Talk:The Grayzone

why are all comments critical of this article removed?

why are all comments critical of this article removed? ~2026-22851-1 (talk) 19:31, 11 January 2026 (UTC)

They aren't. They are archived. See the banner at the top, where you can view and search the talk page archives. ~Anachronist (who / me) (talk) 18:35, 25 May 2026 (UTC)

"Neutral Point of View"?!

This ridiculously biased article illustrates why Wikipedia is increasingly disregarded as a source of information on current affairs. Like all publications, The Grayzone makes mistakes - but not more than other news publications like the New York Times. Its real "crime" is that it exposes the lies of Western politicians and their largely subservient mainstream media. That is what real journalism is for. Longitude2 (talk) 08:19, 7 June 2026 (UTC)

Agree. What an absurd article. Mainstream sources are not going to be reliable where the subject is a critic of the establishment that includes those mainstream sources. There is simply a conflict of interest. The solution to this is for the Wiki article to focus solely on facts in the article outside sections e.g. "Reception" or "Controversy" where editorialisations can then be paraphrased.

Consider the second paragraph of the introduction, which cites half a dozen sources for saying they "have been accused of" publishing pro-Russian propaganda. The last source is a Guardian article, the quote from which says The Grayzone "has been accused of carrying pro-Russian propaganda". Okay ... accused by whom????? And what was the supposed propaganda? This is really basic stuff. Be factual. Don't regurgitate hearsay like it's a conclusion. Then try to balance that with the alternative views. The actual tone and content of their reporting is the important thing, not whether some schmoe thinks they are propagandising. I think all mainstream western media and the BBC are utterly propagandistic in their foreign reportage, I don't see "they have been accused of anti-Russian/Chinese/Iranian/Iraqi/Palestinian/Venezuelan propaganda" in their summaries.

The one on Glenn Diesen is also ridiculous in the same manner. ~2026-26712-13 (talk) 15:26, 3 July 2026 (UTC)

Also, for instance, the excerpt of citation #33, following a clause about Xinjiang, refers only to an accusation of bias in relation to that subject, without any specifics. Maybe it's just there for strength in numbers?

I don't care if a million establishment hacks have accused them of this or that. And yes, I'm quite sure that at some point Grayzone has got something wrong and that they will have their biases, they are hardly likely to err in the favour of Israel. But be granular rather than broad-brush, don't throw a hundred sources at the wall and see what sticks. It's pathetic and shameful.

I noticed all this in 30 seconds just skimming through this rubbish. ~2026-26712-13 (talk) 15:36, 3 July 2026 (UTC)

This article is so stupendously awful that it serves as a good summary of how poorly Wikipedia handles articles about modern political topics. All of the policies and guidelines are in place to solve this problem, but they are applied in such a ludicrous manner, due to the political and philosophical biases of the most committed editors, that it's as if the policies and guidelines don't exist.

Many dozens of people have pointed out the same issues that you have pointed out, but the problem is that a small group of POV-motivated editors become very hostile when that happens. So, even though the editors who notice the obvious problems outnumber the POV-editors 5 or 10 to 1, the editors who notice the obvious problems tend to get sanctioned, banned, or they just get frustrated and give up, and the POV-insertion remains, under the guise of a faux, manufactured "consensus". I tend to think that this will continue until, at least, the end of the "Trump era". Philomathes2357 (talk) Philomathes2357 (talk) 18:56, 29 July 2026 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 27 June 2026

This LLM-generated text has been collapsed and should be excluded from assessments of consensus.

The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

The lead of this article appears to place disproportionate emphasis on criticism of The Grayzone while presenting several evaluative claims in Wikipedia’s own voice. Rather than providing a neutral summary of the publication, the opening paragraphs consist primarily of a sequence of negative characterizations and allegations, many of which are based on the opinions of individual publications or organizations.

Wikipedia’s lead should summarize the topic in a balanced manner by first describing what The Grayzone is—its founding, editor, stated focus, and publication history—before summarizing significant criticism in proportion to its coverage in reliable secondary sources. Where sources characterize the publication as “fringe,” “misleading,” or make other evaluative judgments, those assessments should be clearly attributed instead of being presented as objective facts unless there is a high-quality source demonstrating that they represent an established consensus.

Likewise, allegations concerning subjects such as reporting on Xinjiang, Syria, or Russia should remain properly attributed and should not dominate the lead unless they are demonstrably among the publication’s defining characteristics under Wikipedia’s due-weight policy. The current version reads less as a neutral encyclopedic summary and more as a compilation of criticisms, which risks giving undue prominence to one aspect of the subject at the expense of a balanced overview. ~2026-22468-12 (talk) 03:07, 27 June 2026 (UTC)

So what do you want to change? I would put it as Not done because the request is unclear, but then, what would you like to add, remove, change etc? All I see is a block of text that's giving advice without taking action. Please put in what you want changed and provide it. Theeverywhereperson talk here ^{In solidarity!} 09:07, 27 June 2026 (UTC)

 Not done. Despite the the request for clarification above, any slop LLM edit requests will be summarily ignored. –Deacon Vorbis (carbon • videos) 15:19, 27 June 2026 (UTC)

Wikivoicing criticism

@Ananinunenon: You changed the lead here (wikivoicing WP:LABEL/criticism), stating Reverted to concensus made in 2023 RfC. There was no newer RfC so unless that changes lede should stay this way. At Talk:The Grayzone/Archive 2#RfC I don't see any consensus i.e. no consensus. So that doesn't appear to be correct.

Further pinging Vanilla Wizard. Gotitbro (talk) 09:32, 29 June 2026 (UTC)

I could have sworn there was a consensus on that, the edit was quite a while ago so I can't exactly remember why I thought so at the time. My mistake! Ananinunenon (talk) 10:04, 29 June 2026 (UTC)

You're correct that there was no consensus resulting from that RfC, it was archived without being closed or relisted and it had an exactly 50/50 split between supporters of keeping the lede as it was before & supporters of changing it to something else with more critical language. So there wasn't a consensus in favor of adding terms like "conspiracy theory website" or "fake news website", but there also wasn't a consensus against that or in favor of the pre-RfC status quo language either.  Vanilla  Wizard 💙 15:20, 29 June 2026 (UTC)

@Ananinunenon and Vanilla Wizard: I will be reverting the wikivoicing of these labels (introduced in Ananinunenon's latest edits). We should be very careful with handling WP:LABELs especially when they have no consensus.

Though I would also support moving this from the lead altogether, leaving that discussion for now. Gotitbro (talk) 16:00, 29 June 2026 (UTC)

No strong opposition from me, but I should note the disagreement you two are talking about is really an undiscussed issue and the old RfC isn't too relevant here. That RfC was about 2 different labels, and calling this publication "far left" in Wikivoice was the pre-RfC language which nobody on either side appeared to take issue with. "Fringe" seems to have been added later on.

While I am neutral on this issue and have no plans to argue for one side or the other, I think it'd be helpful for discussion to focus on the strength of the sources for/against using these words in Wikivoice. I'm completely open to the idea that maybe it's not appropriate to call them fringe or far left in Wikivoice, but I reject the idea that it's necessarily a violation of WP:LABEL. Far this or far that isn't a pejorative when it's simply the term used by the preponderance of reliable sources, that's why I supported terming the Republicans far right in Wikivoice, which the consensus version now does. LABEL tells us that value-laden labels may express contentious opinion and are best avoided unless widely used by reliable sources to describe the subject, so any decision one way or the other here should be based on the sources; merely bringing up LABEL as a reason to avoid terms isn't enough.

 Vanilla  Wizard 💙 17:36, 29 June 2026 (UTC)

"preponderance" is certainly the thing we should be looking for. I haven't reviewed the major corpus of RS on this, but I'm still confident that when multiple labels (fringe, conspiracy, far-left and so on) are being proferred for a single sentence that is unlikely to meet the bar. Even focusing to "far-left" itself, that appears to be challenged by the fact that we've had proposals (going through the archives) to say it is "far-right" as well!

These are certainly label issues best avoided. Gotitbro (talk) 18:20, 29 June 2026 (UTC)

The discussion about "fringe" was more recent: Talk:The Grayzone/Archive 3#Why is Grayzone classified as "fringe"? How is this validated? How can it be challenged? - I remember taking part in that discussion.

A preponderance of reliable sources characterize it that way. ~Anachronist (who / me) (talk) 05:03, 30 June 2026 (UTC)

"fringe" that has been linked (which also calls it a pejorative) would appear to be needless if we're already calling it far-left (extreme). As I state, sources have also been proferred for conspiracy, fake news and so on but we need to be circumspect with the labelling here. Gotitbro (talk) 05:58, 30 June 2026 (UTC)

I have undone Ananinunenon's recent changes. Moved the critic characterizations to the latter half of the lead sentence (though I still question the addition there at all). Gotitbro (talk) 18:27, 29 June 2026 (UTC)

@R. Bardghji: You have moved around these labels in the lead sentence again. I don't see that you've participated in discussions about this/edited this article before (appear to have to followed me from Citizen Vigilante) and your edits contain no edit summary to address any of the concerns raised here and prior. Gotitbro (talk) 00:48, 30 June 2026 (UTC)

It looks like all that user did was rearrange a couple sentences without changing the wording of them. But speaking of the wording:

Since you mentioned there was also a discussion in the archives where one editor suggested changing "far left" to "far right", I took a look at that discussion to see if there were sources that describe The Grayzone as far right. I was neutral on whether we should say "far left" in Wikivoice or not because I viewed it as entirely possible that a "far left" group with tankie tendencies could devolve into a far-right group or at least a syncretic one, it's been known to happen (e.g. this happened to the "People's Party"). And full disclosure, I'm biased towards not wanting to see this site described as "left" period, my personal opinion is that groups that praise Putin and Assad are simply anti-US/West and not "left" in any meaningful sense, but the article's language shouldn't reflect what I think, it should reflect what sources say. And after reviewing the sources in that discussion... there are none. No sources were provided to call this group far right, that discussion only reaffirmed the far left label.

Reading that discussion also led me to finding that there was actually a different 2023 RfC, one that I wasn't involved with, and one which actually did produce a consensus. That RfC was specifically about calling The Grayzone far left:

There is a strong consensus that "far-left" can be used to describe Grayzone, and a slightly less clear but still rough consensus that "far-left" should be used in Wikivoice in the opening sentence of the article. Proponents pointed to a long list of reliable sources describing Grayzone as far-left, which this closer evaluates as a strong argument for describing them as such somewhere. However, they often did not specifically address the issue of where to place this description, which is why I've evaluated the consensus for that point as weaker. Opponents gave a variety of reasons: some which boil down to WP:WEIGHT concerns, and some which boil down to MOS:LABEL concerns. Given the sourcing, I don't evaluate either of these concerns as particularly strong, and there were also significantly fewer of both of them combined than there were proponents.

With that in mind, I've moved my position on this and I'm going to have to recommend you do a partial self-revert to reinstate referring to this group as far-left in Wikivoice unless you can refute that this is the characterization used by the preponderance of reliable sources, because the most recent thorough discussion on that exact topic found that this is in fact what the sources are saying, so that's not a WP:LABEL vio.

 Vanilla  Wizard 💙 04:12, 30 June 2026 (UTC)

Pinging @Ananinunenon: to let them know it actually wasn't your mistake, there really was a consensus for this. It looks like Gotitbro just accidentally looked at the wrong RfC.  Vanilla  Wizard 💙 04:16, 30 June 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me know. Should an FAQ for it maybe be put here on the talk page for future reference then? Ananinunenon (talk) 06:03, 30 June 2026 (UTC)

@Vanilla Wizard: I see, good to know. But considering there exactly wasn't a clear consensus for wikivoicing this I would like to leave this upto uninvolved editors to evaluate that close.

The problem of "fringe" in the lead also persists nonetheless. Gotitbro (talk) 04:30, 30 June 2026 (UTC)