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Currently @ Grutness: is adding variations of [[Category:Cryptid]] to dozens of articles throughout Wikipedia for anything that remotely seems like it could be a 'lake monster'. As the term cryptid is a pseudoscientific term used to promote fringe theories of 'hidden animals' by cryptozoologists and pointedly not used by folklorists or biologists ( Cryptozoology#Terminology,_history,_and_approach), this falls flatly into the realm of promotion of fringe theories ( WP:PROFRINGE).

Additionally, none of the articles the user is adding this category to contain a single reliable source discussing cryptozoologist interest in this topic, and therefore the category is included solely due to the judgment of said user that these entities are "cryptids". In his or her edits, the user has also restored a variety of fringe sources that I had removed, such as this one. Attempts to communicate with the user have resulted in the user responding that they require no sources due to some kind of precedent ( [2]). Notably, the user appears to have been so eager to mass-revert my edits that he or she also reverted a vote I made for an article for deletion [3]. (@ Dlthewave:, @ Tronvillain:, @ LuckyLouie:, etc.) :bloodofox: ( talk) 03:04, 18 December 2019 (UTC)

I am adding categories which have reliable sources for research - in many cases bountiful ones. Here is one example which User:Bloodofox suggests has no verifiable research history: Loch Ness Monster. If Bloodofox can give some rational explanation why the Loch Ness Monster should not be regarded as a cryptid, I'd be open to hearing it. I have responded as such on my talk page- contrary to the misrepresentation given by Bloodofox above (the reversion of an AfD !vote was a mistake, and I have apologised for it).

I repeat what I said on my talk page: What? No cryptozoological interest in the Loch Ness Monster? Or in the Waitoreke (which I was involved in a scientific search for)? Surely you jest. And whether you don't see why or not is irrelevant to an existing scheme on Wikipedia which has passed muster from a host of other editors. If you have any objections to the categories and their population, take it through proper channels to WP:CFD or some related process page. Don't simply decide on your own whim that they have no place in Wikipedia and depopulate them.

I would be only to happy to see Bloodofox go through proper channels, rather than taking it upon himself to decde what is or is not a cryptid. Grutness... wha? 03:20, 18 December 2019 (UTC)

This is false. As an example, the only mention of cryptozoology on the Loch Ness monster article is that of Loxton, Daniel; Prothero, Donald. (2015). Abominable Science!. Columbia University Press. pp. 142–144. ISBN 978-0-231-15321-8, wherein the academics discuss the pseudoscience of cryptozoology's fixation with the entity as just one of many with an interest in the folklore surrounding the Loch Ness Monster.

As our cryptozoology article makes clear, folklorists, historians, and biologists do not use the cryptozoology-coined term cryptid, because they have no need for pseudoscientific methods: They don't assume there's a hidden dinosaur or alien behind every folktale or rumor. We don't use fringe sources on articles, and cryptozoology is way on the deep end of fringe next to the closely related Young Earth creationism, as discussed extensively with numerous reliable sources at our cryptozoology article. :bloodofox: ( talk) 03:26, 18 December 2019 (UTC)

So from your argument I take it there is no possibility that Wikipedia would or should have a Category:Young Earth creationism given you suggest that we do not allow such promotion of fringe theories. Grutness... wha? 03:32, 18 December 2019 (UTC)

No, that category contains articles with well-referenced sections with reliable sources that directly discuss the pseudoscience, which is exactly what one would expect. You have conducted WP:OR and applied a fringe theory-internal term, cryptid, to numerous articles that make no mention of the subculture of cryptozoology.

By applying these "cryptid" categories to numerous article about figures from, say, Japanese folklore, you've performed more or less the equivalent of going to our Big Bang article and applying a Young Earth creationist category: You are making a statement about a fringe theory by way of application of a category. :bloodofox: ( talk) 03:34, 18 December 2019 (UTC)

• WP:CATV applies. Categorization must be based on reliable sources, and fringe cryptozoologists don't meet our requirements. The category was added to articles that aren't described as "cryptids" by reliable sources; reversion was appropriate. – dlthewave ☎ 03:43, 18 December 2019 (UTC)

Over at his talk page, Grutness brings up a very solid point that has the potential to save editors trouble in the future: Some of these numerous "cryptid" categories should go to CFD. Many of them are inappropriate and are likely to be picked up by either well-meaning editors looking to help out or with proponents of the pseudoscience, and many of them can be replaced with more accurate categories, like sea monster categories. I'll give this a closer look. :bloodofox: ( talk) 03:52, 18 December 2019 (UTC)

Multiple chemical sensitivity ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

Myself and User:WhatamIdoing struggled with an editor or two for quite sometime — to get this article more neutral — with lots of debates on the talk page. I strongly suspect that a number of sock puppet accounts were created (see article history) and subsequently the article has been skewed to promote a highly pseudoscientific interpretation of this condition, so much so that we already have an editor recognising and complaining about the article. WhatamIdoing seems to have moved onto other articles. More eyes would be welcome.-- Literaturegeek |  T@1k? 02:05, 14 December 2019 (UTC)

What a strange article! First it says "Blinded clinical trials show that people with MCS react as often and as strongly to placebos as they do to chemical stimuli; the existence and severity of symptoms is related to perception that a chemical stimulus is present" -- in other words MCS doesn't actually exist -- then it goes on to list a bunch of causes.

Please weigh in at Talk:Multiple chemical sensitivity#But does it actually exist? -- Guy Macon ( talk) 08:36, 14 December 2019 (UTC)

Yes. It's been under-watched I fear. Such quack! So fringe! Wow! Guy ( help!) 11:43, 14 December 2019 (UTC)

Yeah, thanks for going giving this article your attention. Thankfully, since posting here, there does seem to be editors who are now editing and reversing its pseudoscientific angle.-- Literaturegeek |  T@1k? 14:26, 14 December 2019 (UTC)

I think it's important to remember that these blinded studies don't prove that this isn't "an illness" (which is a complex technical topic that has no particular relationship to any etiology or diagnosis proposed by the patient).

Imagine that you go to a medical clinic, and you say, "Doc, I think my leg's broken. Whenever I stand on my right leg, it hurts and I fall down." Then the doc decides to do an impromptu controlled test: "Stand on your right leg. Yup, you fell down screaming. Okay, stand on your left leg. Huh, you fell down screaming then, too." That doesn't mean that you're wrong and your right leg isn't broken; maybe both of them are. It also doesn't mean that your right leg is broken. Maybe your problem is in a different body part, or you have a problem that doesn't involve bone fractures.

In this case, the literature offers several potential explanations for these results, with the fear of exposure (a little panic attack'll get you every time) and methodological failures (like not allowing enough time between challenges for the person to recover) being perhaps the most common. If you're reading this comment as an encouragement to find a good medical textbook instead of trying to interpret the primary studies yourself ...well, you might not be entirely wrong about that, either. ;-) I cited a few pages from a medical textbook that's listed on Doody's Core Titles yesterday. I invite you all to beat that for a solidly mainstream medical knowledge. WhatamIdoing ( talk) 20:38, 16 December 2019 (UTC)

Okay, but there is no biologically plausible mechanism that someone could walk past or sit beside a lady wearing perfume and develop quite marked somatic bodily symptoms outside of a false belief coupled with anxiety.-- Literaturegeek |  T@1k? 23:35, 16 December 2019 (UTC)

Somatic symptom disorders do not need to involve either false beliefs or anxiety. I'd really love it if you would read some recent med school textbooks about this. WhatamIdoing ( talk) 05:01, 17 December 2019 (UTC)

I am familiar with that disorder and have been for years. It is pretty much the exact opposite of MCS in that the symptoms originate from the mind whereas MCS postulates that the symptoms are caused by chemicals in the environment.-- Literaturegeek |  T@1k? 06:20, 17 December 2019 (UTC)

I'm inclined to say that "MCS" doesn't postulate anything, but the problem is that MCS isn't actually a claim about causation. Some people have promoted that idea (and others), but none of the hypothesized etiologies are the condition(s). MCS is a collection of symptoms, not the original claim that it was an allergy, nor the following claim that it was due to poor liver function, nor the next popular story that it was a non-allergic immune dysfunction, nor any of the other stories people have told. MCS is an experience, not the thing that (allegedly) causes the experience to happen. (This is true for all medical and quasi-medical conditions: Chickenpox is the rash and the fever, not the claim that it's caused by the virus; broken legs are the pain and the fracture, not the claim that it was caused by falling down the stairs, etc.) We're never going to get a decent article if people keep confusing the condition itself with the stories people have told about why they think they/their patients are experiencing this condition. WhatamIdoing ( talk) 19:23, 19 December 2019 (UTC)

Comment I have opened up a sockpuppet investigation: wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investigations/SamuelBurckhalter#Suspected_sockpuppets If my submission has gaps in it feel welcome to add more evidence or support my evidence. Also if you feel I have missed a sock account then please submit it to the list. Cheers.-- Literaturegeek |  T@1k? 18:48, 14 December 2019 (UTC)

Status of accounts:

• QueerWordGirl ( talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) - blocked
• Leobenite ( talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) - blocked
• Martin Kempf ( talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) - WP:DUCK but not CheckUser confirmed.
• KrisKelvin99 ( talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) - blocked
• Greenved ( talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) - blocked
• Bzabrisk ( talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) - last edit June 2018
• Rachel Mulcahy ( talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) - last edit March 2019
• StrillA7 ( talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) - blocked
• Avicennawalking ( talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) - blocked

I think the DUCK can be blocked, but not by me. Guy ( help!) 11:07, 15 December 2019 (UTC)

The immediate use of Template:yo is a giveaway. jps ( talk) 13:03, 15 December 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Martin Kempf -- Guy Macon ( talk) 13:49, 15 December 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for following up on those socks. WhatamIdoing ( talk) 20:38, 16 December 2019 (UTC)

Editors familiar with WP:NFRINGE may be interested in the following deletion discussions:

• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Giglioli's Whale
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Four Mile Globster
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Trinity Alps giant salamander

– dlthewave ☎ 13:21, 13 December 2019 (UTC)

• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Many-finned sea serpent (2nd nomination)
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Jba fofi

– dlthewave ☎ 18:37, 14 December 2019 (UTC)

• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mountain fennec
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Hebrides blob
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Beast of Riber
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ringdocus
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Newfoundland Blob
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Fiskerton Phantom
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Thunderbird (cryptozoology)
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Waheela
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Shunka Warakin
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Giant anaconda

– dlthewave ☎ 13:03, 20 December 2019 (UTC)

dlthewave is there a prior discussion anywhere for the cryptozoology catalogues, Cryptozoology A to Z, Mysterious Creatures etc., and notability?— eric 18:49, 20 December 2019 (UTC)

Can't these all merge somewhere? Hyperbolick ( talk) 19:02, 20 December 2019 (UTC)

The content is usually junk, look what happened to Enrico Hillyer Giglioli after that cryptid got merged in. I guess redirects don't need to be verifiable, but i hate the ones like Jba fofi and Shunka Warakin where we are taking the word of some wacko saying this is a native legend and word in some real peoples language.— eric 19:12, 20 December 2019 (UTC)

• EricR I'm not aware that those specific sources (Cryptozoology A to Z and Mysterious Creatures) have been formally discussed, although editors often try to present them as evidence of notability at AfD. My understanding is that since they're written by adherents/promoters of fringe theories, they're not considered reliable sources and thus cannot be used to establish notability. This is supported by the WP:NFRINGE guideline: "The notability of a fringe theory must be judged by statements from verifiable and reliable sources, not the proclamations of its adherents." – dlthewave ☎ 02:46, 21 December 2019 (UTC)
  • Thanks, for some reason i either failed to read WP:NFRINGE or had it confused with something else. That makes things easier, i'll stop clogging the deletion discussions with those.— eric 15:08, 21 December 2019 (UTC)
• @ Dlthewave:, have you seen Trout Lake Monster? I'm unable to find a single mention of it in reliable sources, and I suspect it might not be mentioned in the one WP:RS-compliant source left in the article. :bloodofox: ( talk) 19:22, 22 December 2019 (UTC)

"Apparently, after eating lunch they went out in their fiberglass boat, and were never seen again." Oh Joy !! - Roxy, the PROD. . wooF 19:30, 22 December 2019 (UTC)

Yeeep—unfortunately, archives for the small paper cited in the article seems to be quite difficult to access. :bloodofox: ( talk) 19:34, 22 December 2019 (UTC)

Couldn't find any RS connecting the missing couple, but did locate 3 about the topic, so I've added them and copy edited accordingly. - LuckyLouie ( talk) 22:53, 22 December 2019 (UTC)

Ah well. [4] Who knew there were two Trout Lake Monsters? (one with RS and one without)- LuckyLouie ( talk)

• Die Glocke (  | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

The article had accumulated a lot of cruft from fringe authors such as Henry Stevens, Jim Marrs and Gerold Schelm. The topic is a classic WP:FRINGE theory and requires WP:FRIND independent sources in order to have an objective article. I've cleaned out the fringe sourcing and expanded the WP:RS sourcing a bit [5]. Unfortunately, this article is a popular drive-by target for fantasy and fringe advocates, so I hope a few will put this on their watchlist. Thanks, - LuckyLouie ( talk) 17:22, 22 December 2019 (UTC)

Added to my watch list—it seems to me that this just doesn't have the notability for an article like this, unless there's more to it... :bloodofox: ( talk) 19:32, 22 December 2019 (UTC)

Found some additional independent sources, so it seems to pass WP:NFRINGE. I may drop a note at WP:SKEP to see if any there have access to CSI articles that may have been published on the topic. - LuckyLouie ( talk) 21:02, 23 December 2019 (UTC)

[Note: I have deleted my comment in utter disgust and have unwatched this page. It appears that I can no longer discuss fringe theories on the fringe theories noticeboard without having someone hijack the discussion into Yet Another US Politics Thread. Congratulation on driving me away. I hope getting in your little political dig was worth it.] -- Guy Macon ( talk) 01:20, 24 December 2019 (UTC)

Guy Macon, and on Pennsylvania Avenue... Guy ( help!) 19:33, 23 December 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ralph Horton flying saucer crash.

You know the drill.

jps ( talk) 02:06, 24 December 2019 (UTC)

And happy holidays to you. - LuckyLouie ( talk) 03:10, 24 December 2019 (UTC)

It looks like the "drill" is to go and blindly vote delete.— eric 00:29, 25 December 2019 (UTC)

When you get some editing chops you can make comments like that. In the meantime, well, Pressdram Vs Arkell applies. Oh, and fix your sig. - Roxy, the PROD. . wooF 07:54, 25 December 2019 (UTC)

No way, User:EricR. I hope the information contained in this article can stay somewhere in Wikipedia, but I just don't see a lot of analysis that we could include for it to be standalone. The reason we have to go through AfD is because historically UFO sightings have been a magnet for dubious content insertion and it's good to get experienced editors like many who have already commented to see if they can't help figure out what to do with this material. Go read the AfD, it's actually instructive. jps ( talk) 17:25, 26 December 2019 (UTC)

Sorry jps, was commenting on another AfD, apologize for hijacking. It seems demonstrating notability is prohibitively difficult once a topic is listed here and tainted by fringe sources.— eric 18:04, 26 December 2019 (UTC)

Intentionally so. Read WP:NFRINGE. The issue is that in the past we would have dedicated fans who would start writing extensive and lovingly produced articles about subjects which had received essentially no WP:MAINSTREAM notice. To appropriately document such ideas so as to adhere to the ideal of WP:NPOV, we need reliable sources that are not compromised by fandom. At the end, we end up removing a lot of content simply because there hasn't been enough produced about the subject yet to allow for a high-quality article. I usually recommend to people who are disappointed in this status quo to go out and create high-quality sources (or encourage others to do so). As this happens, Wikipedia can follow suit. jps ( talk) 20:00, 26 December 2019 (UTC)

Sure, but when a scholar specializing in oral histories of the people in question [6] is being called a "fringe proponent" and journal articles directly on the topic can't gain traction in an AfD, then the problem is not "fandom".— eric 21:17, 26 December 2019 (UTC)

A scholar who is an oral historian could also be a fringe proponent. The two are not mutually exclusive. A famous example of this is the case of The Sirius Mystery. The main proponent of this claim was indeed an expert in recording the oral traditions of the Dogon people, but his credulity when it came to the plausibility of physical claims was another matter. It is perfectly fine to record oral histories and mythologies on Wikipedia as histories and mythologies. It is quite another to start discussions of the subjects of the histories/mythologies themselves. But we're getting off track, likely. jps ( talk) 21:23, 26 December 2019 (UTC)

Far from straying off track, you exemplify the problem.— eric 21:44, 26 December 2019 (UTC)

I'd like to bring this to some wider discussion.

Recently there was a discussion over at Talk:Planet_Nine#Primordial_black_hole about whether or not to include anything in the Planet nine article about a recent hypothesis published suggesting that Planet 9 could be a primordial black hole.

A bit of context: The publication in question was written by two professors, one from Durham University and one from University of Illinois at Chicago. It hasn't yet been published in a journal, but a pre-print appeared on arxiv.org. [7] This story was then picked up by a number of news sources, including most of the top quality science news sources in this field, as well as a lot of other reliable sources (and also a ton of other news stories picked it up as clickbait). Primordial black holes are of course hypothetical, and have not been observed, but the authors were speculating based on recent data from OGLE that had been suggested to possibly indicate a population of similar mass PBHs to the expected mass of Planet 9.

The paper has bee widely covered in the media, to the point that I've had to collapse much of the list below to avoid spamming the noticeboard with an overlong post. Also, the below list isn't comprehensive, I just stopped copying them at some point. Overall, the high quality sources have not dismissed the study as pseudoscience, rather they have treated it as an interesting idea, if an unlikely one with no particular evidence for or against (after all, all the evidence for Planet 9 is based on mass, and a 5 earth mass planet or a 5 earth mass black hole would cause the same observations). The main difference would be in searching, as the MIT tech review article points out: "One consequence of this theory is that Planet 9 will be impossible to spot with visible-light and infrared telescopes. That means astronomers’ current searches for the planet are doomed to failure. A primordial black hole would have a very different signature, say Scholtz and Unwin. They hypothesize that it would be surrounded by a halo of dark matter and that annihilation of dark-matter particles would generate gamma rays. This signal might even be strong enough to be observed by the Fermi Gamma Ray Space Telescope. Scholtz and Unwin say they plan to look for this signal in the Fermi data at some point in the future. That’s fascinating work that provides an entirely new perspective on Planet 9 and how astronomers should look for it."

Editors at Planet nine have been reluctant to include any mention of the study or the news coverage surrounding it (going as far as to call it "not-science" and "pseudoscience"). Particularly as Planet 9 is a featured science article. Currently the Planet 9 article makes no mention of the study whatsoever (though the article is currently at risk of needing to be protected due to the number of drive-by editors attempting to add mention of it, presumably after reading one of the plethora of news sources below). Quite a few reliable sources have reported on the hypothesis, and almost all of the reporting has been in a neutral or even positive manner, and as far as I know, none have called it 'pseudoscience' or 'not science'.

Some editors have suggested that it be included at primordial black hole instead, which does currently contain a sentence about it, though that really has no relevance on whether it is also included at Planet nine, or not.

The real reason I am here is that I want an answer to the question of what do we do when the editors on Wikipedia don't respect a hypothesis and decide not to include it, even despite a plethora of reliable sources reporting on it? Should we include mention of it? Mention of the news coverage of it? No mention of it at all? Does this cross the line of WP:NOTCENSORED and WP:IJUSTDONTLIKEIT or is it just an editorial choice? Some input from others on this noticeboard that have seen similar things come up would be welcome. Thanks, — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{( or here)}_{( click me!)} 03:29, 11 December 2019 (UTC)

Is there any reason why we shouldn't just wait until they publish? -- Guy Macon ( talk) 08:03, 11 December 2019 (UTC)

Guy Macon, Don't we prefer secondary sources over primary sources anyway? We can wait of course, but the way these guys are talking they don't really care if it were published or not. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{( or here)}_{( click me!)} 08:30, 11 December 2019 (UTC)

We prefer secondary sources that report peer-reviewed, published science. Pre-publication, not so much. We are an encyclopedia, not a newspaper. -- Guy Macon ( talk) 09:14, 11 December 2019 (UTC)

Guy Macon, We are a lot of things. Certainly the use of some news sources is appropriate in some places where it might not be in others. Are you saying that for science articles any news source is inappropriate? Or that the source is somehow less reliable when reporting on a pre-publication than they would be if reporting on a post-pub? Are they reliable sources or not? — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{( or here)}_{( click me!)} 10:46, 11 December 2019 (UTC)

I am saying that when the popular press gloms on to something a scientist says or writes outside of the normal peer-reviewed channels of science, they have a strong tendency to get it wrong. So what benefits the Wikipedia reader more, a site that posts Breaking News! This Just In! Alien Life Discovered!!! Stay Tuned To Wikipedia For All Of The Latest Scoops!!! followed by (Embarrassed) Sorry folks. We got that one completely wrong. When the paper was published it turned out to say "the way Starfishes move is so unusual it reminds you of some alien from a science fiction movie", but please continue to Stay Tuned To Wikipedia For All Of The Latest Scoops... or a site that does its best to get things right the first time? -- Guy Macon ( talk) 16:38, 11 December 2019 (UTC)

Guy Macon, I mean, sure. But I haven't suggested that we write a whole article about it, or give it equal weight with other hypotheses in the article. Or say anything more than what it is. At the talk page I suggested a couple sentences along the lines of:

"It has also been suggested that if primordial black holes exist (a candidate for dark matter) that a captured black hole of the appropriate size could also fit the observed data. The authors suggest that such an object, if it existed, would have a very different signature; being largely invisible in the visible and infrared searches currently being conducted but instead could possibly be detectable using data from the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope."

To fit at Planet_Nine#Visibility_and_location, though Planet_Nine#Origin could also work. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{( or here)}_{( click me!)} 19:02, 11 December 2019 (UTC)

Point of clarification, primordial black holes are pretty far down the list of candidates for dark matter. Perhaps just above dark fluid suggestions and definitely below sterile neutrinos. The authors connect them to dark matter because they would likely cause an overdensity in the local dark matter distribution and thus would, if dark matter self-annihilation is a thing (by no means a given), be a source for potentially detectable gamma-rays. This is a proposed test for their harebrained scheme, as it were. The paper is fine, but it is too cute by half. Worthy of a chuckle over coffee but not much more until there is some additional reason to preference such extravagance. Occam's razor does deserve at least some attention, after all. jps ( talk) 19:09, 11 December 2019 (UTC)

ජපස, I agree entirely on all points. The main reason that we should include some mention of it is because otherwise readers will be coming by repeatedly after reading one of the multitude of news articles on this and feeling that we are missing something and attempting to add it. Even if the hypothesis isn't respectable, we should at least say something, even if it is just, "another outlandish hypothesis widely circulated in the media proposed that a PBH could also fit the observed data, but there is no evidence supporting this". — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{( or here)}_{( click me!)} 21:01, 11 December 2019 (UTC)

People are interested in it now already. Did we wait for the Higgs discovery papers to be published? No. We had the discovery in the article the day of the announcement, it took months for the preprints to become publications. I can extend that list a lot if you want - if something is notable we cover it without waiting for peer review. Pretty much everyone in secondary sources agrees that a primordial black hole is a possible but exotic idea and the large range of coverage should answer any concerns about notability. This is notable in general, it is relevant for the topic, we have high quality sources for it, it should be in the article. -- mfb ( talk) 11:54, 11 December 2019 (UTC)

The difference is they were actively looking for the Higgs Bossen, as far as I know this is only an unpublished hypotheses. Slatersteven ( talk) 13:10, 11 December 2019 (UTC)

@ Slatersteven: Just as an aside (I haven't looked at this in much more detail), some of your "top quality science sources" are trash sources. I didn't look through the whole list, but I saw the usual churnalism suspects, such as phys.org, SciencceAlert, etc. These sites are are generally not reliable and should almost never be used. – Deacon Vorbis ( carbon •  videos) 13:37, 11 December 2019 (UTC)

I have not tried to add this. Slatersteven ( talk) 13:43, 11 December 2019 (UTC)

Argh, sorry, I apparently mixed up who said what. – Deacon Vorbis ( carbon •  videos) 16:54, 11 December 2019 (UTC)

We all make mistakes, no problem. Slatersteven ( talk) 16:56, 11 December 2019 (UTC)

Deacon Vorbis, I only listed a couple as top quality, though I did list the ones you said just before as 'generally reliable'. In any case, I'm not an expert on all sources and probably made a few mistakes categorising the list. I did my best. What I do know is that there are a hell of a lot of reliable news sources reporting here. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{( or here)}_{( click me!)} 18:56, 11 December 2019 (UTC)

This jolly hypothesis surely does not rate its own article, but with all the mentions in popular science news, it also ought not be entirely ignored in WP. Something short and noncommittal on the order of, "There is some suspicion that the source of the disturbance has gone undetected because is not a planet, but rather a primordial black hole" with citations to the best three or four sources. Jim.henderson ( talk) 22:03, 14 December 2019 (UTC)

There appears to be little in the way of clarity here (some opposed some in favour), I wonder if we could have a few more comments from people? The primary question is: "Should the Planet nine article have a mention of the PHB hypothesis in some form or should it remain unmentioned?" — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{( or here)}_{( click me!)} 18:41, 27 December 2019 (UTC)

There is zero such suspicions amongst anyone that is reasonable enough to believe that none of the asteroids in the asteroid belt is secretly a teapot. Headbomb { t · c · p · b} 18:43, 27 December 2019 (UTC)

This article was written by 3 SPAs and says things like, Ahsen grounds his eidetic theory in both Eastern and Western traditions of science and philosophy. In addition, it draws on the most recent neuropsychological evidence involving two-process theory and holographic images in the work of Karl Pribram regarding the brain and the discovery of fractals in computer science....These special images are neurologically recorded in the brain and systematically stored away for future reference. At any time, the image can be revisited and the details explored at will.

The article has been sent to AfD. -Crossroads- ( talk) 06:25, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

I noticed that the Akhter Ahsen redirect points to Eidetic memory. It used to redirect to Eidetic imagery but the latter was once a redirect to Eidetic memory itself, thus the double redirect was fixed then. Logs also show that previous article iterations were copyright infringements. — Paleo Neonate – 18:59, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

[8] appears to be a fringe theory, what should I do? I'm not sure how to engage with the editor about it. Clovermoss (talk) 00:56, 29 December 2019 (UTC)

it's unsourced, so I reverted it - if the drive-by IP comes back with a source, then we'll have something to go on - David Gerard ( talk) 01:37, 29 December 2019 (UTC)

Thank you David Gerard. I wasn't sure if I was suppossed to do anything different, so I came here. Having another set of eyes look at it is appreciated. Clovermoss (talk) 01:47, 29 December 2019 (UTC)

Another IP who needs science explained, or Wikipedia, or both. -- Hob Gadling ( talk) 12:50, 31 December 2019 (UTC)

Mars effect (  | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

Some additional eyeballs and input on the article talk page would be helpful. VQuakr ( talk) 17:51, 17 December 2019 (UTC)

I gave up on this article a long time ago. It is amazing to me that spurious correlations like this get any attention whatsoever. jps ( talk) 20:55, 17 December 2019 (UTC)

Does anybody have access to that issue of Skeptical Enquirer that's being cited there? When I see SE being used to support an astrology claim, it makes me curious. ApLundell ( talk) 21:28, 17 December 2019 (UTC)

I requested it. VQuakr ( talk) 23:02, 17 December 2019 (UTC)

Some background is appropriate here, I think. CSIOCP (the former name of the organization that publishes SI) was torn between two factions: the scoffers and the plodders. The scoffers were convinced from previous investigations that most claims of this sort were bunk and were willing to put their money where their mouth was/is. This was the origin of the now retired Randi Prize -- but the scoffers needed aid of the plodders (and sometimes scoffers, including Randi, acted as plodders) who would carefully design tests of claims that would avoid some of the common pitfalls. Crucially, the plodders typically withheld judgment (at least publicly) until the test was performed. Even then, such tests only provide evidence for the null hypothesis rather than disprove the existence of the paranormal. For the most part, these two groups got along, but occasionally the plodders would get involved in certain set-ups which suffered from unexplored issues. Statistics is the famous example of this (look up the history of skeptics becoming convinced by random number generators ala Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research). A rather hefty row ensued in the late 70s and early 80s between certain plodders who thought they came up with a rigorous statistical test and the scoffers who rejected the very premise of such test -- with some cause. There is a little of a Bayesian versus Frequentist argument at work here not to mention the problems that psychology has in general with statistical tests being used as evidence for things that are later found out not to be there at all. This fight more or less spilled over in the pages of SI and was not resolved in part because it threatened to split the community in a way that was a bit more dramatic than the Martin Gardner/Marcello Truzzi tiffs. jps ( talk) 14:53, 18 December 2019 (UTC)

@ ApLundell and VQuakr: I have a copy of the back issue DVD that Skeptical Inquirer issued a few years ago that covers all the issues from the beginning up to 2005 (volumes 1 to 29). So if you want something from an old issue I can easily find it and email you a clip. I wasn't clear on which reference you were talking about, the article as it currently sits references four different issues of SI - 2:1, 4:2, 7:3 and 21:6. Hit me on my talk page about what you need. -- Krelnik ( talk) 20:53, 31 December 2019 (UTC)

English Wikipedia's Menk article seems to be the target of repeated efforts to turn the article into a bigfoot-like creature and link it to the deaths that occurred at the Dyatlov Pass incident. I've actually posted about this here before, and @ LuckyLouie: made a great effort into turning the article around, but it appears more cryptozoologist users came by and removed his WP:RS-compliant sources and replaced them with more WP:FRINGE sources. This article could use more eyes to ensure that this doesn't continue happening. :bloodofox: ( talk) 05:12, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

Additionally, sections like Dyatlov_Pass_incident#Pseudoscientific_theories keep getting added to the Dyatlov Pass Incident article with low-quality sources. Seems like a straightforward case of WP:UNDUE (eg., the usual 'maybe it was a yeti!'). — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bloodofox ( talk • contribs) 05:16, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

• Vaimānika Shāstra (  | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

This article may need more page watchers in relation to WP:PSCI observance. Thanks, — Paleo Neonate – 06:54, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

I reverted an IP trying to call it scientific a little while ago. Doug Weller talk 09:23, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

Watchlisted. ∯WBG ^converse 13:25, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

Mass removal of Quackwatch on biographies of living people [9], [10] etc. This also seems excessive [11], Quackwatch being removed from external links section. This does not look like good faith, it looks like a vendetta against Quackwatch. Has been going on quietly for months. [12]. Many more diffs could be listed. Psychologist Guy ( talk) 00:50, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

• Yes. There is considerable controversy over whether QW can be used at WP:BLPs. I am firmly in the camp that it can and should for particular medical claims. User:Bilby disagrees. I think that it is inappropriate to have wholesale removal and I reject WP:BLPSPS as a blanket rule because of this kind of behavior. jps ( talk) 01:09, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

  jps, if someone is blanket removing Quackwatch under BLPSPS, it's best if that's undone as a violation of WP:SPS. SPS explicitly has the language that we can't use self-published sources as third-party sources in BLPs, not that such sources can't be used at all. It's a violation of that policy to say otherwise. That's in part why self-published sources get used with attribution (without attribution would imply a disinterested third-party source).

I may not agree with calling QW an SPS in its entirety, but that subject largely moot since that doesn't change its usage as a WP:PARITY source where we generally use attribution anyways. Kingofaces43 ( talk) 16:54, 31 December 2019 (UTC)

Problem is, WP:BLPSPS violates WP:SPS and most users (including a number of participants in this very discussion) think that the BLPSPS version should be followed instead of the SPS version. I am of the WP:IAR opinion. Policy is meant to be descriptive and not pre-/pro-scriptive and so, as such, I think using QW as an appropriate counter to the claims of alternative medicine proponents is pretty much what we've been doing for decades. jps ( talk) 20:10, 31 December 2019 (UTC)

We just had an RFC on this that determined that Quackwatch is an SPS,and under WP:BLPSPS we must "Never use self-published sources ... as sources of material about a living person, unless written or published by the subject of the article". That said, I'm only removing Quackwatch from BLPs where the content is authored by Barrett (or is a court record per WP:BLPPRIMARY), and I'm not removing content unless absolutely necessary - instead I'm looking for a non-SPS to replace Quackwatch, or using an existing source if it is available, which has been the case in all situations to date. In your examples:

• [13] Quackwatch replaced with another source that was already in the article, and no content was removed.
• [14] Quackwatch was replaced with another source that was already in the article, with no loss of content.
• [15] Removed an external link that was not used as a source in the article, with no loss of content.
• [16] Replaced Quackwatch with an alternative source that I was able to find, no loss of content.

This is very much in good faith - I'm not deleting content without making an extensive effort to find alternative sources, and so far in all cases I've been able to find an alternative in order to retain the content previously sourced to Quackwatch. - Bilby ( talk) 01:42, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

Bilby, I don't doubt your good faith, but none of those four examples are justifiable deletions. They are not even related to BLPSPS. You seem to be targeting QW as a source. That's not right. Please self-revert. -- BullRangifer ( talk) 03:29, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

BullRangifer, sorry that I missed this before. However, I'm confused. Using the first one as an example, [17], the statement is "Cousens settled the suit for an undisclosed amount paid to the family". Cousens is alive, so this is a BLP, and it is a serious claim. It is about Cousens, and is not attributed as an opinion of a third party. The source being used is this one - an article written by Steven Barrett on Steven Barrett's website, which the community has agreed makes it an SPS. Given that this is presented as a factual claim about a living person sourced to an SPS, that is specifically about the subject and not about the science, in what way is it "not even related to BLPSPS"? I've replaced the reference to Quackwatch with a reference to Phoenix New Times, and did not delete any content from the article. Should we use an SPS as a source instead of Phoenix New Times in spite of WP:BLPSPS? And if so, why? - Bilby ( talk) 05:21, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

I see what you mean, and maybe this is a borderline case. It's not a comment about Cousens, but a simple statement of fact. Barrett is not commenting on him as a person, just what happened. That's why I didn't see it as a violation of BLPSPS. The source you found is good enough as a replacement. -- BullRangifer ( talk) 06:03, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

BullRangifer, Most of what QW does focuses on the bogus treatments. The dangerous precedent we recently set allows the leading investigator and critic of quackery to be excluded simply on the basis that most of the crooks are still alive - in other words, in precisely the cases where it's most important to include reality-based investigation and commentary. Guy ( help!) 17:54, 1 January 2020 (UTC)

No it means we can only use it to comment on their theories, not them. Slatersteven ( talk) 18:00, 1 January 2020 (UTC)

Slatersteven, you say "no" in your reply to Guy, while seeming to address a different point than his. Just to be clear, are you also disagreeing with his point? I'm seeing mixed messages, but I could be wrong. -- BullRangifer ( talk) 19:21, 1 January 2020 (UTC)

Guy, I too see it as a dangerous precedent. "PARITY" allows us to use sources like QW in such articles. Since many of these articles, and their use of QW as a source, are ancient, I'm wondering about something. I have asked about this before but gotten no response.

Has BLPSPS been added since these uses of QW, or have we always interpreted BLPSPS to allow subject matter experts, in keeping with SPS and PARITY which allow the use of SPS subject matter experts? -- BullRangifer ( talk) 19:21, 1 January 2020 (UTC)

What I mean is we have not said QW cannot be used under any circumstances, nor that it cannot be used to comment on fringe medicine. All that has been said is we cannot use it to (in effect) call people names or criticize them as people (exactly what BLP is there for). I really do not see why we have to call Barry the Dancing Hamster a loony when we can just as easily say "The theories expressed by Barry the dancing hamster are lunatic". I just do not get the need to slag of the person. Slatersteven ( talk) 19:28, 1 January 2020 (UTC)

While I don't know of us using QW to make such outrageous ad hominem claims, not even claiming that "so and so is a quack") I do understand your basic point. I'm not opposing the judicious use of BLPSPS, but am skeptical of possible overreaches using it as an excuse to delete QW references, rather than simply rewording and attributing them.

Complete deletion, or even replacement, is rarely justified. If another source is found, just add it. BLP claims should often be backed by several sources anyway. The last time an editor searched and deleted nearly every single use of QW here, I had to examine each one and found only about five, out of myriad, that were justifiable deletions. The real-world war against QW should not be supported by editors here. It is part of the war against mainstream medicine and science, and it only serves to help frauds and scammers. The argument that because QW is "controversial" it should be treated any differently than other sources is absurd. Attribute its opinions and use its statements of fact as facts without attribution. -- BullRangifer ( talk) 19:53, 1 January 2020 (UTC)

I agree, it should be treated no differently, and that is what I have in fact argued for. I would also oppose any attempt to use the RSN findings as a means of removing legitimate criticism of fringe science. But consider the opposite view (we must be allowed to use it for anything" worse as I feel it plays into the hands oft hose who want to portray the project as hostile to fringe topics. Its one thing to say "but this is loony", its quite another to ignore our own polices to do it. That just makes us not just look biased but disingenuously biased. We must be better (and that means having more integrity) than the likes of (fill in your pet loony). Slatersteven ( talk) 20:01, 1 January 2020 (UTC)

Agreed. I just find it really ironic that we're discussing this on the "fringe theories" noticeboard, and are seeing attempts which literally undermine the purpose of this board, which is to seek to stop the protection of fringe theories and their advocates here at Wikipedia. QW is the most famous website dealing with that subject in health care, and those who attack it really need to examine what they are doing and who they are helping. They are helping an industry which rivals big pharma in economic power, and it's not aimed at helping patients, but enriching scam artists and disgraced MDs. -- BullRangifer ( talk) 20:05, 1 January 2020 (UTC)

What we can't have is a two-tiered approach to BLP, where people who expouse fringe views are not treated the same as those who don't. The policy is that we can't use self-published sources to reference claims about living people except when the subject is the author. Not that we can't use them except for people who have psudeoscientific ideas, or we can't use them except when we don't have a better alternative. We can't even use them as a second or third source - if it is an SPS written by someone other than the subject, the policy states that it is unusable as a secondary source about the subject. In regard to your earlier question of when this came about, the rule against self-published sources was added within the first day of the BLP policy being created back in late 2005 [18]. Prior to that it existed in a form in WP:RS, although not until after the Seigenthaler mess caused the community to rethink how to handle BLPs. Nothing has changed since then - it is just that sometimes we make errors, and we use sources that we either shouldn't have used at the time or where situations have subsequently changed in regard to the source. - Bilby ( talk) 22:32, 1 January 2020 (UTC)

Bilby, it's not two-tiered. Those who espouse fringe views are described using specialist sources about fringe views. We would not cite Martin Gardner as an authority about nuclear physics, but can happily cite him as an authority on fringe physics even though he was a mathematician, because he is a published expert on fringe science, as is Barrett. But now we can't cite a very highly regarded website run by experts on quackery to discuss anything that can be argued as relating to the person of a quack, even though most quackery has its roots in one person. That's a dangerous precedent - unless you're a quack in which case it's what you've been unsuccessfully demanding for a decade and more. Guy ( help!) 14:28, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

Small correction: Martin Gardner was a journalist, not a mathematician. -- Hob Gadling ( talk) 19:26, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

Slatersteven, or their claimed credentials or their history. Despite QW being the most cited source investigating these things. Guy ( help!) 21:13, 1 January 2020 (UTC)

As I said, we can still use QW about things, just not people. Slatersteven ( talk) 21:26, 1 January 2020 (UTC)

Slatersteven, as I said, most of the things are so closely tied to people that the distinction is meaningless. Consider, for example, Robert O. Young. He was the inventor of "live blood analysis", and any critique of that particular bullshit is going to be about him as well. This has handed a tremendous win to quacks and quackery shills which they have been pushing for since I first joined Wikipedia. We are now in a position where we cannot cite a resource that is used or recommended by government websites. Guy ( help!) 10:39, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

It does? ""live blood analysis" is a nonscientific medical treatment that Barrat has described as "highly dangerous and fraudulent"", how does "and he has called Robert O. Young a quack" add anything to that? We can cite it, it has not been banned, we just cannot use it to make statements about people (per our policies), if that is wrong then change the policy to say "unless by a recognized expert". Slatersteven ( talk) 12:55, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

Slatersteven, you also removed Barrett as a source for the fraudulent nature of Young's degrees. That is great news for Young, because Barrett is one of the best known investigators of the fraudulent credentials of quacks. Guy ( help!) 14:29, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

No, I reworded it so as to just say "Young's claims" without specifying them, thus being about his claims and not him personally. But I also note we have plenty about him being sued for Practicing medicine without a license. What more do we need then that, we are saying he has been prosecuted for not being qualified, really did the QW claims make that any stronger? This sums up my issue with its use, it is being used when in fact we have far stinger statements from pure RS, it seems to in many cases being used just to use it. Slatersteven ( talk) 14:43, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

You have been removing Quackwatch for months, long before that RFC. You also edited Quackwatch article to add criticisms. For example, you have inserted in the lead "although at times it has also recieved criticism for percieved bias in its coverage" [19]. That is a false balance. On Stephen Barrett [20], you added an "alternative view", "other authors have critcised Quackwatch as being overly biased in its presentation." [21]. This is also a false balance. You do very good work on this website and are a great editor, but in this area some sort of personal bias is visible. I disagree with the idea to totally eliminate Quackwatch from articles. Psychologist Guy ( talk) 02:37, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

I was replacing Quackwatch in limited cases with alternative sources as it was an SPS. That led to a discussion here, and that led to the RFC. During the discussion here and the months of the RFC I did not remove any Quackwatch sources while we waited to see what the consensus was. Now that the RFC is complete and consensus is clear I'm making sure that we use Quackwatch in a manner that meets BLP policy, per the community decision. In cases were it does - either because it is not a BLP, it is not by Barrett, it is only used to express a statement about Barrett's opinion, or it is used in a manner consistent with WP:PARITY - I'm ok with its use.

If you disagree with WP:BLPSPS you could start a discussion to see if there is a consensus to change it to allow sources such as Quackwatch on fringe BLPs, but the prior discussions were opposed to such a change. - Bilby ( talk) 02:48, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

Bilby, I agree with BLPSPS, I disagree with the assertion that QW is a SPS. Because it isn't. Guy ( help!) 14:30, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

Wow! That heading caught my attention, because the last time this happened, the mass deletions (which were nearly all restored) became part of the record of an ArbCom proceeding, and two editors who sided with the shamed deleter ended up with indefinite community bans. That is the harshest punishment we hand out here, and it cannot be undone by an admin, only by the community.

But...is this really what's happening? I'd like to AGF in Bilby and not believe it's really that bad. The recent RfCs about this revealed very divided opinions on the issue, not a clear consensus view. Nevertheless, there seemed to be consensus that we should likely not use QW for statements about the person, while we are perfectly allowed by BLP to use QW for comments about the person's dubious claims and practices. (It would also be better to attribute the comments to Barrett, not to QW, as he is the recognized subject expert.)

At Talk:Gary Null we have just found a Solomonic solution. Rather than deleting "Quackwatch has described Null as "one of the nation's leading promoters of dubious treatment for serious disease", we have revised it to say "Quackwatch has described Null's medical treatments as dubious" (or something like that, yet to be used in the article). That way the source is still used, but the wording redirected to the allowable target.

That is what Bilby should be doing, rather than outright deletions. -- BullRangifer ( talk) 02:53, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

In situations where that wording is appropriate, yes, I'm ok with that and would make that change. Where it is already being used that way I'm fine with it, and haven't been removing it. - Bilby ( talk) 03:00, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

Thank you. I knew my AGF was well-placed. I was the one who did most of the hard work restoring all those deleted QW references back then, over a decade ago, and it was hard work. I'd hate to have to do it again. Please go over the ones you have deleted and make sure there isn't a way to save most of them. It should be possible.

We value subject experts like Barrett, and he is the world leader on the subject since William Jarvis died. His books are classics. Together they were a powerhouse team. I remember when Jarvis requested that I write a book about chiropractic for medical students and health professionals. I wrote most of it, and then the death threats started coming in. I was plastered on the whole front page of a chiropractic magazine, named Chiropractic Enemy Number One, or something like that, and all chiropractors who read the magazine were encouraged to send in any information about me they could find. When they threatened my children, I gave up. They were watching my children's every move, documenting exactly their routes home from school and the timings. It was really scary. They act like $cientology when it comes to criticism, which is the modus operandi of cults. Well, that makes sense. DD Palmer talked about registering it as a religion and compared himself to Jesus, Mohammed, and Mary Baker Eddy: "But we must have a religious head, one who is the founder, as did Christ, Mohamed, Jo. Smith, Mrs. Eddy, Martin Luther and other who have founded religions. I am the fountain head. I am the founder of chiropractic in its science, in its art, in its philosophy and in its religious phase." -- BullRangifer ( talk) 03:24, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

I am with BullRangifer that they all be reverted and attributed. CatCafe ( talk) 03:28, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

Attributing is not always the best solution. In the current cases being discussed, I replaced the Quackwatch source with a non-SPS, and therefore attribution was not necessary and would have weakened the statement. For example, we are better off writing "Cousens settled the suit for an undisclosed amount paid to the family" and sourcing it to the Phoenix News, than "According to Steven Barrett, Cousens settled the suit for an undisclosed amount paid to the family" and sourcing it to Quackwatch [22]. - Bilby ( talk) 03:31, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

You are right that attribution isn't always the best solution. For statements of fact, not opinion, attribution isn't necessary at all. In that case the source doesn't need to change. If it had been opinion about Cousens as a person ("he's ignorant of medical facts", a "purveyor of dangerous advice"), then it would be wise to find another source and also attribute the opinion. This is how we do it with all types of opinion content here. That might mean attributing a different and toothless opinion to a person who is not a subject matter expert and clueless, but so be it, since that is the way we are interpreting BLPSPS. It still seems unnatural and perverse to me to eschew subject matter experts. Fortunately there are occasions when Barrett isn't the only mainstream quackbuster who writes about these fringe pseudoscientists and scam artists, but sometimes he is the only one. That's where WP:FRINGE's parity of sources allows us to use Barrett, as the mainstream POV MUST be heard as it has more due weight than a thousand fringe sources which push those false views. -- BullRangifer ( talk) 06:14, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

You may have it backwards - we are not allowed to use an SPS to make statements about a living person who is not the author of the SPS. We are not allowed to use Quackwatch articles authored by Barrett to source a claim such as "Cousens settled the suit for an undisclosed amount paid to the family". We bend the rules, and at times we use Quackwatch to source a claim about Barrett which applies to the subject ("Barrett has described Cousens as..."), as doing so is using the SPS to source a claim about the author of the SPS, not another living person. - Bilby ( talk) 10:37, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

Bilby, All this hinges on the incorrect claim that QW is an SPS. It isn't, regardless of how many people agreed it is. Guy ( help!) 14:11, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

I really don't see why it isn't an SPS - it is written by Barrett, edited by Barrett, placed by Barrett on a website owned by Barrett, and Barrett makes all of the editorial decisions, including whether or not to seek extra input, what changes to accept, and whether or not to ultimately publish his work. That sounds like the definition of self published. - Bilby ( talk) 14:23, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

Bilby, I know you don't see why it's not an SPS. That's part of the problem. Guy ( help!) 14:30, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

We need to be careful the RSN RFC said that anything by Barrett is an SPS (and thus cannot be used for statements ABOUT living people). Thus "Barrett has described X as... is a violation (as it is a judgement about a person). Anything not by Barrett on QW is not an SPS and is thus allowed. Anything about X's views "Barry the Dancing hamsters theories about..." are comments about the subjects views, not the subject are not a violation as Barratt is an expert thus his views on theories or opinions are acceptable. Slatersteven ( talk) 11:20, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

The way we've taken this before is to only use the SPS for claims about the author or general scientific claims. If we assume that we are using Barrett as a source, the article is an SPS, and we are writing about "Alice" who is a living person:

"Alice is an anti-vaccine advocate" cannot use Barrett, as it is a claim about Alice.

"Alice belives that vaccines cause autism" cannot use Barrett, as it is a claim about what Alice believes, not the belief.

"Vaccines have been shown not to cause autism" can use Barrett, as it is a claim about vaccines and Barrett is an expert in the field.

"Barrett claims that Alice is an anti-vaccine advocate" is borderline, but we've been letting that go, as the source (Barrett) is reliable for claims about what Barrett believes, even if that belief is about another living person.

The hardline approach is to say that we can't use an SPS at all, but in practice the moderate approach of using an SPS as a source for the beliefs of the author - even when those beliefs are applied to a living person - has been getting through, so long as it is clear we are describing the author's beliefs rather than making a statement about the BLP subject. - Bilby ( talk) 11:43, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

Much as I prefer the hard line approach (the law must be blind and all that) I think issues about claims as the the veracity of a persons beliefs are borderline. But we should remove all instances if "X is an..." As it is a claim about a person. The rest is (as I said) borderline and maybe needs further discussion. Slatersteven ( talk) 11:50, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

Slatersteven, I think rather than calling this the "hardline" approach it would be better called the "wrong" approach, since we had an RfC on this topic in which is was decided BLPSPS does not apply to people's work (see the section "Chill" below). If we're going to follow consensus it need to be done with integrity by respecting all relevant RfCs. Alexbrn ( talk) 13:55, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

Err I have never argued we cannot use it to comment about their work, only them. We can still say "QW has called his work utter crap" We just cannot say "he is a peddler of utter crap". Slatersteven ( talk) 14:00, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

Slatersteven, Good: just so long as everyone is clear it's not "hard line" or "borderline" to apply BLP policy to a person's work. It is in fact WP:CRYBLP to do that. Alexbrn ( talk) 14:07, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

Slatersteven, I don't think we were using it for "X is a quack". We were using it for "X dreamed up $QUACKERY one Thursday afternoon" and "X claims 93 advanced degrees but they are all from diploma mills", and Bilby's "consensus" won't allow either of these, as I read it.

Bilby is very diligent in protecting antivaxers in particular, keeping those of us who are firmly in the skeptical camp honest, but I think he is wrong here. Guy ( help!) 14:19, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

Yes, as they are still claims about the person, not their work. We can say "X work is $QUACKERY " or the issue of qualifications is harder to reword but why do we need this anyway. Surely its his work we are concerned with not as if people with them cannot be frauds or humbugs. Slatersteven ( talk) 14:26, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

• I generally agree with Bilby's approach here, which, it must be stressed, is to find and use a better source in place of the potentially controversial or problematic source. BD2412 T 14:07, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

Agree with BD2412. Whatever you think about QW, you can't deny that it is not an uncontroversial source across the community. We should be continually updating our references to include the best sourcing possible, even if we can technically squeak by with more controversial and/or lower quality sources. To argue that we should do otherwise based on one's personal opinion of the controversial/poorer quality source starts to get into WP:ADVOCACY or WP:POINT. GMG ^talk 14:24, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

Finding additional sources is fine, but preferencing the removal of sources solely on the basis of their "controversial" status is not okay. The question is one of reliability rather than controversy for the removal of sources, nonsensical categorical declarations from the WP:CRYBLP era notwithstanding. jps ( talk) 15:38, 29 December 2019 (UTC)

The idea to remove Quackwatch from Wikipedia biographies is probably the most damaging thing I have seen on this project. Plenty of articles are going to be ruined by this. Not just Gary Null's article that has plenty of publicity but many of the others. There's got to be around 40 or so biographies that are going to be damaged. Look at Kurt Donsbach for example. Barrett is cited many times on there. This idea to find replacement sources will not work in all cases. Barrett is an expert and in some cases is the only online source for some of these crackpots. Psychologist Guy ( talk) 15:59, 30 December 2019 (UTC)

There is no policy that says we can only use online sources. Slatersteven ( talk) 16:01, 30 December 2019 (UTC)

Eric R. Braverman has been nuked [23], apparently the consensus now is to not just remove Quackwatch on biographies but also remove casewatch.net which is also maintained by Barrett [24]. Even more articles are going to be effected. Have a search for casewatch, it is used on a lot of articles and biographies in regard to living people. The idea to totally nuke this source is problematic as outlined above as alternative replacement sources do not always exist. This is a serious issue and some people here probably do not realise how bad this will be in the long-term. The only people happy about this are the quacks who have wanted Quackwatch removed from Wikipedia since day 1. Psychologist Guy ( talk) 16:08, 30 December 2019 (UTC)

I am well aware that we do only have to use online sources, but in many cases Barrett's online articles in Quackwatch or Casewatch are the only sources that exist for certain information. Nothing else exists, or if they do exist are hard to locate. So if these sources are eliminated there is no alternative. Psychologist Guy ( talk) 16:11, 30 December 2019 (UTC)

Then issues of wp:undue start to come into play. Slatersteven ( talk) 16:12, 30 December 2019 (UTC)

It is censorship and whitewashing. We are going are have biographies of quacks or people pushing pseudoscientific views have valid criticisms removed from there articles and no alternative references replaced in some cases because none exist. So the final outcome is we are going to end up with biographies like Eric R. Braverman. There will be no mention of quackery on the articles at all. It is false balance. I just don't see anything positive about this. I think I need to put some happy music on because I am getting depressed. Psychologist Guy ( talk) 16:31, 30 December 2019 (UTC)

No it is not it is policy, again if you do not like it change the policy. How useful is any source that slags of the person but not their theories? Slatersteven ( talk) 09:09, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

I have said it before and I am saying it again, if you are unhappy with a policy argue to change it (in the appropriate venue) do not seek to get it ignored when it suits you. Slatersteven ( talk) 16:18, 30 December 2019 (UTC)

Yes I am very unhappy. You have campaigned for years to remove Quackwatch and you are getting your wish. Well done in destroying Wikipedia. Psychologist Guy ( talk) 16:32, 30 December 2019 (UTC)

I suggest that you re-think that, as far as I know I have only commented on QW withing the last 2 months. And I have not "campaigned for years to remove Quackwatch", my comment above (for example) is a way to allow it. All I have done is say "we must obey policy", I have not said if the policy is incorrect (or come to that, correct). The above is way out of line, I will say not more as we are not meant to comment on users. Slatersteven ( talk) 16:42, 30 December 2019 (UTC)

The idea to remove Quackwatch on biographies is destroying Wikipedia, yes that is my opinion. In the long-run we all need to think about this. Removing Quackwatch has only just began and we are seeing damage already. There is a prime example of it above and I have told you why. Neither you or Bilby like Quackwatch, that is obvious from your edits about the subject. I already gave Bilby a compliment he does good work on Wikipedia in other areas. You yourself an experienced editor have done a lot of good things on here. I am not attacking you personally but in this area I do believe the outcome is very negative and you have contributed to it. I have had emails with other users supporting my opinion about this, even support from medical doctors. They probably won't voice it here but I am not scared to. The damage has already been done.. But we can all look back on this conversation in a few years. I have other things to be doing on here, I enjoy creating article here, and there are many other topics that interest me outside of Quackwatch. But I don't agree with the outcome of the RfC on Quackwatch. How a consensus can be drawn from that is beyond me. Many people voted it was not an SPS. The RfC was not clear-cut at all. That's the worst policy based decision I have ever seen. Psychologist Guy ( talk) 17:17, 30 December 2019 (UTC)

This is not the place to comment on users, please stop. Slatersteven ( talk) 17:20, 30 December 2019 (UTC)

User:Psychologist Guy has hit the nail squarely on the head. - Roxy, the PROD. . wooF 17:25, 30 December 2019 (UTC)

Then get the policy changed. Slatersteven ( talk) 17:27, 30 December 2019 (UTC)

Are you addressing me? - Roxy, the PROD. . wooF 17:54, 30 December 2019 (UTC)

I am addressing you and everyone else who is complaining about this policy. Stop criticizing users for enforcing our rules as they are written. Slatersteven ( talk) 17:56, 30 December 2019 (UTC)

Why cant you indent properly? - Roxy, the PROD. . wooF 18:02, 30 December 2019 (UTC)

@ Psychologist Guy:: Saying that removing and replacing one source from a handful of articles "is destroying Wikipedia" will only destroy the credibility of the person making such hair-on-fire comment. Wikipedia is coming up on six million articles, the vast majority of which do not even have any potential use for this source. See my essay, Wikipedia:No attacks on Wikipedia. BD2412 T 22:18, 31 December 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia:The impending doom of Wikipedia GMG ^talk 22:54, 31 December 2019 (UTC)

Okay, you two, I get that you're cozied up with certain factions on this website, but I think you should address the substantive issues with what Psychologist Guy is saying. What we have here is an excellent web-based resource for identifying problematic content that finds its way into Wikipedia via the hoodwinked press, shiftier aspects of academic publishing, and absurd levels of self-promotion. Wikipedia should be celebrating the existence of QW and similar sorts of sites (Snopes comes to mind as does Robert Todd Carroll's excellent website and the famous column from the Chicago Reader: The Straight Dope). We need to be careful in our zeal for following the letter of hastily crowd-sourced policy documents written here. My concern is that we are tying our hands for no reason by removing QW as a source, and since it is impossible to evaluate the motives of those who engage in this kind of WP:ADVOCACY, I just leave it to you to think about what the long term consequences might be if we start to ignore WP:PARITY in favor of letting BLP subjects carry on about their beliefs without factchecking. I think that Wikipedians are wrong to preference WP:BLPSPS in the way they are and as WP:IAR is core policy for a reason, I think we haven't seen the end of this conflict. Simply dismissing one side as histrionic isn't going to help resolve the issue. jps ( talk) 00:32, 1 January 2020 (UTC)

Is this about removing QW as a source or replacing it with better sourcing? Because I was under the impression that the core of the issue was the latter, which is the same thing I've advocated personally before when possible. GMG ^talk 00:46, 1 January 2020 (UTC)

It's about both. Sometimes QW is removed and no better source replaces it. Sometimes it is removed and replaced with a source that is of somewhat lower quality (or is not quite addressing the content as written). Sometimes it is replaced with a source that says the same thing but, then, we're left asking the question "Why not simply add the source instead of getting rid of the QW article reference?" I am not here to say that we should never get rid of citations/links/mentions of QW, but I am of the opinion that the campaign as currently realized is problematic. jps ( talk) 00:50, 1 January 2020 (UTC)

There don't appear to be diffs provided to back up that summary of the situation. I'm not sure I see the grounds cited for not removing QW other than some users like it as a source, regardless of whether the community as a whole finds it controversial. The argument that this is the doom of Wikipedia is silly and I reject it outright without further commentary. (You may want to ping me. I'm not watching this particularly closely.) GMG ^talk 01:02, 1 January 2020 (UTC)

I would like to add the caveat that I don't object to the use of Quackwatch as a source if it is the only source available, and its use is qualified with the statement that the opinion for which it is cited is the opinion of the poster of the piece cited. BD2412 T 17:28, 1 January 2020 (UTC)

As I said, ignore the issues at your own peril. Giving succor to the outrageous contention that QW is somehow "controversial" is just ignorant, as far as I'm concerned. jps ( talk) 21:26, 1 January 2020 (UTC)

I feel like we might want to consider a broader discussion about clarifying WP:BLPFRINGE. Right now it says caution should be exercised when evaluating whether there are enough sources available to write a neutral biography that neither unduly promotes nor denigrates the subject, which seems relevant in the sense that removing Quackwatch could in some cases leave us without enough sources to do that when it comes to fringe theories. My particular concern is that many fringe claims get uncriticial mentions in non-specialist press (ie. by people with no expertise), and no coverage from the people with expertise to properly evaluate them. We need to be certain that we're not presenting them in a promotional tone as a result. The reason people want to use Quackwatch is because it evaluates claims that the scientific establishment otherwise largely ignores (and which achieve enough mentions in popular press that they might appear uncriticially here if we're not cautious about sourcing.) If we're going to avoid Quackwatch and the like, then we need to be stricter about entirely removing clearly WP:FRINGE material sourced only to non-specialist sources - ie. no sourcing a claim about a wonder diet to Newsweek. I would add that such claims should be omitted even as opinions if they are clearly fringe, are making exceptional claims, and so on - presenting someone's claims about a miracle pill, unrefuted, is still inevitably promotional. Something like "X says his magnetized ginkgo-leaf pill can cure cancer, depression, and AIDs" with no responses from experts is absolutely not OK, so in many cases removing QW will necessitate removing the entire claim they were being used as a response to. -- Aquillion ( talk) 22:48, 1 January 2020 (UTC)

Quackwatch is stil regarded as a reliable source. In your example of "X says his magnetized ginkgo-leaf pill can cure cancer, depression, and AIDs", we can use Quackwatch to then say "However, ginkgo-leaf pills do not cure cancer, depression or AIDs", or even "The belief that ginkgo-leaf pills can be used to cure diseases is considered psudeoscientific and false", as that is using it within policy. What we can't do is use Quackwatch to claim that the subject believes that ginko-leaf pills can be used in this manner - we need a different source to make the initial claim, but we can then use it to provide a response from experts under WP:PARITY. - Bilby ( talk) 23:00, 1 January 2020 (UTC)

Bilby, but we can't use QW to establish that $QUACK originated the bullshit, or that his claimed "degrees" are fraudulent, and that is a large part of what QW does - and also a part of why it's been referenced by other reliable sources. They have been suing Barrett without success for decades, and now they have recruited sufficient useful idiots to effectively neuter the use of QW on Wikipedia - and let's not forget that reflecting their bullshit as The Truth™ is a large part of their agenda. Hagiography or nothing is their aim, they know that reality-based content form Wikipedia gets high on Google and they really really want their unicorns and flying pigs to dominate instead. Keeping the coverage of cranks, charlatans, quacks and loonies scientifically accurate is a major success for Wikipedia, and undermining QW is a big step for them in pushing back against that. Guy ( help!) 13:58, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

QW isn't being neutered. It is currently being used on over 400 articles, of which 20 are BLPs that had or may have Quackwatch employed in a way that violates policy. So far, out of those 20 articles, 10 have been modifed to use alternative sources with either no significant change in content, or with expanded content about the subject. What that does is remove ammunition that we give to these people - we still say exactly what we always said, but now they can't argue that we're violating our own policies to do so. It is likely that there will be some cases in the remaining 10 articles where we will have to say slightly less because an alternative to QW cannot be found, but even then those articles will continue to make it very clear that the views of these people are fringe at best, and Quackwatch is likely to still be used in the articles - just more cautiously. - Bilby ( talk) 14:13, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

In that case, perhaps WP:BLPFRINGE should be updated to make it unambiguous that statements about a person's claims, statements, or things they believe are not WP:BLP-sensitive as long as they don't specifically mention the person themselves? I have frequently run into the situation where someone adds a questionable statement by a living person using opinion pieces or other so-so sources, then objects to the inclusion of any refutation with comparable sources (ones mentioning that person's claim specifically, so it's not WP:SYNTH) on the grounds that refuting someone's statement implies that they lied, or are wrong or the like and is therefore WP:BLP-sensitive. If WP:BLPFRINGE specifically instructed people on how to write refutations in a way that don't specifically mention the person who holds the belief or made the claim, and specifically clarified that such refutations are not WP:BLP-sensitive, that would solve a lot of the problems here. (Of course you still want the source making the refutation to be WP:DUE relative to the source it's refuting.) -- Aquillion ( talk) 18:49, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

• In essence, we can use Quackwatch when talking about a theory... but NOT when talking about a proponent of the theory. Blueboar ( talk) 23:47, 1 January 2020 (UTC)

That seems ridiculous. If QW says, "Dr. X's promotion of claim Y is in support of pseudoscientific argumentation." we shouldn't have our hands tied just because the subject of the sentence is Dr. X instead of claim Y. jps ( talk) 02:22, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

I feel we could still cite that with judicious use of the passive voice, eg. "QuackWatch's Stephen Barrett described such claims as pseudoscientific" so it's about the claim and not the person. The simple act of disagreeing with someone is not a WP:BLP-sensitive statement, otherwise we end up with nonsense like an editor adding "person X said [ridiciulous statement Y from an opinion piece]" and then invoking BLP to make it hard to include a refutation. -- Aquillion ( talk) 18:42, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

• Blueboar, virtually every one of these theories was dreamed up by a lone quack, and thus we gut the articles on the quacks and the theories because the useful idiots were persuaded (by Gary Null, a quack) to exclude the leading professional investigator of quacks and their claims. Guy ( help!) 10:42, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

That is a PA, we are not idiots and Mr Null persuaded me of nothing (policy did). Again we do not treat Mr Null differently from Mr Johnson or Mr Jung, BLP applies to everyone even the most evil man in the world (apparently Mr Null, but what do I know?). All I have said is that, treat everyone the same, and wither change policy or apply it fairly and evenly. Slatersteven ( talk) 13:00, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

Slatersteven, it's not about treating people differently, it's about the types of source we use. QW is recommended as reliable by multiple government and other official websites.

With Jung, there is a huge body of scholarly material on which we can draw. With Null, there is a torrent of bullshit emanating from the quackosphere and a few specialist skeptical sources that analyse and debunk, but most reality-based sources don't cover Null because his claims are patently ridiculous and motivated by an irrational hatred of the medical profession.

I can absolutely predict where this is going: we've been having this discussion for a decade about QW, but you only have to get the answer you want once and all usage is purged. I guarantee you that Science Based Medicine and the Skeptical Inquirer will be next on the hit list, and again you'll find a lengthy history of consensus for reliability consistently opposed by all the same people. I guess the technically correct term is actually useful innocent, which is closely related but less well known (as in: I did not know it until today). The term is correct though: propagandists cynically abuse the good faith of those who have at least some fellow-feeling. We have a few editiors who will advocate for anti-science bullshit (as we saw in the GMO case) but we also have a lot of what I think of as Marianne Williamson supporters, who like the fluffy "natural is good" worldview and don't look to hard at the abject nonsense that underpins it. This is, of course, normal for the entire world especially the liberal part of it, but hitherto we have successfully managed to avoid this false equivalence having meaningful effects on content.

Of course one can say that if no reality-based sources write about a quack then we should delete the article. That is a win for Null because it leaves the google footprint for his bullshit untainted by reality. So in the end it comes down to this: is Wikipedia's mission to inform, or not? Guy ( help!) 14:06, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

We are not here to fight to good fight or right great wrongs. We are here to inform, but that means we must also be credible. That means that if we have rules we must be seen to obey them, not ignore them when it suits us. All that does is undermine our credibility and means that people will take what ever we say with a handful of salt. Then we are no informing anyone, because they are not going to bother to read us. All they will do is read "We have heard for example from a Mr Bex Bissell, a man who by his own admission is a liar, a humbug, a hypocrite, a vagabond, a loathsome spotted reptile and a self-confessed chicken-strangler. You may choose if you wish to believe the transparent tissue of odious lies which streamed on and on from his disgusting, reedy, slavering lips. That is entirely a matter for you ..." and they will treat it with the same respect. When we become satire we have lost. Slatersteven ( talk) 14:16, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

Slatersteven, yes, and QW is credible. It is recommended by government bodies. It is not some rando's personal website. I am opposed to use of Gorski's blog and that of Edzard Ernst as sources, because they are self-published, but QW has always had a corrections policy and multiple involved editors. There is not a formal pre-publication peer review process, but content is reviewed at and after publication by experts other than Barrett.

Sure, it's an edge case. But the "consensus" went the wrong way this time. We have decided to second-guess very high level sources that recommend QW, and have done so at the explicit instigation of one of the most dangerous cranks in America, after years of trying and failing to bludgeon this decision through, including legal threats that were reviewed and rebuffed. Guy ( help!) 11:46, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

I do not care who "instigated" it, I am not here to poke Null or anyone one in the eye shouting "you cant stop me!" (and yes frankly that is a lot of the tone I am seeing here). As I said about another matter, if RS are ignoring then that is not our problem, get on to the RS and say "why are you ignoring one of the most dangerous cranks in America". We should not be trying to make up for the deficiencies of the media. I will continue to treat every subject by the same standards, no matter how dangerous they are. When our polices change I will enforce those as well, until then I will enforce the ones we have. Slatersteven ( talk) 12:01, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

• JzG, There's a load of stuff on Null at SBM of course. [25] Alexbrn ( talk) 14:42, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

That means that if we have rules we must be seen to obey them, not ignore them when it suits us.. I vehemently disagree. WP:IAR is a core pillar. jps ( talk) 20:49, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

And I disagree with you based upon IAR, so in order to protect the image and integrity of the project I ignore IAR. I do not see how having one line opinions from QW adds anything to most of the articles we are talking about, where he have unquestionable third party sources often saying the same thing. It makes us look petty and vindictive hence why I say we must be blind in our application of SPS. Slatersteven ( talk) 11:32, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

No doubt there are people who think that QW is a petty and vindictive source. Until WP:PETTYANDVINDICTIVE is agreed to as a standard, I'm not going to sweat what any of those mentioned on QW thinks about their inclusion in that site. jps ( talk) 16:26, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

I am not talking about QW or those they attack. I am talking about the casual reader (of our, OUR, not anyone elses, articles) who may wonder why we need to use QW when other sources say the same thing. Or why we need a one line "QW has said this about him" Or "QW has said that about her" comments like some kind of playground tale teller. That is what I mean by Petty and vindictive, and I will add childish. If this was not a breach of our own polices, no people would not think that. But they are going to ask "why is he being treated differently" its (I think) a valid concern about how this impacts upon our image. Moreover how this impacts upon how seriously people take our criticism of fringe medicine. We cannot afford to be seen as POV pushing. Slatersteven ( talk) 16:34, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

As part of my job, I work with casual readers of Wikipedia who are actively evaluating the content for other purposes. They never complain about too many sources on Wikipedia. Never. Removing QW is not on the priority list of any reader of this website except for those who don't like QW. No one thinks QW is childish nor does any casual reader know that something called "SPS policy" in any of its iterations exists. jps ( talk) 17:04, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

I never said anything about too many sources. Nor did I say QW was childish (and more than I said it was spiteful or vindictive). With this I am not going to reply to you anymore. I am not going to try and respond to counter points of points I never made. Slatersteven ( talk) 17:10, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

I did not start using these adjectives. You said that attributing statements to QW is "petty", "vindictive", and "childish". You are claiming that replacing QW citations is what the rules demand. jps ( talk) 18:27, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

Abusing the letter of WP:SPS

I can tell you that the lighthouse project has used a few technically SPS sources quite heavily, But since it's not a controversial area (except for using "X Light" rather than "X Lighthouse") nobody has ever pushed back against what is, outside WP, a perfectly reasonable use of a source. The thing is, those of us with decent education can tell that the people running these sites are doing things right. Kraig Anderson, for instance, supplies citations to primary documents on his pages; and I had occasion to exchange messages with one of the other fellows and saw that he was doing similarly substantive work. I agree that SPS sources shouldn't be used as authorities unless they can be verified (in the case of research sites) or unless others hold them up as authorities. QW clearly is covered under the latter, exactly as we don't automatically discount SPLC identification of hate groups even though they have some clear political biases. I note that WP:SPS states that "Self-published expert sources may be considered reliable when produced by an established expert on the subject matter, whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable, independent publications," or to put it in other words: if everyone else treats it as reliable, we can and should do the same.

I'm starting a discussion on resolving the discrepancy between the verifiability and BLP versions of things. It seems to be that the former's version of things is correct, and the latter's is at best dated. Mangoe ( talk) 13:46, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

You seemed to have missed the last line of WP:SPS: "Never use self-published sources as third-party sources about living people, even if the author is an expert, well-known professional researcher, or writer". - Bilby ( talk) 13:50, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

Which is why we need a community wide discussion and consensus about it. This is not some obscure rule found in some forgotten document form the 14thC, this is very much at the heart of out policies and would be a highly significant change. It is not something that can be overturned on some obscure persons talk page or on an ad hoc basis. Slatersteven ( talk) 13:58, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

I have raised the issue on the BLP talk page. Mangoe ( talk) 14:30, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

Bilby, SPS where you quote it is is explicit about not using them as third-party sources, not that they cannot be used at all. Current standard usage of sources like QW is to use attribution anyways and not treat them as independent third-party sources that don't need attribution. If someone is removing sources commenting on a BLP themselves solely because they are self-published, that's a a violation of WP:SPS. Kingofaces43 ( talk) 22:16, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

I'm very comfortable with that distinction. No, the sources are not being removed solely because they are self published - they are only being removed or the text modified if they are being employed as a secondary source about the subject. - Bilby ( talk) 22:28, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

Chill

My view overall on this is – chill. There are good (at root, legal) reasons why Wikipedia can't use SPS's for biographical material and while I think there may have been some question whether QW was a SPS in the sense that causes legitimate concern, consensus went the other way. However I not sure it matters much. QW can still be used for providing a counter to fringe ideas, since scientific propositions do not inherit the protection of BLP. There was consensus on this on an RfC around a year ago, when there was an attempt to get Science-Based Medicine (SBM) ruled out for commenting on Michael Greger's claims. Readers will notice some familiar names at that RfC. [26] The closer particularly commented:

I would also like I emphasize that there indeed is a difference between commenting on someone's work and commenting on someone directly. Wikipedia uses a similar rule in discussions where users are required to comment on content and not the user writing it.
After having read this RFC and the applied policy in question, the current wording of BLPSPS is worded such that this blog post is not a violation of policy as those answering no to the question argue.

So when commenting on someone's work, the full range of WP:PARITY-permitted sources is in play. I would note also that there is consensus that Science-Based Medicine is RS for altmed and is not self-published (see the entry at WP:RSP for details). In general, I prefer SBM to QW as an anti-fringe source since QW is getting a bit long in the tooth. Alexbrn ( talk) 16:42, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

There are good (at root, legal) reasons why Wikipedia can't use SPS's for biographical material I definitely don't think this is the case. The root of these reasons has nothing to do with the law. It has everything to do with a certain perspective that held sway about a decade ago and has taken root as the prevailing attitude. After all, "SPS" is not a recognized demarcation for sources in neither the journalistic nor the legal worlds (it's basically a Wikipedianism). Just because a source is "self-published" does not make it unreliable and there is no reason to say that a third-party source is any less likely to run into legal problems, for example. No, this is a cultural preference at this website and it is one that does not enjoy the unanimity of consensus that other rules do (such as WP:ENC or WP:NLT, for example). jps ( talk) 20:48, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

I think it stems from a too broad assumption that SPS means "some random blog", and the suspicion is that if such a blog's owner writes something libellous like "Dr Quack of Quackton is a paedophile" that it would expose the WMF if it got published on WP. By insisting on strong RS it becomes likely cautious legal eyes are in the loop and reduces the likelihood WP will publish such material. However the intent's got lost and the rule is now followed by rote, hence my argument (that QW is certainly attuned to the legal implications of what it publishes) got no traction. It may probably be better if BLP said that biographical sources used must have "an established reputation for fact checking and accuracy". But that ship has probably sailed. Alexbrn ( talk) 21:31, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

I agree with the assumption of what an SPS is being a bit of a problem here as that's morphed a bit in the last 20 years, but from the legal perspective, that is why we use attribution. Even newspapers have to say things like "police said X committed assault" to cover themselves, and we'd need a really strong source to say that without the attribution (if at all?). That's really the core of the caution about self-published sources that seems to get missed here all around. If we never considered WP:DUE and just grabbed anything saying "Joe Schmoe said Dr Quack of Quackton is a paedophile", then there could be issues. That isn't the case for normal usage of QW here though. The RfC you mention above does help point people in the right direction though, and I hadn't seen it before. Kingofaces43 ( talk) 22:29, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

This is why we may need to change policy, if it no longer fits the purpose. But no SPS was never meant to be about "some random blog" as it is clear we "Never use self-published sources as third-party sources about living people, even if the author is an expert, well-known professional researcher, or writer.". It always applied to otherwise reliable sources. Slatersteven ( talk) 11:27, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

Slatersteven, You are quoting something outside the policy. The policy itself specifies self-published "books, zines, websites, blogs, and tweets". QW is is little different to the kind of stuff suggested by that motely collection. Alexbrn ( talk) 12:59, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

Is it not a self published website? Ohn lets also point out this says "There is an important exception to sourcing statements of fact or opinion: Never use self-published books, zines, websites, webforums, blogs and tweets as a source for material about a living person, unless written or published by the subject of the biographical material.". So the only question then becomes (and RSN has decided this) is QW an SPS. Nothing says £unless by an expert" and in fact make it clear that in fact (pretty much) the opposite is the case. We do not take into account the quality of the SPS only if it is one. Slatersteven ( talk) 13:17, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

I don't think the question of whether Barrett is personally an expert is relevant. Alexbrn ( talk) 13:29, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

I agree, and that is the point. The only question that matters is does Barrate's article on QW meet our criteria for being an SPS. AS he runs the website and edits it its hard to see how it does not. But then all re are doing is rehashing the same arguments we did at RSN. Slatersteven ( talk) 13:33, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

Well, it's not what the section was for. The key point here is that we have already has consensus that BLPSPS does not apply to the "work" of living people, which some people are trying to argue for. If we're going to follow consensus we need to do it in all regards. As the to the question whether the policy/decision is right or wrong - I leave that to the sections above. Alexbrn ( talk) 13:43, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

Except I do not think it does, your link seems to be talking about this "Physician and skeptic Harriet A. Hall analyzed one of Greger's videos in which he claimed that death was largely a "food-borne illness" and wrote that while it was already generally accepted that plant-based diets with less red meat conferred health benefits, in the video she found "sweeping statements that go beyond the evidence," "unwarranted assumptions about the meaning of studies," and omission of "any reference to contradictory evidence"." which is not talking about the person but their theories" what we are talking about is "and Wauckqatch has said that Barry is a crank" statements about a person, not their views. Slatersteven ( talk) 13:52, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

Yes, I merely want to counter the argument I've seen being made by some that people's ideas inherit the protection of BLP (see above, about the "hard line" of not using SPS at all in "biographical" articles). Alexbrn ( talk) 13:58, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

Somatic psychology (  | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

Is this a thing?

jps ( talk) 01:43, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

See also: Body psychotherapy. jps ( talk) 01:44, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

"Reflections on Elsa Gindler and her influence on Wilhelm Reich and body psychotherapy" Seriously? THAT Wilhelm Reich? Surely this has to be fringe. Guy ( help!) 13:55, 9 December 2019 (UTC)

• Okay, maybe I can encourage you all to think more about this with a little push to a ball: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Neo-Reichian massage. jps ( talk) 17:52, 26 December 2019 (UTC)
  • See also: [27] jps ( talk) 20:03, 26 December 2019 (UTC)
  • See also: [28] jps ( talk) 21:32, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

See [29] which someone added to Pyramid power although it's now been removed. Doug Weller talk 09:11, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

Doug Weller, that's... special. Guy ( help!) 11:41, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

The abstract also appears to have been copied. While this is interesting it seems to have little to do with pyramid power claims, more about investigating for chambers and scattering and the energy does not originate from the pyramid, this is analysis of results when applying external radiation to it... Also a primary source. — Paleo Neonate – 12:03, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

At least that's what I understood, I only read the abstract. — Paleo Neonate – 12:14, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

@ PaleoNeonate: yes, that was my interpretation also. There was a similar sort of thing a few months ago with articles that weren't about pyramids producing energy. [30] Doug Weller talk 12:16, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

For a moment I really wondered what a brown motor was, but could find the answer in the archives. — Paleo Neonate – 12:26, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

Which reminded me of the "G-Zus file compactor" Amiga jokeware, which documentation claimed it could compress very large files to only a few bytes, that "brown magic" was used, destroying physical bits but allowing their soul to survive and be recovered at uncompression. It actually moved the file and created a very small one (with a ".god") extension that only contained enough information to locate and move the original file back when "uncompressed". Unfortunately I couldn't find an active link to the funny documentation, the archive was suppressed from this public archive (although still shown without a link) and even listed as a trojan here (the tester perceived the file to be deleted rather than moved). — Paleo Neonate – 13:20, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

SemanticScholar.org has the paper. [31]. It's pretty technical, so I don't claim to 100% understand it. I'm sure the methods they came up with is clever and potentially useful to people in the field, but it doesn't seem like they've found anything too surprising. Nobody claims that pyramids don't interact with magnetic waves. Of course they do. Everything does. The fringe claim is that they interact with magnetic waves in an unusual or special way that produces all sorts of magical effects. This paper does not seem to support that at all. Especially since it's not based on measurements, just simulations based on known physical law. ApLundell ( talk) 22:09, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

• Eva Frommer (  | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

To read this article, you'd almost believe that eurythmy and anthroposophic "medicine" were legitimate, rather than the ravings of a mad Nazi occultist. Guy ( help!) 23:08, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

Is "out-patient therapeutic milieu" the same as " Milieu Therapy"? ApLundell ( talk) 23:33, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

I think it's using "milieu" in the general sense. Milieu therapy is an in-patient technique. DGG ( talk ) 06:25, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

• Nevillean theory of Shakespeare authorship ( | visual edit | history) · Article talk ( | history) · Watch

Following an interesting thread at WP:RS/N I started editing this article in an attempt to use WP:FRIND sourcing. There is some pushback. More eyes from fringe-savvy editors welcome! Alexbrn ( talk) 13:32, 23 December 2019 (UTC)

Check out Talk:Shakespeare_authorship_question and the two latest archives if you want to see what you're up against. He doesn't understand how Wikipedia works and he's not interested in learning. Tom Reedy ( talk) 23:08, 23 December 2019 (UTC)

The impassioned rage of Stratfordians when challenged makes me suspect that their case is less strong than they would like it to be. Xxanthippe ( talk) 23:26, 23 December 2019 (UTC).

You mean anti-Stratfordians? Must say I'm a bit surprised this seems such a "hot" topic, but I see it's under DS. Things seem to be have made worse for this article by feuding on other parts of the Interwebs. From a WP:FRINGE perspective there really shouldn't be a problem eventually getting a decent article, as there's a fair amount of good secondary sourcing. Alexbrn ( talk) 04:31, 24 December 2019 (UTC)

I mean exactly what I say. Xxanthippe ( talk) 05:28, 24 December 2019 (UTC).

Interpreting people's emotions is a very bad indicator of the truth or otherwise of the positions they hold. Examining the actual evidence works much better. This is independent of who you are talking about. -- Hob Gadling ( talk) 09:42, 24 December 2019 (UTC)

I guess Tom Reedy is referencing me above even though I've corrected about a dozen factual errors on Shakespeare_authorship_question. First, when I did my degree in Linguistics at UC Berkeley I specialized in Lexicography and did my thesis on a comparison of English and Japanese dictionaries. I worked for several years as a freelance researcher and reader for the Oxford English Dictionary and did an internship in Oxford. Since that is the premier reference work in the world with the highest standards, I have some idea about how a reference work like an encyclopedia should be edited. I place accuracy above all else, because the mission of the Wikipedia is to be factually accurate.

The issue of sourcing is that Alexbrn has unilaterally decided that no RS written by a proponent of the Neville authorship theory may be used in the article. So the only sources that may be used are ones that describe those original sources. However, there are two undeniable RS on the subject of the Neville Theory. One is the original book, Truth Will Out by James and Rubinstein which was published by an academic press. The other is a section in the 2018 book My Shakespeare: The Authorship Controversy. This book was edited by a professor of Brunel University London, published by an established press Edward Everett Root, and includes an article by Alan H. Nelson, UC Berkeley professor and world-renowned Shakespeare expert. So the article in that book by Casson, Rubinstein, and Ewald is undeniably an RS source on the Neville Theory of Shakespeare Authorship, even though it is written by proponents of that theory. I am happy to share more on this as needed so we can work together to improve the article. Kfein ( talk) 20:01, 25 December 2019 (UTC)

[removed some comments to keep this simple] Kfein ( talk) 21:32, 25 December 2019 (UTC)

"The issue of sourcing is that Alexbrn has unilaterally decided that no RS written by a proponent of the Neville authorship theory may be used in the article." Not so. Reliable sources acceptable for use on Wikipedia articles are defined by WP:RS, and must be independent, secondary, and published by an established (as opposed to vanity) press. Sources for fringe articles must be carefully weighed. Being published by an academic press is one crtiterion, but is not probative in and of itself. In addition, material covered in fringe articles cannot exceed that which has been responded to in mainstream reliable sources, lest the article become a soapbox or means of promotion, which from your edits appears to be what you think is a neutral article.

Your first example is not an independent source, nor was it originally published by an academic publisher. Your second example does pass the bar. The discussion about what sources are reliable for the Neville authorship page is here. Tom Reedy ( talk) 21:38, 25 December 2019 (UTC)

It doesn't matter whether it was "originally published by an academic publisher". It was, so it meets that standard. But being published by an academic publisher is not the standard for RS anyway. The second source far exceeds the standards of an RS for the reasons described above.

The issue of only dealing with subjects brought up by independent sources is a separate issue. The problem is refusing to reference valid RS on the subject by proponents. It creates a bizarre disconnect where actual arguments and information in the books is filtered through secondary critical sources.

The discussion you reference clearly shows that Truth Will Out is an RS. It far exceeds all criteria for RS status. It is written by proponents of the theory, and must be treated as such, but it an RS and should be referenced directly in the article. Kfein ( talk) 22:45, 25 December 2019 (UTC)

I would refer people to my discussion of just one paragraph in Macdonald Jackson's review of Truth Will Out. Almost every word is factually inaccurate. By over-emphasizing highly polemic and biased book reviews, instead of referencing the original book, the article turns into a polemic in itself. We need to work to create a *good* article that is informative and focused on facts. Kfein ( talk) 22:52, 25 December 2019 (UTC)

Let me give a concrete example. Currently the article has this stub section: "Conspiracy. Part of James' and Rubinstein's proposition is that Ben Jonson was complicit in a conspiracy to conceal the truth that Neville was the true author of Shakespeare's works." According to Alexbrn uniliteral criterion, we cannot reference James and Rubinstein to find out what their arguments are for this "conspiracy". So the reader only has one side of the story. In this case, no side of the story.

Previously, the article had a quotation from Jonson's epigram he wrote to Neville in his 1616 Works. That is highly relevant and beneficial for the reader of this article. But we exclude this fact and instead have six people saying six different ways how they didn't like James and Rubinstein's book. Neutrality is lost, information is lost, and we just have a polemic masquerading as an encyclopedia article. Kfein ( talk) 23:18, 25 December 2019 (UTC)

You know, you don't have any idea of how to go about editing a neutral article, nor do you seem interested in learning what is and what is not a reliable source for Wikipedia beyond your own opinion, so I'm just gonna let administrators deal with you from now on whenever we disagree on editing the article. Merry Christmas. Tom Reedy ( talk) 00:24, 26 December 2019 (UTC)

• It would seem to me that a book by the person proposing the theory is a RS for what the person is proposing, no matter where published or by whom. It's not a RS of course for the fundamental facts at issue. And I would be very reluctant to say that a book published by a major academic publisher is not a RS, unless there is extensive and convincing evidence about it unreliability. Such publishers always publish after very extensive peer and editorial review. Pearson Longman, is a very reputable publisher of serious works, not a fringe publisher in the slightest. On the broader issue, in an article about a theory we should always try to let the proponent describe what they say; the more absurd the theory, the more it offers the reader evidence of the fringiness. It would seem to me that reading an article where a theory is discussed mainly by its opponents, tends to raise the suspicion of any ordinary reader thta perhaps there might be something to it. DGG ( talk ) 02:56, 26 December 2019 (UTC)

just the point I made above. Xxanthippe ( talk) 03:15, 26 December 2019 (UTC).

Thank you for making this point so clearly, much better than I was able. Kfein ( talk) 04:07, 26 December 2019 (UTC)

The WP guideline seems clear enough to me: "In Wikipedia parlance, the term fringe theory is used in a very broad sense to describe an idea that departs significantly from the prevailing views or mainstream views in its particular field. Because Wikipedia aims to summarize significant opinions with representation in proportion to their prominence, a Wikipedia article should not make a fringe theory appear more notable or more widely accepted than it is. Statements about the truth of a theory must be based upon independent reliable sources. If discussed in an article about a mainstream idea, a theory that is not broadly supported by scholarship in its field must not be given undue weight,[1] and reliable sources must be cited that affirm the relationship of the marginal idea to the mainstream idea in a serious and substantial manner. There are numerous reasons for these requirements. Wikipedia is not and must not become the validating source for non-significant subjects. Wikipedia is not a forum for original research.[2] And for writers and editors of Wikipedia articles to write about controversial ideas in a neutral manner, it is of vital importance that they simply restate what is said by independent secondary sources of reasonable reliability and quality."

And there's an entire section on what a reliable source is for a fringe theory article. In a nutshell, the source must be published by a reputable house, independent, and reliable. Then there's the issue of using primary sources, which the book is, and which is another can of worms. Tom Reedy ( talk) 06:30, 26 December 2019 (UTC)

All of that is perfectly consistent with referencing the fringe material in reference to points made by the independent secondary source. So if a secondary source references a certain topic, then fringe theory sources that would otherwise be RS are appropriate to be referenced. So if a secondary source says "The neville theory is impossible because it requires a conspiracy involving Ben Jonson" then it is appropriate to cite the fringe theory sources directly related to that issue. Maintaining proportionality, balance, neutrality, etc. DGG makes the point much clearer and better than I can. The Wikipedia article need to accurately reflect the fringe theory, and as you say, using the independent secondary sources as the guide keeps it from becoming a soapbox for the fringe theory. But there is a duty to reflect the fringe theory accurately in a neutral way.

Part of the problem here is that Wikipedia has a very broad definition of "fringe theory". And people mistake that for being equivalent to "certainly wrong and needs to be suppressed by a non-neutral article." That is the exact opposite of what we are supposed to be doing. Thea article is supposed to be accurate and neutral. Kfein ( talk) 06:43, 26 December 2019 (UTC)

There is nothing wrong with describing a book's content to the extent that it is covered in secondary sources. But using books that promote a fringe theory as the main sources for an article is not allowable under WP policy and guidelines. If there are no independent, secondary sources that cover a topic, then that topic is not notable enough to have an entry in the encyclopedia. The problem with this particular page is that the books were used to go into detail to effectively promote the theory. Wikipedia has had problems with fringe theorists who think that the encyclopedia is a place to promote their hobby horses, and from the looks of things they seem to be winning. The main SAQ page is a model of how a fringe topic can be covered in a neutral manner without resorting to using fringe sources themselves, except in noting their role in proposing the theory. Wikipedia uses a summary style, which, when used correctly, neutrally describes fringe topics.

I agree with you that there's not enough information on the Neville page and some of what there is one-sided. That is to be expected on a young page that hasn't received much attention from mainstream Wikipedia editors. Slinging aspersions of bias and unfairness is not the way to improve the page. Most fringe pages take a year or better to get hammered out to an even halfway-acceptable description; in the case of the SAQ page it took two, but in the end it was improved enough that it became the first fringe theory article to achieve FA status. The Nevillian page at the moment is essentially a Start status (Providing references to reliable sources should come first; the article also needs substantial improvement in content and organisation.), even though it's been rated C class. But trying to include every detail as related by the books that promote the theory is not an avenue to improvement; see WP:WEIGHT. Tom Reedy ( talk) 07:12, 26 December 2019 (UTC)

We cannot rely on the secondary source to account for the book's contents. That is not a neutral way of presenting the information for a fringe theory because the independent secondary source is by definition going to be hostile to the book. If it weren't hostile, people would say it is not independent.

I have not cast aspersions on anyone. The article as it currently stands is not neutral. That is not an aspersion, it is a fact about the article. it is an evaluation of an article that contains mostly criticism quotations about the Neville theory and very few details of the Neville theory. There are no details because a decision has been made that the only sources that can be used to describe the Neville theory are hostile ones.

The article could be made excellent in a matter of days if the arbitrary restriction were lifted on consulting he source material, guided by the secondary sources, as is common practice for Fringe Theory articles.

Also, as I suggested from day one of this unilateral rewrite, we should use as a model the other pages on the Shakespeare Authorship candidates. I was attacked for this as not understanding the Wikipedia guidelines, even though it is common practice for articles grouped together on a similar subject to have similar formatting and content. Which, of course, is just normal practice for reference works. Kfein ( talk) 07:30, 26 December 2019 (UTC)

"We cannot rely on the secondary source to account for the book's contents. That is not a neutral way of presenting the information for a fringe theory because the independent secondary source is by definition going to be hostile to the book."

So, you disagree with Wikipedia's rules. Then I guess you will either have to lobby for changing the rules and convince a few thousand users, or move to another wiki with more fringe-friendly rules. The second solution seems easier. You will share that other wiki with creationists, birthers, truthers, climate change deniers, astrologers, homeopaths, holocaust deniers, people who think that Venus was a comet once, people who think that Charlemagne never existed, and a lot of others. All of those have exactly the same problems with Wikipedia as you have now. -- Hob Gadling ( talk) 18:17, 26 December 2019 (UTC)

• Any source is "reliable" for a statement of what it contains, but the issue is one of weight. Wikipedia is meant to be a tertiary source, summarizing accepted knowledge about topics, and articles should be based on secondary sources. This is particularly important for fringe topics so that fringe propositions can be contextualized by the mainstream view. In the case of the Nevillian theory this is not a problem, as we have several secondary sources that describe the principal aspects of "theory" in detail. What we don't want to be doing is credulously expounding the "theory" or - even worse - developing new offshoots of the theory using primary sources which make no mention of the "Nevillian theory" (as was happening before). Alexbrn ( talk) 07:43, 26 December 2019 (UTC)

We must separate out facts and interpretations of those facts. The way you have structured the article is that it is suppressing facts because hostile critics don't mention those facts. They don't mention those facts because they are hostile critics and the facts are inconvenient for their position. I understand the need to not make the article into a soapbox, but a balance needs to be struck. People do not come to Wikipedia for expert opinion. They come for a detailed description, and that should include mention of expert opinion. You have moved the article so far in one direction it is just polemic now.

The main purpose of the article is to describe the Neville theory of Shakespeare authorship. It should do so while putting that into context. It should not be a non-neutral polemic piece designed to demonstrate that the theory is incorrect.

Let me clarify, I am not a neutral observer here. I am a proponent of the Neville authorship theory. But all of my work on the article has been to improve its quality and remove factual errors. I fully supporting improving it to match the format of the articles for the other authorship candidates. Even using some stricter standards may be appropriate. But what we have now lacks balance. Kfein ( talk) 08:00, 26 December 2019 (UTC)

The purpose of Wikipedia is to "summarize accepted knowledge" about topics, not to expound them in detail – especially not fringe theories. Otherwise we would have detailed descriptions of alien abductions, bigfoot sightings, and the testimonies of people "cured" by fake medical treatments. The concept of due weight is essential to neutrality and this is decided, by and large, by the attention given to things in good secondary sources. The thing with the Nevillean theory is that it seems every expert who's commented on it finds it risible - but that's reality, and not our problem to fix. Alexbrn ( talk) 08:10, 26 December 2019 (UTC)

Yes, that is your personal view of this, and that is why you have created a non-neutral polemic. The Shakespeare Authorship Question is completely different from things like alien abductions, bigfoot sightings, and fake medical treatments. The problem is that you have not understood correctly /info/en/?search=Wikipedia:Fringe_theories. You have categorized the Shakespeare authorship question as "pseudoscience". But actually, it is an "Alternative theoretical formulation". That is why Truth Will Out was reviewed in academic journals and is published by an Academic Press. That is why it is a source referenced by History of Parliament Online.

You should go on the talk page and read what I wrote about MacDonald Jackson's review and what you put in the Wikipedia article. What is risible? The first paragraph of a review with every single fact wrong? The rest of the review is no better. It is simply polemic that does not engage with the content of the book in a scholarly way.

The other basic principle of reference work writing is consistency across the reference work. You have completely ignored that by not looking to the other articles on the Shakespeare Authorship Question as a model. I explained this on day one of your rewrite, and you simply attacked me as not knowing how Wikipedia works. The style, balance, organization, etc. should mimic the other articles on the topic worked over through the years by members of the Wikipedia community. That is not just common sense, it is also PRECISELY how Wikipedia works.

I am not suggesting that higher and better standards can't be used in this article to more closely adhere to Wikipedia guidelines, but deciding that your personal view of those guidelines will rule, and that you will make unilateral decisions about how the article is written and structured without consulting anyone else, is neither appropriate not consistent with Wikipedia guidelines. Kfein ( talk) 16:24, 26 December 2019 (UTC)

Please see the book Francis Bacon’s Contribution to Shakespeare: A New Attribution Method by Barry Clarke published by Routledge for a very recent example of an academic book on the Shakespeare Authorship Question. You put in all of these insults about Baconian theory in the article which are completely irrelevant, calling it "discredited" and academic presses are publishing about it as we speak. The way you have approached this is not neutral. Avoiding soapboxing and original research is important and you are rightly trying to follow wikipedia guidelines in that regard, and the original article had issues with that, but you have erred significantly in terms of neutrality and balance. Kfein ( talk) 16:58, 26 December 2019 (UTC)

With 700-odd SPA edits under your belt, 124 of them in actual article space and most of the rest of them telling us how you've been unfairly treated and how the encyclopedia should be edited, we're certainly fortunate that you've arrived in time to set us straight on fringe articles. The reason why James and Rubinstein were reviewed in academic journals was because of their theory's connection to Shakespeare, it being the latest incarnation of the crackpot theory that will never die as long as human stupidity exists. Tom Reedy ( talk) 17:02, 26 December 2019 (UTC)

break

It's fairly rum for a WP:SPA to be giving lectures on "precisely" how Wikipedia works while edit warring their POV into their target article. If reputable secondary sources invoke Bacon, we can certainly follow. And all the "Shakespeare didn't write Shakespeare" movements are discredited. We have to be plain about that, just as we are for moon landings and 9/11 conspiracy theories, Holocaust denial and so on. Bottom line: Wikipedia does not indulge crankery. Alexbrn ( talk) 17:25, 26 December 2019 (UTC)

I think different standards of RS are being conflated. "for fringe view to be discussed in an article about a mainstream idea" requires that it only be discussed using non-fringe sources. However, I'm not certain that I can see a policy that prohibits the use of fringe sources in articles about the fringe ideas those sources are dedicated to. If such a policy does exist, it would seem to me to be counter-productive as it would lead to such absurdities as prohibiting fringe-related authors from be quoted in their own articles. ApLundell ( talk) 05:05, 27 December 2019 (UTC)

The issues would be NPOV, specifically WP:WEIGHT, and also WP:NOR. If some aspect of a fringe idea has garnered no attention in any independent source (which we could use), why should Wikipedia be the first publication on the planet to break cover? We are supposed to be a tertiary source; basing stuff on novel exposition of fringe material would make us a poor-man's secondary one. It is sometimes okay to quote the fringe original to fill in needed detail or provide context, but the backbone of the article should always be WP:FRIND sources. Alexbrn ( talk) 06:21, 27 December 2019 (UTC)

Ok, but sometimes "needed detail" can be a significant chunk of an article.

If an encyclopedia reader looks up a discredited idea, it's important to tell them that the idea is discredited, but what they're probably looking for is a detailed description of that idea. Because that's how encyclopedias work. Readers look up topics they want to learn about. ApLundell ( talk) 19:30, 30 December 2019 (UTC)

It isn't Wikipedia's job to make their arguments for them, which is what is being attempted on that page. If it's worth covering, a reputable source will cover it, and then we can. Tom Reedy ( talk) 06:15, 31 December 2019 (UTC)

Notable is not the same as non-fringe. It is Wikipedia's job to describe the topics of its articles based on published, reliable sources, even if they're written by loons who are outside scientific consensus. ApLundell ( talk) 15:45, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

Not quite. Proponents of fringe theories have used Wikipedia as a forum for promoting their ideas. Policies discourage this: if the only statements about a fringe theory come from the inventors or promoters of that theory, then "What Wikipedia is not" rules come into play. Tom Reedy ( talk) 02:56, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

I think that says "not quite" what you hoped it would say. I agree completely with that link's primary assertion that that an article's topic must be notable, and that third party sources must be used to establish that notability. But that's not what I was discussing. I was talking about using fringe sources to provide details in articles about that fringe topic.

If you'd clicked your link and then scrolled up a bit, you'd see that using fringe sources to describe a fringe idea is entirely permissible, provided the claims are described in the appropriate context.

Which is a perfectly sensible policy. It's not about presenting "all sides" or any similar nonsense, it's about providing useful, informational descriptions of discredited ideas instead of just saying "This is a discredited idea", which only serves to send people back to Google and from there to who knows what crazy source. ApLundell ( talk) 22:38, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

I understand perfectly what you are saying; I think the problem is that I'm not being specific enough of what I'm saying. The sentence you are referring to, Claims derived from fringe theories should be carefully attributed to an appropriate source and located within a context, is followed by an example: "There are extreme academic views such as those of Jacques Halbronn, suggesting at great length and with great complexity that Nostradamus's Prophecies are antedated forgeries written by later hands with a political axe to grind." You'll notice that the amount of detail is nothing like the detail of any of the authorship fringe articles. Take for example the Oxfordian theory of Shakespeare authorship—a quick glance will show that it's in extreme detail, so much beyond what is required that it is effectively a recruiting tool and (IMO) violates WP:NPOV. Try to edit it to conform with policy and watch what happens.

In the article this RfC concerns, Nevillean theory of Shakespeare authorship, if you look at the editing history you'll see that the primary advocate editor is trying to get in every tiny detail possible while limiting or disallowing any contrary views except for token criticism. The worse part is that the theory is a dog's breakfast of ideas purloined from other theories with no coherence whatsoever. I've been through this time and again and it's just tiresome to keep fighting the same battle. In the past 10 years Wikipedia has become a promotional vehicle for every nutcase theory and burgeoning actor or musician and after a while editors just get worn out. Tom Reedy ( talk) 00:41, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

Tom Reedy is pointing out that we have a lot of WP:POV Forks masquerading as content forks. Perhaps we should have an omnibus AfD case? jps ( talk) 01:32, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

We had huge arbitration nine years ago. It helped, especially in this area, but as far as fringe topics in general, there seems to be no end to how many advocates believe that "their" Wikipedia page should contain every argument and media mention they can pack in. This particular article is incoherent because any- and everything is being thrown hoping it sticks and the talkpage is the veritable wall of text.

The underlying problem, which can be borne out by reviewing the history of this page, is that "the encyclopedia that anyone can edit" becomes not an island of rational thought and a learning resource, but a reflection of the world at large, and there aren't enough thumbs to plug all the dikes holding back the deluge of the 21st-century dark age. Tom Reedy ( talk) 05:17, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

My impression is that fringe theories are held in check pretty well here, but that is probably because I focus on different areas - I have only read one book about the Shakespeare authorship question (Contested Will, by Shapiro). I guess there are not enough Shakespeare scholars editing WP, while technically and scientifically minded users are in abundance. So, the anti-fringe crowd has not enough knowledgeable personnel in the SAQ. -- Hob Gadling ( talk) 07:05, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

A few AfDs could use input from editors familiar with WP:NFRINGE:

• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Buru (legendary creature)
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Kongamato
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Umdhlebi
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Bergman's bear
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/MacFarlane's bear
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Olitiau – dlthewave ☎ 13:35, 1 January 2020 (UTC)

@ Dlthewave: What do you think of Chuchuna? I remember that you tagged it for proposed deletion but that it was contested. I'd probably support AfD with redirect to Yeti, personally. I suggested to the editor who contested it to append a few sources at the bottom, but nothing so far... Thanks, — Paleo Neonate – 04:58, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

I second that. :bloodofox: ( talk) 05:13, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

Maybe WP:TRANSLATETOHERE? ru:Чучуна google tranlate looks a whole lot better. In english the best source looks like the staff of Nature mocking the soviets.— eric 11:07, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

The translate template has already been added by a bot. The Russian source is available here. That cover photo does not inspire confidence, but it was originally this. The conclusion seems to be the sightings were «худые» чукчи. Chukchi who were separated from and could not return to their homes. If it's redirected to Yeti then wouldn't Wikipedia be pushing the fringe view?— eric 13:27, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Chuchuna – dlthewave ☎ 13:32, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
• Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Great_Spider Jba fofi is back, need more powerful bug spray.— eric 14:34, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Sucuriju gigante and another Giant Anaconda.— eric 17:28, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

Moving some crytids to draft space

I like the idea of putting good neutral content in place of crytid articles, if there is any to be found. In my opinion it's better that readers looking up Chuchuna see something along the lines of wild man rather than being redirected to Yeti or the horrid List of cryptids. I have been thinking though about the amount of work this creates, and time wasted on Afd's arguing to keep an obviously junk article full of fringe sources that possibly could be good in the future. I feel bad about arguing to keep Chuchuna when i can't actually translate it myself. Would a better option be to move articles such as Buru (legendary creature), Umdhlebi, Chuchuna, maybe MacFarlane's bear to draft space? Then once a neutral article is created list it here for a quick look?— eric 13:58, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

We often do this for new articles that are not ready, so it can then expire for WP:G13 if unattended. No mainspace to draftspace redirect is kept though ( WP:R2). If articles are older, draftify is still one of the possible !vote options (and sometimes boldly done like a merge, if noone reverts then it sticks)... I wouldn't personally object, but they could vanish in six months. — Paleo Neonate – 15:47, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

I know what you mean, and this is a major undertaking. Solid articles could exist for many of these entities, especeially those that seem to stem from folklore in, say, the Congo, but either we're being swarmed with junk sources from cryptozoologists and their proponents, or reliable sources on these topics are exceedingly difficult to acess (or simply don't exist). It's an unfortunate situation. :bloodofox: ( talk) 18:25, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

Draftspace seems like a good option for articles that could be improved. I'm not sure how active Wikiproject Folklore is, but they might be a better resource for finding sources and rewriting articles. Umdhlebi in particular is an example of what appears to be a real species surrounded by interesting folklore that's been overrun by cryptozoological interests. – dlthewave ☎ 17:23, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

The WikiProject is pretty new, I created it sometime within the last few years while writing some core folklore-related articles. However, I find that WikiProjects in general have never really functioned as more than an index or place to put useful resources. :bloodofox: ( talk) 23:26, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

Over at Yule log, we have a user holding an RfC (@ 1990'sguy:) in an attempt to add stuff from fringe publisher Llewellyn Worldwide ( Raven Grimassi, fringe examples from the publisher) and other stuff from nonexperts with evangelical Christian publisher deals. The user's rational? Llewellyn Worldwide is perfectly acceptable, despite all the pseudoscience, and the Christian authors are experts because they're Christians and therefore the final word on Christian tradition, and WP:UNDUE does not apply. In fact, the user wants a quote from this random guy about how the Yule log symbolizes 'a battle of good versus evil' in the lead and cits an evangalical historian on how the Yule log may have 'enfeebled version of the ancient Celtic human sacrifice' (which displays a keen lack of historical knowledge, mixing up Celtic with Germanic, while also raising the usual 'paganism = human sacrifice!' red flag one finds in evangelical circles on this topic). While this user's attempts have been rebuffed at every corner so far, his most recent RfC has been attracting drive-by editors who see some of the publishers and just assume they're 'good enough'. Needs more eyes. :bloodofox: ( talk) 17:41, 6 January 2020 (UTC)

Other than the RFC linked above is this RSN discussion. — Paleo Neonate – 08:11, 7 January 2020 (UTC)

• Johann Bessler ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs) (via the COI noticeboard)

Bit of a slow-motion edit war going on. XOR'easter ( talk) 02:04, 6 January 2020 (UTC)

Note: also at COIN (discussion) already. The editor appears to have been properly warned, remains to see if promotion will persist... — Paleo Neonate – 08:05, 7 January 2020 (UTC)

Maybe he's taking his wheels and going home. My research is, essentially, TOO advanced at this time!, etc. (And no, his proposal for how it isn't technically perpetual motion doesn't make sense.) XOR'easter ( talk) 14:54, 7 January 2020 (UTC)

• Kambo cleanse ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

Some extra eyes may be needed here regarding recent edits, thanks. [32] [33] SpicyMilkBoy ( talk) 06:07, 8 January 2020 (UTC)

I've just pulled several fringe sources from British big cats, usually some variation comparable to bigcats.com. What's left seems to be a bunch of poor quality tabloid and media sources stitched together to produce a classic list of purported "sightings"—what one typically encounters with these old fringe articles on Wikipedia. Now, there are reliable secondary sources out there on this topic, wherein, say, folklorists discuss this phenomenon and place these claims of "sightings" into appropriate historical and cultural context. It's interesting stuff. The article really needs to be rewritten using reliable secondary sources, but in the mean time could use more eyes. :bloodofox: ( talk) 03:54, 9 January 2020 (UTC)

• Simple Theory of Difficult Meanings ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
• Imbit ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

Noticed via the robot report. XOR'easter ( talk) 20:53, 8 January 2020 (UTC)

I'm a little late here, but are we sure speedy-delete was the right thing to do? It looked like only a few sentences about the published book were copy-vio? (From an Amazon listing.)

The rest was nonsense, of course, but it disappeared before I could figure out if it was notable nonsense or not. ApLundell ( talk) 21:53, 8 January 2020 (UTC)

I couldn't find anything indicating that it was notable nonsense. The articles were both promoted from draft into main by their creator after being turned down at AFC for lacking secondary sources. XOR'easter ( talk) 22:12, 8 January 2020 (UTC)

Simple Theory of Difficult Meanings has been recreated. XOR'easter ( talk) 16:28, 9 January 2020 (UTC)

The first speedy delete was questionable as the user here seems to be the author of the book, but that makes it obvious self-promotion and I see zero external reception. Obvious speedy deletion case. -- mfb ( talk) 20:36, 9 January 2020 (UTC)

• Riko Muranaka (  | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

If anyone is familiar with this case, can they review the biography please? A lot of it is written in poor English and it's unclear what's being said. Guy ( help!) 13:34, 7 January 2020 (UTC)

Adding: Gardasil#Japan seems related. — Paleo Neonate – 16:22, 7 January 2020 (UTC)

Update: I tried to improve it, but biographies are not my forte and review is welcome, — Paleo Neonate – 08:00, 11 January 2020 (UTC)

• Unofficial Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 disappearance theories (  | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

I think this title could use some work... Guy ( help!) 23:29, 7 January 2020 (UTC)

WP:POVFORK of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. Was formerly Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 conspiracy theories, went to AfD but closed with no consensus. - LuckyLouie ( talk) 23:49, 7 January 2020 (UTC)

Malaysia's government has not seemed like they were super interested in getting to the bottom of this, so I appreciate the desire for "unofficial" theories...

But I would have hoped those theories would come from foreign government agencies, or at least noted experts. Some of these are just "Some random non-expert proposed a crazy idea that couldn't be true". They verge on just being reddit-lore.

On the other hand, I'll grant that they're not all conspiracy theories, so I guess the name 2014 name change was justified. ApLundell ( talk) 00:49, 8 January 2020 (UTC)

Probably that the lead should at least make clear that some debris confirmed as being from the crash were found... — Paleo Neonate – 09:33, 11 January 2020 (UTC)

Eric R. Braverman, a notable physician accused of quackery has had his page white-washed. All critical material has been removed. Psychologist Guy ( talk) 14:45, 27 December 2019 (UTC)

This may be due to the recent RFC about Quackwatch. Blueboar ( talk) 15:55, 27 December 2019 (UTC)

It is more than that, this is pure whitewashing [34]. The idea is to remove any critical material on Braverman. The user who removed all the sources edit summary was [35] "Poorly sourced and probably maliciously posted by subject's ex-wife". Bizarre. Psychologist Guy ( talk) 16:34, 27 December 2019 (UTC)

• There is something strange happening with the user account in question. See, for example, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Sebastian Doggart and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Nike Doggart. I have informed them of my concerns on their user talkpage. jps ( talk) 17:46, 27 December 2019 (UTC)

  What hasany of this got to do with Psychologist Guy? Slatersteven ( talk) 18:07, 27 December 2019 (UTC)

  No he is not referring to me. The account in question is an account called Oxford2008, he whitewashed the Braverman article and has some other suspicious edits. Psychologist Guy ( talk) 18:29, 27 December 2019 (UTC)

  If anyone's investigating all this, see also Isaacnewton7 ( talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log), same articles, same questionable public domain release of pictures of Doggart, etc. – Deacon Vorbis ( carbon •  videos) 18:38, 27 December 2019 (UTC)

  • Yuck. There are some really problematic things happening with these accounts. See Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Oxford2008. jps ( talk) 19:52, 27 December 2019 (UTC)

Fringe filmmaking

There are some vaguely conspiratorial films made by Sebastian Doggart propped up by this farm that I've put up for deletion and are likely of relevance to this board: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/True Bromance, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Courting Condi, and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/American Faust: From Condi to Neo-Condi. jps ( talk) 19:58, 27 December 2019 (UTC)

The first round of deletion discussions have completed, but there are a few for which AfD closers have asked for more input:

• Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Sebastian_Doggart
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Courting Condi
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Nike Doggart (This article is not strictly WP:FRINGE related, IMO, but it was created by the same sockfarm out with some obvious WP:SOAP intentions.)

As always, wise analysis and careful, policy-based arguments would be appreciated.

jps ( talk) 20:30, 6 January 2020 (UTC)

Additionally, any comments at all other than my own on this discussion of a related template would be appreciated:

• Wikipedia:Templates_for_discussion/Log/2020_January_5#Template:Sebastian_Doggart

jps ( talk) 20:37, 6 January 2020 (UTC)

Final round relisting:

• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Courting Condi. jps ( talk) 20:24, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

There is a noticeboard discussion regarding the use of Climate Feedback and InsideClimate News to describe the accuracy of claims made by proponents of climate change denial. If you are interested, please participate at WP:BLPN § Accuracy of claims made by climate change deniers. —  Newslinger  talk 10:49, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

• Farrell Till (  | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

It's already on the alerts list above, but since I'm not sure it's enough I'm also posting the notice here. About a skeptic, but with suboptimal sources and apparent COI history. Currently at AfD here. — Paleo Neonate – 20:24, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

Homeopathy used to be one of the Natural sciences good articles, but it was removed from the list in 2012. I believe that the issues that led to delistment had since been corrected, and I renominated the article back to GA. Is someone willing to review this nomination? It's a highly visible article, so it should be up to the highest standards. Heptor ( talk) 11:02, 11 January 2020 (UTC)

Heptor, good luck persuading quackery shills. Guy ( help!) 23:30, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

Thaanks :D Heptor ( talk) 23:37, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

I also think it's a difficult candidate for GA, I remember once recommending to an editor to try another article (I don't remember if it was Heptor at the time [nope, not me --H]). When honest reviewers have the impression that to meet NPOV the article should describe it as a scientific theory and detail its tenets, or that it should have a rebutal for every criticism resulting in false equivalence, that the article's history and talk page have active seemingly endless debates (not really an article in a stable state)... If it fails, we must also consider that GA has goals that do not always result in the best outcome for all articles, depending on topic, so it's not necessarily a defeat. — Paleo Neonate – 12:26, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

If the criteria for GA lead to some articles being made worse, then the criteria should be changed. -- Hob Gadling ( talk) 06:52, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

Couldn't we try? I haven't recently seen any of the established users argue for what you mentioned about describing the subject matter as a scientific theory. Maybe the orange boxes on top of the talk page are doing their job? The article has been stable for the last couple of months. The last significant edit war was about the use of the picture of Hahnemann to illustrate the article. Before that, as it happens, mr Guy used to revert me quite a lot. Heptor ( talk) 23:21, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

Needs a look over, a sizable chunk of the article seems to be sources to a couple of student papers by someone called Marko Šarić. Slatersteven ( talk) 12:54, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

It seems to me that this calling a person with a Master’s degree “student” is a BLP violation. This "student" from 1992 until 1998 studied History and Polish language at the Faculty of Philosophy (University of Zagreb). Graduated in 1998 with the topic "Social Relations and Conflicts in the Lika-Krka sanjak in the 16th Century and the Beginning of the 17th Century.” In October 2005 he achieved MA degree with the thesis ‘Dinaric Vlachs between the Ottoman Empire and Venice: History of Legal Institutions in the Military Border Society (15th-17th Centuries)’. [36] Some years later (2007 or 2009) he published an article 'Premodern ethnic groups in Lika and Krbava according to census from 1712./14'. [37]. What is suspicious? All these questions were already asked to Slatersteven [38], but they remained unanswered. It looks like pure WP:IDONTLIKEIT.-- Nicoljaus ( talk) 13:32, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

In 2010 he defended his doctoral dissertation: Vlachs on the Triplex Confinium: coexistence in clashes in borders societies and cultures of the Morlakia (16th-17th century)) [39].-- Nicoljaus ( talk) 13:44, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

The paper is from 2007 and was probably in preparation for a year or two. That paper is about ethnicities in Lika area and as I noticed information from that paper cover whole article or a good part. Title of the article is "Vlachs in the history of Croatia" and Vlachs exist and in other parts of Croatia(Slavonia, Dalmatia, Kordun, Banovina, Gorski Kotar, northwestern Croatia, Žumberak, Croatian Littoral however his paper deals with the Lika census(1712) and ethnicities ie only from Lika area. I noticed that in paper are mentioned Serbian Orthodox Vlachs although Austrian historian Karl Kaser in book (Lika census(1712) mentions Vlachs Schismatics which he considers to be members of the Greek Orthodox population. That term "Serbian Orthodox Vlachs" I did not notice that is used by Croatian historians. This is what i noticed at first. Mikola22 ( talk) 15:07, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

to be members of the Greek Orthodox population -- Here was extended explanation: Talk:Vlachs_in_the_history_of_Croatia#Serbian_Orthodox, but Mikola22 WP:NOTLISTENING, as usual.-- Nicoljaus ( talk) 15:48, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

It is Austro-Hungaria, in those years Serbian Orthodox Church was just entering in that area and these inhabitants are from a time when that church is not yet in existence. It is not Turkish but Austro-Hungarian territory. The Austrian historian did not say that without some facts from that time and area. Sources mentione Vlachs Schismatics not Vlachs Serbian Orthodox. "In 1766, when the autocephalous Serbian Patriarchate of Peć was abolished, Eparchy of Dabar-Bosnia and all other Serbian eparchies under Ottoman rule came under the jurisdiction of Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople" ^[1] I finish answering. Mikola22 ( talk) 16:08, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

when that church is not yet in existence. -- Funny news, see Serbian Patriarchate of Peć#Early Modern Period (1557-1766). Also, "In 1766 ... came under" means that previously they were not there. -- Nicoljaus ( talk) 16:17, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

Can we please let third parties look at this? Slatersteven ( talk) 15:15, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

I only see one from Šarić used, published in conference proceedings, while "faculty" and not republished that I can find. I only see one on target citation in scholar and that is also in proceedings. As the author admits “Vlaško pitanje” je zasigurno jedno od najvećih izvora ne-slaganja i opterećenja u hrvatskoj i srpskoj historiografiji. Does not seem appropriate, especially highlighted with in text attribution. Was there another paper by Šarić used?— eric 17:12, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

I only see one from Šarić used --What do you mean with this "used"? Citations are easily searched at Scholar, and there are more than one. I also did not understand what was criminal in the above quote.-- Nicoljaus ( talk) 21:18, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

I meant that i only saw one article by Šarić used within the Wikipedia article, while Slatersteven mentioned two papers. Scholar will not find all citations, but of those results only one cited the correct paper and had a similar usage to that of the article. The is nothing "criminal" in the quotation, just a straightforward acknowledgment by Šarić that his is disagreeing with earlier works on a contentious topic.— eric 22:37, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

Oh, thank you, I did not understand that we are talking about using it on Wikipedia. The is nothing "criminal" in the quotation, just a straightforward acknowledgment by Šarić that his is disagreeing with earlier works on a contentious topic. - Well, I do not see "the acknowledgment of disagreeing with earlier works" here. I would translate this passage as "The 'Vlach Question' is certainly one of the biggest sources of disagreement and burden in Croatian and Serbian historiography". It's not about his disagreement, this is just a statement of fact - the topic is controversial (and, as I see it, it's hard to disagree with this statement).-- Nicoljaus ( talk) 23:42, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

See the dispute over dating of the paper, it may well be used only once, which makes even more of an issue. Huge chunks of the article sourced to one student paper. What are his qualifications for being used so prominently? Slatersteven ( talk) 10:25, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

This is not a "student paper" and you are well aware of this. Could you stop... doing this thing, please.-- Nicoljaus ( talk) 10:39, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

Anyone can use Google search to check the publishing date of 2009: Identitet Like: korijeni i razvitak (See for example: [40], [41] [42] )-- Nicoljaus ( talk) 10:49, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

Book IDENTITET LIKE: KORIJENI I RAZVITAK "Author's contributions written on the basis of a statement submitted at the scientific conference of the same name held in Gospić from 26 to 29 September 2007" Mikola22 ( talk) 11:02, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

( edit conflict)A slightly deeper googling allowed us to solve the sinister riddle:

GOSPIĆ (IKA ) 17.12.2009. / 13:25 -- On December 16th, the collected book "Identity of Like - Roots and Development" was presented in the hall of the Cultural Information Center in Gospic, published by the Ivo Pilar Institute, Gospic Regional Center. Bishop Mile Bogovic also spoke at the presentation of the proceedings, who praised the work of the Ivo Pilar Institute and emphasized the importance of publishing this collection for Lika and Lika people. The two books summarize the papers presented at the Scientific Symposium on September 2007 in Lika. 54 scientific papers from 62 authors on more than 1300 pages have been published. The editor of the proceedings is the head of the regional center Ivo Pilar in Gospić, Dr. Željko Holjevac. Apart from the editors, the reviewers also spoke about the reviewers Dr. Dragutin Pavlicevic and Dr. Ivan Rogic.

[43]-- Nicoljaus ( talk) 11:05, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

Official information of his professor or mentor, "University of Zagreb, Faculty of Philosophy..Subject: Annual Report on the Work of Junior Researcher Marko Šarić (May 2007 - May 2008)..2005 earned an academic degree of Master(Magister) of Science(Croatian: akademski stupanj magistra znanosti) . He presented the synopsis of the doctoral dissertation Vlachs on Tromeda: Conflicting coexistence in border societies and cultures in Morlakia (16th and 17th centuries)...He submitted a synopsis of the Vlach doctoral dissertation on Tromeđa: Conflict coexistence in border societies and cultures in Morlakia (16th and 17th centuries) whose defense could follow in the coming year(2009)..He participated in the scientific conference Identity Like: Roots and Development, which took place in Gospic from September 26 to 29, 2007 with a statement of the Pre-Modern Ethnic in Lika and Krbava according to the 1712 census...This actually means that Marko Saric is still in the school system by 2009. ^{[2] [3]} Mikola22 ( talk) 11:55, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

This actually means that Marko Saric is still in the school system by 2009. -- Another brilliant statement. In 2009, when the book under discussion was published, Marco already submitted a synopsis of his doctoral dissertation. Here is such a "student", lol.-- Nicoljaus ( talk) 12:26, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

"The postgraduate study for obtaining a doctorate of science ends with the preparation and defense of the doctoral thesis (dissertation). The dissertation is done during the second and third year of study" I mean that school system. Mikola22 ( talk) 13:52, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

Saric is no RS as he is not a respectable scholar nor notable or well-known in any way (zero hits on Google Scholar!). The only notable M. Saric is a MD. Please stop going in circles. Sadkσ (talk is cheap) 01:45, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

Šarić is respectable enough to get a Doctorate. And I see his works at the Google Scholar. Try to search: vlachs author:"Marko Šarić"-- Nicoljaus ( talk) 02:30, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

I started this RSN thread, assessment/confirmation and help to remove them welcome, — Paleo Neonate – 12:25, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

There's a RFC on the Glenn Beck page about whether the lead should note his proclivity towards conspiracy theorizing during Obama's presidency. [44] Snooganssnoogans ( talk) 20:05, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2020_January_20#Category:Climate_change_skepticism_and_denial.

Cogent analysis welcome.

jps ( talk) 20:35, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

• Brian Martin (social scientist) (  | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

Someone wants more opinions about moving stuff to the Criticism section. Also, discussion about whether Martin's "support" for pseudoscience and conspiracy theories needs more sources. -- Hob Gadling ( talk) 11:26, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

Looks fine, that content looks well sourced, well placed and accurate to me. CatCafe ( talk) 15:01, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

We definitely need to make mention of his primary notability in the lede. I added a sentence. jps ( talk) 16:31, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

Martin's alleged support for pseudoscience and conspiracy theories needs reliable sources sourced to Martin himself. Xxanthippe ( talk) 21:32, 9 January 2020 (UTC).

No. Why? Do you need him to say "I support pseudoscience and conspiracy theories"? In that case, we cannot say it about anybody.

We have reliable sources saying he does. That is enough. -- Hob Gadling ( talk) 08:43, 11 January 2020 (UTC)

The argument is invalid. If it is asserted that Martin supports antivax or anything else then sources in which Martin says actually that must be quoted. Xxanthippe ( talk) 09:32, 11 January 2020 (UTC).

Says who, except you? It is common usage to actually link the rules one postulates, so people can look them up. -- Hob Gadling ( talk) 11:17, 11 January 2020 (UTC)

I don't see a problem with the current sources, they ideally should be independent ( WP:RS) and the criticism that I see even appears to be attributed... It would be original research to use his primary quotes, if available, and interpret them for the article (but it can be done with uncontroversial basic information they want public). The article even currently includes his refutation, which is generous but acceptable, I think (i. e. "I have never defended this idea"). — Paleo Neonate – 11:57, 11 January 2020 (UTC)

Still being moved away from NPOV by fringe sympathetic eds. - Roxy, the PROD. . wooF 13:52, 11 January 2020 (UTC)

Xxanthippe is just wrong, here and at the article talk page. We've got reliable sources and are not making the criticism in Wikipedia's voice. Doug Weller talk 14:36, 11 January 2020 (UTC)

Could you clarify what it is that I am wrong about? Xxanthippe ( talk) 05:42, 22 January 2020 (UTC).

We give less and not more weight to an individual's self-description than to the description of them in reliable secondary sources. GMG ^talk 13:14, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/is-defending-science-based-medicine-worth-it/

Pertinant to those who read this noticeboard. - Roxy, the PROD. . wooF 13:35, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

This was a a good read and also partly related to Riko Muranaka mentioned here earlier. — Paleo Neonate – 21:09, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

• https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/marketplace-anti-vaccination-hidden-camera-washington-1.5429805
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4WMve_nYf0

-- Guy Macon ( talk) 00:47, 27 January 2020 (UTC)

Although routinely promoted and presented as an expert on the topic of myth, Joseph Campbell's theories are considered fringe in folklore studies, and Campbell, although he made a career out of discussing Jungian ideas of myth, is essentially considered a fringe figure by folklorists.

For example, in 2016 [2005, 2008] Alan Dundes writes "Folklorists have had some success in publicising the results of our efforts in the past two centuries such that members of other disciplines have, after a minimum of reading, believe they are qualified to speak authoritively of folkloristic matters. It seems that the world is full of self-proclaimed experts in folklore, and a few, such as Campbell, have been accepted as such by the general public (and public television, in the case of Campbell)".

However, you'd never know this from reading the article we have on Campbell, which echoes his representation throughout media sources. I've been digging up sources outlining how folklorists have received his theories to add to the article, but the article could generally use more eyes. :bloodofox: ( talk) 05:26, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

in 2016 Alan Dundes writes...

Since Alan Dundes died in 2005, that's quite a trick. -- Calton | Talk 14:41, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

its a reprint of something originally published in 2005. But no Dundes did not write this in 2016, its why we must take care with how we source things. Slatersteven ( talk) 12:46, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

Calton, Maybe he was friendly with Theresa Caputo? Guy ( help!) 14:49, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

I'd feel sorry for Theresa Caputo, then, Man, he loved to hear himself talk. -- Calton | Talk 02:48, 27 January 2020 (UTC)

True, the paper was in fact published first in 2008 and then subsequently reprinted in 2016, but obviously he didn't write it either of those years. ;) :bloodofox: ( talk) 17:47, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

No, 2005, try rereading the source you are using. Slatersteven ( talk) 17:51, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

Wake up on the wrong side of the bed this morning? The book's preface flatly states "This book is an expanded edition of a Journal of Folklore Research special issue in 2008". Dundes presented some version of the paper it includes in 2004, the year before his death, but the paper was first published in the collection in 2008 after an initial publication in the Journal of American Folklore in 2005. Please quit wasting my time with attempts at inconsequential bickering irrelevant to my initial post: maybe go get a coffee instead. :bloodofox: ( talk) 19:01, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

its not irrelevant to point out you did not seem to have been aware of when this was actually published, and implies therefore you had not fully read it. You said something that simply put was not true, and then still made a comment that could not be true (claiming the paper (the paper not the book by someone else) was published three years after his death. This for me raises doubts as to the veracity of what you claim the source says. For example you claim the source supports a claim "[Joseph Campbell]]'s theories are considered fringe in folklore studies" but the source only is Dundes's opinion, and says nothing about wider folklorists. Slatersteven ( talk) 20:27, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

Dundes is a very well known folklorist, but you can find similiar criticisms of Campbell in the works of numerous other foklorists, such as Barre Toelken. Mostly the field ignores him, as is the case with fringe figures and other fields, but as you're generally an unpleasant user to work with, I'll let you dig further on your own. Enjoy! :bloodofox: ( talk) 21:08, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

read wp:v a source must say what you claim it says. If you do not have a source that explicitly says "[Joseph Campbell]]'s theories are considered fringe in folklore studies" and "is not considered a fringe figure by folklorists." (which also seems to contradict the first part. It also does not matter if Campbell is criticized by numerous folklorists (or is not considered fringe as your suggested edit also says), as some (or even many) is not a majority (which is what your text implies). Slatersteven ( talk) 12:26, 25 January 2020 (UTC)

Yeah, in an article space, sure. In discussion, we can discuss fringe figures all day while hunting for sources or commenting on their absence. And I think you know a typo when you see it (re: "not"), which I hadn't noticed, so thanks for that at least. :bloodofox: ( talk) 07:21, 27 January 2020 (UTC)

500-600 mentions in article space, many like Watership Down look mostly appropriate, but Crone, Goddess, Holy Grail, Joy, Damsel in distress etc.?— eric 17:09, 25 January 2020 (UTC)

Yeah, I've seen Campbell's theories injected across the site at various points, which is clearly a matter of WP:UNDUE. I'll take a look at those. :bloodofox: ( talk) 07:21, 27 January 2020 (UTC)

• Agnotology (  | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

I reverted a somewhat recent addition to its lead ( addition / my removal) and noticed that it seems like a sensitive article in relation to conspiracy theories (and interesting claim here by the same editor, who seems to have been involved at fluor and radiation related articles, possibly validating my concern)... So welcoming interested editors to this article in case there's more to fix in general, it's somewhat messy in its current state too, — Paleo Neonate – 17:39, 28 January 2020 (UTC)

I've been removing fringe sources Orang Pendek but there's more work to do. Does anyone have access to the offline sources? – dlthewave ☎ 04:11, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

(Yikes, looking this over, this article ain't pretty... :bloodofox: ( talk) 06:38, 22 January 2020 (UTC) )

email if you'd like Nevada State Journal, but it's mostly just a primary source (Van Herwanden's account) and shouldn't be used the way it is. Archive has Cathay and the way thither. I don't see Hunting the Gugu digitized. There are much better sources Images of the Wildman in Southeast Asia has a whole chapter, unfortunately the bibliography isn't part of the google preview.— eric 21:32, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

I just received newspapers.com access, here's a publicly-available clipping of the Arizona State Journal piece: [45]

There does seem to be good sourcing to cover the local mythological perspective, which is much more relevant then reported sightings by westerners. – dlthewave ☎ 17:20, 26 January 2020 (UTC)

Foreign language "wild man", "forest people", etc. give me a headache. Wild man covers Europe, looks like a bunch from all over Asia redirect to Almas (cryptozoology). Maybe there should be just one article?— eric 00:50, 27 January 2020 (UTC)

Seems like a single article would make sense if these are essentially the same legend with small regional variations. – dlthewave ☎ 13:15, 29 January 2020 (UTC)

Discussion regarding GSOW that may interest readers here. Roxy, the PROD. . wooF 13:54, 29 January 2020 (UTC)

I started this wanting to discuss the general issue without naming the specific group. I guess that was never going to be possible. - Bilby ( talk) 14:06, 29 January 2020 (UTC)

If they were doing something against policy you might have a point, but this is just a continuation of your pro-fringe crusade. Roxy, the PROD. . wooF 15:06, 29 January 2020 (UTC)

Some interesting recent discussions at:

• Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Christianity/Noticeboard#Request for comments on the Turin Shroud
• Talk:Shroud of Turin

— Paleo Neonate – 17:28, 28 January 2020 (UTC)

Oddly enough, I've seen the sample that was tested in 1988, or at least a teeny tiny bit of it. Aint that cool! - Roxy, the PROD. . wooF 14:01, 29 January 2020 (UTC)

And no miracle happened? — Paleo Neonate – 15:58, 29 January 2020 (UTC)

Of course not. It was just a bit of medieval cotton.linen actually. see addendum below - Roxy, the PROD. . wooF 18:39, 29 January 2020 (UTC)

For your information, the Turin Shroud is made of pure linen! Brilliant own goal. Frezase ( talk) 19:47, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

Actually, no. Not only the test results, but I can personally confirm that that bit of the shroud was cotton. I'm an expert. - Roxy, the PROD. . wooF 22:29, 31 January 2020 (UTC)Acvtually, scratch that, I misremembered, it was last century after all. I apologise to Frezase. It was linen. medieval, of course. - Roxy, the PROD. . wooF 22:52, 31 January 2020 (UTC)

Redirect? Doug Weller talk 17:31, 25 January 2020 (UTC)

Why? Is it not a TV show that has garnered some press? Slatersteven ( talk) 18:01, 25 January 2020 (UTC)

( edit conflict)I was curious, so I took a quick look. WP:NTV would seem to indicate that something like this tends to get the benefit of the doubt. However, I couldn't find anything beyond ads for watching/buying and an occasional blog post. Maybe someone with some better google-fu could find some more, but otherwise, redirecting seems reasonable. – Deacon Vorbis ( carbon •  videos) 18:08, 25 January 2020 (UTC)

This seems to have a mention [ [46]]. Slatersteven ( talk) 18:12, 25 January 2020 (UTC)

Gets better [ [47]], maybe notable for all the wrong reasons. Slatersteven ( talk) 18:14, 25 January 2020 (UTC)

And there's always Jason Colavito [48] - LuckyLouie ( talk) 21:04, 25 January 2020 (UTC)

I added an External links section to the article with its IMDb entry per per WP:IMDb and WP:ELPEREN. Seems like a legitimate stand-alone article in my opinion; otherwise, it might be confused by researchers with other In Search of... titles, episode titles, and topics. Looks like it had video releases with foreign titles in Brazil, Germany, and Spain according to IMDb. I've never seen the show, didn't generate enough ratings to get renewed obviously. 5Q5| ^✉ 13:40, 26 January 2020 (UTC)

Hmm, if nothing else, I think we should make it clearer that this Ancient astronauts stuff is squarely a pseudosience. :bloodofox: ( talk) 17:35, 27 January 2020 (UTC)

I agree and noticed that you already did, thanks, — Paleo Neonate – 21:21, 27 January 2020 (UTC)

While retargetting links considering the recent ancient astronauts move, I found the following articles that seemed to lack any criticism or pseudoscience mention (and I'm unsure if it's warranted for the BLP, the link was in "See also", but I also then noticed the work Le Dieu de la Bible vient des étoiles : de la traduction littérale des codex hébraïques initiaux (my translation: "The god of the Bible comes from the stars: literal translation of original Hebrew codex")): Mauro Biglino, UFOs: Past, Present, and Future, not active or important enough for a separate thread I think, but in case anyone wants to look, — Paleo Neonate – 22:54, 27 January 2020 (UTC)

There fortunately was a Colavito review of the film available, — Paleo Neonate – 13:14, 2 February 2020 (UTC)

• Petrozavodsk phenomenon (  | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

Article can’t seem to decide between fringe ufology views, Russian propaganda sources, and a couple of skeptics. - LuckyLouie ( talk) 21:41, 1 February 2020 (UTC)

There seems to be a few decent English sources, I can't speak for the many Russian ones... It may indeed be too long and give space to too much theories. — Paleo Neonate – 17:14, 2 February 2020 (UTC)

Budding edit war: Someone tries to force a paragraph into the article that essentially says that Rutan has friends who think the same as he does. The editor in question tried, in Talk:Judith Curry, to sell en engineer as an expert for something (which is not engineering), well, because he is an engineer and engineers are smart. The whole mixture tastes like PROFRINGE tendentious editing in favor of climate change denial. -- Hob Gadling ( talk) 18:17, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

Oh right: Pinging User:Yae4. -- Hob Gadling ( talk) 18:18, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

With this edit [49] and nothing more than an edit comment, User:Hob_Gadling removed a quote that has existed in the article for over a decade, since August 2009. [50]

With this edit [51] and comment, "that paragraph adds nothing. He knows others who agree with him. So what?" User:Hob_Gadling removed sourced facts like there is a group of "respected scientists, engineers, and/or climate experts who disagree with some or most of the current Global Warming religion."

Obviously it adds something, or you would not want it removed. What are you afraid of, and whose editing is "tendentious?" -- Yae4 ( talk) 19:13, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

It adds fringe propaganda. See WP:FRINGE. Of course I meant it adds nothing encyclopedic.

I have a surprise for you: deleting old text is neither forbidden nor per se unreasonable. If there is good reason to delete it, such as WP:FRINGE, it should be deleted. See also argumentum ad antiquitatem: since the end of scholasticism in the seventeenth century, age has not been a generally accepted criterion for truth. -- Hob Gadling ( talk) 19:25, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

For the first diff: Rutan's views are his own, and fringe or not should be given with due weight as reported by reliable sources. There's valid arguments for the quote being overlong, WP:UNDUE, and maybe WP:FRINGE of the interviewer, which might over-emphasize particular quotes (i don't even see a ref for it, so WP:V). The second just looks like WP:SYNTH to make a WP:FRINGE point.— eric

If Rutan espouses fringe theories, then it is perfectly right for his WP page to state that he does. Whether we agree with him or whether they are fringe isn't important. We should inform the reader about Rutan, not about climate science. If his opinions are demonstrably fringe however, then we can add a statement to that effect. That should ease concerns that this page contributes to fringe propaganda. Martijn Meijering ( talk) 20:32, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

That grantcountybeat column doesn't seem to be a reliable source, not only about climate science, but especially for use in the biography of a living person and not attributed as Burrow's opinion... As for such associations list I don't personally find it useful. — Paleo Neonate – 20:38, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

If it can be properly sourced I don't see a problem with that quote. If he's a climate denier we don't have to sugarcoat it. Make sure to include the part where he admits he's not a climatologist so readers can tell exactly the kind of "I'm not a scientist, but..." quote they're getting. ApLundell ( talk) 22:52, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

[A side note] I haven't heard of Burt for many many years, probably fifty, and wanted to build one of his planes when I grew up. Now he builds space ships and is a climate change denier. Gah. - Roxy, the PROD. . wooF 13:31, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

State that he does, yes. Repeat his wrong and refuted reasoning, no. That would give the impression that what he states as fact is a fact.

"the closer you look at the data and alarmists’ presentations, the more fraud you find" - there has never been any fraud. That is a fraudulent rumor spread by denialists. -- Hob Gadling ( talk) 15:26, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

Hmm yes the last edit including quotes, now reverted by another editor, read like a WP:SOAPBOX... — Paleo Neonate – 17:38, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

Hob Gadling, well, he's kind of right, in that the more you look into it the more you realise that the entire climate change denial machine is fraudulent. Guy ( help!) 10:17, 21 January 2020 (UTC)

Did anyone find a good source for the quote that is still in the article? All i see is this a powerpoint from someone else's site with multiple "versions" since Oshkosh 2009. Is the quote in the WUWT.TV interview? Probably should go per WP:BLP and WP:UNDUE until it's covered by a reliable source, or am i missing something?— eric 18:11, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

There's not much written about Rutan's climate change denial except for some notice that he was one of the signatories to that embarrassing Wall Street Journal Op-Ed. The soapboxing and blockquotes from him are... not relevant to his biography. jps ( talk) 18:23, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

Rm'd the links to the powerpoints, they should be treated like other self published material. I didn't see the fringe argument at first, would have thought something said at Oshkosh would have been well covered.— eric 19:11, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

• I note that there are quite a few instances of "$DENIER wrote $DENIALISTCLAPTRAP for the Global Warming Policy Foundation(source: link to $DENIALISTCLASPTRAP at thegwpf.org)". That's probably not a good idea. Guy ( help!) 10:32, 21 January 2020 (UTC)
  • A backdoor WP:EL to what $DENIER can't get published. Above i would have left the links to those powerpoints if a reliable source would have mentioned them, but that's probably not right either. Reading WP:SELFPUB and WP:PRIMARY, $DENIALISTCLAPTRAP shouldn't be linked in the body.— eric 15:51, 21 January 2020 (UTC)

@ ජපස and EricR: If you don't look for something, then you won't find it, especially if it is several years or more old, or paywalled. The following contains the quotes previously included in the article, and more. It seems encyclopedic for a biography: "And yet, if you didn't know his views, you'd think Rutan was an arch environmentalist. In 1989 his house featured in Popular Science magazine, billed as the ultimate energy-efficient dwelling, and for years he drove an electric car. "People thought I was a liberal and a tree-hugger, but I'm not. It's not because I have any concern about saving the planet, or peak oil. It's about neat technology." Also he "has a penchant for swimming against the tide," and "appetite for mystery and controversy" that "served him well in his aerospace work." Etc. [52]

@ JzG and EricR: Writing about people as though they can be lumped into a disrespected category and treated like a variable looks like Dehumanization, a battlefield tactic, and seems improper at Wikipedia.

@ EricR: Your hypothesis regarding WPFringe of the interviewer seems to me invalidated by the source, if actually you read it.

FYI, I'm going to BLPN with this. -- Yae4 ( talk) 21:24, 29 January 2020 (UTC)

Yae4, Writing about people as if they are climate change denialists when RS identify them as climate change denialists is fine. Guy ( help!) 22:09, 29 January 2020 (UTC)

JzG Name calling is childish. -- Yae4 ( talk) 22:40, 29 January 2020 (UTC)

The point is accuracy (see WP:PSCI and WP:BLPFRINGE). Alternatives would be censoring any compromising information even when presented by reliable sources, to avoid the subject alltogether, or giving the false impression of a scientific debate where it's settled, etc... — Paleo Neonate – 12:08, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

Yae4, sure, but that's not what's going on in this case. The sources identify him as a climate change denialist. That's not more "name-calling" than identifying someone as a creationist or a flat-earther when they are publicly espousing those ideas. Guy ( help!) 19:04, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

@ JzG: Which sources call Rutan that? (PS. Hob Gadling could explain to you why your reference to creationists or flat-earthers is flawed logic.) -- Yae4 ( talk) 21:15, 1 February 2020 (UTC)

Yae4, if one makes a speech saying the earth is flat, it is not necessary for a RS to say you are a flat earther. Flat eartherism is what we call that thing, just as climate change denialism is what we call Rutan's position here. You didn't chalenge "Anthropogenic climate change skepticism" - and that is a euphemism. Wikipedia does not use euphemisms. Guy ( help!) 17:45, 2 February 2020 (UTC)

Yae4, the quotes and edits mentioned where: [53] and [54]. Quotes in those edits do not appear in the New Scientist article, your assertion that it contains the quotes previously included in the article is incorrect. Please do not misrepresent sources.— eric 16:50, 2 February 2020 (UTC)

@ EricR: aka eric, Please do not misrepresent what I wrote above. I specifically listed quotes from the article that were in the newscientist source. The "I put myself in the (Those who fear expansion of Government control) group..." quote you question is not in my list above.

If you try, you can find that quote in writing at least a couple places, including [55] and (not exactly the identical excerpts, but very similar) [56] which links to the former (see Resource #2). I haven't yet tried to find it in the 6-part Youtube recordings of the 2009 presentation, but it's probably heard there too. [57]

Because of the source used [58] when Jmbnf originally added the quote to the article in August 2009 [59], it seems clear version 11 of the presentation powerpoint with speaker notes [60] was the source back then. -- Yae4 ( talk) 19:24, 2 February 2020 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Reichian body-oriented psychotherapy

jps ( talk) 11:15, 3 February 2020 (UTC)

• Alien abduction ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
• John E. Mack ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

Textbook examples of false balance. Reading them you'd get the impression that Alien abduction is a serious possibility. -- RaiderAspect ( talk) 01:06, 3 February 2020 (UTC)

I always felt like the proper tone for articles on alien abduction was sympathy for people who are obviously very, very troubled. The fact that they cannot explain their trauma doesn't make the trauma less real. The problem is that these accounts are not reliable sources for claims about life forms from beyond Earth and, unfortunately, that is the part of the claim that generates the most prurient interest by those kinds of people who used to buy Weekly World News. jps ( talk) 20:10, 3 February 2020 (UTC)

The Alien abduction article seems to have weight issues and also fails to specify that Mack didn't attribute those experiences to actual physical aliens (it may even subtly suggest otherwise). I too sympathize with the "phenomenon" as the experience may occur as a result of sleep paralysis that can happen spontaneously to anyone, independently of psychiatric issues (like Mare (folklore), being awaken in the morning by a being who then vanishes, and other similar experiences depending on one's culture). Fringe interpretations of such are of course another matter... The Mack article has various sourcing problems. — Paleo Neonate – 00:53, 4 February 2020 (UTC)

Adding: the "Paranormal" section uses "abilities" twice which strikes me as odd in Wikipedia's voice considering that there exists no reliable indication of any such actual abilities. I can't access that source though and also question its reliability for unattributed use. It's unclear if the original text was about belief in abilities, people prone to more personal experiences or if it really claimed that. — Paleo Neonate – 02:16, 4 February 2020 (UTC)

Some other very related articles: Alien abduction entities, Alien abduction claimants, Narrative of the abduction phenomenon, Perspectives on the abduction phenomenon... — Paleo Neonate – 02:16, 4 February 2020 (UTC)

Another interesting thing to look at would be if notable sociologists noted evidence of promoting fringe UFO/abduction media on television for political purposes (i.e. interesting pagan takeover conspiracy theory discussed by Colavito in his review of UFOs: Past, Present, and Future). While abduction claimants are often considered to be sane or to plausibly have experienced something unusual, the experiences and interpretations are obviously influenced by cultural narratives... — Paleo Neonate – 19:45, 4 February 2020 (UTC)

I'm not sure if my edits helped with the weight issues, but they address most of my above concerns (except the one about media promotion). While I didn't touch the lead, I just re-read it now and think that it's already decent... — Paleo Neonate – 09:16, 5 February 2020 (UTC)

I found a source for the politics/conspiracy theories concerns (by Michael Barkun) and added some related content, review always welcome, — Paleo Neonate – 06:06, 7 February 2020 (UTC)

Nice work, you've cleaned it up a lot. Wonder if the other related articles you found should be merged into the main article - the usable content in them seems to largely duplicate the Alien Abductions. -- RaiderAspect ( talk) 11:16, 7 February 2020 (UTC)

It's possible, other than the cattle mutilation article I haven't really looked at those yet, although as often, some are linked from the main article as extension (presumably the content was excessive, or some may be POV forks that were linked). Some merges are often indeed possible when cleaning up, I'll try to have a look at those soon. The narrative section of the main article may still be lengthy with various issues though... — Paleo Neonate – 12:08, 7 February 2020 (UTC)

• Draft:Anti-estrogenic diet

Came across this during AfC reviewing, and I'm nervous to move forward, especially given the Carnivore diet issues above. I worry that this is an attempt at that whole soy boy fringe theory, but perhaps I'm looking too much into it. Bkissin ( talk) 19:47, 6 February 2020 (UTC)

The draft contains health claims sourced to sites like Livestrong and "pinklotus.com", which fail WP:MEDRS. A lot of primary and outdated medical research in there as well. Also, only a few of the sources actually mention the anti-estrogenic diet (most are about the general effects of phytoestrogens on health). Needs a trim, at least. As an aside, the article actually suggests eating soy, so I don't think this has anything to do with the "soy boy" meme... SpicyMilkBoy ( talk) 20:01, 6 February 2020 (UTC)

Yep, lots of WP:MEDRS violation, including a claim that studies have shown that high levels of estrogen increases the risk for both males and females for heart disease and cancer sourced to a health-inspector investigation of a factory where the workers complained that power-tool vibrations were giving them numb fingers. It might not be "soy boy" nonsense (perhaps it's just another diet fad mentality at work), but sorting the wheat from the chaff would be harder than writing from scratch. XOR'easter ( talk) 20:37, 6 February 2020 (UTC)

Yeah, if you trimmed out all of the WP:SYNTH and WP:MEDRS violating stuff you'd probably be left with, at best, a couple of sentences that could be merged to a list somewhere. SpicyMilkBoy ( talk) 20:42, 6 February 2020 (UTC)

Do I ever hate how hard it is to participate in the AfC process...

It should be declined per NOT and FRINGE. The editor should consider submitting an article about the main book on the topic instead, assuming it's notable. If the diet is notable, the article should be written from MEDRS and FRINGE standards. In-world perspectives should not be presented in Wikipedia's voice. -- Ronz ( talk) 03:37, 7 February 2020 (UTC)

User:Bkissin is active at AfC and has declined article submissions in the past for similar issues. jps ( talk) 12:19, 7 February 2020 (UTC)

• Nikah mut'ah (  | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

Some editors experienced with fringe theories, especially in the service of religion (Sunni Islam in this case), are requested to weigh in here: [61] An especially sketchy quote reads, This concurs with what many Muslim scholars say, that shiaism is merely syncretism between Islam and pre-Islamic paganism and zorostarian [sic] beliefs and practices. which is sourced to this and this site. There appear to be some other unreliable sources in the rest of the article too, so feel free to look at that and cut as needed as well.

An IP originally was trying to remove the section, but a couple of good faith editors reverted it, evidently not looking closely at the content. I tried pinging them, but they never responded. Anyway, more details are on the talk page which I linked to. -Crossroads- ( talk) 04:38, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

At least half of the sources used to support the conclusion were not adequate so I too removed the section for now then left a message on the talk page (although it's not the only part of the article with suboptimal sources), — Paleo Neonate – 11:04, 2 February 2020 (UTC)

Update: I had to issue an edit warring warning. Also pinging Qurtuva who may not have been aware of this noticeboard discussion. — Paleo Neonate – 15:24, 2 February 2020 (UTC)

Update: User Qurtuva recently blocked as a sock of OyVey1944/AntiRacistSwede/TheAntiFedora/SchlomoShekelberg after a checkuser-confirmed SPI report filed by Crossroads, meaning that WP:REVERTBAN applies... — Paleo Neonate – 08:40, 9 February 2020 (UTC)

• Carnivore diet (  | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

As popularized by Jordan Peterson, etc. has seen a lot of editing recently including over whether it is a "fad". Could use eyes. Alexbrn ( talk) 14:40, 4 February 2020 (UTC)

I think people active on that page are confusing diets that consist primarily of meat and/or animal products with the "carnivore diet" fad. These should be two separate articles. Per WP:ONEWAY, the carnivore diet could link to diets of the various groups they want to mention, but right now it does not appear that Wikipedia has a good article on the diets of indigenous people. Keeping that information on a fad diet page is WP:SYNTH and WP:BIAS. jps ( talk) 14:50, 4 February 2020 (UTC)

Agree we don't want to mix this bonkers fad with indigenous diets, probably a hat note should say something to that effect. We have a pukka article on Inuit cuisine. Alexbrn ( talk) 14:54, 4 February 2020 (UTC)

• I also noticed this new userspace draft: User:Amencher/sandbox — Paleo Neonate – 19:12, 6 February 2020 (UTC)
• I now noticed User:Gun Peterson/sandbox but it seems to be a student, — Paleo Neonate – 21:09, 9 February 2020 (UTC)
• And User:MemaidenModus/sandbox (uncertain if related or if anything worth using, stale from July) — Paleo Neonate – 21:26, 9 February 2020 (UTC)
• Your agenda discovered — Paleo Neonate – 03:38, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

• The Politically Incorrect Guide to Science (  | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) (episode)
• The Politically Incorrect Guide (  | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) (series)
• Tom Bethell (  | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
• Jonathan Wells (intelligent design advocate)#The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design (  | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) (relation)

"The author addresses issues including HIV/AIDS denialism, intelligent design, and the relationship between science and Christianity". It apparently promotes deep state and big pharma conspiracy theories as well as pseudoscientific creationism in the guise of a politicization of science debate but the lead only says "while others criticized him for misrepresenting science for political purposes". The reviews have some material that could possibly be better represented, or maybe that more sources should be found; if they're difficult to find maybe it should be merged in Bethell's article, or the series'... — Paleo Neonate – 08:42, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

"Bethell is an ultra-conservative, right-wing religious zealot (this from a conservative Republican) who has been trying to convince anyone who has been foolish enough to listen for the last 30 years that nothing of science should be believed and everything must be taken on faith – oh, and that’s his own personal interpretation of faith by the way." [62] So: WP:PROFRINGE reviews probably don't belong, then. Guy ( help!) 14:40, 10 February 2020 (UTC)