User talk:Valjean

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"The best content is developed through civil collaboration between editors who hold opposing points of view."
by Valjean. From WP:NEUTRALEDIT

"The quality of Wikipedia articles rises with the number of editors per article as well as a greater diversity among them."[1]

When all else fails, AGF and remember that

We Just Disagree
So let's leave it alone, 'cause we can't see eye to eye.
There ain't no good guy, there ain't no bad guy.
There's only you and me, and we just disagree.
by Dave Mason (Listen)
Graham's Hierarchy of Disagreement
Try to stay in the top three sections of this hierarchy.

All topics are allowed at Wikipedia

[edit]

All topics are allowed at Wikipedia
If a new article clearly passes the General Notability Guideline (GNG), and doesn't contain any issues so serious they cannot easily be solved by following WP:PRESERVE, then there is no conceivable topic that Wikipedia should not cover in depth. None. -- User:Valjean

That is not just an application of WP:NOTCENSORED, but is more importantly an application of the very "purpose of Wikipedia's existence", which Jimbo summed up as "to give free access to the sum of all human knowledge" as it is described in reliable sources:

  • "Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing." -- Jimmy Wales (source)
  • "If I go looking for info, and Wikipedia doesn't have it, then Wikipedia has failed." -- User:Baseball Bugs (source)

The "sum of all human knowledge" literally means all information, not just what has traditionally been covered in ancient encyclopedias. Wikipedia is different. It documents all facts, opinions, beliefs, lies, conspiracy theories, pseudoscientific nonsense, etc. It documents the existence of it all. There is no topic that is so weird, repulsive, or odd that Wikipedia won't cover it, as long as the defining conditions (above) are met. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 15:58, 28 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Misrepresentation of sources

[edit]

Please stop misrepresenting sources, including making up inaccurate quotations, as you did here.

The actual source says “links,” in the words of the Appointment Order between Trump Campaign officials and individuals with ties to the Russian government.

You wrote "links between the Trump Campaign and individuals with ties to the Russian government", removing several words.

Thank you, Politrukki (talk) 20:33, 26 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

??? Why the vitriol? AGF. There is a "natural" explanation. I did quote VERY exactly from page 66. See the first sentence in the second paragraph. To prevent any misunderstanding, I placed it in quotation marks. For some reason, I stopped reading the rest of the editorial note after "p. 66" and didn't notice the supplied quote in the editorial note. I only noticed the quote should be from page 66, so I searched the whole document, seeing many versions, and also found the quote on page 66, and used it.
I didn't notice the previous one above it in the first paragraph (the one you used) I didn't notice it because it didn't get highlighted by my search terms ("links between"). That's because the one you used is not an exact quote because "links" is actually separated (by the words "in the words of the Appointment Order") from the rest of the quote you used. You "put them together". I used the quote highlighted by my search terms, so I didn't have to do that.
So, sorry about the confusion. I did use an accurate quote and never saw your version before this complaint. There are many variations of that quote throughout the document, and we can choose whichever one we'd like to use, but we should then update the editorial note if we use a version from another page. Search the whole document for "links between" and you'll find them. Here's the content under discussion:

It also identifies "[[Links between Trump associates and Russian officials|links between the Trump Campaign and individuals with ties to the Russian government]]"<!--Pipe text is a direct quote from the report.-->,<ref>''[https://www.justice.gov/storage/report.pdf Mueller Report]'', vol. I, p. 66: "The Office identified multiple contacts{{snd}} 'links', in the words of the Appointment Order{{snd}} between Trump Campaign officials and individuals with ties to the Russian government."</ref>

I hope that clears things up. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 21:06, 26 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you. You are correct that you used a correct quote from different part of the Mueller report, and I must apologise. I thought you were altering the quote that was in the attached ref. I did check that that quote was also in the Mueller report, but I didn't notice that there was very similar fragment in the next paragraph. There's a subtle difference between the two paragraphs ("The Office identified multiple contacts—"links" v. This Section describes the principal links; the second seems to suggest that the report doesn't cover all "identified" links, but let's not get into too deep into that here.
Your insertion of "paraphrased loosely from" was unprecedented and puzzling.
We generally should avoid using the primary source, the Mueller report, as a source for anything, and use secondary or tertiary sources instead, but citing the report in the lead section is not the worst problem per se as long as NPOV and other relevant policies are adhered to.
I'm partly striking my comment above. Why not everything? I'll explain. You may have noticed that I continued cleaning up articles that link to Links between Trump associates and Russian officials and spies. I asked you to self-revert your changes, but you failed to response on the article talk page even though I made my request almost a year ago. I'm not aware of a any self-revert. This is also the issue that brought me back to the Mueller report.
Many cases where you changed the link were relatively harmless, e.g. when you only changed the piped link. Other edits were less harmless. E.g. in the Mueller report you claimed the report "identifies myriad links between Trump associates and Russian officials and spies" [emphasis added], which was a clear NPOV violation.
In Carter Page you claimed that "Page was a focus of the 2017 Special Counsel investigation into the many suspicious links between Trump associates and Russian officials and spies" [emphasis added] synthesised the word "suspicious" from two sources (Harding, discredited through Russiagate investigation) even though the first didn't mention Page and second one didn't mention the special counsel investigation, which hadn't even started yet.
Other biographies (or other articles covered by BLP) where you use Harding or other sources, presumably without checking whether the sources name the article subject, include Kevin M. Downing, Rush Limbaugh, Donald Trump filmography. Feel free to correct me if the article subjects are mentioned in the sources. Failing to do that, I maintain that these edits appear to be rather serious misrepresentations. You made the edits more than two years ago, but I consider errors to be "active" until someone fixes them, and I had already alerted you of problems you created when you made edits related to the page move. I'm not delighted that I have to spend so much time fixing errors that may have been avoided if you had not done the out-of-process page move. Politrukki (talk) 19:43, 29 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
(talk page stalker) WP:PRIMARY does not say primary sources should never be used as a source for anything, but that they should be used with care, and that articles should be predominantly based on, and take their analytical framing from, secondary sources. When used in conjunction with secondary sources, a primary source is fine to use. More importantly we should have these discussions on the article's talk page so others can participate and help to improve the article. You already accused Valjean of misrepresenting sources incorrectly once, and probably an explanation will be found for other changes, or perhaps other disagree about your claim for example: Harding, discredited through Russiagate investigation that is hardly obvious or given. "And spies" was the old name of the article, that is not an NPOV violation. Your tone is highly accusatory and I think inappropriate given that these are not clear-cut issues, and as you mentioned those changes were from years ago. Andre🚐 20:17, 29 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I have not carefully read the above yet, but I'll drop this here right now. Politrukki, I totally understand how the current misunderstanding happened, and I accept your apology and don't hold anything against you. Shit happens. Ships pass in the night and don't know it. Edit conflicts occur. There are many things that happen here that cause misunderstandings. I'll read the above and comment later. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 20:54, 29 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I appreciate it. Politrukki (talk) 19:39, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding:

"on the article talk page"

I don't recall seeing that. I see you pinged me, but I don't always get pinged. I don't know why. I would have been happy to help you with the job you just did. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 21:01, 29 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I've never heard anyone say they didn't receive a notification (AKA pong) pinged upon correctly (disclaimer: I haven't received any mention notifications from other users for years because I disabled the function) – even experienced users don't always know they can't fix a ping just by signing the message again. I have confirmed that Wikipedia sent a mention to each user I pinged. You should still be able to check Special:Notifications to see if there's a mention. I often use a subscribe button to subscribe discussions and I've missed some notifications. Politrukki (talk) 19:39, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
"I don't recall" are acutely relevant at my age. As far as pings go, that is a frequent problem many editors mention. There are various reasons they may not work, and then there's the possibility they worked and were not noticed. I do subscribe to many threads and articles, and I often get notifications, but not all of them. Analyzing my watchlist would show me more, but I don't do that very often anymore. It's just too large, so i depend on pings and subscriptions.
It seems to work like FB social media, which will selectively, according to some algorithm, send notifications for only certain items, but not every item. I don't understand it.
One form of notification I always get is activity on my own talk page.
Whatever the case, if I had noticed the above, I would most likely have offered to help you. As an Aspie, I don't mind boring and repetitive work like that. Whenever I have to move an article, there is a lot of cleanup with the links and redirects to the old article title, and I relish doing that. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 19:54, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding:

" Many cases where you changed the link were relatively harmless, e.g. when you only changed the piped link. Other edits were less harmless. E.g. in the Mueller report you claimed the report "identifies myriad links between Trump associates and Russian officials and spies" [emphasis added], which was a clear NPOV violation."

Sometimes Mueller wrote "many", which is a rather vague number meaning more than a "couple", which would be two, and thus meaning more than 3-4. That's how I understand it. When there are over 200 instances of secret links, and they were lied about when discovered, "myriad" is much more accurate and not an NPOV violation.

Also "spies" is accurate. Many of these secret contacts were found during routine surveillance of Russian officials and actual agents (spies). Suddenly, back in 2015, various European allied intelligence agencies (it ended up being eight, including Australia) were discovering that people associated with Trump were talking to those Russians, and it was so suspicious and a threat to democracy that they notified the FBI and CIA. Why would those associated with a current presidential candidate start talking with the Russians, especially since there was already public promise they would support his election, and there was already hacking by Russians starting in 2014? Since "spies" was accurate, that was included in the title of the article for a while. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 21:16, 29 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

You would need to prove that "identified myriad links between Trump associates and Russian spies" is a majority view held in reliable sources. They would not have to use those specific words, but they shouldn't be far off. You're going way off topic with "200 instances of secret links" because Mueller definitely did not identify 200 secret links to "spies". An expression like "links between the Trump campaign and Russian officials" is adhering to NPOV, and is so uncontroversial summary of our article that it could be presented without an inline citation, which is not to say I'd recommend removing it. Politrukki (talk) 20:46, 4 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Various investigations have uncovered hundreds of contacts between Trump associates and Russian government-linked individuals, not just spies. "Myriad" is an accurate term when dealing with so many links. The numbers vary depending on source.
I do not recall saying "identified myriad links between Trump associates and Russian spies". That's not what I believe or what any RS says, so I suspect you've got that one wrong. I don't know where you found that. It was Links between Trump associates and Russian officials, or before that Links between Trump associates and Russian officials and spies. We don't know the exact distribution, but I suspect that it was a minority that were actual "agents", but some of them were because of the nature of who was being surveilled. Spies spy on spies. Eight different countries discovered these suspicious and secretive contacts and reported them to the FBI.
This source says: "272 contacts"[1]
This source says "at least 101 known points of contact..."
This one says "myriad links Trump campaign associates had to Russia."
The Moscow Project – an initiative of the Center for American Progress Action Fund – had, by June 3, 2019, documented "272 contacts between Trump's team and Russia-linked operatives ... including at least 38 meetings.... None of these contacts were ever reported to the proper authorities. Instead, the Trump team tried to cover up every single one of them."[1] -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 21:55, 4 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding:

"Other biographies (or other articles covered by BLP) where you use Harding or other sources, presumably without checking whether the sources name the article subject, include Kevin M. Downing, Rush Limbaugh, Donald Trump filmography. Feel free to correct me if the article subjects are mentioned in the sources.

Harding is okay as a source. MAGA may not like him, but he's good.

Just starting with the last one about a filmography. It's about Trump and does examine the links. The article also mentions that fact. What's the problem? -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 21:24, 29 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I didn't understand your remark. Who or what is MAGA and how is that relevant here? Harding doesn't have a reputation of fact-checking and accuracy, and hence not okay as a source.
To my knowledge, Harding neither mentions nor alludes to Donald Trump filmography. Politrukki (talk) 20:46, 4 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Nonsense, you're presenting your own cherrypicked opinion on a source's reliability absent a reliable source substantiating that. He's a well-credentialed journalist writing for a presumptively reliable outlet. Andre🚐 21:47, 4 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Politrukki, I'm referring to how MAGA does not like any criticism of Trump, including what you edited and Harding. I'm referring to your edit that shows a misunderstanding of "synthesis" (edit summary: "removing improper synthesis"). I added links to back up single words that do not have to mention the film. Harding does mention the "links between Trump associates and Russian officials and the role of Russian interference in the results of the 2016 election." That is also the topic of the documentary film. I have noticed you make this mistake in other places. You misunderstand "improper synthesis". -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 22:07, 4 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Regarding Harding, I agree with Andre. He is a notable journalist and The Guardian is a RS with a good reputation for fact checking. You may not like him, and neither does MAGA, but he's a good source you should not dismiss. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 22:10, 4 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding the "Downing" article. The topic I edited there is the Mueller report, and investigating those links was a major part of Mueller's investigation. What's the problem? -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 21:27, 29 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

To my knowledge, Harding neither mentions nor alludes to Downing. Politrukki (talk) 20:46, 4 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The same answer as above regarding Harding and the filmography. You misunderstand "improper synthesis" and should self-revert the other places where you have deleted RS using that justification. Not every source has to mention the topic of the article. It must mention the words, phrase, or sentence the source is applied to, but not necessarily the article topic. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 22:18, 4 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding "Limbaugh". I added TWO words, with sourcing, to more accurately describe the content. What's the problem? -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 21:29, 29 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

To my knowledge, Harding neither mentions nor alludes to Limbaugh. It was more than two words; you also added "and spies" in the edit that was partially reverted for "editorializing". Politrukki (talk) 20:46, 4 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That was the old name of the article! Andre🚐 21:48, 4 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The same answer as above regarding Harding and Downing. You misunderstand "improper synthesis" and should self-revert the other places where you have deleted RS using that justification. Not every source has to mention the topic of the article. It must mention the words, phrase, or sentence the source is applied to, but not necessarily the article topic. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 22:20, 4 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding:

"In Carter Page you claimed that "Page was a focus of the 2017 Special Counsel investigation into the many suspicious links between Trump associates and Russian officials and spies" [emphasis added] synthesised the word "suspicious" from two sources (Harding, discredited through Russiagate investigation) even though the first didn't mention Page and second one didn't mention the special counsel investigation, which hadn't even started yet."

I'm not sure where to begin, if I even understand this. Are you denying that Page was a focus of the Mueller investigation? Are you denying that the "links" were "suspicious", and that they started long before the Mueller investigation? The sources were talking about the links and needn't mention the Mueller investigation as they were used to talk about the "links". -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 21:39, 29 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I don't understand why you don't understand you can't use sources outside their context (see WP:STICKTOTHESOURCE). If the source you're using doesn't explicitly mention the article subject, you very likely can't use it in the article without conducting original research. Sometimes, the connection can be implicit, if the connection is obvious. For example if we're writing the article about the Crossfire Hurricane, it may be appropriate to use sources that mention the investigation without specifically referring to it by its name.
A word or term in an article does not create a hook you can hang statements that are not explicitly supported by any of the sources. For example, consider the following content from Carter Page:

In December 2019, Michael E. Horowitz, the Inspector General for the Department of Justice, concluded an investigation into the circumstances of the FBI's investigation into the 2016 Trump campaign and its ties to Russia, codenamed Crossfire Hurricane.[2]

What if we add "a Barack Obama appointee" without adding a source:

In December 2019, Michael E. Horowitz, the Inspector General for the Department of Justice, a Barack Obama appointee, concluded an investigation into the circumstances of the FBI's investigation into the 2016 Trump campaign and its ties to Russia, codenamed Crossfire Hurricane.[2]

References

  1. ^ a b "Trump's Russia Cover-Up By the Numbers – 272 contacts with Russia-linked operatives". The Moscow Project. Center for American Progress. June 3, 2019. Archived from the original on December 30, 2019. Retrieved October 11, 2019.
  2. ^ a b Savage, Charlie; Goldman, Adam; Benner, Katie (December 9, 2019). "Report on F.B.I. Russia Inquiry Finds Serious Errors but Debunks Anti-Trump Plot". The New York Times. New York, NY.
Would that be original research? Technically no, because a source that supports the new sentence fully does exist. But the edit would be inappropriate, because that would be using a source outside of its context. Now consider the same addition, but imagine that we add a 2013 source that says Horowitz was appointed by Obama. That would be improper synthesis, for obvious reasons.
If we go back to your edit, the placement of your added refs (in that revision refs #5 and #6) doesn't really matter. Because the statement "Page was a focus of the 2017 Special Counsel investigation into the many suspicious" isn't a sentence that would make sense without the latter part, we could pretend that you placed the footnotes at the end of the sentence. That makes it obvious to see that the full sentence is based on improper synthesis, because none of the sources supports all statements made in that sentence. Politrukki (talk) 20:46, 4 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If the source you're using doesn't explicitly mention the article subject, you very likely can't use it in the article without conducting original research. Where does STICKTOTHESOURCE say that? Particularly the idea of explicitness.
Sometimes, the connection can be implicit, if the connection is obvious. Where does the guideline say that? What determines an obvious connection? Where in the guideline is this test outlined? Andre🚐 21:51, 4 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Politrukki, I think you're thinking of coatracking, not improper synthesis. Adding the words "a Barack Obama appointee" (that's not a sentence) might be seen as objectionable in some circumstances. It could be perceived as an attempt to poison the well.
Your specific question is about adding "a Barack Obama appointee" without adding a source" "Without adding a source" is the possible problem. Sometimes that would not be right. Editors could make that decision through discussion and consensus.
Otherwise, as I have just replied above, you seem to misunderstand "improper synthesis". A source does not always have to mention the article topic. The source is attached to a word, phrase, sentence, or paragraph, and it must support them, not necessarily the article topic.
You write: "In Carter Page you claimed that 'Page was a focus of the 2017 Special Counsel investigation into the many suspicious links between...'"
Do you think that statement is not true? Page was obviously part of the "focus"!
Our "links..." article is backed by many RS and treats those links as "suspicious". Do you think they lied about and hid those links because they were exchanging marmalade recipes?
Spies who are surveiling and secretly recording the "exchanging of marmalade recipes" would not see that as something so serious the surveiled communications would be reported to the FBI. (Kumquat marmalade is the best!)
No, the communications and links we are talking about were so suspicious that EIGHT foreign nations were concerned enough to contact the FBI. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 22:50, 4 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

"Full authority"

[edit]
I have moved this from above so we can do it justice. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 22:48, 29 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This is another problematic behaviour that I identified while fixing the wikilinks.

You were told on 18 May 2018 that there are zero reliable sources to support the "full authority" quote. I removed your misquotation from one or two articles several years ago – that's how I remembered it was a fake quote. But I've had to clean up more now.

  1. You added the quote to Nunes memo on 13 April 2018. You have inserted a false claim that according to the dossier, "Sechin offered Trump a 19% stake in Rosneft" – the actual conspiracy theory is that Trump associates were offered a brokerage. However, I'm not sure whether this error can be fully attributed to you or the source, because if you read the second BI article, you can see from the editor's note that either Bertrand or Bertrand's editor screwed this up.
    The content you added didn't even belong to the article in the first place, because you were conducting original research by using sources unrelated to the Nunes memo. Remember that all material about living persons must strictly adhere to WP:NOR.
  2. You added the "full authority" quote to Timeline of Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections on 12 April 2018, but the article was split into Timeline of Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections (July 2016 – election day) and others in December 2019.
  3. In the Trump Tower meeting article the content was actually copied into by someone else on 2 May 2018, but you edited the material on 16 May 2018.

(Omitted two cases where someone copied content written by you from an unspecified article.)

1, 2, and 3 were added before you informed about the fakeness of the quote, but if I were you, I would've rushed to fix the errors as soon as I was informed of them. It's been seven years since the errors were planted. I doubt whether you were ever going to fix them. I had to find the defective articles with a web search engine. Would it be too much to ask for you to go through your contribution history now and ensure no article includes the misquotation? Politrukki (talk) 20:42, 29 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Please AGF. Instead of accusing, try asking. The quote is not fake at all. Here it is, in its context from Report 134. Here is a good copy. Here is the original pdf:

2. In terms of the substance of their discussion, SECHIN’s associate said that the Rosneft President was so keen to lift personal and corporate western sanctions imposed on the company, that he offered PAGE/TRUMP’s associates the brokerage of up to a 19 per cent (privatised) stake in Rosneft in return. PAGE had expressed interest and confirmed that were TRUMP elected US president, then sanctions on Russia would be lifted.

5. SECHIN’s associated opined that although PAGE had not stated it explicitly to SECHIN, he had clearly implied that in terms of his comment on TRUMP’s intention to lift Russian sanctions if elected president, he was speaking with the Republican candidate’s full authority.

I'll answer more later. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 22:48, 29 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I have stricken "full" and one added letter as those are mistakes made by whoever transcribed the dossier for The Moscow Project. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 23:11, 30 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I have looked at that old archived Talk:Steele dossier page and found my response at the time:

Okay, after some attempts to figure out what you meant, I think I get the point. (The part about "accept the bribe" threw me off.) Your point is the "full authority" part of our content, which is also from the dossier. After searching the sources we currently use and not finding those exact words in them, I'm wondering if that came from some of the previous sources that got axed when I went through and reduced the number of sources for each claim. Sometimes I'd have 6-8 refs after each allegation, and that was indeed a bit much! Maybe that's what happened? Whatever the case may be, the current sources do not justify including that part, so I'll remove it. Thanks for bringing this to my attention. If I ever find the sources which do justify it, I'll return it. -- BullRangifer (talk) PingMe 23:27, 19 May 2018 (UTC)

I would not have added a quote without a RS. Never!

You assumed bad faith and wrote: "I doubt whether you were ever going to fix them." Well, I removed it a long time ago.

I have a tendency to use too many sources, and the article was overloaded with many sources after each claim. After discussion about that problem, I went through the article and removed many sources. This is one instance where I must have inadvertently removed a source I should have kept. Whatever the case, those words are an accurate quote from the dossier, so AGF. Ask rather than accuse. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 23:24, 29 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

There was no accusation. I simply stated my opinion that had I done nothing, the errors may have remained forever. By "fake quote" and "misquotation" I was referring both to the fact that "full authority" was hallucinated by The Moscow Project and that the quote does not appear in the cited sources. Your diff doesn't prove that you fixed the errors I referred as 1, 2, and 3.
And it's not just one word that was problematic. If your paraphrase of the dossier would be "that Page confirmed, on Trump's 'authority'", that would still be inaccurate because Steele's claims are contradictory (which is a common theme in the dossier): first Steele claims Sechin's associate said this was "confirmed" and a moment later the claim has changed to "clearly implied" without explanation. This further illustrates why we generally avoid using primary sources. Politrukki (talk) 21:06, 4 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I just took another look at this and discovered that The Moscow Project's copy of the dossier betrayed me. It has otherwise been quite good. Because one cannot copy and paste from the original, I have used their copy. In this case, it added the word "full". When one reads the original, "full" is not there:

Report 134 describes Carter Page as implying that "he was speaking with the Republican candidate's authority."

So it's good I deleted that after it was discussed. When a consensus forms against me, I bow to it. The debate should have been over the use of the word "full", not so much over "full authority". This is also the type of situation that shows why controversial situations often require longer exact quotes, not just single words in quote marks, and not paraphrases. My search would have been much easier if I had realized it was just one word that was problematic. My search terms "full authority" would never have found the single word "authority".

Imagine how one effing word can cause so much trouble(!), but I goofed. I'm very sorry about that. I now know I'll have to double-check that source. I was acting in good faith all along, but still made a mistake (not the first or last I will ever make...).

There is another factor that played into this error. I was, at that time, laboring under the mistaken belief that we were not allowed to directly cite the dossier, as it was a primary source, and could only cite how secondary sources paraphrased or cited it. That approach can lead to misquotes, as various secondary sources can make mistakes and add another link in the chain between the original and our readers, thus increasing the likelihood of introduced typos and errors.

Now I know that one can often cite primary sources directly (for maximum accuracy) if one is careful to use secondary sources for interpretation and commentary. When it comes to accurate quoting, IAR if necessary. Accuracy supersedes all else. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 23:11, 30 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

If you want to read an unredacted copy of the dossier, it was released by the Republicans (possibly Graham and Grassley). The Republicans included the Cody Shearer memo for some odd reason. It contains rather shockingly detailed descriptions of other alleged sexual kompromat on the "Republican candidate" (starts on page FBI-HJC119-CH-000134) never mentioned by Steele. It harmonizes with what we know of Trump's confessed (bragged) behaviors described in the Hollywood Access tape, but goes into more detail. It quotes an FSB agent's retelling of alleged events. The Guardian briefly mentions it, but without the gross details. The Republicans in the HJC didn't bother to reformat it into normal prose, but it's still readable: "The Shearer memo cites an unnamed source within Russia’s FSB, the state security service. The Guardian cannot verify any of the claims." More here -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 14:08, 1 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Please remove the links to documentcloud... and themoscowproject... unless you have clear proof that they have licensed the copyrighted work. Per LINKVIO we are not allowed to link to unauthorised copies without permission: "if you know or reasonably suspect that an external Web site is carrying a work in violation of copyright, do not link to that copy of the work without the permission of the copyright holder".
Based on your hint I have removed documentcloud... from Carter Page (I know you didn't add the link) and themoscowproject... from Steele dossier (I really hope you didn't add it) per COPYVIOEL (which only involves articles).
From a copyright perspective, using the House report should be fine. Just remember that the fact that a government republishes copyrighted material produced by a third party (even one that works as a government contractor) doesn't cause the work to enter the public domain unless there was an agreement between the parties. Politrukki (talk) 19:08, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It's a long time since I considered that angle. It may not be necessary to link to a complete copy, only to individual allegations as they are often reproduced on secondary RS. That's allowed. Even Steele does not retain a copy of the dossier. He destroyed all copies, and everytime it has been sent to him in connection with legal proceedings, he then destroys it as soon as it is no longer necessary. He can always access it online. That way he cannot be accused of making some improper use of it and then be sued. A strange situation to be in! -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 19:44, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Well, as it turns out, you actually did add the copyvio external link. Why would you do that when you knew that wasn't allowed? Politrukki (talk) 21:06, 4 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Good question. I suspect it was because it was about 5 years since I last thought of that issue and forgot that would be a bad idea. I'm glad you caught it. Article improvement like that is always welcome, so thanks. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 23:35, 4 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Carter Page met Mifsud!

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This is an interesting discovery, and it reinforces my suspicion that both Page and Mifsud are Russian agents. Page always acts very suspicious with his constant denials that turn out to be false and his "memory issues". When forced under oath, he ends up confirming "nearly" all of the accusations against him. He's slippery.

While the connection between Mifsud and Papadopoulos is well-established, Carter Page belatedly admitted to greeting Mifsud:[1]

And after first denying that he met with __ Joseph Mifsud,__ the Kremlin-linked professor revealed to be a key contact of George Papadopoulos, Page equivocated. 'I—you know, there may have been a greeting,' he said. 'I have no recollection of ever interacting with him in any way, shape or form . . . I have no personal relationship with him.'

Valjean (talk) (PING me) 23:25, 30 September 2025 (UTC) [reply]

References

  1. ^ Tracy, Abigail (November 7, 2017). "Is Carter Page Digging the Trump Administration's Grave?". Vanity Fair. Retrieved September 30, 2025.

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