This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
Michael Roach article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
Article policies
|
Find sources: Google ( books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL |
Archives: Index, 1, 2, 3, 4Auto-archiving period: 90 days |
This article must adhere to the biographies of living persons (BLP) policy, even if it is not a biography, because it contains material about living persons. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately from the article and its talk page, especially if potentially libellous. If such material is repeatedly inserted, or if you have other concerns, please report the issue to this noticeboard.If you are a subject of this article, or acting on behalf of one, and you need help, please see this help page. |
This article is rated C-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | ||||||||||||||||||
|
The subject of this article is controversial and content may be in dispute. When updating the article, be bold, but not reckless. Feel free to try to improve the article, but don't take it personally if your changes are reversed; instead, come here to the talk page to discuss them. Content must be written from a neutral point of view. Include citations when adding content and consider tagging or removing unsourced information. |
The edit is certainly better, since the language is now neutral, but I think it's still misleading to say "Roach stated in a letter..." because it suggests to the reader that Roach is the only one who holds this opinion, despite the fact that the event being referred to is mentioned in numerous articles, and that the letter was published by Diamond Mountain, not by Roach on his personal web site. If you must qualify this, you should say "In a letter published by Diamond Mountain, Roach stated that...." But I think this is unnecessary and misleading, since the fact that they were ejected from DM for violating DM policy is not disputed. In general, you say "so and so says" because you are trying to make it clear that it is a minority position. Abhayakara ( talk) 17:53, 25 July 2012 (UTC)
{{Request edit}}
I'm requesting that an editor who has not been accused of COI revert
this edit, which is in violation of the Wikipedia policy for using a self-published source in a BLP (
WP:BLPSPS).
Abhayakara (
talk) 03:05, 26 July 2012 (UTC)
I think maybe it's worth revisiting what we are trying to accomplish here. I'm going to tackle this from the perspective of Wikipedia, not from the perspective of our various POVs or whatever. Wikipedia editors are supposed to take what the literature on a topic says and condense it into an encyclopedia article which is neutral and accurate to the sources. I think we ought to be able to use our knowledge of the subject to figure out where to go to find sources, and how to summarize what the sources say. But there is a danger in this: if we know the subject intimately, we start to put our own opinions into the article, rather than accurately representing what the sources say.
So to bring this back to the discussion at hand, we are talking about what to say about Roach's partner practice with McNally. This is a religious topic, so we have the additional morass of belief to sort through. We mustn't choose to say which beliefs are valid or correct—all we should do is to report what the sources say. Roach says he believes he is qualified to do the practice. Thurman says he finds this claim incredible. Gyatso says nothing specific at all about Roach.
So let's take an example that I think none of us have a personal stake in, and think about how we'd write about it. Imagine for a moment that we are writing about a well-known Catholic who's an alcoholic, and who claims to be sober for ten years. Yet this Catholic has been seen taking communion faithfully every Sunday morning. Parishioners have reported that this person takes a healthy drink of the sacramental wine as it is passed to him. Questions are raised: is this person lying?
Of course, we would never have this discussion. It is an element of faith in Catholicism that the sacramental wine is transformed by the priest's blessing into the blood of Christ. It isn't wine that we're pretending is the blood of Christ. It's actually the blood of Christ. At the same time, if you ask recovering alcoholics about this, they will often say that because taking the host alone still counts as taking the holy sacrament, there is no need to drink the sacramental wine, and that to do so is playing with fire.
But here we have a recovering alcoholic who is taking both elements of the holy sacrament. Are we, as wikipedians, entitled to question his assertion that he is drinking the blood of Christ, and therefore not drinking wine? Clearly we are not. If someone else asserts that he is drinking wine, and not the blood of Christ, is it our duty as wikipedians to report this? Is it even appropriate to report this?
So to bring this back to Roach, he is saying that he is qualified. Does he mean that he can transform the atoms of meat, alcohol or feces into some other substance? I don't know, and it does seem incredible. Assuming that such a miracle were possible, what would we see if we watched him do it? Would we see the unclean substances miraculously turn into something pure? Or would we see him eating these substances in their impure form? Does "transform the substances" even mean that the atoms change, or is it just a matter of him experiencing the substances as if they were different? I don't think the answer actually matters, since we couldn't use this experience in our wikipedia article, but the point is that assertions that Roach is not qualified haven't been made. Questions have been raised as to whether he is qualified. I don't think it's even appropriate in a wikipedia article to report on these questions, because they are essentially speculation and matters of opinion, not matters of fact. No Buddhist tribunal has rendered a judgment on Roach in particular. The Dalai Lama's words on the topic in How to Practice are informative, but can't be used to decide either way.
On the question of his legal marriage to McNally, he provides an explanation for why it was done. They have not acted publicly like a married couple—I've never seen them embrace, or kiss, or do more than hold hands—itself somewhat scandalous for a monk, but certainly not grounds for an accusation of a downfall. We don't have pictures of them doing so, and we don't have reports of them doing so in any reliable sources. So the marriage question is really separate from the practice question, for which we do have reliable sources, including Roach.
Suppose a monk were to legally marry a woman, so as to have legal access to her insurance, or her to his, or so as to ensure that she would inherit his property, and they were not engaging in any karma mudra practice together, and did not openly act like a married couple. Would that qualify as a downfall? If so, why? Does the quote Vritti offered from Gyatso support such a contention, or not? I think it's a judgment call, and so we can't report on it: to do so would be WP:SYNTHESIS.
This is why I keep harping on all the gossipy stuff that keeps getting added to this article. It's not improving the article. This article isn't a place for determining whether Roach is a good guy or a bad guy—it's a place for reporting on what we know about him. We honestly don't know whether he's qualified to do the practice, and we don't know whether he's still got his monk's vows, or whether he's committed a downfall. And so we shouldn't say. Abhayakara ( talk) 17:55, 26 July 2012 (UTC)
Enter Michael Roach ordained as a Gelugpa monk. Since the entire "controversy" in this article revolves around the behavior of Michael Roach as an ordained monk, I think you are arguing and wiki-lawyering a very minority view that what the Dalai Lama says about Gelugpa monks and monastics somehow, has nothing to do with Michael Roach. The remarks of the Dalai Lama are in no way gossip as they reflect the view of the Gelugpa sangha of monks and nuns. It is clear that Michael Roach looks at things differently, but this is his minority view which he shares with very few. At the moment the article now includes exceedingly credible testimony on how the Gelugpas view monastic conduct and how Michael Roach views it. Let the reader decide what to think about this "controversy", the whole point in bringing this subject to NPOV.
201.191.195.82 (
talk) 21:16, 26 July 2012 (UTC)
I, Vritti wrote the statement immediately above. For some reason I am getting regularly logged out of Wikipedia today while doing all this writing ...
Vritti (
talk) 21:23, 26 July 2012 (UTC)
Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified 3 external links on Michael Roach. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
{{
dead link}}
tag to
http://www.mtexpress.com/2004/04-04-09/04-04-09monk.htmWhen you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.
This message was posted before February 2018.
After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than
regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors
have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the
RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{
source check}}
(last update: 5 June 2024).
Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot ( Report bug) 10:24, 31 December 2017 (UTC)
I think this article should be rewritten by an established Wikipedia editor and locked against vandalism. There is minimal discussion of the most notable thing about Roach--the death of Ian Thorson and the controversial marriage to Christie McNally. Meanwhile, the talk page clearly indicates that people editing the page are extreme minority insiders with idiosyncratic ideas about Tibetan Buddhism--indicative of Roach's teachings. Furthermore, most recent edits come from accounts that don't even have user names, just anonymous IP addresses. Switfoot ( talk) 22:58, 21 November 2022 (UTC)
Anyone who reads this article, its editing history, and its Talk page, quickly realises that there had been numerous and consistent attempts to rewrite the article, manipulate the flow of its style and tone towards a certain biased point of view (from both sides of the isle). Both, those who are affiliated with Roach, and those who create blogs to work at destroying his reputation, had tried to push the article towards a certain direction.
I believe we shouldn't allow the article (or its Talk page for that matter) to be dominated only by one point of view that stems from a clear COI.
In its current state, some sections of this article are biased against Roach.
We need to start an objective conversation around the current state of this article and where it is going. 84.198.107.83 ( talk) 22:39, 29 May 2023 (UTC)
This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
Michael Roach article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
Article policies
|
Find sources: Google ( books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL |
Archives: Index, 1, 2, 3, 4Auto-archiving period: 90 days |
This article must adhere to the biographies of living persons (BLP) policy, even if it is not a biography, because it contains material about living persons. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately from the article and its talk page, especially if potentially libellous. If such material is repeatedly inserted, or if you have other concerns, please report the issue to this noticeboard.If you are a subject of this article, or acting on behalf of one, and you need help, please see this help page. |
This article is rated C-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | ||||||||||||||||||
|
The subject of this article is controversial and content may be in dispute. When updating the article, be bold, but not reckless. Feel free to try to improve the article, but don't take it personally if your changes are reversed; instead, come here to the talk page to discuss them. Content must be written from a neutral point of view. Include citations when adding content and consider tagging or removing unsourced information. |
The edit is certainly better, since the language is now neutral, but I think it's still misleading to say "Roach stated in a letter..." because it suggests to the reader that Roach is the only one who holds this opinion, despite the fact that the event being referred to is mentioned in numerous articles, and that the letter was published by Diamond Mountain, not by Roach on his personal web site. If you must qualify this, you should say "In a letter published by Diamond Mountain, Roach stated that...." But I think this is unnecessary and misleading, since the fact that they were ejected from DM for violating DM policy is not disputed. In general, you say "so and so says" because you are trying to make it clear that it is a minority position. Abhayakara ( talk) 17:53, 25 July 2012 (UTC)
{{Request edit}}
I'm requesting that an editor who has not been accused of COI revert
this edit, which is in violation of the Wikipedia policy for using a self-published source in a BLP (
WP:BLPSPS).
Abhayakara (
talk) 03:05, 26 July 2012 (UTC)
I think maybe it's worth revisiting what we are trying to accomplish here. I'm going to tackle this from the perspective of Wikipedia, not from the perspective of our various POVs or whatever. Wikipedia editors are supposed to take what the literature on a topic says and condense it into an encyclopedia article which is neutral and accurate to the sources. I think we ought to be able to use our knowledge of the subject to figure out where to go to find sources, and how to summarize what the sources say. But there is a danger in this: if we know the subject intimately, we start to put our own opinions into the article, rather than accurately representing what the sources say.
So to bring this back to the discussion at hand, we are talking about what to say about Roach's partner practice with McNally. This is a religious topic, so we have the additional morass of belief to sort through. We mustn't choose to say which beliefs are valid or correct—all we should do is to report what the sources say. Roach says he believes he is qualified to do the practice. Thurman says he finds this claim incredible. Gyatso says nothing specific at all about Roach.
So let's take an example that I think none of us have a personal stake in, and think about how we'd write about it. Imagine for a moment that we are writing about a well-known Catholic who's an alcoholic, and who claims to be sober for ten years. Yet this Catholic has been seen taking communion faithfully every Sunday morning. Parishioners have reported that this person takes a healthy drink of the sacramental wine as it is passed to him. Questions are raised: is this person lying?
Of course, we would never have this discussion. It is an element of faith in Catholicism that the sacramental wine is transformed by the priest's blessing into the blood of Christ. It isn't wine that we're pretending is the blood of Christ. It's actually the blood of Christ. At the same time, if you ask recovering alcoholics about this, they will often say that because taking the host alone still counts as taking the holy sacrament, there is no need to drink the sacramental wine, and that to do so is playing with fire.
But here we have a recovering alcoholic who is taking both elements of the holy sacrament. Are we, as wikipedians, entitled to question his assertion that he is drinking the blood of Christ, and therefore not drinking wine? Clearly we are not. If someone else asserts that he is drinking wine, and not the blood of Christ, is it our duty as wikipedians to report this? Is it even appropriate to report this?
So to bring this back to Roach, he is saying that he is qualified. Does he mean that he can transform the atoms of meat, alcohol or feces into some other substance? I don't know, and it does seem incredible. Assuming that such a miracle were possible, what would we see if we watched him do it? Would we see the unclean substances miraculously turn into something pure? Or would we see him eating these substances in their impure form? Does "transform the substances" even mean that the atoms change, or is it just a matter of him experiencing the substances as if they were different? I don't think the answer actually matters, since we couldn't use this experience in our wikipedia article, but the point is that assertions that Roach is not qualified haven't been made. Questions have been raised as to whether he is qualified. I don't think it's even appropriate in a wikipedia article to report on these questions, because they are essentially speculation and matters of opinion, not matters of fact. No Buddhist tribunal has rendered a judgment on Roach in particular. The Dalai Lama's words on the topic in How to Practice are informative, but can't be used to decide either way.
On the question of his legal marriage to McNally, he provides an explanation for why it was done. They have not acted publicly like a married couple—I've never seen them embrace, or kiss, or do more than hold hands—itself somewhat scandalous for a monk, but certainly not grounds for an accusation of a downfall. We don't have pictures of them doing so, and we don't have reports of them doing so in any reliable sources. So the marriage question is really separate from the practice question, for which we do have reliable sources, including Roach.
Suppose a monk were to legally marry a woman, so as to have legal access to her insurance, or her to his, or so as to ensure that she would inherit his property, and they were not engaging in any karma mudra practice together, and did not openly act like a married couple. Would that qualify as a downfall? If so, why? Does the quote Vritti offered from Gyatso support such a contention, or not? I think it's a judgment call, and so we can't report on it: to do so would be WP:SYNTHESIS.
This is why I keep harping on all the gossipy stuff that keeps getting added to this article. It's not improving the article. This article isn't a place for determining whether Roach is a good guy or a bad guy—it's a place for reporting on what we know about him. We honestly don't know whether he's qualified to do the practice, and we don't know whether he's still got his monk's vows, or whether he's committed a downfall. And so we shouldn't say. Abhayakara ( talk) 17:55, 26 July 2012 (UTC)
Enter Michael Roach ordained as a Gelugpa monk. Since the entire "controversy" in this article revolves around the behavior of Michael Roach as an ordained monk, I think you are arguing and wiki-lawyering a very minority view that what the Dalai Lama says about Gelugpa monks and monastics somehow, has nothing to do with Michael Roach. The remarks of the Dalai Lama are in no way gossip as they reflect the view of the Gelugpa sangha of monks and nuns. It is clear that Michael Roach looks at things differently, but this is his minority view which he shares with very few. At the moment the article now includes exceedingly credible testimony on how the Gelugpas view monastic conduct and how Michael Roach views it. Let the reader decide what to think about this "controversy", the whole point in bringing this subject to NPOV.
201.191.195.82 (
talk) 21:16, 26 July 2012 (UTC)
I, Vritti wrote the statement immediately above. For some reason I am getting regularly logged out of Wikipedia today while doing all this writing ...
Vritti (
talk) 21:23, 26 July 2012 (UTC)
Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified 3 external links on Michael Roach. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
{{
dead link}}
tag to
http://www.mtexpress.com/2004/04-04-09/04-04-09monk.htmWhen you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.
This message was posted before February 2018.
After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than
regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors
have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the
RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{
source check}}
(last update: 5 June 2024).
Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot ( Report bug) 10:24, 31 December 2017 (UTC)
I think this article should be rewritten by an established Wikipedia editor and locked against vandalism. There is minimal discussion of the most notable thing about Roach--the death of Ian Thorson and the controversial marriage to Christie McNally. Meanwhile, the talk page clearly indicates that people editing the page are extreme minority insiders with idiosyncratic ideas about Tibetan Buddhism--indicative of Roach's teachings. Furthermore, most recent edits come from accounts that don't even have user names, just anonymous IP addresses. Switfoot ( talk) 22:58, 21 November 2022 (UTC)
Anyone who reads this article, its editing history, and its Talk page, quickly realises that there had been numerous and consistent attempts to rewrite the article, manipulate the flow of its style and tone towards a certain biased point of view (from both sides of the isle). Both, those who are affiliated with Roach, and those who create blogs to work at destroying his reputation, had tried to push the article towards a certain direction.
I believe we shouldn't allow the article (or its Talk page for that matter) to be dominated only by one point of view that stems from a clear COI.
In its current state, some sections of this article are biased against Roach.
We need to start an objective conversation around the current state of this article and where it is going. 84.198.107.83 ( talk) 22:39, 29 May 2023 (UTC)