to" consider removal, because while you have (questionably) sourced the permission to remove, you have provided no reliable source demonstrating the duty to consider removal, the "have to". (Interested parties may see the diff of this current edit.) This reductio ad absurdam hypercasuistry is not meant maliciously, but educationally. We now return you to our regularly scheduled civility. John J. Bulten 17:02, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

Elonka AGF

John, I am trying very hard to assume good faith, but it appears that we are having a fundamental difficulty in communicating. From my point of view (and the point of view of many other editors), it seems that you are in "lawyer" or "high school debater" mode, where though you know that you are in the wrong, you are taking great pleasure in trying to argue that you are right, by seeking tiny loopholes in policy.

However, I am trying very hard to see this from another point of view, which is that you are genuinely bewildered by Wikipedia policies and procedures. I am also trying to give you the benefit of the doubt, and I am wondering if you have the kind of mind which genuinely requires very specific details in order to grasp a new concept. If you are the latter, I am willing to try and "drill down" to specific details for you, in a good faith attempt to try and communicate. But, do you think that you are going to be able to hear it? I tried posting a heartfelt message above below,[1] and you responded by calling me an "edit warrior" who has been stalking you and making unhelpful comments. Which is so not where I'm at, that I'm not even sure how to respond.

Please, just as a mental exercise, do you think that you could try to perceive me as other than a Great Evil? Do you think it is possible that you could try to assume good faith in my regards? I see you often begging for someone to mentor you. Well, hello! I am here! I am offering to mentor you, but you are rejecting my offer.  :/ But truly, I am here as an experienced editor who is willing to take the time to try and assist. If you still can't hear me, I understand, and I will withdraw from your talkpage. But I did want to make the effort. Sincerely, Elonka 18:13, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Well, thank you. We certainly agree on fundamental difficulty in communicating. I am able to hear what you have to say. I don't perceive you as a Great Evil in your idiom, or ill-intended (except perhaps on one point I'll go into later), and I can generally extend good faith when one is open to public discussion. Given the many confusions involved, I first need to know: 1. Are you now willing, as I am, to discuss the primary issues in detail in a consensus-building discussion subject to such WP:BRD principles as "listen very carefully" and "be ready to compromise"?

If so, the first consensus I need is whether an article should exist on the topic of dramatically-concentrated short-period political fundraising. Your objections at AFD appear to me primarily as "magnet for edit-warring" and "WP:COATRACK" (you raise other concerns related to neologism, but they do not enter into the question as I've phrased it). These concerns both seem bad arguments per WP:RUBBISH because they are surmountable problems, and Wikipedians may not delete based on creator intent but on criteria like notability: we are expected to resolve edit wars and coatracks by DR, not deletion. 2. Given this, for what reasons if any would you oppose existence of an article on the topic of dramatically-concentrated short-period political fundraising? (If none, I would ask you to change your AFD entry at this point in good faith.)

The second consensus I need is how to disambiguate the search string "moneybomb". Previously you advocated google bomb as the primary redirect. Independent of the previous paragraph, I would ask: 3. What is your specific justification that users entering the string "moneybomb" would be interested primarily in a detailed description of search manipulation, with a mention of the fundraising form without further fundraising elaboration? (If none, please propose alternate disambiguation specifics.) This proposition, which your position amounts to, would imply there is greater connection of the string "moneybomb" with search manipulation than with fundraising, which is an exceptional claim to me, requiring detailed explanation. I'm sure you recognize that both reliable sources on this point use the string "money bombing" and significantly not "moneybomb".

This must suffice to begin. Please reply to these details first before we build to other matters such as policies. John J. Bulten (talk) 21:21, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

John, one thing that I would like to counsel you on, is that you seem to have a tendency to ask many very long, very complex questions, and then you appear to be demanding thorough answers to every single question. So, I'd like to say up front that when you do this, I probably am not always going to respond to every single question you ask. If you feel that one of the questions is particularly important, then please feel free to re-ask it, in a very short and very focused post, and we can try and concentrate on it. Also, I would please ask you to avoid using straw man arguments. For example, when you take something I say, and then you re-interpret my own words to say something different than what I intended, and then you attack this suddenly weakened statement as being inappropriate. This kind of debate tactic is, well, annoying, so please stop it. Now, getting to some of your other points:

• Articles can be deleted for a variety of reasons. Well-meaning editors can differ on whether or not they think an article is worth keeping, even when those editors are working off the exact same policy page. Many topics that go to AfD, are not clearcut -- they can be ambiguous judgment calls. I cannot speak for all other editors, but my own opinion on the Moneybomb article is based not just on whether or not a particular term is notable, but also on the degree of disruption that the article can bring to Wikipedia. Sometimes it's better to have peace, than to have thoroughness. In the case of "Moneybomb," I still think it would be less disruptive to have the topic covered as a subsection of other articles, than for it to have its own article. Wikipedia is not a dictionary, not a news source, not a soapbox. See What Wikipedia is not. However, I will abide by the consensus of other editors. If the general consensus is to keep the article as its own topic, then I will work to see what can be done to improve the article.
• Assuming that the article is not deleted, the article should cover the term in a neutral manner. This would include discussing the different definitions of the term, which go back decades. It is important that Wikipedia articles present information in a neutral manner, without trying to push a particular agenda. I do not think that the article should be used to present detailed dollar amounts, day-by-day through the election process. That's not what Wikipedia is for. It is also important on Wikipedia, that when a subject is potentially volatile or promotional, that the article stick scrupulously to reliable secondary sources. The article should only include information that has already been published elsewhere, and by "published" that means in either peer-reviewed academic works, or in reliable mainstream news sources, that have a reputation for fact-checking.
• Now, my question for you: Are you willing to be mentored? If so, are you willing to promise:

* To stop issuing warnings and accusations against other editors?

* To engage in civil, good faith discussions, towards the goal of working in a collegial and cooperative manner with other editors?

* To stop working on Ron Paul-related articles for a period of time?

And getting back to the original discussion, do you now understand why you were blocked? Or do you still have confusion on this point? --Elonka 01:34, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

(followup) John, I have been re-reading your posts a few times, trying to see if I can identify other areas of confusion. I think I have found one, which has to do with the nature of consensus, and, perhaps, initiative. One of the core issues here seems to be about "What should the state of the article be, while it is being discussed?" It seems that your point of view is that you should be able to put whatever you want into the article, and that then there should be discussion on the talkpage about it, and then if there is a consensus at the talkpage to remove or change your information, then things can proceed and the information can be removed. Whereas, my point of view is that things should proceed in a different way: That controversial information should be removed from the article first, and then discussion can continue on the talkpage, and if there is consensus to re-insert the information, then things can proceed. Does that make sense?

Another point: In cases where there's a binary "Editor A wants to do it one way," and "Editor B wants to do it another," and other editors or admins are then asked to comment, there is often a quick litmus test of the reliability of the editors involved. Things that enhance a perception of an editor's good faith: Length of time on Wikipedia, proof of working on multiple topics, history of positive interactions with other editors. Things that tend to decrease this perception: Short amount of time on Wikipedia, tendency to only work on articles in a very narrow subject area, history of repeated conflicts with other editors. Or in other words, if Editor A exhibits all of the first set of behaviors, and Editor B exhibits all of the second set, and there's a conflict between Editor A and Editor B, other editors who review the situation are probably going to be more likely to agree with Editor A's stance on things.

To be more specific about this dispute in particular: When there was a conflict about whether or not certain information was supposed to go into the Moneybomb article, as soon as it looked like multiple editors were agreeing at the talkpage that the information should stay out, the proper behavior that was expected of you at that point was to keep the information out, and then engage in discussion on the talkpage about why it should go back in. Not to try and force the information back into the article, and then to insist that editors needed to convince you why it should be taken out. Does this make more sense? Or, am I still not understanding the point of confusion? --Elonka 08:18, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Asides: Sorry, no, you are not understanding the last point. Your first version is essentially my POV ("controversial information should be removed from the article first ...."), but your second does not make more sense. And I'm still confused about the block. And the use of warnings and accusations, and my involvement with Ron Paul articles, will not be resolved right now. But these are not the threshold question: the "fundamental difficulty in communicating" itself.

I am willing "to engage in civil, good faith discussions, towards the goal of working in a collegial and cooperative manner with other editors". But to define our communicative relationship sufficiently (mentorship or otherwise), we must negotiate.

What do you need to hear in exchange for your committing to keep our conversation open and consensus-seeking, in accord with WP:AGF? (That means we would not close it unless we reach consensus or one of use cites a specific policy quotation demonstrating the right to assume bad faith.) Thank you. John J. Bulten (talk) 11:03, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Okay, I'm confused. I'll try re-reading your post a few times to see if I can discern your meaning, and if so, I may amend my reply later, but I wanted to get back to you with my initial impressions first.

So, I'm glad that you're willing to engage in civil good faith discussions, but I'm confused on what exactly we're "negotiating"? I am not empowered to speak for Wikipedia as a whole, I'm only speaking for myself. I'm not empowered to change policy based on this one discussion.

My goal here, is to answer your questions, to help clear up points of confusion, and to help mentor you on the subtleties of wiki-culture, to help you avoid future problems. The best-case scenario, as I see it, is if I can assist you to become a productive editor who can work as a part of the team towards our goal of building a high-quality encyclopedia. However, I am concerned that your idea of "best case scenario", is that you can analyze Wikipedia policies enough, so that you can still push Ron Paul promotional information into the encyclopedia, towards the goal of helping him to raise money and/or win a primary election somewhere.

So, perhaps we should focus on the reason for your block, to help you avoid future blocks? I can't speak directly for Athaenara, but I assume that she's watching this discussion and will chime in if I get something horribly horribly wrong.  :) But as I understand it, you were blocked to prevent damage to the project. It became clear to her, and to others, that your primary goal on Wikipedia was to promote an agenda, and your tactics towards this goal were being perceived as you disrupting Wikipedia to make your point, and harassing other editors in the process. Specific problems included:

• Making accusations of bad faith against other editors
• Putting multiple warnings on other users' talkpages
• Repeated examples of "wiki-lawyering" and trying to find loopholes in policy, in obvious pursuit of your own agenda.

Your proposed changes to WP:V did not appear to be in good faith. It's one thing for an established editor who has a lot of experience on Wikipedia on different articles, who identifies a policy change that needs to be made to help the encyclopedia to run more smoothly, and then proposes it for discussion. It's another for a relatively new editor to be in a conflict on one article, and to react to the conflict by running to a policy page and trying to get the policy changed, to give themselves more leverage in the conflict.

In terms of giving specific diffs of your behavior, I can do this, but I don't think it's necessary, since anyone who looks at your contribs John J. Bulten (talk · contribs) can see that all you were doing for the last few days was arguing about your Ron Paul agenda. It had become a situation where your behavior was becoming disruptive, and was distracting more and more "good" editors from their own tasks, to try and deal with a dispute that was the center of your world. To help illustrate, try looking at the contribs of other editors, by filling in their name in that URL instead of your own. For example, you can check mine here: Elonka (talk · contribs). Or, you can go to someone's talkpage and click on the "User contributions" link on the lefthand side of the page to see what they've been doing recently. All of this is open for public view. For most of the "good faith" editors, they are generally working on multiple articles at one time. There are also tools available which analyze patterns of edits, so you can quickly see where a particular editor has been spending the majority of their time. It's not necessarily a problem if an editor is focusing on one particular article -- they may just be on a big "article improvement" push. But if a relatively new editor shows that they're very focused on one particular subject, and they're also getting into heated conflicts with other more "diffuse" editors, it's often an indication of a problem -- it's a common "signature" of someone who's trying to push their agenda in a tendentious manner, and who is resisting the input of other good faith editors.

Wikipedia may seem like a quiet environment on the surface, but in reality, there's a lot going on. Picture that each day, there are 2,000 entirely new articles that are created. And those are just the ones that stick around. There are actually several thousand created each day, most of which are deleted on sight since they are spam or attack pages or inappropriate in some other way. I have been on New Article Patrol and I speak from experience. It's really astonishing how many people come to Wikipedia to create articles about their dog or their friends in school or the poem that they just wrote or their favorite hamburger at a local restaurant, etc. etc. Then there's another level of the marketers. The guy with the used car lot in Iowa who creates an article about his business, and then changes many other "car" articles on Wikipedia to say in the lead, "Joe's Used Car Lot is the best place to buy this kind of car." We have teams of "Vandal patrol" editors who do nothing else on Wikipedia except continually scan the "recent changes" list to watch for this kind of behavior, and revert it on sight. It's like an enormous game of "Whack-a-Mole".  :) Then there's another level of agenda-pushers. People who are here to promote a nationalist agenda, or a political candidate, or a revision of history, or their own personal scientific breakthrough, or a new word that they think that they just invented (see WP:NFT), etc. etc. Many of these situations are clearcut and are dealt with on the spot. Some are more ambiguous and require more attention, but because there's so much else going on at Wikipedia, it's often difficult to get a single admin's attention for very much time, because they're working on a hundred other things at once, and they just don't have the time to spend hours analyzing one specific editor's request. They can make quick decisions, but in-depth analysis is probably going to be backburnered, and often should be backburnered. There are some problem editors on Wikipedia who have a passion for arguing. They don't care about the encyclopedia, they just want to argue, endlessly. These can be an enormous energy drain on other editors who are busy with other projects, and so they're often going to react by just ignoring the questions, because the only thing that answering them will do, is by giving the arguer more things to argue about. In this case, we have a guideline called "Don't feed the troll": WP:DFTT. In other words, we move on and ignore them.

So getting back to the focus of your own particular dispute, on Moneybomb, though I know it seems like a very big deal to you, to most other Wikipedia editors, it's a very minor point. And when one very small article in the scheme of things (Moneybomb) starts drawing too much heat and drama, and one editor (yourself) is perceived as repeatedly antagonizing other editors, without causing sufficient positive benefit to the encyclopedia in return, the reaction of our administrators is usually going to be to protect the encyclopedia, and to block the disruptive editor. Blocks occur many hundreds of times per day. Administrators are generally not going to get into a lengthy debate with each blockee about the details of your case, they've got other things to do. So they're going to take a reasonable amount of time to look at an editor's history (which might be a few minutes, or if you're lucky, an hour or so), and they're going to make a decision: "Is this person's behavior helpful for the encyclopedia, or destructive?"

And then in terms of the "block review" process, an admin is going to look at your behavior and ask themselves, "Was the block legitimate?" And then past that, they can ask themselves, "Even if it was, should it be ended early? If this editor is let back into the encyclopedia, are there going to be more problems, or will they be able to work on their disputes in a more collegial manner? Do they understand why they were blocked, and are they promising that they're not going to repeat the problem behavior? And if they're making promises, do I believe them?"

In other words, it would be helpful if you considered yourself on probation. If you continue disruptive behavior, these blocks will increase, to the point of "indefinite". I can't say if your next block would be a 1-week block or an indefinite block -- that's a judgment call on the part of an administrator. But it is very important right now that you show that you can behave as a civil and collegial editor, who is willing to make positive contributions to the project, and who is willing to work in a cooperative manner with other editors, preferably on other topics than just those related to Ron Paul. Otherwise, you're going to be asked to leave.

Does that make more sense? --Elonka 19:01, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Yes, aside, thank you for trying to answer the block-related concerns. I will accept your stated goal, "to answer your questions, to help clear up points of confusion", as answer to my #1 above and my italicized rephrasal (i.e., the negotiation of our communicative relationship). I only ask that if you should for any reason decide to assume bad faith with me, please have the courtesy of quoting (not linking) a significant clause or sentence (not title) of a policy. Thank you. I also accepted your answer to my #2 as "the degree of disruption that the article can bring", etc. (reasons you oppose existence of an article on this fundraising method). Here are the next policy questions I need answered, I'm not ready to focus on block policy yet.

3 (rephrased). WP:D says, "Ask yourself: When a reader enters a given term in the Wikipedia search box and pushes "Go", what article would they most likely be expecting to view as a result?" Why do you believe most users who type in "moneybomb" want and expect the article to be on the topic of the "attempt to influence the ranking of a given [Google] page"?

4. WP:RUBBISH says arguments to avoid include "Surmountable problem .... the basis of the quality of the current article." WP:CRYSTAL adds, "It is not appropriate for an editor to insert their own opinions" "about the prospects for success of future proposals and projects", which seems to apply too. What specific policy indicates that your speculation about future disruption, or your belief of present disruption, is a valid deletion argument? WP:SOAP is not a deletion argument because "an article can report objectively about such things". Thank you for sticking to these subjects. John J. Bulten 21:32, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

So it would seem that you are more interested in trying to argue with my reasoning for speaking as I did at the AfD, than in discussing the reasons for your own block? Well, I'll try. Ultimately, it comes down to level of disruption. As for the pages you linked, WP:D is a content guideline. WP:CRYSTAL isn't relevant to what I said. WP:RUBBISH can be used in a variety of ways, though I like the section that says, "If an article is so bad that it is harmful in its current state, then deleting now, and possibly recreating it later, remains an option. If the subject is notable, but the current article is so blatantly biased that it's an embarrassment, or a blatant hoax where all the statements are wrong, then Wikipedia may indeed be better off without the article." I would also argue that WP:SOAP is very applicable, since it appeared that the Moneybomb article was being used to promote the Paul campaign. See also WP:SPAM. But really, this is all moot at this point, since the article has been deleted. And I'll repeat, is there anything else you'd like to work on, besides Ron Paul articles? --Elonka 22:06, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

I am interested, not in arguing, but in our ongoing content dispute and the policies which resolve it. Also, see Wikipedia: WikiProject United States presidential elections for what I'll be working on. Also, the moneybomb closer just self-reverted on two different requests, which echoed what I would have requested. I will rephrase #3, which I didn't see an answer to, building on our agreement that "moneybomb" should not be a redlink: Given the deletion reversion, what should be the outline of the article called "moneybomb"-- or should it be submitted for AFD again in due time? (If the latter, see the previous version of #3.) However, this version will require a detailed answer because any ambiguity will only necessitate clarifying questions. John J. Bulten 22:32, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

In order to have its best chance at survival, the Moneybomb article should (1) Only use information from very reliable published sources; (2) Give a well-rounded, neutral, and understated summary of the encyclopedic nature of the term (see WP:NEO); (3) Cover multiple uses of the term, not just the campaign-finance one. The term has been used in many contexts for many decades.[2][3] I think the article should cover all the major definitions and their impact on society. (4) The article should also have a "long view" tone. In other words, think of how the article will read 20 years from now, long after this election is done. A future reader will probably not be interested in the day by day "Which moneybombs did well, which didn't". They're going to be interested in a very general summary of "how was the term used" and "how did it impact society". (5) The article should avoid any appearance that it's trying to promote a candidate, or that it's trying to whitewash away any negative information about that candidate; (6) the article must show that the editors who are working on it, are willing to work in a cooperative manner, and are interested in keeping the article as stable and undisputed as possible. That means that when good faith challenges come up about information in the article, it is better to move the controversial information to the talkpage, and then discuss whether or not it should go in, and if so, in what form. If the article becomes embroiled in edit wars, especially if the editors involved appear to be WP:SPA editors, it is going to be perceived as disruptive.

Another litmus test, is to think not how the article can be used for those who are interested in the election, but how the article will be perceived by people who are not as interested in the United States 2008 presidential election. For example, we often get fans of television episodes who come to Wikipedia, and want to create an article about every aspect of their favorite show -- every character, every prop, every spaceship, every set, and so on. These are regarded as fancruft, or articles that are interesting to those who are fans, but not interesting at all to a general non-fan audience. Or think of it this way: Say there was an election in the mythical country of Ugantis, and the political parties tumbled into Wikipedia, arguing about which party currently had the upper hand, and getting into raging flame wars about whether or not the term "BTQ" was important in their election or not. Imagine that they were using Wikipedia to post long detailed lists of statistics on whether or not BTQ had had any impact on their particular candidate, and they wanted to create an enormous article on the "BTQ" term that put their candidate in the best possible light, as they argued about who was the first to say it, and on which day. To other editors who were not as interested in Ugantish politics, their perception would probably be to keep information minimal, or even to put a freeze on the entire article until after the election, and then work things out after things had settled down. Other editors might say, "No, go ahead and try and keep it updated, but only if you can work together in a collegial manner." Which would be fine, but if tempers got hot and the article just became the target of edit wars and a reason for editors to personally attack each other, it would probably end up frozen for awhile (protected) until tempers cooled. And if tempers didn't cool, then other editors would start demanding that the "POV-warriors" be banned from editing. --Elonka 23:04, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

I looked at some of the links in those lists, let me get back to you after I look at the rest. John J. Bulten 15:14, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

OK, this helps me understand somewhat better; I still disagree often, but we can take it up when/if it becomes an editing issue. This makes the next questions easier. I agree essentially with your (2) and (4)-(6), and we can work out (1) and (3) as need be. I have also reviewed the links and just created a page which has an overview of "all the major definitions and their impact on society": it's called Money bomb (disambiguation). Now we can shift gears and get to some more direct questions. 5. How do you want to work out whether a source is usable or not? Obviously I wouldn't just keep guessing in the hopes of having gotten it right, only to be struck down repeatedly as "unreliable" without elaboration. I see by your requesting cites we're about to get into exactly this question. But since we've both already stated an argument, how should we resolve it? Let that stand for now. John J. Bulten (talk) 05:37, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

This is pretty well covered in places such as WP:RS and WP:NOR, but as a brief overview (this list is not comprehensive), anything which is a promotional, controversial, contentious, or exceptional claim, cannot be added to Wikipedia unless it is accompanied with a reliable source. The burden of evidence is on the editor who adds the information, to include a source.

• Reliable sources (which can be used) are:
  • Major mainstream news sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy
  • Peer-reviewed academic papers
  • Books from reputable publishers
• Unreliable sources (which should be removed immediately) are:
  • Blogs
  • Blogs masquerading as news sources
  • YouTube videos
  • Personal websites
  • Any website which is not a reliable mainstream news source (see above)
• Primary sources (which probably shouldn't be used at all for this article)
  • Poll results
  • Fundraising appeals

If you have questions about any of the above, please let me know. --Elonka 06:15, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

My inability to respond to the above was a temporary capitulation to the despair engendered by its unlikelihood of accomplishing anything useful. John J. Bulten (talk) 21:10, 7 March 2008 (UTC)