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Something truly odd is going on at Talk:Robert Gallo, and more eyes would be useful. 70.4.91.99 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS) made some... interesting edits which necessitated administrative deletion due to personal attacks, attempted "outing", etc (deleted contribs here for viewers with the sysop bit). The article was semi-protected as a result; this user registered an account, RspnsblMn ( talk · contribs), and while waiting for the autoconfirmed threshold to expire has been engaging in a bit of curious discussion on the talk page. More eyes requested. MastCell Talk 04:18, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
The article's a mess and I'm trying to add references and remove some of the soapboxing. I'm in the middle of a discussion about someone named Nikas. Now, before this happened, Nikas himself seems to have started his own article with the username SuperAtlantis (the name of his old website it seems as that's the name on the pdf recently uploaded here, now deleted). See Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:Superatlantis. Which probably explains why his new website lists Wikipedia as one of the places his work has been published. See his new website Atlantis in Malta. Now, ignoring what has happened before, my question is whether Nikas should be included in the Location Hypotheses article. He is a New Yorker who has gotten an Albanian newspaper to write about this ideas. His web page says he has been published in Mysteries Magazine number 15 and links to the magazine's website, but the website doesn't mention his article and has its own internal search feature which didn't turn up a Nikas or an article on Malta. A web search turns up his participation on a couple of web forums and that's about all, except for a web page by another Atlantis researcher, Georgeos Díaz-Montexano. I don't think this is enough but the person who added a section on him, Italianboy101, disagrees. He isn't going to push it but to be fair and clear in my own mind I thought I'd bring it here. Notable enough or not? Thanks.-- Doug Weller ( talk) 16:51, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
Arrive in Japan, get into an earnest conversation with somebody, and it's not unlikely that you'll soon be asked about your blood type. Momentary scare: Does this person have premonitions involving a bulldozer or chainsaw? Or are you conversing with a vampire? But no: a huge percentage of right-thinking Japanese folk subscribe to this variety of horseshit. The percentage seems particularly high among admirers of cheesecake models (guradoru), about most of whom, let's face it, there really isn't much to say. In the same spirit, hundreds if not thousands of earnest en:Wikipedia articles about these people announce their blood type ( example).
I don't usually hang around the cheesecake/porn articles much, but on occasion I've encountered the credulous retailing of blood "information" and have remarked on it. It's only today that I noticed this old discussion among porn connoisseurs, the reliability of factoids about blood is the main issue, and it seems to be taken for granted that blood type is noteworthy "information". A related conversation continues at the foot of that page and is still in progress; again, it's mostly about "reliability". While I have my own, strong opinions on the reliability of the "facts" making up starlets' PR bios, these opinions are pretty irrelevant to fringe theories, so I'll spare you them. What concerns me, and might concern you, is that those editors concerned with this stuff seem to be coalescing around a position that if more than a tiny number of people are demonstrably interested in a given piece of "reliably sourced information", it's encyclopedic. Now, I'll grant that many people are demonstrably interested (and that blood type isn't sourced any less reliably than date and place of birth, etc etc). However, I see any decision that infoboxes should cater for blood type as pandering to and reinforcing pseudoscience. Cheesecake/porn starlets articles aren't of concern to most people (and as far as I can recall I've only ever tinkered with one), but it's a simple step from these to articles on singers and so forth, non-Japanese starlets, etc.
Does this square with your notion of "encyclopedia"? -- Hoary ( talk) 07:11, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
why porn? The article as far as I can see doesn't mention porn, just women's magazines, media celebrities and manga characters. dab (𒁳) 15:24, 24 February 2008 (UTC)
Somebody keep an eye on this article, please. I just fixed it up - someone was trying to push his personal theory that this malformed octopus is really a new species called "Hexapus," using a cheeky column in the Daily Telegraph as his source. There was a taxobox and everything - ugh. < eleland/ talk edits> 21:42, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
My BS-meter just keeled over and died. I don't know where to even begin describing this mass of free-flowing random-association mega-verbiage. Check this out:
“ | Varṇa (Sanskrit) holds the semantic field "colour", "class", "phoneme", "syllable", "letter"; mālā (Sanskrit) holds the semantic field "garland", "ley", "wreath", "prayer beads", "rosary". Varṇamālā denotes the alphabet of Devanagari, that has come to be common for Sanskrit post- medieval India. Varṇamālā may also be rendered into English as "Chakra of Letters", which is fundamental to the 'thirteenth bhumi' of Mantrayana according to Rongzompa. It should be noted that the term Deva+Naga+ri is constructed from a conjunction of deva "divine" and nāga "serpent", and that snakes often form a "circular" garland-like shape, refer Ourorboros, and are evident throughout Dharmic iconography as girdles, malas, garlands, torques, armbands, etc., as investiture of adornment are 'symbolic attributes' (Tibetan: phyag mtshan). Devanagari seceded from Brāhmī script which is even more visually serpentine. | ” |
And this is only a typical example of what this fellow has been producing with gay abandon. Woo has nothing on this stuff. rudra ( talk) 09:11, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
Conze (1980: p.12) states:
For the last two thousand years Buddhism has mainly flourished in rice-growing countries and little elsewhere. In addition, and that is much harder to explain, it has spread only in those countries which had previously had a cult of Serpents or Dragons, and never made headway in those parts of the world which view the killing of dragons as a meritorious deed or blame serpents for mankind's ills. [1]
Oh, and BTW, "the mind boggles" was purely artful! B9 hummingbird hovering ( talk • contribs) 04:27, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
The article seems unlikely to improve, so I've proposed its deletion through the {{ prod}} template. --Akhilleus ( talk) 05:00, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
So what happens now? This is clearly all original research and so banned by Wikipedia, right? Can the bit about it being part of a series on Tibetan Buddhism be removed now (the series list doesn't include it or rather them? Should all of these be proposed for deletion?-- Dougweller ( talk) 07:46, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
An alternative approach might be to undo the redirect at Tulpa and use that as the core of a proper article, and the target of an eventual merge from Thoughtform (more accurately, with what can be salvaged from it). Whether the result should be titled "Tulpa" or "Thoughtform" can be discussed separately. Here is Tulpa before B9HH's efforts. This is the combo diff of subsequent changes up to the redirect: the changes seem mostly in the popular culture sections. Such sections are trivia magnets and will have to be overhauled, of course. Meanwhile, there isn't much on tulpa per se. rudra ( talk) 20:38, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
Okay, I've moved the (scrutable) material on tulpa to Tulpa, and resurrected what used to be an article on a book, Thought Forms (whose material had been copied over). What's left at Thoughtform is, as far as I can tell, blogorrhic blather from beginning to end. Maybe there's usable stuff in there on "thoughtform", but it might be better to write such an article from scratch. rudra ( talk) 02:57, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
A new (?) editor has recently been attempting to add a chunk of original research and material sourced from blogs (or just unsourced material) to this article about a fairly fringey Middle Eastern conspiracy theory ( [2]). I've attempted to explain the policy requirements at Talk:Pallywood#Relevant Updates,Slanted Interpretations, Lack of Neutrality. Grateful if somone could review my comments and let me know if there's anything I've missed. -- ChrisO ( talk) 00:21, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
Bates method ( | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) The article is suffering from severe NPOV as well as some OR problems, and has for a long time. Article needs a sentence-by-sentence, section-by-section, review to identify everything that is original research, promotional, or otherwise unsupported by independent sources. I recommend identifying problematic sections and sentences first, rather than just gutting the article, to give the regular editors there some realization what it means to follow NPOV. -- Ronz ( talk) 03:43, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
This is an alledged sacred book in the Mormon religion. About a month ago I initiated the process of trying to make clear on the article that there is practically no evidence of these books and that many claims about them and in them are disputed.
The page has moved an inch in the right direction, however, the page spends paragraph after paragrah about how they were found, a physical description of them!, etc., and one sentence which mentions that they may not even exist.
Any help would be appreciated... and there has been A LOT of talking about his for 2 weeks.... so maybe skim a bit and jump in.
btw, not sure if this is the right place for this concern. Sethie ( talk) 22:18, 26 February 2008 (UTC)
I think the proper annalogy is to look at the article on the Ten Commandments... even though the only evidence that these actually exited in physical form comes from a religious source, we can talk about them in terms of religious belief... without resorting to "in-universe" tags. The key is to phrase any discussion of the Mormon Golden Plates in terms of religious belief and not in terms of "fact". The simple addition of "It is believed that..." or "According to Mormon tradition..." should solve any issues here. Blueboar ( talk) 18:11, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
I've created the {{ in-religion-universe}} template, to allow the same issue to be stated, while avoiding calling the subject matter of articles "fiction". Clinkophonist ( talk) 14:27, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
From Adaptogen:
The word adaptogen is used by herbalists...
...
Very simply, adaptogens are nontoxic in normal doses, produce a nonspecific defensive response to stress, and have a normalizing influence on the body. They normalize the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis (HPA axis). As defined, adaptogens constitute a new class of natural, homeostatic metabolic regulators.
This same term is used on other articles, as an actual medical or scientific term:
i.e. Indian gooseberry
From a Western perspective, the fruit is considered to be an adaptogen, helping the body cope and adapt to various physiological stressors, helping to balance the neuroendocrine system and enhance immunity.
Woo? ☯ Zenwhat ( talk) 00:36, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
That's kind of what I figured. It seems to be a scientific term, but not with a lot of research to support it. However, lots of quacks and non-scientists have taken the term up apparently, as a banner to push silly "herbal remedies". One company actually uses the term, adaptogenol for one of their silly potions, yes, like a cureallozine. ☯ Zenwhat ( talk) 18:57, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
What is the role of science in producing authoritative knowledge? How should Wikipedia report on pseudoscience? Veterans of numerous edit wars and talk page battles spanning dozens of articles across Wikipedia, User:Martinphi and User:ScienceApologist will go head to head on the subject of Wikipedia, Science, and Pseudoscience in a groundbreaking interview to be published in an upcoming issue of Signpost. User:Zvika will moderate the discussion. Post suggested topics and questions at The Martinphi-ScienceApologist Interview page. 66.30.77.62 ( talk) 18:24, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
ONE: The Movie needs a cleanup and may well-deserve a close eye as its popularity increases. Vassyana ( talk) 12:45, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
I have looked it over and the version I am looking at looks fine to me. If anyone has specific problems, I would be open to hear them.
It does lack sources.... and.... well it doesn't make any extraordinary claims, so I am fine to leave it be. Hohohahaha ( talk) 00:29, 15 March 2008 (UTC)
I just got through vetting Quantum-Touch. What a trip! I may not have done the best job, but there is a ton of other energy therapies that need to be run through the NPOV/anti-advert ringer. Things to keep in mind: all claims of benefits must be removed since the claims cannot be reliably sourced, all claims of mechanism must be framed as opposed to reality.
ScienceApologist ( talk) 15:00, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
This arrived on my talk page today. Curious dispute concerning nationalism, fringyness, bad sourcing, the lot. Needs some more eyes. Moreschi ( talk) 10:28, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
I cleaned up Slavic settlement of Eastern Alps and Carantania, and made Venetic theory a redirect to a section at Protochronism where I inserted a reference to the idea as a list entry. Note that this seems to be overlapping with a (bona fide) dispute whether Slavic arrival in Slovenia should be dated to the 7th or already to the 6th century. I have no opinion of this. It will need to be looked into if there is positive evidence for 6th century arrival. If there isn't, well, we cannot expect to determine the exact year the first Slav set foot in Slovenia, mid 6th to early 7th century sounds about right. dab (𒁳) 12:33, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
Nice to see some other people found this topic. I didn't know about the existence of this page otherwise I would pop in earlier. I'd be happy if someone could keep an eye on those articles in the future also, I am fed up with all the theories and the debate was going unproductive. -- Tone 13:46, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
Energy therapy and related articles need some people to help do some things:
Please note the following articles especially:
There are some single-purpose accounts guarding these articles carefully, so watch out!
ScienceApologist ( talk) 15:51, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
This is gradually straying into fringe territory. It is a bit difficult to grasp, bear with me: There is an Aramaic-speaking Christian ethnic group in the Middle East who cannot agree on how they want to call themselves. We discuss this at Names of Syriac Christians. For some reason, the name is really important, don't ask me. Predictably, this results in rows over which title the article on Wikipedia should have. Currently it is at Assyrian people, which isn't a bad choice, but neither is it uncontroversial. There are at present 47 redirects(!) to this page. I have tried to outline the problem at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Syriac). Now, instead of finding some acceptable consensus for the article title, people start creating fork articles under their preferred title all over the place. Presently, Syriac-Aramean people. The article is defended hook and crook based on simple obstinacy and revert-warring, in spite of the fact that this particular name does not generate one single google hit. See Talk:Syriac-Aramean_people#Sources.The fringy part, apart from blatant disregard for WP:RS comes with the constant recourse to identification of the group with either the Aramaeans (14th to 10th century BC petty kingdoms of the Levant) or the Neo-Assyrian Empire (10th to 7th century BC Mesopotamia). We even have an article on the latter, Assyrianism. That is, the naming dispute is constantly wrapped up in childish national mysticism that makes addressing the actual issues near impossible (identification literally means they keep saying they "are" the ancient (a) Aramaeans, not Assyrians / (b) Assyrians, not Aramaeans. It is beyond me how you can claim to "be" a sketchily know group from remote antiquity). I am tired of trying to deal with this alone. Some more eyes and brains would be appreciated. dab (𒁳) 07:48, 14 March 2008 (UTC)
this is madness. Chaldean ( talk · contribs) is revert warring like there was no tomorrow, with no sign of even an inkling of WP:CITE basic common sense. Any help please? I would prefer to have intelligent people handle this. The alternative will be some passing apparatchik admin locking everything down for a week, after which the circus will start over. dab (𒁳) 14:14, 14 March 2008 (UTC)
Hmm, WestAssyrian ( talk · contribs) has jumped in. This account appears to be a revert-Dbachmann-only SPA, and I've got a feeling I've seen him before, too. This wouldn't be Nochi ( talk · contribs) returning, would it? Moreschi ( talk) 21:21, 15 March 2008 (UTC)
A user there is insisting that this be kept in the article: A Great Pyramid feasibility study relating to the quarrying of the stone was performed in 1978 by Technical Director Merle Booker of the Indiana Limestone Institute of America. Consisting of 33 quarries, the Institute is considered by many architects to be one of the world’s leading authorities on limestone. Using modern equipment, the study concludes:“Utilizing the entire Indiana Limestone industry’s facilities as they now stand [for 33 quarries], and figuring on tripling present average production, it would take approximately 27 years to quarry, fabricate and ship the total requirements.” Booker points out the time study assumes sufficient quantities of railroad cars would be available without delay or downtime during this 27 year period and does not factor in the increasing costs of completing the work.pgs. 104-105, 5/5/2000, Richard Noone, 1982 Three rivers Press, New York ISBN 0-609-80067-1
My problem with this is that Richard Noone is fringe of fringe, the guy that promised 3 miles of Antarctic ice on 5/5/2000, and that he is the only source for this report (which is evidently photocopied in one of his books). The only references I can find to Merle Booker or the report are from Noone or from the Wikipedia article. I've removed this at least twice. The poster finally moved it to the alternative theories section, but as there is no way evidently of verifying the report and the source is dubious, does it belong on Wikipedia at all? Thanks.-- Doug Weller ( talk) 22:05, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
Based solely on what I've read here, I'm leaning towards "doesn't belong at all." --Akhilleus ( talk) 05:20, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
My view is that unless we can:
the content does not belong on wikipedia. Note that ILIAI is a trade association, which publishes some how-to manuals for architects, contractors, masons etc, and promotes Indiana's limestone industry; and is not an academic or research institute. So we need to exercise extra caution as per WP:REDFLAG. Abecedare ( talk) 05:22, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
The generally accepted estimated date of its completion is c. 2560 BC. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/pyramid/explore/khufustory.html though this date contradicts [[Great Pyramid of Giza#Dating evidence| radiocarbon dating evidence, it is loosely supported by a lack of archaeological findings for the existence prior to the fourth dynasty of a civilization with sufficient population or technical ability in the area.
I also do not appreciate the insult about professional skeptics, by whom I presume you mean archaeologists Egyptologists. Would you please name them? I do have some prejudices. I think that things should be properly referenced, that context should be clear, that statements telling the reader why Khufu's pyramid is date the way it is should be accurate and references instead of just someone's opinion. The problem I have with the Booker study is the source. It's a shame it was never published, but because it is only in Noone's book so far as I can tell (and I know some Egyptologists) it's never been commented on by anyone who knows anything about the pyramid. I admit I don't trust Noone. I think he is in it for the money and anyone who would play on people's fears the way he did with his 'planetary alignment' scare is capable of anything. He may be telling the truth here, in fact I would guess he is (although I don't know if he gave Booker guidelines that might have affected his report). If you can convince people there is a way to include the Booker stuff I'm happy with it, it is just another guesstimate in the end with different inputs. Now, can we please stop the name-calling (but I really do want to know who the professional skeptics are) please?-- Doug Weller ( talk) 17:43, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
This is getting beyond a joke. Thanos5150 is now adding things to footnotes, in this case "How does this reference verify what it actually says?" He repeadly removed the bit in parentheses from this sentence "As a result, given Egyptologists have ascribed the pyramid to Khufu (for a number of reasons including graffiti including his name in areas only accessible during construction),", he insists on calling Manetho's Aegyptica revisionist even though I and one other person have asked for references which he won't give, he's added (as a Wiki link for some reason) "(note:it has been independently verified for this article that Booker was employed at I.L.I as technical director during this time frame and in their opinion the document is likely genuine)". He has a bit of a record for doing this elsewhere, eg his attempt to rewrite the article Pseudoarchaeology from his POV. See http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Pseudoarchaeology&diff=next&oldid=36004873-- Doug Weller ( talk) 06:46, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
ok, I've just come across a miniature walled garden centering around Epsilonism (conspiracy theory). Crazy stuff, this: all Jews are evil and Greeks are superior types possessed of better DNA due to their descent from aliens who visited Earth a way back on a flying visit from Sirius. The problem with most of this is that the people involved simply don't look to be notable except in Epsilonism terms. Result: Ioannis Fourakis, Anestis Keramidas and Angelos Sakketos have all been prodded, though you may think that redirection is more appropriate, as all these chaps essentially appear to be acolytes of Dimosthenis Liakopoulos, who definitely is notable. At the moment this looks to be under control but it would be nice if some people put Category:Epsilonism on their watchlists, as this issue will probably come back at periodic intervals. Other articles of potentially dubious notability that are tangentially related to this are Texe Marrs (not a Greek nationalist, just a crackpot), Nikos Konstantinidis (Greek nationalist, conspiracy theorist), Leonidas Georgiades (Greek nationalist) and also possibly Anastasis Theodoridis. Curiously, most of this lot are from Thessaloniki. Thoughts as to what to do with these? Moreschi If you've written a quality article... 16:21, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
I've come across these before. They are so cranky as to be actually harmless (for our purposes). Some merging/redirecting may be in order. dab (𒁳) 10:59, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
This post reminded me of our old friend. Kafka Liz ( talk) 19:46, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
"TROUDUCUL"? O_o -- vulgaire plaisanterie indeed... I think I actually resent le crétin des Alpes dab (𒁳) 21:27, 19 March 2008 (UTC)
I guess this explains the 2 emails I just received from him. I don't think he grasps how Wikipedia works at all.-- Doug Weller ( talk) 21:35, 19 March 2008 (UTC)
This character is a riot. The prototypical vitriolic Frenchman as if sprung out of a Monty Python sketch. dab (𒁳) 15:12, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
See Talk:Orthomolecular_medicine#Request for comment on the attribution of criticism in the lead. All comments would be welcome. Tim Vickers ( talk) 17:27, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
Goldenhawk 0 looks as though he may be back in the persona of " IndoHistorian". He has added a lot of stuff to the Hittites page, which seems to be designed to demonstrate that the Hittites were "yellow". It has been partly cleaned up by another editor, but still seems very bizarre. Paul B ( talk) 08:13, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
Good sock-spotting. checkuser gave us confirmed: couple of new accounts blocked indef. Moreschi ( talk) 20:18, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
Apparently this battle between Canadian UN peacekeepers and Croatian army forces never happened. Nope, it was all made up — Western media, the UN, the Hague, we all just made it up. We know this for sure, because lots of websites that end in .hr tell us so. *Sigh*... the Plague spreads... < eleland/ talk edits> 16:33, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
This whole article has been hijacked and completely re-written (in extremely poor English) by individuals claiming that sunscreen causes melanoma. The scientific consensus is that it prevents it. The article as it existed before the hijack was much more informative and objective and better written than the polemic that has replaced it. I think it would be better to revert the whole article to an earlier version. Suitsyou ( talk) 16:50, 23 March 2008 (UTC)
Ok I just looked at the article. What was reasonably balanced before is now a mess. And you are right, the English is horrible. Can we just revert back and start over, and then fight these characters who want to create a massive bias? It just reads like a polemic or diatribe now.--
Filll (
talk) 17:17, 23 March 2008 (UTC)
Well, the first thing is we have to collect a substantial number of people interested in NPOV and balance in the sunscreen article. Then, we force them to discuss their POV on the talk page by using up their WP:3RR, and blocking them if they violate 3RR. Then we dismiss their arguments and explain NPOV. If they argue tendentiously, we block them for violating WP:TE. If they are repetitious, we blank their comments or usefy them. And eventually, we will have made headway. It is ugly, but that is all I know how to do. There are other approaches of course, using mediation etc. But I am not experienced in those.-- Filll ( talk) 13:45, 24 March 2008 (UTC)
They are pretty fierce. This is going to take a huge amount of effort and show of force, unfortunately. We could use some help.-- Filll ( talk) 16:17, 26 March 2008 (UTC)
=) Someone [ [15]] has been removing criticism and trying to make these articles promotional... and low and behold, it is someone from..... drumroll...... the Amen Clinic!
Any help patrolling or dealing with this appreciated. Hohohahaha ( talk) 02:37, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
While I admire the work that went behind this article, it really needs attention from some informed and sceptical editors. Abecedare ( talk) 07:11, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
oh dear. Classic WP:SYN fringecruft. I mean,
..."Kuntapa" means "peace". "Islam" means "peace". Therefore, the Atharvaveda prophesies Islam. Any questions? You also got to love the way the "References" are stashed at the end of the article without rhyme or reason in 31 consecutive footnotes of, let's say, heterogenous nature. Unsurprisingly, this turns out to be blogcruft. [16] [17] [18]. dab (𒁳) 10:37, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
{{
cite book}}
: |first=
has generic name (
help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors=
(
help), and is not some random entry on a website/blog.
Abecedare (
talk) 18:35, 27 March 2008 (UTC)It should be noted that the consensus of scholarship considers the "prophecies", for example in the Bhavishya Purana, to post-date the events they discuss. Vassyana ( talk) 17:13, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
The blogcruft is rather old, actually, and can be ultimately traced back to the ramblings of Maulana Abdul Haq Vidyarthi. Blooming nonsense from beginning to end. rudra ( talk) 18:48, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
"Actual photos from Vedas" -- what is this even supposed to mean? This is, of course, blooming nonsense. The question is, is it notable. It's some sort of "the Vedas predicted Islam" hoax. Can we establish it as a notable hoax? In this case, we could keep the article (appropriately rewritten of course). Otherwise, put it on AfD. dab (𒁳) 14:40, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
It should not be Redirected because we already mentioned that Real Photos from Bhavishya Purana, Kalki Avatar, All Vedas that hold information about Mahamad will be added as Refs and Information. We are getting all Holy Books that contain information about Mahamad. and add Real Photos from them. If the article gets redirected to Bhavishya Purana it doesnt make sense to Kalki Avtar, or Atharaveda, Rigveda and all vedas that mention Mahamad. So thats why Redirect is not needed either you put it on AfD or wait untill information from Vedas are provided. -- 99.238.149.85 ( talk) 18:09, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
AfD isn't needed. There's a squib on Mahamada in Bhavishya Purana: just the factoid should be enough. As for "Muhammad/Islam in the Vedas" whatnot, please desist. There are no reliable sources here. All you'll find in blogspace is dawagandists and fringe Hindu loonies, who have diametrically opposite views on these "predictions" or "anticipations" or what have you. Note also that AH Vidyarthi's "translations" are uniformly bogus, for understandable reasons. rudra ( talk) 18:22, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
Aside: We can add this to the article:
... it is as well referenced as anything else in that article :-) Abecedare ( talk) 18:54, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
Agreed that Vidyarthi's book does not qualify as a reliable source, but I found a reference that may be relevant:
The paper, which I have only skimmed, discusses and analyzes various instances in which Muhammad (sometimes spelled as "Mahāmada") is considered an avatar of Brahma, Vishnu etc in Ismaili, Sufi and some interpretations of Hindu literature. This gives us some material to write up an encyclopedic entry on the subject, but I am not sure that Mahāmada would be the right title for the page. Any ideas on how to proceed ? If needed, I can email a copy of the paper since it is not freely accessible. Abecedare ( talk) 20:37, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
Comment According to my team at Universtiy of Toronto (Scarborough Campus) we have come up with the following statements
-- DWhiskaZ ( talk) 21:41, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
Potential merge target Since all the blog/web sources about Mahāmada being mentioned in the Puranas/Vedas etc eventually lead back to the books by A.H. Vidyarthi (see the 30+ links in the Mahāmada page), I think the article content should be merged with Abdul Haq Vidyarthi. In that article we can clearly state his views on Mohammad being prophecized in Buddhist, Hindu, Christian and Parsi literature with fewer concerns about WP:REDFLAG and WP:UNDUE. Abecedare ( talk) 03:31, 29 March 2008 (UTC)
Note: I just ran across this. Not a WP:RS, obviously, but he seems to have done his homework. rudra ( talk) 07:11, 29 March 2008 (UTC)
still at it. Ultimate Prophet (Pbuh) Foretold. I think a block may be appropriate at this point. dab (𒁳) 10:59, 29 March 2008 (UTC)
another possible merge target would be Prophecy#Ahmadiyya. -- dab (𒁳) 11:05, 29 March 2008 (UTC)
Note Article was already trimed down and you already tried redirecting it to another Holy Book that also contains information about Mahamada. The article was created to post views from all Holy Books. -- DWhiskaZ ( talk) 11:45, 29 March 2008 (UTC)
There is apparently a Catholic urban legend going around that George Washington was baptized Roman Catholic on his deathbed by Leonard Neale, 2nd archbishop of Baltimore. The typical "reference" for this is to a pair of articles supposedly published in the "Denver Register" in the 1950s. Laura Scudder very graciously went to the Denver Public Library and discovered that these references appear to be spurious, as detailed here. We've managed to keep the material out of George Washington and religion, but User:Dwain has been diligent in keeping the material in Leonard Neale, now resorting to a new set of references referring to the National Catholic Register, something called "Information Magazine", and a book by Leonard Feeney of Feeneyite fame. I have no assurances that the NCR ref is legit, and the other two don't give page numbers or issue information or anything else sufficient to find the supposed passages.
There are two eyewitness accounts of Washington's death, and neither of them gives the slightest hint that any such thing happened. It would be nice if some others would take a look at this. I've tried remonstrating with Dwain, with negligible success. Mangoe ( talk) 17:20, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
OK... we definitely need a third party (preferably a neutral admin) to review this before it gets into futher edit warring. Dwain has already violated 3rr (I have warned him, but not taken any action) and has rejected any and all arguments that Mango and I have presented on the talk page. Any takers? Blueboar ( talk) 12:47, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
September 11 conspiracy theories and related issues have been taken to ArbCom. The case is currently at the Workshop stage, and a large part of the page is ArbCom looking at various implications of WP:FRINGE and WP:NPOV. It might be useful for editors experienced in the area to keep an eye on the workshop page to make sure the poor little dears don't get confused and come down with an interpretation of policy that makes our life difficult. Relata refero ( talk) 20:04, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
it is sadly true that the arbcom seems to be losing their footing in the purposes and realities of this project. Unlike other recurring problems which the community can route around, this is a real and upsetting danger, because the arbcom stands outside and above the wiki process. I don't know what can be done about it. There is no bad faith involved as far as I can see, just an increasing unwillingness to apply common sense. This is the "IRC admin" attitude: editors are peons, just slap them now and again to keep them in line. Content is for editors, we manage the 'pedia, we don't condescend to either read or write it. We've come a long way from "admins are janitors". dab (𒁳) 14:36, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
I don't know who these "uninvolved admins" are because I can' be bothered to follow these discussions, but it is getting worse. Since 2007, I have come across admins with astoundingly bad judgement that would have been unthinkable in 2005, and that's not even including the (still very rare) instances of actual bad faith. We have made "admins" of mere well-meaning vandal-slappers with no education or grasp of anything more complicated than the decision process required to figure that replacing a page with "penis penis" is vandalism. We've done that because we need these people to bear the brunt of the graffiti artists and bored highschoolers. But we should have made sure they would not get the impression that they "are" the encyclopedia or that they are "running things": this may end in despair. Moreschi et al. have seen the rainclouds and built an ark. It's a good thing the community is reasonably inert ( I should know), but we absolutely need to counter the rampant anti-elitism. An encyclopedia is elitist. Not necessarily "elitist" in terms of who may contribute, but elitist in terms of what is required of editors, whoever they are. dab (𒁳) 18:53, 29 March 2008 (UTC)
Some editors of this article have stated that it includes fringe theories. Do you believe that the article presents fringe theories and what in the article do you consider fringe? --
Jagz (
talk) 18:55, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
::If I thought there was consensus of what the fringe elements of the article were I wouldn't have listed it on this Noticeboard. --
Jagz (
talk) 20:23, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
::::I see a lot of mention of fringe in the RfC but they do not always specify exactly what they are referring to. The RfC was to answer whether people thought the article was neutral and the answer was no. I'm looking for the specifics of what fringe items need to be addressed. Also, the article looks headed for Mediation so there doesn't appear to be a lot of agreement. --
Jagz (
talk) 20:49, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
This isn't worth all this abuse. -- Jagz ( talk) 23:18, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
when something is truly controversial, there is nothing for us but to simply state that it is controversial, and put the best references we have alongside each other. I find it astounding how difficult this appears to be to understand for some people ( Kosovo...) dab (𒁳) 09:21, 29 March 2008 (UTC)
From Efficacy of prayer:
In his book Reinventing Medicine [23] Larry Dossey claims that there will be three eras of medicine, the first dealing with physical medicine (where patients take pills), the second with mind-body medicine (where the body treats itself through psychosomatic methods) and the third with eternity medicine in which patients are affected from a distance via intercessory prayer. As evidence, the book refers mostly to the same third party studies mentioned above, but suggests that they will be further strengthened by future studies.
Is this guy notable enough to warrant an entire sub-section?
His name pops up on QuackWatch several times. [24] ☯ Zenwhat ( talk) 03:54, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
I think we need to take a look at these articles, especially the one on Universe reality, which has been tagged for lack of notability since last July. What concerns me is that the articles are primarily self-sourced to the book in question, or sourced to adhearants of this particular spiritual sect. There is very little in the way of independant secondary sources. I am not convinced that these are deletion candidates ... but they do have problems with meeting the inclusion criteria expressed in WP:Fringe. Blueboar ( talk) 14:50, 21 February 2008 (UTC)
I got rid of all the POV-forks that were slowly building a walled-garden of woo. Included were Universe reality, Thought Adjuster, Revelation (The Urantia Book), and History and future of the world (The Urantia Book). They all now redirect to The Urantia Book. ScienceApologist ( talk) 19:06, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
I started a new article Urantia Foundation. Also, I removed a lot of spam links to this book. There are two Urantia-fans that are none-too-happy with me. People popping these things on their watchlists would be helpful. These "topics" should be covered in the article on the book: not in walled garden/POV-forks. ScienceApologist ( talk) 16:41, 15 March 2008 (UTC)
Oh what fun!
WP:ANI#Repeated article blanking at Thought Adjuster and other articles. We need to have a seminar for administrators on
WP:FRINGE policy. Few of them seem to get it.
ScienceApologist (
talk) 18:35, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
Update -- The remaining articles are now The Urantia Book, Urantia Foundation, William S. Sadler, and Lena Sadler. Thought Adjuster is now redirected to the main article with a possibility of recreating it in the future while all other related articles are protected redirects to the main article. This resolves the issue outlined here, but please help in improving the remaining articles. ScienceApologist ( talk) 19:52, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
A number of articles have been redirected by myself as being original research. Two articles that have been mentioned at the Paranormal WikiProject are: Reality shift and Anomalous phenomenon. Please comment at their respective talkpages. ScienceApologist ( talk) 14:56, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
Articles which have not yet come up on the paranormal radar screen but have also been redirected include:
Also, I tagged the Fortean Times article which reads right now as a Paen to this fringe publication. God we need help! ScienceApologist ( talk) 15:04, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
There is now consensus for the creation of the Anomaly (Forteana) article which retains the old history of the previous article. I believe that the redirect for anomalous phenomenon should be to anomaly, but others feel that since the links in the 'pedia to this article generally regard "paranormal" stuff, we should be careful. What we need to do is go through this list and disambiguate all the links and phrasing. ScienceApologist ( talk) 19:59, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
I know that people who have SA's respect frequent this board. I would like people to look here and comment on the situation (preferably here, not cluttering WTB's talk page worse than it is).. Kww ( talk) 23:52, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
people on either side of the fence should obsess less over this sorry excuse for a documentary. However, if "a connection between quantum physics and consciousness through quantum mechanical means" is the result of several weeks' negotiations I don't know what to say. What does it even mean to "posit a connection between A and B through means of A"? dab (𒁳) 21:09, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
DBachman, I wish you'd been a bit more careful about factual accuracy before you ridiculed a group of editors (half pro-science and half otherwise) who participated in this "three week negotiation." The lead that we worked so hard to agree on doesn't (and didn't on March 21) read "a connection between quantum physics and consciousness through quantum mechanical means," which of course would be ridiculous. The actual wording of the section is (and was): "What the Bleep Do We Know!? ... is a 2004 film, followed by an extended 2006 DVD release, which combines documentary-style interviews, computer-animated graphics, and a narrative that posits a connection between quantum physics and consciousness. The film suggests that individual and group consciousness can influence the material world through quantum mechanical means." (in a sentence closely following, it's made clear that scientists don't agree with this suggestion). If you have a problem with what we've done, take it up on the talk page of Bleep, except I don't think there's anyone there any more; it appears we've all become so discouraged we've given up entirely, at least for the time being. Woonpton ( talk) 16:27, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
see here: we now get articles on non-existent Achaemenid provinces, for the purpose of, you guessed it, national mysticist coatracking (note the section on "survival" / "continuity"). Article should reside at Persian Mesopotamia or similar, if not split altogether into the articles on the actual provinces, Media (Persian province) and Babylonia (Persian province). -- dab (𒁳) 16:24, 26 March 2008 (UTC)
The section above on technical analysis brought to my mind this body of new-age research (also including the random-number generator stuff--I haven't even looked to see if WP has a page on that) which operates the same way, using voodoo statistics to locate spurious patterns in what is essentially noise.
The article has a neutrality problem (someone else has also noticed and put a neutrality tag on the page). There is some criticism of the "research" but the criticism is subjected to a kind of smoke-screen rebuttal and the general impression left is that there's something wrong with the criticism rather than with the research. Even the fact that some of the research was awarded the IgNobel prize, is given a positive spin in the article. I don't have the time or energy to take this on, but it needs more "eyes" as the saying goes. Woonpton ( talk) 18:11, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
Some so-far minor problems here with Altai Khan ( talk · contribs) busy claiming the Safavids were "pure Turkic" (yes, I'm sorry to bore everyone with the Perso-Turkic stuff again, we've seen it all before, but then there is an awful lot of this bollocks). Apparently he has some other curious beliefs. Anyway, so far it's limited to talkpage tendentiousness, but it could turn nastier. The user may be a reincarnation of some IPs, at least one of which I blocked, who played silly buggers with this same page a while back, but then again he may not be. If not, he'll be in need of the Wikipedia Rehabilitation School for Clueless Prepubescent Nationalists. Moreschi ( talk) 20:11, 26 March 2008 (UTC)
This one is getting ridiculous. Deleted, recreated, another attempt at deletion which failed, which I think was a mistake. It is now both growing like Topsy and being used (I believe) to add 'salt line' fringe stuff to other articles such as
Avebury and
Ring of Brodgar. See
Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion/Megalithic geometry (2nd nomination). I'm guessing that once the editor is finished with this article you will see bits of it all over the place.--
Doug Weller (
talk) 17:33, 29 March 2008 (UTC)
Now see Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2008 March 29#Megalithic geometry (closed). The SPA guarding this idea has made a complaint about my redirect of Megalithic yard. There have also been some untoward inclusions of these ideas at:
which I have reverted.
ScienceApologist ( talk) 20:07, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
This is my first time in this Noticeboard, I hope I have come to the right place. There has been a dispute going on here on the inclusion of the incident reported by the New York Times, NYT says:
Sherri Evanina, a F.B.I. spokeswoman in Newark, said five men were detained late Tuesday after the van in which they were driving was stopped on Route 3 in East Rutherford. She said witnesses had reported seeing the men celebrating the attack on the World Trade Center earlier in the day in Union City.
Other editors have objected to covering this incident in Celebrations of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the base that this incident was reported by anonymous eye-witnesses. In my opinion, the incident is notable enough to be covered in the article. Imad marie ( talk) 13:42, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
This is yet more classic WP:UNDUE. I really don't think such trivial material has any place in the article, certainly not such a broad-brush article as this one. In one source the nationality of the men is not mentioned: in another virtually no evidence is provided they were "celebrating", ergo, no reason for this is to be in the Celebrations of the September 11, 2001 attacks article. Moreschi ( talk) 15:07, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
I should point out that there is in fact a genuine Fringe Theory behind all this, which is that Israel was involved in the 11-Sep-2001 attacks, or at least knew of them and failed to warn the USA. A key part of this theory is that these five Israelis were Mossad agents, and were celebrating the successful operation. Some of the web pages Imad has cited explicitly push this theory. Here, though, the object seems to be simply to distract attention from the firmly established facts about Arab celebrations, by insinuating that they were not the only ones. -- Zsero ( talk) 15:29, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
Would someone please take a look at the discussion at the bottom of the Talk:Baghdad Battery page between User:Reddi and myself where he thinks a link to a UFO website with an article on non-existent Indian texts should not be deleted. I've never run into a self-professed 'inclusionist' before. He doesn't seem to think links need justifying if he thinks they are important. He's obviously also very possessive about the article. And doesn't like what he calls 'septics'. Thanks-- Doug Weller ( talk) 17:56, 24 March 2008 (UTC)
It's worse. After a series of insults on the Talk page after I removed a rubbish source, he's now added a section of 'World Wide Web sties that were used in the construction of this article.' and put that source back in it. Looking at the history, a clear case of WP:OWNERSHIP. Also, is AnswersinGenesis considered a reliable source for an external link not on itself? Thanks Doug Weller ( talk) 15:19, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
Can someone please look at the recent edits by Atlantis-korrekt in the light of [26] and tell me what they think? Leave it or? And while I have someone's attention, what do I do when an IP user starts calling me a Nazi on my talk page as they have twice in the last few hours? Thanks.-- Doug Weller ( talk) 07:56, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
Hello,
Ivor Catt is both (a) an (apparently) well-respected VLSI engineer of the 70s and 80s, and also (b) a crackpot with very strange ideas about electromagnetism, and the standard crackpot level of sourcing: lots of Catt's own web pages, zero referreed publications, zero serious citations; Catt's web pages insist that his theory is much-discussed/important/controversial/censored-by-the-establishment, but noone verifiable seems to care. This is a pretty tough thing to describe in an article while maintaining RS, OR, NPOV, and FRINGE guidelines. I think the old article did a pretty good job, but an IP editor has begun restoring the extremely pro-Catt POV. I don't have time to deal; more eyes would be welcome. Bm gub ( talk) 14:16, 1 April 2008 (UTC)
Very interesting guy with strong and radical opinions on every issue! I have added a few sourced sections on his technological contribution ( WSI), as well as his views on management and justice. The sections on his theories of electromagnetism and other scientists' opinion of his theories still needs to be referenced and cleaned up. Any help will be appreciated. Abecedare ( talk) 06:49, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
Funny, I ran into this on Talk:Cryptozoology -- someone saying anyone who doesn't believe in these things should go to the genesispark url. The article has a huge number of external links -- too many according to guidelines, and I have no idea yet what they are like. And recently placed on Talk:Dragon "Look at The "Kent Hovind" article. His website is www.drdino.com, another good one is www.evolution-facts.org." So, are links like that on talk pages ok? Thanks. Doug Weller ( talk) 11:05, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
Second thoughts. Obviously you have to be able to talk about links on talk pages, and blogs, etc. are probably ok there just for background? So when does something become spam? Doug Weller ( talk) 11:47, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
I'd appreciate if a few of you would take a look at Omar Khadr when you have a chance, I'm trying to get some non-Canadian, non-American points-of-view on the subject (face it, both Canada and the US are heavily biased on this person), because we've got one editor who's claiming the article has serious NPOV discussions and is angry...
Basically, we have some legitimate conversation ongoing about NPOV and trying to make sure the article conforms, but it's being made troublesome by a single editor who seems intent on using the article as a WP:COATRACK to rant about Muslims being neanderthals - and would appreciate a neutral look at the talk page. Sherurcij ( Speaker for the Dead) 17:33, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
While this term is somtetimes used to denote extensions to relativity that could lead to a unified theory with quantum mechanics, the things mentioned in the article on Superrelativity are of a very questionable nature. It seems like the page is just a promotion for some pseudo-science theory. The page warrants a review and a note identifying it as a Fringe theory.
Has no real sources. Nominated for deletion. —— Martinphi ☎ Ψ Φ—— 03:45, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
Please have a look at the article Mingrelians. Recently there was an edit war between user:Dauernd vs. user:Kober and user:Iberieli over whether Mingrelians should be called a South Caucasian people or whether they should be called a subethnic group of Georgians. Now despite the troublesome history of user:Dauernd, I think he may have been in the right on this one in referring to Mingrelians as a South Caucasian people as I've never heard any group of people referred to as a subethnic group. Is there even such a thing as a subethnic group? Kober and Iberieli have added some sources however their sources say that Mingrelians have mostly forgotten their native tongue and consider themselves to be Georgians. That's really not quite the same as referring to them as a sub-ethnic group. The other thing to this that the Mingrelian language is mutually uninteligible with the Georgian language. Also, within Georgia, there are many other linguistic groups which can trace there roots there for centuries and have more in common with the Mingrelians and yet are not considered a subethnic group of Georgians. For example the Laz people in Georgia speak a language that is mutually inteligible with the Mingrelian language and yet Mingrelians are considered a subethnic group but the Laz are not. To me this sounds WP:FRINGE. Previous discussion can be seen here. Your thoughts? Pocopocopocopoco ( talk)01:51, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
Subethnic groups exist within dominant ethnic groups or along-side other subethnic groups of the same genera. Subethnic groups share a common culture and maintain a sense of cultural homogeneity, but they vary to the extent that one sub-group may be distinguished from another in some cultural traits. The nature of subethnic groups can be rather complicated. (Milton Kleg, 1993, Hate, Prejudice, and Racism, p. 40. SUNY Press, ISBN:079141535X)
The number of Mingrelian speakers is declining, and most Mingrelian speakers positively identify themselves as "Georgian" (Kartveli). Prof. Stephen F. Jones of Mount Holyoke College, "Mingrelians", in: David Levinson [ed., 1996], Encyclopedia of World Cultures, p. 262. University of Michigan Press, ISBN 0816118086. Online version.
The Georgian or Kartvelian nation comprises an impressively diverse set of local sub-ethnic communities, each with its characteristic traditions, cuisine, manners and dialect (or language). The Svans number about 40,000, most of whom inhabit... Prof. Kevin Tuite of Université de Montréal. The Meaning of Dæl. Symbolic and Spatial Associations of the South Caucasian Goddess of Game Animals. Université de Montréal website.
The classification of the peoples of Transcaucasia was once again the most controversial topic of discussion. Georgian representatives from the Transcaucasian government complained that a number of peoples noted as separate nationalities on the official list were really tribes or religious sub-groups of the Georgian nation. They berated central authorities and experts for attempting "to break-up the Georgian nation," maintaining that the "false division" of the Georgians was reminiscent of tsarist colonial politics. The officials maintained that Adzhars were Georgians who had once been Moslems; they declared that the Soviet regime had created an Adzhar autonomous republic with the goal of promoting "Adzhar" separatism. They further argued that Mingrelian and Svan were regional names for Georgians from different localities. In fact, more than half of the people thought by ethnographers to be Mingrelians had registered themselves in the census as Georgians. Ethnographers wondered aloud whether census takers had engaged in foul play or if the results reflected the population's self-determination. The national-political stakes gave these discussions a high emotional pitch.
The Georgian ethnic group is made up of a whole series of subgroups — the Mountain Svans, Kartlians and the west Georgian Mingrelians
The Georgians, Mingrelians and Svans are related ethnically, within Georgia there existed strong sub-ethnic or regional identities, including Ajarian, Mingrelian, Svan, Imeretian, Kakhetia, etc
within Georgia there existed strong sub-ethnic or regional identities, Adjar, Mingrelian and Svan...
Mingrelians, a sub ethnic group of the Georgian people, live mostly on the back sea coast..
Mingrelia is the home of the Mingrelians, a tribe of Georgian people who speak Megruli...
Georgian sub ethnic groups such as Mingrelians and Svans are probably direct descendants of those Colchians of the Argonauts...
That's got me convinced. I don't really see a problem here. Moreschi ( talk) 14:47, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
ethnogenesis is a gradual process, and there can be meaningful disputes as to at what point an ethnic group forms out of / splits into several groups. I am glad we have a case of a "disputed subgroup" now to compare to the Assyrians/Syriacs debacle (which is ethno(de)genesis-in-progress indeed). dab (𒁳) 16:00, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
All through the Soviet period the main goal of the Georgian leadership and of the Georgian nationalist movement as a whole was the creation of a consolidated Georgian nation in the shortest possible time. With Stalin in power, when the influence of the Georgian lobby in the Kremlin was at its greatest, this policy was carried out by repressive methods. Some peoples were deported from Georgia (Greeks, Kurds and Meskhetian Turks). Others, not even related to the Kartvelians, were declared part of the Georgian tribes and along with Svans and Megrelians were quickly assimilated.
More References, Case closed:
etc. Iberieli ( talk) 16:10, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
A user has posted at Talk:History of astrology in the section Outdated And Inaccurate who apparently wishes to rewrite the whole article to make Ancient Egypt the origin of astrology, while quoting the American Federation of Astrologists as saying it started in Babylonia. He's rounded up a series of what he thinks are facts to create what looks like a synthesis on which to base his argument for rewriting the article. Am I right in thinking it is basically OR? From everything serious I can find, astrology came to Egypt sometime in the first millennium bce with the Greeks. Ironically, I have been trying to fix some articles which discuss Egyptian astrology, getting rid of for instance claims for 4200 bce star charts (nonexistent), astrological pyramids, etc. The user, Big-dynamo, seems to have no history on Wikipedia (I've just noticed) so he may have no clue about Wikipedia policies - I'll add a note to him about where to find it. Thanks. Doug Weller ( talk) 06:42, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
The origins of classical astrology lie in Iron Age Babylonia ("Chaldea"). Of course there some fragments hinting at an older (Bronze Age) history of people watching the stars, but that's without any sort of direct influence on later history. dab (𒁳) 10:42, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
This needs some attention. A whopping chunk of the article is devoted to unlikely-sounding "location hypotheses" relating to a place in Sumerian myth. There's a dispute between Sumerophile ( talk · contribs) and Til Eulenspiegel ( talk · contribs) over this section. To complicate matters, I just blocked Sumerophile for 3RR only to realise he'd spent most of today reverting, you guessed it, the socks of our old friend Ararat arev ( talk · contribs). I've unblocked him ASAP with apologies but the article still needs looking at, with undue weight in mind. Moreschi ( talk) 19:53, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
this is a clear case of "academic references only". If it's published academically, fair enough, however unlikely. If it is WP:SYN or armenianhighland.com blogcruft, remove on sight. dab (𒁳) 21:31, 19 March 2008 (UTC)
Another revert-war yesterday. I've protected the article for two weeks, but the talk page is still as fiery as ever. 81.99.113.232 ( talk) 09:01, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
The stock market equivalent of tea-leaf reading, promoted par excellence by Wikipedia. "Critics say it's wrong, but look, here are some outlying studies!" 64.231.60.239 ( talk) 01:07, 29 March 2008 (UTC)
The discussion at September 11, 2001 attacks has really gone sideways and I plead for some more eyeballs there. The endless circular arguments are exhausting and wasting the time of otherwise good editors. The newest claims include:
This topic is at Arbcom right now but I'm not sure if anything useful will com of it, but this endless time sink has to end sometime. It's an endless rope-a-dope that will only drive off the good editors. I haven't posted here before so if this is not the right place let me know and I'll wander off, maybe to WP:AN/I or something.
`
When was the last time you looked at the cryptid articles at Wikipedia? Maybe you should. I looked at three today and they were all awful:
The last one was so bad, I put it up for deletion.
Please, help with tagging, editing, ANYTHING!
ScienceApologist ( talk) 01:19, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
Has serious issues. The article is apparently hostage to fringe theories that Jesus and Barabbas were the same person or something like that (I didn't read all of it). -- dab (𒁳) 20:16, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
In
this set of several edits,
User:JohnJacobs
User:Jacobsjohn - sorry! crafts a rant about the atheist conspiracy suppressing Intelligent design. He then editwars briefly:
[27]
Today, he continues. Twice as an IP:
[28]
[29] and thrice as himself.
[30]
[31]
[32]
Some quotes from his very special version:
“ | Behe's hypothesis of intelligent design has been rejected by the many scientists and even characterized as pseudoscience by certain members of the scientific community with a strong atheistic bias. | ” |
“ | ...which was received skeptically by many in the scientific community, and rejected outright by scientist with a overt atheistic bias. The most fundamentalist of the atheistic scientists even asserted that Behe's hypothesis, research and examples were based only on a refined form of " argument from ignorance", rather than any demonstration of the actual impossibility of evolution by natural processes. | ” |
“ | Outside the scientific community, there are those who wish to aggressively combat any possibility of a scientific debunking of evolution. Such proponents of Darwinism are usually not well-equipped to challenge Prof. Behe's hypothesis on irreducible complexity, or the theory of Intelligent Design more generally, with credible scientific research or with scientific methods of argumentation, therefore they have tended to heavily rely on various judicial pronouncments in high-profile court battles between creationists and atheists to weigh in on this fascinating frontier in scientific discovery. | ” |
And yet all his edit summaries say that he's removing POV. God help us all. Shoemaker's Holiday ( talk) 19:04, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
Page is unsourced and contains unverified material about the Pagan year. Itsmejudith ( talk) 13:47, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
In December last year, a user Creigs1707 added material to thy above articles on his own research. [33] This was subsequently removed by myself and others -- another users's edit summary read "rm uncritical (self?)-promotion of a source, per WP:NOR and WP:COI)". Creighton has now emailed me and when he isn't calling me a Nazi he says he is going to post them again- and if removed, again and again and again. I have explained that he can't reference his own site and he replied that he has been published on Graham Hancock's website and Atlantis Rising Magazine (issue 65), Alternate Perceptions Magazine (issue 113). I the forthcoming edition of the book "You Are Still Being Lied To" and Nexus Magazine. Nexus is probably acceptable as a source, but I'm not sure about the others. Or about how it works when an editor is writing about his own ideas. Any comments would be of help when he decides to restore his edits, and I won't be around a lot after Friday for over a week. Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dougweller ( talk • contribs) 14:09, 9 Apr 2008
Is addition of claims about Armia Krajowa committing attrocities against non-Polish population and collaborating with the Nazis resulting in non-neutral lead with undue/fringe claims? Comments appreciated here.-- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 16:14, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
User:Nvyslsnp thinks David Bawden is the pope and is using the article as a blog, etc.-- Mike - Μολὼν λαβέ 02:24, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
I've just noticed that there's a new WikiProject which has placed its banner on the Talk:Hermeticism page, among others, related to "Hermetism". We don't have any articles on the subject yet, though. We did have such an article earlier, which was deleted and turned into a redirect as per Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Hermetism. Is there a chance in the eyes of the rest of you that this project, which to date has only its founder as a member, could be counterproductive? John Carter ( talk) 13:16, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
I've removed that, but I'm still unhappy with the tone. What's with this?
“ | It is hard to trace the Hermetic texts back all these millennia because of an event in 391 CE. In Alexandria, a woman named Hypathia, an initiate into the Hermetic Mysteries, took on the growing creed of Christianity head on. She had convinced the people of Alexandria that the beliefs of Christianity were all of pagan origin as well as that the miracles of Jesus of Nazareth were available to all by demonstrating the natural laws behind them. [19] Though her murder didn't take place until 415 CE, it is an example of why the event in 391 CE happened. In that year, her works, along with most of the Hermetic texts, perished when the Great Library of Alexandria was burnt to the ground by the Romans. | ” |
The logic has passed me by. Moreschi ( talk) ( debate) 23:27, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
Right, I've gone hacking at Hermetism with an axe, removing everything sourced to the works of Manly P. Hall, a raving crank with some very interesting theories regarding Atlantis. You can look that up in your spare time :) Who knew that Plato was a Hermetist, and that Judaism started off as Hermetism?
Other so-called reliable sources for this page included Israel Regardie (Moses was a Hermetist!), and the mysterious "Dr. M. Doreal". I Googled him with entertaining results ( LOL!)
I've also removed everything sourced to Kybalion, which I didn't think really counted as reliable source either. What this has left us with is a small minority of material that might be acceptable and the remainder, which is primary-sourced to the Corpus Hermeticum.
What we've got here is an ancient occultish cult of the Greek god Hermes, about which reliable data is very sketchy, that later inspired a whole bunch of (notable) secret societies/pseudo-religious groups/whatever in time of the Renaissance and afterwards. This in turn has been picked up by our friends the New Agers, and, ah, developed from there. What really needs to happen is for Hermetism and Hermeticism to be merged - there's no real reason to have two different articles on the original cult and its more modern descendants, not when reliable data on the ancient cult of Hermes seems so hard to come by. Moreschi ( talk) ( debate) 18:55, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
See Talk:Hermetism now. We can keep Hermetism if we make it into an article on the origins of Hermeticism in the early centuries CE. The problem isn't with the topic itself, it's with the esotericist / new agey nonsense that it attracts. The Book of Thoth: "...Members of this movement often suggest that the Book of Thoth has been positioned beneath the paws of the Sphinx for some 12,000 years." dab (𒁳) 07:07, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
Currently, on 9/11 conspiracy theories there has been some discussion regarding the views of a Canadian mathematician and conspiracy theorist, Alexander Dewdney, who claims that it was impossible for the cell phone calls which occurred on 9/11 to have taken place, and that they were faked following Flight 93 being shot down. However, User:WLRoss has been trying to present a very different version than this in the article — you can see the comparison here. In the first version, the sourcing is to this Macleans article, and there is additional information about phone calls cited to the New York Times included. In the second version, the sourcing is to Dewdney's study here at a 9/11 Truth website, and to the primary views of another conspiracy theorist here. In terms of content, the first version discusses Dewdney's study, then his views that the calls were faked after Flight 93 being shot down. It then discuss a concurring conspiracy theorist, who agrees with his assessment. Finally, it cites industry experts who state that cell phones can work in all stages of an aircraft flight. The second version presents only Dewdney's study, and omits his other views about the phone calls. It also omits the industry expert's opinion entirely.
So, far, in this discussion on the talk page, the arguments have been made against the first version are that:
In favor, I have argued that the Maclean's source is the only one which presents either the study or his views and notable or relevant, and no other reliable sources have been so presented. Selectively choosing which of Mr Dewdney's views to include, or not include, based on the "crackpot"-ness of them is biased editing, and is designed to give readers a false impression about who conducted the study, and what he believes about the phone calls. Furthermore, it omits information on disputes on this subject is because it disagrees with a fact that the WLRoss believes is "undisputably true".
In other words, it's a run of the mill case of selectively picking and choosing which parts of a person's views on a subject you wish to display, in order to present their opinions in the best possible light. In addition, it removes criticism (or dispute) which gives the false impression that the views expressed are undisputed, or correct. I'm bringing this here because I think we need more eyes on this subject, and more voices in the mix. -- Haemo ( talk) 08:00, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
I created this article back in 2005 [37], and it has seen a troubled history since, mostly due to the exploits of the likes of Rokus01 ( talk · contribs) and WIN ( talk · contribs). There have been good additions, but it has been tagged for a rewrite for some time. This isn't very urgent, but it appears that the disordered state gives rise to further deterioration. There is one editor apparently bent on treating the hypothesis as a work of art by Gimbutas without any truth value (as in, not falsifiable, hence art), and consequently to be treated like an unfinished symphony or something, while it is in fact the mainstream hypothesis (or class of hypotheses) for PIE origins. I am not sure how to approach this. The "Criticisms and qualifications" is terrible, but it contains valid content. As I said, this isn't a red-hot topic of edit wars, but I feel it will only get worse if an effort isn't made to put the article back on its feet. dab (𒁳) 18:01, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
Nonwithstanding the anon's claim above, the Kurgan theory is not a "Russian" or "Soviet" theory. If anything, it's a Lithuania-USA co-production, whicih would automatically make it less than useful for Soviet doctrine (it also speaks volumes for its bona fide academic quality that for once an origin theory is not advanced by someone who just happens to be a native of the suggested area of origin...) The actual Russian (1980s Soviet) theory of PIE origins is the Armenian hypothesis: the support of this one is virtually restricted to Russia (and Armenia of course...). It's also a bona fide academic theory, but it has clear drawbacks compared to the Kurgan one, and failed to find wider support. I would be surprised to learn the Soviets touted the Kurgan theory (contemporary Ukrainian nationalism is another issue, of course). dab (𒁳) 19:28, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
or a close cousin? your call:
-- dab (𒁳) 18:11, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
I removed the info that I had added back, Greco-Armeno-Aryan I removed from the Armenian hypothesis, cause it already has links in the "See also", so its not need to push POV. However, minor correction I made, I corrected the date that is 4th millenium BC, corresponding to their hypothesis date, and also in the other PIE pages have the same info that was corrected. And I dont know any Ararat arev. Testerarms ( talk) 18:41, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
Based on contributions it seems likely to him that Ara Ur ( talk · contribs) is another Ararat arev sock. Checkuser concurs. Moreschi ( talk) ( debate) 21:21, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
The page is a mirror of Assyrian people. If you look at the Syriac people page, it uses http://www.spiritus-temporis.com/ as a main source for many lines. If you look at those links, it says specifically below that the information was taken from Wikipedia itself. Per Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Assyrian/Chaldean/Syriac) and Wikipedia:Assyrian-Syriac wikipedia cooperation board, we agreed that we would not bring in politics into other pages, but explain the situation in the Assyrian naming dispute page. We agreed that the defacto name used to describe the group would be Assyrian ( Assyrian people) since that is the term used mostly in the English language. This single user seems to be on a crusade to create an ethnicity based on, well, nothing except a few quotes taken out of content. But now, he is creating all this mirror pages (Example History of the Assyrian people - he goes on and creates History of the Syriac people) and seems to continue to path of mirroring pages like Assyrian culture, etc. We don't have saperate ethnic pages let alone history, culture, music, etc for Orthodox Armenian people and Catholic Armenian people and it should be like this for this group too. Chaldean ( talk) 23:23, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
Chaldean and VegardNorman are two editors who decided they will simply Not Get It. The topic of their dispute is valid, and I have invested insane amounts of time trying to get them to collaborate towards a wikilike solution, but instead they simply act disruptively and are completely impermeable to reason or advice. VegardNorman likes to prance around with pov forks and erratic splits, while Chaldean's approach is consistent and complete ignoratio elenchi. Administrative action is needed here. We can solve these problems, but these two editors are clearly not part of any solution. dab (𒁳) 19:23, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
This page is an archive. Do not edit the contents of this page. Please direct any additional comments to the current main page. |
Something truly odd is going on at Talk:Robert Gallo, and more eyes would be useful. 70.4.91.99 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS) made some... interesting edits which necessitated administrative deletion due to personal attacks, attempted "outing", etc (deleted contribs here for viewers with the sysop bit). The article was semi-protected as a result; this user registered an account, RspnsblMn ( talk · contribs), and while waiting for the autoconfirmed threshold to expire has been engaging in a bit of curious discussion on the talk page. More eyes requested. MastCell Talk 04:18, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
The article's a mess and I'm trying to add references and remove some of the soapboxing. I'm in the middle of a discussion about someone named Nikas. Now, before this happened, Nikas himself seems to have started his own article with the username SuperAtlantis (the name of his old website it seems as that's the name on the pdf recently uploaded here, now deleted). See Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:Superatlantis. Which probably explains why his new website lists Wikipedia as one of the places his work has been published. See his new website Atlantis in Malta. Now, ignoring what has happened before, my question is whether Nikas should be included in the Location Hypotheses article. He is a New Yorker who has gotten an Albanian newspaper to write about this ideas. His web page says he has been published in Mysteries Magazine number 15 and links to the magazine's website, but the website doesn't mention his article and has its own internal search feature which didn't turn up a Nikas or an article on Malta. A web search turns up his participation on a couple of web forums and that's about all, except for a web page by another Atlantis researcher, Georgeos Díaz-Montexano. I don't think this is enough but the person who added a section on him, Italianboy101, disagrees. He isn't going to push it but to be fair and clear in my own mind I thought I'd bring it here. Notable enough or not? Thanks.-- Doug Weller ( talk) 16:51, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
Arrive in Japan, get into an earnest conversation with somebody, and it's not unlikely that you'll soon be asked about your blood type. Momentary scare: Does this person have premonitions involving a bulldozer or chainsaw? Or are you conversing with a vampire? But no: a huge percentage of right-thinking Japanese folk subscribe to this variety of horseshit. The percentage seems particularly high among admirers of cheesecake models (guradoru), about most of whom, let's face it, there really isn't much to say. In the same spirit, hundreds if not thousands of earnest en:Wikipedia articles about these people announce their blood type ( example).
I don't usually hang around the cheesecake/porn articles much, but on occasion I've encountered the credulous retailing of blood "information" and have remarked on it. It's only today that I noticed this old discussion among porn connoisseurs, the reliability of factoids about blood is the main issue, and it seems to be taken for granted that blood type is noteworthy "information". A related conversation continues at the foot of that page and is still in progress; again, it's mostly about "reliability". While I have my own, strong opinions on the reliability of the "facts" making up starlets' PR bios, these opinions are pretty irrelevant to fringe theories, so I'll spare you them. What concerns me, and might concern you, is that those editors concerned with this stuff seem to be coalescing around a position that if more than a tiny number of people are demonstrably interested in a given piece of "reliably sourced information", it's encyclopedic. Now, I'll grant that many people are demonstrably interested (and that blood type isn't sourced any less reliably than date and place of birth, etc etc). However, I see any decision that infoboxes should cater for blood type as pandering to and reinforcing pseudoscience. Cheesecake/porn starlets articles aren't of concern to most people (and as far as I can recall I've only ever tinkered with one), but it's a simple step from these to articles on singers and so forth, non-Japanese starlets, etc.
Does this square with your notion of "encyclopedia"? -- Hoary ( talk) 07:11, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
why porn? The article as far as I can see doesn't mention porn, just women's magazines, media celebrities and manga characters. dab (𒁳) 15:24, 24 February 2008 (UTC)
Somebody keep an eye on this article, please. I just fixed it up - someone was trying to push his personal theory that this malformed octopus is really a new species called "Hexapus," using a cheeky column in the Daily Telegraph as his source. There was a taxobox and everything - ugh. < eleland/ talk edits> 21:42, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
My BS-meter just keeled over and died. I don't know where to even begin describing this mass of free-flowing random-association mega-verbiage. Check this out:
“ | Varṇa (Sanskrit) holds the semantic field "colour", "class", "phoneme", "syllable", "letter"; mālā (Sanskrit) holds the semantic field "garland", "ley", "wreath", "prayer beads", "rosary". Varṇamālā denotes the alphabet of Devanagari, that has come to be common for Sanskrit post- medieval India. Varṇamālā may also be rendered into English as "Chakra of Letters", which is fundamental to the 'thirteenth bhumi' of Mantrayana according to Rongzompa. It should be noted that the term Deva+Naga+ri is constructed from a conjunction of deva "divine" and nāga "serpent", and that snakes often form a "circular" garland-like shape, refer Ourorboros, and are evident throughout Dharmic iconography as girdles, malas, garlands, torques, armbands, etc., as investiture of adornment are 'symbolic attributes' (Tibetan: phyag mtshan). Devanagari seceded from Brāhmī script which is even more visually serpentine. | ” |
And this is only a typical example of what this fellow has been producing with gay abandon. Woo has nothing on this stuff. rudra ( talk) 09:11, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
Conze (1980: p.12) states:
For the last two thousand years Buddhism has mainly flourished in rice-growing countries and little elsewhere. In addition, and that is much harder to explain, it has spread only in those countries which had previously had a cult of Serpents or Dragons, and never made headway in those parts of the world which view the killing of dragons as a meritorious deed or blame serpents for mankind's ills. [1]
Oh, and BTW, "the mind boggles" was purely artful! B9 hummingbird hovering ( talk • contribs) 04:27, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
The article seems unlikely to improve, so I've proposed its deletion through the {{ prod}} template. --Akhilleus ( talk) 05:00, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
So what happens now? This is clearly all original research and so banned by Wikipedia, right? Can the bit about it being part of a series on Tibetan Buddhism be removed now (the series list doesn't include it or rather them? Should all of these be proposed for deletion?-- Dougweller ( talk) 07:46, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
An alternative approach might be to undo the redirect at Tulpa and use that as the core of a proper article, and the target of an eventual merge from Thoughtform (more accurately, with what can be salvaged from it). Whether the result should be titled "Tulpa" or "Thoughtform" can be discussed separately. Here is Tulpa before B9HH's efforts. This is the combo diff of subsequent changes up to the redirect: the changes seem mostly in the popular culture sections. Such sections are trivia magnets and will have to be overhauled, of course. Meanwhile, there isn't much on tulpa per se. rudra ( talk) 20:38, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
Okay, I've moved the (scrutable) material on tulpa to Tulpa, and resurrected what used to be an article on a book, Thought Forms (whose material had been copied over). What's left at Thoughtform is, as far as I can tell, blogorrhic blather from beginning to end. Maybe there's usable stuff in there on "thoughtform", but it might be better to write such an article from scratch. rudra ( talk) 02:57, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
A new (?) editor has recently been attempting to add a chunk of original research and material sourced from blogs (or just unsourced material) to this article about a fairly fringey Middle Eastern conspiracy theory ( [2]). I've attempted to explain the policy requirements at Talk:Pallywood#Relevant Updates,Slanted Interpretations, Lack of Neutrality. Grateful if somone could review my comments and let me know if there's anything I've missed. -- ChrisO ( talk) 00:21, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
Bates method ( | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) The article is suffering from severe NPOV as well as some OR problems, and has for a long time. Article needs a sentence-by-sentence, section-by-section, review to identify everything that is original research, promotional, or otherwise unsupported by independent sources. I recommend identifying problematic sections and sentences first, rather than just gutting the article, to give the regular editors there some realization what it means to follow NPOV. -- Ronz ( talk) 03:43, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
This is an alledged sacred book in the Mormon religion. About a month ago I initiated the process of trying to make clear on the article that there is practically no evidence of these books and that many claims about them and in them are disputed.
The page has moved an inch in the right direction, however, the page spends paragraph after paragrah about how they were found, a physical description of them!, etc., and one sentence which mentions that they may not even exist.
Any help would be appreciated... and there has been A LOT of talking about his for 2 weeks.... so maybe skim a bit and jump in.
btw, not sure if this is the right place for this concern. Sethie ( talk) 22:18, 26 February 2008 (UTC)
I think the proper annalogy is to look at the article on the Ten Commandments... even though the only evidence that these actually exited in physical form comes from a religious source, we can talk about them in terms of religious belief... without resorting to "in-universe" tags. The key is to phrase any discussion of the Mormon Golden Plates in terms of religious belief and not in terms of "fact". The simple addition of "It is believed that..." or "According to Mormon tradition..." should solve any issues here. Blueboar ( talk) 18:11, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
I've created the {{ in-religion-universe}} template, to allow the same issue to be stated, while avoiding calling the subject matter of articles "fiction". Clinkophonist ( talk) 14:27, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
From Adaptogen:
The word adaptogen is used by herbalists...
...
Very simply, adaptogens are nontoxic in normal doses, produce a nonspecific defensive response to stress, and have a normalizing influence on the body. They normalize the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis (HPA axis). As defined, adaptogens constitute a new class of natural, homeostatic metabolic regulators.
This same term is used on other articles, as an actual medical or scientific term:
i.e. Indian gooseberry
From a Western perspective, the fruit is considered to be an adaptogen, helping the body cope and adapt to various physiological stressors, helping to balance the neuroendocrine system and enhance immunity.
Woo? ☯ Zenwhat ( talk) 00:36, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
That's kind of what I figured. It seems to be a scientific term, but not with a lot of research to support it. However, lots of quacks and non-scientists have taken the term up apparently, as a banner to push silly "herbal remedies". One company actually uses the term, adaptogenol for one of their silly potions, yes, like a cureallozine. ☯ Zenwhat ( talk) 18:57, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
What is the role of science in producing authoritative knowledge? How should Wikipedia report on pseudoscience? Veterans of numerous edit wars and talk page battles spanning dozens of articles across Wikipedia, User:Martinphi and User:ScienceApologist will go head to head on the subject of Wikipedia, Science, and Pseudoscience in a groundbreaking interview to be published in an upcoming issue of Signpost. User:Zvika will moderate the discussion. Post suggested topics and questions at The Martinphi-ScienceApologist Interview page. 66.30.77.62 ( talk) 18:24, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
ONE: The Movie needs a cleanup and may well-deserve a close eye as its popularity increases. Vassyana ( talk) 12:45, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
I have looked it over and the version I am looking at looks fine to me. If anyone has specific problems, I would be open to hear them.
It does lack sources.... and.... well it doesn't make any extraordinary claims, so I am fine to leave it be. Hohohahaha ( talk) 00:29, 15 March 2008 (UTC)
I just got through vetting Quantum-Touch. What a trip! I may not have done the best job, but there is a ton of other energy therapies that need to be run through the NPOV/anti-advert ringer. Things to keep in mind: all claims of benefits must be removed since the claims cannot be reliably sourced, all claims of mechanism must be framed as opposed to reality.
ScienceApologist ( talk) 15:00, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
This arrived on my talk page today. Curious dispute concerning nationalism, fringyness, bad sourcing, the lot. Needs some more eyes. Moreschi ( talk) 10:28, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
I cleaned up Slavic settlement of Eastern Alps and Carantania, and made Venetic theory a redirect to a section at Protochronism where I inserted a reference to the idea as a list entry. Note that this seems to be overlapping with a (bona fide) dispute whether Slavic arrival in Slovenia should be dated to the 7th or already to the 6th century. I have no opinion of this. It will need to be looked into if there is positive evidence for 6th century arrival. If there isn't, well, we cannot expect to determine the exact year the first Slav set foot in Slovenia, mid 6th to early 7th century sounds about right. dab (𒁳) 12:33, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
Nice to see some other people found this topic. I didn't know about the existence of this page otherwise I would pop in earlier. I'd be happy if someone could keep an eye on those articles in the future also, I am fed up with all the theories and the debate was going unproductive. -- Tone 13:46, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
Energy therapy and related articles need some people to help do some things:
Please note the following articles especially:
There are some single-purpose accounts guarding these articles carefully, so watch out!
ScienceApologist ( talk) 15:51, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
This is gradually straying into fringe territory. It is a bit difficult to grasp, bear with me: There is an Aramaic-speaking Christian ethnic group in the Middle East who cannot agree on how they want to call themselves. We discuss this at Names of Syriac Christians. For some reason, the name is really important, don't ask me. Predictably, this results in rows over which title the article on Wikipedia should have. Currently it is at Assyrian people, which isn't a bad choice, but neither is it uncontroversial. There are at present 47 redirects(!) to this page. I have tried to outline the problem at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Syriac). Now, instead of finding some acceptable consensus for the article title, people start creating fork articles under their preferred title all over the place. Presently, Syriac-Aramean people. The article is defended hook and crook based on simple obstinacy and revert-warring, in spite of the fact that this particular name does not generate one single google hit. See Talk:Syriac-Aramean_people#Sources.The fringy part, apart from blatant disregard for WP:RS comes with the constant recourse to identification of the group with either the Aramaeans (14th to 10th century BC petty kingdoms of the Levant) or the Neo-Assyrian Empire (10th to 7th century BC Mesopotamia). We even have an article on the latter, Assyrianism. That is, the naming dispute is constantly wrapped up in childish national mysticism that makes addressing the actual issues near impossible (identification literally means they keep saying they "are" the ancient (a) Aramaeans, not Assyrians / (b) Assyrians, not Aramaeans. It is beyond me how you can claim to "be" a sketchily know group from remote antiquity). I am tired of trying to deal with this alone. Some more eyes and brains would be appreciated. dab (𒁳) 07:48, 14 March 2008 (UTC)
this is madness. Chaldean ( talk · contribs) is revert warring like there was no tomorrow, with no sign of even an inkling of WP:CITE basic common sense. Any help please? I would prefer to have intelligent people handle this. The alternative will be some passing apparatchik admin locking everything down for a week, after which the circus will start over. dab (𒁳) 14:14, 14 March 2008 (UTC)
Hmm, WestAssyrian ( talk · contribs) has jumped in. This account appears to be a revert-Dbachmann-only SPA, and I've got a feeling I've seen him before, too. This wouldn't be Nochi ( talk · contribs) returning, would it? Moreschi ( talk) 21:21, 15 March 2008 (UTC)
A user there is insisting that this be kept in the article: A Great Pyramid feasibility study relating to the quarrying of the stone was performed in 1978 by Technical Director Merle Booker of the Indiana Limestone Institute of America. Consisting of 33 quarries, the Institute is considered by many architects to be one of the world’s leading authorities on limestone. Using modern equipment, the study concludes:“Utilizing the entire Indiana Limestone industry’s facilities as they now stand [for 33 quarries], and figuring on tripling present average production, it would take approximately 27 years to quarry, fabricate and ship the total requirements.” Booker points out the time study assumes sufficient quantities of railroad cars would be available without delay or downtime during this 27 year period and does not factor in the increasing costs of completing the work.pgs. 104-105, 5/5/2000, Richard Noone, 1982 Three rivers Press, New York ISBN 0-609-80067-1
My problem with this is that Richard Noone is fringe of fringe, the guy that promised 3 miles of Antarctic ice on 5/5/2000, and that he is the only source for this report (which is evidently photocopied in one of his books). The only references I can find to Merle Booker or the report are from Noone or from the Wikipedia article. I've removed this at least twice. The poster finally moved it to the alternative theories section, but as there is no way evidently of verifying the report and the source is dubious, does it belong on Wikipedia at all? Thanks.-- Doug Weller ( talk) 22:05, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
Based solely on what I've read here, I'm leaning towards "doesn't belong at all." --Akhilleus ( talk) 05:20, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
My view is that unless we can:
the content does not belong on wikipedia. Note that ILIAI is a trade association, which publishes some how-to manuals for architects, contractors, masons etc, and promotes Indiana's limestone industry; and is not an academic or research institute. So we need to exercise extra caution as per WP:REDFLAG. Abecedare ( talk) 05:22, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
The generally accepted estimated date of its completion is c. 2560 BC. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/pyramid/explore/khufustory.html though this date contradicts [[Great Pyramid of Giza#Dating evidence| radiocarbon dating evidence, it is loosely supported by a lack of archaeological findings for the existence prior to the fourth dynasty of a civilization with sufficient population or technical ability in the area.
I also do not appreciate the insult about professional skeptics, by whom I presume you mean archaeologists Egyptologists. Would you please name them? I do have some prejudices. I think that things should be properly referenced, that context should be clear, that statements telling the reader why Khufu's pyramid is date the way it is should be accurate and references instead of just someone's opinion. The problem I have with the Booker study is the source. It's a shame it was never published, but because it is only in Noone's book so far as I can tell (and I know some Egyptologists) it's never been commented on by anyone who knows anything about the pyramid. I admit I don't trust Noone. I think he is in it for the money and anyone who would play on people's fears the way he did with his 'planetary alignment' scare is capable of anything. He may be telling the truth here, in fact I would guess he is (although I don't know if he gave Booker guidelines that might have affected his report). If you can convince people there is a way to include the Booker stuff I'm happy with it, it is just another guesstimate in the end with different inputs. Now, can we please stop the name-calling (but I really do want to know who the professional skeptics are) please?-- Doug Weller ( talk) 17:43, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
This is getting beyond a joke. Thanos5150 is now adding things to footnotes, in this case "How does this reference verify what it actually says?" He repeadly removed the bit in parentheses from this sentence "As a result, given Egyptologists have ascribed the pyramid to Khufu (for a number of reasons including graffiti including his name in areas only accessible during construction),", he insists on calling Manetho's Aegyptica revisionist even though I and one other person have asked for references which he won't give, he's added (as a Wiki link for some reason) "(note:it has been independently verified for this article that Booker was employed at I.L.I as technical director during this time frame and in their opinion the document is likely genuine)". He has a bit of a record for doing this elsewhere, eg his attempt to rewrite the article Pseudoarchaeology from his POV. See http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Pseudoarchaeology&diff=next&oldid=36004873-- Doug Weller ( talk) 06:46, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
ok, I've just come across a miniature walled garden centering around Epsilonism (conspiracy theory). Crazy stuff, this: all Jews are evil and Greeks are superior types possessed of better DNA due to their descent from aliens who visited Earth a way back on a flying visit from Sirius. The problem with most of this is that the people involved simply don't look to be notable except in Epsilonism terms. Result: Ioannis Fourakis, Anestis Keramidas and Angelos Sakketos have all been prodded, though you may think that redirection is more appropriate, as all these chaps essentially appear to be acolytes of Dimosthenis Liakopoulos, who definitely is notable. At the moment this looks to be under control but it would be nice if some people put Category:Epsilonism on their watchlists, as this issue will probably come back at periodic intervals. Other articles of potentially dubious notability that are tangentially related to this are Texe Marrs (not a Greek nationalist, just a crackpot), Nikos Konstantinidis (Greek nationalist, conspiracy theorist), Leonidas Georgiades (Greek nationalist) and also possibly Anastasis Theodoridis. Curiously, most of this lot are from Thessaloniki. Thoughts as to what to do with these? Moreschi If you've written a quality article... 16:21, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
I've come across these before. They are so cranky as to be actually harmless (for our purposes). Some merging/redirecting may be in order. dab (𒁳) 10:59, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
This post reminded me of our old friend. Kafka Liz ( talk) 19:46, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
"TROUDUCUL"? O_o -- vulgaire plaisanterie indeed... I think I actually resent le crétin des Alpes dab (𒁳) 21:27, 19 March 2008 (UTC)
I guess this explains the 2 emails I just received from him. I don't think he grasps how Wikipedia works at all.-- Doug Weller ( talk) 21:35, 19 March 2008 (UTC)
This character is a riot. The prototypical vitriolic Frenchman as if sprung out of a Monty Python sketch. dab (𒁳) 15:12, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
See Talk:Orthomolecular_medicine#Request for comment on the attribution of criticism in the lead. All comments would be welcome. Tim Vickers ( talk) 17:27, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
Goldenhawk 0 looks as though he may be back in the persona of " IndoHistorian". He has added a lot of stuff to the Hittites page, which seems to be designed to demonstrate that the Hittites were "yellow". It has been partly cleaned up by another editor, but still seems very bizarre. Paul B ( talk) 08:13, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
Good sock-spotting. checkuser gave us confirmed: couple of new accounts blocked indef. Moreschi ( talk) 20:18, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
Apparently this battle between Canadian UN peacekeepers and Croatian army forces never happened. Nope, it was all made up — Western media, the UN, the Hague, we all just made it up. We know this for sure, because lots of websites that end in .hr tell us so. *Sigh*... the Plague spreads... < eleland/ talk edits> 16:33, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
This whole article has been hijacked and completely re-written (in extremely poor English) by individuals claiming that sunscreen causes melanoma. The scientific consensus is that it prevents it. The article as it existed before the hijack was much more informative and objective and better written than the polemic that has replaced it. I think it would be better to revert the whole article to an earlier version. Suitsyou ( talk) 16:50, 23 March 2008 (UTC)
Ok I just looked at the article. What was reasonably balanced before is now a mess. And you are right, the English is horrible. Can we just revert back and start over, and then fight these characters who want to create a massive bias? It just reads like a polemic or diatribe now.--
Filll (
talk) 17:17, 23 March 2008 (UTC)
Well, the first thing is we have to collect a substantial number of people interested in NPOV and balance in the sunscreen article. Then, we force them to discuss their POV on the talk page by using up their WP:3RR, and blocking them if they violate 3RR. Then we dismiss their arguments and explain NPOV. If they argue tendentiously, we block them for violating WP:TE. If they are repetitious, we blank their comments or usefy them. And eventually, we will have made headway. It is ugly, but that is all I know how to do. There are other approaches of course, using mediation etc. But I am not experienced in those.-- Filll ( talk) 13:45, 24 March 2008 (UTC)
They are pretty fierce. This is going to take a huge amount of effort and show of force, unfortunately. We could use some help.-- Filll ( talk) 16:17, 26 March 2008 (UTC)
=) Someone [ [15]] has been removing criticism and trying to make these articles promotional... and low and behold, it is someone from..... drumroll...... the Amen Clinic!
Any help patrolling or dealing with this appreciated. Hohohahaha ( talk) 02:37, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
While I admire the work that went behind this article, it really needs attention from some informed and sceptical editors. Abecedare ( talk) 07:11, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
oh dear. Classic WP:SYN fringecruft. I mean,
..."Kuntapa" means "peace". "Islam" means "peace". Therefore, the Atharvaveda prophesies Islam. Any questions? You also got to love the way the "References" are stashed at the end of the article without rhyme or reason in 31 consecutive footnotes of, let's say, heterogenous nature. Unsurprisingly, this turns out to be blogcruft. [16] [17] [18]. dab (𒁳) 10:37, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
{{
cite book}}
: |first=
has generic name (
help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors=
(
help), and is not some random entry on a website/blog.
Abecedare (
talk) 18:35, 27 March 2008 (UTC)It should be noted that the consensus of scholarship considers the "prophecies", for example in the Bhavishya Purana, to post-date the events they discuss. Vassyana ( talk) 17:13, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
The blogcruft is rather old, actually, and can be ultimately traced back to the ramblings of Maulana Abdul Haq Vidyarthi. Blooming nonsense from beginning to end. rudra ( talk) 18:48, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
"Actual photos from Vedas" -- what is this even supposed to mean? This is, of course, blooming nonsense. The question is, is it notable. It's some sort of "the Vedas predicted Islam" hoax. Can we establish it as a notable hoax? In this case, we could keep the article (appropriately rewritten of course). Otherwise, put it on AfD. dab (𒁳) 14:40, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
It should not be Redirected because we already mentioned that Real Photos from Bhavishya Purana, Kalki Avatar, All Vedas that hold information about Mahamad will be added as Refs and Information. We are getting all Holy Books that contain information about Mahamad. and add Real Photos from them. If the article gets redirected to Bhavishya Purana it doesnt make sense to Kalki Avtar, or Atharaveda, Rigveda and all vedas that mention Mahamad. So thats why Redirect is not needed either you put it on AfD or wait untill information from Vedas are provided. -- 99.238.149.85 ( talk) 18:09, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
AfD isn't needed. There's a squib on Mahamada in Bhavishya Purana: just the factoid should be enough. As for "Muhammad/Islam in the Vedas" whatnot, please desist. There are no reliable sources here. All you'll find in blogspace is dawagandists and fringe Hindu loonies, who have diametrically opposite views on these "predictions" or "anticipations" or what have you. Note also that AH Vidyarthi's "translations" are uniformly bogus, for understandable reasons. rudra ( talk) 18:22, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
Aside: We can add this to the article:
... it is as well referenced as anything else in that article :-) Abecedare ( talk) 18:54, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
Agreed that Vidyarthi's book does not qualify as a reliable source, but I found a reference that may be relevant:
The paper, which I have only skimmed, discusses and analyzes various instances in which Muhammad (sometimes spelled as "Mahāmada") is considered an avatar of Brahma, Vishnu etc in Ismaili, Sufi and some interpretations of Hindu literature. This gives us some material to write up an encyclopedic entry on the subject, but I am not sure that Mahāmada would be the right title for the page. Any ideas on how to proceed ? If needed, I can email a copy of the paper since it is not freely accessible. Abecedare ( talk) 20:37, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
Comment According to my team at Universtiy of Toronto (Scarborough Campus) we have come up with the following statements
-- DWhiskaZ ( talk) 21:41, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
Potential merge target Since all the blog/web sources about Mahāmada being mentioned in the Puranas/Vedas etc eventually lead back to the books by A.H. Vidyarthi (see the 30+ links in the Mahāmada page), I think the article content should be merged with Abdul Haq Vidyarthi. In that article we can clearly state his views on Mohammad being prophecized in Buddhist, Hindu, Christian and Parsi literature with fewer concerns about WP:REDFLAG and WP:UNDUE. Abecedare ( talk) 03:31, 29 March 2008 (UTC)
Note: I just ran across this. Not a WP:RS, obviously, but he seems to have done his homework. rudra ( talk) 07:11, 29 March 2008 (UTC)
still at it. Ultimate Prophet (Pbuh) Foretold. I think a block may be appropriate at this point. dab (𒁳) 10:59, 29 March 2008 (UTC)
another possible merge target would be Prophecy#Ahmadiyya. -- dab (𒁳) 11:05, 29 March 2008 (UTC)
Note Article was already trimed down and you already tried redirecting it to another Holy Book that also contains information about Mahamada. The article was created to post views from all Holy Books. -- DWhiskaZ ( talk) 11:45, 29 March 2008 (UTC)
There is apparently a Catholic urban legend going around that George Washington was baptized Roman Catholic on his deathbed by Leonard Neale, 2nd archbishop of Baltimore. The typical "reference" for this is to a pair of articles supposedly published in the "Denver Register" in the 1950s. Laura Scudder very graciously went to the Denver Public Library and discovered that these references appear to be spurious, as detailed here. We've managed to keep the material out of George Washington and religion, but User:Dwain has been diligent in keeping the material in Leonard Neale, now resorting to a new set of references referring to the National Catholic Register, something called "Information Magazine", and a book by Leonard Feeney of Feeneyite fame. I have no assurances that the NCR ref is legit, and the other two don't give page numbers or issue information or anything else sufficient to find the supposed passages.
There are two eyewitness accounts of Washington's death, and neither of them gives the slightest hint that any such thing happened. It would be nice if some others would take a look at this. I've tried remonstrating with Dwain, with negligible success. Mangoe ( talk) 17:20, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
OK... we definitely need a third party (preferably a neutral admin) to review this before it gets into futher edit warring. Dwain has already violated 3rr (I have warned him, but not taken any action) and has rejected any and all arguments that Mango and I have presented on the talk page. Any takers? Blueboar ( talk) 12:47, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
September 11 conspiracy theories and related issues have been taken to ArbCom. The case is currently at the Workshop stage, and a large part of the page is ArbCom looking at various implications of WP:FRINGE and WP:NPOV. It might be useful for editors experienced in the area to keep an eye on the workshop page to make sure the poor little dears don't get confused and come down with an interpretation of policy that makes our life difficult. Relata refero ( talk) 20:04, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
it is sadly true that the arbcom seems to be losing their footing in the purposes and realities of this project. Unlike other recurring problems which the community can route around, this is a real and upsetting danger, because the arbcom stands outside and above the wiki process. I don't know what can be done about it. There is no bad faith involved as far as I can see, just an increasing unwillingness to apply common sense. This is the "IRC admin" attitude: editors are peons, just slap them now and again to keep them in line. Content is for editors, we manage the 'pedia, we don't condescend to either read or write it. We've come a long way from "admins are janitors". dab (𒁳) 14:36, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
I don't know who these "uninvolved admins" are because I can' be bothered to follow these discussions, but it is getting worse. Since 2007, I have come across admins with astoundingly bad judgement that would have been unthinkable in 2005, and that's not even including the (still very rare) instances of actual bad faith. We have made "admins" of mere well-meaning vandal-slappers with no education or grasp of anything more complicated than the decision process required to figure that replacing a page with "penis penis" is vandalism. We've done that because we need these people to bear the brunt of the graffiti artists and bored highschoolers. But we should have made sure they would not get the impression that they "are" the encyclopedia or that they are "running things": this may end in despair. Moreschi et al. have seen the rainclouds and built an ark. It's a good thing the community is reasonably inert ( I should know), but we absolutely need to counter the rampant anti-elitism. An encyclopedia is elitist. Not necessarily "elitist" in terms of who may contribute, but elitist in terms of what is required of editors, whoever they are. dab (𒁳) 18:53, 29 March 2008 (UTC)
Some editors of this article have stated that it includes fringe theories. Do you believe that the article presents fringe theories and what in the article do you consider fringe? --
Jagz (
talk) 18:55, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
::If I thought there was consensus of what the fringe elements of the article were I wouldn't have listed it on this Noticeboard. --
Jagz (
talk) 20:23, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
::::I see a lot of mention of fringe in the RfC but they do not always specify exactly what they are referring to. The RfC was to answer whether people thought the article was neutral and the answer was no. I'm looking for the specifics of what fringe items need to be addressed. Also, the article looks headed for Mediation so there doesn't appear to be a lot of agreement. --
Jagz (
talk) 20:49, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
This isn't worth all this abuse. -- Jagz ( talk) 23:18, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
when something is truly controversial, there is nothing for us but to simply state that it is controversial, and put the best references we have alongside each other. I find it astounding how difficult this appears to be to understand for some people ( Kosovo...) dab (𒁳) 09:21, 29 March 2008 (UTC)
From Efficacy of prayer:
In his book Reinventing Medicine [23] Larry Dossey claims that there will be three eras of medicine, the first dealing with physical medicine (where patients take pills), the second with mind-body medicine (where the body treats itself through psychosomatic methods) and the third with eternity medicine in which patients are affected from a distance via intercessory prayer. As evidence, the book refers mostly to the same third party studies mentioned above, but suggests that they will be further strengthened by future studies.
Is this guy notable enough to warrant an entire sub-section?
His name pops up on QuackWatch several times. [24] ☯ Zenwhat ( talk) 03:54, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
I think we need to take a look at these articles, especially the one on Universe reality, which has been tagged for lack of notability since last July. What concerns me is that the articles are primarily self-sourced to the book in question, or sourced to adhearants of this particular spiritual sect. There is very little in the way of independant secondary sources. I am not convinced that these are deletion candidates ... but they do have problems with meeting the inclusion criteria expressed in WP:Fringe. Blueboar ( talk) 14:50, 21 February 2008 (UTC)
I got rid of all the POV-forks that were slowly building a walled-garden of woo. Included were Universe reality, Thought Adjuster, Revelation (The Urantia Book), and History and future of the world (The Urantia Book). They all now redirect to The Urantia Book. ScienceApologist ( talk) 19:06, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
I started a new article Urantia Foundation. Also, I removed a lot of spam links to this book. There are two Urantia-fans that are none-too-happy with me. People popping these things on their watchlists would be helpful. These "topics" should be covered in the article on the book: not in walled garden/POV-forks. ScienceApologist ( talk) 16:41, 15 March 2008 (UTC)
Oh what fun!
WP:ANI#Repeated article blanking at Thought Adjuster and other articles. We need to have a seminar for administrators on
WP:FRINGE policy. Few of them seem to get it.
ScienceApologist (
talk) 18:35, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
Update -- The remaining articles are now The Urantia Book, Urantia Foundation, William S. Sadler, and Lena Sadler. Thought Adjuster is now redirected to the main article with a possibility of recreating it in the future while all other related articles are protected redirects to the main article. This resolves the issue outlined here, but please help in improving the remaining articles. ScienceApologist ( talk) 19:52, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
A number of articles have been redirected by myself as being original research. Two articles that have been mentioned at the Paranormal WikiProject are: Reality shift and Anomalous phenomenon. Please comment at their respective talkpages. ScienceApologist ( talk) 14:56, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
Articles which have not yet come up on the paranormal radar screen but have also been redirected include:
Also, I tagged the Fortean Times article which reads right now as a Paen to this fringe publication. God we need help! ScienceApologist ( talk) 15:04, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
There is now consensus for the creation of the Anomaly (Forteana) article which retains the old history of the previous article. I believe that the redirect for anomalous phenomenon should be to anomaly, but others feel that since the links in the 'pedia to this article generally regard "paranormal" stuff, we should be careful. What we need to do is go through this list and disambiguate all the links and phrasing. ScienceApologist ( talk) 19:59, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
I know that people who have SA's respect frequent this board. I would like people to look here and comment on the situation (preferably here, not cluttering WTB's talk page worse than it is).. Kww ( talk) 23:52, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
people on either side of the fence should obsess less over this sorry excuse for a documentary. However, if "a connection between quantum physics and consciousness through quantum mechanical means" is the result of several weeks' negotiations I don't know what to say. What does it even mean to "posit a connection between A and B through means of A"? dab (𒁳) 21:09, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
DBachman, I wish you'd been a bit more careful about factual accuracy before you ridiculed a group of editors (half pro-science and half otherwise) who participated in this "three week negotiation." The lead that we worked so hard to agree on doesn't (and didn't on March 21) read "a connection between quantum physics and consciousness through quantum mechanical means," which of course would be ridiculous. The actual wording of the section is (and was): "What the Bleep Do We Know!? ... is a 2004 film, followed by an extended 2006 DVD release, which combines documentary-style interviews, computer-animated graphics, and a narrative that posits a connection between quantum physics and consciousness. The film suggests that individual and group consciousness can influence the material world through quantum mechanical means." (in a sentence closely following, it's made clear that scientists don't agree with this suggestion). If you have a problem with what we've done, take it up on the talk page of Bleep, except I don't think there's anyone there any more; it appears we've all become so discouraged we've given up entirely, at least for the time being. Woonpton ( talk) 16:27, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
see here: we now get articles on non-existent Achaemenid provinces, for the purpose of, you guessed it, national mysticist coatracking (note the section on "survival" / "continuity"). Article should reside at Persian Mesopotamia or similar, if not split altogether into the articles on the actual provinces, Media (Persian province) and Babylonia (Persian province). -- dab (𒁳) 16:24, 26 March 2008 (UTC)
The section above on technical analysis brought to my mind this body of new-age research (also including the random-number generator stuff--I haven't even looked to see if WP has a page on that) which operates the same way, using voodoo statistics to locate spurious patterns in what is essentially noise.
The article has a neutrality problem (someone else has also noticed and put a neutrality tag on the page). There is some criticism of the "research" but the criticism is subjected to a kind of smoke-screen rebuttal and the general impression left is that there's something wrong with the criticism rather than with the research. Even the fact that some of the research was awarded the IgNobel prize, is given a positive spin in the article. I don't have the time or energy to take this on, but it needs more "eyes" as the saying goes. Woonpton ( talk) 18:11, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
Some so-far minor problems here with Altai Khan ( talk · contribs) busy claiming the Safavids were "pure Turkic" (yes, I'm sorry to bore everyone with the Perso-Turkic stuff again, we've seen it all before, but then there is an awful lot of this bollocks). Apparently he has some other curious beliefs. Anyway, so far it's limited to talkpage tendentiousness, but it could turn nastier. The user may be a reincarnation of some IPs, at least one of which I blocked, who played silly buggers with this same page a while back, but then again he may not be. If not, he'll be in need of the Wikipedia Rehabilitation School for Clueless Prepubescent Nationalists. Moreschi ( talk) 20:11, 26 March 2008 (UTC)
This one is getting ridiculous. Deleted, recreated, another attempt at deletion which failed, which I think was a mistake. It is now both growing like Topsy and being used (I believe) to add 'salt line' fringe stuff to other articles such as
Avebury and
Ring of Brodgar. See
Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion/Megalithic geometry (2nd nomination). I'm guessing that once the editor is finished with this article you will see bits of it all over the place.--
Doug Weller (
talk) 17:33, 29 March 2008 (UTC)
Now see Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2008 March 29#Megalithic geometry (closed). The SPA guarding this idea has made a complaint about my redirect of Megalithic yard. There have also been some untoward inclusions of these ideas at:
which I have reverted.
ScienceApologist ( talk) 20:07, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
This is my first time in this Noticeboard, I hope I have come to the right place. There has been a dispute going on here on the inclusion of the incident reported by the New York Times, NYT says:
Sherri Evanina, a F.B.I. spokeswoman in Newark, said five men were detained late Tuesday after the van in which they were driving was stopped on Route 3 in East Rutherford. She said witnesses had reported seeing the men celebrating the attack on the World Trade Center earlier in the day in Union City.
Other editors have objected to covering this incident in Celebrations of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the base that this incident was reported by anonymous eye-witnesses. In my opinion, the incident is notable enough to be covered in the article. Imad marie ( talk) 13:42, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
This is yet more classic WP:UNDUE. I really don't think such trivial material has any place in the article, certainly not such a broad-brush article as this one. In one source the nationality of the men is not mentioned: in another virtually no evidence is provided they were "celebrating", ergo, no reason for this is to be in the Celebrations of the September 11, 2001 attacks article. Moreschi ( talk) 15:07, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
I should point out that there is in fact a genuine Fringe Theory behind all this, which is that Israel was involved in the 11-Sep-2001 attacks, or at least knew of them and failed to warn the USA. A key part of this theory is that these five Israelis were Mossad agents, and were celebrating the successful operation. Some of the web pages Imad has cited explicitly push this theory. Here, though, the object seems to be simply to distract attention from the firmly established facts about Arab celebrations, by insinuating that they were not the only ones. -- Zsero ( talk) 15:29, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
Would someone please take a look at the discussion at the bottom of the Talk:Baghdad Battery page between User:Reddi and myself where he thinks a link to a UFO website with an article on non-existent Indian texts should not be deleted. I've never run into a self-professed 'inclusionist' before. He doesn't seem to think links need justifying if he thinks they are important. He's obviously also very possessive about the article. And doesn't like what he calls 'septics'. Thanks-- Doug Weller ( talk) 17:56, 24 March 2008 (UTC)
It's worse. After a series of insults on the Talk page after I removed a rubbish source, he's now added a section of 'World Wide Web sties that were used in the construction of this article.' and put that source back in it. Looking at the history, a clear case of WP:OWNERSHIP. Also, is AnswersinGenesis considered a reliable source for an external link not on itself? Thanks Doug Weller ( talk) 15:19, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
Can someone please look at the recent edits by Atlantis-korrekt in the light of [26] and tell me what they think? Leave it or? And while I have someone's attention, what do I do when an IP user starts calling me a Nazi on my talk page as they have twice in the last few hours? Thanks.-- Doug Weller ( talk) 07:56, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
Hello,
Ivor Catt is both (a) an (apparently) well-respected VLSI engineer of the 70s and 80s, and also (b) a crackpot with very strange ideas about electromagnetism, and the standard crackpot level of sourcing: lots of Catt's own web pages, zero referreed publications, zero serious citations; Catt's web pages insist that his theory is much-discussed/important/controversial/censored-by-the-establishment, but noone verifiable seems to care. This is a pretty tough thing to describe in an article while maintaining RS, OR, NPOV, and FRINGE guidelines. I think the old article did a pretty good job, but an IP editor has begun restoring the extremely pro-Catt POV. I don't have time to deal; more eyes would be welcome. Bm gub ( talk) 14:16, 1 April 2008 (UTC)
Very interesting guy with strong and radical opinions on every issue! I have added a few sourced sections on his technological contribution ( WSI), as well as his views on management and justice. The sections on his theories of electromagnetism and other scientists' opinion of his theories still needs to be referenced and cleaned up. Any help will be appreciated. Abecedare ( talk) 06:49, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
Funny, I ran into this on Talk:Cryptozoology -- someone saying anyone who doesn't believe in these things should go to the genesispark url. The article has a huge number of external links -- too many according to guidelines, and I have no idea yet what they are like. And recently placed on Talk:Dragon "Look at The "Kent Hovind" article. His website is www.drdino.com, another good one is www.evolution-facts.org." So, are links like that on talk pages ok? Thanks. Doug Weller ( talk) 11:05, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
Second thoughts. Obviously you have to be able to talk about links on talk pages, and blogs, etc. are probably ok there just for background? So when does something become spam? Doug Weller ( talk) 11:47, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
I'd appreciate if a few of you would take a look at Omar Khadr when you have a chance, I'm trying to get some non-Canadian, non-American points-of-view on the subject (face it, both Canada and the US are heavily biased on this person), because we've got one editor who's claiming the article has serious NPOV discussions and is angry...
Basically, we have some legitimate conversation ongoing about NPOV and trying to make sure the article conforms, but it's being made troublesome by a single editor who seems intent on using the article as a WP:COATRACK to rant about Muslims being neanderthals - and would appreciate a neutral look at the talk page. Sherurcij ( Speaker for the Dead) 17:33, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
While this term is somtetimes used to denote extensions to relativity that could lead to a unified theory with quantum mechanics, the things mentioned in the article on Superrelativity are of a very questionable nature. It seems like the page is just a promotion for some pseudo-science theory. The page warrants a review and a note identifying it as a Fringe theory.
Has no real sources. Nominated for deletion. —— Martinphi ☎ Ψ Φ—— 03:45, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
Please have a look at the article Mingrelians. Recently there was an edit war between user:Dauernd vs. user:Kober and user:Iberieli over whether Mingrelians should be called a South Caucasian people or whether they should be called a subethnic group of Georgians. Now despite the troublesome history of user:Dauernd, I think he may have been in the right on this one in referring to Mingrelians as a South Caucasian people as I've never heard any group of people referred to as a subethnic group. Is there even such a thing as a subethnic group? Kober and Iberieli have added some sources however their sources say that Mingrelians have mostly forgotten their native tongue and consider themselves to be Georgians. That's really not quite the same as referring to them as a sub-ethnic group. The other thing to this that the Mingrelian language is mutually uninteligible with the Georgian language. Also, within Georgia, there are many other linguistic groups which can trace there roots there for centuries and have more in common with the Mingrelians and yet are not considered a subethnic group of Georgians. For example the Laz people in Georgia speak a language that is mutually inteligible with the Mingrelian language and yet Mingrelians are considered a subethnic group but the Laz are not. To me this sounds WP:FRINGE. Previous discussion can be seen here. Your thoughts? Pocopocopocopoco ( talk)01:51, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
Subethnic groups exist within dominant ethnic groups or along-side other subethnic groups of the same genera. Subethnic groups share a common culture and maintain a sense of cultural homogeneity, but they vary to the extent that one sub-group may be distinguished from another in some cultural traits. The nature of subethnic groups can be rather complicated. (Milton Kleg, 1993, Hate, Prejudice, and Racism, p. 40. SUNY Press, ISBN:079141535X)
The number of Mingrelian speakers is declining, and most Mingrelian speakers positively identify themselves as "Georgian" (Kartveli). Prof. Stephen F. Jones of Mount Holyoke College, "Mingrelians", in: David Levinson [ed., 1996], Encyclopedia of World Cultures, p. 262. University of Michigan Press, ISBN 0816118086. Online version.
The Georgian or Kartvelian nation comprises an impressively diverse set of local sub-ethnic communities, each with its characteristic traditions, cuisine, manners and dialect (or language). The Svans number about 40,000, most of whom inhabit... Prof. Kevin Tuite of Université de Montréal. The Meaning of Dæl. Symbolic and Spatial Associations of the South Caucasian Goddess of Game Animals. Université de Montréal website.
The classification of the peoples of Transcaucasia was once again the most controversial topic of discussion. Georgian representatives from the Transcaucasian government complained that a number of peoples noted as separate nationalities on the official list were really tribes or religious sub-groups of the Georgian nation. They berated central authorities and experts for attempting "to break-up the Georgian nation," maintaining that the "false division" of the Georgians was reminiscent of tsarist colonial politics. The officials maintained that Adzhars were Georgians who had once been Moslems; they declared that the Soviet regime had created an Adzhar autonomous republic with the goal of promoting "Adzhar" separatism. They further argued that Mingrelian and Svan were regional names for Georgians from different localities. In fact, more than half of the people thought by ethnographers to be Mingrelians had registered themselves in the census as Georgians. Ethnographers wondered aloud whether census takers had engaged in foul play or if the results reflected the population's self-determination. The national-political stakes gave these discussions a high emotional pitch.
The Georgian ethnic group is made up of a whole series of subgroups — the Mountain Svans, Kartlians and the west Georgian Mingrelians
The Georgians, Mingrelians and Svans are related ethnically, within Georgia there existed strong sub-ethnic or regional identities, including Ajarian, Mingrelian, Svan, Imeretian, Kakhetia, etc
within Georgia there existed strong sub-ethnic or regional identities, Adjar, Mingrelian and Svan...
Mingrelians, a sub ethnic group of the Georgian people, live mostly on the back sea coast..
Mingrelia is the home of the Mingrelians, a tribe of Georgian people who speak Megruli...
Georgian sub ethnic groups such as Mingrelians and Svans are probably direct descendants of those Colchians of the Argonauts...
That's got me convinced. I don't really see a problem here. Moreschi ( talk) 14:47, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
ethnogenesis is a gradual process, and there can be meaningful disputes as to at what point an ethnic group forms out of / splits into several groups. I am glad we have a case of a "disputed subgroup" now to compare to the Assyrians/Syriacs debacle (which is ethno(de)genesis-in-progress indeed). dab (𒁳) 16:00, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
All through the Soviet period the main goal of the Georgian leadership and of the Georgian nationalist movement as a whole was the creation of a consolidated Georgian nation in the shortest possible time. With Stalin in power, when the influence of the Georgian lobby in the Kremlin was at its greatest, this policy was carried out by repressive methods. Some peoples were deported from Georgia (Greeks, Kurds and Meskhetian Turks). Others, not even related to the Kartvelians, were declared part of the Georgian tribes and along with Svans and Megrelians were quickly assimilated.
More References, Case closed:
etc. Iberieli ( talk) 16:10, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
A user has posted at Talk:History of astrology in the section Outdated And Inaccurate who apparently wishes to rewrite the whole article to make Ancient Egypt the origin of astrology, while quoting the American Federation of Astrologists as saying it started in Babylonia. He's rounded up a series of what he thinks are facts to create what looks like a synthesis on which to base his argument for rewriting the article. Am I right in thinking it is basically OR? From everything serious I can find, astrology came to Egypt sometime in the first millennium bce with the Greeks. Ironically, I have been trying to fix some articles which discuss Egyptian astrology, getting rid of for instance claims for 4200 bce star charts (nonexistent), astrological pyramids, etc. The user, Big-dynamo, seems to have no history on Wikipedia (I've just noticed) so he may have no clue about Wikipedia policies - I'll add a note to him about where to find it. Thanks. Doug Weller ( talk) 06:42, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
The origins of classical astrology lie in Iron Age Babylonia ("Chaldea"). Of course there some fragments hinting at an older (Bronze Age) history of people watching the stars, but that's without any sort of direct influence on later history. dab (𒁳) 10:42, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
This needs some attention. A whopping chunk of the article is devoted to unlikely-sounding "location hypotheses" relating to a place in Sumerian myth. There's a dispute between Sumerophile ( talk · contribs) and Til Eulenspiegel ( talk · contribs) over this section. To complicate matters, I just blocked Sumerophile for 3RR only to realise he'd spent most of today reverting, you guessed it, the socks of our old friend Ararat arev ( talk · contribs). I've unblocked him ASAP with apologies but the article still needs looking at, with undue weight in mind. Moreschi ( talk) 19:53, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
this is a clear case of "academic references only". If it's published academically, fair enough, however unlikely. If it is WP:SYN or armenianhighland.com blogcruft, remove on sight. dab (𒁳) 21:31, 19 March 2008 (UTC)
Another revert-war yesterday. I've protected the article for two weeks, but the talk page is still as fiery as ever. 81.99.113.232 ( talk) 09:01, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
The stock market equivalent of tea-leaf reading, promoted par excellence by Wikipedia. "Critics say it's wrong, but look, here are some outlying studies!" 64.231.60.239 ( talk) 01:07, 29 March 2008 (UTC)
The discussion at September 11, 2001 attacks has really gone sideways and I plead for some more eyeballs there. The endless circular arguments are exhausting and wasting the time of otherwise good editors. The newest claims include:
This topic is at Arbcom right now but I'm not sure if anything useful will com of it, but this endless time sink has to end sometime. It's an endless rope-a-dope that will only drive off the good editors. I haven't posted here before so if this is not the right place let me know and I'll wander off, maybe to WP:AN/I or something.
`
When was the last time you looked at the cryptid articles at Wikipedia? Maybe you should. I looked at three today and they were all awful:
The last one was so bad, I put it up for deletion.
Please, help with tagging, editing, ANYTHING!
ScienceApologist ( talk) 01:19, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
Has serious issues. The article is apparently hostage to fringe theories that Jesus and Barabbas were the same person or something like that (I didn't read all of it). -- dab (𒁳) 20:16, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
In
this set of several edits,
User:JohnJacobs
User:Jacobsjohn - sorry! crafts a rant about the atheist conspiracy suppressing Intelligent design. He then editwars briefly:
[27]
Today, he continues. Twice as an IP:
[28]
[29] and thrice as himself.
[30]
[31]
[32]
Some quotes from his very special version:
“ | Behe's hypothesis of intelligent design has been rejected by the many scientists and even characterized as pseudoscience by certain members of the scientific community with a strong atheistic bias. | ” |
“ | ...which was received skeptically by many in the scientific community, and rejected outright by scientist with a overt atheistic bias. The most fundamentalist of the atheistic scientists even asserted that Behe's hypothesis, research and examples were based only on a refined form of " argument from ignorance", rather than any demonstration of the actual impossibility of evolution by natural processes. | ” |
“ | Outside the scientific community, there are those who wish to aggressively combat any possibility of a scientific debunking of evolution. Such proponents of Darwinism are usually not well-equipped to challenge Prof. Behe's hypothesis on irreducible complexity, or the theory of Intelligent Design more generally, with credible scientific research or with scientific methods of argumentation, therefore they have tended to heavily rely on various judicial pronouncments in high-profile court battles between creationists and atheists to weigh in on this fascinating frontier in scientific discovery. | ” |
And yet all his edit summaries say that he's removing POV. God help us all. Shoemaker's Holiday ( talk) 19:04, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
Page is unsourced and contains unverified material about the Pagan year. Itsmejudith ( talk) 13:47, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
In December last year, a user Creigs1707 added material to thy above articles on his own research. [33] This was subsequently removed by myself and others -- another users's edit summary read "rm uncritical (self?)-promotion of a source, per WP:NOR and WP:COI)". Creighton has now emailed me and when he isn't calling me a Nazi he says he is going to post them again- and if removed, again and again and again. I have explained that he can't reference his own site and he replied that he has been published on Graham Hancock's website and Atlantis Rising Magazine (issue 65), Alternate Perceptions Magazine (issue 113). I the forthcoming edition of the book "You Are Still Being Lied To" and Nexus Magazine. Nexus is probably acceptable as a source, but I'm not sure about the others. Or about how it works when an editor is writing about his own ideas. Any comments would be of help when he decides to restore his edits, and I won't be around a lot after Friday for over a week. Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dougweller ( talk • contribs) 14:09, 9 Apr 2008
Is addition of claims about Armia Krajowa committing attrocities against non-Polish population and collaborating with the Nazis resulting in non-neutral lead with undue/fringe claims? Comments appreciated here.-- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 16:14, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
User:Nvyslsnp thinks David Bawden is the pope and is using the article as a blog, etc.-- Mike - Μολὼν λαβέ 02:24, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
I've just noticed that there's a new WikiProject which has placed its banner on the Talk:Hermeticism page, among others, related to "Hermetism". We don't have any articles on the subject yet, though. We did have such an article earlier, which was deleted and turned into a redirect as per Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Hermetism. Is there a chance in the eyes of the rest of you that this project, which to date has only its founder as a member, could be counterproductive? John Carter ( talk) 13:16, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
I've removed that, but I'm still unhappy with the tone. What's with this?
“ | It is hard to trace the Hermetic texts back all these millennia because of an event in 391 CE. In Alexandria, a woman named Hypathia, an initiate into the Hermetic Mysteries, took on the growing creed of Christianity head on. She had convinced the people of Alexandria that the beliefs of Christianity were all of pagan origin as well as that the miracles of Jesus of Nazareth were available to all by demonstrating the natural laws behind them. [19] Though her murder didn't take place until 415 CE, it is an example of why the event in 391 CE happened. In that year, her works, along with most of the Hermetic texts, perished when the Great Library of Alexandria was burnt to the ground by the Romans. | ” |
The logic has passed me by. Moreschi ( talk) ( debate) 23:27, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
Right, I've gone hacking at Hermetism with an axe, removing everything sourced to the works of Manly P. Hall, a raving crank with some very interesting theories regarding Atlantis. You can look that up in your spare time :) Who knew that Plato was a Hermetist, and that Judaism started off as Hermetism?
Other so-called reliable sources for this page included Israel Regardie (Moses was a Hermetist!), and the mysterious "Dr. M. Doreal". I Googled him with entertaining results ( LOL!)
I've also removed everything sourced to Kybalion, which I didn't think really counted as reliable source either. What this has left us with is a small minority of material that might be acceptable and the remainder, which is primary-sourced to the Corpus Hermeticum.
What we've got here is an ancient occultish cult of the Greek god Hermes, about which reliable data is very sketchy, that later inspired a whole bunch of (notable) secret societies/pseudo-religious groups/whatever in time of the Renaissance and afterwards. This in turn has been picked up by our friends the New Agers, and, ah, developed from there. What really needs to happen is for Hermetism and Hermeticism to be merged - there's no real reason to have two different articles on the original cult and its more modern descendants, not when reliable data on the ancient cult of Hermes seems so hard to come by. Moreschi ( talk) ( debate) 18:55, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
See Talk:Hermetism now. We can keep Hermetism if we make it into an article on the origins of Hermeticism in the early centuries CE. The problem isn't with the topic itself, it's with the esotericist / new agey nonsense that it attracts. The Book of Thoth: "...Members of this movement often suggest that the Book of Thoth has been positioned beneath the paws of the Sphinx for some 12,000 years." dab (𒁳) 07:07, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
Currently, on 9/11 conspiracy theories there has been some discussion regarding the views of a Canadian mathematician and conspiracy theorist, Alexander Dewdney, who claims that it was impossible for the cell phone calls which occurred on 9/11 to have taken place, and that they were faked following Flight 93 being shot down. However, User:WLRoss has been trying to present a very different version than this in the article — you can see the comparison here. In the first version, the sourcing is to this Macleans article, and there is additional information about phone calls cited to the New York Times included. In the second version, the sourcing is to Dewdney's study here at a 9/11 Truth website, and to the primary views of another conspiracy theorist here. In terms of content, the first version discusses Dewdney's study, then his views that the calls were faked after Flight 93 being shot down. It then discuss a concurring conspiracy theorist, who agrees with his assessment. Finally, it cites industry experts who state that cell phones can work in all stages of an aircraft flight. The second version presents only Dewdney's study, and omits his other views about the phone calls. It also omits the industry expert's opinion entirely.
So, far, in this discussion on the talk page, the arguments have been made against the first version are that:
In favor, I have argued that the Maclean's source is the only one which presents either the study or his views and notable or relevant, and no other reliable sources have been so presented. Selectively choosing which of Mr Dewdney's views to include, or not include, based on the "crackpot"-ness of them is biased editing, and is designed to give readers a false impression about who conducted the study, and what he believes about the phone calls. Furthermore, it omits information on disputes on this subject is because it disagrees with a fact that the WLRoss believes is "undisputably true".
In other words, it's a run of the mill case of selectively picking and choosing which parts of a person's views on a subject you wish to display, in order to present their opinions in the best possible light. In addition, it removes criticism (or dispute) which gives the false impression that the views expressed are undisputed, or correct. I'm bringing this here because I think we need more eyes on this subject, and more voices in the mix. -- Haemo ( talk) 08:00, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
I created this article back in 2005 [37], and it has seen a troubled history since, mostly due to the exploits of the likes of Rokus01 ( talk · contribs) and WIN ( talk · contribs). There have been good additions, but it has been tagged for a rewrite for some time. This isn't very urgent, but it appears that the disordered state gives rise to further deterioration. There is one editor apparently bent on treating the hypothesis as a work of art by Gimbutas without any truth value (as in, not falsifiable, hence art), and consequently to be treated like an unfinished symphony or something, while it is in fact the mainstream hypothesis (or class of hypotheses) for PIE origins. I am not sure how to approach this. The "Criticisms and qualifications" is terrible, but it contains valid content. As I said, this isn't a red-hot topic of edit wars, but I feel it will only get worse if an effort isn't made to put the article back on its feet. dab (𒁳) 18:01, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
Nonwithstanding the anon's claim above, the Kurgan theory is not a "Russian" or "Soviet" theory. If anything, it's a Lithuania-USA co-production, whicih would automatically make it less than useful for Soviet doctrine (it also speaks volumes for its bona fide academic quality that for once an origin theory is not advanced by someone who just happens to be a native of the suggested area of origin...) The actual Russian (1980s Soviet) theory of PIE origins is the Armenian hypothesis: the support of this one is virtually restricted to Russia (and Armenia of course...). It's also a bona fide academic theory, but it has clear drawbacks compared to the Kurgan one, and failed to find wider support. I would be surprised to learn the Soviets touted the Kurgan theory (contemporary Ukrainian nationalism is another issue, of course). dab (𒁳) 19:28, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
or a close cousin? your call:
-- dab (𒁳) 18:11, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
I removed the info that I had added back, Greco-Armeno-Aryan I removed from the Armenian hypothesis, cause it already has links in the "See also", so its not need to push POV. However, minor correction I made, I corrected the date that is 4th millenium BC, corresponding to their hypothesis date, and also in the other PIE pages have the same info that was corrected. And I dont know any Ararat arev. Testerarms ( talk) 18:41, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
Based on contributions it seems likely to him that Ara Ur ( talk · contribs) is another Ararat arev sock. Checkuser concurs. Moreschi ( talk) ( debate) 21:21, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
The page is a mirror of Assyrian people. If you look at the Syriac people page, it uses http://www.spiritus-temporis.com/ as a main source for many lines. If you look at those links, it says specifically below that the information was taken from Wikipedia itself. Per Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Assyrian/Chaldean/Syriac) and Wikipedia:Assyrian-Syriac wikipedia cooperation board, we agreed that we would not bring in politics into other pages, but explain the situation in the Assyrian naming dispute page. We agreed that the defacto name used to describe the group would be Assyrian ( Assyrian people) since that is the term used mostly in the English language. This single user seems to be on a crusade to create an ethnicity based on, well, nothing except a few quotes taken out of content. But now, he is creating all this mirror pages (Example History of the Assyrian people - he goes on and creates History of the Syriac people) and seems to continue to path of mirroring pages like Assyrian culture, etc. We don't have saperate ethnic pages let alone history, culture, music, etc for Orthodox Armenian people and Catholic Armenian people and it should be like this for this group too. Chaldean ( talk) 23:23, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
Chaldean and VegardNorman are two editors who decided they will simply Not Get It. The topic of their dispute is valid, and I have invested insane amounts of time trying to get them to collaborate towards a wikilike solution, but instead they simply act disruptively and are completely impermeable to reason or advice. VegardNorman likes to prance around with pov forks and erratic splits, while Chaldean's approach is consistent and complete ignoratio elenchi. Administrative action is needed here. We can solve these problems, but these two editors are clearly not part of any solution. dab (𒁳) 19:23, 14 April 2008 (UTC)