Talk:Eric Cullen

Non-encyclopaedic phrasing

The "Arrest" section is full of all kinds of non-neutral phrases and could do with a cleanup.

Not only non-neutral, but a bit incoherent, since stuff has been chopped out without a rewrite to tidy it up. Vince Calegon 19:12, 25 March 2017 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Vince Calegon (talk • contribs)

Sources

Three sources under discussion:

• Biography
• Theatre of Cruelty, a website telling the actual truth about Eric Cullen and the facts that show he is not a paedophile but was groomed by them and his life tragically destroyed by a group of them.
• "Wee Burney - The Vile Truth" - article which reports a claim that although Eric Cullen "was the victim of horrific and sustained abuse" he "crossed the line and became an abuser himself".

WP:RS or not?

Ewen (talk) 06:04, 28 June 2017 (UTC)

• adoption.com is a secondary source with multiple references. It repeats some of the material from other sources but may be useful if it includes material which is not in other sources, or is sourced but difficult to access at the primary source.

• Theatre of Cruelty is clearly a one-sided, personal take on the story. That doesn't make it untrue, but casts doubt on its reliability.

• Wee Burney is from the Sunday Mail (Glasgow). I'm not sure of the relationship between this paper and the Daily Mail.

Ewen (talk) 06:15, 28 June 2017 (UTC)

The Sunday Mail (Scotland) is not related to the Daily Mail or its Sunday edition, the Mail on Sunday. The latter two papers are published by DMG, the Sunday Mail is published by Trinity Mirror. Ewen (talk) 08:10, 28 June 2017 (UTC)

There are some independent sources included in the Theatre of Cruelty site e.g. interviews with Eric Cullen that look reliable enough. Ewen (talk) 09:27, 28 June 2017 (UTC)

I confused the Sunday Mail with Mail on Sunday. The Sunday Mail is unrelated to the Daily Mail and seems to be a reliable source. Theatre of Cruelty is, as you say, a one-sided take on the story. The texts are hosted on the same website, which makes them useless for sourcing per WP:USERGENERATED, since we have no way of telling if the texts have been edited to fit the site's agenda.

I have doubts about adoption.com. We can't know if they have a reputation for fact-checking, and WP:QUESTIONABLE includes sites that are "promotional in nature". What I do know is that you have to check the sources yourself, and we can't say in Wikipedias voice that something is sourced because adoption.com says it is. Sjö (talk) 06:32, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

Also, even if the texts at Theatre of Cruelty are correct, they are violations of the copyright of the original publisher, and per WP:COPYLINKS we can't link to it. Sjö (talk) 06:41, 7 July 2017 (UTC)