Talk:Steele dossier

Dolan article

Interesting mentions of dossier:

Dolan denies being a source for the pee tape.

• Nora Dannehy made the right ethical decision], by Charles Halliday Dolan, Jr.

I provided one piece of information about the 2016 campaign to a person, who unbeknownst to me was working on the Dossier – a publicly sourced analysis of atmospherics within the Trump Campaign over Paul Manafort’s firing, from POLITICO and Fox News that was arguably the most accurate item of information in the entire Dossier.

After citing no evidence Durham falsely pronounces that, “In light of these facts, there appears to be a real likelihood that Dolan was the likely source of much of the Ritz Carlton …information in the Steele reports.” That’s just an unmerited supposition couched in vaguely conditional language but illustrates how Durham stretches to reach preconceived conclusions that are not supported by any evidence. As such, after reading the entirety of Durham’s report, it seems more reasonable to conclude its title should be changed to “Grasping at Straws.”

Valjean (talk) (PING me) 02:48, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

References

Update needed

The last two sentences in the opening paragraph are as follows: “While Steele's documents played a significant role in initially highlighting the general friendliness between Trump and the Putin administration, the veracity of specific allegations is highly variable. Some have been publicly confirmed,[7][11][6][8] others are plausible but not specifically confirmed,[12][13] and some are dubious in retrospect but not strictly disproven.[14][15][16]”

All but one of those sources is from the 2010’s. Perceptions have since changed, per CNN and NYT:

• Jonny Hallam, Kristen Holmes and Marshall Cohen. “Trump sues former British spy behind controversial Russia dossier”, CNN (29 Sep 2023): “over the years, the credibility of the dossier has significantly diminished. A series of US government investigations and lawsuits have discredited many of its central allegations and exposed the unreliability of Steele’s sources. Trump has repeatedly denied the claims Steele put forward.”

• Savage, Charlie. “Why the Discredited Dossier Does Not Undercut the Russia Investigation”, New York Times (21 Dec 2021): “Was the dossier a reliable source of information? No. It has become clear over time that its sourcing was thin and sketchy.”

We should update accordingly, to something like this: “Many of its central allegations have been discredited, its sourcing was thin and sketchy, it was an unreliable source of information, and Trump denied its claims.” Anythingyouwant (talk) 05:18, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

Nothing has substantively changed since the last time this was discussed I don't think. We do largely treat the dossier as untrustworthy, but it's not discredited wholesale; much of it turned out to be accurate, and some of it remains unknown. See Talk:Steele_dossier/Archive_27#RFC_on_lead Andre🚐 06:10, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

That RFC was specifically about the first sentence of the lead. I’m talking here about the fourth and fifth sentences which I quoted at the outset of this talk page section. I suggest leaving the first three sentences of the lead exactly as they are, and replacing the next two sentences with the following: “Many of its central allegations have been discredited, its sourcing was thin and sketchy, it was an unreliable source of information, and Trump denied its claims.” This reflects more recent reporting from the New York Times and CNN. Anythingyouwant (talk) 07:08, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

No, that RFC was about any use of discredited or controversial; there was no consensus to add either descriptor. You can start a new RFC or a new discussion but I do not see anything much new in the 2 articles above, so I'm not in favor of a change at this time. The reporting isn't really any different, it's just lazy recycling. Andre🚐 07:20, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

It isn't really very recent (the latest is just recycling old statements) and it's not "reporting" but just voicing opinions. It's not specific, just bellyaching about disappointed false expectations.

BTW, I assume you're referring to changing "Some have been publicly confirmed,[7][11][6][8] others are plausible but not specifically confirmed,[12][13] and some are dubious in retrospect but not strictly disproven.[14][15][16]" Is that correct? -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 07:34, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

Anythingyouwant, you may benefit from reading the recent RfC about adding general opinions and controversial, imprecise, unclear, and contentious labels like "discredited" to the lead. (We already mention them in the body where such opinions and labels can be dealt with much better.) There was no consensus to do so. See Talk:Steele_dossier/Archive_27#RFC_on_lead. Unless you can provide some other arguments and better sources, you are unlikely to get a different result. AFAIK, nothing new has popped up to change the situation, but we're always open to the possibility, and if it happens, the article will be revised again, as has happened many times.

These are the opinions of some writers, not facts, and the lead isn't the best place to highlight such controversial and disputed opinions. Also, the addition of Trump's denial is counterproductive to attempts to add wording like "discredited" to the lead as his denials lend credence to the oft-proven fact that any misdeed he denies usually turns out to be true. He is the ultimate unreliable witness. It's often best not to bring up his denials. His multiple denials and lies to Comey about the pee tape changed Comey from a skeptic who thought the allegation was BS to a "maybe peeliever"(!) who now believes it's possible the pee tape allegation is true.

When one accepts the fact that the dossier is not a perfect, finished, and fully vetted report, but "an unfinished 35-page compilation of unverified raw intelligence reports—"not established facts, but a starting point for further investigation"," the "discredited" description is revealed to be a misjudgment based on false expectations.

The more accurate thing to do, as we have done using myriad RS, is to examine each allegation and evaluate it. In that light, the last sentence of the first paragraph summarizes the more elaborate analyses of each allegation in the body most accurately. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 07:32, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

People forget that "failure to corroborate" an allegation does not mean it is "discredited" or "disproven". It just means the allegation remains uncorroborated. It may be true or untrue. We just don't know for sure. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 07:46, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

CNN reports that subsequent developments have “discredited many of its central allegations”. That’s not opinion, it’s a news article. If a document (e.g. the Steele Report) is deemed unreliable (which the NYT has done), that means pretty much the same thing. It doesn’t necessarily mean the allegations/accusations have been proven false, it just means that the Steele Report has been discredited as a reliable document, and if anything in the Steele Report happens to be true then that’s merely a coincidence. I again request that we accordingly update the last two sentences of our opening paragraph. Anythingyouwant (talk) 19:45, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

They take the same position we do here. Uncorroborated allegations are not considered RS. They are simply ignored. That's what we do with many of the dossier's allegations. We document their existence because RS do that, but do not consider them as strong evidence for anything. What does your suggested change add, other than confusion, since most people assume that "discredited" means "disproven"? How about first dealing with this in the body? Then it will be easier to see if it needs to be mentioned in the lead. We already deal with this type of stuff in the lead in the last two sentences of the first paragraph, a consensus formulation that was reached after long discussion.

The only addition (bolded here) that addresses what you mention without introducing misleading wording to the lead ("discredited" is already mentioned in the body), would be to say out loud what is currently unsaid and assumed: "While many of the allegations are still uncorroborated, (followed by the current wording) some have been publicly confirmed,[7][11][6][8] others are plausible but not specifically confirmed,[12][13] and some are dubious in retrospect but not strictly disproven.[14][15][16]" Valjean (talk) 20:12, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

We could easily add a phrase to address your concern: “Many of its central allegations have been discredited, its sourcing was thin and sketchy, it was an unreliable source of information, Trump denied its claims, and any correct claims in it are coincidental at best.” The opening paragraph currently does not convey these facts. So I’d erase (or move down) the last two sentences of the opening paragraph and insert what I’ve just proposed. We shouldn’t be emphasizing how useful and partially accurate the Steele Report may have been, it was a shoddy bit of dishonest oppo research. It wasn’t even meant to see the light of day. Steele has said that, when he learned of the leak by David Kramer to Buzzfeed, he felt "deep dismay and disappointment... at learning that Mr. Kramer had seriously betrayed his trust.” Anythingyouwant (talk) 20:54, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

Anythingyouwant, it was unverified raw intelligence, and there is no evidence the dossier is "dishonest" oppo research, so it would be wise for you to drop that idea. If you don't, you will fail to evaluate it properly. The FBI even ruled out any contamination with Russian disinformation. They examined it for that, found none, and reasoned that it made no sense for the Russians to include anything that would make Trump look bad since he was their favored candidate.

The unfinished draft we have was never intended for publication until it was vetted and finished. We don't know what would have happened with it at that point. Steele was honest and did the right thing by turning it over to the FBI for vetting. A dishonest operator would not have done that. Unfortunately, the vetting process stopped when the Mueller investigation took over the investigation. Mueller seemed more interested in using other sources and pursuing other issues, and there were many of them.

Your interestingly worded suggestion is worth playing with:

“Many of its central allegations have been discredited, its sourcing was thin and sketchy, it was an unreliable source of information, Trump denied its claims, and any correct claims in it are coincidental at best.”

Based on what we know about each allegation, we could just as well reword that to this:

"Many of its central allegations were proven true, long before the FBI came to the same conclusions using their sources; its sources seemed to be well-connected and could report on things they were in a position to know; it was unvetted and most of the sources could not be interviewed, and therefore it could not be used for much, so the FBI used what it could and then depended on their own sources; Trump denied and lied about its claims, including those proven true; its correct claims showed Steele had good sources, and Danchenko proved to be one of the most valuable sources the FBI has employed in many years."

So you see, this can go both ways, but my version is based on the RS in the article, not opinions, and the opinions we do cite are attributed properly. Your version sounds more like biased opinions not based on examining the allegations and their verification status (which is summed up in the last two sentences of the first paragraph). -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 23:06, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

Valjean states that "The more accurate thing to do, as we have done using myriad RS, is to examine each allegation and evaluate it." However, this approach is fundamentally flawed (and a core problem with our article), because the bulk of the allegations in Steele's dossier have not been discussed in any detail by major journalistic or academic sources. For example, "While The New York Times and many other news organizations published little about the document's unverified claims, social media partisans and television commentators discussed them almost daily over the past two years." As a result, the sources that are used in this article are mostly not reliable, at least not for the content in question.

• For example, the post-2013 incarnation of Newsweek is cited at least fourteen separate times ([1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8], [9], [10], [11], [12], [13], [14]), despite WP:RSP describing this source as "not generally reliable."

At 452,680 bytes as of the latest revision, Steele dossier is nearly twice the size of World War II (252,175 bytes at the time of writing), yet unlike World War II, nearly all of its sources fall into the "generally unreliable" or "marginally reliable" camp of opinion articles/tabloids/blogs (with some day-to-day news reportage for good measure), and the vast majority of all article text has just a single author (Valjean at 79.1% according to the latest estimate). It would be difficult for any person to manually review all 546 (!) individual citations to determine how many of them could be disqualified as opinion articles alone (which "are reliable primary sources for statements attributed to that editor or author, but are rarely reliable for statements of fact" per WP:RSEDITORIAL), but it could easily be in triple digits.

• Just glancing casually, how reliable/encyclopedic is "Christopher Steele: Yes, Trump's Pee Tape 'Probably' Exists" from The Daily Beast (WP:RSP: "Most editors consider The Daily Beast a biased or opinionated source. Some editors advise particular caution when using this source for controversial statements of fact related to living persons.")?

• How reliable/encyclopedic is "Forget the Steele dossier: Mueller report release shows why Trump-Russia inquiry was required" from Salon.com (WP:RSP: "There is no consensus on the reliability of Salon. Editors consider Salon biased or opinionated, and its statements should be attributed.")?

• How reliable/encyclopedic is "Explosive memos suggest that a Trump-Russia quid pro quo was at the heart of the GOP's dramatic shift on Ukraine" from Business Insider (WP:RSP: "There is no consensus on the reliability of Insider.")?

• How reliable/encyclopedic is "The Steele Dossier and Donald Trump's Betrayal of America" from Mother Jones (WP:RSP: "Almost all editors consider Mother Jones a biased source, so its statements (particularly on political topics) may need to be attributed. Consider whether content from this publication constitutes due weight before citing it in an article.")?

Is "Will Trump Be Meeting With His Counterpart — Or His Handler? A plausible theory of mind-boggling collusion" from New York's Intelligencer blog a "news," "analysis," or "opinion" source—and how well does it hold up more than five years later? What about this "analysis" article by Luke Harding in The Guardian (especially in light of Harding's debunked report on a closely related topic)? Is Rachel Maddow's opinion talk show a reliable source? The examples are endless...

One might also wonder how these sources were collated, in the sense of using neutral search criteria to generate a representative sample of high-quality sources. Valjean regularly mentions his use of Google Alerts (e.g., "I'm creating more Google Alerts for this."; "My Google Alerts tell me so."; "I have several Google Alerts for this topic."), but, based on the examples above (and others cited by critics on this talk page over the years), it seems like these alerts may be generating a considerable amount of content that is WP:INDISCRIMINATE, and thus an example of What Wikipedia is not. This problem is particularly pronounced in the Steele dossier#Allegations section.

Furthermore, contrary to Valjean's statement above, it is not the role of volunteer editors "to examine each allegation and evaluate it," as this often results in original research by way of synthesis. This problem is particularly pronounced in the Steele dossier#Veracity and corroboration status of specific allegations section.

Although top-level sources, such as The New York Times, unequivocally state that "the dossier ended up loaded with dubious or exaggerated details," Valjean and others have long actively pushed back against including similar language in our article, in part to avoid conflict with the Steele dossier#Veracity and corroboration status of specific allegations section, which can be interpreted as presenting many allegations in the most sympathetic light possible.

Notably, even the Steele dossier#Kompromat and "golden showers" allegations subsection spends eight paragraphs on the putative "pee tape" and ultimately weighs the "evidence" for and against its existence more-or-less equally, allowing Steele to evaluate his own work as follows: "As for the likelihood of the claim that prostitutes had urinated in Trump's presence, Steele would say to colleagues, 'It's 50–50'." I submit that, in a normal encyclopedia article with less tunnel vision, this collection of OR/SYNTH (largely supported by a skewed sample of low-quality and/or biased sources) would be replaced with a mere sentence or two, such as "No 'pee tape' has yet surfaced, and mainstream sources consider it to be a likely hoax."

While I support Anythingyouwant's proposal, bringing Steele dossier into compliance with Wikipedia's sitewide content policies would require a vast WP:TNT, particularly of the Steele dossier#Veracity and corroboration status of specific allegations section and the huge proliferation of marginal (if not WP:FRINGE) sources. However, there appears to be WP:LOCALCONSENSUS to veto a major overhaul at this time.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 22:01, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

My oh my! You're still personalizing this by making my diligent and careful editing into a crime. Please stop doing that. You also fail to mention that all RS, including opinion articles, are fair game for sourcing, and that each should be used on a case-by-case basis and attributed properly when necessary. WP:RSP is not an exclusionary "don't use opinions at all" list, as you seem to imply for many sources. Rather, that idea is reserved for some sources, and we don't use them.

When dealing with a topic, our job is to find all that RS say and, when possible to safely do so, summarize it. That works fine for simple and uncontroversial stuff not covered by many RS. That's what could have been done with the "verification" stuff, but, due to its complicated and controversial nature, rather than engage in too much summarizing, which can easily be interpreted as biased editorial synthesis, much of the commentary has been listed individually so readers can come to their own conclusions. They can see who wrote it and see that there are often widely varied opinions about each allegation.

Even the pee tape is far from a hoax. Rather, it's an old rumor that started long before Steele and his dossier. There is plenty of evidence that it's likely true, and none, zero, zilch evidence that it isn't. Comey, an expert lie detector, was originally a pee tape skeptic, believing it was BS, but after Trump repeatedly lied to him about it, he changed his mind and now believes it's entirely possible the incident happened. Keep in mind that Trump, Cohen, and a number of others we know by name have known about the pee tape rumor and allegation since shortly after Trump left Moscow in November 2013. Steele did not invent that rumor. His sources just reported it to him. It is not "his" allegation. It's an old rumor.

We don't come down on just "one side" here. It's not that simple. That some negative stuff is not mentioned is obviously because it comes from unreliable sources and lacks due weight for mention. (Yet...we still include quite a bit of that because RS mention it.) That's the right way to do it.

You seem to want to sanitize the article of what most RS have said and present a simplistic, one-sided, politically biased, negative picture of Steele and his sources while making Trump out to be an angel, even though the central accusations against him related to his cooperation with Russian interference turned out to be right, as attested by the 2017 ODNI report, Mueller report, Horowitz report, United States House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and other investigations. Trump never gets a free pass.

Your approach has been rejected because it's a "major overhaul" sledgehammer idea. That violates PRESERVE and other policies. Instead, deal with specific spots and sourcing you believe are weak or wrong. No article is perfect, and that approach has always worked here, resulting in many changes and improvements over the years, all without throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

The length is because we have not split the article (an idea I'm still toying with, but haven't found a good way to do it), unlike what has been done with WW2 and other long topics. They are much larger topics, but splitting keeps the mother article smaller. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 23:49, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

Any proposal has been discussed at length and will require affirmative consensus and Valjean is not the only contributor. Andre🚐 04:00, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

FYI, I have also made a more personal reply to TheTimesAreAChanging on their talk page. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 17:23, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

Cluttered history

I'm reading through the history section and there's a few places where the article goes into more in depth than necessary, basically reaching WP:NOTNEWS. I removed a couple of them and also added some subsections.

Right now there are a lot of segments in the article, not all of them are necessary or well divided, which is overall causing size bloat and readability issues. There's a bunch of sections that are just too detailed and should be cut down, summmarised or split off into separate articles. I'm also not convinced by some of the sections decided ("Two research operations and confusion between them", "What the DNC, Clinton campaign, and Steele knew" etc), so thinking about a reorganisation might be good Soni (talk) 21:57, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

Pretty much all content has been thoroughly discussed and edit-warred over, so be very careful. Right down to the words used, things have ended up as they are for reasons. This is possibly in the top ten most controversial articles here. That doesn't mean there can't be improvement, but I'd urge caution. Maybe point to specific wordings we can discuss here. Historians will need details we may not see as important now. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 01:21, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

@Valjean I'd rather you discuss this in talk page than just in diffs, simply because there's not enough context for why you are reverting.

For one, I think the history section is exceptionally long and think that sectioning it into "Initial report/FBI/Post public" was a good way to not make it an immense wall of text.

Second, I do not see what the paragraph about "Fusion co founder didnt want to help HRC" is doing there. It's not context that really helps the rest of context for the dossier, except to add more details to an already very detailed history.

Third, all the discussions of money payments from FBI are similarly extraneous. Without any payments, just a full paragraph in a long history section detailing what people said about payments is unnecessary and WP:UNDUE.

Fourth, I'm not sure what precisely is the context that you think needs to be extra clarified for conspiracy theories, but I'd personally not defer to conspiracy theories anyway for the purposes of summarising things. Either the conspiracy is notable enough to warrant mentioning, or it's not, in which case, going out of our way to explain things specifically for them is not helpful.

Right now the article is a very long extremely hard to read convolution. Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of all facts that future historians "may" find helpful. It's an encyclopedia foremost and anything that makes the overall topic harder to understand for "present" readers is a net negative Soni (talk) 01:27, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

I have now restored your good subheadings and the release date. Let me reread what you've written above and digest it. I suspect some of your suggestions may be workable. Right now I'm watching the State of the Union Address, so I'll get back to you later. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 04:02, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

I can't find "Fusion co founder didnt want to help HRC". Please use exact quotes. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 04:02, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

I did reduce the "payments" stuff you also edited, but maybe you are now referring to something else? Please quote exactly so I can find it. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 04:04, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

The agents "raised the prospect of paying Steele to continue gathering intelligence after Election Day",[83] but Steele "ultimately never received payment from the FBI for any 'dossier'-related information".[55] In October 2022, during questioning from Special Counsel John Durham, Brian Auten, a supervisory counterintelligence analyst with the FBI, testified that, shortly before the 2016 election, the FBI offered Steele "up to $1 million" if he could corroborate allegations in the dossier, but that Steele could not do so.[84][85] Steele has disputed this description: "And to correct the Danchenko trial record, we were not offered $1 million by the FBI to ‘prove up’ our Trump-Russia reporting. Rather, we were told there were substantial funds to resettle sources in the US if they were prepared to testify in public. Understandably they were not."[86] The Inspector General's report later confirmed that the FBI had initially offered to pay Steele $15,000 for his trip to Rome, but when the FBI dropped Steele as a confidential human source because he had shared information with a third party "in late October 2016" (Mother Jones magazine), the payment was halted

This entire section about payments is completely superfluous and unnecessary for anything to do with WP:DUEness. There was no payment made, and yet there are nearly 200 words describing what various people said and when about said payments. At best it needs a single sentence and nothing more. We do not need to go into extreme WP:NOTNEWS territory by describing what every part of this investigation revealed about potential payments.

Also for future, I request you to engage in talk page before the reverts, next time. I had already explained the edits once while making them, and then explained them again in way more depth after the whole scale revert. Had we discussed instead of revert it all, we'd only have to focus on the edits that need it. Instead we're converging at the same spot, except with far more words simply because the first revert was too hasty. Soni (talk) 04:44, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

I'm following BRD as it's best to work from the default and stable version. You made a BOLD edit, I REVERTED it, and now we are DISCUSSING it. That's normal practice. While discussion is ongoing, no reader will start reading an unstable version. They will read the long-standing version. When we have agreed on the changes, then we make them. This is standard practice. Notice that you have gotten quite a bit of what you wanted already, so things are moving in the "right direction", as far as you are concerned, and I'm very happy to help you. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 05:00, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

The payments stuff is relevant because of Trump's lies about the dossier. He lied about the payments, and so have his supporters. Hence the detail. Readers wonder about these things, and the sources answer their questions. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 05:02, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

Then state the lies about the dossier and put the paragraph in context of those. If it needs to be in the history, sure. I think it's just better served by placing it in a separate section of the article, wherever we are putting what Trump and others have claimed about the dossier.

Either the conspiracy theory is worth mentioning and addressing directly, or we're just trying to sidestep saying what the sources really are saying by pointing out adjacent but ultimately not directly supporting statements. Soni (talk) 05:05, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

Okay, I found "did not like the idea of helping Hillary Clinton". It is part of the evidence of how neither Steele nor Simpson originally had anything against Trump or for HRC. Steele didn't even know the client was Clinton until later. Steele was a friend of Ivanka's, and it was only after he learned what Trump was doing that he turned against him. Simpson didn't really like HRC. This is about the bias of the creators of the dossier. Is that important or not? The accusations against Steele and the dossier are considered important enough to include, so why not this? We usually cover both sides of such issues. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 04:12, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

The way you phrase these discussions seems to veer closer to WP:OR and very close to making your own conclusions instead of acting as a secondary source. Wikipedia is not a news organisation, and we must be careful to follow other RS when making claims of our own.

If you want to showcase Steele and Simpson had no information about their client, let's find a source that says that and quote that. Right now the quote actually in (He didnt like the idea of helping HRC) is just acting orthogonal without actually making the explanation you want to make (They were unprejudiced for/against HRC/Trump). Soni (talk) 04:31, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

Discussions often include OR, and that's okay in a talk page discussion, but I was referring to actual content. It's in the article. Fusion GPS knew their client was a lawyer for the DNC and Clinton campaign. Steele did not learn that until later. That's all. Steele had a favorable relationship to the Trump family before he started working on the dossier. His attitude, very naturally, changed as he discovered things. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 04:54, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

Again, nothing is so far defending why that sentence needs to be in History specifically, as opposed to the section specifically best suited for authorship, biases and overall source veracity of the dossier. Soni (talk) 05:08, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

I am not saying that it might not work better somewhere else, I just have no idea where you'd like to place it. Make a suggestion. Let's collaborate. That's how we work here. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 05:15, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

I thought I was doing that by listing three sections that could match (Authors, Biases/Discrepancies, Veracity), but more specifically "Authorship and sources" seems to be the clearest place for it to go. If it's a claim about Steele it goes in the steele section. If it's about Simpsons more generally, it goes either in Steele's section towards the middle or separately in the next section itself.

The exact formatting depends on the exact claim you are making, since I consider the current claim to be irrelevant to the actual article. You want to say something roughly like "They were not biased towards HRC, they even liked Trump before then" so that fits Authors way more than a general history claim Soni (talk) 05:24, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

More relevant to me, it's not part of the "History" of the dossier is it? It's just more context for the dossier and the biases and verifiability it has, but it tells us nothing about when/how it was made or similar. It's taking a point that's best adjacent to the overall context (How much did the source sympathise with the subject matter) and add it to a section that's already long without any flow towards the rest of history or why this context matters. This entire section will be far better served just moved to another section of the article entirely. Soni (talk) 04:33, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

Anything related to the history of the dossier and its creators and sources is relevant. "Jane Mayer believes the dossier is "perhaps the most controversial opposition research ever to emerge from a Presidential campaign",[43] and Julian Borger described it as "one of the most explosive documents in modern political history".[165]" Therefore it is one of the most widely and deeply covered documents in modern political history. Reliable sources, not some artificial idea of an "ideal" article, dictate what and how much we should write. Wikipedia is not like any other encyclopedia, and should not model itself on any other encyclopedia. We are not paper, and our rules are very different, so we should think differently than the authors of other documents and encyclopedias. Fortunately there isn't much chance the article will get much larger as it is now history, and there are efforts aimed and splitting off some content. That will also help, so we don't need to delete content just to make it smaller. Long articles are allowed here, especially a topic like this one. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 04:54, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

Yes, but that's also not justification to make pages as long as possible without considering when some info "needs" to be there. And more importantly, "where" it needs to be. I am not saying the paragraph is completely irrelevant, I am saying it's irrelevant as it stands for the history. We can easily find better sources that match what the paragraph was half implying, and we can move it to the section where it belongs, rather than make repeated points in multiple subsections of the article.

I'm not arguing for size reduction solely as a function of size reduction, I'm explaining it in the context I care about (How much of it is understandable from a single read through) and giving exact concrete suggestions for what I think could be changed/why. In this case, there are significant parts of the article that are long and warrant it, but there's also enough of it that's long while remaining not as readable Soni (talk) 05:01, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

"rather than make repeated points in multiple subsections of the article." Bingo! I'd love to see that problem resolved. Duplication is sometimes necessary, but not always, and some of that has crept into the article over the years. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 05:06, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

I have looked at the "As Nuland later shared,..." and agree it's no longer very important. It's gone. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 04:16, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

This diff shows the changes made from the version right before you started your edits. You'll see that several of your changes are now in place. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 04:22, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

Lede rewriting

I have made a copy of the lede at User:Soni/sandbox4 to show edits before I make them live.

I have moved a few more sentences of the lede around to make it flow better. Right now the lede seems to start off coherent and clearcut, and then starts repeating itself without any clear cut direction.

There's a paragraph in the middle that serves no purpose other than "facts that didnt fit anywhere else" so removed the bit about Orbis as it was not really relevant to rest of lede or helping with context enough. The line about DNC and Steele saying they didnt know is kinda UNDUE, kinda WP:MANDY but I can see some plausible worlds where we might want to rephrase and include it in some form. The line about US/British intelligence, I moved to another paragraph

The first paragraph is quite long and has no natural breaking points if you plan to keep the structure of that extremely long sentence listing all allegations in a row. I think that sentence could be split into 2 just before namely anyway, but I couldnt see how to. Otherwise the rest of paragraph (veracity of dossier) started being repetitive with the other paragraphs by trying to summarise the documents authenticity twice. Instead now the last paragraph solely focuses on the accuracy of the dossier and segues into the overall impact it had, borrowing the sentence from 1st para and discarding the repeated shorter line in last para.

Finally, now each para of this lede serves a clear purpose and direction, with intro/what were claims + how it was made/when it was public + how seriously was it taken + how correct it is/what impact it had.

I think all of these changes combined make a significant impact making the lede more understandable to a regular reader. Soni (talk) 04:26, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

Changes to the lead have always been a nightmare here. Be very careful. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 04:41, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

That tells me nothing. I am very well aware of how annoying the lede changes here are, most of the unedited bits are exactly what I'd not touched the last time I was here (a year ago?). Back then I was trying to make an unreadable lede parseable, now I'm trying to make a parseable lede easy to follow.

I've also explained all of my reasonings in depth in advance, so we can judge each smaller change on its merits if needed. Best I can tell, each edit improves the article clearly and the lede function better as a wholesale summary. Any more carefulness, and I'd have to open an RFC on every single sentence here. Soni (talk) 04:49, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

Seeing no objections in the last couple weeks, I've implemented these changes Soni (talk) 02:02, 20 March 2024 (UTC)

If I understand this correctly, the following is the better part of what you deleted:

In June 2016, Fusion GPS subcontracted Steele's firm, Orbis Business Intelligence, to compile the dossier. After the election, DNC officials denied knowing their attorney had contracted with Fusion GPS, and Steele asserted he was not aware the Clinton campaign was the recipient of his research until months after he contracted with Fusion GPS.}}

I think that's a reasonable change. It's not essential for the lead. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 03:34, 20 March 2024 (UTC)