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At Talk:Newport Tower (Rhode Island) an editor is arguing that NEARA (the New England Antiquities Research Association) is not fringe. Since it supports most of the fringe ideas about pre-Columbian contact with the Americas, I think it's clearly fringe. An edit war seems to be developing over this. Dougweller ( talk) 11:58, 4 June 2010 (UTC)
We could use some extra input and some calming influence at Talk:Acupuncture#Who Wrote That? (or, Proper Attribution of WHO Review) probably. I'm getting fed up with a promoter. ScienceApologist ( talk) 08:01, 3 June 2010 (UTC)
Someone is inserting questionable content into Thermite, and is misrepresenting sources to do so. Aiken ♫ 19:49, 7 June 2010 (UTC)
This article's lead starts out with an unsupported claim about the origin of a particular geometric diagram being from "early Kabbalist scriptures", and which I suspect is incorrect. It continues with some more statements that seem to make little sense, throws into the mix alchemy and flower of life, adding problems with apparent WP:Synthesis. Then there follows a section about Platonic solids, without explaining what the connection is with the subject of the article. Of the sources used, the only one that has anything to do with the subject is a dead link.
I have no idea what can be done to improve the article. 173.52.182.160 ( talk) 12:13, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
I've reverted some recent large edits, though I'm willing to be persuaded that they might improve the article. The editor who made the edits isn't as yet doing much persuading. If others agree, or disagree, with the rearranging, deletion and addition, can they please way in to try and move beyond the current meta-discussion we appear to be mired in on the talk page. The article is currently locked due to this little contretemps. Thanks! Verbal chat 14:07, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
I know this is getting tiresome, but editor Smatprt is trying to insert the Shakespeare authorship question into the historical revisionism article as an example. The article itself contradicts this interpretation. The discussion can be read here.
Historical revisionism is an accepted scholarly process, not a denial of the academic consensus. The Shakespeare authorship question is already listed as an example in the Pseudohistory article (which Smatprt resisted) and the Fringe theory article (which he fought to include), both of which are valid classifications. There is also a subcategory of historical revisionism, Historical revisionism (negationism), which denies historical reality, not reinterprets it, and in which the Shakespeare authorship question qualifies to be included. I have not added it there because there is a further sub-category, negationism, which the article concentrates on and the examples given are so repugnant that I fear its very presence would violate NPOV. (Anti-Stratfordism is a relatively benign fantasy compared to the examples on that page, even though its methodology is identical.)
I have stated that if he produced a reliable source stating that the SAQ was an example of historical revisionism that I would cease to oppose its inclusion. Since according to the definition given in the article, historical revisionism is a part of the academic field of history, a source from the academic field of history that specifically states that the SAQ is an example of revisionism is what is called for. So far all he has come up with is an attempt to extend a comment by James Shapiro to encompass the entire topic of anti-Stratfordism, a newspaper comment about "revisionist scholars," (whatever they are), and a cite that contradicts his assertion that the SAQ is an example of historical revisionism.
Needless to say, I would like for this dispute to be settled so that I might spend my time more productively. The issue was discussed to death at ScienceApologist's talk page (a discussion which started out as a complaint from Smatprt that he was being harrassed), and I thought it was settled when ScienceApologist opined that "It seems reasonable to me to keep SAQ off of the negationism page, but it seems reasonable to put it on the pseudohistory page. I don't think it really belongs on the Historical Revisionism page because it isn't usually considered to be that way.", but Smatprt came back today with the above-mentioned refs.
I would also add that these incessant attempts to promote the Shakespeare authorship question by inserting a mention of the topic in every possible article grows wearisome beyond belief, and if anybody has some advice on how this problem could be solved I would very much appreciate it. Of course, I do realise that withdrawal from editing Wikipedia is always an option, but I would like to continue to contribute if I can avoid these long and tedious content disputes. Tom Reedy ( talk) 03:08, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
In Shakespeare studies, a legitimate example of historical revisionism would be the current near-consensus that Shakespeare collaborated instead of being a lone genius, which was the scholarly consensus for much of the 20th century. Shapiro talks about how uncomfortable he was with the idea, but that stylometric studies of the type chronicled by Brian Vickers and other evidence has convinced many scholars that Shakespeare's compositional methods must be rethought. Tom Reedy ( talk) 23:32, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
'Who wrote Shakespeare? And does it matter? The initial commission for this article was a result of viewing the ‘search’ statistics for readers of Literature Compass. The combination ‘Shakespeare’ + ‘authorship’ was the most common one bringing readers to the site. Like most institutional academic Shakespeare forums – university courses, textbooks, journals, etc. – Literature Compass did not acknowledge the force of this popular interest by providing any explicit information on the topic. In fact, as I go on to discuss, it is the so-called Shakespeare authorship question – did Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon actually write the plays published under his name in 1623? – which most separates academic from nonacademic Shakespeareans: the academic publishers, conferences, departments and individuals which have commandeered most Shakespearean study during the twentieth century are almost entirely distinct from the presses, symposia,mock-trials, press articles, Internet sites and other forms in which the question of who wrote Shakespeare has been most energetically debated.'Emma Smith, 'The Shakespeare Authorship Debate Revisited,' Literature Compass 5/3 (2008): 618–632, p.618.
In a sense, this is an argument of semantics. In particular, what does the word revisionism mean? In the sense of our article and most scholarly definitions of historical revisionism, it is referring to a particular historiography applied to historical narratives that are of dubious truth-value. To this end, SAQ does not fit the bill. However, one could also have defined "historical revisionism" to mean any attempt to recast history differently. In this way, SAQ, British Israelism, and the Washington stories told by Parson Weems would all qualify. Of course, Wikipedia chooses the more scholarly former approach as opposed to the latter approach. In other words, historical revisionism != List of historical interpretations rejected by the mainstream. ScienceApologist ( talk) 02:56, 3 June 2010 (UTC)
So since (quoting the top of this page) "Wikipedia aims to reflect academic consensus", are we done here? Tom Reedy ( talk) 14:50, 4 June 2010 (UTC)
this issue has not received a proper airing by uninvolved editors
Minor re-eruption of Armenian teenage mutant nationalism at the usual places, Mitanni, Urartu, etc. It will pass I am sure, but you might help making it go away more quickly by taking an interest. Thanks. -- dab (𒁳) 16:18, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
Armeno-Aryan is not a Nationalist Union etc etc.. Its a linguistic term, see the Indo-European related searches on the family tree, to see where it says Armeno-Aryan [4]. the Akhenaten page info was since since September 2009, and it was obviously approved by Dougweller <-- who works in Egypt related pages, and Armeno-Aryan with RS's was there. 75.51.173.254 ( talk) 22:52, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
It is not even Indo-Aryan, it was always put Indo-Iranian, which is before Indo-Aryan, and before that is the ancestors to both Armenians and Indo-Iranians, in that linguistic term (Armeno-Aryan) [5] that Dbachmann keeps thinking is about a Nationalist Union called Armenian Aryans. Look at the sources provided in about Mitanni and do google search in Mitanni you see Armenians coming up in the search results. There are none-Armenian RS's besides Petrie, Henry Hall, Michael Cohen, Colin Renfrew etc etc, which mention of the Mitanni names are not Indo-Aryan, but the subgroup Armeno-Aryan, ancestors of both Indo-Iranian and Armenian. Arta- <---prefix which both Armenian and Iranian kings used and even Armenian "Artashesian" dynasty with the same "prefix" not loanword, that is com,ing from the subgroup before those days of the later kings of Persia and Armenia. Do your further researches to find out, Hbuchmann from the 19th century German linguists saw the links with Indo-Iranians, because of Mitanni names, and also Henry Hall Egyptolostis, and George Rawlinson 75.51.173.254 ( talk)
I have a source for you do another search on Hurrian in google [6] you get this [7] <-- Indo-European elements in Hurrian, which we see example in Mitanni. This is where Armenians originated with the Indo-Iranians in the Armenian Highlands. Herodotus is the only source they base on, which he doesnt even say what they think he is saying. George Rawlinson in 19th century mentions about Herodotus comments [8], and says Indo-Europeans went westward from Armenia to Phrygia, Phrygia to Europe, not the other way around. Also, in the Hittites page new search has been made, and there were no major Indo-European (Aryan) invasions in the 1200's BC Iron Age in the Anatolia/Armenian Highlands. So we are native and originated along with the Indo-Iranians. The Eusibius quote was provided by a User:CodexSinatex <-- dont know spelling its in Mitanni edit history in 2005 he put the quote of "Armenians invaded the Syrians" at the time of Abraham, referring to descendants of Aram, (the name Armenia is derived from Aram) originated in that region, Aram-Naharin's region, (that is Mitanni) in the Armenian Highland also known in Greek as Anatolia. Those last parts of the quote put by CodexSinatrex in 2005 which mentioned that the Armenians originated in the region of Mitanni (Aram-Naharin), was removed by Dbachmann or some other IP users/vandals, who whenever they see a quote related to Armenian during this time, is automatically nationalism. CodexSinatrex is not even an Armenian user, and did not even think of any Armenian nationalistic info to put there, but found yet another RS, by Eusibius. 75.51.173.254 ( talk) 23:36, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
Is this Ararat arev again, or someone else? --Akhilleus ( talk) 01:39, 3 June 2010 (UTC)
If "Armeno-Aryan" is a term, it is indeed linguistic, and should be discussed under Greco-Aryan. I know "Greco-Armenian" is a term, and "Greco-Aryan" is a term, but I have never heard of "Armeno-Aryan" (i.e., a grouping of Armenian and Indo-Iranian to the exclusion of Greek). That's the bona fide side of it. Of course our "Armeno-Aryans" here have nothing to do with linguistics and should just be clamped down upon. I don't know if it is Ararat Arev. I wouldn't be surprised if it was, but you know what, WP:DUCK, we really don't need to know. -- dab (𒁳) 07:55, 3 June 2010 (UTC)
The edit-warrior hailed from California, not Texas, so perhaps it was User:Nareklm. Not that it matters, the two sockospheres are fapp-identical. -- dab (𒁳) 10:56, 3 June 2010 (UTC)
The article is still the playground of patriotic kids with no interest in the article topic. On top of this, we have now an intervention by a lazy admin. Of course it is so much easier to decide "protected. please sort it out on talk." than to sift through the history and figure out who was edit-warring and who wasn't, and who may have violated 3rr. Unfortunately, it is also shoddy admining.
What we need are admin with enough balls to make unequivocal decisions on who is being disruptive and who isn't. In this case, who is discussing the article topic, and who is indulging in puerile patriotic sentiment. Cheap administrating along the arbcom lines of "please be nice everyone and discuss some more, ok?" is not going to cut it in asymmetric controversies between encyclopedists and Randy in Boise (or Narek in Richmond TX). -- dab (𒁳) 09:40, 10 June 2010 (UTC)
Would anyone like to take a look at the introduction to the Bigfoot article? It was recently changed - difference is here - following a talk page discussion in which an editor explained that neither the terms "scientific consensus" or "scientific community" have any actual meaning. The prior intro, while better than the current one, had its flaws, so I'm hoping someone might be able to put together a better one. Regards, ClovisPt ( talk) 21:24, 7 June 2010 (UTC)
this is a point of stylistics, but I too find it jarring that the phrase "scientific consensus" is used unthinkingly on Wikipedia for random topics on which there isn't any "scientific" discourse in the first place. Sorry, but "Bigfoot" is not a topic of serious scientific discourse, and consequently there cannot be a "scientific consensus" on the existence of Bigfoot any more than there is one on the existence of Pikachu. I find statements like
to be at or near the bottom of what Wikipedia has to offer in non-vandalised content. Bigfoot may be considered a topic of scholarly study, but that study would be anthropology, not "science", and wouldn't try to examine "existence" to begin with but work on the premise that the subject matter is one of folklore. In this sense, the reference cited is almost certainly being misrepresented here. -- dab (𒁳) 10:13, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
Where is the consensus that most scientists feel this way? Everything I read shows that most scientists are baffled from all the possible evidence and fascinated by the large number of witnesses. It seems that most scientists keep an open mind when there's eyewitnesses until they can prove otherwise. It's the same with aliens, for the most part people don't believe they're real but what scientist wants to stake their reputation and come forward to say "they don't exist" then have one land in front of us? The entire comment is a misstated conformation that was not from an accurate source. It doesn't belong in Wikipedia.-- Timpicerilo ( talk) 10:26, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
If a source does not say scientific consensus, but says something like scientific community generally, or most scientists, use the phrase scientific community or most scientists or most academic researchers etc. A consensus is a general agreement which is usually an outcome of an official meeting and thus can be a bit misleading to use that term if it was not used in the source. Perhaps I am misreading the problem here. Just stick more closely to what the sources say is my suggestion.-- Literaturegeek | T@1k? 14:13, 10 June 2010 (UTC)
This could use some eyes on it. There's an attempt to call him an Egyptologist in the lead, although the article doesn't (and we'd need reliable sources to call him one), and to remove any mention of his being an Afrocentrist from the lead, although this is in the article. Thanks. Dougweller ( talk) 00:00, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
Afrocentrism is one of our most notorious trolling hotspots, besides what I think I will call "Greater Assyrian" ethnic trolling (Turks-Syriacs-Armenians-Kurds-Iranians) and "Greater Indian" (Indo-Pak) ethno-religious trolling. Afrocentrism hits Wikipedia really badly because most US American editors think it taboo to revert anyone they assume is black (because that would be racist, wouldn't it). -- dab (𒁳) 09:51, 10 June 2010 (UTC)
Looking for related articles, I came across the never-referenced African nationalism. My first thought was to see if I could quietly redirect it to Pan-Africanism, but I held back. For one thing, that would mean burying some remarkable prose.
Between World War I and World War II, a strident howl for self-determination resonated deafeningly from the gorges of numerous mutinous groups in a growing number of African countries.
Tim Shuba ( talk) 02:51, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
A true gem! This Afrocentrism business is high up on my list of surreal ethnic weirdness alongside the Armenian kids and the angry Hindutvavadis. -- dab (𒁳) 12:58, 12 June 2010 (UTC)
There is some debate about the television test section of this article and use of sources. An editor is using http://www.kevinhogan.com/aura.htm as a source, which I feel fails WP:RS. I feel this section could be improved with more RS of scientific / televised tests. Verbal chat 11:43, 12 June 2010 (UTC)
These articles were all created by the same user in May: Balkans-Caucasian race, Northcaucasian race, Pontid race, Caspian race. This has no relationship to real science, right? Prezbo ( talk) 19:59, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
It's like this. These are all items of scientific racism. Scientific racism is essentially historical scholarship, not "pseudo-scholarship", and it was pursued over the period of about 1880 to 1930. Even in the west, there are (maverick) scholarly publications into the 1960s, and in the Soviet Union at least into the 1980s. So while this may all be historical, it is by no means as far in the past as phlogiston but at best a couple of decades, and it may be arguable that the categories remain alive in anthropological literature. So no, I don't think we can dismiss this as "old Soviet notions" and delete it. What we should do is merge these items and discuss them in context. They are all sub-types of the greater Caucasian race, and it would probably be sufficient to keep a section on various subtypes according to various authors. If that turns out too long, there can still be a subtypes of the Caucasian race article to collect all these without the need to keep them scattered in two dozen short articles. -- dab (𒁳) 12:19, 12 June 2010 (UTC)
Blueboar, outdated does not equal fringe. The distinction is important, but it is also delicate and depends on context. The "Caucasian race" itself is "outdated and/or fringe", so I hoped it would go without saying that the same holds for all its proposed subtypes. The Caucasian race article itself is a topic of scientific racism, and the various minor subtypes according to Soviet authors clearly should be listed there. -- dab (𒁳) 08:14, 15 June 2010 (UTC)
This was first created as Silent Talk which I turned into a redirect to DARPA. Then this article was created, and I did the same thing. The most reliable source I can find is an Aviation Weekly Article, and this seems to be more of a proposal than anything actually active or notable. I've taken it to AfD. Dougweller ( talk) 12:08, 12 June 2010 (UTC)
A doubt has been raised over whether or not Anti-Americanism#The_degeneracy_thesis is a fringe theory. The main point being is that this is supported by only two historians [ [11]] or that other historians are just repeating the claims of the two historians [ [12]], and as such do not support notability, (if I understand the objection correctly). Now it seems to me that whilst this is a bit of a silly theory (that Europeans hated the USA before it even existed in essance) it also seems to have recived some attention that takes it beyond the fringe (whilst still being a minority view). Slatersteven ( talk) 14:48, 4 June 2010 (UTC)
This does not seem to be a fringe theory since no one believes in it any more. The obvious point-of-view of the historians in question is that a sort of "European-exceptionalism" is evident in this particular defunct theory which has parallels to anti-Americanism. Whether that point-of-view is properly handled is a question not for this board but for WP:NPOVN, methinks. ScienceApologist ( talk) 09:37, 5 June 2010 (UTC)
Indeed. 18th century scholarship entertained many hypotheses that can now be dismissed out of hand. This doesn't make them "fringe" or "pseudo", as at the time they may have been perfectly reasonable avenues of research. This is not about fringe scholarship, it is about historical scholarship. An important difference (also in the "Christ myth" disussion. The "Christ myth" was respectable scholarship in the 19th century, it is just fringecruft today). I wish people would take care to make this distinction. -- dab (𒁳) 15:28, 5 June 2010 (UTC)
I have rasied it here Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view/Noticeboard#Anti-Americanism. Slatersteven ( talk) 16:36, 5 June 2010 (UTC)
Belated clarification: we've conflated two theories. One was the Degeneracy Thesis, which of course nobody believes today. The other is the theory (or interpretation), advanced by two historians, that the Degeneracy Thesis is an important part of the history of anti-Americanism. It's the latter that I question. It is essentially an idea that has been advanced by a very small number of commentators, as we can see by the fact that a google-books search for "degeneracy+thesis anti-americanism" only produces 7 hits. Given that it seems like a personal interpretation of a very small number of commentators--in a field rife with politics and cultural bias--I don't believe it deserves an entire section in the "anti-Americanism" article. It doesn't have such weight in the academic community. Noloop ( talk) 19:10, 6 June 2010 (UTC)
There is an edit war going on at Universe over the inclusion of a recent proposal that the universe is shaped like a dodecahedron. The proposal is not a fringe theory - there are apparently a few papers on it - the issue is "undue weight" in the Universe article. If someone could take a look and express an opinion on the talk page, perhaps this could be resolved. -- Chetvorno TALK 19:26, 15 June 2010 (UTC)
There is some debate as to NPOV, scope, and comon names of the two categories we currently have for homeopathic "preparations/medicines/products/remedies/tinctures" (aka "water"). Please see the discussion here: CfD: Homeopathic remedies. The two categories are Category:Homeopathic remedies and Category:Homeopathic preparations. See also List of homeopathic preparations which established a wikipedia consensus on the name. Verbal chat 13:38, 16 June 2010 (UTC)
Funkily-sourced tale of aliens in blue tights scampering about on islands near Indonesia evading police bullets and being guided by confused but unharmed children. A candidate ripe for AfD. - LuckyLouie ( talk) 00:03, 17 June 2010 (UTC)
This article has been a mess since 2007 and has hardly changed despite tagging and a prod back in 2007. Any prospect of rescue, or should it go to AfD? Please do the honours! Merci, Verbal chat 08:30, 17 June 2010 (UTC)
A new editor is editing against the established consensus at Aspartame and Aspartame controversy, and editwarred to their preferred version at Aspartame controversy. Although some of their edits may be good (including the addition of new possible MEDRS), they have removed sourced information about the hoax letter and given undue weight to certain POVs. Hence I have tagged the article. Please investigate and give your well thought out opinions. Verbal chat 13:45, 18 June 2010 (UTC)
I'm not averse to including something about a hoax, but WP policy dictates that it must have a good source, not a self-published website. Self published websites, which do no fact checking in most instances, are specifically excluded from allowable sources. TickleMeister ( talk)
Having looked over the contested matter (which seems to be mostly contained in this removal [15] I see two things going on. First, the issue here isn't about medical testing at all, but urban legend and conspiracy history, pure and simple. Second, there's a notability issue which come out pretty clearly in the positive. It showed up in Time, for crying out loud. Therefore, WP:MEDRS isn't even remotely applicable, whereas in the documentation of urban legends, Snopes and the other sites used in the excised passages are generally considered by people in that field to be about as reliable as secondary sources come. It's bizarre to appeal to medical journals as evidence for testimony to the transmission of hoaxes. Mangoe ( talk) 16:42, 18 June 2010 (UTC)
The same editor who replaced an OR table of Exodus 'parallels' in the Ipuwer article mentioned above has also added a large section to this article which is both OR and about world government (which is not the subject of the article) and Biblical allusions to world government. Dougweller ( talk) 06:38, 19 June 2010 (UTC)
This is a neologism of Samuel Huntington to discuss how the West developed on different paths to the rest of the world from the Industrial Revolution onwards. My hunch is it hasn't caught on enough to merit an article and should be merged with our biography of Huntington. But our article on it seems to have developed a steam of its own. It appears, from the talk page, to have been created as a collective project of a group of students. They recount the whole recent history of the world, using reliable sources, true, but it is just an essay. They have got as far as a GA review on it - and that was favourable. Some more eyes please, because others may see the situation quite differently from me. Itsmejudith ( talk) 15:23, 17 June 2010 (UTC)
The questions of article scope and article title should be kept separate. "Great Divergence" is just one possible title for this, another being " European miracle", and there are possibly yet other, better titles, such as " Rise of the western colonial empires". While the term "Great Divergence" may be idiosyncratic to Huntington, the concept discussed in the article certainly is not.
If this article can be merged anywhere, the target article would be
Modern history.
The article is basically the "modern" section of the
History_of_Western_civilization article, and is duly linked from there via {{
main}} {{
see}} (
here).
The scope of the "Great Divergence" article is addressing how the Modern period gave the Western world an incredible and unprecedented edge over all other super-regional cultures. This concerns the period 1500 to 1900. After 1914, the West more or less self-destructed (so there is no danger of singing triumphalist praises of the west being the best, this is about a historical period that came and went).
There has been a lot of confusion regarding this article, and the recent school project has served to add to this confusion. A serious attempt at fixing this will need to look at the "Great Divergence" article in conjunction with History_of_Western_civilization and Western world. This is what the GA/FA-badge hunters mostly overlook, very often it is impossible to meaningfully develop an article without working on related articles at the same time, aligning scopes and content judiciously.
This is not really about a "fringe theory", but it is certainly a spot where experienced editors are needed if there is to be any progress. -- dab (𒁳) 13:41, 20 June 2010 (UTC)
"I think that retelling the same history in numerous articles is sloppy and also a magnet for POV." -- can we put this in large letters and with a blink tag at the top of some basic policy page? The older the project grows, the more severe this kind of problem turns out to be at the topics with a lot of traffic (Jesus! Jesus myth! Historical Jesus! Historicity of Jesus! The quest for the historical Jesus! Jesus in history! Jesus and history! History and Jesus. Jesus H. Christ in History!).
The "European miracle" topic is at least still interesting because it hasn't been well treated anywhere so far, so the current article is as good as any place to make a start. Digging on google books I uncover a large scholarly debate on this over the past 30 years. The current article barely scratches the surface. So I think we need to get decent coverage first and worry about scope overlap later. -- dab (𒁳) 09:17, 23 June 2010 (UTC)
What should be a scholarly article harps too much on alleged links with the Exodus, and my attempts to cut down on this (and on 'argument by authority'} have been reverted. It also needs expanding to give due balance to main stream commentary. Dougweller ( talk) 21:11, 18 June 2010 (UTC)
There is whitewashing of this article. The article as restored [16] accurately reflects the RS which we have, and the recent edits are whitewashing. The article had been deleted, but I restored it because these sources became available. The article as I wrote it is actually less negative toward the church than the articles. Please help restore this article to its proper balance. Should I have posted at the NPOV noticeboard instead? Becritical ( talk) 19:14, 22 June 2010 (UTC)
See Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Race and intelligence. At the center is the degree of acceptance of Arthur Jensen's theories. Mangoe ( talk) 20:53, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
lol, the arbcom really isn't learning. Once again trying to judge on content. When will they pause to check what they were actually elected to do, namely to judge on user conduct, and user conduct only. Of course this is going to take half a year of bureaucracy at least, and the outcome will be "editors are sternly admonished to follow policy". This is so Kafkaesque, I am actually beginning to enjoy it. -- dab (𒁳) 09:42, 10 June 2010 (UTC)
Anything that happens on this noticeboard and in relation to WP:FRINGE is directly based on Wikipedia core policy, WP:NPOV, WP:DUE, WP:V and not on some obscure arbcom decision. The arbcom is exclusively there to penalize user misconduct, especially in case of admin wheel wars getting otu of control (which happen extremely rarely, less than once a year). Anything else the community can resolve oderers of magnitude more expertly and efficiently than the arbcom. "Race and Intelligence" can also be addressed strictly under WP:NPOV, WP:DUE etc. -- the fact that this is proving so difficult in practice is, alongside "Christ myth" and "Shakespeare authorship" due to people misbehaving and failing to objectively "write for the enemy". Such misbehaviour needs to be penalized by the community, the admin community, or failing that by the arbcom, fair enough. But experience shows that the arbcom cannot do anything to resolve these issues, because they are complicated and they are so swamped with flamewars they never get to the point, and a few smart admins with balls can resolve a problem in a matter of days which would take the arbcom half a year to come up with a null-result. -- dab (𒁳) 12:55, 12 June 2010 (UTC)
Please don't bring the fall-out of your falling-out here. I don't even understand why you two fell out in the first place. IMHO you should have a chat off-wiki now rather than later. Itsmejudith ( talk) 10:33, 15 June 2010 (UTC)
As many people as possible, please, to cast an eye on the discussion of the talk page of Race and intelligence about the inclusion of the findings of a paper by Rushton. I am trying to get a general principle accepted that the article should be written up from sources on the history of science etc. There is at least one good source of that kind. My strong impression is that the Rishton paper is fringe in the sense of being well outside the findings of recent scholarship. It also seems evident to me that it should be treated as a primary source. If you have a stats background you might care to look at the coherence of the paper itself, but it isn't directly relevant. Itsmejudith ( talk) 09:55, 26 June 2010 (UTC)
I protected this article a week or so ago, and I've watchlisted it since protection ended. There appear to be several issues with the article which, I'm hoping, would benefit from more eyes. This is detailed on the talk page, but in summary:
{{
Unbalanced}}
and/or {{
POV}}
apply;I'd appreciate it if anyone could talk a look and help move this along.
Cheers, TFOWR 17:04, 25 June 2010 (UTC)
Professor David Elieser Deutsch FRS
Visiting Professor, Department of Atomic and Laser Physics, Centre for Quantum Computation, The Clarendon Laboratory, University of Oxford
David Deutsch laid the foundations of the quantum theory of computation, and has subsequently made or participated in many of the most important advances in the field, including the discovery of the first quantum algorithms, the theory of quantum logic gates and quantum computational networks, the first quantum error-correction scheme, and several fundamental quantum universality results. He has set the agenda for worldwide research efforts in this new, interdisciplinary field, made progress in understanding its philosophical implications (via a variant of the many-universes interpretation) and made it comprehensible to the general public, notably in his book The Fabric of Reality.
As there is consensus to make improvements to this article to improve readability and bring it into line with policy, I have begun trimming OR and removing synthesis, over quoting of Tipler, etc. However, as I get deeper, I note the article is mostly built on primary sources (Tipler), and actual independent WP:RS are few. Also, there is a problem with deliberate conflation of sources - e.g. a source having mentioned the omega point as a general term in physics is made to seem as if that source supports Tipler's theist interpretation in particular. As Tipler's Omega Point theory has not received the kind of notice we generally require to devote a separate article to, it may be that after sufficient improvements are made, the best course is WP:AFD and redirect Omega Point (Tipler) to Frank J. Tipler. - LuckyLouie ( talk) 15:19, 28 June 2010 (UTC)
Sadly, a lone editor has undertaken to edit war the article back to its former state. - LuckyLouie ( talk) 19:20, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
I came across the article on Teruo Higa while checking out our oldest unsourced BLPs and that led me to Effective microorganism. There are plenty of sources available about both the professor and his pet topic (Find sources: Google ( books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL, Find sources: Google ( books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL) but they have to me, a layman, a whiff of pseudoscience. Could someone with some knowledge of microbiology and/or horticulture check out these articles and ensure that anything fringe is presented as such? Phil Bridger ( talk) 19:14, 1 July 2010 (UTC)
Please take a look at this article: Abiogenic petroleum origin, it seems to warrant inclusion in the category of Fringe theories according to the guidelines set forward in WP:Fringe. I have neither the time nor inclination to delve into this deeply (no pun intended); I just happened upon the article and thought it should be mentioned here. Calicocat ( talk) 23:11, 4 July 2010 (UTC)
This is probably about the last thing anyone here is going to be surprised by, but the article needs some review. First, I notice there's no discussion of skeptical criticism of the Ouija board, only credulous variations on occultists claiming they're dangerous to spiritual or mental health, or sinful (I can't help but be reminded of the classic B-movie posters warning the weak of constitution away...) There's some really great stuff.
Gems include:
"In March 1920, a United Press dispatch from Martinez, California stated that detention in the insane ward was filled with seven persons "who, the police say, were driven insane by constant use of ouija boards."[15]"
I guess at least they varied it from the usual old boring "driven insane by constant..." prognosis. Then there's poor Rob Doe:
"In a famous case, in January 1949, a fourteen-year-old Lutheran boy, Rob Doe, living in Cottage City, Maryland became involved in satanic possession after trying to contact his deceased aunt (with whom he had been very close) via an ouija board.[three citations here] ... Rev. William Bowdern, assisted by Rev. Walter Halloran and Rev. William Van Roo, conducted subsequent exorcisms and succeeded in driving out the demon from the child when the child finally uttered "Christus, Domini."[two more citations]"
The main reason I actually bring it up here is that I don't actually know where things sit wrt demons, posession, and fringe, and while I haven't discussed this on the article talk page, it's because I don't want to put a wrong foot (or I suppose approach, or argument) forward there and derail any chance of improvement in the article by accidentally sparking flames.
So, could someone with more experience, both in handling fringe and in not starting brushfires, check this out? Hatchetfish ( talk) 09:03, 5 July 2010 (UTC)
I took out a bunch of stuff that shouldn't have been there, as it was just stuff someone was interested in and not really notable in the subject area, or it did not seem notable. BECritical__ Talk 18:47, 5 July 2010 (UTC)
Big pile of edits by Thebigpowerthing1664 ( talk · contribs).Quote
See diff Seems very fringe, POV. etc. --220.101 ( talk) \Contribs 21:14, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
this is by all appearances an article on an unnotable crank. As long as no evidence of notability is presented, I would support deletion. -- dab (𒁳) 15:21, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
This article is a bit of a mess. It is a personal OR essay written by an editor with an apparent COI (I've removed the stuff about him) as a puffy promotion piece totally lacking in RS. Please add to watchlists and attempt to help clean up if possible, or next stop is AfD. Verbal chat 19:31, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
"astrology and computers"? We need more "X and computers" articles. Badly needed are kangaroos and computers, anger management and computers and Dow Jones and computers. -- dab (𒁳) 13:27, 30 June 2010 (UTC)
yes, in all seriousness, this is a valid topic, and the topic is one of Category:Application software. This is essentially about horoscopy software, but if the usual term is "astrology software" by all means move the article there. -- dab (𒁳) 08:33, 1 July 2010 (UTC)
the article will be fine. It just needs a meaningful title and a {{ refimprove}} tag for the time being. -- dab (𒁳) 14:08, 1 July 2010 (UTC)
So this mostly needs deescalation between Verbal and myself now, both of usn FTN regulars. If I am to be going to honour any of Verbal's allegations above, I would very much appreciate diffs for all the things I am supposed to have done to him. What I have in fact done is take middle ground between an editor knowledgeable of astrology software (the article topic) but not of Wikipedia best practice on one hand (John) and an editor knowledgeable of Wikipedia policy and guidelines, but with his judgement clouded by a general dislike of astrology (Verbal). I think the exchange of niceties is more or less done now and we can return to a more serene appreciation of the remaining issues with the article. Note how while all this turmoil was going on at assorted talkpages, the article has been steadily improving, so the project wins even if everybody walks away annoyed. Which is as it should be. -- dab (𒁳) 14:38, 2 July 2010 (UTC)
Astrology is considered Fringe. In the article discussed in this section, the Fringe attribution is being used as a reason to tag sources as unreliable. Fringe content does not make a publication or publisher or writer unreliable. A judgment that content is fringe does not support a further judgment that a publication about such content is an unreliable source on that subject, nor can it be inferred that a publisher or writer of such content therefore fails to be a reliable source. Such an assertion is a logical fallacy. (It is a kind of category error, in that one is meta to the other.) There are good criteria for the WP:RS label. Identifying the subject matter as Fringe says nothing about how reliable a source about that subject matter might be. Bn ( talk) 02:47, 7 July 2010 (UTC)
Off topic, process issue
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I think I understand how that happened. A power outage crashed my PC. On recovery, the browser restored the edit state. However, the Wikipedia server did not retain the context of that edit. The result was that what was intended as an insertion at the end of the section was processed as a replacement for the entire section. Hence, it appeared to be an unrelated extension of the section on Beardon. LuckyLouie then reverted without examining history to see the relevant context; but if he had, it might well have been taken for vandalism. Is there a place to post a caution about browsers that restore state after a crash? Bn ( talk) 18:26, 7 July 2010 (UTC) |
Occitan nationalist anger at Paris' ill-treatment of their language over the centuries, presented as incontrovertible fact and defended by very cross IPs. Could all be true, but... Itsmejudith ( talk) 20:06, 5 July 2010 (UTC)
Hardly a fringe theory, just a question of political WP:POV. On a related note, our coverage of the umbrella topic of linguistic discrimination is in a sad state. We get occasional and erratic contributions of the kind of Vergonha and Welsh Not, mostly by editors with a political agenda, but nobody has so far bothered to sit down and cover the topic from an academic perspective. -- dab (𒁳) 08:07, 7 July 2010 (UTC)
IP removing pseuo-scientific categories, etc, see their newest set of edits [20]. Dougweller ( talk) 14:35, 6 July 2010 (UTC)
User Gazpr ( talk · contribs) has contributed a large amount of material related to Gazprom and the Russian energy sector. While he provides sources for his edits, concern has been raised that his edits present a fringe point-of-view and possibly promote conspiracy theories. -- Petri Krohn ( talk) 02:04, 7 July 2010 (UTC)
There appears to be extreme fringe point-of-view pushing going on with this article, specifically that the 2010 Kingston conflict is a war. I have asked for sources that it is a war, none have been provided. More eyes would be welcome. Thank you. O Fenian ( talk) 23:37, 11 July 2010 (UTC)
An editor is removing obvious examples, [21] - Fomenko, Illig, - maybe this is a spillover from the argument at Fringe theory? Or the old Shakespeare one? Dougweller ( talk) 20:03, 15 July 2010 (UTC)
I'm going to throw a half-baked idea in here (because it occurred to me just now over coffee, and I didn't want to forget about it). Maybe it's time to consider taking this whole rat's nest of related ideas - fringe theories, pseudoscience, pseudohistory, etc. - and warp them into a new guideline on scholarly revisionism. The consistent problem here, it seems to me, is that scholars have an inherent right to challenge and try to revise the intellectual 'status quo', and wikipedia has an obligation to report on that scholarship when it's notable enough, but the act of reporting on such things gets tangled up between an assortment of misguided editors:
A guideline that disentangles scholarly revisionism from this kind of editorial revisionism might be useful. -- Ludwigs2 14:25, 16 July 2010 (UTC)
Exactly what kind of fringe this might be, I can't say, because it's all over the map and seems to be completely original research. I redirected to simulation but was reverted. I then removed reams of material, but the article is still in shambles and I suppose the unregistered editor may reinsert what I took out. I have no idea how "simulated reality" is supposed to differ from "simulation", nor is any version of the article helpful in explaining that to me. Tim Shuba ( talk) 03:09, 18 July 2010 (UTC)
I've seen too many edits like this one [22] - which is by a self-declared creationist. Is this argument lost and is the phrase no longer one we can use? Dougweller ( talk) 05:41, 8 July 2010 (UTC)
We have a constant background level of creationist trolling, but we also have a lot of people overreacting to that, so I think we are fine. "creation narrative" in the case of Genesis in particular is fine, for reasons peculiar to Genesis: it isn't just an Iron Age myth, it has undergone centuries of redaction from the point of view of monotheist theology, it is a very special case. Our creationists only ever care about the creation according to Genesis, the countless other creation myths from other traditions are comparatively safe from them.
Calling the Genesis account a "creation narrative" is not a fringe theory, and I would actually support the phrasing. It is, of course, a creation myth, but it is also other things, and harping on it being a creation myth is needlessly simplistic. -- dab (𒁳) 22:33, 8 July 2010 (UTC)
Noloop, did you read anything I said? Please don't try to revive the braindead "define myth" debate, at least not here. Slatersteven, please use a dictionary. A religion is not a myth. A myth is a sacred narrative within some religion. If you are going to be pedantic, at least get it right. -- dab (𒁳) 18:50, 10 July 2010 (UTC)
Ludwigs2, when we say "myth" we obviously mean "sacred narrative" not "falsehood". The former is hardly "jargon", it is the only meaningful application of the word in the context. Please be reasonable. Are you suggesting "creation myth" translates to "creation lie"? A creation myth is a sacred narrative regarding the concept of creation. "Jargon" has nothing to do with this, it's perfectly unambiguous. The same way it is straighforward to call a female dog a bitch in a cynological context. -- dab (𒁳) 21:31, 10 July 2010 (UTC)
(outdent) There is a difference between "narrative" and "myth"--that's why those who believe in the Christian myths/narratives/stories care. The term "myth" carries a stronger connotation of a quaint tale no educated person really believes nowadays. Myths are believed in by aborigines and followers of dead religions. The term "narrative" doesn't carry that connotation, or does so to a lesser degree. It is not just an amazing coincidence that cultures dominated by Biblical religions only refer to non-Biblical religious stories as "myths." For Wikipedia to perpetuate that pattern is systemic bias. Noloop ( talk) 01:19, 11 July 2010 (UTC)
They're all myths. But if that has pejorative connotations and must be avoided in order not to risk offending people, then, please, not "narratives". When not in a context of PoMo gibberish ( humdrum example), the noun "narrative" seems to mean little or nothing more than does the simple word "story". -- Hoary ( talk) 03:17, 11 July 2010 (UTC)
KoshVorlon ( talk · contribs) is continuing to redact comments here, there are two sections on his (archived) talk page that I think are relevant to his actions here [23]. Dougweller ( talk) 20:57, 11 July 2010 (UTC)
Comment I fail to understand why anyone is debating what "myth" means and how fair or unfair it is to use the label for one set of stories and not another, or in one title and not another. This entire discussion is entirely outside the realm of policy when it comes to article titles
WP:NAME and article content
WP:V. We follow the terminology used by scholars. Period. I see time and again the clear directives of policy brushed to the side when editors simply don't like the results of following it.
Griswaldo (
talk) 15:31, 16 July 2010 (UTC)
These edits [27] may be fine, or they may be fringe, does anyone know enough about this subject to help? I got to this article via Wikipedia:Editor assistance/Requests#Request for Clarification of 'Grand Unified Theory' Page Content Policy Dougweller ( talk) 10:22, 16 July 2010 (UTC)
looks perfectly ok to me. -- dab (𒁳) 10:44, 16 July 2010 (UTC)
"When the bottom part of the white part of the eye known as the sclera is visible it is referred to as 'Yin Sanpaku' by the Chinese. Attributed to physical imbalance in the body, it can be present in alcoholics, drug addicts and people who over consume sugar or grain. Conversely when the upper sclera is visible this is called 'Yang Sanapaku'. This is said to be an indication of mental imbalance in people such as psychotics, murderers and anyone rageful. Stress and fatigue may also be a cause." - the article.
Wow. So, if some of the white of your eyes is visible, you're an alcoholic or drug addict? This needs so many qualifiers it's not even funny. Adam Cuerden ( talk) 19:34, 20 July 2010 (UTC)
Apparently Christ myth theory isn't a fringe theory after all but "interesting, scientific material" and the like. I guess I was wrong to think that it was disruptive to keep adding it into the 4th sentence of the lead of Historical Jesus. Griswaldo ( talk) 19:29, 21 July 2010 (UTC)
*sob* If Jesus had known that this would eventually come of his mission, I think he would have wept and stayed in his carpentry shop. I mean, salvation is all very well, but has it been worth this? -- dab (𒁳) 09:39, 22 July 2010 (UTC)
The article defines OOPART as "Fringe terminology". It lists artifacts "argued by various fringe authors to have been OOPArts", then says they are "categorised according to their current status in the eyes of the mainstream scientific community."...listing some as "fully validated" and some "with some scientific validation". Mainstream science not recognizing OOPART as a term...but validating some OOPARTs? Seems to be a contradiction. Maybe someone here can find a way to fix this article. - LuckyLouie ( talk) 23:15, 21 July 2010 (UTC)
I can't get a response to my analysis from the page-watchers: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Time Cube (7th nomination). Please comment. ScienceApologist ( talk) 13:37, 22 July 2010 (UTC)
Tagged by another editor for OR - Dab, you've looked at this in the past. Dougweller ( talk) 16:27, 22 July 2010 (UTC)
yes, it's a problem. This is in effect our "pseudolinguistics" article, but it isn't based on anything solid. Perhaps we should reduce it to a section at Pseudo-scholarship until somebody does it properly. Alternatively, it could be merged into Mass lexical comparison, which was itself "povved" last year [28] and needs attention. We need this article, but right now it's just broken. -- dab (𒁳) 20:43, 22 July 2010 (UTC)
Hi I posted at the "neutral point of view boards before" but after i looked around i saw that maybe my issue is more correct here? i will copy paste it. Would be nice if somebody could tell me which place is better, i will delete it at the other boards then. Copied Text:
I think its a common point of view that this battle was a tactical victory. The english articles ( i think its the only wiki article doing this ) called it tactical inconclusive, without any citiations. I attempted to changes this but was reverted. To illustrate that its common view that this battle was tactical german victory i posted some books at the talk page. Other editors, which present their point of view, while they discuss why they consider this battle as inconclusive, failed to bring only one quote which supports "tactical inconclusive". For every neutral editor checking this bear in mind that tactical is a special condition of a victory which needs special citiations. There are multiple scales of warfare, they are losly connect. A tactical victory is something different then strategic victory. Thus we need exact claims for this. Please take a look here :[
[29]], i list sources there. You also can take a look at any non english article about this battle, you could also do a quick google search with "tacitcal victory" and jutland. Thanks for your time
Blablaaa (
talk) 21:07, 22 July 2010 (UTC)
While describing notable historic pseudoscholarship - and thus certainly a viable subject for Wikipedia - this article has real issues with tone. It seems to accept the pseudoscholarship as fact at several points, and talks about how other bits of pseudoscholarship "confirm" it.
Needs work. Adam Cuerden ( talk) 02:51, 23 July 2010 (UTC)
I must insist that this is not "historic pseudoscholarship", it is historic scholarship. Or just religious mysticism in some cases. The John Dee section needed a fix though. -- dab (𒁳) 08:35, 23 July 2010 (UTC)
Such material as is present is presented fairly, but the problem is completeness (lack of). Picking out Dee, Emmerich and LDS in particular is pretty random, a good overview of the topic would have more sweeping strokes and less random detail. -- dab (𒁳) 19:51, 23 July 2010 (UTC)
There are ongoing discussions, involving such well known editors as Ludwigs2, about changing Wikipedia:Fringe theories. As this is directly relevant to this noticeboard, please have a look at Wikipedia Talk:Fringe theories. Verbal chat 14:07, 18 July 2010 (UTC)
Everyone means well, but it adds up to guideline pages full of bloat. Please assume the reader is (a) sentient and literate, and (b) aware of basic policy. It is true that "one may not be able to write about a fringe theory in a neutral manner if there are no independent secondary sources of reasonable reliability" but this holds for every article on the project just as well. Please, if you are reviewing the page, make it your main aim to end up with a more concise version. -- dab (𒁳) 19:12, 18 July 2010 (UTC)
There is a merge proposal for Science of morality and Ethical naturalism. I think some more attention might help elucidate the intersection of philosophy and science viz popular media and speculation.— Machine Elf 1735 ( talk) 08:03, 25 July 2010 (UTC)
Here's a real extreme case, someone's doing a copy and paste to get rid of the word myth from book titles, etc [31]. After an undiscussed move (now being discussed by others at the retitled Talk:Flood legends. Dougweller ( talk) 20:50, 19 July 2010 (UTC)
The myth haters are really beginning to go to pathological lengths here. Only on Wikipedia... -- dab (𒁳) 13:54, 20 July 2010 (UTC)
The "label myth" is not "contentious". This should be considered trolling. I haven't yet seen a single "contention" forwarded by an editor who had as much as basic grasp of the issues involved. This is simply white noise in my book. Just keep pointing people to WP:NAME. If they can show their preferred title is in fact the most commonly used, hey presto, they've got their move, without needing to go through misguided "controversies". What I would hope could come of this is at leats a wider recognition that Til Eulenspiegel is a habitually disruptive, long-term problem editor, in spite of the basically fair maintenance work he is also doing. -- dab (𒁳) 11:04, 21 July 2010 (UTC)
I just found the deletion discussion for the "Myth disclaimer box" I mention above. It's at Wikipedia:Templates_for_deletion/Log/2009_March_21#Template:Myth_box. The thing was in use from June 2007 to March 2009 and looked like this:
Note on the term mythology: |
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In an academic context, the word " myth" refers to any sacred and traditional narrative. Unless otherwise noted, the words "mythology" and "myth" are here used in this sense, with no implication as to the historicity or factuality of the content of any such sacred narratives. |
I think I recommended its deletion, although I do not seem to have contributed to the deletion discussion itself. -- dab (𒁳) 14:00, 26 July 2010 (UTC)
The United Nations Security Council article makes a WP:Fringe claim [34] "Out of all UN-member states, Israel is the only nation that is not eligible to sit on the Security Council."
The Jewish Virtual Library does have a page which claims that Israel is the only country ineligible for membership on the Security Council. [35] Members are actually elected based upon the criteria contained in Article 23 of the UN Charter. [36]
Israel had never filed an application to be a candidate before 2005. The Jewish Virtual Library has another article which says that Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom announced in September 2005 that the country will, for the first time, seek a temporary seat on the Security Council. [37] That article links to a 2005 UN news story in which Israel announced its candidacy for a seat on the Security Council [38] Israel's Ynet News explained at the time that Israel had never applied to be a candidate before, and that if it were accepted it, would have to wait 13 years for the next available opening. [39]
Do we have to repeat old stories about a case of hypothetical ineligibility? Obviously, you can find sources that say Israel is ineligible. However, Israel has been a candidate in the elections for several years now and it was never truly "ineligible". harlan ( talk) 14:53, 22 July 2010 (UTC)
(outdent) I think under the circumstances that an acceptable secondary source would have to cite UN rules which made Israel at some time or another ineligible; a flat statement on the basis of personal authority will not do. There's too much rancor and political contamination concerning the legitimacy of Israel to accept a flat statement from anyone. Mangoe ( talk) 18:35, 23 July 2010 (UTC)
This is hardly a fringe theory. Participation in various UN organs, including the security council, requires membership in a regional group, and until 2000, Israel was not a member of any such group. There are dozens of sources that say this, which can be eaisly found. Here for example is The Independent explaining that "Israel was not a member of any voting bloc because of the hostility of Arab countries in the region until 2000, when it was admitted to the "west European and others group". Although the group has been allowed to have a vice-president of the General Assembly for the first time - its UN ambassador, Dan Gillerman - membership of the group was conditional on it not having a seat on the Security Council." Or Human Rights Watch, saying it in its World Report 2001: The Events of 2000, p.398. Or the book "Israel among the nations", published by the academic publisher Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, which says the same on p. 74, footnote 15, which even quotes UN Sec. General Annan confirming this to be the case. HupHollandHup ( talk) 00:14, 25 July 2010 (UTC)
I'm not sure if I should be here or the NOR board, if someone would look at the last section where an editor is claiming we should use criteria developed by the 'scientific community', ie mainly those attending some sort of Atlantis conference, to determine what should be in the article. In other words, notability wouldn't matter if some unknown guy's ideas passed those criteria. Dougweller ( talk) 13:15, 26 July 2010 (UTC)
In this biography of a law professor-turned-founder of the intelligent design movement, User:Freakshownerd has been insistent on replacing consensus text that has stood largely unchanged for over two years ( see here) with text that skirts the fringe nature of Johnson's beliefs. The user apparently feels that mentioning Johnson's AIDS denial or the fact that his positions are rejected by the scientific community is a BLP violation. I would appreciate if others could take a look at this individual's edits and weigh their merits. Thanks. Keepcalmandcarryon ( talk) 14:12, 26 July 2010 (UTC)
There was some whitewashing going on, to be sure. I tried to address it. Sticking close to primary sources to document Johnson's beliefs is not necessarily a bad idea. ScienceApologist ( talk) 15:49, 26 July 2010 (UTC)
This page is an archive. Do not edit the contents of this page. Please direct any additional comments to the current main page. |
At Talk:Newport Tower (Rhode Island) an editor is arguing that NEARA (the New England Antiquities Research Association) is not fringe. Since it supports most of the fringe ideas about pre-Columbian contact with the Americas, I think it's clearly fringe. An edit war seems to be developing over this. Dougweller ( talk) 11:58, 4 June 2010 (UTC)
We could use some extra input and some calming influence at Talk:Acupuncture#Who Wrote That? (or, Proper Attribution of WHO Review) probably. I'm getting fed up with a promoter. ScienceApologist ( talk) 08:01, 3 June 2010 (UTC)
Someone is inserting questionable content into Thermite, and is misrepresenting sources to do so. Aiken ♫ 19:49, 7 June 2010 (UTC)
This article's lead starts out with an unsupported claim about the origin of a particular geometric diagram being from "early Kabbalist scriptures", and which I suspect is incorrect. It continues with some more statements that seem to make little sense, throws into the mix alchemy and flower of life, adding problems with apparent WP:Synthesis. Then there follows a section about Platonic solids, without explaining what the connection is with the subject of the article. Of the sources used, the only one that has anything to do with the subject is a dead link.
I have no idea what can be done to improve the article. 173.52.182.160 ( talk) 12:13, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
I've reverted some recent large edits, though I'm willing to be persuaded that they might improve the article. The editor who made the edits isn't as yet doing much persuading. If others agree, or disagree, with the rearranging, deletion and addition, can they please way in to try and move beyond the current meta-discussion we appear to be mired in on the talk page. The article is currently locked due to this little contretemps. Thanks! Verbal chat 14:07, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
I know this is getting tiresome, but editor Smatprt is trying to insert the Shakespeare authorship question into the historical revisionism article as an example. The article itself contradicts this interpretation. The discussion can be read here.
Historical revisionism is an accepted scholarly process, not a denial of the academic consensus. The Shakespeare authorship question is already listed as an example in the Pseudohistory article (which Smatprt resisted) and the Fringe theory article (which he fought to include), both of which are valid classifications. There is also a subcategory of historical revisionism, Historical revisionism (negationism), which denies historical reality, not reinterprets it, and in which the Shakespeare authorship question qualifies to be included. I have not added it there because there is a further sub-category, negationism, which the article concentrates on and the examples given are so repugnant that I fear its very presence would violate NPOV. (Anti-Stratfordism is a relatively benign fantasy compared to the examples on that page, even though its methodology is identical.)
I have stated that if he produced a reliable source stating that the SAQ was an example of historical revisionism that I would cease to oppose its inclusion. Since according to the definition given in the article, historical revisionism is a part of the academic field of history, a source from the academic field of history that specifically states that the SAQ is an example of revisionism is what is called for. So far all he has come up with is an attempt to extend a comment by James Shapiro to encompass the entire topic of anti-Stratfordism, a newspaper comment about "revisionist scholars," (whatever they are), and a cite that contradicts his assertion that the SAQ is an example of historical revisionism.
Needless to say, I would like for this dispute to be settled so that I might spend my time more productively. The issue was discussed to death at ScienceApologist's talk page (a discussion which started out as a complaint from Smatprt that he was being harrassed), and I thought it was settled when ScienceApologist opined that "It seems reasonable to me to keep SAQ off of the negationism page, but it seems reasonable to put it on the pseudohistory page. I don't think it really belongs on the Historical Revisionism page because it isn't usually considered to be that way.", but Smatprt came back today with the above-mentioned refs.
I would also add that these incessant attempts to promote the Shakespeare authorship question by inserting a mention of the topic in every possible article grows wearisome beyond belief, and if anybody has some advice on how this problem could be solved I would very much appreciate it. Of course, I do realise that withdrawal from editing Wikipedia is always an option, but I would like to continue to contribute if I can avoid these long and tedious content disputes. Tom Reedy ( talk) 03:08, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
In Shakespeare studies, a legitimate example of historical revisionism would be the current near-consensus that Shakespeare collaborated instead of being a lone genius, which was the scholarly consensus for much of the 20th century. Shapiro talks about how uncomfortable he was with the idea, but that stylometric studies of the type chronicled by Brian Vickers and other evidence has convinced many scholars that Shakespeare's compositional methods must be rethought. Tom Reedy ( talk) 23:32, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
'Who wrote Shakespeare? And does it matter? The initial commission for this article was a result of viewing the ‘search’ statistics for readers of Literature Compass. The combination ‘Shakespeare’ + ‘authorship’ was the most common one bringing readers to the site. Like most institutional academic Shakespeare forums – university courses, textbooks, journals, etc. – Literature Compass did not acknowledge the force of this popular interest by providing any explicit information on the topic. In fact, as I go on to discuss, it is the so-called Shakespeare authorship question – did Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon actually write the plays published under his name in 1623? – which most separates academic from nonacademic Shakespeareans: the academic publishers, conferences, departments and individuals which have commandeered most Shakespearean study during the twentieth century are almost entirely distinct from the presses, symposia,mock-trials, press articles, Internet sites and other forms in which the question of who wrote Shakespeare has been most energetically debated.'Emma Smith, 'The Shakespeare Authorship Debate Revisited,' Literature Compass 5/3 (2008): 618–632, p.618.
In a sense, this is an argument of semantics. In particular, what does the word revisionism mean? In the sense of our article and most scholarly definitions of historical revisionism, it is referring to a particular historiography applied to historical narratives that are of dubious truth-value. To this end, SAQ does not fit the bill. However, one could also have defined "historical revisionism" to mean any attempt to recast history differently. In this way, SAQ, British Israelism, and the Washington stories told by Parson Weems would all qualify. Of course, Wikipedia chooses the more scholarly former approach as opposed to the latter approach. In other words, historical revisionism != List of historical interpretations rejected by the mainstream. ScienceApologist ( talk) 02:56, 3 June 2010 (UTC)
So since (quoting the top of this page) "Wikipedia aims to reflect academic consensus", are we done here? Tom Reedy ( talk) 14:50, 4 June 2010 (UTC)
this issue has not received a proper airing by uninvolved editors
Minor re-eruption of Armenian teenage mutant nationalism at the usual places, Mitanni, Urartu, etc. It will pass I am sure, but you might help making it go away more quickly by taking an interest. Thanks. -- dab (𒁳) 16:18, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
Armeno-Aryan is not a Nationalist Union etc etc.. Its a linguistic term, see the Indo-European related searches on the family tree, to see where it says Armeno-Aryan [4]. the Akhenaten page info was since since September 2009, and it was obviously approved by Dougweller <-- who works in Egypt related pages, and Armeno-Aryan with RS's was there. 75.51.173.254 ( talk) 22:52, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
It is not even Indo-Aryan, it was always put Indo-Iranian, which is before Indo-Aryan, and before that is the ancestors to both Armenians and Indo-Iranians, in that linguistic term (Armeno-Aryan) [5] that Dbachmann keeps thinking is about a Nationalist Union called Armenian Aryans. Look at the sources provided in about Mitanni and do google search in Mitanni you see Armenians coming up in the search results. There are none-Armenian RS's besides Petrie, Henry Hall, Michael Cohen, Colin Renfrew etc etc, which mention of the Mitanni names are not Indo-Aryan, but the subgroup Armeno-Aryan, ancestors of both Indo-Iranian and Armenian. Arta- <---prefix which both Armenian and Iranian kings used and even Armenian "Artashesian" dynasty with the same "prefix" not loanword, that is com,ing from the subgroup before those days of the later kings of Persia and Armenia. Do your further researches to find out, Hbuchmann from the 19th century German linguists saw the links with Indo-Iranians, because of Mitanni names, and also Henry Hall Egyptolostis, and George Rawlinson 75.51.173.254 ( talk)
I have a source for you do another search on Hurrian in google [6] you get this [7] <-- Indo-European elements in Hurrian, which we see example in Mitanni. This is where Armenians originated with the Indo-Iranians in the Armenian Highlands. Herodotus is the only source they base on, which he doesnt even say what they think he is saying. George Rawlinson in 19th century mentions about Herodotus comments [8], and says Indo-Europeans went westward from Armenia to Phrygia, Phrygia to Europe, not the other way around. Also, in the Hittites page new search has been made, and there were no major Indo-European (Aryan) invasions in the 1200's BC Iron Age in the Anatolia/Armenian Highlands. So we are native and originated along with the Indo-Iranians. The Eusibius quote was provided by a User:CodexSinatex <-- dont know spelling its in Mitanni edit history in 2005 he put the quote of "Armenians invaded the Syrians" at the time of Abraham, referring to descendants of Aram, (the name Armenia is derived from Aram) originated in that region, Aram-Naharin's region, (that is Mitanni) in the Armenian Highland also known in Greek as Anatolia. Those last parts of the quote put by CodexSinatrex in 2005 which mentioned that the Armenians originated in the region of Mitanni (Aram-Naharin), was removed by Dbachmann or some other IP users/vandals, who whenever they see a quote related to Armenian during this time, is automatically nationalism. CodexSinatrex is not even an Armenian user, and did not even think of any Armenian nationalistic info to put there, but found yet another RS, by Eusibius. 75.51.173.254 ( talk) 23:36, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
Is this Ararat arev again, or someone else? --Akhilleus ( talk) 01:39, 3 June 2010 (UTC)
If "Armeno-Aryan" is a term, it is indeed linguistic, and should be discussed under Greco-Aryan. I know "Greco-Armenian" is a term, and "Greco-Aryan" is a term, but I have never heard of "Armeno-Aryan" (i.e., a grouping of Armenian and Indo-Iranian to the exclusion of Greek). That's the bona fide side of it. Of course our "Armeno-Aryans" here have nothing to do with linguistics and should just be clamped down upon. I don't know if it is Ararat Arev. I wouldn't be surprised if it was, but you know what, WP:DUCK, we really don't need to know. -- dab (𒁳) 07:55, 3 June 2010 (UTC)
The edit-warrior hailed from California, not Texas, so perhaps it was User:Nareklm. Not that it matters, the two sockospheres are fapp-identical. -- dab (𒁳) 10:56, 3 June 2010 (UTC)
The article is still the playground of patriotic kids with no interest in the article topic. On top of this, we have now an intervention by a lazy admin. Of course it is so much easier to decide "protected. please sort it out on talk." than to sift through the history and figure out who was edit-warring and who wasn't, and who may have violated 3rr. Unfortunately, it is also shoddy admining.
What we need are admin with enough balls to make unequivocal decisions on who is being disruptive and who isn't. In this case, who is discussing the article topic, and who is indulging in puerile patriotic sentiment. Cheap administrating along the arbcom lines of "please be nice everyone and discuss some more, ok?" is not going to cut it in asymmetric controversies between encyclopedists and Randy in Boise (or Narek in Richmond TX). -- dab (𒁳) 09:40, 10 June 2010 (UTC)
Would anyone like to take a look at the introduction to the Bigfoot article? It was recently changed - difference is here - following a talk page discussion in which an editor explained that neither the terms "scientific consensus" or "scientific community" have any actual meaning. The prior intro, while better than the current one, had its flaws, so I'm hoping someone might be able to put together a better one. Regards, ClovisPt ( talk) 21:24, 7 June 2010 (UTC)
this is a point of stylistics, but I too find it jarring that the phrase "scientific consensus" is used unthinkingly on Wikipedia for random topics on which there isn't any "scientific" discourse in the first place. Sorry, but "Bigfoot" is not a topic of serious scientific discourse, and consequently there cannot be a "scientific consensus" on the existence of Bigfoot any more than there is one on the existence of Pikachu. I find statements like
to be at or near the bottom of what Wikipedia has to offer in non-vandalised content. Bigfoot may be considered a topic of scholarly study, but that study would be anthropology, not "science", and wouldn't try to examine "existence" to begin with but work on the premise that the subject matter is one of folklore. In this sense, the reference cited is almost certainly being misrepresented here. -- dab (𒁳) 10:13, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
Where is the consensus that most scientists feel this way? Everything I read shows that most scientists are baffled from all the possible evidence and fascinated by the large number of witnesses. It seems that most scientists keep an open mind when there's eyewitnesses until they can prove otherwise. It's the same with aliens, for the most part people don't believe they're real but what scientist wants to stake their reputation and come forward to say "they don't exist" then have one land in front of us? The entire comment is a misstated conformation that was not from an accurate source. It doesn't belong in Wikipedia.-- Timpicerilo ( talk) 10:26, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
If a source does not say scientific consensus, but says something like scientific community generally, or most scientists, use the phrase scientific community or most scientists or most academic researchers etc. A consensus is a general agreement which is usually an outcome of an official meeting and thus can be a bit misleading to use that term if it was not used in the source. Perhaps I am misreading the problem here. Just stick more closely to what the sources say is my suggestion.-- Literaturegeek | T@1k? 14:13, 10 June 2010 (UTC)
This could use some eyes on it. There's an attempt to call him an Egyptologist in the lead, although the article doesn't (and we'd need reliable sources to call him one), and to remove any mention of his being an Afrocentrist from the lead, although this is in the article. Thanks. Dougweller ( talk) 00:00, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
Afrocentrism is one of our most notorious trolling hotspots, besides what I think I will call "Greater Assyrian" ethnic trolling (Turks-Syriacs-Armenians-Kurds-Iranians) and "Greater Indian" (Indo-Pak) ethno-religious trolling. Afrocentrism hits Wikipedia really badly because most US American editors think it taboo to revert anyone they assume is black (because that would be racist, wouldn't it). -- dab (𒁳) 09:51, 10 June 2010 (UTC)
Looking for related articles, I came across the never-referenced African nationalism. My first thought was to see if I could quietly redirect it to Pan-Africanism, but I held back. For one thing, that would mean burying some remarkable prose.
Between World War I and World War II, a strident howl for self-determination resonated deafeningly from the gorges of numerous mutinous groups in a growing number of African countries.
Tim Shuba ( talk) 02:51, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
A true gem! This Afrocentrism business is high up on my list of surreal ethnic weirdness alongside the Armenian kids and the angry Hindutvavadis. -- dab (𒁳) 12:58, 12 June 2010 (UTC)
There is some debate about the television test section of this article and use of sources. An editor is using http://www.kevinhogan.com/aura.htm as a source, which I feel fails WP:RS. I feel this section could be improved with more RS of scientific / televised tests. Verbal chat 11:43, 12 June 2010 (UTC)
These articles were all created by the same user in May: Balkans-Caucasian race, Northcaucasian race, Pontid race, Caspian race. This has no relationship to real science, right? Prezbo ( talk) 19:59, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
It's like this. These are all items of scientific racism. Scientific racism is essentially historical scholarship, not "pseudo-scholarship", and it was pursued over the period of about 1880 to 1930. Even in the west, there are (maverick) scholarly publications into the 1960s, and in the Soviet Union at least into the 1980s. So while this may all be historical, it is by no means as far in the past as phlogiston but at best a couple of decades, and it may be arguable that the categories remain alive in anthropological literature. So no, I don't think we can dismiss this as "old Soviet notions" and delete it. What we should do is merge these items and discuss them in context. They are all sub-types of the greater Caucasian race, and it would probably be sufficient to keep a section on various subtypes according to various authors. If that turns out too long, there can still be a subtypes of the Caucasian race article to collect all these without the need to keep them scattered in two dozen short articles. -- dab (𒁳) 12:19, 12 June 2010 (UTC)
Blueboar, outdated does not equal fringe. The distinction is important, but it is also delicate and depends on context. The "Caucasian race" itself is "outdated and/or fringe", so I hoped it would go without saying that the same holds for all its proposed subtypes. The Caucasian race article itself is a topic of scientific racism, and the various minor subtypes according to Soviet authors clearly should be listed there. -- dab (𒁳) 08:14, 15 June 2010 (UTC)
This was first created as Silent Talk which I turned into a redirect to DARPA. Then this article was created, and I did the same thing. The most reliable source I can find is an Aviation Weekly Article, and this seems to be more of a proposal than anything actually active or notable. I've taken it to AfD. Dougweller ( talk) 12:08, 12 June 2010 (UTC)
A doubt has been raised over whether or not Anti-Americanism#The_degeneracy_thesis is a fringe theory. The main point being is that this is supported by only two historians [ [11]] or that other historians are just repeating the claims of the two historians [ [12]], and as such do not support notability, (if I understand the objection correctly). Now it seems to me that whilst this is a bit of a silly theory (that Europeans hated the USA before it even existed in essance) it also seems to have recived some attention that takes it beyond the fringe (whilst still being a minority view). Slatersteven ( talk) 14:48, 4 June 2010 (UTC)
This does not seem to be a fringe theory since no one believes in it any more. The obvious point-of-view of the historians in question is that a sort of "European-exceptionalism" is evident in this particular defunct theory which has parallels to anti-Americanism. Whether that point-of-view is properly handled is a question not for this board but for WP:NPOVN, methinks. ScienceApologist ( talk) 09:37, 5 June 2010 (UTC)
Indeed. 18th century scholarship entertained many hypotheses that can now be dismissed out of hand. This doesn't make them "fringe" or "pseudo", as at the time they may have been perfectly reasonable avenues of research. This is not about fringe scholarship, it is about historical scholarship. An important difference (also in the "Christ myth" disussion. The "Christ myth" was respectable scholarship in the 19th century, it is just fringecruft today). I wish people would take care to make this distinction. -- dab (𒁳) 15:28, 5 June 2010 (UTC)
I have rasied it here Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view/Noticeboard#Anti-Americanism. Slatersteven ( talk) 16:36, 5 June 2010 (UTC)
Belated clarification: we've conflated two theories. One was the Degeneracy Thesis, which of course nobody believes today. The other is the theory (or interpretation), advanced by two historians, that the Degeneracy Thesis is an important part of the history of anti-Americanism. It's the latter that I question. It is essentially an idea that has been advanced by a very small number of commentators, as we can see by the fact that a google-books search for "degeneracy+thesis anti-americanism" only produces 7 hits. Given that it seems like a personal interpretation of a very small number of commentators--in a field rife with politics and cultural bias--I don't believe it deserves an entire section in the "anti-Americanism" article. It doesn't have such weight in the academic community. Noloop ( talk) 19:10, 6 June 2010 (UTC)
There is an edit war going on at Universe over the inclusion of a recent proposal that the universe is shaped like a dodecahedron. The proposal is not a fringe theory - there are apparently a few papers on it - the issue is "undue weight" in the Universe article. If someone could take a look and express an opinion on the talk page, perhaps this could be resolved. -- Chetvorno TALK 19:26, 15 June 2010 (UTC)
There is some debate as to NPOV, scope, and comon names of the two categories we currently have for homeopathic "preparations/medicines/products/remedies/tinctures" (aka "water"). Please see the discussion here: CfD: Homeopathic remedies. The two categories are Category:Homeopathic remedies and Category:Homeopathic preparations. See also List of homeopathic preparations which established a wikipedia consensus on the name. Verbal chat 13:38, 16 June 2010 (UTC)
Funkily-sourced tale of aliens in blue tights scampering about on islands near Indonesia evading police bullets and being guided by confused but unharmed children. A candidate ripe for AfD. - LuckyLouie ( talk) 00:03, 17 June 2010 (UTC)
This article has been a mess since 2007 and has hardly changed despite tagging and a prod back in 2007. Any prospect of rescue, or should it go to AfD? Please do the honours! Merci, Verbal chat 08:30, 17 June 2010 (UTC)
A new editor is editing against the established consensus at Aspartame and Aspartame controversy, and editwarred to their preferred version at Aspartame controversy. Although some of their edits may be good (including the addition of new possible MEDRS), they have removed sourced information about the hoax letter and given undue weight to certain POVs. Hence I have tagged the article. Please investigate and give your well thought out opinions. Verbal chat 13:45, 18 June 2010 (UTC)
I'm not averse to including something about a hoax, but WP policy dictates that it must have a good source, not a self-published website. Self published websites, which do no fact checking in most instances, are specifically excluded from allowable sources. TickleMeister ( talk)
Having looked over the contested matter (which seems to be mostly contained in this removal [15] I see two things going on. First, the issue here isn't about medical testing at all, but urban legend and conspiracy history, pure and simple. Second, there's a notability issue which come out pretty clearly in the positive. It showed up in Time, for crying out loud. Therefore, WP:MEDRS isn't even remotely applicable, whereas in the documentation of urban legends, Snopes and the other sites used in the excised passages are generally considered by people in that field to be about as reliable as secondary sources come. It's bizarre to appeal to medical journals as evidence for testimony to the transmission of hoaxes. Mangoe ( talk) 16:42, 18 June 2010 (UTC)
The same editor who replaced an OR table of Exodus 'parallels' in the Ipuwer article mentioned above has also added a large section to this article which is both OR and about world government (which is not the subject of the article) and Biblical allusions to world government. Dougweller ( talk) 06:38, 19 June 2010 (UTC)
This is a neologism of Samuel Huntington to discuss how the West developed on different paths to the rest of the world from the Industrial Revolution onwards. My hunch is it hasn't caught on enough to merit an article and should be merged with our biography of Huntington. But our article on it seems to have developed a steam of its own. It appears, from the talk page, to have been created as a collective project of a group of students. They recount the whole recent history of the world, using reliable sources, true, but it is just an essay. They have got as far as a GA review on it - and that was favourable. Some more eyes please, because others may see the situation quite differently from me. Itsmejudith ( talk) 15:23, 17 June 2010 (UTC)
The questions of article scope and article title should be kept separate. "Great Divergence" is just one possible title for this, another being " European miracle", and there are possibly yet other, better titles, such as " Rise of the western colonial empires". While the term "Great Divergence" may be idiosyncratic to Huntington, the concept discussed in the article certainly is not.
If this article can be merged anywhere, the target article would be
Modern history.
The article is basically the "modern" section of the
History_of_Western_civilization article, and is duly linked from there via {{
main}} {{
see}} (
here).
The scope of the "Great Divergence" article is addressing how the Modern period gave the Western world an incredible and unprecedented edge over all other super-regional cultures. This concerns the period 1500 to 1900. After 1914, the West more or less self-destructed (so there is no danger of singing triumphalist praises of the west being the best, this is about a historical period that came and went).
There has been a lot of confusion regarding this article, and the recent school project has served to add to this confusion. A serious attempt at fixing this will need to look at the "Great Divergence" article in conjunction with History_of_Western_civilization and Western world. This is what the GA/FA-badge hunters mostly overlook, very often it is impossible to meaningfully develop an article without working on related articles at the same time, aligning scopes and content judiciously.
This is not really about a "fringe theory", but it is certainly a spot where experienced editors are needed if there is to be any progress. -- dab (𒁳) 13:41, 20 June 2010 (UTC)
"I think that retelling the same history in numerous articles is sloppy and also a magnet for POV." -- can we put this in large letters and with a blink tag at the top of some basic policy page? The older the project grows, the more severe this kind of problem turns out to be at the topics with a lot of traffic (Jesus! Jesus myth! Historical Jesus! Historicity of Jesus! The quest for the historical Jesus! Jesus in history! Jesus and history! History and Jesus. Jesus H. Christ in History!).
The "European miracle" topic is at least still interesting because it hasn't been well treated anywhere so far, so the current article is as good as any place to make a start. Digging on google books I uncover a large scholarly debate on this over the past 30 years. The current article barely scratches the surface. So I think we need to get decent coverage first and worry about scope overlap later. -- dab (𒁳) 09:17, 23 June 2010 (UTC)
What should be a scholarly article harps too much on alleged links with the Exodus, and my attempts to cut down on this (and on 'argument by authority'} have been reverted. It also needs expanding to give due balance to main stream commentary. Dougweller ( talk) 21:11, 18 June 2010 (UTC)
There is whitewashing of this article. The article as restored [16] accurately reflects the RS which we have, and the recent edits are whitewashing. The article had been deleted, but I restored it because these sources became available. The article as I wrote it is actually less negative toward the church than the articles. Please help restore this article to its proper balance. Should I have posted at the NPOV noticeboard instead? Becritical ( talk) 19:14, 22 June 2010 (UTC)
See Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Race and intelligence. At the center is the degree of acceptance of Arthur Jensen's theories. Mangoe ( talk) 20:53, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
lol, the arbcom really isn't learning. Once again trying to judge on content. When will they pause to check what they were actually elected to do, namely to judge on user conduct, and user conduct only. Of course this is going to take half a year of bureaucracy at least, and the outcome will be "editors are sternly admonished to follow policy". This is so Kafkaesque, I am actually beginning to enjoy it. -- dab (𒁳) 09:42, 10 June 2010 (UTC)
Anything that happens on this noticeboard and in relation to WP:FRINGE is directly based on Wikipedia core policy, WP:NPOV, WP:DUE, WP:V and not on some obscure arbcom decision. The arbcom is exclusively there to penalize user misconduct, especially in case of admin wheel wars getting otu of control (which happen extremely rarely, less than once a year). Anything else the community can resolve oderers of magnitude more expertly and efficiently than the arbcom. "Race and Intelligence" can also be addressed strictly under WP:NPOV, WP:DUE etc. -- the fact that this is proving so difficult in practice is, alongside "Christ myth" and "Shakespeare authorship" due to people misbehaving and failing to objectively "write for the enemy". Such misbehaviour needs to be penalized by the community, the admin community, or failing that by the arbcom, fair enough. But experience shows that the arbcom cannot do anything to resolve these issues, because they are complicated and they are so swamped with flamewars they never get to the point, and a few smart admins with balls can resolve a problem in a matter of days which would take the arbcom half a year to come up with a null-result. -- dab (𒁳) 12:55, 12 June 2010 (UTC)
Please don't bring the fall-out of your falling-out here. I don't even understand why you two fell out in the first place. IMHO you should have a chat off-wiki now rather than later. Itsmejudith ( talk) 10:33, 15 June 2010 (UTC)
As many people as possible, please, to cast an eye on the discussion of the talk page of Race and intelligence about the inclusion of the findings of a paper by Rushton. I am trying to get a general principle accepted that the article should be written up from sources on the history of science etc. There is at least one good source of that kind. My strong impression is that the Rishton paper is fringe in the sense of being well outside the findings of recent scholarship. It also seems evident to me that it should be treated as a primary source. If you have a stats background you might care to look at the coherence of the paper itself, but it isn't directly relevant. Itsmejudith ( talk) 09:55, 26 June 2010 (UTC)
I protected this article a week or so ago, and I've watchlisted it since protection ended. There appear to be several issues with the article which, I'm hoping, would benefit from more eyes. This is detailed on the talk page, but in summary:
{{
Unbalanced}}
and/or {{
POV}}
apply;I'd appreciate it if anyone could talk a look and help move this along.
Cheers, TFOWR 17:04, 25 June 2010 (UTC)
Professor David Elieser Deutsch FRS
Visiting Professor, Department of Atomic and Laser Physics, Centre for Quantum Computation, The Clarendon Laboratory, University of Oxford
David Deutsch laid the foundations of the quantum theory of computation, and has subsequently made or participated in many of the most important advances in the field, including the discovery of the first quantum algorithms, the theory of quantum logic gates and quantum computational networks, the first quantum error-correction scheme, and several fundamental quantum universality results. He has set the agenda for worldwide research efforts in this new, interdisciplinary field, made progress in understanding its philosophical implications (via a variant of the many-universes interpretation) and made it comprehensible to the general public, notably in his book The Fabric of Reality.
As there is consensus to make improvements to this article to improve readability and bring it into line with policy, I have begun trimming OR and removing synthesis, over quoting of Tipler, etc. However, as I get deeper, I note the article is mostly built on primary sources (Tipler), and actual independent WP:RS are few. Also, there is a problem with deliberate conflation of sources - e.g. a source having mentioned the omega point as a general term in physics is made to seem as if that source supports Tipler's theist interpretation in particular. As Tipler's Omega Point theory has not received the kind of notice we generally require to devote a separate article to, it may be that after sufficient improvements are made, the best course is WP:AFD and redirect Omega Point (Tipler) to Frank J. Tipler. - LuckyLouie ( talk) 15:19, 28 June 2010 (UTC)
Sadly, a lone editor has undertaken to edit war the article back to its former state. - LuckyLouie ( talk) 19:20, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
I came across the article on Teruo Higa while checking out our oldest unsourced BLPs and that led me to Effective microorganism. There are plenty of sources available about both the professor and his pet topic (Find sources: Google ( books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL, Find sources: Google ( books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL) but they have to me, a layman, a whiff of pseudoscience. Could someone with some knowledge of microbiology and/or horticulture check out these articles and ensure that anything fringe is presented as such? Phil Bridger ( talk) 19:14, 1 July 2010 (UTC)
Please take a look at this article: Abiogenic petroleum origin, it seems to warrant inclusion in the category of Fringe theories according to the guidelines set forward in WP:Fringe. I have neither the time nor inclination to delve into this deeply (no pun intended); I just happened upon the article and thought it should be mentioned here. Calicocat ( talk) 23:11, 4 July 2010 (UTC)
This is probably about the last thing anyone here is going to be surprised by, but the article needs some review. First, I notice there's no discussion of skeptical criticism of the Ouija board, only credulous variations on occultists claiming they're dangerous to spiritual or mental health, or sinful (I can't help but be reminded of the classic B-movie posters warning the weak of constitution away...) There's some really great stuff.
Gems include:
"In March 1920, a United Press dispatch from Martinez, California stated that detention in the insane ward was filled with seven persons "who, the police say, were driven insane by constant use of ouija boards."[15]"
I guess at least they varied it from the usual old boring "driven insane by constant..." prognosis. Then there's poor Rob Doe:
"In a famous case, in January 1949, a fourteen-year-old Lutheran boy, Rob Doe, living in Cottage City, Maryland became involved in satanic possession after trying to contact his deceased aunt (with whom he had been very close) via an ouija board.[three citations here] ... Rev. William Bowdern, assisted by Rev. Walter Halloran and Rev. William Van Roo, conducted subsequent exorcisms and succeeded in driving out the demon from the child when the child finally uttered "Christus, Domini."[two more citations]"
The main reason I actually bring it up here is that I don't actually know where things sit wrt demons, posession, and fringe, and while I haven't discussed this on the article talk page, it's because I don't want to put a wrong foot (or I suppose approach, or argument) forward there and derail any chance of improvement in the article by accidentally sparking flames.
So, could someone with more experience, both in handling fringe and in not starting brushfires, check this out? Hatchetfish ( talk) 09:03, 5 July 2010 (UTC)
I took out a bunch of stuff that shouldn't have been there, as it was just stuff someone was interested in and not really notable in the subject area, or it did not seem notable. BECritical__ Talk 18:47, 5 July 2010 (UTC)
Big pile of edits by Thebigpowerthing1664 ( talk · contribs).Quote
See diff Seems very fringe, POV. etc. --220.101 ( talk) \Contribs 21:14, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
this is by all appearances an article on an unnotable crank. As long as no evidence of notability is presented, I would support deletion. -- dab (𒁳) 15:21, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
This article is a bit of a mess. It is a personal OR essay written by an editor with an apparent COI (I've removed the stuff about him) as a puffy promotion piece totally lacking in RS. Please add to watchlists and attempt to help clean up if possible, or next stop is AfD. Verbal chat 19:31, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
"astrology and computers"? We need more "X and computers" articles. Badly needed are kangaroos and computers, anger management and computers and Dow Jones and computers. -- dab (𒁳) 13:27, 30 June 2010 (UTC)
yes, in all seriousness, this is a valid topic, and the topic is one of Category:Application software. This is essentially about horoscopy software, but if the usual term is "astrology software" by all means move the article there. -- dab (𒁳) 08:33, 1 July 2010 (UTC)
the article will be fine. It just needs a meaningful title and a {{ refimprove}} tag for the time being. -- dab (𒁳) 14:08, 1 July 2010 (UTC)
So this mostly needs deescalation between Verbal and myself now, both of usn FTN regulars. If I am to be going to honour any of Verbal's allegations above, I would very much appreciate diffs for all the things I am supposed to have done to him. What I have in fact done is take middle ground between an editor knowledgeable of astrology software (the article topic) but not of Wikipedia best practice on one hand (John) and an editor knowledgeable of Wikipedia policy and guidelines, but with his judgement clouded by a general dislike of astrology (Verbal). I think the exchange of niceties is more or less done now and we can return to a more serene appreciation of the remaining issues with the article. Note how while all this turmoil was going on at assorted talkpages, the article has been steadily improving, so the project wins even if everybody walks away annoyed. Which is as it should be. -- dab (𒁳) 14:38, 2 July 2010 (UTC)
Astrology is considered Fringe. In the article discussed in this section, the Fringe attribution is being used as a reason to tag sources as unreliable. Fringe content does not make a publication or publisher or writer unreliable. A judgment that content is fringe does not support a further judgment that a publication about such content is an unreliable source on that subject, nor can it be inferred that a publisher or writer of such content therefore fails to be a reliable source. Such an assertion is a logical fallacy. (It is a kind of category error, in that one is meta to the other.) There are good criteria for the WP:RS label. Identifying the subject matter as Fringe says nothing about how reliable a source about that subject matter might be. Bn ( talk) 02:47, 7 July 2010 (UTC)
Off topic, process issue
|
---|
I think I understand how that happened. A power outage crashed my PC. On recovery, the browser restored the edit state. However, the Wikipedia server did not retain the context of that edit. The result was that what was intended as an insertion at the end of the section was processed as a replacement for the entire section. Hence, it appeared to be an unrelated extension of the section on Beardon. LuckyLouie then reverted without examining history to see the relevant context; but if he had, it might well have been taken for vandalism. Is there a place to post a caution about browsers that restore state after a crash? Bn ( talk) 18:26, 7 July 2010 (UTC) |
Occitan nationalist anger at Paris' ill-treatment of their language over the centuries, presented as incontrovertible fact and defended by very cross IPs. Could all be true, but... Itsmejudith ( talk) 20:06, 5 July 2010 (UTC)
Hardly a fringe theory, just a question of political WP:POV. On a related note, our coverage of the umbrella topic of linguistic discrimination is in a sad state. We get occasional and erratic contributions of the kind of Vergonha and Welsh Not, mostly by editors with a political agenda, but nobody has so far bothered to sit down and cover the topic from an academic perspective. -- dab (𒁳) 08:07, 7 July 2010 (UTC)
IP removing pseuo-scientific categories, etc, see their newest set of edits [20]. Dougweller ( talk) 14:35, 6 July 2010 (UTC)
User Gazpr ( talk · contribs) has contributed a large amount of material related to Gazprom and the Russian energy sector. While he provides sources for his edits, concern has been raised that his edits present a fringe point-of-view and possibly promote conspiracy theories. -- Petri Krohn ( talk) 02:04, 7 July 2010 (UTC)
There appears to be extreme fringe point-of-view pushing going on with this article, specifically that the 2010 Kingston conflict is a war. I have asked for sources that it is a war, none have been provided. More eyes would be welcome. Thank you. O Fenian ( talk) 23:37, 11 July 2010 (UTC)
An editor is removing obvious examples, [21] - Fomenko, Illig, - maybe this is a spillover from the argument at Fringe theory? Or the old Shakespeare one? Dougweller ( talk) 20:03, 15 July 2010 (UTC)
I'm going to throw a half-baked idea in here (because it occurred to me just now over coffee, and I didn't want to forget about it). Maybe it's time to consider taking this whole rat's nest of related ideas - fringe theories, pseudoscience, pseudohistory, etc. - and warp them into a new guideline on scholarly revisionism. The consistent problem here, it seems to me, is that scholars have an inherent right to challenge and try to revise the intellectual 'status quo', and wikipedia has an obligation to report on that scholarship when it's notable enough, but the act of reporting on such things gets tangled up between an assortment of misguided editors:
A guideline that disentangles scholarly revisionism from this kind of editorial revisionism might be useful. -- Ludwigs2 14:25, 16 July 2010 (UTC)
Exactly what kind of fringe this might be, I can't say, because it's all over the map and seems to be completely original research. I redirected to simulation but was reverted. I then removed reams of material, but the article is still in shambles and I suppose the unregistered editor may reinsert what I took out. I have no idea how "simulated reality" is supposed to differ from "simulation", nor is any version of the article helpful in explaining that to me. Tim Shuba ( talk) 03:09, 18 July 2010 (UTC)
I've seen too many edits like this one [22] - which is by a self-declared creationist. Is this argument lost and is the phrase no longer one we can use? Dougweller ( talk) 05:41, 8 July 2010 (UTC)
We have a constant background level of creationist trolling, but we also have a lot of people overreacting to that, so I think we are fine. "creation narrative" in the case of Genesis in particular is fine, for reasons peculiar to Genesis: it isn't just an Iron Age myth, it has undergone centuries of redaction from the point of view of monotheist theology, it is a very special case. Our creationists only ever care about the creation according to Genesis, the countless other creation myths from other traditions are comparatively safe from them.
Calling the Genesis account a "creation narrative" is not a fringe theory, and I would actually support the phrasing. It is, of course, a creation myth, but it is also other things, and harping on it being a creation myth is needlessly simplistic. -- dab (𒁳) 22:33, 8 July 2010 (UTC)
Noloop, did you read anything I said? Please don't try to revive the braindead "define myth" debate, at least not here. Slatersteven, please use a dictionary. A religion is not a myth. A myth is a sacred narrative within some religion. If you are going to be pedantic, at least get it right. -- dab (𒁳) 18:50, 10 July 2010 (UTC)
Ludwigs2, when we say "myth" we obviously mean "sacred narrative" not "falsehood". The former is hardly "jargon", it is the only meaningful application of the word in the context. Please be reasonable. Are you suggesting "creation myth" translates to "creation lie"? A creation myth is a sacred narrative regarding the concept of creation. "Jargon" has nothing to do with this, it's perfectly unambiguous. The same way it is straighforward to call a female dog a bitch in a cynological context. -- dab (𒁳) 21:31, 10 July 2010 (UTC)
(outdent) There is a difference between "narrative" and "myth"--that's why those who believe in the Christian myths/narratives/stories care. The term "myth" carries a stronger connotation of a quaint tale no educated person really believes nowadays. Myths are believed in by aborigines and followers of dead religions. The term "narrative" doesn't carry that connotation, or does so to a lesser degree. It is not just an amazing coincidence that cultures dominated by Biblical religions only refer to non-Biblical religious stories as "myths." For Wikipedia to perpetuate that pattern is systemic bias. Noloop ( talk) 01:19, 11 July 2010 (UTC)
They're all myths. But if that has pejorative connotations and must be avoided in order not to risk offending people, then, please, not "narratives". When not in a context of PoMo gibberish ( humdrum example), the noun "narrative" seems to mean little or nothing more than does the simple word "story". -- Hoary ( talk) 03:17, 11 July 2010 (UTC)
KoshVorlon ( talk · contribs) is continuing to redact comments here, there are two sections on his (archived) talk page that I think are relevant to his actions here [23]. Dougweller ( talk) 20:57, 11 July 2010 (UTC)
Comment I fail to understand why anyone is debating what "myth" means and how fair or unfair it is to use the label for one set of stories and not another, or in one title and not another. This entire discussion is entirely outside the realm of policy when it comes to article titles
WP:NAME and article content
WP:V. We follow the terminology used by scholars. Period. I see time and again the clear directives of policy brushed to the side when editors simply don't like the results of following it.
Griswaldo (
talk) 15:31, 16 July 2010 (UTC)
These edits [27] may be fine, or they may be fringe, does anyone know enough about this subject to help? I got to this article via Wikipedia:Editor assistance/Requests#Request for Clarification of 'Grand Unified Theory' Page Content Policy Dougweller ( talk) 10:22, 16 July 2010 (UTC)
looks perfectly ok to me. -- dab (𒁳) 10:44, 16 July 2010 (UTC)
"When the bottom part of the white part of the eye known as the sclera is visible it is referred to as 'Yin Sanpaku' by the Chinese. Attributed to physical imbalance in the body, it can be present in alcoholics, drug addicts and people who over consume sugar or grain. Conversely when the upper sclera is visible this is called 'Yang Sanapaku'. This is said to be an indication of mental imbalance in people such as psychotics, murderers and anyone rageful. Stress and fatigue may also be a cause." - the article.
Wow. So, if some of the white of your eyes is visible, you're an alcoholic or drug addict? This needs so many qualifiers it's not even funny. Adam Cuerden ( talk) 19:34, 20 July 2010 (UTC)
Apparently Christ myth theory isn't a fringe theory after all but "interesting, scientific material" and the like. I guess I was wrong to think that it was disruptive to keep adding it into the 4th sentence of the lead of Historical Jesus. Griswaldo ( talk) 19:29, 21 July 2010 (UTC)
*sob* If Jesus had known that this would eventually come of his mission, I think he would have wept and stayed in his carpentry shop. I mean, salvation is all very well, but has it been worth this? -- dab (𒁳) 09:39, 22 July 2010 (UTC)
The article defines OOPART as "Fringe terminology". It lists artifacts "argued by various fringe authors to have been OOPArts", then says they are "categorised according to their current status in the eyes of the mainstream scientific community."...listing some as "fully validated" and some "with some scientific validation". Mainstream science not recognizing OOPART as a term...but validating some OOPARTs? Seems to be a contradiction. Maybe someone here can find a way to fix this article. - LuckyLouie ( talk) 23:15, 21 July 2010 (UTC)
I can't get a response to my analysis from the page-watchers: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Time Cube (7th nomination). Please comment. ScienceApologist ( talk) 13:37, 22 July 2010 (UTC)
Tagged by another editor for OR - Dab, you've looked at this in the past. Dougweller ( talk) 16:27, 22 July 2010 (UTC)
yes, it's a problem. This is in effect our "pseudolinguistics" article, but it isn't based on anything solid. Perhaps we should reduce it to a section at Pseudo-scholarship until somebody does it properly. Alternatively, it could be merged into Mass lexical comparison, which was itself "povved" last year [28] and needs attention. We need this article, but right now it's just broken. -- dab (𒁳) 20:43, 22 July 2010 (UTC)
Hi I posted at the "neutral point of view boards before" but after i looked around i saw that maybe my issue is more correct here? i will copy paste it. Would be nice if somebody could tell me which place is better, i will delete it at the other boards then. Copied Text:
I think its a common point of view that this battle was a tactical victory. The english articles ( i think its the only wiki article doing this ) called it tactical inconclusive, without any citiations. I attempted to changes this but was reverted. To illustrate that its common view that this battle was tactical german victory i posted some books at the talk page. Other editors, which present their point of view, while they discuss why they consider this battle as inconclusive, failed to bring only one quote which supports "tactical inconclusive". For every neutral editor checking this bear in mind that tactical is a special condition of a victory which needs special citiations. There are multiple scales of warfare, they are losly connect. A tactical victory is something different then strategic victory. Thus we need exact claims for this. Please take a look here :[
[29]], i list sources there. You also can take a look at any non english article about this battle, you could also do a quick google search with "tacitcal victory" and jutland. Thanks for your time
Blablaaa (
talk) 21:07, 22 July 2010 (UTC)
While describing notable historic pseudoscholarship - and thus certainly a viable subject for Wikipedia - this article has real issues with tone. It seems to accept the pseudoscholarship as fact at several points, and talks about how other bits of pseudoscholarship "confirm" it.
Needs work. Adam Cuerden ( talk) 02:51, 23 July 2010 (UTC)
I must insist that this is not "historic pseudoscholarship", it is historic scholarship. Or just religious mysticism in some cases. The John Dee section needed a fix though. -- dab (𒁳) 08:35, 23 July 2010 (UTC)
Such material as is present is presented fairly, but the problem is completeness (lack of). Picking out Dee, Emmerich and LDS in particular is pretty random, a good overview of the topic would have more sweeping strokes and less random detail. -- dab (𒁳) 19:51, 23 July 2010 (UTC)
There are ongoing discussions, involving such well known editors as Ludwigs2, about changing Wikipedia:Fringe theories. As this is directly relevant to this noticeboard, please have a look at Wikipedia Talk:Fringe theories. Verbal chat 14:07, 18 July 2010 (UTC)
Everyone means well, but it adds up to guideline pages full of bloat. Please assume the reader is (a) sentient and literate, and (b) aware of basic policy. It is true that "one may not be able to write about a fringe theory in a neutral manner if there are no independent secondary sources of reasonable reliability" but this holds for every article on the project just as well. Please, if you are reviewing the page, make it your main aim to end up with a more concise version. -- dab (𒁳) 19:12, 18 July 2010 (UTC)
There is a merge proposal for Science of morality and Ethical naturalism. I think some more attention might help elucidate the intersection of philosophy and science viz popular media and speculation.— Machine Elf 1735 ( talk) 08:03, 25 July 2010 (UTC)
Here's a real extreme case, someone's doing a copy and paste to get rid of the word myth from book titles, etc [31]. After an undiscussed move (now being discussed by others at the retitled Talk:Flood legends. Dougweller ( talk) 20:50, 19 July 2010 (UTC)
The myth haters are really beginning to go to pathological lengths here. Only on Wikipedia... -- dab (𒁳) 13:54, 20 July 2010 (UTC)
The "label myth" is not "contentious". This should be considered trolling. I haven't yet seen a single "contention" forwarded by an editor who had as much as basic grasp of the issues involved. This is simply white noise in my book. Just keep pointing people to WP:NAME. If they can show their preferred title is in fact the most commonly used, hey presto, they've got their move, without needing to go through misguided "controversies". What I would hope could come of this is at leats a wider recognition that Til Eulenspiegel is a habitually disruptive, long-term problem editor, in spite of the basically fair maintenance work he is also doing. -- dab (𒁳) 11:04, 21 July 2010 (UTC)
I just found the deletion discussion for the "Myth disclaimer box" I mention above. It's at Wikipedia:Templates_for_deletion/Log/2009_March_21#Template:Myth_box. The thing was in use from June 2007 to March 2009 and looked like this:
Note on the term mythology: |
---|
In an academic context, the word " myth" refers to any sacred and traditional narrative. Unless otherwise noted, the words "mythology" and "myth" are here used in this sense, with no implication as to the historicity or factuality of the content of any such sacred narratives. |
I think I recommended its deletion, although I do not seem to have contributed to the deletion discussion itself. -- dab (𒁳) 14:00, 26 July 2010 (UTC)
The United Nations Security Council article makes a WP:Fringe claim [34] "Out of all UN-member states, Israel is the only nation that is not eligible to sit on the Security Council."
The Jewish Virtual Library does have a page which claims that Israel is the only country ineligible for membership on the Security Council. [35] Members are actually elected based upon the criteria contained in Article 23 of the UN Charter. [36]
Israel had never filed an application to be a candidate before 2005. The Jewish Virtual Library has another article which says that Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom announced in September 2005 that the country will, for the first time, seek a temporary seat on the Security Council. [37] That article links to a 2005 UN news story in which Israel announced its candidacy for a seat on the Security Council [38] Israel's Ynet News explained at the time that Israel had never applied to be a candidate before, and that if it were accepted it, would have to wait 13 years for the next available opening. [39]
Do we have to repeat old stories about a case of hypothetical ineligibility? Obviously, you can find sources that say Israel is ineligible. However, Israel has been a candidate in the elections for several years now and it was never truly "ineligible". harlan ( talk) 14:53, 22 July 2010 (UTC)
(outdent) I think under the circumstances that an acceptable secondary source would have to cite UN rules which made Israel at some time or another ineligible; a flat statement on the basis of personal authority will not do. There's too much rancor and political contamination concerning the legitimacy of Israel to accept a flat statement from anyone. Mangoe ( talk) 18:35, 23 July 2010 (UTC)
This is hardly a fringe theory. Participation in various UN organs, including the security council, requires membership in a regional group, and until 2000, Israel was not a member of any such group. There are dozens of sources that say this, which can be eaisly found. Here for example is The Independent explaining that "Israel was not a member of any voting bloc because of the hostility of Arab countries in the region until 2000, when it was admitted to the "west European and others group". Although the group has been allowed to have a vice-president of the General Assembly for the first time - its UN ambassador, Dan Gillerman - membership of the group was conditional on it not having a seat on the Security Council." Or Human Rights Watch, saying it in its World Report 2001: The Events of 2000, p.398. Or the book "Israel among the nations", published by the academic publisher Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, which says the same on p. 74, footnote 15, which even quotes UN Sec. General Annan confirming this to be the case. HupHollandHup ( talk) 00:14, 25 July 2010 (UTC)
I'm not sure if I should be here or the NOR board, if someone would look at the last section where an editor is claiming we should use criteria developed by the 'scientific community', ie mainly those attending some sort of Atlantis conference, to determine what should be in the article. In other words, notability wouldn't matter if some unknown guy's ideas passed those criteria. Dougweller ( talk) 13:15, 26 July 2010 (UTC)
In this biography of a law professor-turned-founder of the intelligent design movement, User:Freakshownerd has been insistent on replacing consensus text that has stood largely unchanged for over two years ( see here) with text that skirts the fringe nature of Johnson's beliefs. The user apparently feels that mentioning Johnson's AIDS denial or the fact that his positions are rejected by the scientific community is a BLP violation. I would appreciate if others could take a look at this individual's edits and weigh their merits. Thanks. Keepcalmandcarryon ( talk) 14:12, 26 July 2010 (UTC)
There was some whitewashing going on, to be sure. I tried to address it. Sticking close to primary sources to document Johnson's beliefs is not necessarily a bad idea. ScienceApologist ( talk) 15:49, 26 July 2010 (UTC)