Talk:Killian documents controversy/Archive 7

message: Blogs written by someguy are not reliable sources. Do not use them as such. JBKramer 21:21, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Seeing as though it was "blogs written by some guy" which exposed these memos as the forged items they were and led directly to Rather's exit and CBS's climbdown, I don't see how you can reasonably remove blog links because they're not reliable. They broke the story, they're intrinsically linked to it! Trying to provide information on what happened without linking to blogs is like trying to report on a newspaper issue by referring only to TV news broadcasts. What you are doing makes no sense, please justify your removals on a more substantial basis, else we should get started on reverting your changes. — Impi 22:28, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Blogs are not reliable sources, per WP:RS. Find a newspaper talking about a blog, and cite that. Do not cite the blog. Blogs are rarely acceptable citations. JBKramer 01:04, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  In this particular case, the blogs are the reliable source regarding what the blogs said at that time. It is silly to use a tertiary source, describing what someone else says the blog said, when the primary source is available. Indeed, such a tertiary source would be someone self-publishing original research, and hence not allowable either. If you're concerned that the blogs quoted might in the future edit the pages linked, there's a mechanism to preserve the current state of the quoted link. I suggest that you make those copies and revert your attempts at excessive purity. htom 06:28, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

text: Here's a reliable source that solves a lot problems for this article.--RWR8189 08:31, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

text: This article from the Columbia Journalism Review also has a lot of verifiable information about the controversy.--RWR8189 09:27, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

text: Sure you can. Newspaper articles are perfect. JBKramer 12:52, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Again, you miss the point. Newspaper articles are perfect for citing facts and claims, but they are not primary sources. For example, let's refer back to the Muhammed cartoons controversy. In that case, all facts and claims surrounding the controversy were cited to reliable sources, yet Wikipedia ALSO provided a link to the cartoons themselves as a primary source. Now naturally, the cartoons are not a reliable source, seeing as they are neither objective nor accurate about their subject matter, but that didn't prevent them being displayed as a source nonetheless. The situation with regards to this article is little different, so that providing information about the Killian documents without linking to the blogs that were at the heart of the issue is just as silly as it would have been for Wikipedia to not link to the Muhammed cartoons. — Impi 14:21, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Cartoons were printed in a newspaper. When the blogs are quoted in a newspaper, link the quotes. Blogs cannot be used as sources. JBKramer 15:13, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The cartoons themselves were linked to, not merely newspaper reports of them. Please explain, in more than just two sentences, why it supposedly violates Wikipedia's guidelines to link to blogs. You've been decidedly less than convincing thus far. — Impi 16:18, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  WP:EL. The cartoons were published in a RS. They were also the subject of the article. JBKramer 21:10, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Don't get stuck on the cartoons, they were an analogy and not the basis of the discussion. The important thing to understand here is the difference between primary sources (even though biased) and reliable tertiary sources such as newspaper articles. Oh, and are you actually capable of using more than just two sentences to respond? It's awfully frustrating trying to understand your position if you keep refusing to adequately articulate it. — Impi 22:05, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  (Wikipedia needs some syntax like :+ or :> to indent to a single greater level and := or :| to the current level.) Anyway, statements made in blogs can indeed be primary sources; there is no better source than a primary source. The blogger says "I did X" or "I do X"; anyone else reporting it is either saying "He did X", if they observed it, or "He claims to have done X" if they didn't.  Someone quoting the blog's statement is a secondary source. Someone quoting that secondary source is a tertiary source. A newspaper is almost always going to be at least one step more removed from a blog post than the blog post itself (some newspaper publication is on blogs!), and hence the newspaper is considered to be the less reliable source, not the more reliable one. The cynic in me wonders if JBKramer is trying to increase newspaper sales, or at least newspaper sites' hits. htom 00:58, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Review WP:RS. Wikipedia prefers secondary sources to primary sources. JBKramer 11:15, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: My patience is beginning to wear thin. WP:RS does not apply because we are not using blogs as citations for facts or claims. And you evidently didn't read through WP:EL, as it makes it clear that linking to websites is perfectly acceptable when they are the subject of the article. As the various blogs involved in this issue (such as LGF) are indivisibly intertwined with the Killian memos and the controversy surrounding them, we are obliged to link to them as primary sources. And if you continue to refuse to supply adequate reasoning in defence of your position, then I feel we will have little choice but to revert your changes on the assumption that you can't, in fact, defend them. We've been patient and polite thus far while you've just jerked us around; it can't last. — Impi 13:11, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  The subject of this article is not blogs. It is "Killian documents." The links are not to "Killian documents," they are to "blogs which discuss Killian documents." Please remain WP:CIVIL. We are not obliged to link to anything.JBKramer 13:37, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  You seem to think -- and claim -- that we are obliged to link to newspapers. The article itself could more properly be titled "Alleged Killian documents controversy" One could reduce the article to the statement that CBS produced documents claiming to come from Killian, called the Killian document, see Killian_documents_authenticity_issues but there is more involved in the controversy than the actual authenticity or lack thereof of the documents; one of the facts of the controvsrsy is that the newspapers did not discover the story and then did not cover the story for several days. htom 18:02, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

text: That does not fit the exception in WP:EL, which reads "Links normally to be avoided: 8. Links to blogs, except those written by a recognized authority." None of the people discussed are recognized authorities. JBKramer 15:00, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  I suspect that several parts of policy and recommendation are going to have to be re-written to properly cope with the problem of blogs as sources. Until that's done, we struggle on. Your removal of primary sources, in this particular case, where the customary secondary sources did not cover the controvery, in my opinion, does not help the reader understand either the documents or the controversy. I understand that you want a "better" article; your means produce a "worse" article. htom 18:02, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  If no reliable source has covered something, we can not have an article on it. Are you saying this article is unverifiable? JBKramer 18:24, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: No, no, no! A thousand times no. You fail to see the difference between cited sources (which must be reliable) and subject sources. If an article is about a document, we link to that document if possible, even though the document in question is not reliable or objective. Where an article is about a website, we link to that website even though it may not be reliable or objective, and so on. We do this because we are obliged to provide the most amount of information to readers as is reasonably possible, while we ensure credibility by backing up the article's facts and claims with citations to reliable sources. The blogs involved in this controversy are part of the subject: You cannot fairly cover the issue of the fraudulent Killian memos without discussing the blogs that discovered the forgery. As such, they are part of the article's subject and we link to them as a way of providing information to the reader. This article is poorer if a reader is not directed to the original links and original analyses, so as to view first hand the process that led to the unmasking of these forgeries. Why are you unable to see that? — Impi 20:13, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Sure we can. Newspaper articles talked about it - the current article uses only reliable sources. We are not a web directory - we are an encyclopedia. If reliable sources didn't care to say something, it didn't happen. JBKramer 00:56, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

text: JBKramer, this article about the Killian documents and controversy makes reference to blog entries that played perhaps the central role in this subject.  They are not for the most part being cited as authoritative sources of fact but as noted above as primary sources of the events noted in the article.  I'm not sure how removing them improves the article or its treatment of the controversy.  I think you are misapplying the reliability standard here.  Kaisershatner 17:10, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Blogs 

message: ::: Here is an example of a blog as an authoratative source that you just put back in the article - "Bouffard claims that further study left him "more convinced" that the memos were forgeries and that he was quoted out of context by the Boston Globe." If anything a blog says is relevent, it will be commented on by a reliable source. Blogs are not appropriate as sources or as links, per WP:RS and WP:EL. JBKramer 17:29, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  I just bulk reverted your removals. (What I mean is, I simply undid all of your changes.  Some of your removals might make sense).  Some of the blog links, such as the one you cite above, might be appropriate to remove, but let's consider them on a case-by-case basis, shall we? Kaisershatner 17:35, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  So, looking into this example:  if you google "Bouffard Globe misquoted" you'll see that the bulk of the links are blogs.  The major news outlets didn't generally cover this, with the exception of the retraction in the Globe (which I have added as a cite).  Are you taking the position that because it wasn't printed in a "reputable" print source, that it never happened?  Or do you think that Bouffard actually did claim to have been misquoted, but that coverage of this facet of the story was lacking in the major newspapers of the day?  Seems to me to be clear that it did occur, but the only available citations are blogs.  Now what?  Kaisershatner 17:59, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  If it wasn't reported in a reliable source, we can't say it. JBKramer 18:03, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: The Bouffard example

message: This dispute is about whether blogs can be cited as reliable sources in this article.
Statements by editors involved in the dispute:
*WP:V and WP:RS indicate quite clearly that personal websites are not considered reliable sources.  WP:IAR as a principle suggests there may be exceptions to the rules.  In this particular example, blogs played a central role in the controversy regarding the Killian documents and, as noted in the "Bouffard" example above, may be the ONLY sources of certain information regarding this topic.  Is it reasonable to use them as sources?  Kaisershatner 16:07, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: RFC: Use of blogs as citations

message: Why the superscript th in Rathergate? The article doesn't explain and I'm not American, so I don't know myself. It seems odd that there'd be something visually odd in the article with no apparent justification… — OwenBlacker 18:07, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: One of the key indicators that the documents were forgeries was a superscripted 'th' on the unit names - something which was rare on typewriters (and even on typesetting machines) of the late 60s and early 70s, but something which Microsoft Word does pretty much automatically.  That hint led Charles Johnson (and others) to attempt to recreate the documents in Word, leading to an exact match. Αργυριου (talk) 18:19, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yup. Few typewriters of the time had a th glyph. Those that did frequently had the characters shaped so that they did not protrude above the height of a capital letter, which the memo's th does. As Mr. Rather's name contains a th, once it was called 'Rathergate', someone took a dig at him with it, and it spread like wildfire.  htom 18:27, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Aaah, that makes sense. Someone should include that in the article, I think — Αργυριου's explanation here could almost certainly just be added straight to the article, imho. — OwenBlacker 10:27, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: OK, I've added a short explanation as a footnote. Please treat my edit as a first draft. Cheers, CWC 09:04, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Looks good to me; thanks!  :o) — OwenBlacker 17:19, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ra<sup>th</sup>ergate 

message: The Killian memos have been demonstrably proven to be forgeries. All involved, other than the politically driven Bush-haters, accept widespread acknowledgement of the counterfit nature of the documents presented by Rather and Mapes in an attempt to affect the outcome of the last Presidential election. Excellent work was done by a number of Bloggers to expose the documents as fakes and shed light on the agendas of others who wished it wasn't so.((unsigned insertion by 72.204.236.227, 22:12 6 April 2007 (UTC)))
: Dear 72.204.236.227
: Sorry, but if you have been attention, just the opposite has been proven: [Redacted per WP:BLP] there's now hard proof that even the Texas Air National Guard was merrily proportionally printing by the late 60's at the latest; [Redacted per WP:BLP]; all of the other "evidence" including supposed format issues and whatnot have turned out to be nonsense; despite the extremely misleading focus on Selectrics, common office technology in the early 70's actually included sophisticated word processing and magnetic media storage not all that fundamentally different from what it is today; despite assertions that modern Times Roman or Times New Roman had to have been used, they don't match up at all to the font metrics shown in the memos to the point that all attempted recreations of the especially the longest memos are completely off, even allowing for copy/fax distortion; the "CG Times Bold" font is evidently close to the font metrics of old daisywheel printers in proportional mode and with a Times or Roman style printwheels, and that too does very convincing memos recreations, and without the need for the "smart quotes" those more modern fonts need; and one of the memos that CBS didn't even used, a very short one dated Feb. 2nd, 1972, made a comment to flight certifications, a comment that could only have been surmised by very tediously analyzing, summing and graphing Bush's flight records -- but it turns out that those flight records were not released (very belatedly, yet luckily) until just a few days after CBS got all the memos from Burkett, meaning that it could not have been forged under any circumstances.
: It's game over, rover. It's now time to start fixing blame for how the bogus forgery chargers got started and why they weren't shot down right away since the information for doing that was always present for any responsible journalist or reporter to look up and research. Hope this clarifies. 65.78.25.69 23:57, 7 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: unsigned insertion

message: Missing from the Aftermath section is the "reassignment" of Sr Producer Esther Kartiganer, who sued CBS as a result. No time to add this myself...but the story element is readily Googled. Andyvphil 14:14, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Esther Kartiganer  

message: The section "Initial Skepticism" doesn't explicitly cover the initial lack of skepticism in MSM. See the AP Story  with it's repetition of the misidentificaltion of Stoudt as heading TANG. And see  (search for "Washington Post"). The significance of this story is that that was overcome, so the initial gullibility/resistance maybe needs to be covered better? Andyvphil 13:09, 25 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: That's a very good point. You're a good editor, Andyvphil — do you want to have a go at it? Cheers, CWC 13:19, 25 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks muchly. So much need for improvement, so little time. Andyvphil 01:16, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Initial LACK of skepticism in MSM 

message: The research may turn up a typewriter that could have possibly performed the task but that is not a conclusive fact and it most certainly does not effect whether or not the documents are forgeries. This was an Air National Guard office. The chance of it having the most sophisticated advanced office equipment of that current year are not only low but highly improbable. The budget for the Air National Guard was going down. They were letting pilots go and they were retiring planes. The documents can't be verified as real and they certainly were not verified as original or real prior to Dan Rather going on TV. However, rather than wait until they were verified which would have been to late for the election, Rather and Maples ran the story anyway. Maples and Rather have never hide the fact that they disliked the republicans and Bush. To say this was anything but a convienant hatchet job is giving it more credit than it is worth. The real underlying story is that a major news outlet ran with an unconfirmed story defaming a canidate just prior to an election. They knew without question that the news they reported would and could effect the election. We had a major news outlet pick a canidate they liked, and they ran a hit piece attacking the one they didn't. They campaigned for a canidate without any restrictions or consequences.
The opinion pieces are the only punishment that they really got. They lost thier jobs, but what happened to CBS? Nothing. 
Quek807 20:43, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Do I really need to point out that everything you just wrote is unsupported by any cited evidence and is pretty much just moronic in regards to the best evidence available? If you're just going to state silly opinions, there are other more appropriate venues than here. Back it up or shut up. Callmebc 00:32, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  The Underlying Issue of the Typewriter 

message: See The Smoking Memo at http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=12615
: The only thing "smoking" involves whatever you're inhaling on. Gawd.... The Charles Johnson stuff was already covered.  He picked the simplest, shortest memo for his "experiment" and got OK (far from great) results with a Word recreation, but this trick fails miserably with all of the other memos! Something he neglected to mention for some strange reason. This and this is what you get when you try that trick with one of the longer memos, bright eyes. Callmebc 00:42, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I would like to see results of "StarOffice under Linux", to see what you mean. To be fair, I think BC addresses the "smoking memo" gif at length, denying pixel correspondence (I haven't examined his argument). Andyvphil 13:38, 7 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Will you stop abusing the discussion group here with your already well-refuted nonsense? There are are places like the Free Republic that are much better suited for such "material. Callmebc 00:42, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

text: Stream, that bit about kerning was indeed my impression before I started looking into this. But the memos are NOT KERNED. MS Word does NOT by default kern text. See Newcomer (search for third occurance of "kern"). They are certainly forgeries, not typed on the dates they purport to be typed on, and Rather and CBS fully deserve the bad reputation they've acquired for this affair. But exactly how the memos were produced is unclear...although that's of secondary importance. Andyvphil 13:59, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I see -- the memos were forged because they were kerned, and then when you find out that they weren't kern, still claim they were forged because....just because. How the memos were produced is unclear...although that's of secondary importance, because Rather and CBS fully deserve the bad reputation, eh?  So facts are irrelevant to personal beliefs and making people you don't like look bad -- is that what you're really saying? (By the way there is absolutely no "pixel correspondence" -- just look here.) I'm going to try mightily to have both you and "CWC" banned from any further Wikipedia editing, and have "Alabamaboy" stripped of his admin rights. If you guys are going to essentially break things and call names just because someone points out evidence you don't like and won't accept, you have absolutely no business whatsoever editing an encyclopedia. I gave "Alabamaboy" a couple of days to come clean (and also to give me a breather before having to go through what looks to be a very tedious procedure.) Cheers and all the best. Callmebc 11:13, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pixel correspondence like a fingerprint 

message: I'm going to make a general warning on this page about avoiding personal attacks (such as  and ). Everyone in this discussion should also realize that Wikipedia's WP:BLP policy does indeed apply to article talk pages, as some people on this page have already stated. Anyone repeatedly violating these policies could be blocked. Best,--Alabamaboy 17:11, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Personal attack and [[WP:BLP]] warning 

message: I have blocked Callmebc from editing for 72 hours for various policy violations.  To other editors, my general recommendation about how to handle WP:COI is to declare affiliations in your own user space and exercise personal restraint at relevant articles.  The safest route where COI is obvious (such as an article about one's place of employment) is to post material and citations to the talk page and let uninvolved Wikipedians evaluate it for inclusion in the article.  Regards, DurovaCharge! 07:09, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sysop steps in