Talk:Steele dossier

BLPN Discussion

For any page watchers, there is a discussion at Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons/Noticeboard concerning a recent editing dispute at this article (edit, revert). Thank you for your attention to this matter. TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 18:02, 26 May 2026 (UTC)

Okay, so you also left a note here. That's good. You should have stuck with this and not misused BLPN. The issue has been fixed, as far as I'm concerned, but if you still see a problem with it, feel free to explain. I'm easy to work with. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 20:06, 26 May 2026 (UTC)

Article length

Coming here from that discussion: this page is too large and not conducive to reading or comprehension. Why has it not been split up and why is it kept at this length? Viriditas (talk) 22:31, 26 May 2026 (UTC)

Good question. I have split off the legal stuff into its own article. That was an easy one. Please come with a suggestion for a topic that could be split off as its own article. I'd like to split off the pee tape stuff, but there is a lot of resistance to any article on that topic, even though GNG is pretty clear about that.

We have this same issue at Donald Trump, where there are a lot of topics that could easily be split off, but no one does it. The presidency stuff should be reduced to one section with 5-8 paragraphs.

Why it's so large? Because RS have devoted a crazy amount of coverage, there have been investigations and lawsuits, and especially because of so much controversy, lies, and conspiracy theories. That creates the critical nexus for a perfect storm where details become important. Baseball Bugs put it well: "If I go looking for info, and Wikipedia doesn't have it, then Wikipedia has failed." This article has the details that debunk conspiracy theories.

If the topic was not so controversial, it would be a much smaller article. Otherwise, its size doesn't bother me, largely because this type of topic is not suitable for reading in one setting. It's for searching after reading the lead, which gives a pretty good overview of the article. It's not a story, narrative, or timeline. Those types of topics need to be readable as there is a logical flow. This is blocks of information. It's a whole lot of loosely connected details, and many that have no connection with each other at all.

Again, I really want to hear some ideas on how we can make it smaller. I am not against the idea, but we need to do it without losing critical information. I have my own ideas of what's critical because I know the lies and conspiracy theories, so I know what tidbit is the answer to a question. I really respect WP:PRESERVE. That's why splitting off stuff is the best solution. Duplication is one area to attack. I am too close to the topic to always notice it. Sometimes it's necessary, but not always. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 23:22, 26 May 2026 (UTC)

I'm talking about readability. Large sections get split into new articles. Those sections are then replaced with summary style paragraphs. Allowing any article to get to this kind of extreme length does a major disservice to readers. We have WP:TOOBIG for a reason. Don't see why it is being ignored. Viriditas (talk) 23:31, 26 May 2026 (UTC)

Please suggest a topic in a large section that could become a summary style article.

I don't remember if they have been suggested before (probably not), but I think the "History" and "Authorship and sources" sections could become a separate article. The most basic elements that should stay here are the "Allegations" and "Veracity ..." content. They belong together, and there is no dossier without them. They are the core content. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 00:13, 27 May 2026 (UTC)

My dude, I'm done here. You know there is an issue. What you do about it is up to you. You are obviously resistant to change. I'm not going to go around in circles on this. Viriditas (talk) 00:25, 27 May 2026 (UTC)

Huh? What do you mean? You brought a legitimate complaint, and I solicited possible solutions. You are the "other eyes" needed here. I am not resistant at all. Please bear with my aspie-lite condition. It interferes with my understanding sometimes, plus my "language confused" condition where I speak two languages every day. That sometimes creates problems for me. Maybe we are speaking "past each other"? I'll ping @Tryptofish: who can maybe "translate" and mediate.

What do you think of my suggestion? Do you think it would be good to split off that content? If you think so, I'll be happy to just do it. I just don't like to make major changes solo. That's a recipe for getting into trouble. I don't own this article, so others should be involved in the decision. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 00:41, 27 May 2026 (UTC)

I will bow out now. This is not rocket science nor does it require weeks of discussion. Make the article shorter to help readers. NO CARRIER Viriditas (talk) 00:43, 27 May 2026 (UTC)

Did you even read what I wrote? Just say "Yes, make that change", and then I can't be accused of making a major change solo. I'm a bit sensitive about that, what with the false "ownership" accusations. Just say "yes". One word will do it. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 00:48, 27 May 2026 (UTC)

I have no idea what NO CARRIER means. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 02:50, 27 May 2026 (UTC)

@Skynxnex: Since you have shown interest in this "length" topic, I'm requesting your opinion. It's been an issue for years and no resolution has manifested itself. People come here and complain, then they disappear. I did split off the legal section, but more needs to be done.

I am not getting any help from Viriditas, and my communication skills as an aspie are just not cutting it here, and I'm not sure why, because my suggested solution is simple. At least I think so. Do you think my suggestion above makes sense: "I think the "History" and "Authorship and sources" sections could become a separate article." I am cautious about doing such a thing alone because of the false "ownership" accusation. I need backup from someone else.

BTW, thanks for pointing out the apples vs oranges nature of the absurd comparison of this article with the others. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 02:47, 27 May 2026 (UTC)

There is another, very logical, target for spinning off into its own article, and that is the Steele dossier#Kompromat and "golden showers" allegations section.

The reason is the fact that it gives undue weight, in this article, to one allegation. This is a textbook example of a proper spin off topic. The subject grows and grows, and at some point it gets too large for the whole context of the article. It then becomes an undue burden and should be spun off into its own article, never deleted. Then we just leave a summary paragraph and hatnote pointing to the new article.

Per GNG, it should get a stand alone article. Those are the rules here. Even though it is clearly the most notorious allegation, no other allegation gets so much treatment, and that's because far fewer RS cover them at all, and not nearly as much, while I have nearly 400 fully formatted RS just on this topic. It has received inordinately much coverage, some in great depth as the subject of articles by subject matter experts, Congressional investigations, lawsuits, books, TV shows, comedy, etc. There is even an interesting scholarly paper that covers it: Sexing the Mueller Report. See section III: THE MOSCOW SEX TAPE (THE “PEE TAPE”) It's interesting. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 14:48, 27 May 2026 (UTC)

Jane Mayer believes the dossier is "perhaps the most controversial opposition research ever to emerge from a Presidential campaign", and Julian Borger described it as "one of the most explosive documents in modern political history".

The pee tape allegation is obviously the most controversial and well-covered allegation. It could be spun off, just as it is, but I'm not the one to do it as I live under a cloud of suspicion after the MfD closed with the deletion of my article on the same topic. I was far too comprehensive, covered too many other related topics in the same article, and there were some NPOV and other issues as well. It was very large. So if you want to do it, please do. Trump Moscow tape rumor is a good title that is neutral and has common name validity, although Trump pee tape rumor has far more, but it's too controversial a title. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 14:36, 27 May 2026 (UTC)

References

Bold stubifying

Let's do brass tacks. I'm willing to do some research. I don't buy that there are problems worth cutting 450,000. Get specific. I own several related books and also have TWL access and ability to find archived news articles. I will also mercilessly excise any bad SYNTH, so let's do this properly. TNT is not merited and I don't see a consensus here for that. Andre🚐 20:47, 30 May 2026 (UTC)

Well, if my making that WP:BOLD move actually gets you and other editors to fix the problems with the page, then it was a success. We clearly have a dispute going on, and if you can improve the page so that the problems get solved, I thank you for it. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:12, 30 May 2026 (UTC)

True, I agree! And I don't fault you for being BOLD. Andre🚐 21:16, 30 May 2026 (UTC)

Thank you for your attention to this matter. (Sorry, I couldn't resist.) --Tryptofish (talk) 21:18, 30 May 2026 (UTC)

It's clearly a big article, one of the biggest, if not the biggest and greatest articles in history, but only I can fix it. Andre🚐 21:22, 30 May 2026 (UTC)

I suggest something closer to a rewrite. I personally don't have an opinion on whether the long form or the short form exists until then. If I can offer some suggestions, I'd want to play this by the book (literally) as I explain in User:Thebiguglyalien/The source, the whole source, and nothing but the source: we should start by grabbing general book and journal articles and summarize them in their entirety. It's important that we avoid hand-picking sources on a contentious article like this. The most important thing is that I'd want to avoid using exposés, diatribes, tell-alls, and opinion pieces as sources, even if they're from credible authors and publishers. There should be enough impartial analytical sources to write an article, and whether an opinion is due should be determined by whether one of these sources describes in a third-party fashion. A straightforward list of these sources will make the writing process much easier going forward. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 21:41, 30 May 2026 (UTC)

That's a slightly more stringent and formalized way than the naturalistic and iterative way I prefer to work. I do agree that the best sources are books and academic journal articles over news. Opinions can be used attributed in some cases (not BLP load bearing if that is in doubt). I'm not aware of a problem with "exposes" or "tell-alls" and what makes an opinion piece a diatribe is subjective. I have Simpson's book and Steele's book, the books by Shimer, Jamieson, the WaPo guy (can't think of his name right now). The problem with insisting we blow up all lesser sources is that this is still pretty recent, and has only recently improved enough source upstream-wise to support more textbook like and retrospective journal work. NODEADLINE, work in progress, and even poorly cited (non BLP load bearing) material might be salveageable per SOFIXIT, PRESERVE, etc. So I'm going to suggest a Wiki way forward is to try to fix problems while also refactoring aggressively and discussing openly. There are certainly parts that could be rewritten more extensively but I'm not going to approach it as throwing away all journalistic sources first. Andre🚐 22:18, 30 May 2026 (UTC)

If we're looking at the best sources to start with, the ones that caught my eye were Spooked by Barry Meier and Russian Roulette by Michael Isikoff and David Corn as ones that are hopefully impartial and analytical. With that said, I haven't read them and can't say for sure they'd be useful. For individual events, I like timeline sources, which I see listed in further reading. They're pretty good at demonstrating due weight. After that, the best sources would be journalism/articles that give an overview or analysis of the topic, allowing the sources to put together the events so we can avoid accidentally doing so ourselves. There are some good sources like this in the article already, we just have to make sure they're WP:MINEd. I won't say there should be zero contemporary sources, but they shouldn't be the first choice if there are better options.

As far as exposés and tell-alls, it's because articles are exponentially more difficult to write neutrally when these are used as sources; it's too easy to let the authors' opinions seep into the article, and their presentation of facts is going to be more selective than more impartial sources, leading to distorted WP:WEIGHT. On a similar note, this would be a good article to keep "Try not to quote directly from participants engaged in a heated dispute" in mind (WP:IMPARTIAL). Thebiguglyalien (talk) 03:06, 31 May 2026 (UTC)

I will check out Spooked but it's literally "An Exposé" :-) But I don't think we're actually too far apart on how to do this. Andre🚐 04:53, 31 May 2026 (UTC)

So, I have started working. I have trimmed a few long blockquotes and excessive detail, and I intend to recenter around the big picture historical narrative of events rather than starting out in the weeds, then I'll treat the controversies evenly. Mostly from Meier thus far (which was already cited in the article). I intend to look at Isikoff and Corn next. Isikoff is a part of the story as he is mentioned in Meier. Obviously the books by Simpson and Steele are also part of the story but are useful as well. I will say these book sources are clearly not sufficient without help from news/web sources. Meier, being a journalist not an academic, is just writing longer form journalism in a way. I'll do some digging for journal articles, but there is clearly not an authoritative, textbook-like account of the Steele dossier yet. Even Meier, while he is skeptical of the unconfirmed and possible misinfo parts of the dossier (see also Jamieson p.31, but Jamieson only mentions this a couple times), shies away from any comprehensive debunking, merely citing opinions that Steele is junk that are largely already represented here (but I'll keep working out of the book).

As I understand it the goal here is 1) shorter and more succinct and less verbose, in a more summary style, 2) ensure neutrality and appear less as if we are defending the dossier and more portraying the debate and the evolution over time of the views of its value, which are mainly that it got some of the major details right and early, but whiffed it on some other things (which as mentioned may have been planted misinfo). Meier makes an interesting point about the Rome meeting, along with Simpson's dim view of the NYT article that FBI saw no connection Trump-Russia, that Simpson and Steele basically got the fundamental idea of Russia helping Trump right (as our article already says, perhaps too verbosely), but failed to get the story out in time despite their desire to hurt Trump after finding what they found, and then went too big and whiffed it on other things that ended up helping Trump. Meier also takes a positive view of the Horowitz report, presumably not shared by Steele, and perhaps Harding. I will look at Harding too, but he probably takes a more positive view of Steele and the Dossier that I will keep attributed (as it already is in the article). I would say Meier is largely dispassionate leaning negative and critical, which isn't a bad Wiki vantage point to work from. Andre🚐 18:00, 6 June 2026 (UTC)

I sincerely wish these efforts good sailing. Maybe another approach than my comprehensive (Jimbo and Baseball Bugs style) one will work better, but one thing is certain, the article will never be fully accepted. Atsme tried to delete it more than once and failed, but there are forces that don't want the words "Steele dossier" to exist at Wikipedia. Good luck. Really. I know this is in good hands. This will be exciting to watch from the sidelines, without participating! -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 01:54, 31 May 2026 (UTC)

A complaint from AE to deal with

Before the radical reworking began, I had already begun to analyze a complaint at AE, and I'd like to leave what I've done in your hands. Take it or leave it, but the complaint deserves attention. I was going to fix it, but it's now best I don't edit this article

A problem was pointed out at AE by Ealdgyth, and it deserves attention. When another editor says something's wrong with content I worked on, I always seek to fix any problems and improve the content, sourcing, attribution, and whatever else might need to be done.

The following example includes a diff, and that's good. But alone, the diff proves nothing. It's a diff right before the next diff, which might show the material getting improved. Who knows without looking further than that one diff?

The complaint should be taken seriously, so here goes....

Here is the complaint

Diff from 21:46, 19 June 2023:

Looking at SFR's further data:

• This edit "Before the Crossfire Hurrican team received dossier material on September 19, 2016" is sourced to this blog (which is a problem in itself) but it does not contain any information stating anything about September 19. There are only two mentions of September in the blog post - one a general statement in a quote, and the second a mention of September 9 in another quote. Nor is "Crossfire" mentioned at all in the blog. The addition of this to Carter Page's article is also problematic.
• While looking at this particular edit, I also noted "The following sources and the historical timeline show the Republicans' claims are false." being added to the two articles - this is a concerning addition, especially as it is not sourced at all. This appears to be Valjean's own synthesis from the following paragraphs, and not something from any source. User:Ealdgyth (talk) 12:24, 30 May 2026 (UTC)

A quick and superficial analysis

• The content starting with "Before the Crossfire Hurricane team received dossier material on September 19, 2016" has been updated and sourced since that diff.
• Here is the current version:

Before the Crossfire Hurricane team received dossier material on September 19, 2016, they had already gathered enough evidence from their own sources to make them seriously consider seeking FISA warrants on Carter Page, but they needed a bit more, and, because "the Justice Department possessed information 'obtained through multiple independent sources that corroborated Steele's reporting' with respect to Page", the mutually independent corroborations gave them more confidence to make that decision.

• Lawfare is an online multimedia publication about national security issues in the United States. It is a renowned and super reliable source operated by lawyers and other legal and national security experts. They are "subject-matter experts" supreme. It's hard to find a better source. They do a lot of teamwork and produce excellent and deep analysis. It is now a normally unquestioned RS.

It is far from a "blog", even though it used to have that moniker (Lawfare (blog)). The old 2023 diff is misleading and creating this confusion because in 2023, the old "blog" link to Lawfare had not yet been updated. That updating happened later. The "blog" word no longer appears in the Steele article for that source, and should not appear anywhere at Wikipedia. The new link is to Lawfare (website), which recognizes the changes and modernization of the organization. It is far from a blog anymore. It took them some time to change their URL.

• I suspect some later sources should be copied to the above for the nitty-gritty details. They exist and are most likely nearby.

• The following may well not exist anymore. I haven't checked. The sentence "The following sources and the historical timeline show the Republicans' claims are false." is itself an introductory statement, like a lead, that literally says "The following sources", so, IOW "the sources follow". I'm not sure how to say it better. They are there! Like an article lead without any sourcing, the sources are found in the body of the article. Here they are located later, just not immediately connected to the introductory sentence. Placing the sources into the sentence defeats its introductory purpose.

Without looking deeply yet, my immediate impression is that, since the meaning of that introductory/lead sentence is apparently not clear enough, maybe the sources should be copied into the sentence itself and the later content tweaked. A Featured Article requires a source at the end of the sentence, but other articles don't always do that. Introductory sentences, without sources, are not forbidden.

That's just a quick and surface analysis. IOW, I could be wrong. First impressions can be misleading. I'm speaking from the knowledge of how I normally work. I got that knowledge from RS. I do not make up shit, but shit happens! I'm imperfect and may have made a careless mistake by omitting a source in exactly that spot. If so, I would normally fix it, but I'll leave this up to others now. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 02:12, 31 May 2026 (UTC)

Sources:

Notes and references

Valjean (talk) (PING me) 02:12, 31 May 2026 (UTC)

Mayer 2018

Worth noting for posterity that I have restored the crux of the Mayer 2018 edit that TTAC had added and Valjean removed. Both are currently blocked, but I think on balance that a fairer way to try to defuse the bomb and continue to improve iteratively is to add this. Of course, anyone may revert it, and we will discuss it further. On analysis the purpose of the edit is to balance the likelihood of anything having the thumb on the scale given that nobody really knows what happened, so it makes it more neutral by qualifying, basically raises the possibility that witnesses conflated a recollection of a story leading to it being distorted in the dossier, since the thrust of the neutrality dispute seems to be that Valjean has allowed himself to overweight on the idea of this recollection being accurate, but we do not know and some sources are more equivocal. While I can see why Valjean reverted it, and I can see another reasonable person doing so as well, I'm adding it back because I think it doesn't detract and might be helpful if a little awkward, which can be smoothed out later. Andre🚐 00:11, 1 June 2026 (UTC)