The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

These are some of the most read newspaper of the country and I wanted to preemtively ask about the general reliability of the sources.on cases of economical, national and political reporting. This does not cover press releases, syndicated news or editorials. Usage for general information regarding local news is to be gauged here. The sources to rate for are:

1. The Business Standard: tbsnews.net/
2. The Daily Star: thedailystar.net/
3. Prothom Alo: prothomalo.com/ (English version, online only)

• Option A: Generally reliable
• Option B: Additional considerations
• Option C: Generally unreliable
• Option D: Deprecate

Greatder (talk) 16:19, 26 January 2025 (UTC)

Option A: As RfC initiator, I would say these 3 sources are the newspaper of record of the country. 2, 3 for all general reporting and 1. for business and financial news. Greatder (talk) 17:05, 26 January 2025 (UTC)

• Bad RFC As per the message in the noticeboard header and the one in the edit notice RFCs shouldn't be opened without prior discussions. Also the idea of preemptively rating a source doesn't work, as anyone who may object to the source can't know to do so before the source has even been used. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 17:33, 26 January 2025 (UTC)

  @ActivelyDisinterested The 3 sources have been exhaustively used in thousands of articles. TBS 2,127 times, Prothom Alo 3,063 times, The Daily Star 10,416 times.

  How would you suggest a RfC on these widely cited sources be called upon? Greatder (talk) 17:39, 26 January 2025 (UTC)

  The first place to start is to discuss it with other editors, only if there is still disagreement should an RFC be opened. Also if noone is contesting that the sources are reliable, why is there any need to discuss them at all? Again preemptively declaring a source as being generally reliable doesn't work, anyone disagreeing in the future can't come back in time and object now. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 17:48, 26 January 2025 (UTC)

  @ActivelyDisinterested if someone disagrees, they can always open a new RfC. I opened this one because I saw these don't have an entry in the perennial sources list despite being highly cited, and I had seen many RfC for general notability of news articles without a general disagreement. Greatder (talk) 17:53, 26 January 2025 (UTC)

  RFCs are a method of dispute resolution. Where is the dispute? Most reliable sources do not have (and should not have) an entry in the perennial sources list because they are not perennially disputed. MrOllie (talk) 18:01, 26 January 2025 (UTC)

  The perennial source list for for source that have been regularly discussed, it is not a list of all sources (see WP:RSPNOT). Opening an RFC just to get a source listed on the perennial source list misses the point of the list. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 18:06, 26 January 2025 (UTC)

• Even ignoring the fact there hasn't been previous discussion as per requirements, grouping multiple things into one RFC just makes things harder than it needs to be. Alpha3031 (t • c) 12:02, 27 January 2025 (UTC)

  Agreed. TarnishedPath^talk 08:24, 31 January 2025 (UTC)

• Option B and do not enter to RSP I’d evaluate depending on what the edit in question is, per WP:CONTEXTMATTERS, and think no evaluation without that can be really valid except to say that ‘it depends’. I don't see a RFC reason stated or need shown to have any general rating. I would say reasonable to look at using cites to these if they turn up in a google. But it should not be in RSP per RSP criteria, and I don’t see why any ratings are even needed. Cheers Markbassett (talk) 15:46, 31 January 2025 (UTC)
• Bad RfC. We should be considering sources on their own, not lumping them into one clump except for very good reason. The reason provided here (that they are in the same country) is not a good reason to have them all considered as one group. There are plenty of countries (I'd wager more or less all of them) with both good sources and bad ones. As such, the RfC question is more or less asking us all to give a single rating that would apply to each of the sources, when a reasonable actor would see these as three separate questions to answer. This RfC should be closed as improperly filed and as lacking an answerable RfC query. — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 19:29, 12 February 2025 (UTC)
• Bad RFC - please consider removing the RFC tag on this and closing this @Greatder:. we need context, we need WP:RFCBEFORE, and we need good reason for lumping these together. User:Bluethricecreamman (Talk·Contribs) 19:32, 12 February 2025 (UTC)

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

Which of the following best describes the reliability of Jacobin (magazine)?

• Option 1: Generally reliable
• Option 2: Additional considerations
• Option 3: Generally unreliable
• Option 4: Deprecate?

— Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 16:28, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

• Option 2 I am opposed to the use of WP:GREL and think that no media outlet, no matter how reliable, should be listed higher than option 2. With that being said, I would list New York Times or the CBC in precisely the same way and I don't believe that any of the complainants have demonstrated in any way that Jacobin is less reliable, per Wikipedia's standards, than any other American news media outlet. I am deeply concerned that many of the complaints are about "bias" when reliability does not include a political compass test. This is not grounds to treat a source as unreliable. Simonm223 (talk) 16:43, 16 January 2025 (UTC)
• Option 2/3, bias is one thing, getting things down right incorrect is another. As was demonstrated in the pre-discussion, the notion around the housing stock was truly an egregious error. This was not a typo, or a miscalculation, this was bias that creeped so heavily into the newsroom as to make the writers push a narrative, instead of report on the facts. When that happens, "Generally unreliable" or at minimum, "Additional considerations" makes sense as the guidance when using this source. I do not think further deprecation is warranted though since the reporters seem to be of a mixed quality, some are more diligent than others and the bias merging into wanton disregard for facts varies there too. The problem is, we rate sources, not just individual writers, and therefore as far as a source rating goes, "Option 2" or "Option 3" then makes the most logical sense. Iljhgtn (talk) 16:47, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

  It was corrected. Your entire case is based on a single incident where a single writer made a single mistake. And it was fixed. There is absolutely no grounds for "Generally unreliable" on the basis of presented evidence. Simonm223 (talk) 16:51, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

  It was corrected only after significant outside pressure and even then the correction was weak and inaccurate. The guy who wrote the article was explicitly mocking the people who pointed out his error and accusing them of something along the lines of being corporate shills. It also wasn’t a single incident as they publish nonsense regarding Russia and Ukraine, including and up to outright conspiracy theories, pretty regularly. It simply is not a reliable source, however much one agrees with their editorial stance. Volunteer Marek 19:29, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

  So you agree with Iljhgtn's conspiracy theory that this was the purposeful result of pushing bias not an error? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 21:30, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

  • I don’t see any “conspiracy theories” from anyone here, including User:Iljhgtn and your attempts to characterize a pretty reasonable statement (“bias that creeped” in) as such are kind of offensive and disingenuous. Can you make an argument without making false and insulting accusations against others? Volunteer Marek 01:22, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

    You misquote the editor (to your benefit), for someone so interested in errors supposedly motivated by bias that seems odd... In context its clearly stronger than that "This was not a typo, or a miscalculation, this was bias that creeped so heavily into the newsroom as to make the writers push a narrative, instead of report on the facts." when nothing suggests that this was the result of narrative pushing (thats how you push a narrative either, as you've pointed out although lingusitically similar its an embarrassing and obvious error). Horse Eye's Back (talk) 01:39, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

    • You literally accused another editor, without basis in fact, of pushing “conspiracy theory” as a rhetorical device on your part to discredit and debase their views. You have absolutely no room to accuse others of, according to you, “misquoting” (which I did not do). And your attempts to litigate the meaning of “narrative pushing” (of course the article was trying to push a narrative! It was an opinion piece! That’s what opinion pieces do - this one just did it with false facts) are just typically tiresome. Volunteer Marek 01:58, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

      You keep dancing around... Do you really believe that the information was changed to push a narrative? (and remember that such a specific claim about a living person falls under BLP, so if the answer is yes a source needs to be provided) Horse Eye's Back (talk) 02:07, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

      No , I’m not. I’m simply asking you to refrain from trying to falsely characterize other people’s comments as “conspiracy theories” in a cheap attempt to delegitimize them since they’re clear nothing of the sort. Not everything you disagree with is a “conspiracy theory”. In this particular case, the article clearly had false info in it. No one has ever said that “information was changed” (as if on purpose) so please stop pretending otherwise. What was said was that “bias creeped in” which I think is a fair characterization. So please quit it with the strawman’ing. Volunteer Marek 02:27, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

      I am pretty shocked by these accusations if true, and would ask we WP:FOC. I believe @Horse Eye's Back is a good editor and contributor to these discussions normally though, so I think I must be missing something or a miscommunication may have occurred. I will give them time and space to explain if they feel explanation is warranted. I sure would appreciate it. Iljhgtn (talk) 17:34, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

      Its you who needs to provide a source to substantiate your allegations against a living person. ""This was not a typo, or a miscalculation, this was bias that creeped so heavily into the newsroom as to make the writers push a narrative, instead of report on the facts." is a BLP violation unless a source is provided or the author drops dead. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 18:37, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

  And what is your source for that? Nobody else is saying that this was the result of bias, the sources say that "third largest corporate owner of housing" became "owns a third of housing" which is a very understandable mistake. You appear to have constructed your own conspiracy theory around this incident. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 17:44, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

  Im sorry but “third largest owner” turning into “owns one third of all housing stock” is NOT an “understandable mistake”. It misstates the actual fact by a factor of 500. Maybe if this was like a student in some freshmen class using AI to write a paper that would be “understandable” (and still get an F) but this is supposed to be a professional, who’s job it is to get this stuff right and this is supposed to be a serious organization that has an editorial board that does fact checking. Which they obviously didn’t do. Volunteer Marek 19:36, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

  Its not math so the factor that it mistates it by is irrelevant, they are much more similar statements as written and to me (someone who works with the writing of other human beings every day) it is entirely understandable. That sort of error is made by every major and minor publication, it’s how they handle it which counts and here it was handled well. You can of course respond to this with a source which says that this is a major error, but I don't think that such a source exists (if it does I couldn't find it) Horse Eye's Back (talk) 21:28, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

  Whats “not math”? The difference between .0006 and .33? You sure? Volunteer Marek 01:23, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

  And let’s see these “every major and minor publications” that make these kinds of error. Volunteer Marek 01:25, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

  I note the failure to provide the requested source. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 01:39, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

  • Right back at you. Volunteer Marek 01:59, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

    [69], your turn and no stonewalling now provide the source or go away. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 02:07, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

    • Lol, those are standard corrections for minor misstatements not exaggerations of something by a factor of several hundred to push a narrative and then mocking and attacking people who point out the error and then putting up a half assed note. By your standard Daily Mail and Breitbart (both unreliable) would count as RS since they too have issued corrections in the past. No, reliable publications do not make errors of this magnitude and when they publish corrections they directly address any mistakes. Breitbart, Daily Mail or Jacobin unfortunately don’t do that. Volunteer Marek 03:08, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

      Your source that this was "exaggerations of something by a factor of several hundred to push a narrative" and not simply an error is what? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 18:32, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

  I have to say I question your judgment in supporting option 3 "generally unreliable" over Jacobin publishing and then retracting a single erroneous sentence, and for having a bias/narrative/agenda, when you also !voted option 1 "generally reliable" for The Heritage Foundation which routinely publishes fabricated information without retraction. Could you kindly articulate how an admittedly biased outlet with a team of fact checkers is apparently significantly worse than a think tank that churns out misinformation and disinformation (and has a team of paid staff working around the clock to target, dox, and threaten Wikipedia editors)?  Vanilla  Wizard 💙 20:12, 18 January 2025 (UTC)

• Option 1 A screenshot of a tweet documenting an already corrected error is insufficient to depreciate a reliable source. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gamaliel (talk • contribs) 16:54, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

There are a lot more issues about Jacobin than just a tweet, and include more recent topics after the last RfC like the Russian invasion of Ukraine. --NoonIcarus (talk) 17:00, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

I do not see that in the above discussion, can you link to any discussion of this? Thank you. Gamaliel (talk) 17:22, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

@Gamaliel: Mostly Wikipedia talk:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 8#Jacobin and at Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 351#Rfc: Jacobin (magazine). Kind regards,

Thank you for the links. I will repost once I've read through those discussions. Gamaliel (talk) 18:14, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

• Option 2 at the very least, change current assessment. It might be easier to comment if editors agree or not to change the current category. My position is based on coverage that mixes opinion with facts and its use of unreliable sources, some of which have been deprecated by this noticeboard (like The Grayzone). I went into more detail about this at Wikipedia talk:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 8#Jacobin and at Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 351#Rfc: Jacobin (magazine). --NoonIcarus (talk) 16:58, 16 January 2025 (UTC)
• Option 2 (intext attribution) WP:RSBIAS and WP:RSOPINION cover most of the points here. Jacobin publishes opinions peice that should have intext attribution. This is how they are used in the large amount of WP:USEBYOTHERS that Jacobin also has. I may not like Jacobin very much but bias, opinion, or minor mistakes do not make a source unreliable. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 17:06, 16 January 2025 (UTC)
• Option 1 Context matters: "Information provided in passing by an otherwise reliable source that is not related to the principal topics of the publication may not be reliable." The example given was a mistake in a book review, cubsequently corrected, about how much housing stock Blackstone owned. No reasonable editor would use this review as a source for an article on housing or Blackstone and more than one would use a reliable source on U.S. housing for an article about 19th century French poetry. TFD (talk) 17:08, 16 January 2025 (UTC)
• Option 1-ish Jacobin are clearly a biased source but they are also clearly as reliable for facts as any other major WP:NEWSORG. When they make mistakes, they correct themselves, and that improves their reliability, it doesn't hurt it. Loki (talk) 17:17, 16 January 2025 (UTC)
• Option 2: additional considerations/bad RFC - based on the discussion above, evidently there's some kind of social media uproar about some thing that Jacobin published and later corrected. It's poor timing to hold an RFC on reliability both when emotions are high and when it's in response to an isolated incident, both of which are true here. But ignoring that, it seems (again from the discussion above) that Jacobin published something that was egregiously incorrect, then retracted or corrected it. That's pretty much the standard we expect of reliable publications: errors are compatible with reliability, it's how the publication responds to and corrects errors that determines reliability in this context. Media Bias/Fact Check gives Jacobin a "high" reliability score of 1.9 (out of 10, lower scores are better), which is in the ballpark of the New York Times (1.4) and Washington Post (2.1). However, they also give it a "left bias" rating of -7 (a 20-point scale with 0 as completely unbiased), which is on the edge of their extreme ratings. Editors should consider attribution, and/or balancing this source's POV against publications more to the right. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 17:21, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

• Option 2/3 While BIAS usually covers issues like, it may not be entirely sufficient for advocacy media, which includes Jacobin. While Jacobin is a fine publication and I've sourced it myself, the reality is it does not usually report Who/What/Why but almost exclusively publishes explainers and analysis pieces that have a designed structure. For instance, How Biden Embraced Trump’s Terror Smear Against Cuba [70] is not an editorial or opinion piece, it's presented as straight news reporting in the form of an explainer article. But, as an encyclopedia, we obviously can't start injecting artistic wordsets like "terror smear" into articles. So merely saying that BIAS can cover the case of Jacobin is not sufficient. For the purposes of encyclopedia writing, there will never be anything chronicled by Jacobin that is appropriate for WP which we can't find a superior source for elsewhere. They don't do spot news, data journalism, or investigative reporting, which are the three ways we use newsgathering media to reference articles. Simply looking at the current issue, I don't see a single story that is actually reporting things. Each article is an opinion piece lightly packaged as an explainer. So, while I don't think Jacobin is "unreliable" per se, I don't see any value of using it for the very scope-limited purpose of encyclopedia-writing. Chetsford (talk) 18:08, 16 January 2025 (UTC)
• Option 1 for facts and 2/inline attribution otherwise for articles that are mainly opinion. The hoohah over an article that was actually about Mark Fisher and since corrected such that it doesn't even mention Blackstone seems like a one off. Selfstudier (talk) 18:13, 16 January 2025 (UTC)
• Nothing in the above discussion or that I've seen in the last year leads me to deviate from my !vote in the previous RfC which was this: Option 2: mostly a partisan opinion source usable with attribution if noteworthy, but occasionally publishes well-researched pieces by experts in their fields, on topics that might not be covered in more mainstream sources, in particular on the history of the left or on socialist theory. I also think that the closing of the last RfC, and in particular green flagging on RSP, did not reflect the consensus of the discussion, as I argued when this came up on this board in 2023: I have long been unhappy with the RSP summary of the many RSN discussions of this source, where the consensus has clearly been much more negative than the summary. It is clear that several editors have major issues with its use in specific areas (e.g. Russia/Ukraine, Venezuela) and that this should be flagged, and that it publishes content by a few conspiracy thinkers (Branko Marcetic was mentioned in the last discussion, McEvoy flagged here) and again this isn't highlighted in RSP. So I'd favour a rewrite of the RSP and possibly a change from green to yellow as a better reflection of the community consensus. In short: I think we need to approach it in a much more case by case basis. BobFromBrockley (talk) 18:22, 16 January 2025 (UTC)
• Option 2 My assessment hasn't changed from last time, jacobin publishes mostly opinion so this is largely a moot point and the rest of what they publish often contradicts itself—blindlynx 18:24, 16 January 2025 (UTC)
• 1 or 2, I think that most of the time they should be used with attribution but they're generally reliable enough that I don't think we should be requiring attribution. I also question the need for a new RfC... It doesn't seem like there has been anything substantial since last time so this shouldn't have been opened. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 18:34, 16 January 2025 (UTC)
• Weak option 2 per above voters (especially AD and Bob), but I won't die on that hill if the consensus ultimately feels differently. Strong oppose option 3, though, for somewhat obvious reasons. The Kip ^(contribs) 18:52, 16 January 2025 (UTC)
• Option 1/2 - I don't like Jacobin. They read to me like the socialist equivalent of Christian rock. But they have an editor, publisher and corrections, and I'm reasonably sure they're not actually liars. It's an opinion outlet, like a leftist analogue of Reason. I'm not convinced coverage in Jacobin connotes notability. So I'd give them a strong "considerations apply" - attribute, not ideal for notability - David Gerard (talk) 19:13, 16 January 2025 (UTC)
• Option 1/2 Jacobin's fine. It's left-leaning, but it doesn't cook up facts or make shit up. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:15, 16 January 2025 (UTC)
• Option 3 or 4 They publish outright falsehoods and when they issue corrections these are weak and weaselly. The recent completely absurd claim in one of their articles that Blackstone owns 33% of US single family housing stock is an example (it’s actually 1/10 of 1%). Whether you’re sympathetic to their editorial position is irrelevant. Garbage is garbage and facts are facts and as an encyclopedia we can’t rely on click bait nonsense for sources. Volunteer Marek 19:21, 16 January 2025 (UTC)
• Option 1, with attribution for analysis and opinion pieces. The Blackstone mistake was bad, and the author's petulant attitude upon being corrected leaves much to be desired. But the error was corrected relatively promptly, and they have an editorial team on staff. I'm not in favor of downgrading a source based on a single mistake. However, Jacobin has an explicit editorial stance that informs nearly all of its articles, and if it's used for more than straightforward facts, it should probably be attributed as e.g. "the socialist magazine Jacobin". I'm open to changing my view if others can demonstrate a more sustained pattern of errors or falsehoods. Astaire (talk) 20:32, 16 January 2025 (UTC)
• Option 1 (with caveats) due to the lack of developments since the last RfC which could actually change the conclusion of general reliability, as opposed to demonstrating fallibility or bias. I do have some sympathy with the no media outlet, no matter how reliable, should be listed higher than option 2 position articulated above, but I think that comes down to how we interpret "generally reliable" in practice. In other words, "additional considerations" always apply, in principle. The difference between option 1 and option 2 comes down to how likely we expect those "additional considerations" to be of practical relevance, and how exactly we should address them. XOR'easter (talk) 20:47, 16 January 2025 (UTC)
• Option 1, it doesn't seem anything has changed since the last RfC. Corrections and retractions is what a reliable source is expected to do and is a sign of reliability. Mistakes which are far greater than this are commonplace across the array of reliable sources (what matters is whether there are corrections or not) nor does partisanship equate to unreliability. Here the error appears to be about what's more or less a single sentence, an ancillary point or side-note in an opinion piece which has been corrected since. It should be treated no different a manner than any other openly partisan neworgs such as Reason (RSP entry). There is no requirement for reliable sources to be "neutral" or for the matter any standard that suggests newsorgs with an explicitly stated ideological position are any better or worse in matters of reliability than newsorgs that don't have an explicitly stated ideological position. WP:NEWSORG and WP:BIASED are quite clear. 

Though the standard disclaimers apply which are to check for whether what they publish has due weight for inclusion (not an issue of reliability), use in-text attribution with their political position made apparent when quoting opinion and that the context always matters. That there is a subreddit post critical of a error that was corrected is no basis for determining reliability of sources on Wikipedia or starting an RfC, so this is also a Bad RfC. This discussion has been had at a much greater depth in the previous RfC where it was shown that the magazine in question has quite significant use by others and affirmatory coverage from reliable secondary source demonstrating that they generally have a "reputation for fact-checking and accuracy" which doesn't needs to be rehashed. Tayi Arajakate _Talk 20:55, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

Option 1: Bad RfC + L + Ratio Creating this RfC immediately after some sort of ostensible social media outrage (ex. I nominated David Joyner (business executive) for deletion not long after the Killing of Brian Thompson, and people got so upset that they brigaded it via external social media) seems like a bad idea. It's been made clear in the past that Jacobin has a perspective (like literally any media outlet) but don't sacrifice factual accuracy to get there. My previous vote remains true: "While it wears its political perspective on its sleeve, it has proven itself time and again in its robust fact-checking. The issue with conservative and reactionary [and left-wing, see e.g. Occupy Democrats and Daily Kos] sources on the WP:RSP isn't that they have a bias – it's that they constantly express said bias through the use of provable mis- and disinformation. Jacobin does not sacrifice factual accuracy for the sake of a bias."

I would say the same of any other outlet whose perspective coexists peacefully with actual facts. The sort of neoliberalism adopted by American news outlets which we categorize as generally reliable (correctly so) isn't some sort of default worldview that needs to be treated as sacred and less biased than any other. If we're allowed to point to a single incident, then I could just as easily (but wouldn't, because I'm acting in good faith) point to the NYT's 2002–2003 reporting about Iraq and WMDs which was so unbelievably mistaken and grounded in literally nothing that we spend a paragraph attributing it to falsely luring Americans into supporting an illegal invasion based on lies, yet Wikipedia (even in the days when that story was reasonably fresh) would balk at the idea of calling them 'marginally reliable', let alone 'generally unreliable'. Meanwhile, this one is literally just a typo in a single article – a bad typo, but one anyone with a brain could understand didn't reflect reality and which was quickly corrected. Reading some of the stories on the front page right now, they report on events similar to what would be covered in a magazine like the generally reliable New York and contain no obvious factual errors. TheTechnician27 (Talk page) 21:34, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

• Option 2, mainly per u:BobFromBrockley. The Blackrock error was quickly corrected, so I don't hold it against them. Consider this quote from CANZUK Anglo-conservatives sometimes fantasize about reuniting the dominions ... where workers could be exploited freely. A not-insignificant percentage of the content supported by Jacobin is of similar nature. Alaexis_¿question? 21:56, 16 January 2025 (UTC)
• Option 1 A screenshot from Reddit detailing an error which was corrected is not reason to lower our consideration of the reliablity of the publication. WP:GREL is generally reliable, not always reliable. Admittedly the publication does contain a lot of opinion peices, however that is already covered by WP:RSOPINION and WP:RSEDITORIAL. Notably, The Economist is similarly heavy on opinion pecies and community consensus is that it is WP:GREL. TarnishedPath^talk 22:09, 16 January 2025 (UTC)
• Option 2 Jacobin is basically the left-wing equivalent to the right-wing British Magazines Spiked and The Spectator. Like these publications, most of its content is opinion orientated, and citing less opinion-focused sources should be preferred. It's clear that the current "generally reliable" rating is suggesting to readers of RSP that Jacobin's opinionated content is usable carte blanche without caveat, which I do not think is accurate. Hemiauchenia (talk) 22:16, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

Some Jacobin pieces have openly pushed 9/11 conspiracy theories [71], as well as conspiracy theories about the Euromaidan [72] which have not been retracted. The Green RSP rating has mistakenly led people to believe these pieces were reliable [73], Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_407#https://jacobin.com/2022/02/maidan-protests-neo-nazis-russia-nato-crimea Hemiauchenia (talk) 22:20, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

You should probably read farther than the headline. Simonm223 (talk) 23:05, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

The pieces (which are both by staff writer Branko Marcetic) are strongly slanted, but you're perhaps right that saying they are "pushing conspiracy theories" is going a bit far. Hemiauchenia (talk) 23:31, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

"The CIA bungled intel pre-9/11" is somewhat the opposite of a conspiracy theory since it literally attributes to incompetence what conspiracists attribute to malice. Simonm223 (talk) 14:01, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

• (Summoned by ping in this thread) Bad RFC / No listing just as in 2021. Or Option 2, it is a liberal analysis magazine, to be considered frequently as WP:RSOPINION. See you at the next 1-day social media hysteria. MarioGom (talk) 22:27, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

  This doesn't really matter for the purposes of the RFC, but Jacobin is not remotely liberal. It's far left, and quite anti-liberal. --Trovatore (talk) 22:32, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

  For whatever far left and anti-liberal mean in the US, I guess so. It does not change my point at all. MarioGom (talk) 22:35, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

  I find it really funny when Americans see somebody holding mainstream social democratic politics and start calling them extreme. Simonm223 (talk) 22:55, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

• Option 1. Correcting a mistake is a sign of reliability. The normal caveats about bias/opinion and attribution apply, but not seeing enough to move it down to 2. -- Patar knight - ^chat/_{contributions} 23:07, 16 January 2025 (UTC)
• Option 1 The current summary at WP:RS/P acknowledges that Jacobin is biased and that editors should take care when using it, which is exactly how it should be. Bias and adherence to factual accuracy are two different things; neutrality is not objectivity and vice versa. We do not need to demote it purely for being biased. Agree with others that an RfC being started based on a Reddit thread of a screenshot of a tweet of an editor who made a mistake which was ultimately corrected is a bit silly.  Vanilla  Wizard 💙 23:32, 16 January 2025 (UTC)
• Option 1 as per the analysis by Selfstudier, XOR, and Tayi. Cambial — foliar❧ 23:43, 16 January 2025 (UTC)
• Option 1 WP:GREL already has certain considerations and it doesn't mean that 100% of what is published can make it to WP. Editors are expected to use their judgement. The article in question is a WP:NEWSBLOG. I don't see any reason for downgrading them based on a reddit thread. Lf8u2 (talk) 01:49, 17 January 2025 (UTC)
• Option 1 This entire RfC appears to be politically motivated and is predicated on a correction of a sentence that mixed up "third largest" with "a third of". Many other mainline newspapers have made similar, if not worse, errors before. The question is whether corrections were made when such errors were pointed out. And the correction was made here, meeting requirements of reliability. This is likely also about an opinion article, which makes this even more pointless. Silverseren^C 02:41, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

  Weapons of mass destruction from the New York Times? Was that ever retracted? TarnishedPath^talk 11:14, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

• 3. If you can't get a better, more disinterested outfit than Jacobin to vouch for a given fact, that's poissibly a problem. Maybe the fact just isn't important enuff to use, seeing as nobody else has seen fit to bother reporting it.

It's not a matter of some particular instance about mistakes regarding mixing up "third largest" with "a third of" or whatever. Heck everybody does stuff like that. The NYTimes has has published more (unintentionally) misleading or plain-wrong charts than I've had hot meals. I mean, here we've got Nature finding that "among the 348 documents that we found to include the [egregiously bogus and not-even-wrong 'fact' that 80% of the world's biodiversity is found in the territories of indigenous peoples] are 186 peer-reviewed journal articles, including some in BioScience, The Lancet Planetary Health, and Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, and 19 news articles targeted at a specialist audience." Imagine that. I would guess that that's largely because "puts indigenous peoples in a good light" trumps "is true" in the emotional hind-brain of the leather-elbow-patch set. It's not a lefty thing in particular, right-wingers are just as bad I'm sure.

Which just strengthens my point, there're no blinders like ideological blinders, so its not so much a matter of how many fact-checkers you have as in how you maybe are presenting facts which, while individually true, are cherry picked or incomplete or out of context or one-sided or otherwise misleading. It might not even be intentional, exactly. Mind-sets are like that. Better to stick with Time or other people who are more into just blandly attracting a broad readership rather than with people who have points to make.

They're big and smart enough that reporting their opinions are worthwhile, of course. "According to Jacobin, consumption of oligarchs is (due to their high protein-to-fat ratio) a potential avenue for ameliorating world hunger" is fine. As long as we include the qualifier. Herostratus (talk) 04:06, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

@Herostratus: not to backseat comment but if "They're big and smart enough that reporting their opinions are worthwhile, of course. "According to Jacobin, consumption of oligarchs is (due to their high protein-to-fat ratio) a potential avenue for ameliorating world hunger" is fine." isn't that a 2? I'm in much the same boat and offered a split 1/2, my understanding is that a 3 shouldn't be used for opinion. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 18:50, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

Backseat comments are totally fine. I live for them. I'm not sure about the details of our rule, but aren't all publications are completely reliable for their contents? If the News of the World says "the moon is made of green cheese" we can certainly say "According to the News of the World, the moon is made of green cheese" if for some reason that was useful. The ref is just so the reader can check that they did indeed print that. Similarly for any opinion or other statement. Since all entities are reliable for their own contents, I assume we are not talking at all about that. Why would we.

What we are talking about is: if entity X says "FBI stats say that African-American violent crime was up 50% in Los Angeles in 2024", can we say that in our own words because we can be confident that it is true because we know that entity X has a good fact-checking operation? Can we be very very sure that entity X would also point out if violent crime for all races was also up 50%? Can we be very very sure that this increase is not because the FBI started using a new definition of "violent crime", because entity X would surely point that out? Can we be very very sure that violent crime in the city of Los Angeles is steady and the increase is purely from Los Angeles County (or whatever), because entity X would surely point that out? In other words -- can we be very very sure that entity X would not cherry-pick some facts and leave out others because they are here to make points? We want to be careful about being led by the nose by these people. Herostratus (talk) 22:47, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

I think the thing is our due weight policy says that due weight (noteworthiness) is apportioned based on the amount of attention given in reliable sources. I take that to mean opinion in generally reliable sources is worth reporting; opinion in generally unreliable sources isn’t. BobFromBrockley (talk) 14:35, 18 January 2025 (UTC)

The Daily Mail is not reliable for its own contents, having doctored its archives. 100.36.106.199 (talk) 00:05, 20 January 2025 (UTC)

• Option 1 The author's attitude certainly leaves much to be desired... but I don't think a single mistake that was quickly fixed – in a blog piece, which generally wouldn't even be cited except in very limited circumstances and with attribution per WP:NEWSBLOG – is a good enough reason to downgrade their reliability. Smallangryplanet (talk) 07:52, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

• Option 2 My opinion is unchanged from the previous RfC. It is absurd that we've opened up another RfC over a minor issue that was quickly corrected, all because a few neoliberal redditors got mad about it. I think citations to Jacobin should require attribution, but trying to tar them as unreliable over this one case is ridiculous. Log off Reddit, there is nothing worthwhile to be found there. --Grnrchst (talk) 09:59, 17 January 2025 (UTC)
• Option 2. I concur with other editors that this RFC should never have been opened. Please be more considerate of your fellow editors' time. GordonGlottal (talk) 14:41, 17 January 2025 (UTC)
• Option 2 possibly Option 3. I don't see that the source is any better than it was in 2021. Per Dr.Swag Lord, Ph.d's previous comments and references from the 2021 RfC copied below as well as this recent incident. Yes, making a mistake and correcting it is good but when the mistake is so egreious and the author attacks people who note the error how much faith should we put in the source? Last time I also noted that per Adfont's media review (not a RS but still worth a look) this source is more biased than Breitbart!

Normally, we put these extremely ideological sources in the Option 2 category (e.g., Salon (RSP entry), Townhall (RSP entry)). Jacobin obviously doesn't report straight news, so it (i) always needs to be attributed and (ii) check to see if it complies with WP:WEIGHT. However, Jacobin has additional issues. Its stated political mission is to: centralize and inject energy into the contemporary socialist movement [74]. So it is more in line with an advocacy group than a news source. Also, it has pretty fringe views. James Wolcott identifies Jacobin as part of the alt-left [75]. It's pretty fringe-y on topics concerning Venezuela [76], the USSR/Communism [77][78], and anti-semitism [79], [80]. I would avoid using Jacobin for those topics. But if you need a socialist/Marxist opinion on something, then Jacobin is definitely a good source to use. Dr. Swag Lord (talk) 21:10, 18 July 2021 (UTC) Based upon Noonlcarus's comment, Jacobin does seem to frequently use deprecated/unreliable sources for facts. Some examples include Alternet (RSP entry) [81][82][83], Daily Kos (RSP entry) [84], Raw Story (RSP entry) [85], The Canary (RSP entry) [86], and the Electronic Intifada (RSP entry) [87].Dr. Swag Lord (talk) 04:53, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

As I mentioned above, when a source is this biased we have to ask if that level of bias is going to have too great an impact on both the weight they give various facts thus leading to questionable conclusion and their ability to verify otherwise factual claims as we saw here. I think that puts the source deep into the use with caution territory Springee (talk) 18:19, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

And yet you rated the Heritage Foundation at 2/3 below and didn't find any problem with their extreme ideological bent, saying in their defense that deprecating the foundation would reflect more on the biases of editors than on the true quality of the source and would again push Wikipedia away from the goal of collecting knowledge. This is a group that is regularly equated in academic best sources with fascism such as in:

1. Neo-fascist trends in education: neo-liberal hybridisation and a new authoritarian order Díez-Gutiérrez, Enrique-Javier, Mauro-Rafael Jarquín-Ramírez, and Eva Palomo-Cermeño, Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies (JCEPS). Sep2024, Vol. 22 Issue 2, p125-169
2. Pandemic abandonment, panoramic displays and fascist propaganda: The month the earth stood still. By: McLaren, Peter, Educational Philosophy & Theory, 00131857, Feb 2022, Vol. 54, Issue 2
3. THE ANTI-DEMOCRACY THINK TANK. By: Stewart, Katherine, New Republic, 00286583, Sep2023, Vol. 254, Issue 9 (note that the think tank that they call "The West Point of American Fascism" in this article is the Claremont Institute but that they refer to Heritage as participating in Claremont events.)
4. The Road Ahead Fighting for Progress, Freedom, and Democracy, Weingarten, Randi, American Educator. Fall2024, Vol. 48 Issue 3, p2-9. 8p.

So I guess my question is one of consistency: do you believe Jacobin is more ideologically compromised than the fascist-adjacent Heritage foundation? If not why do you believe that the Heritage Foundation is more valuable to the "goal of collecting knowledge" than Jacobin? Simonm223 (talk) 19:20, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

You are missing a major difference. HF isn't a media source, they are a think tank. Jacobin is a media source, not a think tank. I've argued that all think tanks should be used with great care and in particular we should generally not cite them unless an independent RS points to their work. So the question is can we cite HF when a RS mentions the views/claims/etc of HF with respect to the article topic. In that regard I'm suggesting we treat them more like a primary source vs a RS. Jacobin is different and the relevant question is can we treat them like a regular RS as we do with many other news media sources. If Jacobin publishes a claim about an article subject should we cite them? I argue they should be evaluated by the same standards we use for news media sources. By that standard it's strong bias etc means we should use it's claims and reports with caution and should question if they have weight to justify inclusion. In your post above you provided a list of texts but absent links I can't see what they say nor if their arguments are sound or crap but they don't impact the distinction I've made. Springee (talk) 21:09, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

The list of texts are available via Wikipedia library which is why I provided bibliographical information rather than links as links to material on WP library don't work. With the exception of New Republic all are academic journals. And now please answer my original question: do you believe Jacobin is more ideologically compromised than the Heritage Foundation? Simonm223 (talk) 21:19, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

If you want to cite those sources to support an argument you should tell us what they say or at least why you think they support your position. As for your question, I already answered. It doesn't matter if the HF is more or less compromised because the purpose of each is different. When it comes to topics of automobiles Honda is more compromised than the AP but they also might be a better source if we are asking about stratified charge combustion in automobile engines. Springee (talk) 21:23, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

On this charge I will defend Springee. I don't necessarily agree with them but I'm not seeing the dissonance in their arguments, especially as they seem to be going 2/3 on both (there is not formal vote here but that seems to be the upshot of what they're saying). Their slighlty idiosyncratic argument about the purspose of the source being primary is also one which they've been making consistently for years. With all due respect I think you're being too hard on Springee. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 21:27, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

I take the idea that a publication being openly social democratic is too biased to be reliable personally offensive. Anywhere outside the United States Jacobin would be seen as barely left of the political center. But I will concede that Springee is being consistent. And I actually agreed that think tanks should be treated as primary sources. Frankly, were Springee to be more reasonable on the "political bias" overreach, we might otherwise be agreeing. Simonm223 (talk) 21:35, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

We may not be disagreeing at all given we both are giving them a "2". I'm arguing that their bias is too much to make them a 1. The possible 3, the same score I gave them last time, is a concern regarding things like the issue that started the recent discussion. I was about to post something about really disliking the RSP's simplistic bucketing. It's really not a good system as we really should put more effort into asking if a source is appropriate for the claims being supported and when an encyclopedia should be citing strongly biased sources in general. If we need to use such a strongly biased source is the information DUE? Springee (talk) 21:54, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

We do agree on disliking the RSP bucketing system. My personal opinion is no news media source should be treated as a blanket "generally reliable" because reliability is contextual. However I do think that Jacobin is, from a global perspective, not in any way ideologically extreme. Social democracy is a normal left-of-center political position. The extreme-right shift of US politics over the last few decades makes them seem like outliers but that's the real bias problem right there. Simonm223 (talk) 22:22, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

Jacobin is not merely social democratic; their About Us page states they offer socialist perspectives and approvingly includes quotes describing them as supporting radical politics and very explicitly on the radical left, and sort of hostile to liberal accommodationism. Crossroads ^-talk- 22:29, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

I would strongly advise against getting too side-tracked by having a conversation about "social democracy" vs "democratic socialism" (same goes for any arguments over distinctions between "left" vs "liberal" in this thread). I can say from experience that these semantics rabbitholes are shockingly deep, and they're not at all necessary or helpful for this RfC. All I'll say is that these terms are commonly used as synonyms by at least some people, and the "Ideology and reception" section of Jacobin (magazine) notes the political diversity of contributors, incorporating "everyone from social democratic liberals to avowed revolutionaries", so I don't think either you or Simonm223 are wrong on this. Different people are gonna use different terms and apply different meanings to each of them.  Vanilla  Wizard 💙 03:23, 18 January 2025 (UTC)

Anywhere outside the United States Jacobin would be seen as barely left of the political center. Where outside the United States are you talking about? The world where barely 20% of countries recognize same-sex marriage? Where sixteen countries have banned the burqa? Is it Japan, where the conservative Liberal Democratic Party has been in power since 1955? Or China, where a media outlet that is as critical of the Chinese Communist Party as Jacobin is of the Democratic Party would have long been banned, and their writers arrested? I think we all need a reality check here, especially if we want to represent reality in our articles. feminist🩸 (talk) 03:54, 18 January 2025 (UTC)

While I can't speak for them, I'm guessing they probably had in mind specifically other western democracies, as it's common for European countries to have a mainstream Socialist Party with an ideology listed as social democracy (to name a few: Spain, Portugal, France, Albania, etc).

I'm comfortable speculating this is their argument because it's one that's often repeated in American progressive-left circles. This argument is usually presented as follows: Bernie Sanders is viewed as the furthest left one can go in America, the things his supporters want are not radical to other developed countries (paid time off, universal healthcare, etc), therefore what is far left in America is only moderately left elsewhere.

Not saying I entirely agree or disagree with that argument, either how Simonm223 phrased it or how I interpreted it. Just saying I think they had in mind comparable democracies, not the entire world.

 Vanilla  Wizard 💙 16:52, 18 January 2025 (UTC)

Yeah. I don't feel the need to put a million qualifiers on a comment on a WP discussion board when all I really need to say is that the United States has an abnormal political compass compared to its peers. But also there used to be lots of socialists, for instance, throughout the Middle East. American allies killed most of them. Simonm223 (talk) 18:33, 18 January 2025 (UTC)

This has become a discussion about Overton windows rather than the source. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 22:11, 18 January 2025 (UTC)

• Option 3 or 2 - Right-wing outlets that mix opinions in their articles, selectively choose facts to promote a political agenda, or sloppily misrepresent the truth have rightly been marked as unreliable ages ago. There is no reason to have a different standard for other political positions. And regardless of that, outlets that do that cannot be relied on (i.e. are unreliable) to present an accurate picture of the facts on a given topic, nor are their writers' opinions noteworthy in our articles. Op-eds from even mainstream papers like NYT, WaPo, etc. are routinely removed as sources; outlets like Jacobin that consist entirely of such articles should likewise not be used (and we have already done this for right-wing opinion outlets like Quillette). The green checkmark at RSP misleads editors into thinking opinions and claims published in Jacobin are more noteworthy than they really are. Crossroads ^-talk- 22:47, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

  Jacobin's raison d'etre is to promote socialism, and it has a strong ideological perspective that makes it unreliable for coverage of contentious geopolitical issues, hard news, or factual reporting. However, it may be used with caution for topics within its area of expertise (such as the theory and history of socialism, labor movements, and socialist cultural commentary), provided proper attribution and corroboration from neutral sources are applied. 2601:340:8200:800:30C1:6FF8:F57B:FCF8 (talk) 03:03, 20 January 2025 (UTC)

  This is no more a good argument than it would be to state that the raison d'etre of X publication is to promote capitalism and the geo-political interests of the United States, and it has a strong ideological perspective that makes it unreliable for coverage of contentious geopolitical issues, hard news, or factual reporting.

  I could apply that faulty argument to shitloads of mainstream US publications that are currently considered to be generally reliable. TarnishedPath^talk 05:19, 20 January 2025 (UTC)

• Option 1. Folks have said it well already so I won't belabor the point. I can't really imagine an occasion when I would cite Jacobin, but I consider them roughly a left-wing equivalent of The Economist or Reason (also publications I'd be unlikely to cite –– all three of these are usually rather predictable and tend to offer shallow analysis). I wasn't sure how we list those other two so I checked RSP just now and saw that they're 1s. Yes, OTHERSTUFF is a poor argument, but I was more interested in getting a baseline on where the community draws the line between 1 and 2. With respect, I object to Crossroads' comparison to Quillette, which leans heavily into platforming fringe ideas and displays little editorial oversight. (Interestingly, here's some solid reporting by Jacobin on a hoax published in Quillette, revealing the latter's abysmal editorial practices, courtesy of this past RSN discussion.) Generalrelative (talk) 01:09, 18 January 2025 (UTC)

  Personally I don’t see Reason and Economist as equivalent, and was surprised to see Reason green flagged for the same reason that I don’t think Jacobin should be. That is, whereas Economist is mostly reporting and some opinion, both Reason and Jacobin are mostly opinion and some reporting. The Jacobin piece on the Quillette hoax looks good to me, but everything else they’ve published by that author wouldn’t be usable for facts as they’re pure op eds. I’d put the Spectator and National Review in the category as Jacobin and Reason. (Whereas Spiked and American Conservative are worse, red flag territory rather than amber.) BobFromBrockley (talk) 15:02, 18 January 2025 (UTC)

• Additional considerations apply. As I indicated in the discussion above which I started, the mere fact that Jacobin thought it appropriate to publish a statement that Blackstone Inc. "owns a third of US housing stock" indicates that they do not do adequate fact-checking before publishing articles. Therefore, one should attempt to corroborate any facts they publish with more reliable sources before relying on Jacobin to support any factual statements in articles. feminist🩸 (talk) 03:18, 18 January 2025 (UTC)
• Option 1. Our guideline on reliable sources is explicit that reliable sources are not required to be neutral, unbiased, or objective. I may not personally love the political perspective of Jacobin, but they don't go out of their way to platform disinformation that flatly contradicts academic consensus about reality. Regarding Jacobin as unreliable on the grounds of its bias would require evidence that said bias leads it to regularly publish misinformation and untruths. I haven't seen this established.
  Moreover, the error brought up that somehow has sparked this RFC was both A) corrected in a timely manner, which is what we expect from a reliable source; and B) a case where context matters, as the original source was a book review of several books written by Mark Fisher. If cited, it should be cited to warrant information about Fisher or his books or the genre he wrote in, etc. The Blackstone number was Information provided in passing, and we already know that such info occasionally may not be reliable, and so we use our best judgment as editors, citing and reading a wide variety of sources and going to the best sources. For a topic like Mark Fisher, looks like Jacobin is a good resource. For Blackstone and housing, try an article from the journal Urban Studies. Not every source is perfect at every subject, but when a source has a known editorial staff, issues corrections to publications, and is grounded in reality, it's reliable, even if I wouldn't personally enjoy talking politics with the editor.
  Finally, when a piece published in Jacobin is an opinion piece, we can just treat it as such, per our guideline about opinion pieces in reliable sources. The Economist and The Wall Street Journal publish a lot of opinion pieces too, yet GREL they've remained. As the perennial list says of The Economist, editors should use their judgement to discern factual content—which can be generally relied upon—from analytical content, which should be used in accordance with the guideline on opinion in reliable sources. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 06:51, 18 January 2025 (UTC)

• Option 3 or Option 2, long overdue for the reasons already set out in this thread. And frankly, the idea that a magazine whose name is derived from the people who instituted the Reign of Terror was ever acceptable w/o issue is offputting by itself. Just10A (talk) 23:26, 18 January 2025 (UTC)

  For the record, the founder has said that in naming the magazine, he was thinking of The Black Jacobins, a book about the Haitian Revolution, not the French. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 01:24, 19 January 2025 (UTC)

  Not that that is relevant anyway when assessing reliability. TarnishedPath^talk 01:50, 19 January 2025 (UTC)

  The Black Jacobins is named so because the author analogizes the actions of the Haitians to that of the French Jacobins. It's just adding an extra step (not to mention that the word has a known meaning on it's face, so it's mostly irrelevant.). Regardless, it's clearly derived, and it's frankly silly to even argue semantics. Just10A (talk) 02:06, 19 January 2025 (UTC)

  Just to be clear your argument about the name being relevant to reliability is literally arguing semantics. Your objection doesn't make any sense. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 03:19, 19 January 2025 (UTC)

  I was referring to the semantics of what counts as "derived from." And no, while the name clearly doesn't inherently reflect relevance. If a source called "The KGB Times" came up on the noticeboard for reliability, it's perfectly reasonable for a person to point out "Hey, I don't think it's reliable for reasons x,y, and z, andddd the name also doesn't exactly inspire confidence." That's all I'm saying. Don't twist my statement into something it's not. Just10A (talk) 05:45, 19 January 2025 (UTC)

  That is arguing semantics. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 16:45, 19 January 2025 (UTC)

  If that's your benchmark, then practically everything is arguing semantics, including this whole thread. "Jacobin publishes words -> what are the meaning of those words? (semantics) -> can we qualify those meanings as 'reliable?'" Clearly distinguishing factors, and I'm not interested in arguing semantics about the word "semantics" with you like a 12 year old. My vote's been explained, get over it. Just10A (talk) 17:27, 19 January 2025 (UTC)

• Option 1/Keep the current RSPS summary I think a few people arguing for additional considerations are misremembering the current RSPS legend. Additional considerations doesn’t refer to things like weight, or bias, or that you need to attribute opinion pieces because those are all standard considerations that apply to all sources. The current RSPS summary already says (in part) Editors should take care to adhere to the neutral point of view policy when using Jacobin as a source in articles, for example by quoting and attributing statements that present its authors' opinions, and ensuring that due weight is given to their perspective amongst others'. I can't find anything that indicates that's not still a perfectly good summary. CambrianCrab (talk) 01:10, 19 January 2025 (UTC)

• Option 1* Jacobin is a biased source, something that should obviously be considered by anyone thinking of sourcing them for anything contentious, but their reporting has never been an issue in terms of establishing basic factual information about a situation. One writer for a book review making a dumb statement that was corrected by the source doesn't change that. BSMRD (talk) 04:19, 19 January 2025 (UTC)
• Option 1: Nothing of substance has been presented to suggest that this source is not GREL. Most of the reasons being presented for MREL appear to be about bias, but that is not of direct relevance to reliability unless it can be shown that any bias directly impinges somehow on its reliability. That it provides a perspective from a rarefied position on the political spectrum is a moot point in terms of reliability. Arguably it is good to have sources from all different positions on the political spectrum for the purposes of balance, but that is, again, irrelevant to its reliability. Iskandar323 (talk) 15:41, 19 January 2025 (UTC)
• Option 1/2: generally reliable, they have a correction policy. Bias for opinion pieces and essays should be taken into account, attribute accordingly. Bluethricecreamman (talk) 00:08, 20 January 2025 (UTC)
• Bad RfC As on 25 July 2021. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 19:44, 20 January 2025 (UTC)
• Option 1 I previously commented in the 2021 RfC based on our guideline for use of biased sources. In particular I found this 2019 assessment by the Columbia Journalism Review persuasive. Most recently this January 4, 2025 article from the Columbia Journalism Review cites a Jacobin article from November 2024 positively. A major trade publication in the field of journalism still seems to find Jacobin worth citing as "demonstrat[ing] convincingly" how Harris lost the pro-labor vote in the 2024 election. Why should we not follow CJRs lead? The arguments seem to be (1) Jacobin recently issued a major retraction and (2) Jacobin has a left-wing bias. I could buy into (1) if they constantly issued retractions, but no one has shown that that is the case. (2) is contrary to WP:BIASED. Altogether, I don't see why we should treat Jacobin differently from reliable but right-of-center-biased publications like The New Criterion or The Atlantic Monthly. — Wug·a·po·des 07:08, 21 January 2025 (UTC)
• Option 2 or Option 3: Not only is Jacobin an extremely biased, ideologically charged source, but their reporting has been called into question multiple times. At the very least, additional considerations do apply. Doctorstrange617 (talk) 13:14, 21 January 2025 (UTC)
• Option 2. This is not a WP:NEWSORG. Its stated purpose is "to foster class consciousness and build the institutions that can tame and eventually overcome capital". Compare to the missions of the NYT: "We seek the truth and help people understand the world."; or the BBC: "to act in the public interest, serving all audiences through the provision of impartial, high-quality and distinctive output and services which inform, educate and entertain". The NYT and the BBC are both biased (every source is biased), but they do at least aim to deliver reporting. Jacobin, on the other hand, is an advocacy organisation. That doesn't make it automatically unreliable, nor does that make it solely a source of opinions, but that does makes it qualitatively different from the newspapers that others have compared it to - and that is an important additional consideration worth noting. For the record, I disagree that one incident of inaccuracy is enough to downgrade a source, particularly one that was corrected. Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 13:41, 21 January 2025 (UTC)
• Just because I note that my earlier !vote wasn't posted in to this section, for the avoidance of doubt, whilst I think this is a Bad RFC because there's no reason for initiating it, I support Option 2 or Option 3 because it is strictly an opinion site and not one that should be relied on for statements of fact about anything but itself. FOARP (talk) 14:55, 22 January 2025 (UTC)
• Option 1 – Jacobin may be biased, but that has no bearing on reliability. They have many well-respected articles that have been cited by other reliable sources, have transparent editorial controls, and a demonstrated process for retraction and correction. I see a couple complaints above that Jacobin isn't a news organization; however, this isn't relevant to reliability. Just like The Economist, Jacobin publishes more retrospective, interpretive articles which for certain subjects can often be better than using contemporaneous news articles. Overall this is a very bad RfC given the creator's undisclosed connection to the previous overturned RfC (see comment by Tayi Arajakate) and a complete lack of any examples of actual uses on Wikipedia where the reliability is questioned. This is as far as I can tell a knee-jerk reaction to a single example of an error on an unrelated topic in an offhand remark inside a book review, and which wasn't even used on Wikipedia. An absurd reason to open an RfC. Dan Leonard (talk • contribs) 15:40, 22 January 2025 (UTC)
• Option 1 per Silver seren and Wugapodes (and thank you for providing actual reported information on their editorial process rather than speculation, heavy irony in this whole discussion). This whole saga is based on one correction? Really? Gnomingstuff (talk) 19:24, 22 January 2025 (UTC)
• Option 1 bias has nothing to do with reliability. Meanwhile, corrections are a strong signal of reliability. --Pinchme123 (talk) 22:11, 22 January 2025 (UTC)

Bias has plenty to do with reliability, or can. It's a worthwhile thing to take into consideration. Herostratus (talk) 21:56, 23 January 2025 (UTC)

Your caveat is doing all the work here. Literally (not hyperbolic) every source of every kind has a bias. Just having a bias means nothing in relation to reliability. Unless of course what you mean is that a source claims to not have a bias, which would then be a significant ding to its reliability (but that isn't true for this source). --Pinchme123 (talk) 04:20, 25 January 2025 (UTC)

• Option 3/4: An encyclopedia should focus on high-quality, fact-driven sources. Not on ones that report the news with heavy political agendas, at least not without qualifying it. Using a highly politically charged source (of whatever political persuasion) inevitably leads to

1. Bias and lack of objectivity: Sources with extreme political leanings present information very selectively and often distort facts to support an ideological agenda. This can lead to biased or one-sided entries that undermine neutrality. It can also lead to including content that is not encyclopedic. See Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not.
2. Erosion of credibility: Wikipedia is expected to provide balanced, factual, and well-researched content. Reliance on politically extreme sources can damage its reputation as a reliable and neutral reference.
3. Misinformation and inaccuracy: Sources like Jacobin often contain errors, conspiracy theories, or exaggerated claims that, when included in encyclopedia entries, could mislead readers and spread misinformation.
4. Cherry-picking evidence: Extreme political sources may omit contrary evidence or fail to represent the full range of perspectives. This results in incomplete or skewed coverage. Critical context is lacking.
5. Harm to reputation of the field: Normalizing unreliable content can set a dangerous precedent here. Per Wikipedia policy, a fact worthy of entry in an encyclopedia would be covered by multiple reliable sources. It would be difficult to "counter" each instance of citing Jacobin with another source of equal repute but on the opposite political extreme covering the same story.

Further, Jacobin is mostly an opinion source. While it is not the worst source in the world, it hardly ranks among reliable sources. According to Ad Fontes Media, which monitors news value and reliability, "Ad Fontes Media rates Jacobin in the Hyper-Partisan Left category of bias and as Mixed Reliability/Opinion OR Other Issues in terms of reliability."

The goal of Wikipedia, which prioritizes reliable secondary sources, is to present information with a sense of detachment. There is no shortage of such sources, and those are the ones to use. --Precision123 (talk) 21:30, 23 January 2025 (UTC)

Well said. Iljhgtn (talk) 21:31, 23 January 2025 (UTC)

Thank you, @Iljhgtn:. I'd also like to add that @Herostratus: put it nicely above: "If you can't get a better, more disinterested outfit than Jacobin to vouch for a given fact, that's poissibly a problem. Maybe the fact just isn't important enuff to use, seeing as nobody else has seen fit to bother reporting it." --Precision123 (talk) 21:38, 23 January 2025 (UTC)

That is also a good point. I imagine that is why as a standalone source it likely should not be relied upon for reliable reporting on the facts, but that maybe it could work to bolster a claim made already by another reliable source. Option 2 of "Additional considerations" is where I am leaning. Iljhgtn (talk) 21:40, 23 January 2025 (UTC)

The OP @Feminist also spoke to this. Iljhgtn (talk) 21:41, 23 January 2025 (UTC)

1. All sources are biased, it's a natural part of human nature. This is covered by WP:RSBIAS, if that bias effects accuracy and fact checking then that needs to be shown by examples. Biased sources are not unreliable simply because of their bias.
2. People's opinions of Wikipedia are not a criteria for determining a reliable source.
3. Instances of errors or misinformation should be shown, saying they might exist isn't evidence that they do exist.
4. This is again covered by WP:RSBIAS.
5. This point relates to NPOV not reliability. Editors should take WP:DUE, WP:BALASP, and WP:FALSEBALANCE into account, but ultimately whether a source should be used is not the same as if a source is reliable.

-- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 23:06, 23 January 2025 (UTC)

Detachment is specifically not required of sources per RSBIAS "... reliable sources are not required to be neutral, unbiased, or objective." -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 23:24, 23 January 2025 (UTC)

@Precision123: did you employ ChatGPT or other LLM to compose this response? The structure is suspiciously similar to ChatGPT's writing style and your response is primarily platitudes with no specific examples or references to the specific policies undergirding RSP. Your sentence Sources like Jacobin often contain errors, conspiracy theories, or exaggerated claims that, when included in encyclopedia entries, could mislead readers and spread misinformation is especially LLM-like and makes the spurious claim that sources like Jacobin may use conspiracy theories which hasn't been brought up anywhere here. Dan Leonard (talk • contribs) 02:38, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

I was going to comment on their lack of examples given for claims, but correctly assessed that someone else would probably do so. TarnishedPath^talk 03:06, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

It is an unfortunate aspect of LLMs that they generate nice sounding wording that has no understanding of Wikipedia policies or guidelines. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 10:40, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

I referenced specific Wikipedia policies and also cited a credible evaluation of the source. Here it is again: "Ad Fontes Media rates Jacobin in the Hyper-Partisan Left category of bias and as Mixed Reliability/Opinion OR Other Issues in terms of reliability." That does not sound like an option-1-level source. I also disagree with the "well everything is biased" statement, which opens the door to including sources that are not worthy of encyclopedic entry. Several newsrooms maintain a commitment to objectivity—and even if there are problems in one given piece—the point we have made is that a fact should be able to be covered by multiple reliable sources anyway. In addition, news sources have been evaluated for their reliability. For example, The Guardian is a left-leaning news source that is very reliable by credible observers. Each source should be evaluated on its own. This one does not make the cut for option 1 inclusion. --Precision123 (talk) 17:03, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

Ad Fontes Media* is not a reliable source, see the archives, and the only policy you mentioned was WP:NOT that is about article content and has nothing to do with reliable sources (see WP:V and WP:RS).
*Specifically the general issue with Ad Fontes Media and similar sites is that they use their own methodology for evaluating sources and not Wikipedia's criteria. The discussion isn't about whether the source is reliable in some absolute sense, but whether it's reliable for the purposes of Wikipedia. Additionally most of these sites are US based and simply reflect US public opinion on the political leaning of a source, and the political leaning of a source has absolutely nothing to do with if it is reliable or not. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 17:12, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

Please keep in mind that AFM is not a RS in context of use in Wikipedia articles. That does not mean it isn't a useful source when evaluating the RS of other sources. For example, if a prof of journalism had a page where he had detailed examples of journalistic failures made by various sources we would have to treat it as self published. However if his arguments were solid we certainly could use it for evaluating other sources in terms of reliability, bias etc. When AFM, MBFC and AllSides all say the source is strongly partisan we should pay attention. These rating sites are used by others and in that regard we should give them some weight (not WEIGHT) in our discussions. However, as a non-RS we should never put something like "According to AFM, [source name] is rated as [rating]". This was a problem for a while and is the reason why editors said don't use the rating sites as RS in the article space. Springee (talk) 17:55, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

Absolutely editors could use such sites for researching the quality of a source, but just saying "such and such site says" isn't meaningful. If there are failures that show a reputation that lacks facts checking and accuracy, then those need to be presented as evidence. Editors are in no way obliged to agree with how any external website rates a source. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 20:03, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

I put his reply into 3 different AI detectors (the top 3, not that they are infallible). The results were: 100% human, 0% AI; 100% human 0% AI, and; 96% human, 4% AI. Accusing someone of using AI/LLM without evidence is a personal attack, and stating some asinine remark like "It is an unfortunate aspect of LLMs that they generate nice sounding wording that has no understanding of Wikipedia policies or guidelines" when you have no evidence presented is laughable. I would strike this. Just10A (talk) 17:32, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

I second that the baseless accusation should be amended to a strikethrough like this, and the discussion should remain focused on content. Iljhgtn (talk) 17:43, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

AI detectors are notoriously unreliable (often giving false positives and false negatives). While there's no way to know for sure, I don't blame Dan Leonard for having a sneaking feeling. Numbered points pithy subtitles following by vague elaboration without specific examples or evidence is, after all, a very GPT-style way to answer questions. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 18:26, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

I agree, which is why I said they're not infallible. However, they still have 0 evidence presented (in fact they now have substantial evidence against), and Accusations about personal behavior that lack evidence are personal attacks. "Serious accusations require serious evidence, usually in the form of diffs and links." End of story. Just10A (talk) 18:47, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

The accusation was framed as a question and was justified by the similarity to how ChatGPT writes and the lack of substance in the !vote. If the accusation was poor etiquette, the !vote is not based on any real evidence or actual policy and thus will probably be given little attention by a closer. If the !voter wants to be taken seriously, they could add examples for their allegations. BobFromBrockley (talk) 18:51, 26 January 2025 (UTC)

My general comment about how useless AI comments is not a personal attack or an "asinine remark" as AI comments waste other editors time. However editors shouldn't tag other editors replies as being AI as it's not very useful, instead they should feed them back into a chatbot to generate a reply. That way their time isn't wasted replying to such comments. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 20:21, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

Accusing @Precision123 of using an ChatGPT or LLM type tool to generate a response is baseless and is failing to WP:FOC. Jacobin is a bad source at best with additional considerations, or generally unreliable at worst, but neither of those details are raised when accusing this editor of bad faith without evidence. Iljhgtn (talk) 17:28, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

I agree that we should keep this discussion respectful. Whether or not Ad Fontes Media itself is to be included as a source in the body of a Wikipedia article (due to a straight-line self-publication rule) is different as to whether editors can consult it in good faith when evaluating reliable sources. Ad Fontes Media is, in fact, well respected and regularly cited by newspapers of record and other solid news sources: Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today. The idea that newspapers of record can regularly reference it but Wikipedia editors cannot even look at it when discussing the reliability of sources does not make sense. AFM is known to be independent with a a clear and comprehensive methodology that speaks not just to bias but more importantly to reliability.[88] Again, this is not about including Ad Fontes Media as a source in in other Wikipedia articles. This discussion is about another source that, after going through an independent review of its articles, came out about as reliable as Breitbart. --Precision123 (talk) 18:20, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

You're welcome to divine source reliability in tea leaves too for all that matters - it's just that an RfC closer will rightly ignore such arguments and, I would hope, will ignore arguments that basically come down to a WP:GUNREL source saying "they're scary leftists." Simonm223 (talk) 18:25, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

Saying that one of these sites rates a source in a particular way is meaningless. If there is evidence of a reputation of poor fact checking or accuracy then evidence needs to be presented here. Editors don't have to agree with Ad Fontes Media, AllSides, or whatever, so just stating that sites opinion doesn't add anything to the discussion. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 20:07, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

Such a site could be useful for researching an argument you can present here. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 20:09, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

My apologies to Precision123 if this is unfounded. I thought the bolded, numbered list structure and lack of policy specifics was similar to recent LLM use on the AfD nominations of Bhaskar Sharma and seed oil misinformation, but I acknowledge I may have been a bit too quick to the draw here. I invite an uninvolved editor to mask this with a {{collapse}}. Dan Leonard (talk • contribs) 22:07, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

Asking someone if they used an LLM to write something, as Dan Leonard did here, is not an accusation of anything, let alone an accusation of bad faith. It's a perfectly reasonable and polite thing to do when you suspect someone might have. Not everyone knows that LLMs are discouraged and asking gives people an opportunity to be learn about community norms. CambrianCrab (talk) 01:13, 25 January 2025 (UTC)

• Option 2. They are an analysis/opinion magazine rather than a strait news source, so their pervasive bias has to be carefully considered when assessing its use as a source. Eluchil404 (talk) 00:48, 24 January 2025 (UTC)
• Option 2 Yes, we allow biased sources, but a source like this with explicitly declared bias that includes its title should be balanced against our NPOV policy, particularly. WP:IMPARTIAL and WP:ATTRIBUTEPOV. In Perennial sources we reserved option 1 for the established reliable sources like BBC or Time magazine. Brandmeister^talk 09:59, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

  BBC as unbiased, hmm ... Hutton Inquiry, criticism of the BBC, etc. Iskandar323 (talk) 12:28, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

  And Time Magazine has never had a spicy political take either. Simonm223 (talk) 12:38, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

  Having a spicy take is not the same thing as "spicy" being both your brand and your model for all writing. Though that is to say nothing of the outright egregious falsehood discussed earlier that was begrudgingly and reluctantly retracted (with insult to the commenter pointing out the error just for good measure). Iljhgtn (talk) 16:24, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

  You have failed to demonstrate that the publication Jacobin did any of the above in any of your many comments above. You just repeatedly point back to a bad tweet the author of one article made and then throw all kinds of WP:WEASEL language around Jabobin's retraction. Focus on policy rather than your personal politics please. Simonm223 (talk) 17:49, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

• Option 2. I sympathize with Marek's concerns about reliability and published falsehoods and with the perceived higher standard editors like Simon have outlined. I'll note that, regarding Wugapodes's comment on how a substantial number of journalists hew to Jacobin's analysis on the labor vote, there's the obvious ideological angle to take into account, but that doesn't justify special treatment. We ought to take all sources with appropriate context and salt. I personally think that analysis is bullshit, as do many others like me who conduct analyses on data and on elections. But that's WP:OR and thus irrelevant. That the citing journalists trust this data is not a mark on Wikipedia but on them. My bigger issues are with how the socialist classist lens blinds contributors and the editorial team to errors like the 1/3 of housing stock canard. I've seen variations on that rumor online, with each repetition more dramatic in the telling. Did the team pass it by out of incompetence or out of truthiness? How did fact-checkers, editors et al. let this blatant falsehood through so easily? I'm also dissatisfied with the correction itself. But it's nice that it was made at all. In any case, it's the essays and opinion pieces that offend facts the most (Blackstone, Ukraine, Georgia, the Eisenhower). It's the lack of clear separation of reportage from opinion that worry me; this is unlike newspapers, so let's look at magazines. I can't claim to have read every magazine of this vibe, but I know that the The New Yorker, Time, and the former National Geographic didn't have issues of this nature. NG even had a clear remit! And while we're on the topic of misleading essays, might we remember Salena Zito interviewing registered Republicans in diners in 2017? I think then that the best practice is to examine linked sources that Jacobin pieces include, not necessarily the content of the pieces themselves. If we are to follow this practice, then, we must at minimum seek option 2. Iseult ^Δx talk to me 02:18, 25 January 2025 (UTC)

  You may wish to place a bolded "Option 2 or Option 3" or whatever it is you choose to emphasize then as well at the start of your comment. I believe this makes it easier for an uninvolved closer to see all of the !votes and to close most accurately in the end of the RfC. Thanks for your comment @Iseult Iljhgtn (talk) 13:57, 25 January 2025 (UTC)

  Iljhgtn you might now want unbold your text here to avoid confusing a closer! :) BobFromBrockley (talk) 18:56, 26 January 2025 (UTC)

• Option 2 The Jacobin is a socialist outlet that posts primarily opinion pieces from a socialist point of view. Opinion pieces should be treated as such. The Jacobin strikes me as somewhat more reliable than genuine fringe left outlets - you’re not going to find, for example, defenses of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, or pro-Assad pieces, typical hallmarks of “tankie” outlets. So I don’t see any major red flags here, with the caveat that opinion pieces are just that. Toa Nidhiki05 14:32, 25 January 2025 (UTC)
• Bad RfC. RSP is supposed to be about saving editors' time, i.e. BBC is reliable, conspiracysite.com is not. Otherwise, rating sources encourages editors not to critically interrogate sources every time, and to get into long arguments about consistency, like this one. The Jacobin falls into the biased but usable category of generally decent journalism. It featured and eventually corrected a shoddy article, but then again, no newspaper/magazine hasn't. Most articles are op-eds, and not relevant to us. Sometimes, it may feature useful investigative journalism or reporting, although even then, better sources often exist. Whether this puts it in generally reliable or additional considerations is down to personal editing philosophy. I don't care whether it stays green or goes yellow, but I do suggest that accompanying summary has the following added to remind editors: "opinion pieces should be judged by WP:RSOPINION, WP:RSEDITORIAL, and WP:NEWSBLOGS". See you all in a year or two when we get pinged again to vote once more. Jr8825 • Talk 15:20, 25 January 2025 (UTC)

  You may wish to strikethrough this comment given your updated comment below. Iljhgtn (talk) 18:09, 9 February 2025 (UTC)

  @Jr8825 ping so it's not missed -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 20:05, 9 February 2025 (UTC)

  Thanks for the ping/message. I considered this, but decided that I stand by the points I made here as they're broadly compatible with my soft !vote for option 2 below. Specifically, I think this is still a flawed RfC as unnecessarily rating sources into neat categories is unhelpful and impractical for contextually appropriate sources such as the Jacobin, and that citing it requires particular care as it mostly prints opinion pieces, sometimes including fringe opinions as shown below, meaning that better sources usually exist. Jr8825 • Talk 01:23, 10 February 2025 (UTC)

• Option 1, As other editors have pointed out, being left-wing or right-wing does not necessarily mean you are unreliable. It doesn't mean you lie. It just means you're political. As long as Jacobin reports the facts, which it does, then there isn't a reason to depreceate it. Genabab (talk) 21:51, 25 January 2025 (UTC)
• Option 2: its existence as an advocacy outlet combined with its blending of fact and opinion means considerations apply beyond general reliability. A previous discussion about Jacobin suggested that it's willing to publish conspiracy theories about the Russo–Ukrainian war, but I'd want to see more examples before declaring it generally unreliable. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 22:54, 25 January 2025 (UTC)
• I'll be honest, I'm not sure I see the point of this RFC. Social media furor over a correcte error isn't really going to make any difference to an assessment. Volunteer Marek's assertion of publish outright falsehoods would be a better reason if evidence could be provided, but there appears to be nobody interested in actually establishing a pattern of failure to correct errors or poor reputation. It is also raised in the discussion by some participants that most of it (and I expect, most of what we use it for) is opinion, for which I will note that whether the colour of a box is green or yellow is essentially irrelevant, because WP:RSEDITORIAL/WP:RSOPINION covers both cases. I see neither the need (a statement of where having a yellow box instead of a green box would make the slightest bit of difference) nor the required evidence to make a change. Alpha3031 (t • c) 15:24, 27 January 2025 (UTC)
• Option 2/3 per FOARP. It's strictly a collection of opinion pieces, so we should treat it accordingly, just as we would treat the opinion section of a reliable newspaper. I.e. it should be used with attribution per WP:NEWSOPED. — xDanielx ^T/_C\^R 05:05, 28 January 2025 (UTC)
• Option 2 (or good 3) due to the issues described above, primarily the mixing of fact and opinions, some rather concerning errors, and similar. I would encourage avoiding them for contentious political, military and economic claims. While it's political leaning is significantly different from what the 'average voter' would consider to be part of the Overton window, this is at worst indicative of and at best irrelevant for their (un-)reliability; I am concerned that consensus would look differently on a comparably right wing source. FortunateSons (talk) 09:24, 28 January 2025 (UTC)
• Option 2 per Precision123, Barnards, and Springee. Clearly highly skewed reporting with ulterior motives other than reporting the news, making it a poor source to use. However, I don't think it necessarily merits deprication, just additional considerations when using. --Gryphonclaw18 (talk) 20:35, 28 January 2025 (UTC)
• Option 1, mostly opinion, so where that is true we should attribute, but generally good at fact-checking and correcting mistakes. We do not expect any source to be free from mistakes, just to correct them when they come to light.Boynamedsue (talk) 17:34, 29 January 2025 (UTC)
• Option 2 because Jacobin deserves additional considerations in my opinion. The discussion around bias is a distraction—the thing to focus on is whether they consistently publish accurate information. It has whitewashed authoritarian leftist regimes, such as in its coverage of Venezuela. While U.S. sanctions have harmed the country, Jacobin has downplayed the role of the Venezuelan government’s economic policy and human rights abuses. This fits into a broader pattern where Jacobin prioritizes criticism of U.S. foreign policy while failing to discuss the failures of regimes they like. Given these issues, Jacobin should be treated with additional consideration. Gjb0zWxOb (talk) 23:55, 29 January 2025 (UTC)
• Option 2 per Barnards.tar.gz, the source itself state that it is biased, some issues with factual accuracy so additional considerations can apply. Senior Captain Thrawn (talk) 03:16, 31 January 2025 (UTC)
• Option 2. Bias does not automatically mean unreliability. Jacobin seems fine for opinion as long as it's not undue, but we should exercise caution when using them for factual reporting. 💽 🌙Eclipse 💽 🌹 ⚧ (she/they) ^talk/edits 12:53, 1 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option 1 Are we unfamiliar with WP:BIASED? There seems to be a double standard for sources like Jacobin compared to similar RS with different political views. Cheers. DN (talk) 13:06, 3 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option 1. Nothing has changed since the previous RFC; a single retraction is evidence of reliability, not unreliability. So I'm just going to cite the CJR piece I did back then, which compares it to a long list of sources we list as green. It is obviously a WP:BIASED source, which has to be taken into consideration when determining when and where it is due, but we have numerous other such sources listed as green on RSP, and nobody has really sustantiated any reason why this one would be treated differently. (Also, I note that someone above presented the unconvincing argument that it ought to be downgraded because there are no biased / advocacy-style right-leaning sources we consider GREL. That isn't an WP:RS argument in the first place; it's WP:FALSEBALANCE for sources. But it's also wrong - we list WP:REASONMAG, which is funded by a think-tank with the purpose of advancing the values of individual freedom and choice, limited government, and market-friendly policies, as GREL. As I pointed out the last time this came up, the CJR piece even directly compares the two as similar sources on opposite sides. Anyone who believes that the two should be treated differently ought to take a moment to explain the difference.) --Aquillion (talk) 23:56, 4 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option 1 for straight news reporting and Option 2 for analysis. We need reliable sources that provide an unambiguously left perspective just as we need reliable right sources. This lengthy debate shows that the publication will correct its errors, which is an indicator in favor of reliability, not against reliability. Cullen328 (talk) 06:07, 5 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option 3 or 2:Jacobin has limited reliability. While I won't delve into the numerous specific instances illustrating this, it is essential to recognise that Jacobin shares significant shortcomings with Fox News, which was ultimately classified as "marginally reliable."

The rationale behind Fox News being deemed "not generally reliable" stemmed from a decision by the Wikipedia community, which concluded that the outlet could no longer be trusted in its reporting on science and politics. The advice was that it "should be used with caution to verify contentious claims" in these domains, ultimately leading to its categorisation as "marginally reliable." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fox_News

For example (just one out of many), consider this title from Jacobin regarding COVID: "Thank Socialism for the Vaccine. Blame Capitalism for Its Distribution. "https://jacobin.com/2020/12/socialism-vaccine-capitalism-distribution. This article presents itself as an opinion piece, interspersed with selective information, which reflects an observable trend within the publication. Therefore, it makes sense to follow the precedents set by Wikipedia for evaluating sources that exhibit similar issues of reliability and objectivity. Fenharrow (talk) 20:39, 5 February 2025 (UTC)

That article is clearly opinion and covered by WP:RSOPINION just like any other opinion piece from any other publication, regardless of the publication's reliablity. A publication having opinion peices does not relfect on their ability to fact check and issue corrections. TarnishedPath^talk 23:02, 5 February 2025 (UTC)

+1 - I'm not seeing Fenharrow's comparison to WP:FOXNEWSPOLITICS. The problem with Fox News isn't that it's biased, it's that it's unreliable. All Fenharrow demonstrated above is that Jacobin has published opinion. A title like Thank Socialism for the Vaccine. Blame Capitalism for Its Distribution. makes it pretty obvious that what you're about to read is an argumentative essay, not a news article, and relevant considerations already apply without needing to recategorize the reliability of the whole outlet.  Vanilla  Wizard 💙 12:18, 6 February 2025 (UTC)

The majority of content published in Jacobin consists of opinion articles that require careful consideration and proper attribution, which makes it as unreliable as Fox News if not more. Its quality as a source simply does not meet the same standards as, for example, The New York Times. Fenharrow (talk) 05:41, 13 February 2025 (UTC)

Biased or opinionated content is not automatically unreliable. Neutrality and objectivity should not be confused. Again, Fox News is an unreliable source because much of the political content they publish is not reliable as a source of fact, not simply because it's a biased source. A source can be biased and still be reliable as a source of information, take Al Jazeera as an example.  Vanilla  Wizard 💙 13:32, 13 February 2025 (UTC)

The argument was/is that Jacobin is a majorly a collection of opinions rather than a purveyor of news. If a source primarily presents opinions, then labelling its information as "generally reliable" without attribution is not a good practice. Hence Option 2 or 3. Fenharrow (talk) 18:14, 15 February 2025 (UTC)

Frankly we shouldn't be calling any source generally reliable as it leads editors to make lazy appeals to authority rather than engaging with the sources in a thorough way. Which is why I !voted 2 despite thinking Jacobin just as reliable as its peers to the center. Simonm223 (talk) 18:50, 15 February 2025 (UTC)

"it leads editors to make lazy appeals to authority"

That's what the WP:RS policy says to do, I thought.

"engaging with the sources in a thorough way"

Isn't that WP:OR? TurboSuperA+ (☏) 19:12, 15 February 2025 (UTC)

• Option 2/3. While every source has a certain bias, Jacobine is a radical leftist publication, more on the fringe side, and at the very least additional considerations must apply. I'm sure it is always possible to find a more balanced source for the information reported by Jacobine, and if not, I don't think Jacobine should be relied on as a sole source for such information. Grandmaster 10:28, 6 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option 1 for factual articles and Option 2 or inline attribution for opinion pieces. It seems that nothing has changed in their reliability since prior RFC. Per WP:Biased, bias does not mean unreliability. The fact that they come from a biased perspective does not change the general trend of reliability in the factual content they present. Nothing has changed since past RFC and they typically provide retractions and corrections when there are errors. ~Malvoliox (talk | contribs) 17:48, 7 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option 3 There are certain areas where their coverage is highly useful--including their critiques of the USA's Democratic Party, like this one that deftly eviscerates Kamala Harris[89]. But then they screw up big time on other topics because their perspective on geopolitics and history is so heavily distorted by their strange ideological bent in favor of corrupt authoritarian dictatorships.[90] They vouch for Nicolas Maduro, who illegally seized control of Venezuela just to mismanage and embezzle funds, driving the economy into the ground, while he rounds up his political opponents and throws them in jail. And apparently--per Jacobin--the appalling poverty of Venezuela can be blamed on Donald Trump, since he was in the wrong to sanction Maduro's regime. Likewise, they argue "against the mainstream consensus"[91] to condone the "virtuous" Bolsheviks who apparently had no choice but to centralize the Russian economy, thus transforming the country into a totalitarian hellscape.[92].Manuductive (talk) 05:51, 8 February 2025 (UTC)

  @Manuductive makes excellent arguments in favor of Option 3. If push came to shove, I think Option 3 is best suited for Jacobin, but Option 2 would at bare minimum be fitting for this fairly fringe source. Iljhgtn (talk) 00:57, 9 February 2025 (UTC)

  If you look at the Ad Fontes Media chart[93], Jacobin is rated about as reliable as The New York Post and less so than The Daily Caller, Fox News, and City Journal. I don't see many editors here clamoring to endorse those outlets. Manuductive (talk) 01:32, 9 February 2025 (UTC)

  Ad Fontes Media is considered to be generally unreliable. Refer to WP:ADFONTES which states "There is consensus that Ad Fontes Media and their Media Bias Chart should not be used in article space in reference to sources' political leaning or reliability. Editors consider it a self-published source and have questioned its methodology". TarnishedPath^talk 01:45, 9 February 2025 (UTC)

  To be clear, Ad Fontes is viewed as not reliable for article space. That means no editor should say "Source X is biased [cite AFM]". It useful as a reference when evaluating sources at RSN. Is it perfect? Likely not. However, if AFM says a sources is heavily left/right then it probably isn't reasonable if an editor claims the same source is mainstream. I would say if AFM and MBFC and AllSides all say a source is strongly biased, it probably is strongly biased. A search for AFM on Google scholar results in papers that cite it as a resource and at least one paper ((Lin, Hause, Jana Lasser, Stephan Lewandowsky, Rocky Cole, Andrew Gully, David Rand, and Gordon Pennycook. "High level of agreement across different news domain quality ratings." (2022).)) that does a comparative analysis and finds it agrees well with other rating systems and endorses it's use. If we are going to say use by others matters when establishing reliability, well AFM is used (and tested) by scholars. I still think the decision not to use it as a reference in article space is correct. Springee (talk) 03:01, 9 February 2025 (UTC)

  If a consensus of editors have questioned a websites methodology, then I'd suggest it is poor reasoning to quote it to establish any matters of fact. Ad Fontes suggesting that Jacobin is less reliable the New York Post, a publican known for a lack of fact checking and posting outright fabrications, is absurd. TarnishedPath^talk 05:28, 9 February 2025 (UTC)

  The excerpt you cited does not have a lot of weight here since it is a suggestion about specifically the name-space. Since editors in the user-space are better equipped to contextualize AFM material versus the general public for whom the name-space is carefully curated, therefore a different standard applies to the material we take into consideration here. Manuductive (talk) 07:55, 9 February 2025 (UTC)

  How they judge reliability is not the same as Wikipedia's policies or guidelines. Also their methodology is poor and they show nothing other than there own opinions. AFM is a trash website, along with other such sites. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 11:30, 9 February 2025 (UTC)

  The research paper I referenced suggests their results are likely good and they align with other sources. That doesn't mean they are correct on any specific claim but their overall direction seems to be both accepted and validated in scholarship. Springee (talk) 13:40, 9 February 2025 (UTC)

  Some minimal support from research papers doesn't make them the arbitor of what is, or is not, a reliable source. There methodology is poor and there nothing I'm seeing that changes my opinion on that. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 13:48, 9 February 2025 (UTC)

  Editors may want to use them as a place to start investigating a source, in the same way people use Wikipedia as a place to start investigating a topic. But the argument "because AFM said" should be given no weight in any argument. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 13:50, 9 February 2025 (UTC)

  The difference might not be one of quality so much as scrutiny. The NYP has much greater reach thus is likely to be scrutinized by more people/sources. If say 1 in 100 articles in each contained a damning error it's all but certain we would read about the NTP's failings in a wiki approved source. In the case of Jacobin there are fewer articles published in absolute terms so fewer people are likely to check them and those that do are more likely to be right biased sources that will be dismissed as unreliable regardless of the quality of their specific argument. Springee (talk) 13:46, 9 February 2025 (UTC)

  An argument about unknown unknowns isn't very compelling. TarnishedPath^talk 23:07, 9 February 2025 (UTC)

  These are helpful articles, Manuductive. They show Jacobin sometimes publishes fringe views, with implications for its appropriateness as a source and potential implications for reliability. Initially, looking at these articles [94] [95] I was concerned about who the writers were and whether they have any expertise or authority. After some digging, it does appear they are both relatively established, if niche/fringe, academics: Samuel Farber has been published by university presses and Soma Marik was a visiting professor at Jadavpur University. This article in places goes against the mainstream consensus on Maduro and recent Venezuelan history, but the writer appears to be an editor of a Sage-published academic journal, so it could plausibly be used to attribute his views if contextually appropriate and not given undue weight. The existing guidance on op-eds and biased sources applies – but I do think this shows Jacobin has to be used with careful scrutiny to avoid false balance in favour of fringe viewpoints. There is an inherent ambiguity with fringe academic views, particularly if it's unclear whether they directly go against mainstream views (if an academic consensus even exists). I !voted "bad RfC" above as I think rating sources discourages critical contextual assessments, but after looking at these articles I think Option 2 (additional considerations apply) would be a helpful flag for future editors unfamiliar with Jacobin. Jr8825 • Talk 04:41, 9 February 2025 (UTC)

• Option 1 Reliable for facts, with a well-functioning editorial process which corrects errors. Burrobert (talk) 14:47, 11 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option 1. An unnecessary RfC, as the standard approach (avoiding Opinion pieces generally, rules regarding attribution, etc.) is sufficient for dealing with questions of its political position. JArthur1984 (talk) 18:27, 11 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option 1 per Burrobert and JArthur1984.--C.J. Griffin (talk) 18:30, 11 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option 1, primarily per User:CambrianCrab. Existing policy about use of biased opinion publications is largely sufficient, and the current RSPS summary adequately summarizes appropriate use of Jacobin articles as sources. Suriname0 (talk) 21:27, 12 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option 3 Like it was noted before we do allow biased sources but when bias cross certain thereshold we should limit souch sources. It should be not be used for any conterversal topic --Shrike (talk) 08:28, 14 February 2025 (UTC)
• Jacobin is an opinionated source - their shtick is commentary, not journalism, and they have an explicit POV. As such we should be citing them only rarely, and usually with in-text attribution for cases where their views may merit inclusion; there are usually less contentious sources available for factual material. That said, the evidence here of unreliability is extremely flimsy. They made an error, it was pointed out, they corrected it. Our most reliable media sources do this on a daily basis. Un unretracted error would be grounds for downgrading them, but this isn't such. I give the fringe views claim very little weight - we do not downgrade sources because their OpEds are out of left field, even the most reliable news outlets publish questionable views among the opinion columns every so often. So I suppose I'm at Option 2, but where the "additional considerations" are explicitly about using in-text attribution for their analytical content rather than reliability concerns about their infrequent factual reporting. Vanamonde93 (talk) 19:58, 15 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option 1 per TFD and Tayi.VR _{(Please ping on reply)} 13:51, 18 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option 3 or 4 A propaganda outlet with not even the intention to publish factual information. Highly opinionated, which in itself is a disqualifier. Frequently gets things wrong or make things up. Below, in the discussion on Daily Express, I recommended the Daily Express is should depreciated and I see no reason not to deal with Jacobin in the same way. The writers at Jacobin may be better at writing, but both the Jacobin and Daily Express are highly selective in their reporting, only report stories that suit their own (opposite) agendas, and prefer making things up if it favours their POV rather than reporting a truth they dislike. Jeppiz (talk) 13:58, 18 February 2025 (UTC)

• Seeing as there's substantial disagreement in the pre-RfC section above, I've gone ahead and launched this RfC. — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 16:28, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

  Pings to @Feminist, The wub, Thebiguglyalien, Super Goku V, Simonm223, FortunateSons, Oort1, Burrobert, ActivelyDisinterested, Hydrangeans, Vanilla Wizard, Iljhgtn, Selfstudier, Horse Eye's Back, NoonIcarus, Harizotoh9, and Springee: who commented above. — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 16:38, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

  Additional pings to @WMrapids, David Gerard, Bobfrombrockley, Shibbolethink, Crossroads, Herostratus, Dumuzid, Aquillion, Gamaliel, Dr.Swag Lord, Ph.d, BSMRD, Wugapodes, Ip says, King of Hearts, Chetsford, Tayi Arajakate, MPants at work, Jlevi, The Four Deuces, Grnrchst, Szmenderowiecki, Dlthewave, Jr8825, Thenightaway, Nvtuil, Peter Gulutzan, FormalDude, Volunteer Marek, FOARP, Sea Ane, 3Kingdoms, Bilorv, Blindlynx, Jurisdicta, TheTechnician27, MarioGom, Novemberjazz, and Volteer1: who commented in the 2021 RfC. — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 16:46, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

  I think you should also disclose that the previous RfC was initially closed by you (back then under the usernames User:Mikehawk10 and User:Mhawk10) and the discussions that followed at Wikipedia talk:Reliable sources/Perennial sources/Archive 6 § Jacobin (magazine) and Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive340 § Close review of the latest RfC about Jacobin's reliability led to an overturn on grounds of it being heavily flawed and ostensibly a supervote, followed by a re-close afterwards. Especially considering your statement in the above section questioning that (re)closure now, which also partially forms the basis for this RfC. Those discussions might also answer your question on why it was (re)closed in the manner it was. Tayi Arajakate _Talk 20:37, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

  I've tried to ping everyone from the prior RfC and from the discussion above. This was done manually: I excluded 1 vanished account and I tried to ping people by their current usernames if they have changed names since then. If I missed someone, please feel free to notify them. — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 16:48, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

  Per my prior comments about space constraints I've split this to its own section. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 16:51, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

  I've just moved the RFC out of the discussion again. The RFC shouldn't be made a subsection of the prior discussion, due to ongoing issues with overloading on the noticeboard. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 19:07, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

• Comment Editors should bear in mind that reliability does not mean infallibility. It merely means we can use sources where applicable. In this case, the impeached article is a book review, which combines a description of a book and the reviewer's opinions. The only acceptable use of a book review - whoever wrote it and wherever it is published - is in an article about the book reviewed.

Ironically, there can be no article about the book because it lacks notability. It was only reviewed in Jacobin. We are basically working to prevent things that will never happen. Under current policy therefore this source could never be used.

Our time would be better spent ensuring that RS policy is adhered to.

TFD (talk) 17:39, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

• Bad RFC because we should not be rating things just for the sake of rating things, but since we're doing this: Jacobin is clearly an opinion outlet, not a news outlet. We shouldn't be relying on them for statements of fact for that reason alone. FOARP (talk) 17:57, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

  Notwithstanding my !vote above I do agree this is a bad RFC because there's not ever been an example presented of Jacobin being used to source anything even remotely questionable during the RFCBefore discussion. Simonm223 (talk) 18:18, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

  Well, there was one example that generated the 2023 discussion which was Jacobin being used to source a description of the 2014 Maidan Revolution as "the far-right U.S.-backed Euromaidan protests", so that's one occasion of it being used to source something questionable. It was also used by the same editor on the 9/11 attack page to source the claim that the CIA facilitated the attacks and intentionally withheld information that could have stopped the attacks.

  That editor is now blocked (because of their conduct on this noticeboard I think?) but they used the green flag at RSP to justify their edits. BobFromBrockley (talk) 10:26, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

  "Jacobin being used to source a description of the 2014 Maidan Revolution as "the far-right U.S.-backed Euromaidan protests","

  Many WP:RS are saying the same, not just Jacobin. So that's not a good example. TurboSuperA+ (☏) 05:04, 9 February 2025 (UTC)

  Absolutely a bad RfC, I rolled my eyes when I was pinged about this. Nothing fundamental has changed about Jacobin's editorial line or policy since the last RfC was opened four years ago. I can't believe we're hashing this out again because of a single reddit post. --Grnrchst (talk) 10:02, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

  Several new issues have been revealed since the last RfC, contrary to some claims and like Bobfrombrockley mentions above, including after Russia's invasion of Ukraine. They were able to be discussed at Wikipedia talk:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 8#Jacobin. --NoonIcarus (talk) 20:33, 6 February 2025 (UTC)

• The Jacobin author who wrote the nonsense claim that Blackstone owns 1/3 of US housing stock literally mocked the people who tried to correct him and the correction - which itself was inaccurate and weaselly - was issued only after social media pressure. This is an outlet that very obviously does not care one bit about fact checking if it gets in the way of producing click bait pieces. It’s exactly the kind of source we should NOT be using, especially as the whole media landscape is shifting that way. Volunteer Marek 19:24, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

  They issued a correction. This is what we expect of reliable outlets. Your personal characterization of the correction as "weaselly" is your personal opinion on tone and has nothing to do with any Wikipedia policy. Simonm223 (talk) 19:27, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

Did this correction at least state what the correct % was? Like, the correction itself tries to make it seem like a minor overstatement rather than, you know, a completely wild exaggeration that tried to take advantage of general innumeracy. “I’m a billionaire!”. “No you’re not”. “Ok that was an overstatement”. Come on. It’s quite disappointing to see how many people are fine with misinformation, weak sourcing and “alternative facts” as long as it agrees with their ideological preconceptions. Whats even more disappointing is when these are people who are claiming to be building a factual encyclopedia. Facts are facts and garbage is garbage, regardless of whether it come from the left or right. Volunteer Marek 03:19, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

Yes facts are facts and garbage is garbage but as long as we allow garbage like New York "Iraq has WMDs" Times to be treated as a reliable source I don't see why we should treat Jacobin differently. Jacobin is compliant with Wikipedia's requirements. If you want to talk about tightening those requirements I'd be open to the discussion at WP:VPP. Simonm223 (talk) 14:05, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

Was the weapons of mass destruction bit ever retracted by New York Times? As far as I'm aware it wasn't. Perhaps we should be wasting community time and having a discussion about them? TarnishedPath^talk 14:15, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

Yeah my point is just that a lot of editors are establishing a double standard where Jacobin is being held to a higher standard than what Wikipedia generally expects from news organizations. I would like it to be measured against the same standard as anyone else. Simonm223 (talk) 14:17, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

Agreed. I'm not the biggest fan of them because there's so much oped stuff but we've never thought that reason to downgrade The Economist. TarnishedPath^talk 14:33, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

Exactly. And that is kind of what I was getting at when I suggested the right venue for what Volunteer Marek was concerned about was WP:VPP. If we allow these kinds of sources then we allow these kinds of sources. I would be happy to restrict these kinds of sources more than we do but it has to be handled at a policy level rather than via exceptions to present policy. Simonm223 (talk) 14:38, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

• This does not appear to be an outlet generally characterized as producing click bait. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 01:54, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

It is not the case that a book review can only be used in an article about that specific book. For example, they are frequently cited in biographies of authors, in order to demonstrate that those authors meet the relevant wiki-notability standard. And an article about the pedagogy of some subject could cite reviews of textbooks about that subject. XOR'easter (talk) 20:53, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

• My issue with Jacobin is that it is deemed a reliable source when it is really no different than The American Conservative, National Review, or The Spectator which are not. This comes across as ideological bias since all generally are opinion pieces from a certain angle.3Kingdoms (talk) 18:33, 4 February 2025 (UTC)

  I can't speak for those sources, as I don't believe I've ever been part of a discussion about them, but politics and the ideological bias of any source is not a reason for it being reliable or unreliable. Each source should be evaluated separately, on its own merits alone and nothing else. Also it seems all those sources are on the RSP as opinionated sources that should be attributed intext, I and many others have said the same about Jacobin. That doesn't mean they are unreliable, only that what they publish is usually opinion pieces.
  Of course consensus may not agree with my position, but if that's the case then the fault will be with the strength of my arguments and failure to persuade others that my argument's right -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 18:54, 4 February 2025 (UTC)