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In the Robert O. Becker article someone is trying to add lots of undue, unsourced and OR material [1]. Comments etc welcomed. IRWolfie- ( talk) 09:25, 11 May 2012 (UTC)
Theres no third party reliable sources on this article, the references consist of Theosophist authors only and a look through the internet reveals that the concept of esoteric astrology has not been covered by many, is the topic notable enough to have its own page? GreenUniverse ( talk) 21:47, 11 May 2012 (UTC)
John F. Ashton is a living food-scientist and young-earth creationist. This short paragraph describes a book he published. It's taken from a section which is about his mainstream work, rather than his creationism advocacy.
The cited sources seem to be WP:RS for the content of Ashton's book but probably not WP:MEDRS for the claims being made.
For example, The notion that red wine has an anti-aging effect is a fringe view that's often expressed in popular media. Does it make any sense to compare the life prolonging effects of chocolate to another substance which has not been proven to prolong life? Ashton has almost certainly claimed this, however I think we need to find a way to show that these views are not regarded as mainstream amongst nutritionists. -- Salimfadhley ( talk) 22:09, 12 May 2012 (UTC)
I have started an RFC on the pseudoscience section of the lede of astrology where I have proposed new wording. Your comments are appreciated at Talk:Astrology#RFC_on_change_to_pseudoscience_summary_in_lede. Thanks. SÆdon talk 22:14, 12 May 2012 (UTC)
Subject claims to have recorded the first live conversation between the living and the spirit world. Also says his band has achieved cult status with their vast internet following. Maybe I'm missing something but they both sound like non-notable fringe theories to me. It's up for AfD. - LuckyLouie ( talk) 00:55, 15 May 2012 (UTC)
The article on this WP:FRINGE organisation is rather badly sourced, largely accepts it at its own self-assessment, and does little to establish notability. Is it simply an under-written piece on a notable piece of woo, or is it beyond saving? Hrafn Talk Stalk( P) 10:48, 15 May 2012 (UTC)
This is related to the article discussed immediately above. My fringey sense tingles reading this, because "catastrophism" is also a code word for Velikovsky's ideas. I am highly doubtful that the paradigm shift it presents actually obtains in real geophysical research. Any other opinions? Mangoe ( talk) 14:26, 15 May 2012 (UTC)
I removed some 50% of the article on Mound builder (people) which was devoted to fringe theories and grossly violating WP:UNDUE. Some additional voices and eyes would be useful, especially as it may be okay to add a limited amount of the material removed back into the article.
128.59.171.10 ( talk) 20:00, 16 May 2012 (UTC)
FYI, there's an AFD open for this article - which should really have been called "Masreliez (family)". The notion that this family is important in Swedish art-history seems to be a fringe view unsupported by significant coverage in mainstream sources.
The article concerns a group of people, some of whom may be individually notable in Swedish visual and performing arts. I'm not convinced that the family is notable in itself. -- Salimfadhley ( talk) 10:25, 18 May 2012 (UTC)
A group of rural Kentuckians claim they fought off an attack by extraterrestrials, but when police arrived they found nothing. Yet to read the article you'd think beings from outer space were the cause, or at least, something otherworldly and mysterious. Like many of our UFO articles, this one is slanted toward credulous interpretations rather than a dispassionate reporting of claims. Much of the article is spent on trying to connect several unrelated events. Undue weight is given to describing claims in the most graphic and sensational way possible. Parsimonious explanations are buried at the end of the article and positioned as an afterthought, or alternatives to the extraterrestrial/mystery default view. - LuckyLouie ( talk) 14:41, 18 May 2012 (UTC)
However, if you mean that UFO articles should be reduced to little more than stubs that provide few details of the event and make no attempt to mention multiple points of view then I would disagree. You said that Clark is biased, but what about UFO debunkers such as Philip Klass and Robert Sheaffer? I’m curious as to what you think an ideal Wiki UFO article would contain, assuming you’re in favor of even having such articles. 70.145.229.162 ( talk) 23:30, 23 May 2012 (UTC)
This discussion may be of interest: Talk:Fringe_theory#Continental_drift_-_bad_example. Continental drift is a bad example of a fringe theory that became mainstream because the suggested mechanisms were all rejected in favour of a completely different mechanism: plate tectonics. IRWolfie- ( talk) 22:03, 21 May 2012 (UTC)
Any thoughts on a merge and redirect of Bruce Porter Roberts to Gemstone File? There is some verifiable information about Roberts (searching combinations of "Bruce Roberts", "Gemstone File", and "Skeleton Key"), but I'm not sure there is enough to warrant a stand-alone article. Per this source, little is known of him except that he died of a tumor. Thanks! Location ( talk) 19:27, 23 May 2012 (UTC)
This is a theory or belief system developed by one person, Arnold Mindell. It is studied by students at Arnold Mindell's Process Work Centre in Portland where there has been an investigation into that organisation's academic standards and the master's degree they offer in Process Work. Arnold Mindell may have a PhD in psychology but he is reported in the local Portland press as not being licensed as a psychologist in Oregon. This may be why he does not us the title 'Process orientated psychology' in the US ( http://www.wweek.com/portland/article-285-dream_academy.html). Arnold Mindell and Process Work are not notable, and people checking their validity may rely on the wikipedia entry. It is not a theory taught in psychology departments in institutions or universities other than Mindell's own which has been criticised as functioning as a visa scam. — Preceding unsigned comment added by NotMindell ( talk • contribs)
I have been trying to submit research information in Robert O. Becker, but this work has been consistently disrupted by deletions. After one of these ("explained" with merely the label "undue"), the deletionist IRWolfie- (who fails to see the significance of WP:DONOTDEMOLISH) reported my submission(s) here on this noticeboard.
This would have been a valid invitation to cooperation if it had contained an explanation like: "Can anybody explain what is undue about Becker's research on stimulating regrowth after an amputation or bone fracture, and what the due methods for such stimulation would be?". But no such explanation was given, nor requested. The "explanation" was implicit, from the context: The Fringe theories Noticeboard. (Becker worked with conventional physiology, combined with conventional physics. Nothing fringe here.)
The following day Salimfadhley, active on Fringe Noticeboard, arrived at Robert O. Becker, and started by posting a Notability tag - after IRWolfie- so conveniently had weakened the article's notability information by e.g. slashing away the last 21 of the 33 peer-reviewed papers for which Becker was the first author - unlisting e.g. three articles printed in Nature. (And IRWolfie- placed an Undue Weight tag on the few science description sentences remaining - without explaining this in Talk.)
Conclusion: The POV-based disruptive editing was attempted reinforced through the recruiting of a meat-puppet. When such deletionism effectively scares away those willing and able to write for Wikipedia, discussions in quite large forums are called for. ( An undisrupted version of the article is on Wikinfo.org.) OlavN ( talk) 06:18, 26 May 2012 (UTC)
I've taken the book to Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/The_Body_Electric_(book)#The_Body_Electric_.28book.29. IRWolfie- ( talk) 09:24, 27 May 2012 (UTC)
I hope someone here's willing to give this the time it warrants; the article, though short, has a serious "KILLED BY THE GOVERNMENT" undertone and is rather badly sourced. I'm not really sure where to begin; I'd probably be too heavy-handed. J Milburn ( talk) 09:14, 27 May 2012 (UTC)
I went to the Multiverse article expecting it to be about the fascinating theory that physicists have developed in recent years. And it does cover that. But it also appears to be a coatrack with a lot of WP:OR. It covers Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Mormonism, etc., and includes sentences such as this: "Many religions include an afterlife existence in realms, such as heavens and hells, which may be very different from the observable universe." Maybe there should be a split, with one article titled "Multiverse (physics)" and another titled "List of multiple universe hypotheses" or something. It appears that many of the sources don't explicitly use the term "multiverse" but are included if they talk about multiple worlds, etc. A section with a long quote by Ouspensky seems to have nothing to do with multiverse. Eager to know what you think. TimidGuy ( talk) 10:48, 28 May 2012 (UTC)
Interintel ( talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) is repeatedly adding fringe material about Bell's to that page. Another user reported this at the Physics wikiproject page, but I thought it would also be appropriate here. a13ean ( talk) 18:41, 29 May 2012 (UTC)
Found this at ANI, along with
Llewellyn Worldwide. Both fringe, both promotional. Just starting to look at Ogdoadic, maybe an AfD candidate.
Dougweller (
talk) 10:27, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
Llewellyn needs some serious work, but it's a notable topic. They're by far and away the largest and most well-known New Age & occult publisher. I'd be deeply surprised if sources couldn't be found for it. And thank you for raising this here. I didn't realize this was the right place for this kind of fringe. I thought it was more a pseudoscience place. -- 76.180.172.75 ( talk) 13:16, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
The supposed "Ogdoadic Tradition" is considered "fringe" (at best) even among other esoteric or magical Orders. I propose, given that all of the Llewellyn publications are essentially unreliable on this topic, that unless a non-Llewellyn reference can be found the article should be deleted. ~Autumnal Monk~ talk 11:34, 31 May 2012 (UTC)
There are some very fringe-sounding, possibly non WP:MEDRS claims in this article. -- Salimfadhley ( talk) 16:30, 31 May 2012 (UTC)
Comments on Talk:Bell's_theorem#Seeking_consensus_to_exclude_the_disproof_of_Bell.27s_theorem will be appreciated. Thanks. History2007 ( talk) 00:39, 1 June 2012 (UTC)
Created (or rather re-created, a version was deleted last year as A3 but had earlier been very similar to this version) just a few minutes ago, it could use a closer look. A first glance shows some unsourced material. I don't know anything about this person so am asking others to take a look. IRWolfie, you'll recognise this. Dougweller ( talk) 12:22, 1 June 2012 (UTC)
Dedicated account is rebuilding the article after unreliably-sourced material was removed. A few fringe conspiracy books/websites are being mixed in with more reliable sources, and there also seems to be some amount of WP:COATRACKing going on, with Novel being used as a starting point to promote the idea of wider conspiracies and connections (i.e. Novell was involved with A, and A was involved with B, and B was involved with C). The article could benefit with a general look-over by some fresh eyes. - LuckyLouie ( talk) 16:30, 9 June 2012 (UTC)
This article has no inline cites and to me reads as the fringe/occultish version of how we have this stuff now, as evidenced by the huge gap between the ancients and moderns. I think it could be argued that this is a spurious term, though I've had a very hard time getting "this is not a term-of-art" deletions to go through. Could I get some other opinions here? Mangoe ( talk) 16:06, 1 June 2012 (UTC)
"Materialization could be caused by quantum-mechanical spin changes, coming from structure-coupled electromagnetic fields (see Patrick Linker)" was added here. Seems like a non notable fringe theory to me, but others may want to review it. - LuckyLouie ( talk) 22:32, 5 June 2012 (UTC)
Did you know that Dudeism is a "world religion", founded in the year 2005 by an expat journalist in Thailand named Oliver Benjamin, on his internet website? And that it is inspired by a Jeff Bridges character in the 1998 film "The Big Lebowski"?
No, neither did I, until someone just now started adding a few too many paragraphs on it, into our established article explaining the Hippie Movement, which of course triggers my "undue weight" meter. The proposition that this "Dudeism" is any kind of significant or notable phenomenon, would naturally involve the claim that it now has over 100 thousand ordained priests worldwide, as a CNN lifestyle columnist apparently reported last February. All I can gather from looking the religion's website, is that it is pretty obviously a joke or parody religion, which is also affirmed in the same CNN column, yet wikipedia at the moment seems to be treating this like a serious, bona fide religion. Hence the fringe report. What is best? Til Eulenspiegel ( talk) 15:13, 6 June 2012 (UTC)
Raised this at BLPN also. Claims to have discovered "the Will of the Prophet Muhammed". Dougweller ( talk) 15:52, 10 June 2012 (UTC)
Since October, a number of articles have been edited to claim priority for the discovery of dark energy for the Hungarian astronomer György Paál. The claim is that Paál first detected the presence of dark energy and determined that omega-lambda = 2/3. These claims are problematic in several ways. From the point of view of Wikipedia policy: they cite only primary sources, the papers by Paál et al. themselves; they depend on original synthesis to connect these papers with dark energy as we know it; and they give undue weight to Paál's work. From the point of view of physics: although Paál may have gotten the right value for omega-lambda, he did not derive it from anything that mainstream cosmology would consider valid evidence for dark energy. Instead, he based his calculations about claims of periodic quasar redshifts that are essentially a fringe topic today and not supported by modern data sets. I would appreciate it if others would take a look at my edits and keep an eye out for anything similar. The articles in question: dark energy; cosmological constant; accelerating universe; list of multiple discoveries; György Paál. -- Amble ( talk) 02:32, 11 June 2012 (UTC)
Edited to make correct the article titled Saltville, Virginia , only to have it changed back to reflect conjecture today. Scientific fact, There is no proof that Spaniards were ever at Saltville as claimed in article or that the Chisca Indian ever lived in the area. Confirmed by Virginia Division of Archaeology. Statements in article are unverified claims and/ or wild guesses. Rockhead56 ( talk) 18:19, 11 June 2012 (UTC)
User Dilek2 has been adding a fringe theory that the Ottoman Turks are descended from Esau. [21] [22]. This editor has also posted this theory to several other pages [23] [24] and claimed the Orghuz Turks are descended from Uz (son of Aram) [25] [26] At no point has Dilek2 provided even the most unreliable of sources to support any of this. Edward321 ( talk) 05:59, 13 June 2012 (UTC)
The mainstream German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung has in a report by one of its senior reporters on the Houla massacre presented an account [27] of the May 25 events that supports the claims of the Syrian government and thus contradicts the opinion of mainstream media in general. There is discussion on the talk page on whether or not to allow the FAZ article into the article. One principal contributor to the article has asserted that it should not be included, citing it to be a fringe position, and that it shouldn't be used unless other mainstream media in turn report on it. [28] I'm not sure if this demand for coverage by more mainstream media for a source that is already mainstream, presenting an obvious minority viewpoint, represents a good understanding of WP:FRINGE. I'm therefore asking for clarity on the issue. There might be other relevant considerations from a WP:FRINGE point-of-view besides the one I'm inquiring specifically about. __ meco ( talk) 16:28, 13 June 2012 (UTC)
Some of you may be interested in this.
50.74.135.246 ( talk) 22:19, 7 June 2012 (UTC)
Hoax, joke? Source 1 (not a RS) suggests it might be the equivalent of an April Fool's joke. Dougweller ( talk) 08:20, 15 June 2012 (UTC)
Article about a writer on the horrible Mayan doom this year, I've removed some puffery in the lead but needs work. Dougweller ( talk) 08:32, 16 June 2012 (UTC)
This notice is to advise interested editors that a Contributor copyright investigation has been opened which may impact this project. Such investigations are launched when contributors have been found to have placed copyrighted content on Wikipedia on multiple occasions. It may result in the deletion of images or text and possibly articles in accordance with Wikipedia:Copyright violations. The specific investigation which may impact this project is located here.
All contributors with no history of copyright problems are welcome to contribute to CCI clean up. There are instructions for participating on that page. Additional information may be requested from the user who placed this notice, at the process board talkpage, or from an active CCI clerk. Thank you. Marcus Qwertyus 05:06, 12 June 2012 (UTC)
Anyone want to have a go at this one? Some very dubious sources. Dougweller ( talk) 17:35, 18 June 2012 (UTC)
Don't know how long I'll be allowed to stick around with the WP:RANDY police, but I made some midnight raids today I thought you all should know about: 1) Cold fusion. A wired.com source is being used to claim that DARPA is secretly funding cold fusion through SRI International and Michael McKubre in particular. It may be true that McKubre received some money laundered through the DARPA funding scheme, but wired.co.uk is not a reliable source to expose this and the DARPA document the cold fusion proponents want to cite seems to simply not say anything of the sort. There is this game being played of trying to "legitimize" cold fusion research by claiming quiet funding by the likes of NASA, the US Defense Dept, etc, but these claims are usually dubiously sourced and seem to be mostly soapboxing. Still, expect some pushback and anger from the dedicated cold fusion advocates on that one. 2) Masreliez. Search the archives for more on this one.
3) Plasma cosmology. An organized campaign has happened off-site to try to commandeer this article. Poor sourcing seems to be par for the course. I commented on User talk:Art Carlson's page about my major concerns on this one. Keeping an eye on it would be good and also the fringe physics proponents who are most active there lately. 4) Fractal cosmology. Could use even more clean-up than I gave it. The end of greatness is more-or-less observed and, though there are some who don't believe this, it is a pretty damning falsification of this proposal. One can look at the maps of the cosmos themselves for more on this. 5) Fringe theory: I see a lot of action there, but kept out. Keep up the good work, folks. Educators everywhere thank you for your diligence.
All the best, 209.2.217.151 ( talk) 18:52, 12 May 2012 (UTC) SA / VanishedUser314159
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This is attracting SPAs. See WP:NPOV and this thread [29] at DRN to see one of them. A new one has just arrived. If you look at the talk page, you can see I've been removing some bad sources, got rid of the quoteboxes which were pov (probably everyway, we shouldn't have any pov in any direction), and have removed a section on Punt that besides being badly sourced didn't actually discuss the history of the controversy.
Note please the bright yellow banner when you edit and the note at the top of the article page - this is not an article about the controversy, it is an article about the history of the controversy although editors too frequently ignore this. I'm sure it needs more work to make it truly NPOV. SPAs of course can make it almost impossible to keep that way. Dougweller ( talk) 12:45, 18 June 2012 (UTC)
I removed the potential copyright violations from the article from the banned sockpuppet GreenUniverse. IRWolfie- ( talk) 11:05, 20 June 2012 (UTC)
I have been told that this is a suitable forum for an alert about the encyclopedic quality of Biology and political orientation.
The page is currently supported by a single political project (and no scientific project). Personally, I wish to refrain from involvement, following unfortunate interaction elsewhere with a prominent member of that supporting project.
— MistyMorn ( talk) 08:59, 17 June 2012 (UTC)
I've put it up for AfD, the article is unsalvageable. IRWolfie- ( talk) 18:13, 24 June 2012 (UTC)
The article ethereal beings is up for deletion as (in User:AndyTheGrump's assessment) "One Big Pile of Synthesis and Original Research". I would agree that something drastic needs to be done, though I'm more inclined to merge and prune the bejesus out of it. Anyway, the ancillary issue is that there are a lot of terms for immaterial beings, both by genus and as overall classes, and the latter are really quite a mess. Spirit lacks references but is basically sane, and on the other hand we have horrible messes like this one, and non-physical entity, and I haven't chased about the reset of the general articles. There are also questionable genus articles like Daemon (classical mythology), which I'm pretty sure is a more or less made-up modern term. The whole set of articles needs at least a once-over to deal with the most egregious cases. Mangoe ( talk) 13:03, 19 June 2012 (UTC)
To claim a specific collaborative project across many universities is fringe is
WP:POINTY especially where a cursory google search shows plenty of mainstream news reports for the preliminary experimental results
[32] as well. There is nothing relevant to be discussed here.
IRWolfie- (
talk) 13:44, 20 June 2012 (UTC) (extended collapse 12:17, 23 June 2012 (UTC) )
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This is terrible fringe, some scientists bluntly claim the Standard Model is flawed. The experiment has obviously not been replicated, thus it is not RS. It is not published in peer reviewed journals, although they claim they will submitted it to Physical Review Letters. Let's just hope the editors of that journal set their priorities right and toss this crackpot theory right out, no need to peer review something silly like that. Why can't some scientists set up a petition to stop this, in Italy recently such nonsense ("Piezonuclear fission") was successfully stopped that way by governmental intervention. A further clue is that this experiment is named after a children's book I doubt that this article passes the notability test, so we could consider an AfD. But while it is still here, we should really tone down the soapboxing and sensationalist wording in this article and depict this for what it is: an erroneous and futile attempt of some "scientists" to rewrite the standard model. The "Notable events" section is violating WP:NOTNEWS, and also not RS. It's only a bunch of self published press releases. The "Institutions involved" section is a clear violation of WP:NOTDIR and is an attempt to push notability by association. We'd better do this quickly before some scam artists picks this up, but expect some pushback and anger from the advocates on this one. -- POVbrigand ( talk) 13:12, 20 June 2012 (UTC)
I think the other members of the board might also want to share their thoughts on whether this is a fringe theory or not. The experiment is not replicated and so far no peer reviewed papers are published. So that's fringe as far as I understand. -- POVbrigand ( talk) 13:58, 20 June 2012 (UTC)
At no point have they claimed to have established a new "theory". They are simply saying that they did an experiment and the result appears to be (subject to verification) contrary to the predictions of the standard model. This is the way science advances! Contrast that with other WP:FRINGE stuff - in just about every other case, the "theory" came first (think Hydrinos or Homeopathy) and the hypothesis/experiment stuff that should have preceded it simply never happened. Unsurprisingly, the mainstream rejects it out of hand. You might successfully argue that this is a "fringe hypothesis". But they aren't claiming any kind of new "theory" - in the intended sense of Scientific theory. Since there is no new theory it can't possibly be a "fringe theory". Right now, it's a poorly understood, unexplained, not yet properly validated experiment with an uncertain outcome. The comparison with Fleishmann & Pons is a good one. Initially, the FP experiment was just like this one - a hypothesis and an unvalidated experiment. Then the experiment was reproduced by third parties - and the anomalous readings were elegantly explained using nothing more than mainstream theory. Up to that point, this was not a fringe theory - after this point, it was merely a slightly poorly done experiment. But subsequently, a bunch of people rejected the mainstream explanation and insisted that something real was happening and started pushing out claims for actual new theories. That's why we now talk of cold fusion as "A fringe theory" with good justification. As to the "BaBar" name being a clear indication that this is fringe - that's just ridiculous mud-slinging. It's called BaBar because the particle that figures centrally in the experiment is the anti-particle of the B meson - which is written as a B with a bar over the top of it and pronounced "B bar" in conversation. Choosing Babar the elephant as a mascot is just a little light humor of the kind you see throughout the scientific world - it's no indication of a lack of seriousness in the project itself. Recall that Homo floresiensis is nicknamed "The Hobbit" after the children's book - and the seminal paper by Alpher, Bethe and Gamow on the origins of the universe is almost always referred to as the "αβγ paper" because it's humorous. SteveBaker ( talk) 14:05, 21 June 2012 (UTC)
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A SPA is sticking in a bunch of stuff from a conspiracy site; at least, that's what it looks like at first glance. I'm going to revert out soon so other monitors may be needed. Mangoe ( talk) 11:08, 26 June 2012 (UTC)
This article appears to be missing mainstream balance and makes it look like Astrology has demonstrated predictive power. IRWolfie- ( talk) 14:04, 13 June 2012 (UTC)
I also note that the critical reception (WSJ and John Heron) do not have any of the large quotes etc and only small mentions while positive reception in fringe publications has large quotes, this is clearly unbalanced. IRWolfie- ( talk) 17:07, 14 June 2012 (UTC)
Note that I've taken the over-aggressiveness of Goethean here and on the article to WQA. IRWolfie- ( talk) 19:16, 14 June 2012 (UTC)
Note also this article Archetypal_cosmology which appears to claim the existence of the new paradigm sciences that with Jungian Psychology help to outline a new mythic worldview. No indication at all about the mainstream view or acceptance is given in the article. IRWolfie- ( talk) 19:59, 17 June 2012 (UTC)
Regulars may remember that there is a series of articles on transhumanism, a philosophical approach which touches on fringe theories in several ways. (Just to make life interesting, so do some of the philosophies that oppose it.) There are many articles in the series (a portal in fact), but I was advised to concentrate cleanup efforts on the main transhumanism article. It had been promoted to FA in 2006, so I put it into FA review, and after some months in review it has been demoted. It would be really good if we could once more have many eyes on the main article and the series. My attempts at improvement are systematically reverted. Itsmejudith ( talk) 14:02, 26 June 2012 (UTC)
A really stupid edit war over this, with editors trying to insert something not in the article but claiming it is in the article, aided by a 'new' SPA who might be the IP who tries to put pov material in it who in turn just might be another editor. Nothing in the article says the government considers these national treasures yet even an experienced editor is trying to put this in the lead. See the talk page also. Dougweller ( talk) 20:46, 27 June 2012 (UTC)
I am relatively new to Wikipedia and trying to learn all of the etiquettes etc...I have tried to address the Bias in the Ahmadiyya page but unfortunately I believe that people motivated by bias are seeking to keep a fringe opinion as the main opinion on the article. For a minor edit that I had tried to make i.e to change the statement to "self identify" I have met with a wall of rejection by two prolific wiki-contributers. One is Ahmadiyya Peaceworld111 himself and whilst a respected wikipedia contributor has a vested interest in not maintaining the balance of the page. The other simply reverted every change that I had made. I questioning the selective referencing used in the opening line of the page. One quotation is from the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community which whilst biased I am happy to accept. The other is from an author who spent time with the Ahmadiyya community in England. I raised the issue that throughout his book he had cited that Muslim opinion was that the Ahmadiyya were not Muslim and therefore to quote his singular statement whilst ignoring his own referencing of the fact mainstream Islam consider the Ahmadiyya to be none Muslim is biased. http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Islam_and_the_Ahmadiyya_Jama%CA%BBat.html?id=Q78O1mjX2tMC. I sought to resolve this issue by adding the statement that they self identify as an Islamic Reformist movement or alternatively to find an alternative opening quotation. All were met with firm refusals and a denial of any bias. Either way a fringe theory should not start an article as its prime quotation. If the other quotation is from the community itself then it supports the statement of self identification which I have put across ( Steeringly ( talk) 09:59, 30 June 2012 (UTC))
I wasnt particularly pushing an opinion that they are not Muslim the title of the section is misleading. I was simply trying to raise the issue that it was their self identification that categorises them as Muslim as generally Muslims reject their beliefs as heretical. The reason I feel that it is a fringe issue is becasue the work cited as evidence of the Ahmadiyyah being an Islamic reformist movement is a fringe opinion and therefore should be correctly categorised as self identification by the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community. ( Steeringly ( talk) 13:23, 30 June 2012 (UTC))
I think Echo Flight UFO/Missile Incident (additionally created as Oscar Flight UFO/Missile Incident) promotes a fringe "UFOs did it" angle (sourced to UFO sites) as the main view. News sources [37] [38] report a newly-discovered hardware glitch was responsible for the missiles going offline. - LuckyLouie ( talk) 16:45, 4 July 2012 (UTC)
I have created the story thet is mentioned above. User noq has attempted to sassert a POV that simply does not make any sense at all. Others have mentioned and he continues to push a POV that is out of line and this user is now bordering on abusive.
Other users have also questioned his actions on this story as well as others. According to the users logs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Noq noq seems to be doing a great deal of Drive By Tagging and according to user talk page, user noq's objectives should be questioned and reviewed.
noq seems to manipulate in a quest to perform self serving edits that serve no function and both distract and hinder Wikipedias ability to evolve. According to noq POV, a person is the same as a group of people and under this users POV, just about all of Wikipedia should be deleted or merged.
In this case, users noq POV is that a group of people that had the same effect as World War 2 on a famous yacht race, is not notable unless the group did something else notable.
I will use the Space Shuttle Challanger as a example that we can ref: In that story, each person whom was in the craft at the time it exploded has a singular page devoted to them. No other event took place for this person, so according to user noq, each of these people should be merged into the master story, as none of the astronauts that died that tragic day, had other notable events to report upon. Under user noq POV each of these people would have to had something else that also made them notable in some way in order to qualify for a Wiki page.
Here user noq asserts that Mr. Dennis Conner, in creating a team that would design something that the world had never even seen before, that went on to win the oldest race in modern sports and were cited over and over and over in the media, by Dennis Conner himself and world wide as a group, do not qualify for a page that defines the group. User noq's pov is that these men, as a group need to do something else, other then gather 70 people together that had never worked together before to do something that is still active in sportings most historic race today by creating a whole new form of sailing. If using the above example POV from noq to apply to the story I have referenced here, someone like Christa McAuliffe, should be merged into the main story as she was not really notable untill she was killed in that tragic crash, (a single event). user noq POV is way way way out of line and this POV, is distructive and noneproductive to Wiki's main objectives.-- WPPilot 04:52, 6 July 2012 (UTC)
The mainstream position on this is that it is a hoax. Recently a fringe geologist, Scott Wolter, has claimed it is genuine, and his views have been given some prominence in this article using his website as as a source. Now the hoax category has been removed (I've replaced it). Dougweller ( talk) 15:03, 27 June 2012 (UTC)
Maria Gimbutas theories about an ancient triple Goddess are fringe and rejected by mainstream academia. However these criticisms of her theories are being deleted from the article Triple Goddess (Neopaganism). The content being censored can be seen in this diff: [ [40]], for spurious reasons (ad-hominem arguments from an editor history of long-running disputes with myself). However, a prevailing argument on the Talk page is that the criticism from mainstream views are a WP:COATRACK and that the article should report this (fringe) theory without recourse to outlining it's rejection by mainstream academia. So how should this be handled? should a fringe, rejected theory be simply repeated by wikipedia (as the current article shows) or should mainstream rejection of those theories be part and parcel of reporting it? Davémon ( talk) 14:49, 4 July 2012 (UTC)
What to do with the above article? Folklore surrounding tunnels might be a notable subject, but that's not what we seem to have. Rather it's a collection of miscellaneous tunnels. Should we merge with ley line? Itsmejudith ( talk) 06:53, 10 July 2012 (UTC)
The Dyatlov Pass incident leaves the reader with the strong impression that the hikers were either attacked by aliens, or stumbled onto a secret soviet weapons test grounds and were therefore eliminated.
Now, I can believe that a bunch of hikers got spooked by something and ran like hell into the woods in their underpants. And in -30C weather it's not difficult to imagine how that would kill them. (Or how the ones that wound up in the bottom of a ravine might have broken their bones.) Or I can believe that an avalanche smashed them out of their tents and pushed them down the slope. (Some combination of the two also seems entirely plausible, to me.)
However, this article seems to concentrate a lot on some pretty dubious aspects of the story. It's presented as fact that the hikers clothing was "highly radioactive" and that there were mysterious orange spheres in the air above where the hikers were camped.
Maybe I'm just overreacting. It could be that the radiation and orange fireballs stuff is true. But as the article is based almost entirely on a single non-contemporary article in the St. Petersburg Times, maybe it's placing a little undue weight on the conspiracy story? APL ( talk) 05:55, 13 July 2012 (UTC)
The article on conspiracy theorist James H. Fetzer appears to be filled with many primary and otherwise dubious sources. There seems to be a lot of puffery, but I am unsure how to deal with most of this given that WP:PRIMARY does allow the use of primary source information to fill in details. Location ( talk) 15:42, 5 July 2012 (UTC)
The lead of the article on Ayurveda contains a paragraph on safety concerns, which are a major issue in the discussion in independent reliable sources. This paragraph, naturally, is loathed by proponents of Ayurveda who either delete it or try to bury it elsewhere in the article. More eyes would be apprectiated. A discussion is in progress on the article talk page. Thanks. Dominus Vobisdu ( talk) 12:34, 16 July 2012 (UTC)
Patrick Flanagan ( | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
If anyone has a spare moment, this bucket of miscellaneous woo and technobabble looks a prime candidate for an AfD. I must admit though that I'm impressed that someone can apparently claim that something which will "lower the surface tension of drinking water" is somehow of benefit - or significance? A little Whisky in my water (or preferably, a lot of Whisky) has a similar effect. And for teetotallers, there is always detergent, though I'd suggest that the Whisky might possibly taste better. AndyTheGrump ( talk) 03:09, 18 July 2012 (UTC)
I'd honestly be curious to see the response at noting that the surface tension concoction is but one of thousands/millions/a more or less infinite number of surfactants... Regardless, he's sure as heck not notable for that.
It seems that the article Musica universalis is being inappropriately linked with astrology in the text and the templates on the article, when the sources don't support that linkage. IRWolfie- ( talk) 16:55, 18 July 2012 (UTC)
See [41] and 2 similar edits (3RR given). Editor seems to think that we are calling a theory a law of science, that because evolution is not a scientific law it something or other, not sure, and that it isn't observable. So, editor is removing the word 'empirical'. Dougweller ( talk) 12:47, 19 July 2012 (UTC)
We appear to be having an impasse at Barack Obama citizenship conspiracy theories regarding the proper treatment of Joe Arpaio, an Arizona sheriff who has been going to great lengths to "investigate" the authenticity of Obama's birth certificate. Note that this entire article is supposed to be devoted to the reporting of what are generally admitted to be fringe theories, so that point is not what is at issue here. Rather, the problem involves exactly how Arpaio's claims should be described in the article.
See the recent revision history for the article, and the "Sheriff Arpaio" section of the article's talk page. I see two main areas of dispute here:
I proposed three rewrites of the Arpaio material in the article's talk page, with little success — some other editors continued to insist that the existing material is adequate and that there is no need to rewrite it. Attempts to edit the article are descending into edit-warring misbehaviour, with accusations being traded of "content improperly removed", "possible vandalism", and editing actions based solely on "I don't like it" grounds. I'm intentionally declining to name specific individual editors here because I'm hoping to keep this matter in the realm of a content dispute, rather than cross the line and characterize it as a user conduct issue.
I will admit here that I'm partial to the idea that the May 2012 Hawaii trip by Arpaio's staff should be reported. But if it is going to be simply impossible to achieve a consensus along these lines, I would favour deleting or severely trimming mention in the article, not only of Joe Arpaio, but of other individuals and their quests — on the grounds that the article is really supposed to be about the fringe theories, and not really about the fringe theorists. This idea actually looks like it might manage to get a consensus behind it, though it's hard to tell now that people have gone back to edit-warring.
Any comments or suggestions for intervention would be welcome here. —
Rich
wales 06:58, 15 July 2012 (UTC) 06:03, 16 July 2012 (UTC)
It looks like we may finally have reached consensus on a rewrite of this article's description of Joe Arpaio. So it should be possible to close this request for intervention. If and when problems arise again, I'll open up a new request (and presumably post it on the NPOV noticeboard, not here). — Rich wales 21:23, 20 July 2012 (UTC)
User: Jason from nyc deleted my newly created article on Muslim Brotherhood conspiracy theories and restored the terribly written Influence Operations of the Muslim Brotherhood article instead. That article was so bad it was practically unsalvagable, since it featured few to no reliable sources and openly promoted the conspiracy theories about the Muslim Brotherhood that are advanced by discredited " counterjihad" activists such as Robert Spencer, David Horowitz and Pamela Geller. I replaced it with an article with a NPOV title (since it describes the allegations for what they are, conspiray theories) which I used reliable sources to write. However, Jason from nyc reverted my changes, deleting my new article (which he ludicrously claimed had been "moved by consensus") and restoring the bad version. Wikipedia isn't the place to promote fringe theories, and I don't think Jason from nyc should be allowed to do so here. LonelyBoy2012 ( talk) 20:54, 20 July 2012 (UTC)
Phillip Willis (
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I'm not sure where to begin with this one. The article for Phillip Willis, who was a witness to the assassination of JFK and referred to in various conspiracy works, is filled with citations pointing to primary source material and images. There are a lot of explanations in the "References" sections that aren't backed-up by commentary from a secondary source (e.g. description of Willis in the Zapruder film). It is as though the citations need citations. Thanks! Location ( talk) 19:17, 23 July 2012 (UTC)
I just reverted a page move of List of plants used in herbalism to List of medicinal plants. Mangoe ( talk) 04:09, 25 July 2012 (UTC)
The article about Asebu (a region and former Fante kingdom on the Gold Coast, contemporary Ghana) reads like a fringe theory involving the Israelites in Egypt and their journey to the Promised Land. Please have a look at this. Best, Fentener van Vlissingen ( talk) 21:31, 24 July 2012 (UTC)
{{uninvolved}}
Hello,
Perhaps not the kind of posts you usually receive here, but I need your advice if you don't mind. Would you be kind enough to tell me whether this site [45] is a fringe site or not? The link you are looking at in particular relates to an article which was originally authored by the anthropologist David Maranz. Thank you so much for your time. Best Regards. Tamsier ( talk) 13:01, 25 July 2012 (UTC)
I am not acting as an Administrator in this dispute, nor am I canvasing. I am asking for a reliable source for the existence of something called the "Raampa pictographs". You have mentioned them in several articles and those articles and a fringe website are the only place that the phrase is used. So anyone searching for information about these from a reliable source by our criteria is going to find nothing. What I am trying to say is that we need to find a name for these that isn't an invented name, one that is used by reliable sources. Isn't there one? Where are they located? Hasn't anyone written about them besides Gravrand, and if he's the only one, what does he call them? And unless you are trying to get me blocked, what do you want another Administrator for? Dougweller ( talk) 21:02, 26 July 2012 (UTC)
Saafi people#Language states "The Saafi also have a very rich an ancient culture of writing called the Raampa, and have contributed immensely to the old Serer Raampa writing tradition. The word Raampa itself comes from the Saafi language. It was a religious pictographic writing system used by the Serer people to which the Saafi are a sub-group of. The Raampa tradition has also been adopted by some none-Serer ethnic groups. The original source for this was the fringe Maranz article mentioned above. Tamsier changed the source to an article by Henry Gravrand[ [57] without changing the text. Neither Maranz nor Gravrand are experts on writing, and Gravrand's article appears to be an obscure article not used as a source in other reliable source (at least I can't find any). I'm raising a discussion at Talk:Saafi people but at the moment it seems NPOV and WP:UNDUE. I think I figured out a bit about the attacks on me and maybe the problems I see with some of the articles, see [58]. Dougweller ( talk) 13:16, 29 July 2012 (UTC)
Blacklight Power is a pseudo-science based company. The article currently doesn't seem very balanced towards mainstream opinion and the pseudo-science theories are presented uncritically Bhny ( talk) 21:36, 25 July 2012 (UTC)
I removed some poorly (one primary and self-published) sourced grandiose claims that it has significant implications for the standard model. IRWolfie- ( talk) 18:04, 29 July 2012 (UTC)
Some input into this article would be helpful. It's an interesting idea, to say the least, but probably falls somewhere in-between being fringe and an alternative theoretical formulation (likely more towards the fringe side of the spectrum). Currently the article uses sources like Deepak Chopra and non physicists as the "pro" side, while the "con" side is mostly made up of mainstream scientists. Still, the idea does have some support from respected people. At the very least it's worth a read if you haven't heard of this. Sædon talk
Hi re Ignat Ignatov, does the word Kirlian ring any bells? And would I be correct in thinking that "Water in the Human Body is Information Bearer about Longevity" is not the most mainstream title for a scientific paper? Ϣere SpielChequers 15:43, 31 July 2012 (UTC)
This article cites mainly papers by the creator of the theory, predicting that industrial civilization will only last fron 1930 to 2030. The "theory" has changed over the years, as some predictions have failed to occur. It has made predictions about what year the maximum energy per capita will be used, followed by electric blackouts, massive disease and famine, and a return to a worldwide population die-off and stone age lifestyle in the mid 21st century. The article may be presenting the theory in too favorable a light with respect to its acceptance in the field of energy research. This article has been mentioned in relation to the recent power blackouts in India. Edison ( talk) 16:50, 31 July 2012 (UTC)
A theory (stated to be distinct from theories of physics or cosmology) which allows time travel, and referenced mostly to the writings of the theory's creator. Not seeing much secondary coverage in reliable and independent sources. Edison ( talk) 16:35, 3 August 2012 (UTC)
I think the entire "Evidence" section is giving undue weight to fringe studies. Few, if any, legitimate scientific inquiries into the topic have produced positive results and yet two paragraphs are devoted to a single study which, when messaged to an incredible degree, hinted at its possible efficacy. -- Daniel 23:35, 3 August 2012 (UTC)
This is a new article that came to my notice. Everything in it is bullshit, but on investigating I find that it exists in the context of a whole corpus of bullshit called applied kinesiology (which is a completely different thing from real kinesiology). Bottom line, I'm not sure how to deal with it. Looie496 ( talk) 02:20, 5 August 2012 (UTC)
No, not Fox News but instead Wikipedia -- according to some person cited within the newly augmented article Bias. Apparently " FrontPage Magazine" and " WorldNetDaily" regard Wikipedia as a agnostic/atheist liberal/leftist plot. Speaking as a member of the reality-based community, I'd be most alarmed if a project of which I was a tiny cog were not so regarded by "WorldNetDaily" etc -- but there you are; I suppose people taking "WorldNetDaily" seriously would regard me as part of the problem. It's probably bad manners to say "No, run off to 'Conservapedia'"; what's the right etiquette here? -- Hoary ( talk) 06:26, 6 August 2012 (UTC)
I was advised on the WikiProject India board to post here. The issue involves a group of edits on the Black people article that over the past few weeks have basically attempted to change the entire direction of the article. While the wikipage was, like its companion White people article, originally reserved for discussion on race-based social categories/constructs (and thus featured the main Race template and category), a newbie editor has been unilaterally replacing material on racial classification with material largely centered on dark skin color. On this new basis, he/she has also added image galleries of disparate peoples, including Dravidians of South Asia, under the pretext that they are all "black people" since "black people" apparently without qualification refers to all "people with relative dark skin". But how does one go about objectively determining what constitutes "relative dark skin"? And where exactly is the cut-off point? Wouldn't such a broad, skin color-based parameter also by definition rule out many light-skinned so-called "black people" like Stedman Graham in favor of more dark-skinned individuals not traditionally considered "black people" like Vijay Singh? It's a slippery slope. The article now almost approximates in content the old "Africoid" wikipage, a deleted essay on the fringe Afrocentric "Africoid" concept [62] that was created by a banned user. I have tried explaining that these pages are not solely based on skin color, but rather on debatable social categories/constructs on race. Hence, why East Asians are not discussed on the white people wikipage, although many East Asians have skin color as light as, and sometimes even lighter than, many Europeans. Gallery images have also historically been discouraged on these pages because of their repeatedly demonstrated potential for misuse and idiosyncratic selections. This is why the white people article presently does not feature any images at all. Perhaps its black people companion wikipage should follow suit, or at the very least limit images to a couple of within-text pics that few would contest as "black". Please advise. Soupforone ( talk) 12:32, 6 August 2012 (UTC)
IP with little clue about the subject edit-warring to claim that the radio-carbon dating was done on rock (it wasn't, it was organic material under the walls that was dated). Dougweller ( talk) 15:57, 6 August 2012 (UTC)
There's a discussion at WP:CON about an editor at The Urantia Book ( | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views). I took it off my watchlist some time ago and just added it again, but it would be useful if other editors took a look at it (including the recent discussion on the talk page, I see that some material removed some time ago has been reinserted). Dougweller ( talk) 08:19, 7 August 2012 (UTC)
FYI: I have started an AfD on the Agha Waqar's Water Fuelled Car article Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Agha_Waqar's_Water_Fuelled_Car. SteveBaker ( talk) 12:47, 8 August 2012 (UTC)
There is a bit of culture warrior battle going on at various articles, but the conflict that we might be able to address here centers on right-wing authoritarianism and authoritarian personality, and from there slops over into social conservatism. Basically, as best I understand it, there was a hypothesis that people like, well, Nazis and fascists fall into a distinct personality type. This led to the "F scale", but in practice when actually tried out on Nazi prisoners, it didn't work too well. But never fear, much later we have Robert Altemeyer's formulation of a "Right Wing Authoritarian scale", which apparently shows that conservatives all are possessed of a strong tendency towards authoritarianism. This research was then popularized in John Dean's Conservatives without Conscience.
OK, so this sounds a bit axe-grinding, doesn't it? I personally have to wonder how Uncle Joe fits into this theory, or how all those liberals who want to enact laws regulating public behavior escaped the authoritarian label. But there is a concerted effort here to emphasize that nobody of significance disputes this thesis. And at the bottom of it all we have the now-retired User:Jcbutler, who as it turns out has a conspicuous conflict of interest: he has published research supporting this thesis, and he is the author of the statement in the RWA article that the dissenters are a minority viewpoint.
I'm hard-pressed to believe that the world of conservative ideology doesn't object to this thesis. But I'm having a very hard time finding evidence that they are even aware of it. Other than Dean's book we seem to be trapped in a little closed world of psychology papers which I'm somewhat inclined to reject as primary sources. Of course since this involves current politics the level of bad behavior here is very high, and I have been accused of "conservative bias" for doubting that this isn't what every reasonable person accepts. Mangoe ( talk) 18:37, 10 August 2012 (UTC)
User:Paul Bedson is pushing some fringe claims at Olympic Games and the less important Tailteann Games, namely that the Tailteann Games date to 1600 BC [67]. This is an impossibly old date, considering it is barely into the Bronze Age and written records from Ireland don't appear for millennia later. He is using this source [68], a history of Ireland for the period of 1922-1985. I consider this kookery of a high order. The claim regarding the Tailteann games is exceptional, and the source used is far from adequate for such a claim. The matter is somewhat urgent, since a lot of people are currently looking at the article due to the fact that the games are ongoing. Athenean ( talk) 22:51, 11 August 2012 (UTC)
At Talk:Turkey Mountain inscriptions there is an argument with Til Eulenspiegel claiming censorship but the real issue is about the use of a source by William F. McNeil, who is an expert on the history of baseball but also wrote one or two books (I'm not sure if the second is just a rewrite of the first or an entirely new book) "suggesting that ancient European and Asian mariners visited the United States more than 1000 years ago". Whether it's one or two, he's had virtually no attention paid by mainstream sources. Another bone of contention is the use of the late Gloria Farley's webpage as a source - Farley is another minor fringe writer. Dougweller ( talk) 14:44, 3 August 2012 (UTC)
Note that the requirement is significant coverage in reliable sources. Passing mentions like this don't help torwards notability. IRWolfie- ( talk) 01:32, 5 August 2012 (UTC)
It's at DRV at the moment Wikipedia:Deletion_review/Log/2012_August_13#Turkey_Mountain_inscriptions. IRWolfie- ( talk) 09:34, 14 August 2012 (UTC)
We have a number of reliable non-fringe sources that discuss, for instance, the Kensington Runestone. We have mainstream archaeologists commenting on the Bat Creek stuff. But we don't seem to have anything similar for this. There are not only not "plenty of books that discuss this", the handful that do mention it are except for Fell pretty trivial, and no mainstream source seems to have taken this seriously. Our guideline on fringe articles says "A fringe theory can be considered notable enough for a dedicated article if it has been referenced extensively, and in a serious and reliable manner, in at least one major publication that is independent of the theory. References that debunk or disparage the fringe theory can also be adequate, as they establish the notability of the theory outside of its group of adherents. References that are employed because of the notability of a related subject – such as the creator of the theory, and not the theory itself – should be given far less weight when deciding on notability." Til, if you can't find a source that qualifies, the article should go to AfD. This has been overlooked in the past, but since you've been pushing this hard don't you think we need to follow our guideline here? Dougweller ( talk) 11:43, 5 August 2012 (UTC)
( edit conflict)And although Til claimed there were the sources he mentions above, I note that he didn't try to use them and I can't find them. Nor am I clear if he meant that Turkey Mountain was mentioned, or Fell's ideas about visitors to America. The Tulsa document does mention, with no discussion, the ideas of "Jenks resident William M. O’Brien" described as a local historian and geologist but it isn't clear where he is referring to (probably Turkey Mountain but that's not explicit so far as I can see). As I said, there's no discussion and this seems to be a pretty informal document. It's at [69] and I'm looking at a paragraph that says "Soon, other Creeks who had migrated from Alabama began to settle in the immediate region at the present towns of Coweta, Sapulpa and Sand Springs. But the Lochapoka Square at Tulsa was still where they all gathered for their government functions and religious observances. (David where is theis?)" - note the question there. So this doesn't meet the criteria. Waiting for the first links Til mentioned and exactly what they say - and why they weren't added to the article if they are so good. Dougweller ( talk) 13:14, 5 August 2012 (UTC)
Here's another: "The geology of the Atlantic Ocean, Volume 1" 1050 pages, by Kenneth Emery (1984), gives it a passing mention on p. 3: "Near Tulsa up the Arkansas River, a rock cliff carries the Celtic name Gwynn written in both Ogam and Punic" in the context of a discussion of purported evidence for purported Celts in America... Til Eulenspiegel ( talk) 13:24, 5 August 2012 (UTC)
NOTE... Since there is currently an active AFD page for this, further discussion should take place on that AFD page. Blueboar ( talk) 13:53, 5 August 2012 (UTC)
This page is an archive. Do not edit the contents of this page. Please direct any additional comments to the current main page. |
In the Robert O. Becker article someone is trying to add lots of undue, unsourced and OR material [1]. Comments etc welcomed. IRWolfie- ( talk) 09:25, 11 May 2012 (UTC)
Theres no third party reliable sources on this article, the references consist of Theosophist authors only and a look through the internet reveals that the concept of esoteric astrology has not been covered by many, is the topic notable enough to have its own page? GreenUniverse ( talk) 21:47, 11 May 2012 (UTC)
John F. Ashton is a living food-scientist and young-earth creationist. This short paragraph describes a book he published. It's taken from a section which is about his mainstream work, rather than his creationism advocacy.
The cited sources seem to be WP:RS for the content of Ashton's book but probably not WP:MEDRS for the claims being made.
For example, The notion that red wine has an anti-aging effect is a fringe view that's often expressed in popular media. Does it make any sense to compare the life prolonging effects of chocolate to another substance which has not been proven to prolong life? Ashton has almost certainly claimed this, however I think we need to find a way to show that these views are not regarded as mainstream amongst nutritionists. -- Salimfadhley ( talk) 22:09, 12 May 2012 (UTC)
I have started an RFC on the pseudoscience section of the lede of astrology where I have proposed new wording. Your comments are appreciated at Talk:Astrology#RFC_on_change_to_pseudoscience_summary_in_lede. Thanks. SÆdon talk 22:14, 12 May 2012 (UTC)
Subject claims to have recorded the first live conversation between the living and the spirit world. Also says his band has achieved cult status with their vast internet following. Maybe I'm missing something but they both sound like non-notable fringe theories to me. It's up for AfD. - LuckyLouie ( talk) 00:55, 15 May 2012 (UTC)
The article on this WP:FRINGE organisation is rather badly sourced, largely accepts it at its own self-assessment, and does little to establish notability. Is it simply an under-written piece on a notable piece of woo, or is it beyond saving? Hrafn Talk Stalk( P) 10:48, 15 May 2012 (UTC)
This is related to the article discussed immediately above. My fringey sense tingles reading this, because "catastrophism" is also a code word for Velikovsky's ideas. I am highly doubtful that the paradigm shift it presents actually obtains in real geophysical research. Any other opinions? Mangoe ( talk) 14:26, 15 May 2012 (UTC)
I removed some 50% of the article on Mound builder (people) which was devoted to fringe theories and grossly violating WP:UNDUE. Some additional voices and eyes would be useful, especially as it may be okay to add a limited amount of the material removed back into the article.
128.59.171.10 ( talk) 20:00, 16 May 2012 (UTC)
FYI, there's an AFD open for this article - which should really have been called "Masreliez (family)". The notion that this family is important in Swedish art-history seems to be a fringe view unsupported by significant coverage in mainstream sources.
The article concerns a group of people, some of whom may be individually notable in Swedish visual and performing arts. I'm not convinced that the family is notable in itself. -- Salimfadhley ( talk) 10:25, 18 May 2012 (UTC)
A group of rural Kentuckians claim they fought off an attack by extraterrestrials, but when police arrived they found nothing. Yet to read the article you'd think beings from outer space were the cause, or at least, something otherworldly and mysterious. Like many of our UFO articles, this one is slanted toward credulous interpretations rather than a dispassionate reporting of claims. Much of the article is spent on trying to connect several unrelated events. Undue weight is given to describing claims in the most graphic and sensational way possible. Parsimonious explanations are buried at the end of the article and positioned as an afterthought, or alternatives to the extraterrestrial/mystery default view. - LuckyLouie ( talk) 14:41, 18 May 2012 (UTC)
However, if you mean that UFO articles should be reduced to little more than stubs that provide few details of the event and make no attempt to mention multiple points of view then I would disagree. You said that Clark is biased, but what about UFO debunkers such as Philip Klass and Robert Sheaffer? I’m curious as to what you think an ideal Wiki UFO article would contain, assuming you’re in favor of even having such articles. 70.145.229.162 ( talk) 23:30, 23 May 2012 (UTC)
This discussion may be of interest: Talk:Fringe_theory#Continental_drift_-_bad_example. Continental drift is a bad example of a fringe theory that became mainstream because the suggested mechanisms were all rejected in favour of a completely different mechanism: plate tectonics. IRWolfie- ( talk) 22:03, 21 May 2012 (UTC)
Any thoughts on a merge and redirect of Bruce Porter Roberts to Gemstone File? There is some verifiable information about Roberts (searching combinations of "Bruce Roberts", "Gemstone File", and "Skeleton Key"), but I'm not sure there is enough to warrant a stand-alone article. Per this source, little is known of him except that he died of a tumor. Thanks! Location ( talk) 19:27, 23 May 2012 (UTC)
This is a theory or belief system developed by one person, Arnold Mindell. It is studied by students at Arnold Mindell's Process Work Centre in Portland where there has been an investigation into that organisation's academic standards and the master's degree they offer in Process Work. Arnold Mindell may have a PhD in psychology but he is reported in the local Portland press as not being licensed as a psychologist in Oregon. This may be why he does not us the title 'Process orientated psychology' in the US ( http://www.wweek.com/portland/article-285-dream_academy.html). Arnold Mindell and Process Work are not notable, and people checking their validity may rely on the wikipedia entry. It is not a theory taught in psychology departments in institutions or universities other than Mindell's own which has been criticised as functioning as a visa scam. — Preceding unsigned comment added by NotMindell ( talk • contribs)
I have been trying to submit research information in Robert O. Becker, but this work has been consistently disrupted by deletions. After one of these ("explained" with merely the label "undue"), the deletionist IRWolfie- (who fails to see the significance of WP:DONOTDEMOLISH) reported my submission(s) here on this noticeboard.
This would have been a valid invitation to cooperation if it had contained an explanation like: "Can anybody explain what is undue about Becker's research on stimulating regrowth after an amputation or bone fracture, and what the due methods for such stimulation would be?". But no such explanation was given, nor requested. The "explanation" was implicit, from the context: The Fringe theories Noticeboard. (Becker worked with conventional physiology, combined with conventional physics. Nothing fringe here.)
The following day Salimfadhley, active on Fringe Noticeboard, arrived at Robert O. Becker, and started by posting a Notability tag - after IRWolfie- so conveniently had weakened the article's notability information by e.g. slashing away the last 21 of the 33 peer-reviewed papers for which Becker was the first author - unlisting e.g. three articles printed in Nature. (And IRWolfie- placed an Undue Weight tag on the few science description sentences remaining - without explaining this in Talk.)
Conclusion: The POV-based disruptive editing was attempted reinforced through the recruiting of a meat-puppet. When such deletionism effectively scares away those willing and able to write for Wikipedia, discussions in quite large forums are called for. ( An undisrupted version of the article is on Wikinfo.org.) OlavN ( talk) 06:18, 26 May 2012 (UTC)
I've taken the book to Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/The_Body_Electric_(book)#The_Body_Electric_.28book.29. IRWolfie- ( talk) 09:24, 27 May 2012 (UTC)
I hope someone here's willing to give this the time it warrants; the article, though short, has a serious "KILLED BY THE GOVERNMENT" undertone and is rather badly sourced. I'm not really sure where to begin; I'd probably be too heavy-handed. J Milburn ( talk) 09:14, 27 May 2012 (UTC)
I went to the Multiverse article expecting it to be about the fascinating theory that physicists have developed in recent years. And it does cover that. But it also appears to be a coatrack with a lot of WP:OR. It covers Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Mormonism, etc., and includes sentences such as this: "Many religions include an afterlife existence in realms, such as heavens and hells, which may be very different from the observable universe." Maybe there should be a split, with one article titled "Multiverse (physics)" and another titled "List of multiple universe hypotheses" or something. It appears that many of the sources don't explicitly use the term "multiverse" but are included if they talk about multiple worlds, etc. A section with a long quote by Ouspensky seems to have nothing to do with multiverse. Eager to know what you think. TimidGuy ( talk) 10:48, 28 May 2012 (UTC)
Interintel ( talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) is repeatedly adding fringe material about Bell's to that page. Another user reported this at the Physics wikiproject page, but I thought it would also be appropriate here. a13ean ( talk) 18:41, 29 May 2012 (UTC)
Found this at ANI, along with
Llewellyn Worldwide. Both fringe, both promotional. Just starting to look at Ogdoadic, maybe an AfD candidate.
Dougweller (
talk) 10:27, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
Llewellyn needs some serious work, but it's a notable topic. They're by far and away the largest and most well-known New Age & occult publisher. I'd be deeply surprised if sources couldn't be found for it. And thank you for raising this here. I didn't realize this was the right place for this kind of fringe. I thought it was more a pseudoscience place. -- 76.180.172.75 ( talk) 13:16, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
The supposed "Ogdoadic Tradition" is considered "fringe" (at best) even among other esoteric or magical Orders. I propose, given that all of the Llewellyn publications are essentially unreliable on this topic, that unless a non-Llewellyn reference can be found the article should be deleted. ~Autumnal Monk~ talk 11:34, 31 May 2012 (UTC)
There are some very fringe-sounding, possibly non WP:MEDRS claims in this article. -- Salimfadhley ( talk) 16:30, 31 May 2012 (UTC)
Comments on Talk:Bell's_theorem#Seeking_consensus_to_exclude_the_disproof_of_Bell.27s_theorem will be appreciated. Thanks. History2007 ( talk) 00:39, 1 June 2012 (UTC)
Created (or rather re-created, a version was deleted last year as A3 but had earlier been very similar to this version) just a few minutes ago, it could use a closer look. A first glance shows some unsourced material. I don't know anything about this person so am asking others to take a look. IRWolfie, you'll recognise this. Dougweller ( talk) 12:22, 1 June 2012 (UTC)
Dedicated account is rebuilding the article after unreliably-sourced material was removed. A few fringe conspiracy books/websites are being mixed in with more reliable sources, and there also seems to be some amount of WP:COATRACKing going on, with Novel being used as a starting point to promote the idea of wider conspiracies and connections (i.e. Novell was involved with A, and A was involved with B, and B was involved with C). The article could benefit with a general look-over by some fresh eyes. - LuckyLouie ( talk) 16:30, 9 June 2012 (UTC)
This article has no inline cites and to me reads as the fringe/occultish version of how we have this stuff now, as evidenced by the huge gap between the ancients and moderns. I think it could be argued that this is a spurious term, though I've had a very hard time getting "this is not a term-of-art" deletions to go through. Could I get some other opinions here? Mangoe ( talk) 16:06, 1 June 2012 (UTC)
"Materialization could be caused by quantum-mechanical spin changes, coming from structure-coupled electromagnetic fields (see Patrick Linker)" was added here. Seems like a non notable fringe theory to me, but others may want to review it. - LuckyLouie ( talk) 22:32, 5 June 2012 (UTC)
Did you know that Dudeism is a "world religion", founded in the year 2005 by an expat journalist in Thailand named Oliver Benjamin, on his internet website? And that it is inspired by a Jeff Bridges character in the 1998 film "The Big Lebowski"?
No, neither did I, until someone just now started adding a few too many paragraphs on it, into our established article explaining the Hippie Movement, which of course triggers my "undue weight" meter. The proposition that this "Dudeism" is any kind of significant or notable phenomenon, would naturally involve the claim that it now has over 100 thousand ordained priests worldwide, as a CNN lifestyle columnist apparently reported last February. All I can gather from looking the religion's website, is that it is pretty obviously a joke or parody religion, which is also affirmed in the same CNN column, yet wikipedia at the moment seems to be treating this like a serious, bona fide religion. Hence the fringe report. What is best? Til Eulenspiegel ( talk) 15:13, 6 June 2012 (UTC)
Raised this at BLPN also. Claims to have discovered "the Will of the Prophet Muhammed". Dougweller ( talk) 15:52, 10 June 2012 (UTC)
Since October, a number of articles have been edited to claim priority for the discovery of dark energy for the Hungarian astronomer György Paál. The claim is that Paál first detected the presence of dark energy and determined that omega-lambda = 2/3. These claims are problematic in several ways. From the point of view of Wikipedia policy: they cite only primary sources, the papers by Paál et al. themselves; they depend on original synthesis to connect these papers with dark energy as we know it; and they give undue weight to Paál's work. From the point of view of physics: although Paál may have gotten the right value for omega-lambda, he did not derive it from anything that mainstream cosmology would consider valid evidence for dark energy. Instead, he based his calculations about claims of periodic quasar redshifts that are essentially a fringe topic today and not supported by modern data sets. I would appreciate it if others would take a look at my edits and keep an eye out for anything similar. The articles in question: dark energy; cosmological constant; accelerating universe; list of multiple discoveries; György Paál. -- Amble ( talk) 02:32, 11 June 2012 (UTC)
Edited to make correct the article titled Saltville, Virginia , only to have it changed back to reflect conjecture today. Scientific fact, There is no proof that Spaniards were ever at Saltville as claimed in article or that the Chisca Indian ever lived in the area. Confirmed by Virginia Division of Archaeology. Statements in article are unverified claims and/ or wild guesses. Rockhead56 ( talk) 18:19, 11 June 2012 (UTC)
User Dilek2 has been adding a fringe theory that the Ottoman Turks are descended from Esau. [21] [22]. This editor has also posted this theory to several other pages [23] [24] and claimed the Orghuz Turks are descended from Uz (son of Aram) [25] [26] At no point has Dilek2 provided even the most unreliable of sources to support any of this. Edward321 ( talk) 05:59, 13 June 2012 (UTC)
The mainstream German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung has in a report by one of its senior reporters on the Houla massacre presented an account [27] of the May 25 events that supports the claims of the Syrian government and thus contradicts the opinion of mainstream media in general. There is discussion on the talk page on whether or not to allow the FAZ article into the article. One principal contributor to the article has asserted that it should not be included, citing it to be a fringe position, and that it shouldn't be used unless other mainstream media in turn report on it. [28] I'm not sure if this demand for coverage by more mainstream media for a source that is already mainstream, presenting an obvious minority viewpoint, represents a good understanding of WP:FRINGE. I'm therefore asking for clarity on the issue. There might be other relevant considerations from a WP:FRINGE point-of-view besides the one I'm inquiring specifically about. __ meco ( talk) 16:28, 13 June 2012 (UTC)
Some of you may be interested in this.
50.74.135.246 ( talk) 22:19, 7 June 2012 (UTC)
Hoax, joke? Source 1 (not a RS) suggests it might be the equivalent of an April Fool's joke. Dougweller ( talk) 08:20, 15 June 2012 (UTC)
Article about a writer on the horrible Mayan doom this year, I've removed some puffery in the lead but needs work. Dougweller ( talk) 08:32, 16 June 2012 (UTC)
This notice is to advise interested editors that a Contributor copyright investigation has been opened which may impact this project. Such investigations are launched when contributors have been found to have placed copyrighted content on Wikipedia on multiple occasions. It may result in the deletion of images or text and possibly articles in accordance with Wikipedia:Copyright violations. The specific investigation which may impact this project is located here.
All contributors with no history of copyright problems are welcome to contribute to CCI clean up. There are instructions for participating on that page. Additional information may be requested from the user who placed this notice, at the process board talkpage, or from an active CCI clerk. Thank you. Marcus Qwertyus 05:06, 12 June 2012 (UTC)
Anyone want to have a go at this one? Some very dubious sources. Dougweller ( talk) 17:35, 18 June 2012 (UTC)
Don't know how long I'll be allowed to stick around with the WP:RANDY police, but I made some midnight raids today I thought you all should know about: 1) Cold fusion. A wired.com source is being used to claim that DARPA is secretly funding cold fusion through SRI International and Michael McKubre in particular. It may be true that McKubre received some money laundered through the DARPA funding scheme, but wired.co.uk is not a reliable source to expose this and the DARPA document the cold fusion proponents want to cite seems to simply not say anything of the sort. There is this game being played of trying to "legitimize" cold fusion research by claiming quiet funding by the likes of NASA, the US Defense Dept, etc, but these claims are usually dubiously sourced and seem to be mostly soapboxing. Still, expect some pushback and anger from the dedicated cold fusion advocates on that one. 2) Masreliez. Search the archives for more on this one.
3) Plasma cosmology. An organized campaign has happened off-site to try to commandeer this article. Poor sourcing seems to be par for the course. I commented on User talk:Art Carlson's page about my major concerns on this one. Keeping an eye on it would be good and also the fringe physics proponents who are most active there lately. 4) Fractal cosmology. Could use even more clean-up than I gave it. The end of greatness is more-or-less observed and, though there are some who don't believe this, it is a pretty damning falsification of this proposal. One can look at the maps of the cosmos themselves for more on this. 5) Fringe theory: I see a lot of action there, but kept out. Keep up the good work, folks. Educators everywhere thank you for your diligence.
All the best, 209.2.217.151 ( talk) 18:52, 12 May 2012 (UTC) SA / VanishedUser314159
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This is attracting SPAs. See WP:NPOV and this thread [29] at DRN to see one of them. A new one has just arrived. If you look at the talk page, you can see I've been removing some bad sources, got rid of the quoteboxes which were pov (probably everyway, we shouldn't have any pov in any direction), and have removed a section on Punt that besides being badly sourced didn't actually discuss the history of the controversy.
Note please the bright yellow banner when you edit and the note at the top of the article page - this is not an article about the controversy, it is an article about the history of the controversy although editors too frequently ignore this. I'm sure it needs more work to make it truly NPOV. SPAs of course can make it almost impossible to keep that way. Dougweller ( talk) 12:45, 18 June 2012 (UTC)
I removed the potential copyright violations from the article from the banned sockpuppet GreenUniverse. IRWolfie- ( talk) 11:05, 20 June 2012 (UTC)
I have been told that this is a suitable forum for an alert about the encyclopedic quality of Biology and political orientation.
The page is currently supported by a single political project (and no scientific project). Personally, I wish to refrain from involvement, following unfortunate interaction elsewhere with a prominent member of that supporting project.
— MistyMorn ( talk) 08:59, 17 June 2012 (UTC)
I've put it up for AfD, the article is unsalvageable. IRWolfie- ( talk) 18:13, 24 June 2012 (UTC)
The article ethereal beings is up for deletion as (in User:AndyTheGrump's assessment) "One Big Pile of Synthesis and Original Research". I would agree that something drastic needs to be done, though I'm more inclined to merge and prune the bejesus out of it. Anyway, the ancillary issue is that there are a lot of terms for immaterial beings, both by genus and as overall classes, and the latter are really quite a mess. Spirit lacks references but is basically sane, and on the other hand we have horrible messes like this one, and non-physical entity, and I haven't chased about the reset of the general articles. There are also questionable genus articles like Daemon (classical mythology), which I'm pretty sure is a more or less made-up modern term. The whole set of articles needs at least a once-over to deal with the most egregious cases. Mangoe ( talk) 13:03, 19 June 2012 (UTC)
To claim a specific collaborative project across many universities is fringe is
WP:POINTY especially where a cursory google search shows plenty of mainstream news reports for the preliminary experimental results
[32] as well. There is nothing relevant to be discussed here.
IRWolfie- (
talk) 13:44, 20 June 2012 (UTC) (extended collapse 12:17, 23 June 2012 (UTC) )
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This is terrible fringe, some scientists bluntly claim the Standard Model is flawed. The experiment has obviously not been replicated, thus it is not RS. It is not published in peer reviewed journals, although they claim they will submitted it to Physical Review Letters. Let's just hope the editors of that journal set their priorities right and toss this crackpot theory right out, no need to peer review something silly like that. Why can't some scientists set up a petition to stop this, in Italy recently such nonsense ("Piezonuclear fission") was successfully stopped that way by governmental intervention. A further clue is that this experiment is named after a children's book I doubt that this article passes the notability test, so we could consider an AfD. But while it is still here, we should really tone down the soapboxing and sensationalist wording in this article and depict this for what it is: an erroneous and futile attempt of some "scientists" to rewrite the standard model. The "Notable events" section is violating WP:NOTNEWS, and also not RS. It's only a bunch of self published press releases. The "Institutions involved" section is a clear violation of WP:NOTDIR and is an attempt to push notability by association. We'd better do this quickly before some scam artists picks this up, but expect some pushback and anger from the advocates on this one. -- POVbrigand ( talk) 13:12, 20 June 2012 (UTC)
I think the other members of the board might also want to share their thoughts on whether this is a fringe theory or not. The experiment is not replicated and so far no peer reviewed papers are published. So that's fringe as far as I understand. -- POVbrigand ( talk) 13:58, 20 June 2012 (UTC)
At no point have they claimed to have established a new "theory". They are simply saying that they did an experiment and the result appears to be (subject to verification) contrary to the predictions of the standard model. This is the way science advances! Contrast that with other WP:FRINGE stuff - in just about every other case, the "theory" came first (think Hydrinos or Homeopathy) and the hypothesis/experiment stuff that should have preceded it simply never happened. Unsurprisingly, the mainstream rejects it out of hand. You might successfully argue that this is a "fringe hypothesis". But they aren't claiming any kind of new "theory" - in the intended sense of Scientific theory. Since there is no new theory it can't possibly be a "fringe theory". Right now, it's a poorly understood, unexplained, not yet properly validated experiment with an uncertain outcome. The comparison with Fleishmann & Pons is a good one. Initially, the FP experiment was just like this one - a hypothesis and an unvalidated experiment. Then the experiment was reproduced by third parties - and the anomalous readings were elegantly explained using nothing more than mainstream theory. Up to that point, this was not a fringe theory - after this point, it was merely a slightly poorly done experiment. But subsequently, a bunch of people rejected the mainstream explanation and insisted that something real was happening and started pushing out claims for actual new theories. That's why we now talk of cold fusion as "A fringe theory" with good justification. As to the "BaBar" name being a clear indication that this is fringe - that's just ridiculous mud-slinging. It's called BaBar because the particle that figures centrally in the experiment is the anti-particle of the B meson - which is written as a B with a bar over the top of it and pronounced "B bar" in conversation. Choosing Babar the elephant as a mascot is just a little light humor of the kind you see throughout the scientific world - it's no indication of a lack of seriousness in the project itself. Recall that Homo floresiensis is nicknamed "The Hobbit" after the children's book - and the seminal paper by Alpher, Bethe and Gamow on the origins of the universe is almost always referred to as the "αβγ paper" because it's humorous. SteveBaker ( talk) 14:05, 21 June 2012 (UTC)
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A SPA is sticking in a bunch of stuff from a conspiracy site; at least, that's what it looks like at first glance. I'm going to revert out soon so other monitors may be needed. Mangoe ( talk) 11:08, 26 June 2012 (UTC)
This article appears to be missing mainstream balance and makes it look like Astrology has demonstrated predictive power. IRWolfie- ( talk) 14:04, 13 June 2012 (UTC)
I also note that the critical reception (WSJ and John Heron) do not have any of the large quotes etc and only small mentions while positive reception in fringe publications has large quotes, this is clearly unbalanced. IRWolfie- ( talk) 17:07, 14 June 2012 (UTC)
Note that I've taken the over-aggressiveness of Goethean here and on the article to WQA. IRWolfie- ( talk) 19:16, 14 June 2012 (UTC)
Note also this article Archetypal_cosmology which appears to claim the existence of the new paradigm sciences that with Jungian Psychology help to outline a new mythic worldview. No indication at all about the mainstream view or acceptance is given in the article. IRWolfie- ( talk) 19:59, 17 June 2012 (UTC)
Regulars may remember that there is a series of articles on transhumanism, a philosophical approach which touches on fringe theories in several ways. (Just to make life interesting, so do some of the philosophies that oppose it.) There are many articles in the series (a portal in fact), but I was advised to concentrate cleanup efforts on the main transhumanism article. It had been promoted to FA in 2006, so I put it into FA review, and after some months in review it has been demoted. It would be really good if we could once more have many eyes on the main article and the series. My attempts at improvement are systematically reverted. Itsmejudith ( talk) 14:02, 26 June 2012 (UTC)
A really stupid edit war over this, with editors trying to insert something not in the article but claiming it is in the article, aided by a 'new' SPA who might be the IP who tries to put pov material in it who in turn just might be another editor. Nothing in the article says the government considers these national treasures yet even an experienced editor is trying to put this in the lead. See the talk page also. Dougweller ( talk) 20:46, 27 June 2012 (UTC)
I am relatively new to Wikipedia and trying to learn all of the etiquettes etc...I have tried to address the Bias in the Ahmadiyya page but unfortunately I believe that people motivated by bias are seeking to keep a fringe opinion as the main opinion on the article. For a minor edit that I had tried to make i.e to change the statement to "self identify" I have met with a wall of rejection by two prolific wiki-contributers. One is Ahmadiyya Peaceworld111 himself and whilst a respected wikipedia contributor has a vested interest in not maintaining the balance of the page. The other simply reverted every change that I had made. I questioning the selective referencing used in the opening line of the page. One quotation is from the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community which whilst biased I am happy to accept. The other is from an author who spent time with the Ahmadiyya community in England. I raised the issue that throughout his book he had cited that Muslim opinion was that the Ahmadiyya were not Muslim and therefore to quote his singular statement whilst ignoring his own referencing of the fact mainstream Islam consider the Ahmadiyya to be none Muslim is biased. http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Islam_and_the_Ahmadiyya_Jama%CA%BBat.html?id=Q78O1mjX2tMC. I sought to resolve this issue by adding the statement that they self identify as an Islamic Reformist movement or alternatively to find an alternative opening quotation. All were met with firm refusals and a denial of any bias. Either way a fringe theory should not start an article as its prime quotation. If the other quotation is from the community itself then it supports the statement of self identification which I have put across ( Steeringly ( talk) 09:59, 30 June 2012 (UTC))
I wasnt particularly pushing an opinion that they are not Muslim the title of the section is misleading. I was simply trying to raise the issue that it was their self identification that categorises them as Muslim as generally Muslims reject their beliefs as heretical. The reason I feel that it is a fringe issue is becasue the work cited as evidence of the Ahmadiyyah being an Islamic reformist movement is a fringe opinion and therefore should be correctly categorised as self identification by the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community. ( Steeringly ( talk) 13:23, 30 June 2012 (UTC))
I think Echo Flight UFO/Missile Incident (additionally created as Oscar Flight UFO/Missile Incident) promotes a fringe "UFOs did it" angle (sourced to UFO sites) as the main view. News sources [37] [38] report a newly-discovered hardware glitch was responsible for the missiles going offline. - LuckyLouie ( talk) 16:45, 4 July 2012 (UTC)
I have created the story thet is mentioned above. User noq has attempted to sassert a POV that simply does not make any sense at all. Others have mentioned and he continues to push a POV that is out of line and this user is now bordering on abusive.
Other users have also questioned his actions on this story as well as others. According to the users logs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Noq noq seems to be doing a great deal of Drive By Tagging and according to user talk page, user noq's objectives should be questioned and reviewed.
noq seems to manipulate in a quest to perform self serving edits that serve no function and both distract and hinder Wikipedias ability to evolve. According to noq POV, a person is the same as a group of people and under this users POV, just about all of Wikipedia should be deleted or merged.
In this case, users noq POV is that a group of people that had the same effect as World War 2 on a famous yacht race, is not notable unless the group did something else notable.
I will use the Space Shuttle Challanger as a example that we can ref: In that story, each person whom was in the craft at the time it exploded has a singular page devoted to them. No other event took place for this person, so according to user noq, each of these people should be merged into the master story, as none of the astronauts that died that tragic day, had other notable events to report upon. Under user noq POV each of these people would have to had something else that also made them notable in some way in order to qualify for a Wiki page.
Here user noq asserts that Mr. Dennis Conner, in creating a team that would design something that the world had never even seen before, that went on to win the oldest race in modern sports and were cited over and over and over in the media, by Dennis Conner himself and world wide as a group, do not qualify for a page that defines the group. User noq's pov is that these men, as a group need to do something else, other then gather 70 people together that had never worked together before to do something that is still active in sportings most historic race today by creating a whole new form of sailing. If using the above example POV from noq to apply to the story I have referenced here, someone like Christa McAuliffe, should be merged into the main story as she was not really notable untill she was killed in that tragic crash, (a single event). user noq POV is way way way out of line and this POV, is distructive and noneproductive to Wiki's main objectives.-- WPPilot 04:52, 6 July 2012 (UTC)
The mainstream position on this is that it is a hoax. Recently a fringe geologist, Scott Wolter, has claimed it is genuine, and his views have been given some prominence in this article using his website as as a source. Now the hoax category has been removed (I've replaced it). Dougweller ( talk) 15:03, 27 June 2012 (UTC)
Maria Gimbutas theories about an ancient triple Goddess are fringe and rejected by mainstream academia. However these criticisms of her theories are being deleted from the article Triple Goddess (Neopaganism). The content being censored can be seen in this diff: [ [40]], for spurious reasons (ad-hominem arguments from an editor history of long-running disputes with myself). However, a prevailing argument on the Talk page is that the criticism from mainstream views are a WP:COATRACK and that the article should report this (fringe) theory without recourse to outlining it's rejection by mainstream academia. So how should this be handled? should a fringe, rejected theory be simply repeated by wikipedia (as the current article shows) or should mainstream rejection of those theories be part and parcel of reporting it? Davémon ( talk) 14:49, 4 July 2012 (UTC)
What to do with the above article? Folklore surrounding tunnels might be a notable subject, but that's not what we seem to have. Rather it's a collection of miscellaneous tunnels. Should we merge with ley line? Itsmejudith ( talk) 06:53, 10 July 2012 (UTC)
The Dyatlov Pass incident leaves the reader with the strong impression that the hikers were either attacked by aliens, or stumbled onto a secret soviet weapons test grounds and were therefore eliminated.
Now, I can believe that a bunch of hikers got spooked by something and ran like hell into the woods in their underpants. And in -30C weather it's not difficult to imagine how that would kill them. (Or how the ones that wound up in the bottom of a ravine might have broken their bones.) Or I can believe that an avalanche smashed them out of their tents and pushed them down the slope. (Some combination of the two also seems entirely plausible, to me.)
However, this article seems to concentrate a lot on some pretty dubious aspects of the story. It's presented as fact that the hikers clothing was "highly radioactive" and that there were mysterious orange spheres in the air above where the hikers were camped.
Maybe I'm just overreacting. It could be that the radiation and orange fireballs stuff is true. But as the article is based almost entirely on a single non-contemporary article in the St. Petersburg Times, maybe it's placing a little undue weight on the conspiracy story? APL ( talk) 05:55, 13 July 2012 (UTC)
The article on conspiracy theorist James H. Fetzer appears to be filled with many primary and otherwise dubious sources. There seems to be a lot of puffery, but I am unsure how to deal with most of this given that WP:PRIMARY does allow the use of primary source information to fill in details. Location ( talk) 15:42, 5 July 2012 (UTC)
The lead of the article on Ayurveda contains a paragraph on safety concerns, which are a major issue in the discussion in independent reliable sources. This paragraph, naturally, is loathed by proponents of Ayurveda who either delete it or try to bury it elsewhere in the article. More eyes would be apprectiated. A discussion is in progress on the article talk page. Thanks. Dominus Vobisdu ( talk) 12:34, 16 July 2012 (UTC)
Patrick Flanagan ( | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
If anyone has a spare moment, this bucket of miscellaneous woo and technobabble looks a prime candidate for an AfD. I must admit though that I'm impressed that someone can apparently claim that something which will "lower the surface tension of drinking water" is somehow of benefit - or significance? A little Whisky in my water (or preferably, a lot of Whisky) has a similar effect. And for teetotallers, there is always detergent, though I'd suggest that the Whisky might possibly taste better. AndyTheGrump ( talk) 03:09, 18 July 2012 (UTC)
I'd honestly be curious to see the response at noting that the surface tension concoction is but one of thousands/millions/a more or less infinite number of surfactants... Regardless, he's sure as heck not notable for that.
It seems that the article Musica universalis is being inappropriately linked with astrology in the text and the templates on the article, when the sources don't support that linkage. IRWolfie- ( talk) 16:55, 18 July 2012 (UTC)
See [41] and 2 similar edits (3RR given). Editor seems to think that we are calling a theory a law of science, that because evolution is not a scientific law it something or other, not sure, and that it isn't observable. So, editor is removing the word 'empirical'. Dougweller ( talk) 12:47, 19 July 2012 (UTC)
We appear to be having an impasse at Barack Obama citizenship conspiracy theories regarding the proper treatment of Joe Arpaio, an Arizona sheriff who has been going to great lengths to "investigate" the authenticity of Obama's birth certificate. Note that this entire article is supposed to be devoted to the reporting of what are generally admitted to be fringe theories, so that point is not what is at issue here. Rather, the problem involves exactly how Arpaio's claims should be described in the article.
See the recent revision history for the article, and the "Sheriff Arpaio" section of the article's talk page. I see two main areas of dispute here:
I proposed three rewrites of the Arpaio material in the article's talk page, with little success — some other editors continued to insist that the existing material is adequate and that there is no need to rewrite it. Attempts to edit the article are descending into edit-warring misbehaviour, with accusations being traded of "content improperly removed", "possible vandalism", and editing actions based solely on "I don't like it" grounds. I'm intentionally declining to name specific individual editors here because I'm hoping to keep this matter in the realm of a content dispute, rather than cross the line and characterize it as a user conduct issue.
I will admit here that I'm partial to the idea that the May 2012 Hawaii trip by Arpaio's staff should be reported. But if it is going to be simply impossible to achieve a consensus along these lines, I would favour deleting or severely trimming mention in the article, not only of Joe Arpaio, but of other individuals and their quests — on the grounds that the article is really supposed to be about the fringe theories, and not really about the fringe theorists. This idea actually looks like it might manage to get a consensus behind it, though it's hard to tell now that people have gone back to edit-warring.
Any comments or suggestions for intervention would be welcome here. —
Rich
wales 06:58, 15 July 2012 (UTC) 06:03, 16 July 2012 (UTC)
It looks like we may finally have reached consensus on a rewrite of this article's description of Joe Arpaio. So it should be possible to close this request for intervention. If and when problems arise again, I'll open up a new request (and presumably post it on the NPOV noticeboard, not here). — Rich wales 21:23, 20 July 2012 (UTC)
User: Jason from nyc deleted my newly created article on Muslim Brotherhood conspiracy theories and restored the terribly written Influence Operations of the Muslim Brotherhood article instead. That article was so bad it was practically unsalvagable, since it featured few to no reliable sources and openly promoted the conspiracy theories about the Muslim Brotherhood that are advanced by discredited " counterjihad" activists such as Robert Spencer, David Horowitz and Pamela Geller. I replaced it with an article with a NPOV title (since it describes the allegations for what they are, conspiray theories) which I used reliable sources to write. However, Jason from nyc reverted my changes, deleting my new article (which he ludicrously claimed had been "moved by consensus") and restoring the bad version. Wikipedia isn't the place to promote fringe theories, and I don't think Jason from nyc should be allowed to do so here. LonelyBoy2012 ( talk) 20:54, 20 July 2012 (UTC)
Phillip Willis (
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I'm not sure where to begin with this one. The article for Phillip Willis, who was a witness to the assassination of JFK and referred to in various conspiracy works, is filled with citations pointing to primary source material and images. There are a lot of explanations in the "References" sections that aren't backed-up by commentary from a secondary source (e.g. description of Willis in the Zapruder film). It is as though the citations need citations. Thanks! Location ( talk) 19:17, 23 July 2012 (UTC)
I just reverted a page move of List of plants used in herbalism to List of medicinal plants. Mangoe ( talk) 04:09, 25 July 2012 (UTC)
The article about Asebu (a region and former Fante kingdom on the Gold Coast, contemporary Ghana) reads like a fringe theory involving the Israelites in Egypt and their journey to the Promised Land. Please have a look at this. Best, Fentener van Vlissingen ( talk) 21:31, 24 July 2012 (UTC)
{{uninvolved}}
Hello,
Perhaps not the kind of posts you usually receive here, but I need your advice if you don't mind. Would you be kind enough to tell me whether this site [45] is a fringe site or not? The link you are looking at in particular relates to an article which was originally authored by the anthropologist David Maranz. Thank you so much for your time. Best Regards. Tamsier ( talk) 13:01, 25 July 2012 (UTC)
I am not acting as an Administrator in this dispute, nor am I canvasing. I am asking for a reliable source for the existence of something called the "Raampa pictographs". You have mentioned them in several articles and those articles and a fringe website are the only place that the phrase is used. So anyone searching for information about these from a reliable source by our criteria is going to find nothing. What I am trying to say is that we need to find a name for these that isn't an invented name, one that is used by reliable sources. Isn't there one? Where are they located? Hasn't anyone written about them besides Gravrand, and if he's the only one, what does he call them? And unless you are trying to get me blocked, what do you want another Administrator for? Dougweller ( talk) 21:02, 26 July 2012 (UTC)
Saafi people#Language states "The Saafi also have a very rich an ancient culture of writing called the Raampa, and have contributed immensely to the old Serer Raampa writing tradition. The word Raampa itself comes from the Saafi language. It was a religious pictographic writing system used by the Serer people to which the Saafi are a sub-group of. The Raampa tradition has also been adopted by some none-Serer ethnic groups. The original source for this was the fringe Maranz article mentioned above. Tamsier changed the source to an article by Henry Gravrand[ [57] without changing the text. Neither Maranz nor Gravrand are experts on writing, and Gravrand's article appears to be an obscure article not used as a source in other reliable source (at least I can't find any). I'm raising a discussion at Talk:Saafi people but at the moment it seems NPOV and WP:UNDUE. I think I figured out a bit about the attacks on me and maybe the problems I see with some of the articles, see [58]. Dougweller ( talk) 13:16, 29 July 2012 (UTC)
Blacklight Power is a pseudo-science based company. The article currently doesn't seem very balanced towards mainstream opinion and the pseudo-science theories are presented uncritically Bhny ( talk) 21:36, 25 July 2012 (UTC)
I removed some poorly (one primary and self-published) sourced grandiose claims that it has significant implications for the standard model. IRWolfie- ( talk) 18:04, 29 July 2012 (UTC)
Some input into this article would be helpful. It's an interesting idea, to say the least, but probably falls somewhere in-between being fringe and an alternative theoretical formulation (likely more towards the fringe side of the spectrum). Currently the article uses sources like Deepak Chopra and non physicists as the "pro" side, while the "con" side is mostly made up of mainstream scientists. Still, the idea does have some support from respected people. At the very least it's worth a read if you haven't heard of this. Sædon talk
Hi re Ignat Ignatov, does the word Kirlian ring any bells? And would I be correct in thinking that "Water in the Human Body is Information Bearer about Longevity" is not the most mainstream title for a scientific paper? Ϣere SpielChequers 15:43, 31 July 2012 (UTC)
This article cites mainly papers by the creator of the theory, predicting that industrial civilization will only last fron 1930 to 2030. The "theory" has changed over the years, as some predictions have failed to occur. It has made predictions about what year the maximum energy per capita will be used, followed by electric blackouts, massive disease and famine, and a return to a worldwide population die-off and stone age lifestyle in the mid 21st century. The article may be presenting the theory in too favorable a light with respect to its acceptance in the field of energy research. This article has been mentioned in relation to the recent power blackouts in India. Edison ( talk) 16:50, 31 July 2012 (UTC)
A theory (stated to be distinct from theories of physics or cosmology) which allows time travel, and referenced mostly to the writings of the theory's creator. Not seeing much secondary coverage in reliable and independent sources. Edison ( talk) 16:35, 3 August 2012 (UTC)
I think the entire "Evidence" section is giving undue weight to fringe studies. Few, if any, legitimate scientific inquiries into the topic have produced positive results and yet two paragraphs are devoted to a single study which, when messaged to an incredible degree, hinted at its possible efficacy. -- Daniel 23:35, 3 August 2012 (UTC)
This is a new article that came to my notice. Everything in it is bullshit, but on investigating I find that it exists in the context of a whole corpus of bullshit called applied kinesiology (which is a completely different thing from real kinesiology). Bottom line, I'm not sure how to deal with it. Looie496 ( talk) 02:20, 5 August 2012 (UTC)
No, not Fox News but instead Wikipedia -- according to some person cited within the newly augmented article Bias. Apparently " FrontPage Magazine" and " WorldNetDaily" regard Wikipedia as a agnostic/atheist liberal/leftist plot. Speaking as a member of the reality-based community, I'd be most alarmed if a project of which I was a tiny cog were not so regarded by "WorldNetDaily" etc -- but there you are; I suppose people taking "WorldNetDaily" seriously would regard me as part of the problem. It's probably bad manners to say "No, run off to 'Conservapedia'"; what's the right etiquette here? -- Hoary ( talk) 06:26, 6 August 2012 (UTC)
I was advised on the WikiProject India board to post here. The issue involves a group of edits on the Black people article that over the past few weeks have basically attempted to change the entire direction of the article. While the wikipage was, like its companion White people article, originally reserved for discussion on race-based social categories/constructs (and thus featured the main Race template and category), a newbie editor has been unilaterally replacing material on racial classification with material largely centered on dark skin color. On this new basis, he/she has also added image galleries of disparate peoples, including Dravidians of South Asia, under the pretext that they are all "black people" since "black people" apparently without qualification refers to all "people with relative dark skin". But how does one go about objectively determining what constitutes "relative dark skin"? And where exactly is the cut-off point? Wouldn't such a broad, skin color-based parameter also by definition rule out many light-skinned so-called "black people" like Stedman Graham in favor of more dark-skinned individuals not traditionally considered "black people" like Vijay Singh? It's a slippery slope. The article now almost approximates in content the old "Africoid" wikipage, a deleted essay on the fringe Afrocentric "Africoid" concept [62] that was created by a banned user. I have tried explaining that these pages are not solely based on skin color, but rather on debatable social categories/constructs on race. Hence, why East Asians are not discussed on the white people wikipage, although many East Asians have skin color as light as, and sometimes even lighter than, many Europeans. Gallery images have also historically been discouraged on these pages because of their repeatedly demonstrated potential for misuse and idiosyncratic selections. This is why the white people article presently does not feature any images at all. Perhaps its black people companion wikipage should follow suit, or at the very least limit images to a couple of within-text pics that few would contest as "black". Please advise. Soupforone ( talk) 12:32, 6 August 2012 (UTC)
IP with little clue about the subject edit-warring to claim that the radio-carbon dating was done on rock (it wasn't, it was organic material under the walls that was dated). Dougweller ( talk) 15:57, 6 August 2012 (UTC)
There's a discussion at WP:CON about an editor at The Urantia Book ( | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views). I took it off my watchlist some time ago and just added it again, but it would be useful if other editors took a look at it (including the recent discussion on the talk page, I see that some material removed some time ago has been reinserted). Dougweller ( talk) 08:19, 7 August 2012 (UTC)
FYI: I have started an AfD on the Agha Waqar's Water Fuelled Car article Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Agha_Waqar's_Water_Fuelled_Car. SteveBaker ( talk) 12:47, 8 August 2012 (UTC)
There is a bit of culture warrior battle going on at various articles, but the conflict that we might be able to address here centers on right-wing authoritarianism and authoritarian personality, and from there slops over into social conservatism. Basically, as best I understand it, there was a hypothesis that people like, well, Nazis and fascists fall into a distinct personality type. This led to the "F scale", but in practice when actually tried out on Nazi prisoners, it didn't work too well. But never fear, much later we have Robert Altemeyer's formulation of a "Right Wing Authoritarian scale", which apparently shows that conservatives all are possessed of a strong tendency towards authoritarianism. This research was then popularized in John Dean's Conservatives without Conscience.
OK, so this sounds a bit axe-grinding, doesn't it? I personally have to wonder how Uncle Joe fits into this theory, or how all those liberals who want to enact laws regulating public behavior escaped the authoritarian label. But there is a concerted effort here to emphasize that nobody of significance disputes this thesis. And at the bottom of it all we have the now-retired User:Jcbutler, who as it turns out has a conspicuous conflict of interest: he has published research supporting this thesis, and he is the author of the statement in the RWA article that the dissenters are a minority viewpoint.
I'm hard-pressed to believe that the world of conservative ideology doesn't object to this thesis. But I'm having a very hard time finding evidence that they are even aware of it. Other than Dean's book we seem to be trapped in a little closed world of psychology papers which I'm somewhat inclined to reject as primary sources. Of course since this involves current politics the level of bad behavior here is very high, and I have been accused of "conservative bias" for doubting that this isn't what every reasonable person accepts. Mangoe ( talk) 18:37, 10 August 2012 (UTC)
User:Paul Bedson is pushing some fringe claims at Olympic Games and the less important Tailteann Games, namely that the Tailteann Games date to 1600 BC [67]. This is an impossibly old date, considering it is barely into the Bronze Age and written records from Ireland don't appear for millennia later. He is using this source [68], a history of Ireland for the period of 1922-1985. I consider this kookery of a high order. The claim regarding the Tailteann games is exceptional, and the source used is far from adequate for such a claim. The matter is somewhat urgent, since a lot of people are currently looking at the article due to the fact that the games are ongoing. Athenean ( talk) 22:51, 11 August 2012 (UTC)
At Talk:Turkey Mountain inscriptions there is an argument with Til Eulenspiegel claiming censorship but the real issue is about the use of a source by William F. McNeil, who is an expert on the history of baseball but also wrote one or two books (I'm not sure if the second is just a rewrite of the first or an entirely new book) "suggesting that ancient European and Asian mariners visited the United States more than 1000 years ago". Whether it's one or two, he's had virtually no attention paid by mainstream sources. Another bone of contention is the use of the late Gloria Farley's webpage as a source - Farley is another minor fringe writer. Dougweller ( talk) 14:44, 3 August 2012 (UTC)
Note that the requirement is significant coverage in reliable sources. Passing mentions like this don't help torwards notability. IRWolfie- ( talk) 01:32, 5 August 2012 (UTC)
It's at DRV at the moment Wikipedia:Deletion_review/Log/2012_August_13#Turkey_Mountain_inscriptions. IRWolfie- ( talk) 09:34, 14 August 2012 (UTC)
We have a number of reliable non-fringe sources that discuss, for instance, the Kensington Runestone. We have mainstream archaeologists commenting on the Bat Creek stuff. But we don't seem to have anything similar for this. There are not only not "plenty of books that discuss this", the handful that do mention it are except for Fell pretty trivial, and no mainstream source seems to have taken this seriously. Our guideline on fringe articles says "A fringe theory can be considered notable enough for a dedicated article if it has been referenced extensively, and in a serious and reliable manner, in at least one major publication that is independent of the theory. References that debunk or disparage the fringe theory can also be adequate, as they establish the notability of the theory outside of its group of adherents. References that are employed because of the notability of a related subject – such as the creator of the theory, and not the theory itself – should be given far less weight when deciding on notability." Til, if you can't find a source that qualifies, the article should go to AfD. This has been overlooked in the past, but since you've been pushing this hard don't you think we need to follow our guideline here? Dougweller ( talk) 11:43, 5 August 2012 (UTC)
( edit conflict)And although Til claimed there were the sources he mentions above, I note that he didn't try to use them and I can't find them. Nor am I clear if he meant that Turkey Mountain was mentioned, or Fell's ideas about visitors to America. The Tulsa document does mention, with no discussion, the ideas of "Jenks resident William M. O’Brien" described as a local historian and geologist but it isn't clear where he is referring to (probably Turkey Mountain but that's not explicit so far as I can see). As I said, there's no discussion and this seems to be a pretty informal document. It's at [69] and I'm looking at a paragraph that says "Soon, other Creeks who had migrated from Alabama began to settle in the immediate region at the present towns of Coweta, Sapulpa and Sand Springs. But the Lochapoka Square at Tulsa was still where they all gathered for their government functions and religious observances. (David where is theis?)" - note the question there. So this doesn't meet the criteria. Waiting for the first links Til mentioned and exactly what they say - and why they weren't added to the article if they are so good. Dougweller ( talk) 13:14, 5 August 2012 (UTC)
Here's another: "The geology of the Atlantic Ocean, Volume 1" 1050 pages, by Kenneth Emery (1984), gives it a passing mention on p. 3: "Near Tulsa up the Arkansas River, a rock cliff carries the Celtic name Gwynn written in both Ogam and Punic" in the context of a discussion of purported evidence for purported Celts in America... Til Eulenspiegel ( talk) 13:24, 5 August 2012 (UTC)
NOTE... Since there is currently an active AFD page for this, further discussion should take place on that AFD page. Blueboar ( talk) 13:53, 5 August 2012 (UTC)