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The lawsuit is mentioned in the article, and it has sources. Should the appeal of that judgment be mentioned? The Star-Telegram article stated the defendant would appeal, and the defendant has a press release announcing the appeal. On the one hand, reporting the existence of an appeal would serve WP:NPOV. On the other hand, I don't know of any independent sources that comment on the merits of the appeal. An appeal is a matter of right, so the existence of an appeal does not speak to its merits.
Agreed. I think saying "I'm going to appeal" is a typical reaction by anybody who comes up short in a trial. If news of this appeal does come up in a WP:RS let's put it in, if not then it does not belong in an encyclopedia. If anybody decides to add more information about the trial, then it should probably be kept short. I added the $6.1 million judgement to the article because that is a large amount for a small organization like this, but I don't think all the details of this trial need to be crammed into this stub of an article. Keep in mind that this article is about an animal sanctuary, not a legal battle. If a reliable source about the appeal is found, then I would suggest changing the text to something like "In June 2012, Bat World Sanctuary was awarded 6.1 million dollars in damages in its defamation lawsuit against a former volunteer. This ruling is currently under appeal." No more than that. MisterUnit (talk) 16:39, 2 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I'm a bit confused by this diff. This is a CBS news article. You could say that that any article written by any journalist is "just an opinion," but that doesn't necessarily make it the case. Unless Qwyrxian or anybody else can explain to me why CBS News is not a WP:RS, or show me conflicting sources that say that sanctuaries other than BWS are the largest bat rescue center on the planet by both area and bat population, I will certainly be adding the content back to the article. Thanks MisterUnit (talk) 23:45, 2 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, if you look at the article, it's not a CBS news article, it's a Good Morning America article. Good Morning America is not a reliable source for actual facts (I checked on WP:RSN). It is a source for it's own opinion (in this case, claiming BWS is the largest in the world), but the problem is that the GMA opinion isn't important enough wrt Bat Sanctuaries to be included. While a blog is obviously not a reliable source, this blog post indicates another site as the Guinness World Record Holder with over 1.8 million bats. This about.com article also claims 1.8 million. Now, even if I'm inclined to doubt those links (as I should), it still seems quite likely to me that slightly over 20K bats in BWS are not the largest in the world. So, the only way we can include the quote is as an opinion, but I believe that it gives very much undue weight to a morning fluff show to have it's opinion about what the largest something in the world is, especially given some believable if uncertain evidence that they're off by nearly a factor of 100. Qwyrxian (talk) 05:04, 3 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Weird, that's my mistake. I somehow read "Early Show" (in the html), and took into account the non-journalistic style of the piece, and attributed it to GMA. But, of course, as you say, that's a different network. On the other hand, the claim is unbelievably false. Is this a case where we want to say, "Well, a source says it, so it's verified, so we'll include it"? Ahhhh....I see, the source doesn't say it's the world's largest bat sanctuary, it says it's the "world's largest bat rescue center". Which, of course, is a pretty vague term. Well, I guess it can go back in the article...it just doesn't seem like a particularly useful claim to me. Do other's think it should be returned? I'm tempted to argue that the overall tone of the piece marks it as a human interest store (not phrases like "And that's not all."), not one we should rely upon for such a tremendous claim...but I'm not that determined on this matter. Qwyrxian (talk) 05:51, 3 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Right, I can see how it would be confusing since in that quote BWS is referred to as a "rescue center," whereas it's referred to as a "sanctuary" for pretty much the rest of the article. I don't disagree that the piece is a bit puffy, but I also haven't been able to find a "bat rescue center" with more than 20,000 bats, so I don't necessarily think the claim is false. I do, however, think that it adds to the article. If you were writing an article on the world's largest city you would mention that it is the world's largest city, if you were writing an article on the world's largest sports arena you would mention that it's the world's largest sports arena, so I don't see why you wouldn't mention this being the world's largest bat rescue center.
I'm with Qwyrxian on this one, in that I'm not too determined to argue about this. My work here started off as an AfD rescue project (something I'm not too used to doing since I'm usually a devout deletionist), and I've been surprised by the amount of attention this article has drawn. Really I was just surprised to see an admin stating that a CBS News source is not reliable, but now I get the confusion. Still, I think the content belongs in the article. Thanks MisterUnit (talk) 14:55, 3 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Well, absent any clear reason to remove the info, I'm going to add it back in. I still wish I knew exactly what they meant, or where they got that info (the nature of the piece makes me worry that BWS said "We're the biggest in the world" and the reporter was like "Ooh, let's go with that!"), but my sneaking suspicions aren't quite enough to justify removal. Qwyrxian (talk) 22:58, 3 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
